Thunder Bay (18 page)

A
t first there was routine to the days.

After breakfast, Wellington and Lima took off with their packs full of instruments. Sometimes they used the collapsible boat they’d brought in the plane, which they called a Folbot; sometimes they struck out on foot. Always they headed toward the ridges. Usually they were gone until late afternoon, often until almost dark.

Henry’s principal job was to feed the expedition and see to the safety of the camp—and Maria. Henry didn’t wonder that Lima trusted him to be alone with his daughter. He understood clearly that Lima thought of him as little better than a stock animal—a horse or an ox, say—something to be worked hard, put up for the night, and forgotten. That his daughter might look at Henry in a different way probably never occurred to Lima. That was fine with Henry. On the plane he’d been intrigued by the young woman. When he discovered that she was his responsibility, he was no happier with the arrangement than she. Lima forbade her leaving camp unless Henry accompanied her. And Henry was forbidden to leave her alone. He was eager to explore the area and to hunt game, but when she walked in the forest, Maria made more racket than a wounded moose. Henry hated taking her with him. For several days he confined himself to camp. He dug three pit toilets—one for the white men, one for Maria, and one for himself—and constructed rudimentary seating for each using a sturdy section of limb lashed to supporting Y branches. He built a shelter suitable to eat under when it rained. Much of the rest of his time was passed fishing for walleye and trout from the lake. Maria spent the bulk of her time reading or writing in her journal and looking bored or unhappy.

“I’m sick of fish,” she declared on the fourth day, after her father and Wellington had left. “And I’m sick of sitting.” She squatted on a flat rock, half hidden by leatherleaf, at the edge of the water, and she looked across the lake at the tallest ridge. “I’m hiking up there today.”

“There are wolves,” Henry said.

It was true. He’d heard the howl of a pack at night. Mostly, though, he said it to scare her.

“Wolves don’t hunt in the day. And they won’t attack unless they believe you’re sick or infirm.”

“You read that in one of your books?”

“As a matter of fact.”

Henry had his hands in a bucket full of leeches he’d collected for fishing. “If they’re hungry, wolves will attack a bull moose in broad daylight. They’ll tear it apart.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Henry shrugged.

“I’m going.” She put down the book she’d been reading and stood up.

“I’m not ready to go,” he said.

“I don’t care.” She stomped off, following the shoreline.

Henry sighed and waited. When she was out of sight, he took up his rifle and followed, keeping himself hidden.

Henry expected her to tire quickly, but he was surprised by her endurance. The lake snaked for more than two miles to the west and Maria followed the shoreline at a steady pace. She stopped several times to drink from small streams and once to relieve herself. Henry looked away. By noon she’d reached the base of the ridge. She paused for a while, taking the measure of the height and looking, Henry supposed, for the best route up. Finally she began her ascent.

Henry gave her a little head start, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and started up himself. He stayed a couple of hundred yards west of her and downslope, keeping to the scrub jack pines and black spruce whose roots dug tenaciously into the cracks in the rock. The
bare stone often had a thin skin of slippery green-gold lichen, making the climb more treacherous. The crest of the ridge was a good three hundred feet above the lake. Maria clambered up quickly and steadily. Between his own climbing and his tracking of Maria, Henry had his hands full.

In twenty minutes, Henry neared the top. Maria wasn’t far below and he pushed hard to be there ahead of her. He positioned himself in a copse of aspen whose leaves in that early autumn were gold as new doubloons. Maria stood on a jut of gray rock, smiling in the sunshine, looking at the scene below her. The ridges that cupped the lake lay at the meeting of two topographies. South, the land was folded in a series of rugged hills; north, the forest ran flat all the way to the horizon. The deep ravines of the hills were lined with ragged outcrops that erupted from the earth like fractured bone through flesh. It reminded Henry of Noopiming, the woods that Woodrow had taught him to love.

Maybe it was the beauty of the scene and the way it lightened his heart, or maybe it was because he saw that Maria had been moved by it, too; whatever the reason, he found himself walking toward her, purposely making just enough noise that she would hear. She turned and did not look happy.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“What I’m paid to do.”

“You followed me. I should have known.”

He wanted to say something to her, something soothing, but the words wouldn’t come. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’ll wait below.” He turned away.

“No,” she said to his back. Then more gently, “Stay.”

They stood together, for a long time silent, drinking in the magnificence of what lay before them.

“Why don’t you want me with you when you go into the woods?” Maria asked.

“You make too much noise. You scare the game.”

“I don’t mean to. You could teach me how to be quiet. I learn quickly.”

He liked the sound of her voice. It reminded him of water pushed by wind.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

Instead of answering she said, “Do you have family?”

“My parents are gone. Two sisters are in school in Wisconsin.”

“I’ve heard my father and Leonard talk about someone named Woodrow.”

“My uncle. He is gone, too.”

She nodded, and her eyes rested on the deep green that reached to the horizon. “My mother died when I was a little girl. Since then I’ve lived in boarding schools, mostly in the States.”

“I know about boarding schools,” Henry said.

“Nuns.” Maria made a sour face, and Henry laughed. “You don’t do that much,” she told him.

“What?”

“Laugh.”

He thought about it. Woodrow could make him laugh. Since his uncle had passed away, Henry hadn’t felt like laughing.

She sat down on the rock and hugged her knees. Henry sat down and laid his rifle on the ground.

She said, “They’re hunting gold, you know.”

“I know.”

“Leonard is a geologist. He knows where to look, but he doesn’t have the money to prospect. My father foots the bill. They met in a casino in Havana. My father was probably throwing away money, as usual. He loves to gamble. I’m sure that’s part of the attraction of looking for gold. They’ve found it twice already. First in Australia, but it turned out not to be a very rich strike. Then again in South America, but they lost that claim somehow. They won’t talk about it. Anyway, I thought maybe if I came with him this time, it might be a chance to get to know him.”

