The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (75 page)

Afterward they explored southward until they arrived at the desolate inlet, empty
of fishermen but its sand littered with the huge flyblown skeletons of redfish. Dottie
was astounded by their size and Eville, rhapsodizing, said before we leave the island,
we’re going to get you one.

They stowed their books and sand chairs and extra clothes in the back of the truck
with the coolers and fishing gear and drove up the beach toward the unsettled horizon
of the approaching weather, Portsmouth now their private sanctuary. They were alone,
the first humans or the last, not lawless on the frontier, certainly, but readily
succumbing to the temptations of the unwatched and unregulated, the happy delinquencies
of life before the park service, passing the bottle of tequila back and forth between
them on the joyride up the beach, their spirits synchronized and boisterous. At the
end of the ride they had arrived at the limits of their world, the vast sand flats
like a miniature Gobi Desert creating the northernmost tip of the island and beyond
that the inlet beginning to churn with a rising tide and beyond that the smudge of
land that was the pirate haven of Ocracoke.

They parked as far out onto the Atlantic side of the point as they could drive, where
the treachery of shoals mounded and arced a mile out toward the entrance to the inlet’s
channel. Eville sat on the tailgate rigging Dottie’s surf rod with a thick filament
of forty-pound line, a wire leader and sliding nugget of lead weight, and a large
barbed hook shiny with malice and baited with a hunk of thawed mullet. He asked if
she wanted him to cast for her and she put her hands on her hips and said, Is this
my rod? He said yep and she said, No, and took it from him, wading waist-deep into
the shorebreak to heave the line out along the base of the nearest shoal and Ev said,
What is it you don’t know how to do? She walked the rod back up the slope of the beach,
reeling in the slack and planting the butt in the holder he had staked into the sand,
next to their chairs, and sat down with tequila and her book.

Nothing to it, he said, Dottie detecting a slight air of superiority in his voice.
Eville hoisted the straps of his bib waders over his bare shoulders and spent the
next several minutes fussing with his rod and tackle box. Then he was ready and clomped
over to where she sat to take a gulp from the bottle, grinning down at her slyly,
pleased with himself for having something clever to say. This is his and hers fishing,
he said.

Yeah? She smiled crookedly. How?

You’re on the bottom, I have the top.

She gaped at him, feigning astonishment, before she sniggered. God, Burnette. You
just cracked another sex joke. I think I need to be on guard.

Something like that, he said, taking another slug before he strode down the bank into
the inlet, stepping into a drop-off that threatened to fill his waders before he found
his footing and lunged up onto a bar where the waves foamed around his knees.

She watched him for a while, mesmerized by his art, the backhand grace and looping
precision that were the pride of every fly fisherman but when his luck hadn’t turned
she picked up
The Odyssey
from the sand to read and read until she began to doze as the clouds moved closer
and the light changed. The next thing she knew she was wrenched alert by a incipient
sense of emergency and she saw Eville, perhaps fifty yards from shore, waving his
arms at her, his whoops barely audible, and then she heard the buzzy humming of her
line, run out completely to its knot on the spool, before she noticed the rod itself,
its stiff fiberglass bowed with the pressure of something strong and big. She sprang
to her feet to grip the shaft with both hands as she released it from the holder but
when she did the torque of the fish was overpowering, dragging her into the water,
amazed that the line could withstand such tension without breaking.

She lowered the tip of the rod to gain slack but when she tried to crank the reel
after two wraps she was locked again into a stalemate of resistance, the fish edging
her farther into the water while Eville slogged furiously toward shore and then the
bottom went out from under him and he disappeared, submerged by the deadly weight
pouring into his waders, only the fly rod in his upraised hand visible, marking his
position, and she had a moment to tell herself they were identical in their stubbornness,
suicidal almost, neither of them willing to lose a rod or a fish or anything else.
She lay on her belly and kicked, letting whatever was on the end of her own line help,
sledding her deeper into the surf until she was close enough to angle her body sideways
to Eville and snatch his wrist and in a few seconds their feet began to bump along
the slope of a sand bar and Eville’s head bobbed up like a hapless Poseidon, gagging
water and half-drowned. She let go of him then and stood up and planted her heels,
determined to carry on with her struggle against her leviathan, whatever monster this
was on the end of her line. Eville tried to thrust himself higher onto the bar but
the waders held him down. Drop your rod, she said. He sputtered back, Drop yours.
Finally he managed to slip the straps from his shoulders and peel the top of the rubber
overalls to his waist.

