One night two drunken campers came to their campsite. The men ignored the barricade that separated the family’s area from the campground itself, and walked down as if they were invited guests. “Is your father here?” they asked Girl in gruff, slurred voices. She said no, but the men didn’t leave. They were tall with untrimmed beards, smelly and unwashed from living in the bush country. They found Father’s Reiner beer in the cooler and sat down at the picnic table to hang out for the night. They told Juli that she was very pretty, and Girl agreed. Juli had long, red hair and baby blue eyes. Even though she was short—only four-foot-nine-inches—she had really big breasts, so big that even at eight years old Girl knew they were impressive. The sky doesn’t darken during an Alaskan summer, so there was no easy way to end the evening. The stars don’t come out, there’s no feel of time passing—it is like one very long day. Eventually, Juli told the men that she had to get her little sister to bed. Still they did not stand up and go, but kept drinking beer around the campfire, trying to convince Juli to hang out with them longer.
Juli and Girl went into the King cabin, and Juli locked the door from the inside. There wasn’t really a doorknob, but there was a metal latch and Juli hooked the Master lock through the hasp and shut it. The sisters stood quietly as the door, listening for the men. Girl kept her arms wrapped around her big sister, trying to slow her thumping heartbeat, afraid the men could hear it. Juli told Girl, “If I tell you to run, go out the window as quietly as you can and climb in the window of the cabin next door. I’ll meet you there. Don’t look back or wait for me in the woods, just run as quickly as you can.”
Girl wasn’t sure about this. What if Juli couldn’t get in the window? What if the men caught her? Girl went and laid down on her metal camp bed as quietly as she could, hoping the men would think they were asleep. Juli stood by the door, one eye on the peephole. She did not lie down until the men gave up and walked away.
pearl the squirrel
There was a fat, dead squirrel in the trap Father had set in the storage area of the Taylor cabin. The oversized mousetrap had caught him behind the head, and he wasn’t moving or bleeding.
“Dad!” Girl called. “You got a squirrel!” She went outside so she didn’t have to watch him take it out of the trap and she tried not to cry.
“Why do you have to kill them?” Father didn’t hunt. He hardly ever fished. He loved his dog more than he loved just about anyone or anything. How could he do this?
“Girl, you know I have to. They eat our food.”
She didn’t see how a squirrel could get into all those cans, and he kept the dehydrated meat and noodles and stuff in sealed plastic containers. What was even here for an animal to eat? Some candles? The squirrel had looked soft and cuddly, even though you couldn’t hug a squirrel. Girl balled up her hands in her pockets, kicked the gravel at her feet, and didn’t look up. She puffed out her lower lip and blew her tangled, dirty hair out of her eyes.
“Look, I know you love animals, honey. But it wasn’t a pet. It was a wild animal, and if I let them in here they’d eat everything.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. It wasn’t fair.
“Hey, I have an idea—we could stuff him and make him into a stuffed animal,” Father said.
“Really? We could do that?” A jolt of longing banished Girl’s melancholia. She loved stuffed animals. A real squirrel would be the best thing ever.
“Sure! We can go down to the lodge later and ask Linda for some button eyes.” Father was cheerful, his big blue eyes looking into Girl’s brown ones. She swore he never blinked, or at least not as much as normal people.
“But only if you dissect it with me first.” Father longed for one of his children to follow him into medicine someday. As far as bribes went, it was an easy one. Girl wasn’t afraid of entrails, especially if she would get a real stuffed squirrel afterward.
Father carefully took the squirrel out of the rattrap and carried it into the cabin.
“Brother? Do you want to help dissect a squirrel?” Father asked as he laid the carcass on the white Formica counter.
“No way!” Brother dropped the book he was reading and ran outside. Good. If he thought Girl was going to share the squirrel with him he could think again.
“Get my purse,” Father said, as he always referred to his camera bag, much to Girl’s embarrassment. The bag held everything he ever needed: wallet, camera, film, reading glasses, stethoscope, scalpels, bandages, and stitches—all sorts of medical tools and even packets of Betadine for cleaning wounds. He laid out a couple of sterile-packaged scalpels and his locking scissors with teeth that seemed to come in handy for a multitude of things.
