Jake’s Boat
Gail A. Webber
At 2 a.m., Jake gazed out at the lake, listening to the loons. “Sound like spirits, don’t they, Jeannie?” She called them Medawihla, the name her Abenaki grandmother taught her. Though Jeannette had been dead five years, Jake still talked to her.
The deep lake was cold even in the summer, with strong currents around the many islets. Every few years someone drowned or simply disappeared, like the boy whose overturned canoe they found last month. Though he knew the lake well, Jake had to be careful—lots of things were harder at eighty-seven. But he took his boat out nearly every day, sometimes fishing for white perch or largemouth bass, and other times just rowing around. When Jeannette was alive, they did those things together.
“We had a good life, didn’t we,
