Fire and Spark

by Laura Singer

  Chapter 5

  Tents were the first thing Matt and Jenni looked at. Matt's tent would hold two, in a pinch, but that didn't seem like a good idea.

  "How come your stuff is all dry, except for the tent?" Jenni wanted to know.

  Matt shrugged. "When I got to the Bass Lake campsite I put up the tent and threw everything inside, still in waterproof bags, and went fishing. When my fishing got so crudely interrupted…."

  "I didn't see you catching much." Jenni noted.

  "I was still figuring out the lake. When your call came, I just rolled the tent around everything else and threw it into the canoe. Everything but the outside of the tent is dry." He almost seemed proud of himself. "You can share a tent with Saundra," he added.

  So much for romantic poems, Jenni thought. "Or I could sleep under the tarp, you know."

  Matt considered that. "If you want. Probably not too many bugs at night this time of year."

  "I'm kidding. Saundra will have to put up with me. It sure looks like the other tent," Jenni pointed at the flattened tent where Allen and Liza had camped, "isn't going to be of much use to anybody."

  "Oh, I think every support rod is probably broken." Matt looked pensive. "What have we got in sleeping bags?"

  Jenni's mood was brightening even as the sun got lower. Taking inventory of camping equipment was so much easier than taking inventory of one's life. "I can use Clayton's sleeping bag, assuming Saundra doesn't mind. And assuming she doesn't try to cuddle me all night since I'll be in Clayton's place and in his sleeping bag."

  Matt said nothing, but Jenni figured he was imagining the benefits of cuddling with Saundra. "That does that," Matt said. "Let's see what we have in the way of food."

  Saundra spoke up, which startled Jenni. Must be the pine needles, Jenni thought, that made her approach so quiet. "We lost a lot when the canoes rolled over. Most of the food and cooking gear was in one bag, and that went to the bottom. We only saved the snacks that were in Allen's bag. And we already ate those last night."

  "I brought enough food for me for three days," Matt said. And we just have to have enough for supper and breakfast. Assuming you don't mind beans and dehydrated stew."

  "Beans?" Saundra asked. "On a camping trip?"

  "It was supposed to be a solo trip." Matt shrugged. "I was only sharing the tent with myself."

  They spread the food onto the ground, around the firepit. Aside from the three packages of dehydrated food Matt had brought, and a bag of chips Jenni had brought, they had some cereal and granola that Saundra's group had brought packed into plastic bags. They had floated to the surface after the canoes overturned, Saundra told them. Finally, there were two colas and two cans of ginger ale, and five large chocolate bars.

  "More than enough," Jenni said. "We need food for supper and something for breakfast, basically. Lonnie will pick up any of us who wish to go back to the lodge tomorrow morning, I imagine." She looked at Matt.

  "I'll be getting back to civilization just as fast as I can," Saundra said. "I'm getting fond of places with roofs." She yawned. "I'll have all the chocolate; you guys can fight over the horse food." Then she laughed. "Just kidding. And, I meant to tell you, Clayton got another phone. They're keeping Allen and Liza in North Hastings Hospital in Bancroft. Apparently they're doing so well they'll be out in a couple of days. Clayton and Liza have already signed Allen's cast."

  "So you'll be wanting to stay here for a few more days," Matt suggested, with a smile.

  "I'll be wanting," Saundra said firmly, "to get into Bancroft and rent a motel room or a nice cabin by the lake. Somewhere that's dry when it rains, and warm in the nights."

  Matt laughed. "Can't blame you for that." He sighed. "Myself, I don't know. I came here to catch fish and enjoy the solitude. Can't say I've had much of either, but then again, I hadn't been camped – or fishing – for very long before Jenni here showed up." He shrugged broadly, arms out and palms up. "I'll think about it and let you know tomorrow. Would that be okay?"

  "Sure," Jenni said. "You going to camp here tonight, or go back to Bass Lake?"

  "Oh, here, for sure." Matt seemed surprised at the question. "It's too late to go back to the other campsite anyway, so you two will just have to put up with me and the beans I had for breakfast this morning."

  "Glad of it," Jenni found herself saying. Then felt she had to add something. "Always good to have a man around to chop wood and protect us from bears."

  "That's right!" Matt raised a thumb. "It's national Sexist Stereotypes Week. I'd completely forgotten. Well, if you girls will put some supper on, this boy will go get some firewood. Anybody have an axe or saw?"

  "Axe," Saundra said. "Saw." She pointed at the lake and raised her eyebrows.

  "Just as well I brought a little folding Swede saw." Matt sorted through his backpack and hauled out the tool.

  Jenni turned to Saundra. "What do you think? Stew and beans for supper?"

  "You going to share my tent?" Saundra wanted to know.

  "I might have to."

  "Then we'll save the beans till tomorrow. We'll split the two packs of stew into three parts, and have granola with it." We can eat the beans tomorrow morning."

  "I like that idea." Jenni looked over her shoulder. Matt had made a small pile of twigs and some birch bark to start a fire going again."

  "You were in the scouts." She noted.

  "Got a badge for making a fire in a pouring rain," Matt said. "It's wet here, but not that wet." He went into the forest looking for better fuel. Jenni knew it was always harder finding firewood at the end of a season, after summer campers had taken all the loose and nearby deadwood.

