Women and Other Animals Part 5

"Maybe you can give me a lesson, tell me what tastes good out of this river. h.e.l.l, I don't even know how to bait a hook."

Gwen shrugged and lifted the edge of the omelet to look inside at tiny cubes of green pepper. There wasn't anything to teach, really.

"I should have put tomatoes in this," he said, "but I forgot to buy them. I work for the power company, so I know you've got no power over there. Have you got a generator? A phone?"

She shook her head no. The fis.h.i.+ng dog lay under the table so Gwen worked her bare feet beneath him. She had left her shoes in the boat.

"It's incredible you live like that." He chewed, swallowed. "And you don't have a job?"

Gwen shook her head. A halfsheet of paper on the table read "Overdue book notice."

"Your house looks like a hideout, you know, like a place in a movie where criminals get away from the cops. Would you be the gangster's girlfriend?" He lifted his eyebrows. "Or his daughter maybe? You could be completely innocent, after all."

Did he know something? A sickly knot began to form in Gwen's stomach.

"You don't talk much. Now, Danielle, she could talk." He pointed a fork at Gwen. "And yet, she never thought to mention she was sleeping with my best friend.

Funny. Of course, he didn't mention it either. But they're in love now, so everything's swell."

Gwen clung to silence. Why was he telling her this?

"I moved up here from Kalamazoo a year ago for my job. Where're you from?"

When she saw he was going to wait for an answer, she said, "Snow Pigeon."

"That's forty, fifty miles up the river. Did you grow up right on the water?"

Page 73 She nodded yes and watched out the window. Dan was messing around on the dock.

"When Danielle was here, I hardly noticed the river. Now it's all I think about."

As Gwen finished her toast, Dan got into his boat and pulled away, and Gwen watched him grow smaller as he headed upstream. When he was out of sight, she took the last bite of her omelet and let her fork drop onto her plate. The clank startled her. "I've got to go," she said.

"Can't you stay a few minutes longer? I promise to stop complaining about women. Here, I'll make you another piece of toast."

She sat back down but kept her weight on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. She felt she was stretched across the river like a shock cord, ready to snap back.

"You act like a girl who was raised by wolves." He smiled. "They don't like to be in enclosed s.p.a.ces."

"Thank you for the food." Gwen stood and hurried out the kitchen door, leaving the toast to pop up behind her. She broke into a run across the yard, and by the time she reached her boat she was panting. Out in the middle of the river, she felt a momentary sense of freedom, but upon reaching her dock the first thing she noticed were rotting catfish heads still nailed to the big oak. Then she remembered she had meant to buy matches. With her second to last match she started a fire in the wood burner, but she dozed off on the floor before it really got going. When she woke up, the sky was fully lit, so she moved to the dock for the sun's warmth. She looked down and was surprised to be wearing Michael's clothes. After his Jeep rolled away across the river, she pressed her face into the clean sweat s.h.i.+rt.

When darkness muscled in again, she used her last match to light the kerosene lamp, but it only seemed to intensify the darkness outside. She heard a sampling of rain, and it occurred to her, as if for the first time, that Jake really wouldn't be coming back. She thought of her dad's trailer in Snow Pigeon and the shoulderhigh stacks of wood her father must have already cut and split, which Page 74 Paula must have stacked by herself against the trailer for the winter. Her own winter supply was about two armloads of broken branches, and once the river iced up Gwen would have no transportation. She ought to cross while she could, walk to the road, and hitchhike someplace warm, Florida maybe. All evening she watched the lights in Michael's house: the kitchen, the hall, the bedroom that was supposed to be a living room. His silhouette sat hunched over the table where they'd eaten.

She wondered, had girls really been raised by wolves?

Even though it was late, she had to get out of the cottage for a while. She pulled one of Jake's stretched wool sweaters over Michael's sweats.h.i.+rt and carried her quilt to the boat in case it got really cold. Past Willow Island, almost to Confluence, her engine sputtered out of gas and died. She didn't protest, but let herself be pulled back down river. If she fell asleep out here, and slept long enough, she would wake up in Lake Michigan. The river was quiet and dark. The herons were asleep in their trees. n.o.body danced on lawns, no stars shone, and cold rain began to pour down on the river. By the time her quilt became soaked through, she realized she should have kept rowing to reach Confluence to buy matches and boat gas for her next trip. And some food too, a burger and fries for starters. Instead she'd be stuck in a dark cabin with cans of beans and oily sardines. She reached into her pants pocket to feel her money and found nothing-she had left it in her jeans on Michael's bathtub. She drifted with a numbing sense of her own stupidity. Rainwater collected in the boat and pooled around her feet. Instead of going to her own side of the river when she rounded the last bend, she pulled up at Michael's oilbarrel float. Surely he'd loan her matches, and maybe he even had gasoline in his shed. She tied her boat and tucked the oars inside but found the shed locked. With the blanket around her, she approached the house and looked in through the sliding gla.s.s door.

