STORY: Lake Geneva pt.1 of 2

     1
     The old man's head looked like an abandoned hornet nest rotting in the cranny of a barn.  He was grey and papery as if his skin might flake and crumble like fish overcooked in a skillet.
 He was given to the porch in the mornings where from his wheelchair he played sentinel over the farmlands, until the house staff, judging the zenith of that day's heat, dispatched, and pushed him back inside the house to the road-facing windows, where he would resume the watch, looking there against the blaze like an elder planet waiting on a dying sun.
     It was at those windows the old man spotted a black Plymouth coming down the rows of corn like a rhinoceros in the high grass, agitating him, him ringing his bell, swinging it violently while gripping the wheelchair with his free hand, until the house girls with queer looks for each and the other, came to him, and heard him demand  again the porch, making no more sense than usual to these adolescents from town.
    "It is a Plymouth, you understand?  Not Chrysler, a Plymouth -- I want the porch, quickly!"
     It took two girls to move him through the parlor, past the hunting trophies and the old gravelly maps, to the front hall, and there a final dip to the porch; with the courage befitting the senior girl on staff, one asked the old man what the difference was between the Plymouth and the Chevrolet.
     "I said Chrysler.  Plymouth and Chrysler, not Plymouth and Chevy; a Chrysler is proletariat: shylock, but not so far from dirty fingernails that he'll try to rob us outright.  But the Plymouth, such as that one there, that's for the pure and high fascist -- a man who thinks God made him for policing the rest of us even beyond the outskirts of where he ought to place himself.  The porch!  Go!"
     And they did.
     The girls did not think the man in the Plymouth looked like a copper.  He was handsome.  He wore a grey suit and a grey fedora; coppers never wore clothes as this in the pictures.
     The man took down his hat and swung it across his body as hello to the girls.  He nodded and turned away from them and to the sun as if to spotlight himself.  Handsome, but he was odd; later the girls would all agree it was his face: the smooth forehead and lean jaw, the blu-black grid of hair tamped down from the hat -- these, fittings of vitality, but loose-fitting; and behind it, the florabundant experience of great age.  When the man smiled his teeth were grey.  The suit was light linen, but it was ninety degrees, he stood in then sun, and did not sweat.
     "David Ross?"
     The old man picked a mosquito off his nose, "Yes?"
     "It was told that David Ross who owns a farm up this way, as well many thousands of acreage behind it, could show me the way to Lake Geneva."
     "No one told you that." The old man said.
     "Can you show me the lake?"
     "Naah.  It's a long way."
     "A man's name is Demidov."
     "See my chair?  I'm not much for hikes these days.  I know this Demidov never told you such a thing."
     The man in the suit looked over the girls lined up in the shade.
     "I said, a man's name is Demidov.  I said, It was told."
     "Well what's that supposed to mean, sir?"
     "It means speech is overheard as often as told.  We talk to ourselves.  We hear it.  God overhears it.  Sometimes others."
     "It seems maybe this Demidov is the man you should talk to."
     "I'm looking for the lake, Mr. Ross.  It is told this lake is unreachable wilderness, a curiosity.  As for Demidov -- when I see him again it won't be for directions."
     The Old Man smiled.  The other, in the suit, was dry; if it was a joke what he said, he gave no cue.  He took his hat down again, and examined it as if it had yet to be purchased.
     "I think it's time you went back the way you came." The old man said.
     The man in the suit took a package of cigarettes from his jacket, tapped two free.  He stepped to the stairs, and reached one out to Old Ross; it was received along with a match, lit and inhaled.
     Ross waved the girls away from their hiding places behind him, and they obeyed , going inside the house.  Ross wheezed over the smoke.
     "If I ask again for you to leave, sir?"
     "I'll leave.  But I will come back.  I will see the lake if I have to burn every tree, every crop, every acre; it will be purged; I'll make a lake of fire.  Your acquaintance, Demidov: I've hunted him.  He has said you are the man to show me this lake.  This lake I desire to be shown.
     Ross rubbed the cigarette against the arm of the chair.
     "Demidov -- I am not like him."
     "I know perfectly well what you are, David Ross, what I don't know yet is what the lake is.  I would like supper.  I would like a bath, supper, and a room tonight.  Tommorrow I would appreciate your guidance to the lake.  The lake you showed the Russian."
     The man in the suit blew smoke rings, halos in the sun.
     "Have the girls show you in."
     The man in the suit put his hand on Ross's trembling fist.
     "Capital."
     As he walked past the wheelchair, his hand remained on Ross's.  The old man asked him, "What's your name?"
     "Witten you can call me."