“Is anyone hungry? Before we start we should all take a pee break and have a snack if anyone needs it.”
Valerie’s voice was husky, almost as if she was recovering from a cold. “And where do you suggest we pee?”
“Try over there, behind that clump of willows. And bury your tissue when you’re done. And make sure you don’t sit in poison ivy if there is any or squat over a bee’s nest,” Erica warned.
Last summer in the garden, I disturbed a wasp nest hidden in a tangle of trumpet vines. They came at me with a fury and I ended up at the local clinic, my arms swollen like inner tubes, angry red welts covering my neck, arms, and abdomen. I even had welts on one breast. It swelled up like a melon. The nurse asked how the wasps had gotten inside my clothes. I said I didn’t know. It all happened so fast. I didn’t tell her I had been naked so of course they attacked everywhere and anywhere. After that I was very careful to watch the flight paths of any bees or wasps to see if there was a pattern that had them coming and going on a regular route.
While I folded up the chart, Charlene took charge, assigned the canoe teams and made last minute adjustments with the others to balance the canoes just right. She put Valerie in the bow with Roz steering, leaving Hope with herself paddling stern.
Erica pushed our canoe into the water and climbed in, soaking her sneakers in the process so she took them off and tossed them onto the floor of the canoe. She wriggled her toes over the gunwale and slapped at the water with her bare feet like a little kid, a big grin on her face. The sun had risen to the tree line and dappled light played on the water. A slight breeze stirred the morning air.
“Oooh, the water’s cold. Let’s get going.”
“It will get hot as soon as the sun rises a little higher in the sky. You’ll be glad the water’s cool then.”
After tossing my sandals into the canoe, I shoved the stern into the water and hopped in barefoot. I grabbed my paddle and used its tip against the river bottom to move us beyond the bank. I feathered the paddle to bring us parallel to the others and waited, the tip of my paddle still rooted to the river bottom. While I held the canoe steady, I studied the river.
When I looked upriver to the left, it was about sixty or so feet wide, with a high bank on the west side partly made of a jutting rock ledge and partly earth with old gnarled tree roots sunk back deep into the bank. Ferns grew tall and wild along with elderberry, buttonbush, dogwood, willow, and hemlock trees. On the east side along the pebbled banks I could identify loosestrife, riverbank grape, tussock sedge, and reed grass growing close to the edge in sunny spots. There was a stand of birch trees, white against all the green with lovely peeling bark and feathery leaves. A straight run of river turned, just before the launching spot, into a wide curve that formed a little bay of shallow water before moving on around jutting rocks. From this point it seemed as if the water just lazed along. Tall trees formed a canopy on either side. In the middle, when the sun was higher, the water would become bright and sparkly. I loved that part of the day on a river.
The canoes pushed off and entered the gentle swirl. I lifted my paddle and said to Erica, “Okay, let’s move ’em out.”
We were truly on our own now. We dipped our paddles in stroke after stroke until we merged with the current into the middle of the river where the water was dark, deep, running smooth and steady. The two other canoes followed in a snaking pattern one after the other, carried by the current, each one in the stern position steering a course forward, keeping to the middle water where the flow was strongest.
Not too far along, as the river widened and straightened for what looked like a good stretch, the three canoes came abreast of each other. I extended my paddle to the canoe with Hope and Charlene.
“Here,” I said to Charlene, “grab it and get Hope to do the same with Valerie. If we each hang onto the paddles, we’ll be rafted for a while as long as the river runs straight and calm like this.”
The other canoe pulled up alongside and Hope stuck out her paddle to Valerie. Soon we were abreast of each other, paddle to paddle. Every once in a while I told Charlene, who was in the middle canoe, how to keep us going fairly straight by using her paddle as a rudder. The bow paddlers did the same and we slid down the river like a raft with three pontoons.
“Who wants to fill Katelyn in on our stories?”
Erica looked from one canoe to the other, her eyebrows arched. Droplets of water fell from her paddle in a thin line leaving a dotted wake that floated away behind us in a disappearing line that spread out in the water until it vanished into gentle ripples.
“If we tell her all about us, will she tell us all about her?” Charlene, the cross examiner.
“You do it. You got us all onto the council in the beginning.” Roz pointed at Erica and then leaned over and waved a dragonfly away from the canoe.
“We want to hear Katelyn’s story first,” said Charlene.
“Okay then, Katelyn, first tell us how you and Maze met,” Erica said, turning around to face me in the bow. “Whoa,” she sucked in a breath and grabbed the gunwales as the canoe wobbled when she changed her position. “Careful,” she warned.
“You be careful,” Charlene told her. “You’re the one who’s moving around in there. So, tell us.” She pointed to me. “If Erica falls in we’ll just let her swim the rest of the way.”
“My boyfriend from college and I lived together after I got back from a nine month Fulbright in Italy. I got a degree in art. He was a musician. We struggled. Financially, you know.”
“So that was before Maze?” Roz asked. “A musician and an artist? No money? Hard to imagine,” she teased.
“I know, right? I was very naïve then.”
“Is this too personal?” Hope asked me.