At first she could see only the glowing numbers on a digital clock. As her eyes adjusted, she saw King lift his head from the floor at the foot of the bed.

As quickly as King began to bark, Michael was standing on the other side of the gla.s.s in shorts. His chest was as hairless as the chests of schoolboys she had known before Jake. She had fooled Page 75 around with boys back home and had always been afraid of her father finding out.

Michael switched on a blinding light and slid the door open. "Gwendolyn? Don't you ever sleep in a bed?"

"I'm sorry."

"Well, come on in. Be sorry inside."

She stepped up and puddles formed on the plywood.

"d.a.m.n, I've got to finish this floor. I'm going to put down oak like in the kitchen."

Gwen hadn't realized how cold she was until she stepped into the warm house.

"This blanket's soaked-let me put it in the dryer. I'll put your other clothes in there from this morning-I washed them. Talk to me, Gwen."

He looked at her until finally she said, "That omelet was good."

Michael laughed. "Take a shower now, and you can thank me for that tomorrow." Gwen closed her ears to his babbling and followed him to the bathroom. He started running the water, and she remembered only after she had peeled off her s.h.i.+rts that she shouldn't undress in front of a stranger. Michael looked away and abruptly left the room. Gwen hardly recognized the thin, dirty creature in the mirror. Her once dark, soft curls were matted, and her complexion was ruined with scratches and poison ivy scars. Three times she shampooed her hair before the water rinsed clean. She put on the dark terry cloth robe which hung on the back of the door, then padded across the hall to the room with the boat skeleton. It looked too big to fit through the doorway. The room didn't even have a view of the water, so it was no wonder he didn't sleep in there. She returned to the living room and lay with King on his rug. Michael came in and sat on the foot of the bed and looked amused.

"Maybe you really are a wolf girl."

"I watch King fish from my house."

"Why do you call her King?"

"Her?"

"I never had a dog before Renegade." He stroked the dog's head. "It was the craziest thing. When I closed on this house the old owner asked if I'd keep her, because she loved the river." Mike tugged on Page 76 the dog's ear and her mouth opened as if in a smile. "You sleep in my bed, and I'll sleep on the floor. I haven't got a couch."

"We can both sleep on the bed," said Gwen. "It's big." Still wearing the bathrobe, she climbed in on the river side. Michael got in the other.

"What's that mysterious light at your house?" he asked.

"A kerosene lamp. I used my last match so I had to leave it burning."

"Did you come here to teach me how to fish?"

"I need to borrow matches. And I ran out of gas on the way to Confluence."

"Did you see my boat in there?" Michael waited for her to nod. "When Danielle left, I decided to redo that room, but then I figured I'd rather have a boat. Then I could go to that island with the black willows. I'd like to live on that island."

"Why don't you buy a boat?"

"I want to build my own boat, the way I did this bed. I slept on mattresses on the floor for a month and a half until I finished this."

Gwen looked at the headboard, which was made of solid planks, nothing fancy. "How about a motor? You going to build that?" Her dad would have called her a smarta.s.s.

"Next door neighbor's got a twoandahalf horsepower he'll sell me. I got my boat plan from a librarysale book from 1905. You have to bend the wood and use bra.s.s screws. You probably know all this stuff from living on the river. Maybe you can take me for a ride in your boat tomorrow."

Michael was propped on one elbow looking at her. Gwen had never driven a boat with a man in it, and it struck her as a fine idea that she'd take Michael up to Willow Island. Instead of offering, though, she leaned up and kissed Michael, and the kiss she got in return was so mild that she wasn't sure it had happened. When Jake kissed you, you knew you'd been kissed.

"Talk to me," he said. "I don't kiss just any girl who wanders in here. Who was that man at your house the other day?" When she didn't respond he said, "Tell me why you're out in the rain. What could a girl like you be afraid of out there?''

Page 77 She couldn't tell if Michael was laughing at her, and she wasn't sure she minded if he was. She would've liked to tell him something-maybe that she'd seen the heron flying with a little snake-but then he'd want her to talk more. His arm lay above the blankets, small compared to Jake's or Dan's or her father's. This arm couldn't hold her down or put her any place she didn't want to be. A girl could even stand and fight against an arm like this, instead of running away. The light dimmed across the river, then flickered and went out. Michael started to talk several times, but stopped himself. Gwen felt sorry for him, for his being unable to overwhelm a woman.