Let me have the rod.

Get away.

Take mine and give me yours.

No fucking way.

He was out of danger now, standing next to her, the draining waders down to his knees
like a man interrupted taking a crap. Come on, he said, give it to me.

Hey, she snarled. Back off. No.

Just let me take it for a minute to get a feel for what’s on.

The muscles in her forearm were corded from the strain, her biceps bulged, and no
matter how much effort she threw into the fight she felt the fish would best her,
the line snap, the hook shake free. Then they both saw the line slacken and Eville
yelled,
Reel! Reel!
and she did, grunting through clenched teeth, saying, Excuse me, weren’t you busy
drowning?

But they were giddy now, sharing the exhilaration of the battle, and she reeled frantically
for a moment before she began to think the fish was lost, Eville groaning with disappointment—Is
he off? He’s off—yet the line went taut again and flew out of the reel in a siren’s
pitch as the fish made its desperate run from the shoals toward open water. Eville
almost tackled her from behind, laughing maniacally, wrapping his arms around her
middle. He gripped his hands on the rod between her hands, saying, Come on now, share,
and she thought, Oh, okay, I like the way this works, and together they broke the
fish’s run, Eville’s stubbled jaw nuzzling her neck, Dottie feigning reproval, Stop
it, the waves at the front of the bar slamming against her hips and the butt of the
rod pressed at her crotch and Eville pasted against her backside.

Okay, okay, Eville cheered, we got the son of a bitch. She cranked forever, so it
seemed, without seeing the catch until Eville said, Hold up, we don’t want him short-lined
this far out, let’s get back to the beach where he can’t escape, and so she opened
the bail to ease out line and they dropped into the cut and frog-kicked spastically
back to shore and she resumed reeling until the line angled down into the cut between
bar and shore, the fight gone from the beast, and she pulled and reeled until the
widened jaws slowly emerged like the prow of a submarine from the murky water and
Eville there at the water’s edge, ready to pounce on the thing, made one of those
yodeling rebel yells.

The eyes emerged, big and dumb as a cow’s, and then the enormous bulk of the fish’s
head, an unearthly refulgence of the most dazzling orange, a bejeweled horror although
not so horrible as beautiful, and then, after several more cranking revolutions, nothing—pale
tatters of shredded flesh, like a flag ripped apart in a high wind, streaming in the
current.

Motherfucker, Eville howled. We’ve been robbed.

She walked the rod higher up the beach, dismayed and angry herself, dragging the disembodied
head out of the water. Eville dashed to the truck for his handheld scale, speculating
from the remaining twelve pounds that the shark had taken forty. There’s still good
meat here, he said, carving out the scallops of the drum’s cheeks and the triangles
at both sides of its throat.

I’ll get it, she kept thinking about the shark. I’ll kill it. Bait me up again, she
told Eville, but it was time to go.

Overhead, scudding clouds heralded the arrival of the front and the afternoon, now
late, cooled and darkened. The ride back to camp was filled with the agonized jubilation
of cheated fishermen, hooked into the dream only to see it stolen. At the tent and
without modesty they changed into dry, warmer clothes, jeans and long-sleeved shirts,
drawing their eyes along the length of each other’s bodies, her lust no more inhibited
than his.

She started a fire with the last of the wood while Eville went behind the dunes to
scrounge more fuel, coming and going until he had a pile sufficient for a bonfire.
She melted butter with garlic and steamed the clams and they popped them into their
mouths and chewed, exchanging lame jokes about the female attributes of bivalves,
lewdly licking the labia, making pussy puppets, chasing their merry vulgarity with
the last of the tequila. She was getting loaded, and so what? Why not? she told herself,
her thoughts boozy, zinging, swooping, mean little birds. This time he wanted her
too, what could be more obvious, had in fact always wanted her as all the men seemed
to want her, a man prize, alpha only need apply, their wanting no secret or mystery
to a beautiful woman, beauty’s curse until it wasn’t, every guy on your leg like a
glaze-eyed dog. A thousand,
Get offs!
for each
Climb on.
In Haiti in Cap-Haïtien Burnette had looked at her ruefully and asked, Are we friends?
She was amused.

What’s so funny? Eville said.

Nothing.

Why are you laughing?

I don’t really know. Us?