Henry didn’t like her father and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to know him better. Family made a difference, he supposed.

“I should be in college, a place called Bennington. It’s in Vermont. My second year there. But I have no interest in it. Not right now.”

“What now?” Henry heard himself asking.

She smiled and it made him burn with happiness. She opened her
arms. “This. Something that’s not Paris or New York or Havana. Something ... transcendent.”

Henry didn’t know what the word meant, hut her voice told him and he understood.

Her face glistened with a sheen of sweat from the hike and the climb. Henry’s body was damp, too. The wind pushed over the ridge and fanned him cool. Maria’s hair rippled like black water, and she closed her eyes.

“Would you like to hunt with me?” Henry asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever seen an animal killed?”

“In Cuba once. I watched a pig slaughtered for roast.”

“To your eyes it might not be pretty.”

“I can take it. What will you hunt?”

“We passed through a meadow on our way here. I saw rabbit droppings.”

She stood eagerly. “Hasenpfeffer for dinner?”

Henry looked up at her dumbly.

“Fancy roast rabbit,” she said.

“I don’t know about fancy.” He smiled and rose beside her.

They returned to camp in the early afternoon with a fat, dead snowshoe rabbit in hand. Its coat was dark brown. Henry had explained to Maria that in winter, the fur would turn soft white to match the snow. He set about the skinning and cleaning and quartering, and Maria did not turn away. When he’d finished, he made a fire, settled a pot of water at the edge, and put the cut-up rabbit in to stew.

Maria said, “I’m going for a swim. Come with me?”

Henry laughed, thinking she was joking. The nights were cold and the lake would be like ice.

“All right then.” She disappeared into her tent and came out a few minutes later dressed in shorts and a man’s white undershirt. Her feet were bare, and Henry saw that her toes were painted red. “Last chance,” she said.

Henry shook his head. “You’ll be out fast enough.”

“Think so?”

She dashed toward the lake and dove in. She disappeared for a long time. Henry left the fire and ran to the rocky shore. He was
about to go in after her when she burst through the surface and began stroking evenly away. He watched her, admiring how smoothly she moved through the water, leaving a wake like a comet’s tail.

Henry went back to the fire and cut onions and carrots and potatoes to add to the stew. All the while he kept an eye on Maria. She stayed a long time in water Henry knew would make his own muscles cramp.

Finally she returned to shore and climbed from the lake. Strands of her black hair clung to her cheeks. Beneath the thin wet cotton of her undershirt her skin was visible and pink. The dark areolas of her breasts were like eyes behind a veil.

Henry looked away, but not before she caught him looking and not before she smiled.

H
enry couldn’t sleep. He lay in his tent staring up at canvas that was drenched in silver moonlight. It wasn’t the canvas he was seeing. It was Maria, stepping soft and pink from the lake. He didn’t understand what was happening to him or the way he felt. Strong, but also very weak. Full of fire and at the same time ice. Hard in every muscle but yielding deep inside. He’d never felt anything like this, not even during his brief courtship of Dilsey.

He threw back his blanket and stepped into the night. The ground was cool against his bare soles. The four tents had been arranged in a semicircle around the campfire. He crossed to Maria’s tent, his shadow crawling up the canvas. He longed to see her, even a glimpse, and he considered pulling her tent flap aside just for a moment.

But he was afraid.

Instead, he walked to the lake. The water was silver fire. The ridges on the far side stood gray and ghostly against the black southern sky. Henry glanced back at the camp, then quietly undressed. He stepped into the lake. The cold hammered his legs, but he pushed on, farther and deeper. He wanted the icy water to kill the fire that wouldn’t stop burning in him. He let out his breath and sank toward a place where the moonlight didn’t reach.

He felt a disturbance of the water and came up quickly. He looked toward shore and saw her slender figure slipping into the lake. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she was naked. She swam toward him, her face a pale, beautiful bubble. Henry stared at her, too amazed to speak. He felt the loop of her arms around him and the press of her warm body. She kissed him, her lips the softest touch he’d ever known.

“You’re freezing,” she said. “Come with me.”

Out of the water and in the moonlight, her naked skin was jeweled with shining droplets that rolled down the line of her spine, along the curve of her buttocks, and fell from her like pearls off a broken string. She stooped and gathered her clothing and his and led him to her tent. She drew aside the flap and slipped inside. Henry hesitated. Her hand appeared, beckoning him in. He followed.

Her sleeping bag was open. She lay on it in the silver-green light of the moonlit canvas. She reached out and took his hand and drew him down to her.

“Let me warm you,” she murmured.

She rolled on top of him, blanketing him with her own body, her breasts against his chest, her thighs cupping his. She kissed him again, and he grew hard and kissed her back. Her lips broke away and drifted across his cheek, his neck, his chest.

“Maria,” he whispered, desperate and grateful.

She put her finger to his mouth. “Shhhh. No noise.”

She pushed herself up to straddle him and looked deeply into his eyes. Her own eyes were full of silver-green fire. She moved ever so slightly, and he was surprised and amazed to find himself inside her, a place warmer and more welcoming than he’d ever imagined. He grasped her hips and tried to push deeper, but she laid a hand on his chest and shook her head.

She leaned to his ear and whispered, “Let me.” She kissed him for a long time.

The first time was over quickly, and Henry wasn’t sure if he’d done things right. He’d been divided, worrying about what he was doing with Maria and worrying about whether the white men would hear. But Maria smiled and snuggled into his arms and whispered he was wonderful, and like magic he was ready again. This time he did not worry about the white men.