She turned to face him, then pulled him against her with what felt like somebody else's strength.

"I'm not afraid of anything," she whispered. Even if it was a lie, she liked saying it. She wrapped a hand around the back of Michael's neck and kissed him hard. She pushed her fingers through his hair, then felt along his boneandmuscle shoulder with her hand, wanting suddenly to touch as much of his skin as possible. She leaned across him and felt the curve of his back and his b.u.t.tock, then continued down his leg until she felt him shudder and move toward her. Fresh air trickled through a window not quite closed. King sighed on the floor. From the end of the hall she heard the clothes and blanket in the dryer turning around and around, softly falling on each other.

She woke alone to light pouring through the sliding gla.s.s door, luxurious on her clean skin. Her own cottage had no southern exposure, and she usually slept with her clothes on. Gwen pulled herself up and noticed her quilt and her jeans and red Ts.h.i.+rt folded on the end of the bed. Money was folded on top. Her heart thudded hotly before she realized that it was the bills and change that she'd left in her pants pocket. In the kitchen she found Michael wearing a tie and a name tag.

"Do you want to stay here while I'm at work?" He leaned against the sink counter. She tried to remember his warm, bare chest, but his body seemed stiff and small beneath the white s.h.i.+rt, and she couldn't imagine him naked.

"I'm going home," she said automatically.

Page 78 He handed her a cup of coffee. "How old are you, Gwendolyn? I'm thirtyone."

"Eighteen." She pushed aside three clothbound books and an old Mother Earth News and rested her coffee on newspapers. King sat on the floor beside her.

"You wouldn't lie, would you?" he said. "If you're sixteen, I could be arrested for statutory rape. G.o.d, I had no intention of doing that last night. I don't even know you." He stared at Gwen in a way that seemed rude, so she refused to look up at him. He raping her-what a joke. She sipped her coffee and stroked King's head.

The dog had the most glorious eyes, as warm as fire. As the silence expanded, Gwen let herself settle into it. Silence was a game that she felt comfortable with, the only game she knew she could win. She didn't even consider saying that she'd trade the whole river for coffee this good every morning. Instead, she pretended to be out in the boat with her father or Jake, pus.h.i.+ng thoughts out of her mind so she wouldn't be tempted to express them.

"I'm sorry," Michael finally said, sitting across from her, giving in as suddenly as he had last night. "I just don't know anything about you. For all I know you're some lost heiress or a girl who just killed her whole family and buried them in the garden."

Through the window Gwen watched an old man in a limp fis.h.i.+ng hat troll downstream.

"Or maybe I'm dreaming you." His voice grew quieter. "Because, believe me, if I dreamed a girl, she'd be just like you. She'd have beautiful shoulders like you. She'd be smart, and she'd even smell like you."

What could she smell like? Gwen wondered. She'd just had a shower.

"Except this girl would talk. She'd argue with me. And if I was lucky, she'd be an heiress with an island in the river."

Gwen still kept his words on the surface. She wasn't a wolf girl or a murderer or an heiress. Or a dream. She was Gwen, trying to figure out what to do next. Give her some matches and gas and she'd be fine for a while longer. King pushed her head beneath Gwen's hand until Gwen resumed petting her.

Page 79 "But maybe that guy you live with will come back and cut me up and use me for bait."

Gwen thought that was the first sensible thing he'd said. "Don't worry about him."

"So he's gone for good?"

Gwen shrugged and tried not to think about Jake coming back. He could be found innocent. The judge could let him go.

"Are you going to live in that cottage year 'round? Keep warm with wood?"

"I'm thinking about going south this winter. Florida, maybe."

"The herons go to Florida. You'll fly south like the birds, eh?"

As if seeing through clear water, Gwen imagined Jake and Dan coming downstream in the boat, and her stomach knotted. The thought of Jake's body near hers made it hard to breathe. Suddenly she couldn't stand Michael's laughing talk. "I have to go."

"Will you come back tonight?" Michael's eyes were as brown and hopeful as King's. Jake's eyes were deep blue. "We can eat dinner or something. I could come get you in the Jeep."

"There's no road."

"And I don't have a boat yet, so I guess it's up to you, Gwendolyn." He folded his arms and watched her stand and drain her coffee and walk to the door, just as he'd watched her row away with his dog on the day they'd met.

