Her parents’ backyard is huge, and it’s obvious that they’ve lived here for a long time. Everywhere there’s the kind of projects that you only get done when you’ve got a few years on your hands. An artificial embankment is built up with railroad ties. In the south end of the yard is a gazebo that Paul had proudly told me about making with Justin and Tansy both helping him. White fairy lights are strung around the porch awning.
Underneath them, Tansy seems dangerously young. It’s the first time the difference in our ages has struck me like this. Her bottom lip is soft and tremulous. “Do you promise?” she asks on a whisper. She’s got fistfuls of my shirt at my waist.
“Promise. No pressure,” I tell her, even as my heart is crying for some kind of proof that it’s not alone. That I’m not walking a tight wire between skyscrapers.
I’ve been skydiving, I drive a motorcycle; I’ve swum with sharks. Rock climbing wasn’t enough; I had to learn to ice climb. When that wasn’t enough, I went up a waterfall in Canada. None of it is anything compared to how I feel right now. There’s so much adrenaline rushing through my system that I taste copper at the back of my mouth.
“I’m scared, Cai.”
“I know.” I make myself strong and tall for her. Brave in a way I’m not sure I’m carrying off. It’s hard to hold two people up.
I’ve been here before. When my sister disappeared and my mother was a ruined wreck. Dad propped her up as much as he could, but Mom had never really been the same afterward. I’d learned to keep my troubles to myself because she couldn’t handle them without thinking of Xue.
Just like now. I shove my fear into a little ball and punch it way, way down inside me. There’s me and Tansy holding on to each other in the dark. That’s enough. If she leaves me, it’ll be enough once I’m in the dark on my own.
Dinner was strange and great at the same time. Tansy’s family is incredibly nice and genuine, but I didn’t realized how much I thrive on Tansy’s gaze on me until it was gone. She didn’t look at me once. Through me. Past me. Kind of near me. But never at me in the intoxicating way she normally does. I’d do anything to get that back, even if it means acting like I’ll be okay if she never loves me in return.
Even though I know that’s a lie.
Tansy
The cruddiest part about hunting is how early it starts. It’s still dark as I wrap both hands around the ancient metal thermos Mom handed over as we scooted out the door. It’s too well insulated though, and I can’t get any sense of warmth. My breath hovers in front of me in puffy clouds. The tiniest hint of lightening sky in the east is our only sign that dawn is on the way.
Cai huddles into her jacket, huffing into her clasped hands. “Damn, it’s cold.”
Beth’s showing no sign of the cold. She’s tossing gear around in the bed of her truck and pauses and looks down at both Cai and me. Her fists rest on her hips. “Did you layer? You’ve got to layer up when it’s cold out. Not that this is actually cold, but you’re both Californians now.”
“I layered.” I lift an arm, showing how puffy I am. I’ve got a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt and a short-sleeved shirt underneath my blaze-orange sweatshirt. There’s no way I’m either complaining about the cold or getting shot.
Cai stomps her feet and shuffles to get warm. “It’s going to be in the fifties later. I didn’t want to wear too much and get overheated. Besides, I wore a coat. Coat equals warm.”
“Drink more coffee,” Beth says cheerily. She’s wearing camouflage overalls and an orange beanie. She hops down from the truck bed more nimbly than she ought to be able to manage in knee-high wader boots. “Ice fishing. Now that’s something you’ve got to bundle up for.”
“Noted,” I say. “No ice fishing for me. Ever.”
“I’m starting to remember why you moved to California.” Beth points a finger at me with a teasing grin. “You’re a cold wimp.”
“Not having winter for eight years has spoiled me.”
Beth hands Cai an unloaded rifle. Yesterday we had a hunter safety class from Justin’s buddy Alan, who works for DNR, so I’m not super nervous. Not really. It’s weird to see Cai jack open the chamber and double-check that it’s empty. She looks too rough and urban to be out here in the woods. Even the jacket she’s wearing is stylishly masculine: a slim-line FUCT jacket with double zippers and seaming that emphasizes her height and stature.
