My new novel is set on the waters and shores of Lake Champlain. This excerpt describes the thoughts and feelings of Malcombe Caulwell, the keeper of an inn that was once a lighthouse, as he walks along the shoreline of Burlington Bay.
.... Malcombe Caulwell walked every day,
clambering over the rocks that lined the lake along the Cove. Always in sight
of silver water, always in sight of the bone-white piled granite of the long
breakwater built to keep the inner harbor safe from the storm-whipped winds and
waters that in any season could come racing down the long, narrow waterway.
That single sailboat was still moored
here today, rocking a bit on the waves, sails furled-up tight around the wooden
boom, a trim and well-kept blue sloop that was always first and last in the
water. Today, beneath a suddenly overcast sky, the boat’s usual brightwork
seemed dull and old.
Descending from a boulder, Malcombe
stepped onto the hard sand at water’s edge on North Beach.
Waves, a foot high, maybe, hissed and plopped hollowly, bringing small
branches, even a few small wild apples, to rest for a while at the shoreline.
He stepped around a nest of beer bottles, a couple of used condoms that looked
like dead jellyfish lying spent in the sand. The power plant tower,
smoke-stained red-brown brick, rose to the south. Not belching smoke today, he
was glad to see.
Malcombe always did his best to see
beyond the way the lake and shore were misused, disrespected. Not just nowadays,
but all through history. His reading and research told him that. For all the
sublime and transcendent power made manifest in this confluence of water,
mountains, islands, stone, and sky that Lake Champlain
revealed, there were also those darker things. Pollution from factories and
farms, the slicks of oil that eddied near the tanker piers and often broke
loose to wander, sometimes adding a sickening petroleum stench to the heat and
humidity of the dog days in August.
And
the blood of battle on these waters: 1776 and Benedict Arnold’s fleet at
Valcour, 1814, and Macdonough defeating the British at Plattsburgh… How many ghosts, how many
severed limbs, how much flesh and blood and bone under these deep waters, or
washed up against isolated stretches of shore? Not to mention the shipwrecks…
At the place where the sand became a tiny
rock-strewn beach, Malcombe stopped to skim a few flat stones. His best effort
today lifted seven times; in the flat gray light there was an optical illusion
suggesting that it might skip all the way across the water and actually reach
those mountains.
Malcombe smiled, and a word came into his
head. Solitude. Certainly not loneliness.
He never said it aloud anymore, but he
knew what really kept him going, from day to day, either alone or as a provider
of meals, conversation, and information to passing strangers, was nothing other
than love.
Could you love the whole of a place, a
lake, this shoreline for instance, like it was alive? Its past, present, future
all flowing together into your heart, your imaginings, your…spirit?
Yes. He’d shared all this in words with
Lauren in the years they’d had together; now it seemed that he quietly, simply
lived it.
Back a few feet from shore now, and up
along a higher path, Malcombe walked with the lake to one side and the railroad
tracks, three lines of track straight-edging through a swath of cinder and a
faint smell of creosote, to the other. From this vantage he could see the curve
of the harbor, and beyond to the ancient iron railroad bridge that marked the
entry to the old barge canal.
This was Malcombe Caulwell’s usual
turnaround point, about a half hour out from the inn. Time now to head back,
bake the single loaf he’d shaped and then left to rise one last time in the
cool kitchen.
So he turned around, began walking back
toward home. A juniper-scented wind came out of the north to meet him.
-Kevin Macneil Brown
THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER is available for purchase at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/kevin-macneil-brown/the-lake-of-living-water/paperback/product-20419011.html
Also available in Kindle Edition :
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lake-Living-Water-ebook/dp/B009JJQZMA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349616138&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lake+of+living+water
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Changing Skies, Adirondacks, and Lake Champlain- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, February 2012
