Lost & Found (7 page)

“Dear, do you want to kill something?” asked Tess.

“No. I want to learn archery, feel the Zen of centering, pulling the bow, then the release,” said Rocky.

The dog stood up and with the barest limp, repositioned between the women and the door. Tess winced, as she always did when she saw the dog limp. She squeezed her shoulders up to her ears, then released them with a shuddering sigh and shook herself.

“There is something oddly perverse about you wanting to learn about bows and arrows after this dog was nearly killed by a fool shooting him.”

“I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it,” said Rocky. “You would think I would be repulsed by the idea of archery, but I’m not. I don’t want the dog to know. I mean I won’t do it around him. I won’t even keep the stuff here. I’ll go over to the mainland. I looked up some places.”

“Why don’t you take up Tai Chi or Qi Gong. Why must you allow yourself to be pulled to something so hard and straight, and without mercy?”

Tess was helping Rocky winterize her cottage. They hung
plastic on the windows in the living room and her bedroom. Rocky plugged in her hair dryer and aimed it at the plastic that was attached to the window frame with double-stick tape. All the fold marks from the packaging remained. She aimed the hair dryer slowly up and down, making a path from top to bottom following the directions on the cardboard insert.

“Oh, that noise!” said Tess, putting her hands over her ears. “It’s bright green and disagreeable. That hair dryer must be as old as I am. I’ll be outside until you finish.”

Rocky kept shrink wrapping her windows and paused for a moment wondering what it would be like to be Tess and have sharp noises be green, see the days of the week as big cubes that each hold their own niche in space. When Tess learned that Rocky was interested, she let her know more and more of her synesthete world. Tess didn’t hide it from people, but she didn’t elaborate unless she knew someone was truly interested. Tess told her that a Ford Taurus on her road hums like an air conditioner from the 1970s, with a tinge of blue. When Tess whacks her elbow or stubs her toe, that part of her body glows bright orange and sends sharp orange lines along her nerves all the way to her brain.

Rocky turned off the hair dryer. She saw the strong wave of Tess’s white hair as she walked past the deck, inspecting something along the ground. The dog sat sentinel at the door, knowing that his pack was divided, one out and one inside. His look of distress suddenly lodged in Rocky. She had seen dogs do this before, when she and Bob had taken in foster dogs. Before they knew it, the dog had become part of their pack and took a role that was either protector or protected, either the alpha or the puppy. This was now her world, a dog
who could not tell her his secret and a woman who held her ears to keep out the bright green noise of a hair dryer. And she had a palpable yearning to put her hands on a bow and pull back the string.

Despite Tess’s warning about archery, she looked in the Yellow Pages for sporting goods stores in Portland and called while Tess was outside. She phoned the very first one listed, Sporting Equipment Store, and asked if they had archery supplies. Ron Wilcox, the owner, said, “We got all the compound bows. What we ain’t go, you can order.”

When Tess returned to the little house, and the dog visibly relaxed with a sigh, Rocky explained that she had found the store that she was looking for.

“But I didn’t understand something that he told me,” Rocky said. “What’s a compound bow?”

Tess shrugged. “How should I know? I’m a retired physical therapist gone Buddhist, not a sports woman.”

Rocky drove her own car, ever doubtful of the yellow truck’s legal standing off island. Lloyd seemed well enough for a car trip, so she brought him for the ride. He was the perfect passenger.

The mainland seemed suddenly foreign to Rocky. The smell of the ocean was still present along the streets of Portland, but less dense. She had a growing sense of what living on an island meant. She was keenly aware that she was living on the tip of a mountain surrounded by ocean. But more often she felt like the entire island was a loosely anchored raft. She woke in the middle of the night and worried that the island was unsubstantially connected. What would it take for it to break free? On the mainland, the land felt suddenly still,
and the 3,000-mile stretch from coast to coast bore down on her as she turned the knob on the Sports Equipment Store. A bell clattered overhead as the door jarred it.

A large-bellied man held open the pages of a magazine. He looked up from behind the desk. Behind him was an arsenal of guns, riflescopes in glass cases, pistols resting like reptiles under the glass countertops. She smelled oil and metal.