Gwen sat crosslegged on her dock and watched Michael pull out of the driveway. She felt the tug of King and Michael and the house, solid even without its floors and walls and baseboards. Even the road onto which Michael turned pulled at her-it led to Confluence, Roseville, and Snow Pigeon, and all the towns on other rivers. Maybe she could go to Michael's house during the day to be with King or bring the dog over here. Or maybe, thought Gwen, she would just hitchhike away from here and find a new place, where people would let you start over again without asking a lot of questions. A heron dropped from the sky and settled out of sight downstream. Two female mallards drifted near sh.o.r.e, one not quite fullgrown. Gwen wondered if this was all that remained of a dozen chicks that the momma hatched this June. Maybe this girl was the Page 80 only one who survived the fat racc.o.o.ns who hunted at the water's edge. Gwen lay back on her dock, her hands behind her head and her knees up, and fell asleep.

Late that afternoon, a pale car pulled into Michael's driveway, and Gwen knew immediately that the woman who stepped out of it was the owner of the white underthings. She disappeared behind the house and, shortly afterwards, King bounced down to the water. Was she intending to take the fis.h.i.+ng dog away? As soon as Gwen considered the possibility, she reeled in her line, dragged the outboard motor off the boat without taking any care to protect the propeller, and rowed into the current, rowed so hard that she landed upstream. King ran to her, but bowed playfully and tossed her head instead of climbing into the boat. "King! Come!" Gwen barked. "King! Come!" As the dog jumped in, the woman appeared from inside the house. She wore a white sleeveless turtleneck. Gwen could imagine her holding a gla.s.s of champagne, looking over at Gwen and not inviting her to the party.

"What are you doing with Renegade?" the woman yelled. Her hair had the color and s.h.i.+ne of caramel melted onto apples. Her bare arms were long and clean.

"She's not yours!" Gwen yelled. "You left her!"

"I'll call the police, you freaky little tramp."

King began to whimper, and as she rowed out into the river Gwen saw Michael stepping from his Jeep. The woman stomped toward him, yelling and pointing at Gwen, and Michael crossed his arms. Gwen looked away, but soon she heard Michael shout, "Renegade!" At the call, King jumped from her boat-nearly tipping it over-and swam back. Gwen stopped rowing and put her head in her hands. Upon reaching land, King followed Gwen's boat along the sh.o.r.eline until Michael called her again. Then Michael shouted her own name, "Gwendolyn!" She knew she should pick up her oars and row, if not to Michael then back to her own cottage, but she didn't have the will to fight the current. Instead, she let her boat be swept past Michael's house and everything that was familiar.

She glided past solitary black fishermen with bottles twisted in paper bags and the green heads of willows weeping beside them. Turtles and blue racers sunned themselves on fallen trees, sliding Page 81 into the water at her approach. A heron fished silently at a tiny inlet, one bulging banded eye on her as she pa.s.sed, wary, but not alarmed so long as she moved with the current. She was tempted to row and approach it, but decided instead to leave the bird in peace. The river widened. Men steered speedboats around her, and she tossed side to side in their wake. Her hands rested on the oar handles, but she dipped her oars only to right her downstream course. At times she let herself twirl in the current like a twig. She saw a tree which resembled first Jake and then, at closer range, her father, with her father's brooding face and big arms upraised.

After she'd floated for hours, houses began to appear more often on either side of the river, a sign that she must be approaching Lanakee and the harbor, but she didn't feel ready to see all those strangers and their houses and yards. She wished she could see her sister Paula, and maybe Michael, but they were both behind her.

By finally taking hold of the oars she stopped herself, and tied the boat up at the ruined dock of an abandoned fis.h.i.+ng cottage. She climbed onto the dock and lay carefully on the boards to soak in the last light before continuing. Downstream, after the river flowed under some traffic bridges and past boat slips, lay Lanakee Harbor and, beyond that, Lake Michigan-the coldest, darkest place she'd ever been. She knew what happened when the river met the lake, that the river emptied at a lighthouse which perched at the tip of a long tongue of concrete. The lighthouse winked red, then white, then red. Gwen found herself drifting beyond the lighthouse, dark water pressing on her from all directions. But from the heartless depths emerged the fis.h.i.+ng dog, now paddling toward her boat, eyes as bright as fire. Upon hearing a splash beneath her, Gwen awoke.