  There were three old grates at the campsite – campers tended to bring a stove or fridge grate, prop it on some stones over the fire, then leave it, blackened and bent, when they left for home. Jenni also knew that you didn't want to cook food, such as meat or vegetables right on a grate; fridge grates were high in nickel and not good for the human system. But Matt's cooking pot was big enough to hold the stew and the water needed to rehydrate it, so Saundra added a few more twigs to the flames and they took turns stirring the result while trying to avoid the smoke, which circled inconsistently from the fire.

  "You've had a long day," Jenni said. The rock she was sitting on seemed to be slanted to one side.

  "That's for sure." Saundra said forcefully, using a twig to pick a piece of ash out of the pot.

  "How's Clayton handling things?"

  "He texted me a couple of minutes ago. He'd like to come back, get his stuff, and spend another night here. I told him he'd have to find a way to the lodge, then rent a canoe."

  "Sound like a plan?"

  Saundra snorted. "Got any lip balm? It's one of the many things I forgot."

  Jenni fished a tube of Carmex out of her pack. "You sound like you're looking forward to civilization."

  "Believe me, most of human history is men killing each other and women improving on creature comforts. First thing I want is a warm shower that comes from a water heater and has shampoo and conditioner nearby. I do have a comb. Would you like to borrow it?"

  "For sure." Jenni smiled, and said, "I think I'm ready to go home before a tree falls on me, too. Get back to civilization. Find a real toilet."

  Saundra got a far-away look in her eyes. "Oh lordy, a toilet that's got a dry seat and no spiders. And lights, and…."

  "You've only been here two nights," Jenni pointed out.

  "Next year, rent a cabin. Tie the canoe up in front. Paddle in the morning; go shopping in the afternoon. Cripes, I'm starting to look forward to my job, believe it or not."

  "You have a full-time job?" Jenni, unemployed at the moment, felt a pang of envy.

  "Just a data entry job at an insurance company to help pay my way through school. Pretty dull, but I like the people." She shook a wrist, accidentally flinging a rehydrated carrot chunk into the bushes. "I'll probably end up like my aunt, with carpal tunnel syndrome."

  "I had
that." Jenni shook her head at the memory. "My advice is to get surgery if your doctor says to. I waited a lot longer than I should have to get mine."

  "I've already got tendonitis in my mousing elbow, but I work out a lot and that seems to help."

  Jenni wondered where Saundra found the time to work out. But it did sound like a reasonable thing to do. "I worked out pretty regular," Jenni said, not specifying how often "regular" was. "Then I got married, and, well…."

  "Married, eh? Darn. I was going to introduce you to Bentley, my stalker-guy."

  "You have your own personal stalker?"

  "At work, I do. Bentley's always sending me emails that aren't related to anything to work. The way I look in my tight jeans is a favorite subject of his."

  "Yuk."

  "Well, I didn't get to wear jeans except on Fridays, but I had to stop that too. He probably thinks he's complimenting me. He keeps pretending to be my best buddy, even when I tell him I don't need one."

  "Let me guess, short and wide."

  "Actually, except for his bizarre taste in clothes and military haircut, he's okay-looking." She paused to taste the stew and move the pot to a cooler location on the grate. "I don't know who he thinks I am, but it sure isn't me.

  "You think?"

  "Biggest problem with men. Can't get the bastards to see a woman like she is, instead of how he'd like her to be. Might be different after I get married."

  "Maybe not. Julio – he's my husband for a few days more – spent the entire marriage trying to remake me into the girl he really wanted."

  "I hope he was polite about it."

  "No." Jenni suddenly realized why she reacted to Matt so badly. He couldn't possibly have a clue about the real Jenni. Someday, if I don't get stupid again, she thought, I'll find someone who wants me for myself after he gets to know me. Someday. She wasn't optimistic, the way things were going. "You have a cat?"

  "Cat?" Saundra seemed puzzled by the change in topic. "Nope, but I'm going to get one as soon as I can. Probably inherit one when my grandparents get put into the nursing home."

  "I've got one now. Quarto's a bit nervous because he never knew when Julio was going to pet him and when he was going to throw something at him."

  "Poor cat. I intend to have a dozen when I get old and my knees get bad." Saundra paused to look down at her current wrinkled outfit. "Actually, I think with all this rain, I'm starting to wrinkle already. And look like a bag lady."

  "Some women," Jenni said, "look dressed to the nines no matter how many days they've been out in the bush. I never managed that."

  "I could go on a month-long canoe trip," Saundra said, "if they'd let me spend every third or fourth day in a nice hotel room. Including one just before I got back to civilization."

  "Doesn’t look like we're going to get that chance here." She looked up at a bird passing overhead, as if she were suspicious it might drop something on her head.

  About twenty minutes into the process, the food, according to a taste test by Saundra, was ready, and Matt had returned with a substantial load of branches.

  "Problem," Jenni announced. "We have a pot of stew, but only one plate and one bowl, one fork and one spoon. All of which are owned by one Matt the Lone Fisherman of Bass Lake."

