Cascade (24 page)

So that was how they ended up moving his truck down the street, behind the carriage house belonging to Richard Harcourt’s abandoned summer house. That was how they ended up going for the walk in the woods.

T
he Spaulding land, all forty-two acres, most of it forest, was cool and quiet, last year’s pine needles a soft, rusty carpet underfoot. The path out to Pine Point was well worn, thick with roots, the air heavy with the smell of pine pitch and river water. On the eastern trail, Jacob tried to bring up the subject of Asa; he understood Asa’s position, he said, but Dez pointed out a pink lady slipper, growing quietly in the shade of an ancient oak. “Look, they’re very rare,” she said.

Like the subject of Ruth, she didn’t want to talk about Asa.

Something rustled through the undergrowth, a flash of gray fur. “Squirrel,” Jacob said. The squirrel triggered the bursting of a flock of birds from a tree, beating their wings and flapping toward the sky.

They watched until the birds were out of sight.

“I feel so contented,” Dez said, “when I’m in the woods.”

She wasn’t really content. She said that because it sounded nice, because it fit the moment, because she wanted it to be true. She wondered if she should tell him about New York. If only she had Rose or a mother
to offer advice—to say,
Yes, go ahead and tell him about New York
. Or,
No, dear, it’s best not to speak. He might think you’re chasing him
.

She told him how the summer before the flu came, she and her mother found a spring deep in these woods. “It was somewhere near Whistling Falls. And in the middle of the spring there was this frog, just sitting on a lily pad. He stared at us with these hooded, bulbous eyes.” She paused to imitate the frog—his stillness, his watchfulness. She had been newly conscious of herself as alive, as someone with an eye for composition. “I had my little sketchbook,” she said, patting her skirt pocket. “My mother was the one who got me into the habit of carrying one all the time. She sewed pockets on all my clothes. She watched while I drew him, and swore I’d bewitched the frog. I was little; I believed her.” It was easier to talk while walking, to look ahead, to feel cocooned inside your moving body, inside the sound of your voice. “But the strange thing was, this frog really did seem to pose. He never moved, just looked straight at me. And as soon as I was done, he leaped off the lily pad and disappeared.”

“And then just a year later, she was gone and my father was so—” She tried to summon the right word.
Morose
,
despairing, angry
; none of them adequately described the grieving her father had gone through. “He was staging a particularly bloody production of
Macbeth
and I was left to run wild. I spent an entire three days trying to find that spring. I tried retracing our steps, and when that didn’t work, I walked a grid north, east, south, west, trying to find it. I found old stone walls and old foundations, and lots of Indian arrowheads. But I could never find that spring again.”

“You were looking for your mother.”

“I guess I was.” She wished she could take his hand. Knowing she couldn’t made her voice hard. “We people take up space, and then when we’re gone, there’s just the space left, and sometimes you can’t quite comprehend how that can happen.”

He turned to her.
“Yes,”
he said. “I think that’s why so many of us are driven to create something tangible, something that will assert itself as
us
after we’re gone.”

This was why, Dez thought. This was why she loved him.

“Most people do it by having children, of course,” she said. “It’s normal to want a part of yourself to live on. But with children, I think
you
get diluted over time. Who knows much about his great-great-or-greater grandparent? Never mind farther back than that? Art, books, music. Those are the things that last.”

“If they’re lucky.”

Well, of course, there had always been wars and natural disasters, she conceded. “But look how much has lasted already, and the world we live in, our civilization, isn’t even all that old. We’ve got the First Folio, countless paintings. Music.”

“True. But I think it might be memory that matters most,” he said.

She thought about that. “Well, true. But where does memory come from? I think it comes back to the same thing. We have to record our existence somehow, some way, if anyone is ever going to remember it. Oral histories—do they really work anymore, in this modern world? People read books, they go to the pictures, they move far away from their original homes.”

It seemed the right time to tell him about New York, but they had arrived at a fork, a fork marked by a giant boulder left by some ancient retreating glacier. If they turned right, they would find themselves at the parking area at Pine Point. They would emerge onto River Road. The sun would be bright in their eyes. Jacob would look at his watch and think about all he had to do and their walk would come to an end. If they turned left, they would travel deeper and deeper into the woods toward Secret Pond. She would get to spend at least an extra hour with him.

