“When a female wolverine is ready to breed,” Mrs. Sorensen said in the faceless dark. “She spends weeks tracking down potential mates, and weeks separating the candidates. She stalks her unknowing suitors, monitoring their habits, assessing their skills as hunters and trackers. Evaluating their abilities in a fight—do they prefer the tooth or the claw? Are they brave to the point of stupidity? Do they run when danger is imminent? Do they push themselves to greatness?”
Father Laurence cleared his throat. “Have you forgotten the prayer, my child?” he said, his voice a timid whine.
Mrs. Sorensen ignored him. “She does not do this for protection or need. Her mate will be useful for all of two minutes. Then she will never see him again. He will not protect his brood or defend his lover. He will be chosen, hired, used. He will not be loved. His entire purpose is to produce an offspring that will eventually leave its mother; she needs a child that will live.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” prompted Father Laurence. “That’s how people usually—”
“Now, in the case of a black bear, when the female becomes aware of the new life in her womb, she makes special consideration to the construction of the den. She is at risk, and she knows it. Pheromones announcing her condition leak from every pore. Her footsteps reek pregnant. Her urine blinks like road signs. Her fertility hangs around her body like a cloud.”
“Agnes—”
“When she digs her den, she moves more than a ton of rock and soil. She designs the space specially to provide a small mouth that she can stopper up with her back if she needs to.”
“Agnes—”
“She will grow in the dark, and birth in the dark, and suckle her babies in the feminine funk of that tiny space—smelling of mother and baby, and sweat and blood, and milk and breathing and warm earth—hiding under the thick protection of snow.” Her voice caught. She hiccupped.
“Agnes—”
“I thought I was anonymous.”
“And you are. I call all my confessionals Agnes.”
She laughed in the dark.
“I am asleep, Father. I have been asleep for—ever so long. My arms are weak and my breasts are dry and there is a cold dark space within me that smells of nothing.” She sat still for a moment or two. Then: “I love my husband.”
“I know, child,” he whispered.
“I love him desperately.”
What she wanted to say, the priest knew, was “I love him, but . . .” But she didn’t. She said nothing else. After another moment’s silence, she opened the door, stepped into the light, and vanished.
Father Laurence had no doubt that Agnes Sorensen loved her husband, and that she missed him. They had been married for thirty years, after all. She cared for him and tended to him every day. His death was sudden. And certainly one must grieve in one’s own way. Still, the sheer number of animals in the house was a cause for concern. The list of possible psychiatric disorders alone was nearly endless.
The priest walked out to the apple barn but no one was there. Just the impossibly sweet smell of cider. It nearly knocked Father Laurence to his knees. He closed his eyes, and remembered picking apples with one of the girls at school when he was a child—sticky fingers, sticky mouths, sticky necks, and sticky trousers. He remembered her long hair and her black eyes, and the way they fell from the lowest tree branch—a tangle of arms and legs and torsos. The crush of grass underneath. Her freckles next to his eyelashes, his front tooth chipping against hers (after all those years, the chip was still there), the smell of her breath like honey and wine and growing wheat. So strong was this memory, and so radically pleasant, that Father Laurence felt weak, and shivery. There was a cot in the barn—he didn’t know what it was there for—and he lay upon it.
It smelled of woodland musk and pine. It was covered in hair.
In his dream he was barefoot and lanky and young. He was on the prowl. He was hungry. He was longing for something he could not name. Something that had no words (or perhaps he had no words; or perhaps words no longer existed). He was watching Agnes Sorensen through a curtain of green, green leaves. She carried a heaping basket of apples. A checkered shirt. Apple-stained dungarees. A bandana covering her hair. Wellington boots up to her knees, each footfall sinking deep into the warm, sweet mud.
When Father Laurence woke, it was fully dark. (Was someone watching? Surely not.) He got up off the cot, brushed the hair from his coat and trousers. His body ached and he felt curiously empty—as though he had been somehow scooped out. He walked out into the moonlit yard. Mrs. Sorensen wasn’t in the barn. She wasn’t in the yard. She wasn’t in the house, either. (Was that a shape in the bushes? Were those eyes? Heavens, what am I thinking?) The house had been emptied of its animal sounds, and emptied of its light and smell and being. It was quiet. He knocked. No one answered. He walked over to the car.