  "No problem," Matt said. "Put one third of the stew onto the plate for Saundra, one third into the bowl for Jenni, and leave one third in the pot for me. I'll wash the spoon off when I get back with more wood."

  "That'll probably take him a while," Saundra said, serving Jenni a bowl of the stew and herself a plateful. A chipmunk made a brief appearance from behind a tent. "We spent a few hours dancing naked around the campfire yesterday after we swam ashore and the rain had gone. Had our clothes strung on a line near the fire on the downwind side. They dry quicker that way, but they'll smell of smoke for a long time."

  "Sounds primeval," Jenni said, "but a little lacking in privacy."

  Saundra settled onto a piece of plastic from a garbage bag, legs out and her back against a big rock. "No problem about that, although Liza seemed a bit uncomfortable. Not like we hadn't seen each other naked before anyway." She looked across the lake, where the few clouds left were turning pink with the approaching sunset. "There was an unspoken agreement that we might switch tent partners for the second night."

  "Okay…."

  "And then halfway through the night, boom, the rain and wind and lightning branched and trees falling and Liza screaming. I think she thought the branch had broken most of her bones and killed Allen."

  "Wow!" Jenni tasted the stew. It wasn't bad, or maybe it was just because she hadn't eaten much other than snacks since breakfast.

  "And we didn't have any flashlights, except a little one on a keychain that Clayton had in his pocket. We got the branch off their tent, then Clayton cut the tent open to get Liza and Allen out. It was still raining, and we sort of dragged them into our tent."

  "Crowded tent."

  "Full of wet people, hardly any light, and two people in terrible pain." Saundra shook her head. "It was a long time till morning." Then, because Matt hadn't got back yet, she pushed the pot back towards the flames. "I'm thirsty," she said, looking at an almost empty plastic water bottle. "And very tired."

  "Thirsty?" Matt said from across the campsite, dragging back another dead tree branch. Or maybe a tree; Jenni wasn't sure. Since all they'd need would be enough firewood for the morning's breakfast, she began to wonder if he was planning to stay longer, or if he had security issues. Maybe he lived with Annie and his mother or something. Or maybe staggering through the woods with big logs was as much wilderness experience as he figured he was likely to get. Still puffing, Matt appeared again with a small bag. He extracted a water purification pump, and said, "Give me a few minutes and a container and I'll get you some drinking water from the lake."

  Jenni got up. "No you won't. I know how to run one of those things. Eat the stew your harem made for you while you were out pulling up trees by their roots."

  "Bears," Matt said, sitting down and reaching for the stew pot. "I fought off a herd of bears, too, and a couple of mountain lions." He looked around, then inspected the spoon Saundra had used. "Any known social diseases?" he asked. When Saundra shook her head, he wiped the spoon clean with a few pine needles, then cleaned it on a tail of his shirt. "Remind me to wash this shirt when I get home," he said, and started in on the stew.

  Jenni found a spot along the shore where she could kneel in a position that wasn't totally painful, and pumped water from the lake, through the filter, and into a plastic container Matt had brought with him.

  It was a slow process, forcing lake water through a porcelain filter to remove giardia and other icky living things, but they needed the water, and Jenni was glad to be alone. Or not; she could hear the other two talking and laughing back near the tents.

  She switched hands to give some of her muscles a rest. It was still hard finding a good place to kneel, but she had the big water container almost full. The call of a loon out on the lake, and its echo by another loon further away, caught her attention. Who are they laughing at, she wondered. The only trees still lit by the sun were on the tips of a far-away hill. The water was dark and still, and the trees across the lake started to look like fangs. My life, so far, she thought. Maybe next year things will be looking better. She started up towards the campsite.

  Saundra was talking up a storm about schoolwork and Matt was feeding small sticks into a growing fire in the firepit. Saundra was, Jenni noted, looking young and shapely. Obviously she was wearing more expensive camping clothes, but a better figure didn't hurt her any. I wonder what would happen if I left them alone, she wondered.

  Matt turned to Jenni. "Our water girl! Thanks, Jenni."

  Saundra said, pointing, "look what Matt found.

  "Lawn chairs?" Jenni said. "We have lawn chairs?"

  "He found them over behind the cedars," Saundra said. "They were hidden."

  "Life is indeed looking up," Jenni ackn
owledged, then decided that that sounded like she didn't appreciate it, so she added, "I mean it. Dad always said that finding a comfortable place to sit was the biggest problem in camping. We sometimes took lawn chairs in the fishing boat," she added. "I have to agree with him," she tacked on. "How many?"

  "Only two," Matt said, so we'll have to, ah, change around. Share."

  "No you won't." Saundra shook her blonde hair. "I was up most of last night and need some sleep so bad I'm getting giddy. Next thing you know I'll be dancing around the fire."

  That image, Jenni figured, probably did something to Matt's brain, after a bit of masculine editing. "Are you sure?"

  "I am very, very, sure," Saundra said. "When you're ready just crawl into the tent if you want. I'll leave Clayton's sleeping bag unzipped so you can get in without waking me up." She turned on a flashlight and handed Jenni her phone. "First a visit to the facilities." She disappeared in the direction of the pit toilet further back in the woods.