“I called yesterday about archery equipment?”

Rocky was suspect of other women who ended statements as if they were questions and now she wondered if women did this when they were afraid. This store felt like the suburban Pentagon and she was an unwelcome delegate from the UN.

“Yeah, over here,” Ron said as if he were a hunter leaving his blind. “Is this for you or someone else?”

“For me.”

“What draw weight are you looking for?”

Rocky was amazed at how quickly she could be stripped naked in places like car garages, lumberyards, or now, sporting supply stores.

“I’ve never used a bow before. I don’t know anything about it. What do you mean, how much weight?”

She followed Ron past the camouflage vests and pants, hip waders, hats with flaps over the ears, folding camp chairs, all the way to the back of the store where archery supplies were lined up.

“I’m gonna expand this section next year. We’ve got more people looking into archery. There’s more houses smack in the middle of the woods, less room to hunt with a gun. With these, you only need a good twenty yards, the closer the better. What do you plan to hunt?”

“Nothing. A target, I guess. I just want to learn how to do it.”

Rocky looked at the bows, complicated devices with pulleys that looked like a combination of technology and medieval utility. This was not what she was expecting. He explained how the pulley system on the compound bow did some of the work and that the archer did not have to exert as much power consistently.

“Are these the only kind you have?”

“These are the only kind I have in stock,” he said.

“When did bows start to look like this?”

“Back in the seventies. These compound bows are all anyone ever asks for,” he said.

Rocky remembered she had the remains of the arrow that had nearly killed Lloyd. She pulled it out of her bag.

“I mean this sort of arrow, a bow for this.”

She held up the broken arrow.

“Oh, now that’s a different thing altogether. You’re looking for someone who’s into traditional archery. I don’t do that here.” He folded his arms across his chest to close the conversation.

“Who does?” asked Rocky, crossing her arms over her chest.

She followed him back to the counter. The wall behind the counter was covered with business cards. He pulled the tack out of one of them and handed a card to Rocky. “This guy hunts with traditional bows. Hill Johnson. He used to give lessons. I don’t know if he still does. He’s up in Brunswick. You can’t have the card; it’s the only one I got. You need a pencil to write down his number?”

She thanked him and left. While she drove, Lloyd sat in
the passenger seat. Rocky had cracked the passenger window several inches to clear the car of dog breath. As they drove, Lloyd turned his snout to a tendril of scent going by a restaurant. And then he leaned his upper body toward the window and tilted his nose skyward as he savored the breeze filled with smells unnoticed by humans. Lloyd closed his eyes and his soft lips fell into a Lab smile.

She pulled into a Dairy Mart to a get a Coke, full sugar variety. She hoped that the man who taught lessons and who used traditional bows was not a weird survivalist. She imagined he would be older, a lot like the man who ran the sporting goods store.

As she got out of the car, Lloyd assumed a more proprietary posture and looked like a regal walrus, staring casually ahead. Even though it was early December, she opened her window a crack also and opened the roof vent. She looked back with encouragement at the dog.

“I’ll be right back.”

A green-and-black SUV pulled in right next to her, too close, and she said under her breath, “Big asshole.” She would have to get in on Lloyd’s side of the car.

She went to the front door and with studied sarcasm, held the door open for the tight-jawed man who leapt from the vehicle. Rocky wanted him to say something, she wanted to let loose with a tirade about guzzling eighty percent of the world’s resources so that he could drive his Behemoth to the Dairy Mart. But both of them stopped dead as the black Lab went off like a bomb in the car. The hair on Lloyd’s back stood up straight and the car rocked as he thrashed his body.

“Jesus, Lloyd. Cut it out. What’s gotten into you?” The
man did a double take when he saw Lloyd and then looked hard at Rocky.

“Is that your dog?” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t think he likes you,” said Rocky.

He offered her a contemptuous look, but since Lloyd did not let up his show of force, the look was brief. Rocky noticed that his brown hair was short, but just long enough to be meticulously combed to one side. He stumbled backward to his vehicle and seemed to forget whatever he had needed at the store. He made a tire squealing exit.