There were footprints, he saw, in the mud alongside the driveway. Wellington boots sunk deep into the mud and dried along the edges. And another set, just alongside. Bare feet—a man’s, presumably. But very, very large.
For Agnes Sorensen, Thanksgiving passed with several invitations to take the celebratory meal with neighbors or former coworkers or friends, who all would have welcomed her with open arms, but these were all denied.
She said simply that she would enjoy the quiet. But surely that made no sense! There had been no one on earth quieter than Mr. Sorensen. The man had hardly spoken.
And so her neighbors carved their turkeys and their hams, they sliced pie and drank to one another’s health, but their minds wandered to the pretty widow with hair like starlight, her straight back, her slim skirts and smart belts, and her crisp footsteps when she walked. People remembered her lingering smell—the forest and the blooming meadow and some kind of animal musk. Something that clung to the nose and pricked at the skin and set the mouth watering. And they masked their longing with another helping of yams.
(Only the three sisters on the Parish Council didn’t see what the big fuss was about. They had always thought she was plain.)
Randall Jergen—not the worst drunkard in town, but well on his way to becoming so—claimed that, when he stumbled past the Sorensen house by mistake, he saw the widow seated at the head of the well-laid table, heaped to the point of breaking with boiled potatoes and candied squash and roasted vegetables of every type and description. Each chair was filled, not with relatives or friends or even acquaintances, but with animals. He reported two dogs, one raccoon, one porcupine, one lynx, and an odd-looking bear sitting opposite the pretty widow. A bear who grasped its wine goblet and held it aloft to the smiling Mrs. Sorensen, who raised her own glass in response.
The Insufferable Sisters investigated. They found no evidence of feasting. And while they did see the dogs, the tiny cat, the raccoon, the lynx, and the porcupine, they saw no sign of a wine-drinking bear. Which, they told themselves, they needed to know whether or not was true. Drunken bears, after all, were a community safety hazard. They reported to the stylists at the Clip ’n’ Curl that Mr. Jergen was, as usual, full of hogwash. By evening, the whole town knew. And the matter was settled.
For a little while.
By Christmas, there had been no fewer than twenty-seven reports of Sasquatch sightings near, or around, or on the Sorensen farm. Two people claimed to have seen a Sasquatch wearing a seed cap with the glass factory’s logo on it, and one swore that it was wearing Mr. Sorensen’s old coat. The sheriff, two deputies, the game manager at the local private wildlife refuge, and three representatives from the Department of Natural Resources all paid the widow a visit. They all left the farm looking dejected. Mrs. Sorensen was not, apparently, available for drinks, or dinner, or dancing. She gave their questions crisp answers that could have meant anything. She watched them go with a vague smile on her pale lips.
The Insufferable Sisters investigated as well. They looked for footprints an
d boot prints. They looked for discarded hats and thrown-off coats. They hunted for evidence of possible suitors. They interviewed witnesses. They found nothing.
By late January, neighbors noticed that Mrs. Sorensen had begun to walk with a lightness—despite the parka and the heavy boots, despite the sheepskin mitts and the felted scarf, her feet floated atop the surface of the snow, and her skin sparkled, even on the most leaden of days.
Bachelors and widowers (and, if honesty prevails, several uncomfortably married men as well) still opened doors for the pretty widow, still tipped their hats in her direction, still offered to carry her groceries or see to her barn’s roof, or check to make sure her pipes weren’t in danger of freezing (this last one was often said suggestively, and almost always returned with a definitive slap). The Insufferable Sisters arrived, unannounced, at the Sorensen farm. They came laden with hotdish and ambrosia salad and bars of every type and description. They sat the poor widow down, put the kettle on, and tapped their long, red talons on the well-oiled wood of the ancient farm table.