  "I'll see you in the morning, then, I guess," Matt said. "I'm going to stay up for a while and watch the fire." He opened a lawn chair and sat down, using a stick to poke at the fire.

  Jenni looked at Saundra's tent. She looked at the lawn chair. The rest of the world was pretty dark. What the hell, she thought, and sat down maybe a third of the way around the fire. The smoke, of course, drifted around and she held her breath until it had changed direction again. Somewhere inside her, she heard a warning: beware of moonlight and firelight; the woods brings out the primitive instincts. She decided to ignore it.

  "You're staying up?" Matt waved at the smoke, but a small breeze had come up, and it was taking the smoke plume out over the lake and dropping the temperature a bit.

  "Sorry to spoil your solitude. Again." With the brightness of the fire the rest of the world seemed nothing but blackness. Somewhere across the lake a loon laughed again.

  "Well, you didn't have much choice this afternoon." Matt shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  But I did have a choice this evening, Jenni thought. "I'm a bit keyed up and I don't think I could get to sleep anyway. If you don't mind, I'd like to stay up for a while." What the heck, she thought, it could get interesting.

  "Pleased to have you here." That was followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire and the shifting of burning logs. The night was cooling fast, Matt broke a branch over his knee and threw the two parts into the flames.

  Just what, Jenni wanted to know, is he thinking? "Am I making you uncomfortable?" she asked. "I can go into the tent – Saundra's tent – and try to sleep if you need some time alone." She scratched an itch on her leg. Something scuttled in the bushes behind her.

  Around a fire legs always get hotter than the rest of a person. Melted toes and drifting smoke are the big hazards of a campfire. Both Jenni and Matt shifted their legs to the side at the same time.

  "Actually, yes, you are making me uncomfortable. Or I'm making me uncomfortable." Matt scratched his own leg. "But I'd prefer you to stay. Might as well deal with it." He tossed another branch into the fire, but the fire really didn't need it, Jenni observed. She hoped he wasn’t getting symbolic with the fire.

  "Okay. Do you own a cat?" Jenni looked at him but he was watching the embers.

  "Pardon? No."

  "Damn. I was trying to introduce a conversational gambit," Jenni said. "A person can always start with comparing cats."

  "So you own a cat?"

  "Well…. One."

  "So much for that conversation." Matt shifted legs. "Jenni's short for Jennifer?"

  "Jenni. Two n's and an i. Short for Jennifer."

  "Most Jennifers are Jenns, as far as I've seen."

  "That's the number one reason I don't call myself 'Jenn'".

  "Sounds like a plan. Why the i at the end? Instead of a y?"

  "Jenny with a y is a female mule." Jenni found a twig and tossed it onto the fire, sending up a few sparks which Matt dodged. "On the other hand, my mother always said I was stubborn like a mule. She might have been right. Sometimes I hang on to kite strings I should let go of."

  "Join the club." There was a longer pause. "I guess your friend… Emilia? I guess she told you about my reaction to you."

  "Of course. We're women, you know."

  "Well, let me first apologize for whatever bizarre part of my brain does such a thing."

  "I guess my beauty overthrew ya. Understandable." Jenni was starting to relax a bit. Not much, but a bit. Maybe it was because however uncomfortable she felt, he seemed to feel worse.

  There was no laughter or snort of derision. "Don't think so. Every day in the city I see one or two women more beautiful." Matt even sounded sincere.

  At least one or two, Jenni thought. How tactfully phrased. Maybe if she could put on some eye makeup and a cocktail dress and get a push-up bra, she'd look better. She shook her head; why would she want to look better for Matt? Obviously primeval forces at work. "Emilia's better looking than me."

  "She is."

  Truth is cheap, Jenni thought, then realized it wasn't all that common. "Then why me?"

  Matt looked away. "I'm a man," he said, assembling his thoughts slowly. "I fall in love with five women who pass me on the streets of Oshawa every day. For a whole four seconds each." He kicked the fire. "I have impure thoughts, as the preacher would say, more times a day that I'd ever admit to."

  "And this isn't that?"

  "This isn't that. I've met women so physically beautiful that I get tongue-tied and can't say anything but gibberish. And I've had heart-tearing crushes on girls since I was old enough to ride a bike."

  "Not those either."

  "And I've fallen in love a couple of times. Real love, with someone I got to know." he paused. "Or thought I knew."

  "And I'm not in that file, either?"

  "This never happened before." Matt stirred the embers and this time it was Jenni's turn to dodge the flying sparks that rose into the air.

  "So," she said. "That leaves us with love at first sight, just like they say."

  "Don't be silly!" Matt looked at her, angrily. "Whatever you feel about someone you don't know might be called something, but I'm damn sure it isn't love." He stared into the darkness. "Just how could you love someone you know nothing about?"

  "The newspapers tell about people who fell in love at first sight," Jenni pointed out.

  "I have no doubt," Matt said, "that there are a lot of cases where two people noticed each other, smiled, and got married a year later. After getting to know each other. That's an attraction that turns into love. Of course that happens. Of course." He kicked the fire. "Love grows like a flame. The conditions have to be right. Otherwise, you're just living in delusions."

  "You'd know that?" She seemed to have made him angry, but that was fine. She was sure that was just fine.