“Let’s go left,” she said. “It’s beautiful. There’s a pond up ahead that’s so hard to find it’s called Secret Pond.”

Who wouldn’t be tempted, who wouldn’t want to see a place with a name like that?

So at the fork, they turned left. A simple choice, left instead of right.

W
hen they entered the clearing to Secret Pond, Jacob drew in his breath, like everyone who saw it for the first time—the pond spread out like an illustration from a children’s storybook, overhead branches forming a canopy that allowed golden, diffuse light to filter down through the thick foliage. High in the trees, birds called and flew among the boughs.

“Let’s sit here,” Dez said, heading for a nearby grouping of flat rocks. But instead of continuing with the conversation Dez was finding so exhilarating, Jacob craned his neck to peer across the pond. “What’s that?”

“It’s just an old dam.”

“Really? Let’s take a look,” he said, walking off before she could reply. On the other side of the pond, he stood with his hands on his hips, inspecting the way the dam had been built. Why was it there, he wanted to know? Who would have built a funny little dam in the middle of the woods?

Dez explained its history but she didn’t let on that Asa’s family had built it. She didn’t let on that they were on Spaulding land.

The stone-and-mortar dam stood only about seven feet tall but ran about fifteen feet wide. The top was flat, and wide enough to walk on. From the riverside, water flowed along a tributary that was camouflaged by brush and brambles. Normally, the water bumped up against the dam and flowed back to the river because a solid wooden floodgate kept the dam closed. But now the floodgate had been raised. It hung from a hoisting platform, poised between rusty chains, just below the rim of the dam.

Jacob climbed the embankment to get a closer look; Dez tagged after him. They looked down into the gap of the dam, where the river sloshed back and forth, passing through the lock and into Secret Pond.

It was clear that Asa’s diversion had been successful, and was, as he had said, near invisible from the river. Stan himself had said the flow appeared stronger up at Whistling Falls.

“It’s been opened recently,” Jacob said, pointing out the bottom two-thirds of the floodgate, stained dark with muck from years of being closed up tight. “I wonder why?”

“Probably the water people.”

“But why?” Jacob crouched to peer down into the gap. “It doesn’t make any sense. Opening this took work.”

“I don’t know.” Dez wanted to go back into the cool, quiet sanctuary of the woods, back to the conversation they’d been enjoying. “Supposedly the water men are saying the water runs funny near Pine Point. Maybe it’s something to do with that. Checking water flow or something.”

“Do you have your sketchbook?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to draw it.”

She suppressed an urge to sigh and pulled the pad from her pocket as he positioned himself down onto the edge of the gap. He gestured for her to sit beside him, even though she had to squeeze into the space. As he began to draw, Dez was conscious of her leg and hip pressing against his.

“When I was young,” he said, “oh, about twelve, I was completely
fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci and all those perfect, precise drawings he did. The hydraulic machines, the tanks. Did you know he even played a part in the development of the dams and canals that made Milan so prosperous? Such genius.”

“No.” Dez didn’t. And how could she really care, when his arm kept brushing hers? It was more than she could stand. She looked at him helplessly.

He paused and met her gaze. Something intimate passed between them even as he continued to talk. “I loved that he was always trying to think of a better way to do things. And I love that some long-ago farmer came up with this.”

“Me, too,” she said. The unspoken something allowing her to prop her chin atop his arm casually, as if she always had such access to his body. She watched his fingers, wrapped around her pencil, taking such care to document each detail—the links that made up the chain bolted to the floodgate, the steel hook-and-pulley system, the rope that led from the pulley to the hoisting platform, ending in a sailor’s knot wrapped around two cleats. A light breeze lifted his hair; she wanted to smooth it back in place. When he finished and put the sketch in his pocket and got to his feet, he reached down to help her up.

She was conscious of her hand in his, conscious of the way he held it a few moments longer than necessary. Then he tugged on the rope.

“I’d love to give it a go,” he said. “Want to?”

“Why?”

“Why not? I’d like to see if it operates as smoothly as it would appear to.”

