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September Issue |
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Resources |
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In the Lake of the Woods
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13691 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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5 / 1995 |
3,276 Words |
| Author
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Tim O'brien
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Having retreated to a secluded cottage on a lake, John and Kathy Wade try to reassemble their lives after John's devastating election defeat.
FOOTNOTE: Condensed from In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright * 1994. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin.
They were at a fancy party one evening, a political affair, and after a couple of drinks John Wade took Kathy's arm and said, "Follow me." He led her out to the car and drove her home and carried her into the kitchen and made love to her there against the refrigerator. Afterward, they drove back to the party. John delivered a funny little speech. He ended with a couple of magic tricks, and people laughed and clapped hard, and when he walked off the platform, Kathy took his arm and said, "Follow me."
"Where?" John said.
"Outside. There's a garden."
"It's December."
Kathy shrugged. They had been married six years, almost seven. The passion was still there.
It was in the nature of love that John Wade went to the war. Not to hurt or be hurt, not to be a good citizen or a hero or a moral man. Only for love. Only to be loved. He imagined his father, who was dead, saying to him, "Well, you did it, you hung in there, and I'm so proud, just so incredibly goddamn proud." He imagined his mother ironing his uniform, putting it under clear plastic and hanging it in a closet, maybe to look at now and then, maybe to touch. At times, too, John imagined loving himself. And never risking the loss of love. And winning forever the love of some secret invisible audience--the people he might meet someday, the people he had already met. Sometimes he did bad things just to be loved, and sometimes he hated himself for needing love so badly.
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[They wanted to get married right after college but first] there was Vietnam, where John Wade killed people, and where he composed long letters full of observations about the nature of their love. He did not tell her about the killing. He told her how lonely he was and how he wanted more than anything to sleep with his hand on the bone of her hip. He said he was lost without her. He said she was his compass. He said she was his sun and stars. He compared their love to a pair of snakes he'd seen along a trail near Pinkville, each snake eating the other's tail, a bizarre circle of appetites that brought the heads closer and closer until one of the men in Charlie Company used a machete to end it. "That's how our love feels," John wrote, "like we're swallowing each other up, except in a good way, a perfect Number One Yum-Yum way, and I
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