  "You hear about love at first sight. A lot. My parents always said it happened to them. But if you ask about the details, you find that their eyes met in a room full of other people they weren't interested in. They smiled at each other and thought, "that person looks interesting. He walked over, and talked. That went well enough that they had a coffee together, and another a couple of days later. Half a year later they figured they were in love and a few months after that they got engaged."

  "I've seen that happen." That's pretty well how it went with Julio, she thought, but decided it wasn't the time to tell that to Matt.

  "For the rest of their lives they told people it was love at first sight. but it wasn't. It was interest at first sight, and they spent months falling into love." Matt shifted. "I've never heard of people rushing into each others arms, prepared to abandon everything else after a ten-second glance. Have you?"

  "Not anybody sober," Jenni said. She decided not to mention Lonnie's encounter with the same phenomenon.

  "That's right. That's exactly right."

  "I must admit it never happened to me. I've taken my time getting to think I knew somebody before ge
tting it all wrong." Jenni, got up, found a branch to break off, and tossed it onto the fire.

  "I've been in love," Matt said. "Real love. Grew it like a rhubarb bed in spring. Like you said, I took the time to get to know someone before getting it all wrong."

  "How did it turn out?"

  There was a silence, then Matt got up and dragged more branches near, He broke some of them up, snapping them in his hands. When he sat down again, he just said, "Ashes. Ashes in the wind. Maybe next time, if I get a next time, I'll take a bit longer. Hand out some psychological tests or something." He turned to her. "You've done better in life, I suppose?"

  Jenni ignored the question. That must be some marriage Matt had, she thought. They had something in common, but she had no desire to tell him about her marriage. "And then I wandered into your view."

  "The first thing I thought," Matt said, "was that you probably reminded me of someone else. A girl I had a crush on in grade eleven, maybe, or my mother, or a fairy tale my mother read me when I was too young to know better."

  "Makes sense." Jenni thought that maybe that's why she took to Julio. Not just a desire to get away from her family. She decided she'd work on that idea later. "Which was it?"

  "I went through my memories and came up with nothing." Matt sighed. "Either my memory is bad or that isn't the solution."

  "So what now? I get my own personal stalker? Doesn't sound like fun to me."

  "Hardly that, Jenni. All I feel is annoyance."

  "Not anger."

  "Close, sometimes. I'm not enjoying the process at all."

  "I won't have to be watching over my shoulder?"

  "Well, right now, if you asked me to give up everything and go live in a trailer outside Dawson City, I'd probably do it, knowing every second it wasn't right. But," Matt added, "I think I'll just get away as fast as I can and hide as well as I can."

  "Great. I'm becoming a gargoyle."

  "Whatever works for you." Matt looked at her. "Look, I can't apologize enough for this whole thing. If I were you, I'd be nervous of the guy sitting over here."

  "Oh, you think I should be?"

  "Nope. Totally harmless, regardless."

  "All the serial killers say that." Jenni was getting depressed, not at Matt, but at the distance between them.

  "You got a point there." Matt went silent.

  "It would be different if you had a cat." They stared into the fire for a while. The silence lengthened, and Jenni thought maybe she'd better go to bed anyway.

  "You like canoeing, I guess," Matt said. "Wouldn’t a motorboat be more fun?"

  "I do," Jenni acknowledged. She thought a bit. "I like the independence. I like following the shores, watching the forest. If I see a creek leading into a swamp, I can push the canoe up there for a bit. through the weeds. Hard to do that in a motorboat.

  "That's true."

  "If I think there's another lake not far away, I can carry my canoe over, and see what it's about." She looked up as a couple of early fall leaves drifted down. "When I see rocks under the canoe, I can just watch them drift by, instead of frantically trying to save the prop."

  "Sounds more peaceful than a motorboat, for sure. Ever done canoe-camping?"

  "With my father a couple of times. With Julio a couple of times, but he generally found it boring. I guess he liked having people around to impress. Three or four times by myself?"

  "By yourself? That's not usually a girl thing to do."

  "I was a bit nervous the first couple of times, but I found I liked the silence and the peacefulness. You?"

  "I like to camp on the hilltops," Matt said. I like hills. I see a hill, and I'll climb to the top. Sometimes there's a good view; most of the time there isn't. I'm happy either way. I like the outdoors, and I wanted to try canoeing, so as soon as I was sure my mother wasn't going to haunt me, I rented that canoe."

  They both listened to the fire crackling and the night sounds of the forest. The smoke drifted around again, full of cedar smells. Then Matt said, "Who's stupider, men or women?"

  "Women," Jenni said without thinking.

  Matt looked over at her. The firelight lit half his face, with its puzzled expression. "What about the wrecked cars and the silly macho games?"

  "Women believe in love. Sooner or later they believe in the dream, and the smoke, as the old song says, gets in their eyes."

  "Aren't some women happily married? I know some that seem okay with their choice."

  Jenni thought of Emilia. "So do I. Can you see the stars tonight?"

  "Not with this campfire going. Is that your point?"

  "Yeah. Too much flame, too much light, blinds women. Attracts them. Outside it, they feel like they're missing something essential. Inside it, they can't see much."