I shook my head slowly. I was wondering what they would think about my story. Maze knew all about it but he was hardly what you could call an innocent bystander.
“It’s okay,” I said and went on about the past in a kind of dreamy state out there on the river. So far from every day life. Like I was on a cruise. These were shipboard buddies. The kind you get close to fast and then break away from after you dock. I didn’t consider what they might think or say tomorrow.
“We were willing to live without money. We just wanted to be free to follow wherever our art took us. We were in complete agreement on that. We lived like scavengers, moving from one cheap place to another, collecting other people’s cast offs, buying clothes at Goodwill. He booked himself into any gig he could, played for nickels and dimes, got stiffed by club owners. Four years went by like that.”
“And you were what … twenty something?” Charlene asked. She dropped one foot over the gunwale and tapped her toes on top of the water. “Oooo,” she cooed, “it’s cold. But nice.”
“I was twenty-five when he got a letter that an uncle he barely knew had died and left him a big lot on a busy street corner. He went to talk to a realtor about selling it and she told him it was a good place for a strip mall. She offered to set up financing and be his partner. We would have income for life. He borrowed money from a bank using the land as collateral, built the mall, rented it out and made money. With the profits he bought another piece of land next to it and built a bigger strip mall. This realtor was hungry. Before I knew it, he was becoming a strip mall king and he stopped playing music. He turned into this controlling, workaholic, money crunching machine. He joined the Chamber of Commerce, wanted me to change the way I dressed and have people over for drinks and join the country club. Wanted to plan huge events. Especially our wedding. He got totally fixated on that. It was a nightmare. There was nothing I could do to get him to let go. It was like a drug.”
“What happened? Obviously you didn’t stay,” Roz said.
“One day I just packed up a couple of bags and left everything but my clothes and art supplies. My art rep had told me about a quiet little village on the Mexican Pacific. So I got on a plane and flew down there. I didn’t even have a place to stay so I wen
t to a B&B for two weeks until I rented a small house in the hills above the beach.”
“Wow,” said Hope. “And you did it all by yourself?”
“How long were you with this music man?” Roz asked.
“Six years if you count the time at school. I thought we’d be together our whole lives.”
“But you were just kids,” Roz said. “So young.”
“I’ll never make that mistake again,” I said. “How old were you when you got married?”
“Yes, tell us your sordid tale,” Erica leaned over and let her fingers run along the surface of the water then flicked some drops at Roz. She turned to me. “Roz has two daughters in college. She has a Ph.D. and works for a research company. She has trouble with men.”
“I do not have trouble with men. As a matter of fact I like men very much.”
“True. She likes lots of men.”
“You’re a prude.”
“You know, just because I’m big doesn’t mean I don’t have yens.”
“Hey, did I say anything about your weight? Or your yens?”
“She’s been married three – count ’em three – times and now she’s taken up with a truck driver.”
“We all live a little vicariously through Roz,” Charlene broke in. “I think Erica’s jealous of the new boyfriend. You met Will, right?” Charlene rolled her eyes.
“For the record,” Roz spoke directly to me, “I met Ed,” she tilted her head to the side in a little bow when she spoke his name, “when I was attending a conference in Las Vegas. He was winning big at the blackjack table. Really big. And buying drinks for everybody. He spotted me and asked if I was hungry. Well what was I supposed to say?”
“She’s always hungry,” Valerie broke in. “Always.”
“They gave him one of those high roller suites with all the trimmings so he invited me up there for dinner and I stayed the night.”
“And that was the beginning of a love affair of the soul,” Erica added.
“We’re having a good time. What’s wrong with that? He’s on the road all the time. When he passes near here he stops for a day or two. And sometimes we meet in Vegas or Atlantic City. When he’s winning, it’s exciting and fresh and fun. And he treats me like a princess. I don’t want anything more than that so what’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” said Charlene. “Except that you can’t possibly have anything to talk about.”
“You’d be surprised. Ed is sort of a renaissance man. He can talk on any number of subjects.” She turned to me and whispered, “Charlene has four older sisters. When they were kids, they used to call her Snarlene.”
“Talk is easy anyway.” I don’t know why I broke in like that. I must have been thinking about Maze. They all looked at me. No one spoke. “I mean finding someone you can really connect with is … ”
“Don’t you feel connected to Maze?” Hope asked. She seemed mystified by these stories.
“Will and I are connected. Good God we are so connected we have almost nothing to say to each other anymore. After thirty years together, we’ve said it at all least fifty times. What else is there to talk about?”
“I wish I’d been married to someone for thirty years.” Hope’s voice was wistful and quiet. The canoes made a soft whooshing sound against the water. “It must be very comforting.”
“At your age that would mean you’d have been married at two. Besides you don’t even date.” Valerie’s voice was even lower now. And I noticed a flat edge to it that sounded almost Midwestern.
“Yes. How do you expect to get married if you don’t even test the waters?” Charlene slid her leg out over the side of the canoe and dipped her toes into the river. “Speaking of waters, ooh, that is so cool and fresh. Hey, when we eat lunch I’m going for a swim.”
“Katelyn,” said Roz looking over at me. “What do you think? Is it better to have sex and not even think about marriage? You’re not married to what’s his name, right?”