She hesitated. She couldn’t fool with Asa’s dam. But was there really any harm in closing it then opening it right back up again? There probably wasn’t even any harm in closing it. The pond was already filled.

Jacob crouched to get a closer look at the gap. “Look at those grooves.” She could see the twelve-year-old boy in him, and the sight was endearing. He pointed to the channels carved into the mortar on either side of
the spillway. “See how carefully cut they were? I think we just need to make sure the grooves in the floodgate match up.”

He took off his jacket, unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves and flexed his hands, then positioned Dez in front of him, five fingers on each shoulder that jolted through her like lightning. “You hold here,” he said, demonstrating with two fists gripping the rope. “As soon as I’ve released the rope, I’ll pull hard from the top, but you have to be ready. You have to be already pulling.”

Dez grabbed tight, conscious of the smell of rope fibers and the starch from Jacob’s shirt. His chin grazed her shoulder, the points of his collar pricked the back of her neck. She wondered if his heart was beating as rapidly as hers.

“Okay,
pull
,” he said.

They pulled the rope hard to keep the floodgate from hurtling down, and it was inevitable, the way her back had to grind against his chest. Surely he was aware of what was happening. The floodgate, the act of closing it, was a contrivance, for both of them, wasn’t it?

The floodgate dropped a few inches and stopped.

“It’s stuck,” he said.

“You’re right, it needs to seat into those grooves.”

“Forget it,” he said. His lips brushed her ear, his voice vibrating her eardrum. “It’s too much for you.”

“No.” She didn’t want to stop. “Try again. We have to be synchronized here. I think we have to raise it a bit then be sure it slides evenly down, inside the grooves.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She was far from hurt; she was exhilarated. She could do this forever, stand with him behind her, holding her, his mouth so close to her hair, the nape of her neck. “I won’t. Don’t worry. The key is to not let it go flying. Let’s count to three, come on.” They counted aloud—
one, two, three!
—pulling on the rope with just enough balancing leverage to position, then release it gently. The floodgate creaked and grunted, sliding
reluctantly along the grooves. The rope burned into her palms but she ignored that.
One, two, three, again!
Down the floodgate came, another few inches, then half a foot, then suddenly free and gliding along the grooves rapidly, sliding down, down, until it sealed itself tight like a guillotine.

They let go of the rope at the same time, laughing, breathless. “Now to hoist it back up again,” she said.

“There’s not a chance the two of us can heft that back up again. Whoever did that must have done it with a few men.”

That made her pause, but then she considered. The pond had filled. Asa’s plan had already worked, and if he discovered the dam closed, he would think the water people had found and closed it. No real harm done.

She inspected her palms. “Look!” They were smeared with blood. She turned to show him and nearly stumbled backward into the gap.

“Careful.” Jacob grabbed hold of her. “We’d better put that in place.” He gestured to a wooden safety cover that rested against the embankment, pinning flat a dozen yellow dandelions, and reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief. “But first let me tend to your wounds, madame,” he said, blotting at the spots of blood.

She savored the moment. The press of the clean cotton against her skin. The sound of crickets or cicadas or whatever it was that filled summer afternoons. The smell of grass and river water.

When he finished with her, she pushed open his right hand, then pursed her lips and blew the rope fibers away, pressing the handkerchief against his own scraped palms. All she could think was that she wanted physical contact one more time. If she could have that, she thought, she would be content for the rest of her life.

“Dez.” He spoke firmly, but not quite firmly enough. She searched his eyes and they flickered, became less resolved even as he said, “I’m leaving. You’re married. We need to help each other stay resolved.”

She did not tell him to be resolved. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on
his and touched the inside of his wrist, knowing that when she did he would be weak. Her fingers traveled up the inside of his arm to the roll of his sleeve, her touch feathery so that his skin would quiver and jump. She thought,
Maybe this is the only time in my life I will get to do this, feel this, and when I’m an old lady with dry bones I’ll be happy I didn’t deny myself the moment.
She placed both hands flat against his chest and unfastened his shirt, fingers nimble with the buttons. He gave in then, with a barely audible sigh, and she swayed into him, knowing he would kiss her and snap open her dress and lead her, rather clumsily, because he was not big enough to carry her like a movie’s hero, down the embankment to the soft grass.