  "And yet?"

  "There are a lot of good men on this planet. Some women get lucky. Bound to happen." Jenni watched him as he turned his face back to the fire and put another stick onto it. The fire, by this time, was mostly embers.

  "Happens to men, too, you know."

  "Not as often."

  "But it happens."

  "Blinded by love? Are we about to elope?"

  "Not me," Matt said. "You might have made me crazy, but I'd hate to think I was that crazy."

  "What I want," Jenni said, "is a marshmallow and a camp song. And some of the years I've lost. Maybe I'd like to be with my father at some lakeside campsite with the future still ahead of me."

  "You miss your father?"

  "Why would it be crazy to elope with me? Leap into the great unknown. A whole future on a sudden whim, or a shot between the eyes by Cupid's arrow. Assuming I were crazy enough to go along with it."

  "Did that," Matt said. "Not suddenly, but in a year or less I was in love. Real love."

  "Marriage?"

  "The whole thing. Big wedding, nice house…."

  "Love?"

  "She probably thought so, at first. I like to think so."

  "And you?"

  "Stubborn. Bit of mule in me, too, I guess. Too much a sense of commitment and not enough common sense. One day I realized I was trying to warm myself by ashes."

  "And you were out of there, of course."

  A silence. "I turned out to have more of a stupid sense of commitment than I knew." Matt kicked at a stick near the fire.

  "You learn things when you get married, or so I found out, too." Jenni poked the fire. "Is there any more wood?"

  "Lots. I seem to have planned for a very long night." He got up.

  "I guess love is a lot more complicated than we thought it would be."

  Matt shook his head. "I get the feeling that it's pretty simple. We just don't know the rules."

  Jenni thought about that one, then shook her own head. She was sure that if the rules of love had been simple, she'd have figured them out. But she wasn't going to say that to Matt. "It must have been pretty hard," she said.

  "I don't like to talk about it. Sorry about that. I much prefer denial. The more I concentrate on a problem, the worse it seems to get. A guy thing, I think."

  Jenni figured he must be doing it all wrong, but she also figured it wasn't a good time to get into a debate. "Looks like we'll both be canoeing alone, at least for a bit."

  "I might just prefer it that way."

  "Annie doesn't mind?"

  "Oh, until they can fit a wheelchair into a canoe, it's going to be me alone. We used to canoe, way back when, but after the accident…. You're married, did Emilia say?"

  Was he just trying to make conversation? Jenni wondered. Did he himself know why he asked? She made a sudden decision. Enough of being something in the back of his brain. She'd just talk until he figured out the real Jenni. Or got bored and ran off to his tent.

  "Julio and I went canoeing a fair amount. He wasn't much of a fisherman, but he liked challenging the wilderness or something like that. We met on a group canoeing expedition."

  "And you took to him."

  "He had confidence. He believed in
himself without any doubt. I had none of that. And he's a good-looking guy." Jenni wondered if she should have said that; maybe Matt would feel she was comparing men. But she went on. "He's into muscle building. Not in a competitive way; just enough to turn a girl's head."

  "That," said Matt, "is the combination I've put in for in my next incarnation."

  It was true. Jenni knew a few muscles and a lot of confidence was what most men needed to stand out. She didn't detect a surplus of either in Matt. Matt was a reasonably good-looking guy, but a bit low on animal magnetism. "I was pleased that he noticed me. He wasn't much of a brain, I guess, but that wasn't what most girls were after."

  "I don't think people should be allowed out of school without some older people telling them the truth about love and marriage."

  "We were kids. We wouldn't have believed them anyway. Did you have any kids?" It was, Jenni realized, a beautiful night to fall in love, to make an appointment for whenever and never and talk about children and stars. But…

  "No." Matt poked at the fire again. "She didn't want any. You?"

  "My father was getting pretty sick by the time I married Julio. He didn't approve at all, but I was getting stubborn about it, so he made me promise to wait three years before having kids."

  "Smart man."

  "Yeah, I guess he knew something. He died when I'd been married a year or so. If he'd lived beyond my teenage years we could have gone fishing again. I think about him a lot."

  "I don't. Look back, I mean. I see an old wizard talking to me. He says, 'Never look back; that way madness lies'".

  "I don't know how you do that."

  "You're a woman. Men think of one thing at a time. Well, two things. But once you've got them in your mind, the rest of the world gets shoved away."

  "Must be nice."

  "Is."

  Jenni looked up. "At least, with the woods this wet, we're not going to start a forest fire."

  In the long silence that followed, Jenni thought about her father and Emilia and Tanya, and a few other things. She wondered how she looked by firelight. Candles were supposed to make a girl look better, but Jenni suspected that firelight wasn't as good. Darn shame, she thought, and made another resolution to take up jogging. She might not ever get to the standards that Emilia and Saundra set, but it couldn't hurt. Anyway, she decided, the worse I look, the better chance I have of getting rid of this guy before any damage is done…. She looked away from the fire and up. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a few stars. Beautiful, she thought. I've always liked the night stars. I wonder how they look from a hilltop.

  "You seem to get along with Emilia," Matt said.