I swing the shock-proof case of my camera over my shoulder. My weapon of choice for this outing is my DSLR camera. I could have used the same pink-stock Mossberg that I first went hunting with twenty years ago. That time I’d been with my dad and Frank. They’d joked and laughed, keeping their topics tamed down out of respect for me.
We’re a quieter party as we make for Beth’s usual hunting blind.
She’s being generous by sharing her spot. The terrain has changed so much over the years that I’m an out-of-towner who needs a guide. I know the shape of the pines and the way they stretch toward the sky, but the trail cuts through the underbrush differently.
Deeper in the woods, an animal skitters away. Cai peers into the dark as if she’d be able to see what it is. She controls the direction of her shotgun’s muzzle surprisingly well, making sure it stays pointed away from either Beth or me. Alan stressed that safety precautions should be taken at all times, even though she checked that it was unloaded. She’s doing it.
“Think it was a deer?” she asks in a half whisper.
“Probably not,” I tell her. “Too small. Bunny or fox.”
“Fucking cool.” The white flash is her teeth. She’s smiling, which brings out my smile in return.
It is pretty fucking cool. “Nature is awesome.”
This is what I’d thought of, after all. The reason I’d decided to invite Cai to Idaho. I knew she’d be this alive and in the moment. She embraces everything with her whole heart.
Including me.
I shake that away. I can’t look at it now. We’re tramping through the woods following Beth, whose headlamp casts bouncing white light over the path in front of us. If I get too deep in my head, it’ll be my luck that I’ll wander away from the trail and get lost. Maybe that’d be the answer to all my problems though. No more crazy-in-my-head Tansy if I’m too busy being eaten by a bear.
Beth’s homemade box blind is on a small platform reachable by ladder. There’s camouflage on the outside with plywood on the inside. It’s claustrophobically narrow, with room for three camp chairs lined up and a little space for our gear and not much else. Thank god for the short window that runs almost all the way across the front. It’s meant for shooting out of, but it also lets in a little fresh air. At least we warm up pretty quickly.
Waiting as the sun comes up and the forest starts to wake is pretty mind-blowing. The more still we are, the more the leaves of the trees rustle and shift. I sip coffee in slow motion so I don’t miss a moment.
“There we go,” Beth says in a heated whisper. She points across the clearing. “Here comes mama and her sweetheart.”
“Oh, wow,” Cai breathes.
I put down my coffee cup silently and scoop my camera out of my lap. Through the zoom of my lens, the quartet comes so close I can count the spots on the fawn. The male of the pack has a small but beautiful spread of antlers.
“He’s a five pointer,” I tell them. Well within the requirements of our deer tag.
The rustling of fabric next to me says Cai is standing, moving forward to take aim. I get up too and run off a series of snaps before it’s too late. The lens whirs but otherwise my camera is silent.
Beth offers advice in a whisper. “Line up your sights with the chest. Breathe slow. Stay calm.”
The female deer freezes and looks up in our general direction. I don’t think she’s spotted us though. It’s the wariness of a woman who’s been in danger.
I know that look.
“I can’t do it,” Cai suddenly says. She lowers the rifle.
“You can, it’s easier than you think. L
ook, he’s coming even closer.”
Beth is right. The buck ambles toward us. He’s grazing on tall grass. They’re busy getting fat for the winter.
“No, I mean I know I can,” Cai explains in a whisper. “But I don’t want to. It’s enough to be here.”
I lower my camera and look at Cai over it. She has a wondrous smile, the corners tilted up and her expression relaxed in a way that I normally only see when it’s her and me in bed together. And only after we’re done, too. When we’re playing, she’s intense in a way that makes my fingers tingle now in memory.
“What?” Beth is faintly incredulous, and I kind of can’t blame her. We got up stupidly early to only make this a hike, plus had to go through the safety class and the money Cai’s paid … “Do you mind if I do?”
“Go ahead.”
Beth is an expert. She’s barely lifted her gun and sighted in before the air is rent with a loud crack. Birds caw and flutter through the forest all around us. In the clearing, the mother deer and fawns rear and leap away. I don’t even see blood before the buck falls as if his legs have gone boneless.
