The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [108]
Ahead, Keegan paused, stepping out of the procession to wait for me to catch up. His arms were muscled from his work with glass and fire; he had a long narrow burn just below his elbow.
“Excited?” he asked, falling into step beside me.
“Very. You must be, too.”
“Oh, yes.” He smiled, nodded ahead. “Not half as excited as Oliver, though.”
“No kidding. Have you seen his collections? His archived collections, I mean?”
Keegan glanced at me with interest. “He invited you over?”
“He did. I took my mother.”
“You must have impressed him. He doesn’t show those images to many people. What did you think?”
I remembered the quietness of the Westrum House, the black auditorium seats all empty and the doors to the world locked, the images flashing up on the screen. I thought of Oliver’s passion and the exquisite beauty of the windows. As uneasy as I was about Oliver’s intentions, I’d also left feeling dazzled by the intricate, luminous glass.
“They were exceptional. He needs more display space, though, not more windows. Do you think he’ll go after these?”
“Wouldn’t you? An interrelated series—that’s got to be a very special find. Did he serve you tea?”
“He did. Orange spice. With honey. It was very good.”
The tall grass and weeds reached the hem of the only dress I’d brought, short-sleeved and as soft as a T-shirt, the sort of cloth that never wrinkled, good for traveling. It was black, and I wore black sandals, which had gotten soaked within a few steps. Keegan’s jeans were wet to his knees, which reminded me of our wilder days, pulling the canoe out of the water, his legs wet and his feet pale against the shale beach. We’d been so carefree. My departure had been fixed even then, but it was still so far on the horizon I felt we’d never get there. That last spring the present had seemed somehow eternal, as if nothing would ever change. I wondered if Keegan ever thought about those days, the innocent world we’d inhabited until my father died.
“How’s Max? I keep thinking of him standing above that rushing water.”
“He’s good. He probably doesn’t even remember, so don’t be worrying. I thought about bringing him today, so he could see where they were digging.” He gestured to the small cemetery adjacent to the church, enclosed within an ornate black iron fence; beyond this fence, unrecognized for decades and now roped off with dark blue tape, was the site where the Iroquois had once lived, before the village of Appleton was built and razed, before the land was taken by the government. Though it was still early, two archaeologists were already standing just outside the taped-off area, drinking coffee from paper cups. They waved. I found myself thinking of the lake, of the earth beneath my feet, which had seen so many people, so many seasons, come and go.
“He didn’t want to come?”
“Oh, he’d have come in a heartbeat. Are you kidding? He’s totally into digging. But in the end it seemed like a bad idea. He’d just be all over the place.” Keegan waved back to the archaeologists, whom he seemed to know. “They found some bowls yesterday, did you hear? Big stone bowls, with granite pestles, probably used for grinding corn.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, imagining the streets and buildings that had once filled this land, and the trails and patterns of the Iroquois who lived here