Part 6 (1/2)
”Not out plain, but it was there between the lines. Can't blame her, I guess. It would be hard raising children alone.”
Nate stopped and placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the stretch of sh.o.r.e they had covered. ”I reckon I was worried over nothing. There aren't all that many rattlesnakes around, after all.”
”Better safe than bit.”
”You're standing up for me? I figured you would poke fun from now until Christmas.”
”Let's further think of this,” Shakespeare quoted. ”Weigh what convenience both of time and means may fit us to our shape if this should fail, and our drift look through our bad performance.”
Nate shook his head. ”I've put everyone to a lot of bother for nothing. It was coincidence, nothing more, those rattlers appearing so close together.”
”If it had been two grizzlies or two mountain lions you'd have the same cause for concern.”
”You can come right out and say when I'm wrong. I'm a grown man. I can take it.”
”Oh, all right.” Shakespeare quoted the Bard, ”In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.” He chuckled. ”How's that?”
”You call that being hard on me?”
”Later I'll beat you with a switch if it will make you feel better.”
”I've inconvenienced everyone.”
Shakespeare put his hand to his chest again. ”A true knight, not yet mature, yet matchless, firm in word, speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue, not soon provoked nor being provoked, soon calmed. His heart and hand both open and both free.”
”I'm no saint,” Nate said gruffly.
”You're human. We all are. And as humans go, you are one of the few I have admired with all that I am.”
”Why are you talking like this?”
”You never know,” Shakespeare said.
Nate had a thought that troubled him. ”This has something to do with your age, doesn't it? All you've done lately is talk about how old you are and how you don't feel as spry as you used to.”
”I don't.”
”Good G.o.d. You're over eighty. How spry do you think you should be?”
Shakespeare placed his hand on Nate's shoulder and said earnestly, ”I'm preparing you, is all.”
”Is there something you're not telling me?”
”No.”
”You sick?”
”No.”
”Have a disease of some kind?”
”No.”
”Then why, for G.o.d sake?”
”I'm old, Nate. Very old. You keep denying how old I am. You tell me I'll last a good long while, but there are no guarantees. So I am saying now what I might not be able to say tomorrow or the next day.”
”It might not happen for years yet.”
Shakespeare shook his head. ”I look at myself in the mirror every day and I know what I see.” He sighed and raised his face to the vault of sky, then gazed at the lake. ”I have no complaints. I've had a good life.”
”Now you're being ridiculous. You act as if you have one foot in the grave when you've just admitted that you are as healthy as can be.”
”Why doesn't anyone listen anymore?” Shakespeare said sadly. ”My wife is denying my age just like you.”
”I'll have Blue Water Woman and you over for supper tomorrow night and we'll talk some more.”
”We'll be happy to come over, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll be the topic. What I've just said to you goes no further than right here.”
Nate grinned. ”You just don't want Blue Water Woman upset with you.”
”No. I don't want her upset, period. I love that woman, and talking about me dying would hurt her.”
”You have my word,” Nate said.
Winona looked up and saw her husband and McNair talking. ”I thought we were hunting for snakes. Look at those two.”
Blue Water Woman was using the b.u.t.t of her rifle to move a large rock. ”I hope it is not what I think it is.”
Winona arched an eyebrow in a silent question.
”Shakespeare has been going on again about how no one lives forever,” Blue Water Woman revealed. ”He says he has a feeling, a premonition, that he isn't long for this world.”
”Men can be so silly,” Winona said. When her friend didn't respond, she said softly, ”Blue Water Woman?”
Blue Water Woman turned. Her eyes were misting. ”I am worried, Winona. It is all he talks about anymore. At first I thought it was his age. His joints hurt and he cannot get around as well.”
”He gets around better than men half his age.”
”You know that and I know that, but he says he is not the man he used to be. The other day he talked about how when he was younger he could swim a lake this size. Now he says he would be lucky to make it halfway across.”
”Everyone grows old. It is part of life.”
”It is part of dying,” Blue Water Woman said. She walked to a boulder and sat. She rested the stock of her rifle on the ground and gripped the barrel in both hands and leaned on it. ”In all the winters we have been together, I have never seen Carcajou like this.”
Carcajou, as Winona knew, was a nickname given to Shakespeare in his younger days, before he discovered the Bard. It was French for ”wolverine.” Shakespeare never talked about how he got the name, not even to his wife.