“Maze? No. We’re not married.”
“You didn’t finish,” Hope said. “About how you and Maze met.”
“I’ll tell you that story later. I want to hear about all of you.”
“Well I decided a long time ago that marriage and I were not compatible. I’m too driven. Too focused on work. Besides when I’m involved in a trial I don’t have any time or energy for anything but my client. I have to be there one hundred and ten percent.”
“So there’s no man in your life?”
“Oh sure there is. We don’t live together. But we’ve been together for – what is it now – twelve years I think. He owns his house. I own my house. We spend weekends together. We go on trips together when I’m between court cases. We’re very satisfied with things the way they are.” Erica’s raised eyebrows hinted Charlene was not coming completely clean about something.
“What’s that look for?” Charlene asked, “We like our situation, no matter what some people may think. Anyway, Val’s the happily married one here. She’s carrying the banner for the rest of us.”
Valerie let her hand dip in the water. She smiled, as if this was some joke between them. “Yes, I’m just a living ideal, am I not?” She arched her neck back and looked up at the sky from beneath the brim of her stylish straw hat.
The rafted canoes glided along. Spots of sunlight glittered on the water. The air had turned warm although it had happened imperceptibly. One moment it was a cool morning and the next it had turned into midday.
One by one the women let go their hold on each other’s paddles. After a few more curves in the river we came to the first flat area with shallow water where I had designated on the map as a good place to rest up and eat a leisurely lunch. The day was fine. The birds had stopped singing. They too were resting in the middle of the day.
CHAPTER SIX
THE TROUT
The spot that had looked so fine on the chart turned out to be overgrown with poison ivy and brambles along the banks. There was not a good pull out for the canoes. It was hot by then, but we pushed on, paddling steadily now to find someplace to take a break. Around two bends in the river, we came upon a wide flat stretch of sandy bank that formed an island where the river breached into two parts. We pushed onto this sandbar island, bows first, one after the other. The stern paddlers had to step into water up to their knees to get out. We splashed around a bit and squealed with the cold. On the far side of the sandy island where the water slowed, a long pool formed. It was deeper over there, the clear water dark, perfect for sunning with a few large flat rock ledges above the water’s surface,.
There were tufts of grasses here and there and short wispy willows along the far side of the bank. Redwings flitted around resentfully, disturbed by our presence, crying out as they settled on a willow, hanging like acrobatics from its swinging branches. Somewhere a jay called raucously.
I walked over to that side of the island and stood quietly gazing at one particular rock ledge that had an outcropping hanging far out above the water.
“Hey, Katelyn, what’re you doing over there? Don’t you want some lunch?”
It was Charlene, the director.
“Would anyone like fresh grilled trout for lunch?” I called back without turning my head.
“What are you talking about?”
Roz came to stand by my side. “And what are you looking at over there?”
“Does anyone want fresh grilled trout for lunch?” I repeated.
“Sure but the maitre’d says our table isn’t ready,” Roz answered.
The others came over.
“If you all will gather some dry wood and start a fire, I’ll catch us some trout to grill.”
I pushed my jeans down and stepped out of them, stripped off my T-shirt and waded into the water in my bra and panties.
“Whoa. Look at nature girl.”
This was more than even Roz, the rebel, expected.
“Oh man. That looks like fun.”
Charlene waded in. “Wait for me,�
�� she called. She stripped down, came up beside me, and we walked farther in toward the flat rocks.
“Go collect some wood, you guys,” I called back to the others as we hit water deep enough to start swimming to the far side of the rock ledge.
Once we reached the rocks, I could see the others scurrying back to the middle of the island where they picked up driftwood that was lying around everywhere. Some of the pieces were too large for the fire but they dragged these over anyway. It was as if some primitive nesting instinct took over, as if the women were preparing to spend the winter on this little piece of land. Roz and Valerie stacked the wood and collected more. Erica and Hope unloaded the duffels packed with food. Took out the mess kits and a pot for boiling water. Set up a small standing grill on some rocks that they arranged in a circle to make a fire pit. Spread a cloth on the ground, prepared the lunch table with canned goods and small drink cartons. In packing for camping, they had tried to bring food in containers they could burn so they would make as little trash to carry back as possible. They stacked the firewood so it had a lot of air and then lit the kindling. It caught quickly and they collected more to have extra to add as it burned down. I could hear them talking.
“Do you think this water is okay to cook in?” Erica asked Hope.
Hope shrugged. “I guess so. It’s way out here with nothing upriver but river. I mean what could be in it but water? There aren’t any farms or industrial plants or sewage or anything. I think it’s okay.”
Erica fanned the fire with a branch that still had green leaves on it. The fire crackled and spit. They tossed more branches on it. It flared up. They let it burn down some while they set up the rest of the lunch things. When it was a smaller fire, Erica placed the grill above one end of it above the flames so it wasn’t in the fire but got plenty of heat from below. Hope stuck more branches around the down wind side and the fire settled into a steady burn. The others came over to admire the fire. Roz opened a drink and took a long swig. It was only then that they looked over to the pool on the other side of the island.
The Naked Gardener Page 7