Yeah, he said and chuckled along.

At sunset the wind began to rise and the ocean boom and she stood at the tailgate
cutting yellow squash and onions into a foil packet with butter, which she threw on
the coals to cook while Eville pan-fried the odd but substantial scraps of salvaged
red drum. With the cooking done and the sand blowing, they were forced to retreat
to the cab to eat their dinner, bringing along cans of Coke and the bottle of rum,
Dottie’s appetite returned with a vengeance that matched Eville’s quotidian hunger.
Jesus,
so
good. Damn right, they chorused, fuck the shark, slurping on their drinks between
mouthfuls, watching sparks shower away like burning hornets from the fire into the
gloom as night descended with the heart of the storm. By the time they put their empty
plates out of the way on the floorboards and decided to retire to the tent they were,
after hours of merry drinking, bad dancers interpreting the wrong disaster, more earthquake
than gale, staggering out of the truck, Dottie falling over Eville falling down, the
two of them hee-hawing, pretzeled together.

Rain spattered in intervals; the wet wind flapped and cracked like wool blankets shaken
by giants. Lying down inside the tent they listened to the roar, staring like insensate
beings at the dome above as it jerked and convulsed, as if someone stood outside beating
it with a paddle. Dottie had just enough sense to ask if they should relocate their
shelter higher up in the dunes but Ev, the boy from the mountains, thought they’d
be fine where they were. Should I turn on the lantern? she slurred, but he rolled
against her and her body seemed instantly a type of carnal sponge absorbing a superheated
flow, the divine pressure of a man’s length against her own, this heavenly thermal
exchange of hidden energy, the body’s best secret. My God, to be touched!

He began touching her, its specificity breathtaking, and she hastened to unbutton
her shirt and his mouth followed his hand to a nipple and in the dark whether she
closed her eyes or opened them made no difference. Light-headed and quivering, she
pulled him hard against her. Kiss me, Burnette, she whispered, and he started to,
his mouth smearing along her jaw until it discovered her lips, her tongue poised to
go inside, one of his legs prying between hers. Then a downburst of wind seemed to
detonate the tent, collapsing the dome, the rain raking the fabric like buckshot.
A bolt of nearby lightning revealed a snapshot of Eville’s face frozen above hers,
cross-eyed with intoxication and exasperated with the interruption. Sober or not,
he was a man who rallied to a crisis and he was up and outside in an instant, leaping
instinctively around in the downpour, lashing the tent to the truck to keep it from
blowing away while she lay on her sleeping bag, her hands folded atop the denim over
her crotch, thinking, Hurry back, what better accompaniment than this, what better
orchestra, the smashing urgency of it all. She undressed and waited and when he came
back, thoroughly soaked and dripping, pelting her with shocking droplets, she helped
him tear off his sodden clothes, saying, Here, pulling him back onto her, come here,
let me get you, warm you, warm up, but as they kissed she wrenched her head away,
alarmed and gasping, and pushed him aside
because his weight had settled her down into the soaked bottom of the sleeping bag,
the floor of the tent turned sloshy with the storm tide beginning its surge across
the beach.

They threw everything but the ruined bedding into the duffel and sprinted through
the flood to the truck, buffeted and rocking in the wind, flinging themselves into
the cell of the cab, too stunned to say anything, naked and freezing and addled. She
dug towels out of the bag and Eville started the truck to blow heat into the space
and they wiped themselves off and struggled into dry clothes and sat back silenced
in the din, exhaling their mutual impotence. Eville flicked on the headlights, the
nearby tent barely visible in the downpour, soupy water streaming past its puny island.
He put the truck in gear, forgetting the tent secured to its frame, and edged ahead
through the maelstrom until he found a terrace higher up in the dunes and parked and
cut the useless lights and pronounced them safe and secure. Crazy, huh? she said mirthlessly.
The bad news was the beer was outside in the cooler and they were out of cigarettes.
The good news was dry pillows and she gave Eville one as he reached behind the seat
to extricate an old malodorous grease-stained blanket from a moldy heap of cleaning
rags and tools, and there they huddled, the world outside seething with its violent
harmonies, supreme and impersonal and mindless, the two of them, almost lovers, resigned
to a squirming, fitful night—worse—of almost sleep, rousing themselves at dawn to
behold a new world, an awesome world, midstream in the deluge, water triumphant everywhere
below, the spine of dunes their Ararat.