“Well?” said Mrs. Ostergaard, the eldest of the sisters.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Sorensen, her cheeks flushing to high color. “The tea is in the top drawer of the far right cabinet.” Her eyes slid to the window, where the snowflakes fell in thick curtains, blurring the blanketed yard, and obscuring the dense thicket of scrub and saplings on the other side of the gully. The corners of her lips buzzed with—something. Mrs. Ostergaard couldn’t tell. And it infuriated her.
Mrs. Lentz, the youngest of the sisters, and Mrs. Ferris, the middle, served the lunch, arranging the food in sensibly sized mounds, each one slick and glistening. They piled the bars on pretty plates and put real cream in the pitcher and steaming tea in the pot. They sat, sighed, smiled, and interrogated the pretty widow. She answered questions and nodded serenely, but every time there was a lull in the conversation (and there were many), her eyes would insinuate themselves toward the window again, and a deepening blush would spread down her throat and edge into the opening of her blouse.
The dogs lounged on the window seat and the raccoon picked at its bowl on the floor of the mudroom. Three cats snaked through the legs of the three sisters, with their backs an insistent arch, their rumps requiring a rub, and all the while an aggressive purr rattling the air around them.
“Nice kitty,” Mrs. Ostergaard said, giving one cat a pat on the head.
The cat hissed.
The sisters left in the snow.
“Be careful,” Mrs. Sorensen said as she stood in the doorway, straight backed and inscrutable as polished wood. “It’s coming down all right.” Her eyes flicked toward the back of the yard, a flushed smile on her lips. Mrs. Ostergaard whipped around and glared through the thick tangle of snow.
A figure.
Dark.
Fast.
And then it was gone. Snowflakes clung to her eyelashes and forehead. Cold drops of water crowded her eyes. She shook her head and peered into the chaos of white. Nothing was there.
The sisters piled into their Volvo and eased onto the road, a dense, blinding cloud swirling in their minds.
The next day they called a meeting with Father Laurence. Father Laurence withstood the indignities of their fussing in relative silence, the scent of apples, after all this time, still clinging sweetly in his nostrils.
The day after that, they called a second meeting, this time of the priest, the mayor, the physician, the dogcatcher, and a large-animal veterinarian. They were all men, these officials and professionals that the sisters assembled, and all were seated on folding chairs. The sisters stood over them like prison guards. The men hung on to their cold metal chairs for dear life. They said yes to everything.
Three days later, Arnold Fiske—teetotaler since the day he was born—nearly ran Mrs. Sorensen over with his Buick. It was a warm night for February, and the road was clear of any snow or ice. The sun had only just gone down and the sky was a livid orange. On either side of the road, the frozen bog stretched outward, as big as the world. Indeed, it was the bog that distracted Arnold Fiske from the primary task of driving. His eyes lingered on the dappled browns and grays and whites, on the slim torsos of the quaking aspens and river birches and Norway pines fluttering like flags on the occasional hillock. They rested on the fluctuations of color on the snow—orange dappling to pink fading to ashy blue. He returned his gaze to the road only just in time. He saw the face of Mrs. Sorensen (that beautiful face!) lit in the beam of his headlights. And something else too. A hulk of a figure. Like a man. But more than a man. And no face at all.
Arnold Fiske swerved. Mrs. Sorensen screamed. And from somewhere—the frozen bog, the fading sky, the aggressively straight road, or deep inside Arnold Fiske himself—came a ragged, primal howl. It shook the glass and sucked away the air and shattered his bones in his body. His car squealed and spun. Mrs. Sorensen was pulled out of the car’s path by . . . well, by something. And then everything was quiet.
Arnold Fiske got out of the car, breathing heavily. His dyspepsia burned bright as road flares. He pressed his left hand to the bottom rim of his rib cage and grimaced. “Oh my god,” he gasped. “Agnes? Agnes Sorensen! Are you all right?” He rounded the broad prow of the Buick, saw the horror on the other side of the car, and fell to his knees, scrambling backward with a strangled cry.
There was Agnes Sorensen—her long down coat bunched up around her middle, her hood thrown off, and her starlight-colored hair yanked free of its bun and rippling toward the ground. She was curled in the long arms of a man. A man covered in hair.