  Jenni nodded, although Matt was looking the other way, out into the darkness. "She's a good friend. I'm just helping her for a couple of weeks at the lodge, then I'll go back to looking for another job. Got caught in the layoffs at the last one. Emilia's a teacher, mostly contract, but about to get a longer job this year, when some woman goes on maternity leave in a couple of weeks. Her husband works in Oshawa. Am I boring you?"

  Matt actually laughed. "No, I like to find out what other people think; I obviously know too little, Spent my time studying rocks instead of people." He sounded happy thinking of that. "My wife always knew what I was, I suppose, but she just assumed she could change me. Into what, I'm not sure."

  "But you got a job studying rocks?"

  "I turned out to be good at visualizing real landscapes by looking at maps, and made a few good guesses. Now I work as a consultant. It's not like being paid to walk the hills alone, like I used to do, watching the sky and being wild as the spring wind when the flowers first come out, but it pays a lot better." He looked into the fire. "What happened with you and Julio?"

  Jenni had no desire to tell him the details. "I blamed myself for every problem we had. Figured it must be something I was doing wrong, in spite of what my friends told me."

  "I've seen that happen to other women. There's not much you can tell them."

  "One day I woke up with a picture of my father in my mind, saying it wasn't my fault. And I realized he was right. "

  "And your friends all thought you'd finally taken their advice."

  "Of course. Now they're on my case a lot. You hadn't more than left the car before Emilia was sending the two of us off to the Bahamas." More silence. "All ashes in the wind," Jenni said.

  "Pardon."

  "You were saying that a minute ago. A poet, I understand."

  Long pause, then, "Ah, Lenny. Did he tell you that?"

  "He showed me a couple of stanzas you wrote."

  "Sometimes I write things to dismiss them."

  "Sounds like a plan," Jenni said.

  "I'm guessing," Matt said, "that Julio never ever saw the real Jenni. All he saw was something else. And you're pissed off at some dude who is attracted to you without knowing you. Déjà vu all over again."

  "And you're not ready to let go of someone who didn't want you either. There's a lot of anger somewhere in all that."

  "You might be right. Or not."

  "We could get paddles and beat each other for a while," Jenni said.

  "And each of us would be substituting for someone else. Sounds like misdirected bruising."

  "Yeah."

  "We could try to be friends."

  "Not yet." Jenni stretched a bit. "Someday."

  "I think you're right."

  I'm bitter, Jenni thought. Those times I caught Julio cheating on me hurt me too much. Maybe if and when Matt's single, I'll look him up. "How did you do in school," she asked. He'd be happier talking to Saundra or Emilia, she thought.

  "Quiet, solitary. The gloomy poet."

  "Some girls find that attractive."

  "Maybe. None of them managed to find me." Matt got up, brought a few more branches close to the fire pit. "I have a good and interesting job and a nice house. Five years ago I was wondering what I'd be doing."

  "Hobbies?"

  "I go sailing with some friends sometimes, and I write poetry. Annie and I travel a bit, sometimes together, sometimes not. I do a lot of swimming. I used to swim a lot in high school. Mostly just to prove I wasn't a complete nerd."

  "That's okay?"

  "Just fine with both of us."

  "And you live together."

  "Same house, different sections."

  "You must be the type of guy who's strong on commitment or something." Jenni scratched an itch on her lower back and hoped it wasn't something alive.

  "Could be that, or just stubborn. Like a mule. I know one."

  "A mule?"

  "A mule named Johnson. I do volunteer work at a donkey sanctuary out in the country once or twice a month."

  "Do you like that?"

  "I do. They save up some of the heavy work, like moving hay around. Johnson's the only mule, and we get along well. The rest are all donkeys that people have abandoned or mistreated."

  Jenni shook her head. "Why would anybody mistreat a donkey?"

  "Most of the time they don't mean to. But people try to treat them like a horse, and their health suffers. Worse than that, donkeys suffer in silence, and people can't understand what's wrong. So, eventually, the sanctuary gets them."

  "Sounds like you're doing fine." Jenni wondered how happy he was.

  "Being with Annie doesn't cover everything. A bad marriage leaves a few lost spaces. Sometimes I'm like an old piano, out of tune and missing some notes that will never be played again. A harbor full of boats afraid of the storms." He smiled ruefully. "Do you miss love?"

  "I'm a woman. I feel like one of those donkeys in your sanctuary, wondering how I ended up there and why someone didn't try harder to figure me out."

  "Still married?"

  "Separated."

  "What advice would you give a younger girl about love? After all you've been through?

  Jenni shrugged. "The logical thing would be to tell her to listen more to her head and less her heart. To find some friends who can look around the
smoke and fire and give her some advice."

  "You think that would work?"

  Jenni laughed. "Give up the magic for logic? What young girl would ever listen?"

  "Tell me about yourself."

  "Like what?" Jenni wasn't sure where to start, or if she should start.

  "How'd you end up at the Two-and-a-Half Pine Resort, for example."

  Well, thought Jenni. I can talk. I guess, if nothing else, I can bore the guy till he runs screaming into the lake. So she started. She talked about her job, and how it ended with company layoffs six months ago and of where she grew up. And her friends. Every job she'd had since she was a kid, and everything else from political opinions to the movie stars she liked. Strangely enough, she got more cheerful as she went through it. Partway through she was telling funny anecdotes about most of her life and laughing out loud.