Cai slowly unloads her weapon, gaze trained on the deer. When she puts it down, I slip my hand into hers. “Are you okay?” I whisper.
She nods, gives me a little lift of her mouth that’s kind of more an assurance that she’s okay than a real smile. “That was really something,” she says to Beth.
“It’s not a big deal to chicken out.” Beth whacks Cai’s shoulder. “We can try again tomorrow morning.”
“No, I think I’ve gotten what I came for.”
“Are you sure?” Beth is confused. She glances at me as if for direction, but I just shrug. “You got a license and a tag and everything. I’d hate to see you go home empty-handed.”
“No, really. It’s fine.” Cai shakes her head. “Just looking down the barrel and knowing that I could do it was enough for me. What am I actually going to do with a deer anyway?”
“Well, I know I’m gonna take off and dress it,” Beth says with a shrug. “Looks like a nice amount of meat on him. I’ve got a deep freezer to fill up. If I don’t have room, Tricia Pelfer has a chest freezer too.”
She heads out of the blind to do the dirty work of preparing the deer. I take the chance to lean into Cai and rest my head on her shoulder. I’m not afraid of PDAs around my old friend, but it had seemed unwise when Cai was carrying a gun. She opens, letting me push under her arm like an insistent kitten, and then holds me close to her side.
“Who’s that Tricia?” she asks.
“Single mom. Got three girls and works at the bar.” I watch Beth arrange the deer so its hind legs are downhill and its head on a couple of rocks. “I bet she ends up giving most of it to Tricia anyway. Talking about keeping it for herself is just show.”
“She’s nice.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“She’s not getting you back.”
“What?” I say, laughter making the word come out all weird. “God, no. I can’t even— What?”
She rubs my back and looks into my eyes. I wonder if she sees the weird, shifting guilt that I carry on behalf of Mom. It’s not that I want Beth back, or even that she wants me again, but I have this sneaking suspicion about Mom’s planning. What she hopes for me.
And the thing is, I kind of don’t mind the idea of never leaving. The air is cold and clean in a fresh way that doesn’t happen in Southern California. The cleaner the air gets there, the more it’s scented with salt, which is just weird. Here are leaves and grass and clarity I don’t get anywhere else.
But in my arms is a Californian who says she loves me. She’s a good woman, the kind who can sight in on that antler spread and decide that she doesn’t actually have to pull the trigger because she doesn’t have a practical use for the animal. The cold has turned the tip of her nose dark pink, which probably means that mine is glowing like Rudolph’s.
I lean up on my toes and kiss her. Our cold noses bump. Her lips are cold too, at first, but after a long moment she opens up and lets me into her warmth. I lick into her mouth, and her tongue comes out to meet mine. We taste like black coffee, as if we’re part of a pair.
I pull back only far enough to talk. “I promise I have no interest in Beth.”
“Good enough for me.”
Even this is different in a beautiful way. A way that waters my soul with gentleness. I didn’t realize until she said that so easily that even part of me had still expected a worse reaction. But now there’s no part of me that’s waiting for an interrogation once we get back to her hotel room. I know that’s not going to happen.
She trusts me. She loves me, and that love doesn’t make her so fragile that she has to treat me like a weapon waiting to be launched against her.
I feel her chest against mine. Her curves and my curves go together. I kiss her again and this one catches fire. She holds my face between both her hands so that she can tilt me to the precise angle she wants. I hold on to her wrists and let her take me wherever she likes. I always know it’s going to be somewhere good.
My body is just starting to warm from the inside out when I hear Beth laughing.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says. She’s come back into the blind for a couple of ziplock bags and paper towels. “God, you two really are like newlyweds or something. Who the hell else would start getting it on in front of a dead deer?”
I jolt away from Cai and cover my face with my hands. “Oh, eeewww,” I squeal. “That’s nasty.”
“You’re the one who was doing it.” Beth is chuckling at us and wiping her hands on a rag. The brown material doesn’t give away much in the way of stains. The rust on her fingers is blood though. “I’m just pointing it out.”