“Come outside and wash your hands with me,” he said, walking out the door to the picnic table outside. He turned the knob on the big plastic jug of water and handed Girl a surgical scrub brush. It had a soft yellow sponge on one side, and white plastic teeth on the other.
“But the squirrel’s dead. It’s not going to catch germs.”
“It’s good practice,” he said in the voice that meant no arguing. They scrubbed their hands clean under the cold water and finally got to the good stuff.
“We can tan the skin with Betadine,” Father said. Girl stood close to his elbow and looked over his shoulder. The skin on Father’s neck was pebbly and red, and he smelled warm and comforting—that special Father smell that wasn’t cologne or sweat, but just the body warmth of hugs and infrequently washed wool shirts. Without running water, no one bathed that much at Loon Landing. His hairless, knobby hands cut smoothly through the squirrel’s belly in one neat motion.
“Hand me the hemostats.”
“The what?”
“Those curved scissors with teeth.”
“Okay.” Girl leaned her elbow on the table so she could see closer as he peeled back the skin and pointed out the various organs.
“This is the esophagus, and stomach.” Girl was surprised that there wasn’t a lot of loose blood. “Look, it was female—here is her uterus, and back here are the kidneys.” The organs were super tiny—smaller than she had anticipated. Father carefully dissected the carcass and removed the innards, setting them aside. “Look at the spine.” He named off each vertebra as he pointed with the tip of the blade: cervical, thoracic, lumbar. One of the eyeballs was on the counter. It was a cloudy blue-gray, like the lake outside. When he wasn’t looking Girl poked it with a pen, expecting it to roll like a marble. Instead it squished like a tiny fragile grape. She hadn’t meant to dishonor the squirrel by mutilating it and she didn’t want Father to know, but at the same time she craved absolution.
“I thought eyeballs were hard,” she said, “like marbles. But it squished when I poked it.”
“That’s right. They’re really bags of fluid.” He scraped the skin clean and reached for the Betadine. Girl watched him rub the orange disinfectant all over the inside of the squirrel pelt, then hang it up to dry by the wood stove. “We have to let it cure for a while.” He took the guts and threw them in the woods for an animal to find.
In the days it took the skin to cure, it smelled like rotting food and antiseptic inside the Taylor cabin, and Girl found excuses to be outside as much as possible. Father had lost the majority of his sense of smell in a high school chemistry accident when an experiment he was working on blew up, so it didn’t bother him as much as it bothered everyone else.
After a few weeks the skin was dry, and Father stuffed it with cotton balls and sutured it closed with his strong, deft fingers. Girl was surprised by how much it had shrunk. The pelt had half the girth of when it was alive—it was a good thing the squirrel had been so fat. They found blue buttons for eyes. Girl had hoped for buttons that actually looked like stuffed animal eyes, but it was the best they could do out in the woods and everything. She named the squirrel Pearl and slept with her every night, rubbing the soft body against her cheek. Pearl was Girl’s most prized possession.
On the plane trip home to New York, Girl and Broth
er got into a fight, as they always did. Brother was bigger and stronger, but Girl could generally wear him down enough to win by just letting the blows fall on her and not giving in. She wasn’t above cheating to win, either, and that day she took her home-taxidermied squirrel and used it like a scythe, slicing his arm with the crisp, dried claws of Pearl.
“You are so getting in trouble for this,” Brother gloated. “I’m calling the stewardess.” Bing went the call button, and Girl knew she was in for some serious shit.
“I probably need a rabies shot or something!” Bing. Bing. Bing.
“Yes?” The stewardess flashed a wide, fake smile but her eyes were squinched and she looked angry. The children always binged the call button too much.
“My sister scratched me with her squirrel,” he said, pausing dramatically and shooting Girl an exaggerated glare, “and I need a Band-Aid.” He held out his forearm, which was indeed bleeding.
“Squirrel?” She was confused, so Girl held it up to clarify. She might as well face the consequences. It wasn’t like she did it by accident, but she figured that she had good reason. He started it, after all. Girl finished it.
“Oooh! It’s so cute!” the stewardess exclaimed, taking the squirrel from Girl and holding it up. “Jane! Come see this!” She called another stewardess over to pet Pearl.
“It’s adorable,” Jane said. “We should show the Captain. Do you mind?” Jane asked Girl.