Not a man.
Her voice was calm. Her hands were on the man’s face. No. Not a man’s face. And not a face either. It was a thicket of fur and teeth and red, glowing eyes. Arnold Fiske’s breath came in hot, sharp bursts.
“What is that thing?” he choked. He could barely breathe. His chest hurt. He pressed his hands to his heart to make sure it wasn’t going out on him. The last thing he needed was to have a heart attack in the presence of a . . . well. He couldn’t say. He couldn’t even think it.
Mrs. Sorensen didn’t notice.
Her voice was a smooth lilt, a lullaby, a gentle insistence. A lover’s voice. “I’m all right,” she soothed. “You see? I’m here. I’m not hurt. Everything is fine. Everything is wonderful.”
The man (not a man) bowed its head onto Agnes Sorensen’s chest. It sighed and snuffled. It cradled her body in its great, shaggy arms and rocked her back and forth. It made a series of sounds—part rumble, part hiccup, part gulping sob.
My god, Arnold Fiske thought. It’s crying.
He sat up. Then stood up and took a step away. Arnold shook his head. He tried to hold his breath, but small bursts still erupted, unbidden, from his throat, as though his soul and his fear and his sorrow were all escaping in sighs. He looked at the widow and her . . . erm . . . companion, feeling suddenly and inexplicably calm. And inert. As though he had been, without warning, suddenly hollowed out. Like a squash shell before it’s shoved into the oven.
He cleared his throat. “Would you,” he said. And faltered. He started again. “Would you and your, um, friend . . .” He paused again. Wrinkled his brow. Muscled through. “Need a ride?”
Mrs. Sorensen smiled and wrapped her arms around the Sasquatch’s neck.
Because that, Arnold Fiske realized, is what I’m seeing. A Sasquatch. After all these years. Well. My stars.
“No, thank you, Mr. Fiske,” Agnes Sorensen said, extricating herself from the Sasquatch’s arms and helping it to its feet. “The night is still fine, and the stars are just coming out. And they say the auroras will be burning bright later on. I may stay out all night.”
And with that, she and the Sasquatch walked away, hands held, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. And perhaps it was.
In any case, Arnold Fiske couldn’t shut up about it.
&nb
sp; By noon the next day, the whole town knew. And the whole town talked about it.
A Sasquatch. The widow and a Sasquatch. Ain’t that just a kick in the pants.
Two days later, the pair had been spotted in public, walking along the railroad tracks.
And again, picking their way across the bog.
And again, standing in the back of the crowd, at a liquidation auction. The Sasquatch sometimes wore Mr. Sorensen’s old seed hat and boots (he had cut out holes for his large, flexible toes), and sometimes wore the dead man’s scarf. But never his pants. Not even some kind of shorts. Or, dear god, at least some swimming trunks. The Sasquatch was in possession, thankfully, of a bulbous thicket of fur, concealing the area of concern, but everyone knew what was behind that fur, and they knew it would only take a stiff breeze, or a sudden movement, or perhaps the presence of a female Sasquatch to cause a, how would you say—a shaking of the bushes, as it were. Or a parting of the weeds. People kept their eyes averted, just to be safe.
The sisters were enraged.
Mrs. Sorensen was spotted walking with a Sasquatch past the statues and artistic sculptures of Armistice Park.
(“Children play at that park!” howled the sisters.)
They called Father Laurence at home nineteen times, and left nineteen messages with varying levels of vitriol. Fool of a priest was a phrase they used. And useless.
Father Laurence, for his part, went to the woods, alone. He walked the same paths he followed in his boyhood. He remembered the rustle of ravens’ wings, and the silent pounce of an owl, and the snuffling of bears, and the howling of wolves, and the scamper of rabbits, and the slurping of moose. He remembered something else too. A large, dark figure in the densest places of the wood and the tangled thickets of the bog. A pair of bright eyes and sharp teeth and a long, loose-limbed, lumbering gait that went like a shot over the prairie.
Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories Page 2