The young people were long and tan, and they laughed as they pushed on one another. They looked like people anywhere: white and in ugly, oversize clothes, sunburned and chapped and smiling with large, elastic mouths.

He glanced at them briefly and wondered what shapes their lives held, if they were content, if they were mad or frustrated. But at this time of the evening the geese were away, and the gulls had returned to their nests, and Wallace had the edge of the water to himself except for the other anonymous watchers nearby. Other times, he saw them lazily and confidently striding in the shade toward the soccer fields and picnic grounds, like stern game wardens. Sometimes, he saw their big grey wings spreading out beneath him as they glided across the water. There was a covered bridge and a family of geese living there. The larger boats were taken out farther down, near the boathouse, where Wallace sometimes took walks in the other direction, to where the grass grew wild and the trees were denser and heavier. The small boats had come in and been set on their racks, draped for the night. He had never been over there himself, had never had a reason to cross the lake to that rarefied and separate part of town. Wallace had thought at times when he took the lakeshore path at night, looking through the scrim of trees, that all those houses did look like a flock of enormous birds crouching on the other side. And on the distant shore, past where the peninsula, furred with pine and spruce trees, hooked into the lake like a thumb, there were houses raised up on great stilts, the lights in the windows like the eyes of some large birds. There were, two or three arm lengths away from Wallace, other people sitting too, watching the moon rise. They were made from a kind of harsh, unfinished stone that had been smoothed by the water and the foot traffic. At the edge of the water, stone steps descended to the murky bottom of the lake.

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