In the Lake of the Woods Read Online Free Page A

freaks. [Laughter] I should know, right?
—Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo
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The capacity to appear to do what is manifestly impossible will give you a considerable feeling of personal power and can help make you a fascinating and amusing personality. 15
—Robert Parrish (
The Magician's Handbook
)
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Pouring out affection, [Lyndon Johnson] asked—over and over, in every letter, in fact, that survives—that the affection be reciprocated. 16
—Robert A. Caro (
The Years of Lyndon Johnson
)
    Â 
There surely never lived a man with whom love was a more critical matter than it is with me. 17
—Woodrow Wilson
    Â 
When his father died, John hardly even cried, but he seemed very, very angry. I can't blame him. I was angry, too. I mean—you know—I kept asking myself, Why? It didn't make sense. His father had problems with alcohol, that's true, but there was something else beneath it, like this huge sadness I never understood. The sadness caused the drinking, not the other way around. I think that's why his father ended up going into the garage that day ... Anyway, John didn't cry much. He threw a few tantrums, I remember that. Yelling and so on. At the funeral. Awfully loud yelling.
—Eleanor K. Wade
    Â 
After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. Physiological arousal continues unabated. 18
—Judith Herman (
Trauma and Recovery
)
    Â 
It wasn't insomnia exactly. John could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but then, bang, he'd wake up after ten or twenty minutes. He couldn't
stay
asleep. It was as if he were on guard against something, tensed up, waiting for ... well, I don't know what.
—Eleanor K. Wade
    Â 
Sometimes I am a bit ashamed of myself when I think how few friends I have amidst a host of acquaintances. Plenty of people offer me their friendship; but, partly because I am reserved and shy, and partly because I am fastidious and have a narrow, uncatholic taste in friends, I reject the offer in almost every case; and then am dismayed to look about and see how few persons in the world stand near me and know me as I am. 19
—Woodrow Wilson
    Â 
Show me a politician, I'll show you an unhappy childhood. Same for magicians.
—Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo
    Â 
My mother was a saint. 20
—Richard M. Nixon
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I remember Kathy telling me how he'd wake up screaming sometimes. Foul language, which I won't repeat. In fact, I'd rather not say anything at all.
—Patricia S. Hood
    Â 
For some reason Mr. Wade threw away that old iron teakettle. I fished it out of the trash myself. I mean, it was a perfectly good teakettle.
—Ruth Rasmussen
    Â 
The fucker did something ugly.
—Vincent R. (Vinny) Pearson
    Â 
Vinny's the theory man. I deal in facts. The case is wide open. 21
—Arthur J. Lux (Sheriff, Lake of the Woods County)

7. The Nature of Marriage
    When he was a boy, John Wade's hobby was magic. In the basement, where he practiced in front of a stand-up mirror, he made his mother's silk scarves change color. He cut his father's best tie with scissors and restored it whole. He placed a penny in the palm of his hand, made his hand into a fist, made the penny into a white mouse.
    This was not true magic. It was trickery. But John Wade sometimes pretended otherwise, because he was a kid then, and because pretending was the thrill of magic, and because for a while what seemed to happen became a happening in itself. He was a dreamer. He liked watching his hands in the mirror, imagining how someday he would perform much grander magic, tigers becoming giraffes, beautiful girls levitating like angels in the high yellow spotlights—naked maybe, no wires or strings, just floating there.
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    At fourteen, when his father died, John did the tricks in his mind. He'd lie in bed at night, imagining a big blue door, and after a time the door would open and his