  After about twenty minutes she ran out of things to say. When the silence got long, Matt started to describe how he got his lure undone from the tree after Jenni had left. He made the story very funny. Jenni, who had had similar episodes while fishing with her father, laughed. Encouraged, Matt told a few more stories about the consulting business that were almost as funny, then seemed to wear down.

  "That's what you do?" Jenni asked. "Read maps for a consulting company?"

  "That's it. Maps and landscapes. The company owns the helicopter that took away Clayton and the rest."

  "Mining consulting?"

  Matt nodded. "That and things like tracing underground water streams for municipalities, and providing information for environmental groups opposed to the mining groups or what the municipalities want to do. They work for anybody willing to hire people like me and a helicopter."

  "You sound like you like it."

  Matt shrugged. "A person likes work he's good at, if people tell him he's good at it."

  "But that's all outdoor stuff. And you don't seem… in a canoe...."

  Matt laughed. "I've done lots of boating, but not in a canoe. My uncle – my mother's brother – died while fishing from a canoe, and my mother made it clear she didn't want to see me in a canoe." He paused. "She died about five years ago…."

  "You miss her," Jenni noted.

  "So here we sit, both of us disappointed in love," Matt said, changing the subject. "Where did we go wrong?"

  "Just unlucky?" Jenni shifted in her chair. "And stubborn. Me the patient donkey and you the mule that won't change."

  "Yeah," Matt said. "I'm a slow learner sometimes." He seemed far away.

  "And you say you never walked out?"

  "Maybe I should have." He looked at Jenni, the light from the fire playing on his face. "How did we get so lost in the jungles of love?" he asked. There was a moment when a possible sympathy hand squeeze seemed possible, but the moment came and went.

  Jenni thought, suddenly, I like him.

  Matt asked her, "What happened to your marriage? Did you wake up one morning and discover a note on the table or something?"

  "I walked out. It was Julio who got the note."

  There was a long silence. "Why?" The fire was down to a red glow, but Matt didn't make any move to get more wood.

  "Some things…" Jenni said, "Some things just don't work out." She changed the subject. "But you're still living with Annie, aren't you?"

  "That's a long-term relationship."

  A man who doesn't know when to let go, Jenni thought. Noble, but stupid sometimes. "Not about to walk away."

  He smiled. "Not me. Not from Annie."

  What was that poem about? Jenni wondered. She took it from her pocket. "I got this from Lenny. It's a poem of yours."

  He seemed to recognize it instantly. "Ah," he said. "Ah. I…."

  "I wondered if you wrote it for Annie."

  The thought seemed to surprise him. "Annie? Oh, no. Not for Annie." He hesitated a long time. "Can I have it?"

  "Of course," Jenni said. "It's yours, in the end."

  "I'm sorry. It was meant to be a three-stanza poem, and I only finished the first two." He crumpled it and threw it into the fire, where it flared briefly.

  Good, Jenni thought. Who wants an unfinished poem?

  "It's late," Matt said, getting up and heading into the woods. Jenni's eyes followed his flashlight among the trees then stood up and found the fold-up bucket Matt had brought. She made her way carefully down to the lake, grateful that the moon was bright enough to see, once her eyes had adjusted from the firelight. It was beautiful with the moonlight on the lake. She lugged a bucket of water to the firepit and dumped it onto the coals. There were still hot spots, but the landscape was so wet that she wasn't worried the fire would spread. Matt hadn't returned, so she found Saundra's tent, unzipped the front, and crawled in. Saundra didn't move as Jenni zipped the tent up and crawled into Clayton's sleeping bag.

  Sometime in the night, Jenni woke up. For a moment Jenni imagined that she heard Julio whistling “The Shadow of Your Smile,” a tune he’d always insisted was “their” song. She listened carefully, but heard nothing but an owl across the lake and the usual crashing of whatever somewhere in the bush. When you camped at night, there was always something making noise somewhere. You let your imagination do the rest, her father had once told her, or you went back to sleep. A whippoorwill called from somewhere close.

  Then she figured out what had woken her: Saundra was crying. Jenni reached over to wrap her arms around Saundra, holding her for a moment. "You've had a rough couple of days," Jenni said. Saundra just nodded, then curled up and went back to sleep. It took Jenni much longer. Just what had gone wrong with her life, she wondered. Then, of course, she remembered what Tanya had once told her. “Any thinking you do in the middle of the night is a product of your inner demons,” Tanya had said. “Don’t let them do your thinking for you. Things will usually look different in the morning.” Jenni lay down again, adjusted her body to accommodate a thick pine root that ran under the tent, and wondered if Matt was still up, and if so, what he was thinking about. Then, quite unexpectedly, she fell asleep.

  When she woke up, it was light, and she was cold. Saundra wasn’t beside her, so she unzipped the front of the tent. There was a dense mist on the lake, and it wasn’t possible to see further than past the canoes, but already the wind was starting to move tendrils of the fog around. Matt and Saundra were sitting in the lawn chairs by the fire, and a pot was on the grate above the flames.

  ***