As though part of her dream, a great blue heron flew up in front of her. Gwen held her breath as the bird spread its wings in slow motion, its feathers almost brus.h.i.+ng her leg as it took off from under the dock and flew over the river, against the current. As the bird left her, Gwen felt herself shredding from the inside out. She wished she had been awake to see the heron close up, to stare into that clear, savage eye, to see the drops of water on his crest and witness the neck feathers roughen and smooth out. The motion of those wings reminded her of being with Michael in his bed-the feathery blan Page 82 kets, the night air through the window, his skin warm in her hands. She leaned back and let herself imagine the flush of wings again, the swoosh of air, as soft as her clothes turning in the dryer, falling upon themselves. She longed to hear the steady breathing of the fis.h.i.+ng dog.

The sun was setting over houses where people were eating dinner. Paula was probably cooking Daddy macaroni and cheese. Paula had turned sixteen this summer without her, and maybe she'd finally learned to cook fish. If Gwen filled both gas tanks and had money to refuel in Confluence, she might be able to motor all the way to Snow Pigeon. She would sneak in and remind Paula not to feel bad, remind her that there was no pleasing Daddy. Jake was sitting in a jail cell, probably eating with a bunch of guys complaining about the food. Maybe Michael had cooked that woman dinner, or maybe he was eating alone or bending wood. Gwen's stomach hurt from hunger. She hadn't brought along fis.h.i.+ng gear, and once she hit Lake Michigan the water would be empty and the tide would pull her out and away. She did not want to go. She did not want to starve to death in a cold, bottomless place. Somehow she would have to row back upstream.

To lessen the current, Gwen hugged the edge of the river as closely as she could without sc.r.a.ping bottom, dipping her left oar shallow. She faced backwards toward a fuming orange sunset, and as the color faded, her eyes adjusted. She rowed steadily, seeing the dark cottages and ancient trees only after she'd pa.s.sed them. The hair stood up on her arms when she heard a whippoorwill cry. Farther upstream, a nighthawk made a crazy flutter as he stabbed the air for insects. Muskrats and other night hunters slid into the water and rose alongside her boat. When a quarter moon appeared, Gwen pulled herself up to a snag. Her arm muscles burned and her hands were raw from the oar handles. She felt the night pulling at her boat, luring her into the dark, easy current. If she gave up this time, it would carry her all the way to the blinking light at the entrance to Lake Michigan, where there were no herons, no dogs, nothing for her. She fell asleep leaning against her boat and awoke stiff and cold with no moon in the sky. The thought of working her muscles again brought tears stinging to her eyes, but resting wasn't Page 83 helping, so she pushed off again and rowed. The river curved and narrowed until she could make out occasional irrigation pumps and boathouses on the opposite bank. She focused on a line of three bright stars until they disappeared behind trees. Blisters formed and ruptured on her hands, but she didn't let go of the oars, for fear she wouldn't be able to make herself grab hold again. To warm herself, she conjured up a picture of Michael's yellowandwhite kitchen, cluttered with books and jars of jelly.

She needed to stop rowing, to rest under her covers, even if there was sand in the bed. But when she finally caught sight of her dark place on stilts, she remembered that she had no matches, and she knew how the pockets of coldness would be trapped between her blankets long after she tried to curl up and sleep without a fire.

And she'd left her warmest covering, her quilt, folded on Michael's bed. She headed instead across the river, to Michael's oilbarrel float. She misjudged the distance from sh.o.r.e and stepped out into thighdeep water. Her fingers no longer worked well enough to make a knot, so she wound the rope as many times as she could around a crosswise support piece. As she worked, her aluminum prow clanged against the metal barrels. The noise must have woken King, because a light came on in the bedroom, and King jogged out into the yard and over the plank to watch Gwen at eye level. Gwen petted her, face to face.

When the kitchen light came on, Gwen suddenly noticed her legs were numb in the water, as though she'd fallen asleep standing. She staggered to sh.o.r.e. If that white underpants woman was gone, she and Michael could empty her dresser into the river. Gwen would like to drag out all of Jake's huge pants and flannel s.h.i.+rts and release them alongside the perfect bra.s.sieres. She and Michael could watch pieces of clothing twirl and dance on their way to Lake Michigan, sinking and resurfacing, grasping at each other before disappearing for good.

Michael opened the door before she knocked. King stayed beside her.

"Can I have some matches?" she asked. She thought deliriously of swallowing a box of wooden matches, having them fall to the bottom of her empty stomach.

Page 84 "You're late for dinner." The clock behind him said 4:10. "Come in, though."

Gwen clenched her teeth, locking her jaw against the cold. She could survive in the cabin across the river, or in Florida, or anywhere. She asked, "Are you by yourself?"

"Don't worry about Danielle. I can defend myself against her."

"I brought King back. She came out to find me."