“Do me a favor and don’t point anything out again. Ever.”
“I promise to behave.”
We follow her out of the tiny box. I don’t know about Cai, but I’m feeling a little awkward again.
Beth grabs a line and ties it to the deer, then uses it to hitch the carcass to a tree and haul it up. “Your mom’ll never let me hear the end of it if I’m the reason you don’t move back home, after all.”
“What?” Cai’s voice comes out harsh. I haven’t heard anything like it from her before. Her eyes are wide, and she’s got her arms crossed over her chest, but I can still see her body clench.
“She said Tansy was thinking about it. Nothing set in stone yet.”
I shake my head. “I never said that to her.”
Cai knows me better than that. It’s part of the problem and the perfection of us at the same time. The straight sweep of her brows lower. She glares at me. “But you are thinking about it.”
She didn’t even make it a question. She didn’t need to. I hold a hand out, but I’ve got no words to rescue myself with.
Beth looks back and forth between us, her expression opening up. She twists a hank of paper towels. “I’ve stepped in it, haven’t I? Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you guys were … I mean, it’s only been three months since …” She trails off. “I gotta go load the buck up. I’ll be back with the four-wheeler in a minute.”
There’s more distance between Cai and me than the few feet between us. She doesn’t say anything. My insides are a clenching mess. I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to make a big deal of trying to get air either. I draw in a long, slow breath, and even that can’t fill my chest. I’m too busy panicking to feel anything else.
Finally I can’t take the sadness coming off her anymore. “Well?”
“Where would you work?”
“There’s an opening at the elementary school. It’s public, but …” I cup my elbows in my hand. I don’t think I could be any more curled in on myself unless I dropped to the ground and turtled up.
“You’ve looked.”
“I … It was one quick search …” I hear myself trail off yet again, and it’s like I’m replaying history. This is who I used to be.
Cai won’t hurt me. I don’t know what sh
e will do, but I know this won’t be laced through with acerbic barbs that linger for years and cut away at my self-esteem. She seems sad more than angry. There’s no hint of rage radiating from her, turning my spine into water.
I can’t do this. I won’t. I bring my head up and intentionally straighten my shoulders. “Yeah. I searched. I’m thinking about it.”
Cai
Tansy is avoiding me. It’s a sneaky kind of avoidance, because it’s not like she’s icing me out. She still stands next to me, and we’re together pretty much all day. First we go with Beth to the deer processor, where we run into some guys that Beth and Tansy both know. They’re funny and accepting of both my presence and Beth’s in-your-face butchness. Mitch offers us a choice between home brew and a Budweiser. I pick the home brew and it’s surprisingly good for someone who’d also drink Bud, with enough hoppiness to keep it interesting.
It’s a weird feeling. I laugh it up with the group as we lean on tailgates in the street outside the processor’s cooler where we’ve dropped off the deer to be turned into sausage and leather gloves. They swap hunting stories, and everyone finds it pretty funny that I willingly passed up my shot this morning. Eddie, a tall guy with a handlebar moustache, volunteers that it’s probably about how I can’t exactly take a whole deer on a plane, and I take the olive branch. Good enough for me that they want to understand; I don’t exactly crave their approval.
It’s Tansy that I watch the whole time. She’s on fire, alive in a comfortable way that says she knows her own skin and where she belongs in the world. The only other time she’s looked this relaxed is when I told her to crawl to me.
I’ve got to admit that I like that version of Tansy’s relaxation better. It’s selfish of me, I know it. I don’t give a fuck. I want to take her home to California.
Except then I feel like the biggest bitch possible, because our afternoon stop is lunch with Tansy’s grandmother. Her stooped, white-haired grandmother who wears a sweatshirt with high-fiving kittens on it. Tansy collects her from the small set of apartments one block away from Main Street and Ethel comes out holding Tansy’s arm. She’s a few inches shorter than Tansy, though it’s hard to tell if that’s because of her curved back. I think she has a tiny bun knotted at the top of her head, but her cloud of hair is so curly that it’s hard to tell how it’s held up. Maybe pure force of will.
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