“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging. She was getting off scot-free.
“But—” Brother whined, but was cut off by the flight attendant.
“We’ll be right back with this,” the first stewardess said, walking down the aisle with Pearl.
“You suck,” Brother said. “You always get your way. Everyone always loves you.” Girl ignored him, smiling sweetly at the stewardess when she returned the squirrel. Brother never even got his Band-Aid.
car rider
Girl and Brother lived 1.3 miles from Rogers Middle School—two tenths of a mile short of the busing requirements. Girl was always jealous of the kids who got rides home, but there were plenty of other kids who walked, too. Poor Tim lived three blocks past Girl—he had missed the bus cutoff by half a block.
One day, though, Girl was going to be a car rider. It was her first day back to school following a week of the flu, and Stepmother said she would leave work early so Girl didn’t have to walk in the cold. This was unheard of, and all day long Girl would stop working and remember, “I don’t have to walk today!”
After school, she stood outside in her pink-and-purple-striped ski jacket. The sun was out, and it was so cold that the snow squeaked under her moon boots. She had wanted moon boots more than anything, but they got heavy when she walked, and she wished she had just bought normal ones.
She kicked the snowy sidewalk as she waited, watching the other kids get picked up one by one. She looked at the clouds as the teachers pushed through the school doors a half-hour later, their arms juggling papers and tote bags as they fought to unlock their car doors.
“Hey, are you okay?” one of the teachers asked. All the other kids were gone.
“I’m fine! My stepmother is coming to get me today!” she called back cheerfully. Stepmother was late, but she was always late. Girl coughed into her mitten. When the janitor locked the double doors, she started to worry. After he drove off, Girl only lasted a few more minutes before she gave up and started walking home. When she got halfway she started to cry, snot and tears covering her face in the icy wind.
Girl was halfway down the row of shops at Irondequoit Plaza. The strip mall had a large cement awning, so it was a little warmer. Stepmother pulled up in her bronze Datsun station wagon, but Girl ignored her and just kept walking. Stepmother trailed her for a few shops, then stopped and got out of the car.
“I’m so sorry!” she cried, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I got carried away at work, I didn’t know what time it was. I am so sorry.” Girl wanted to punish her more, refuse to get in the car, make her suffer, but Stepmother was crying harder than Girl was, so she got into the front seat and they drove home.
the ghost
When Father and #Four divorced, they sold Loon Landing and Father bought a boat. The Ghost had a single wooden mast mounted to the top of the enclosed cabin, a teak deck, and a pale gray, fiberglass hull the color of a seagull’s wing. Navy blue letters spelled out GHOST in fancy script, painted above smaller lettering identifying the previous owner’s home port of Kodiak, Alaska. Father never got around to correcting the letters to read Seward, Alaska, where he docked the boat. There were white plastic-covered wires called stays at various places to mount the smaller sails, and a fence-like wire in the same white plastic-covered metal that ran around the edge to keep the children from falling off. White rubber buoys were used as bumpers off the sides, and the dodger, a canvas windscreen at the back of the boat, was bright blue. They steered the boat by way of a wooden handle called a tiller that attached to the rudder at the very back of the vessel. The steering area was called the cockpit, and it had a recessed deck framed by storage benches made of teak. If Girl stood on the floor in the cockpit, she was too short to see over the dodger, so mostly she stood up on the benches. The cockpit was the only access into the cabin of the boat by way of a three-rung ladder followed by two conventional stairs. The ladder could be flipped up to access the hidden storage compartment inside the wooden steps where her father always kept lemon-flavored hard candies to combat seasickness, among other things. To the left was the tiny two-burner stove they cooked on. Girl liked the way the metal cooktop moved freely with the waves so as not to spill the soup, and the fence around the burners that kept pots and pans from flying about if they hit a swell. Girl loved using the foot pedal at the galley sink that brought up ice-cold Alaskan seawater to wash dishes, saving the fresh water for the final rinse only. To the right of the stairs was the built-in chart desk where Father kept maps and the radio. The children were forbidden to sit at the built-in seat of the chart desk, though, and Girl developed an aversion to it much like a dog with a shock collar. Girl avoided looking at the desk entirely if she could help it, and she had no interest in learning how to work the finicky radio that was always on the fritz.