Rocky went back to her car. The dog stopped as quickly as he had begun, yet the fur on his back was still raised in ominous warning. Rocky ran her hand over his head to settle him and she imagined the danger button in his body switching back to the off position. “So you’re not mister nice guy all the time,” she said.

The entire encounter took about one minute and Rocky wondered if she should have paid more attention. She wondered if Lloyd knew that guy and if he did, why did Lloyd want to rip off his head? Bob had said that some people give dogs the creeps and there was no explanation.

Later that evening she called Hill Johnson to set up an initial lesson in two days. Rocky stumbled when she told him that she wanted to learn archery and he let her. That was the first thing she noticed about him. He listened and she imagined him watching her over the phone.

“Are you still there?” she asked him.

“I’m here. I was waiting for you to finish. The best thing to do is to come out and try it once, then decide if you want lessons,” he said.

Later that week, they stood in Hill’s backyard in Brunswick.

Rocky asked him about his name. “Hill? You mean Hillary? That must have been a tough one in junior high.”

“Nothing tough about it. It’s a family name and Hill is what I’ve always been called. Only my grandmother called me Hillary and she’s no longer with us,” he said.

His archery shop took up half of his garage, right on the apex of a cul-de-sac street. Hill looked younger than she was by more than a few years and taller than she had expected. She was startled by his features, the combination of dark, rich eyebrows highlighting his face in contrast to an adolescent rosiness in his cheeks. And his eyes did not exactly match; one eye was blue-green and the other was green-blue. An unexpected nudge from her lungs forced her to take in more air and her torso shifted forward toward Hill’s slightly oversized chest men can get, offering a preview of future expansion. She pulled back instantly.

If Rocky had seen him in Stop n Shop, she was pretty sure he’d be cruising the meat department, followed by the bread aisle. They hadn’t gone into his house, instead they had skirted around his garage to his backyard.

Rocky assumed the lessons would begin immediately. His backyard extended at least an acre and bumped up against a railroad track. Two paper targets were tacked to hay bails. He handed Rocky a bow. “My wife started on this one,” he said. “This is a good size for you.”

She was relieved there was a wife. Now they could be all business without an undercurrent of sexual tension. She hefted the bow in her hands and attempted to look knowledgeable but quickly decided to drop the pretense. “I don’t
even know where to start and I’m not sure what I’ll do with this.”

Anyone who had watched her miniature performance, the relief when he said wife, the defensive posture when he handed her the bow, the decision to drop her defenses, and the admission of her novice standing, would have thought that she was a complicated woman. Hill chose to attend to archery.

“Today, you’ll start with breathing and flexing your knees. If you can become still enough, you’ll move up to pulling the bowstring.”

“I notice you didn’t include arrows. No arrows?”

“No. Too breezy anyhow.” There had not been one hint of breeze until that moment and suddenly the treetops began to dance.

“Good call,” she said.

Rocky discovered that she had become gradually inaccurate at judging ages, but as she watched him more closely, she guessed that he was late twenties, early thirties, even though his dark hair sprouted an early scattering of white near his temples. Something about him said military. Way too young for the Gulf War. Maybe just ROTC and a tour of duty. Maybe back from Iraq. National Guard. What was it that looked so military about him? No, not military. He was a hunter.

“I just watched the weather channel,” he said and let her have a loose, slightly crooked smile. “I’m one eighth Lakota, but I don’t think one eighth of anything counts for much. I’m half Irish, and then some Austrians got into the mix. Then there’s the English part. That’s where Hillary came from. I bet the Indians even watch the weather channel.” Rocky no
ticed that the only people who said “Indian” anymore usually were Native Americans.

“OK, stand sideways with your left side closest to the target. Turn your head to face the target. No, just your head, not your shoulders; they’re like the arrow. Your arms and shoulders are going to become part of the whole arrow. You’re holding a lot of energy between your shoulder blades, let it drop down until you can feel your feet touching the earth.”