“Lis, you all right?”

She turned and saw Portia climbing cautiously over the slippery limestone rocks. The young woman walked up to the gate.

“The old dam. Still here.”

“Yup,” Lis said, pressing her stinging fingers. She laughed. “But then where would a dam go? Give me some muscle here, would you?”

They tried the wheel together but it didn’t move a millimeter. For five minutes the sisters hammered at the worn gears and the wheel’s shaft but were unable to budge the mechanism.

“Been years since anybody opened it, looks like.” Portia studied the gate and shook her head. She then gazed at the lake. It stretched away, a huge plain of opaque water at their feet.

“You remember this place?” Lis asked.

“Sure.”

“That’s where we were going to launch the boat.” Lis nodded at the beach.

“Right. Oh, is this it? The same boat?” Portia touched the gunwale of the rowboat.

“That? Of course not. It was that old mahogany sail-boat. Father sold it years ago.”

“What were we going to do? Run away? Sail someplace? Nantucket?”

“No, England, remember? That’s when we’d read books out loud. After lights out. I’d read you some Dickens story. And we were going to live in Mayfair.”

“No, it was Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t mind them. But Dickens you did solo. That was more than I could take.”

“You’re right. Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson. I think it was the idea of a housekeeper bringing us tea in the afternoon that we liked best.”

“And doing the dishes afterwards. Can you sail to Boston from here?”

“I can’t sail to the other side of the lake from here.”

Portia peered into the water. “I’d forgotten all about the beach. I think one of my dolls drowned here. Barbie. Probably worth a hundred bucks nowadays. And we’d steal Oreos, then sneak down here and eat them. We’d come here all the time.” She tried unsuccessfully to skip a stone. “Until the picnic.”

“Until the picnic,” Lis echoed softly, dipping a hand into the dark water. “This is the first time I’ve been back.”

Portia was astonished. “Since then?”

“Yep.”

“That was when? Twenty years ago?”

“Try thirty.”

Portia shook her head as the number sunk in. The rowboat gave a hard thud and bounced into the dam. She watched it for a moment then said, “It’ll go over if we don’t do something.” Portia eased the boat to the beach and tied it to a sapling. She stepped back, wiping the bits of rotten rope from her hands, and exhaled a fast laugh.

“What?”

“I was thinking. I don’t know if I ever asked what happened.”

“Happened?” Lis asked.

“That day? The picnic? I’d seen him mad but I’d never seen him that mad.”

Was it true? Had they never talked about it? Lis’s eyes were fixed on the jagged tops of three pines, rising out of the forest; the protruding trees were all different heights and for some reason put her in mind of Calvary. “I don’t know,” Lis answered. “I sassed him, probably. I don’t remember.”

“I wish I’d been older. I’d’ve turned him in.”

Lis didn’t speak for a moment. “See that?” She pointed to a rock the size of a grapefruit sticking up out of the sand and mud. The water was now an inch away from it. “After he finished spanking me, I crawled over to it. Tried to pick it up. I was going to hit him and push him into the lake.”

“You? The girl who never fought back?”

“I remember being on my hands and knees, wondering what it’d be like to be in jail-whether they had separate jails for boys and girls. I didn’t want to be in jail with a boy.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

After a moment Lis replied, “I couldn’t get it out. That’s why.” Then abruptly she said, “We better get some sandbags here. It looks like we’ve got about a half hour till it overflows.”

Trenton Heck stared into the night sky through the sliding door of his trailer. In front of him, on a red vinyl place mat, sat a plate of tuna salad and rice; at Emil’s feet was a bowl filled with Alpo and spinach. Neither had eaten very much.

“Oh, Lord.”

The plate got pushed across the table and Heck swiped up a quart bottle of Budweiser, gulping three stiff swallows. He realized that he’d lost his taste for beer as well as his appetite and set the bottle back on the table.

Aside from a glaring light above the table the trailer was dark. He walked over the yellow-and-brown shag carpet to his green easy chair, a Sears “Best,” and clicked on the pole lamp. It gave an immediate comfort to the long space. The trailer was large, a three-bedroom model. It was sided in sunlight-yellow aluminum, the windows flanked by black vinyl shingles.

Although Heck had lived here for four and a half years and had accumulated almost everything that a married then divorced man would by rights accumulate in that time, the rooms were not cluttered. Trailer makers are savvy about closets and storage areas; most of Heck’s earthly possessions were stowed. Apart from the furniture and lamps the only visible accessories were photographs (family, dogs), trophies (silver-plated men holding pistols in outstretched hands, gold-plated dogs), a half dozen needlepoints that his mother had produced during the period of her chemotherapy (easy sentiments-“Love is where the home is”), cassettes for the stereo (Willie, Waylon, Dwight, Randy, Garth, Bonnie, k.d.,) and a couple of small-bore targets (center-riddled with tight groupings).

Because he was feeling sorry for himself he read the foreclosure notice again. Heck opened the blue-backed paper and laughed bitterly as he thought, Damn, that bank moves fast. The auction was a week from Saturday. Heck had to vacate the Friday before. That part was as unpleasant to read as the next paragraph-the one explaining that the bank was entitled to sue him for the difference between what they made by selling his property in the foreclosure and the amount he still owed.

“Damn!” His palm crashed down. Emil jumped. “Goddamn them! They’re taking everything!”

How, he thought bitterly, can I owe more than what I bought with the money they lent me? Yet he knew some things about the law and supposed that suing him for this sum was well within their rights as long as they gave him notice.

Trenton Heck knew how fast and bad you could ruin a man’s life as long as you gave him notice first.

He figured he could live without the trailer. The worse tragedy-what hurt him like a broken bone-was losing the land. The trailer had always been intended as a temporary residence at best. Heck had bought these acres-half pine forest and half low grass-with some money an aunt had left him. The first time he’d seen the property he knew he had to own it. The thick, fragrant woods giving way to yellow-green hills gently sloped like a young girl’s back. A wide stream slicing off the corner of the property, no good for fishing but wonderful just for sitting beside as you listened to the water gush over smooth rocks.

And so he’d bought it. He hadn’t asked the advice of his sensible father, or his temperamental fiancée, Jill. He went to the bank, horrified at the thought of depleting a savings account larger than any he’d ever possessed in his life, and put the money down. He walked away from the office of a surly lawyer the owner of four and seven-eighths acres of land that featured no driveway, well or septic tank.

Or a dwelling either.

Unable to afford a house, Heck bought a trailer. He’d allowed Jill a part in that decision, and the young waitress-born never to be cheated-had slugged walls and measured closets and interrogated salesmen about BTUs and insulation before insisting that they buy the big one, the fancy one, the Danger-Wide Load trailer (“You owe me it, Trenton”). The dealer’s men eased the long vehicle onto the pinnacle of the prettiest hill on the property, right next to the spot where he planned to build his dream split-level.