The main cabin had a foldable table and two benches that converted into sleeping berths when they attached the canvas sides that connected with ropes to hooks in the ceiling. They had a tiny bathroom with a hand-pump toilet and minuscule sink, but Father had chosen the mirror for authenticity, not function. Girl could not see her face in the cloudy glass, but it didn’t matter. Girl would start fifth grade in the fall, and she didn’t care much about brushing her shoulder-length hair, though she did feel guilty if she didn’t brush her teeth. Father didn’t mind if the children avoided all forms of brushing on the Ghost, and they generally ended the summer with a new cavity or two from their neglect. Guilt was no match for laziness. After a week or two her hair had divided into clumps approaching dreadlocks, but Girl liked how the clumps gave a curl to her straight hair and made it seem thicker.
Behind the bathroom was Father’s bed, which reached from wall to wall in a big triangular shape, fitting into the nose of the boat. The walls around it had built-in cubbyholes and a small wooden bookshelf where he kept his book of dirty limericks as well as other books by Ogden Nash and Jack London. Above the bed was a square hatch that could be opened for air or escape, if necessary. Underneath Father’s bed were storage tanks for water. They carried all their freshwater with them, and the fluid was doled out like liquid gold, though Girl hated the plastic-y taste.
Father insisted that Brother and Girl learn the nautical vernacular for everything and had even sent the children a young sailor’s dictionary to New York for them to memorize, but they didn’t. Girl thought it was dumb to call ropes lines or, even worse, halyards. They were just white nylon and cotton ropes with a hint of blue thread running through them. They didn’t need a special name, in her opinion, but
if Girl used the word rope her father would suddenly act as if he was struck deaf—same thing if Girl said bathroom instead of head, or called the galley a kitchen. Front was fore and back was aft, port meant the left and starboard was the right. That made Girl mad. She was left-handed, and she wanted the left side to be called starboard. It was so much prettier sounding than port.
Girl straddled the empty space of the cockpit with her legs, each foot solidly on one of the teak benches that had roughened to gray in the salty air. Girl first came to know teak in this dried silver state, her hands and feet learning its texture as she traversed the boat monkey-like on all fours when they were underway. When they oiled the deck and benches at the end of each summer and returned the brown tackiness to the boards, Girl was always disappointed. The chore of rubbing linseed oil by hand into the wood in long, even strokes wasn’t an unpleasant one, but it gummed up the feel of the wood and held the soul of the teak at bay, trapped beneath a layer of emollient. Besides, the boat was named the Ghost, and ghosts were white, gray, or silver. They were never golden brown. Girl steered the boat with the five-foot-long tiller, made of varnished wood as thick as her forearm, coming to a phallic knob at the end.
“Most people stand to one side to steer with a till,” her father said, “but if you stand like this, with one foot on each side and the tiller between your legs, you can feel the rhythm of the waves in your body, and you’ll make course corrections instinctively. Besides, you aren’t tall enough to see over the dodger if you stand in the cockpit itself.”
Girl was ten in 1983, and not yet five feet tall. With one foot on each built-in storage locker Girl added eighteen inches to her height, just enough to see over the blue canvas windbreak at the very back of the forty-four-foot sailboat. The tiller rose between her legs and Girl gripped it in front of her stomach, slightly uncomfortable about the sexuality of it. Her shadow rendered her a long-haired boy with a foot-long erect penis. Girl disliked looking down at her hand holding this rod in the same way her father and brother held their bodies when they peed off the deck, so Girl kept her eyes on the horizon and avoided looking at the tiller. It wasn’t that Girl minded steering this way, actually, but she didn’t want her father to make a joke about her having a penis, and Girl hoped he didn’t notice her shadow. Girl and Brother had seen strippers rubbing poles between their legs on a dirty movie their father had left in the VCR for a week the year before. Brother was one year older than Girl, and he watched that tape over and over in the living room until Father returned it to the video store. Girl wanted to watch the cartoon movie they rented, Shinbone Alley, but Brother was bigger and always got his way. The dirty movie was called The Van, and it was kind of fascinating, but Girl could only sit through it once. The movie caused a tickling between her legs, and she didn’t like to feel that while sitting next to Brother. Girl was never sure if her father left the dirty movie accidentally or as a gift to his son.
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