Then they turned onto the alley and there was the little pub and her bike and the general store. And he said, “Hey, do you want to get something to eat? Or even just a drink.”
A heavy bank of clouds now blotted out the sun. The air turned cold, the alley dark and twisted. She looked at her bike, parked in front of her general store, and longed to run to it, to hop on and pedal away.
She looked back at the linguistics major. At the maleness her eye detected emanating everywhere from him. Then, for a moment, she saw beneath it not predation at all but a harmless cub-like nascence. She saw a furry head and myopic eyes that never totally focused, stooped shoulders and a soft belly and a pale fuzz over unmuscular limbs.
A drop of rain hit her cheek, another splatted on the ground.
She took one step. And then another.
When she entered the pub, the smell of beer assailed her. The far wall receded, and the voices swelled to a roar as she followed the linguistics major to a table. Sinking down onto a chair she stared at the scarred and polished tabletop, feeling the room pulse and whirl, focusing on controlling her breaths so that her heart wouldn’t pound itself right out of her chest. He was talking but she couldn’t understand the words and when she looked up his Adam’s apple rising and falling appeared as something so mechanical that she had to look down again. The waitress came and he ordered, but it was all that she could do to shake her head. Then he rose and said something and left the table and her eyes followed as if tied to him by string until he disappeared through a door beyond the bar. Bathroom, she realized, and the simply rationality of this thought calmed her enough that she began shallowly processing the peripheral space. A nearby table of older women talking and laughing, two blonds and two brunettes, administrative types in pastel suits and low chunky heels. Another one full of students, freshmen by their look. And up at the bar, a handful of men, who might all have been the same man, hunched over their pint glasses in faded T-shirts with letters peeling off their backs, their working-man pants stained and creased and battered boots on their feet.
Then with a series of depth-charged shocks her brain isolated a black mass of curls. Broad shoulders. Impossibly long folded limbs. And upon this body that had isolated itself from all the rest, she settled her gaze. Her mind channeled all the supple grace that lay stored in its coils like potential energy, fed upon it in order to return to itself, secure in the knowledge of being itself unperceived. But when her eyes grazed the mirror behind the bar, she discovered his eyes were fixed upon her as intently as hers were on him. And for a minute it seemed as if they even breathed as one, for his nostrils reflected back exactly the rise and fall of her own breast.
The linguistic major sat down then, blocking her view, and she was looking down at the tabletop again. But she was still herself, though with a torn apart feeling now, that of once again breathing alone.
“If art is a language it would explain why we can recognize someone’s work even when seeing a piece for the first time,” the linguistics major said, and she realized she could understand him again.
After the waitress arrived with his meal and a glass of water for her, she looked up. Leaning out a little she saw the bar stool where the hiker had been sitting was empty, and realized something else.
The bobcat had stopped running.
5
The boy had begun seeking order in things. To this end he’d invented a new game. He’d point to an object and she would name and describe it. A blade of grass was green and bendy, a beetle hard and black and quick. He absorbed these new concepts effortlessly, but was still frustrated by his attempts to communicate. The problem, she thought, was that his mouth could yet only shape a few sounds, and each therefore had to be overloaded with meanings. Like how “daa” could be a sound of affirmation, but it could also mean “dog,” or that he wanted to be put down, and he used it when he was pointing to something as well. She found it helped to bend down low and try to see from his point of view. Still the things that interested him were never the ones that impressed themselves upon her. She noticed flowering hillsides, the leaves of a tree all shimmering in the wind. The things he remarked on slid right past her senses—rivulets of soft dirt, wet marks on rocks, trees creaking in a breeze.
Days of cold temperatures and heavy rain had kept them from the river. They stayed in her cottage, reading books and coloring and playing with her boy cat. But the forest was a constant distraction, waiting for them outside the windows, every swaying of its branches catching her eye, laden for an instant with significance. She imagined the bobcat threading though the pines just out of sight, watching their movements too through the glass. She wondered if it—if she—had given birth yet, whether she still came down to the river to drink, and how often. While the boy colored in outlines of cats, she drew the hiker in the bar with Guston’s cartoonish simplicity, his nose over-large and pulsing rhythmically. But still the thought bubbles above his head did not reflect what went on in his mind, only the bar mirror behind him, and in that was an image of her own panicked face.
Then one day the sky was overcast but the air was warmer and the rain did not fall. Her morning classes were strangely empty and the afternoon ones were apparently canceled, for even the professors didn’t show up. Looking down Main Street the shops and cafes were deserted, and so was the intersection with High where she waited for her light. She felt disoriented by this and a little afraid, like there was something important happening and she was the only one not aware of it. Then suddenly she smelled perfume, the human kind, a scent of floral shampoos and musky colognes that mingled sourly with the lilac-drenched breeze. Turning her head she saw a crowd of students surging toward her across the green. The girls were teetering in high heels and wearing dresses that exposed great swaths of turgid flesh, while the guys strode awkwardly in shiny shoes, thrusting their hips as if venereal threats lay hidden beneath their suits. And now the pieces all fell into place, and she understood. It was spring formal night at the fraternity houses.
The sky glowered, beetle-browed, as she hurried down the trail, short of breath but with an idea flowering now inside her black mood. The boy in her arms held on tightly but, as if he felt the turbulence inside her, made no sound.
When they reached the river it was the same color as the sky.
“Daa,” the boy said, pointing toward Thinking Rock, but she didn’t stop, just hoisted him higher on her hip and made for the stretch of ferns from which they’d first seen the bobcat come. She found as she crossed it that it was larger than it had appeared, and the plants that comprised it were so high and dense they hid everything below her knees. The boy twisted in her arms, taking everything in, but made no attempt to get down.
Eventually the ferns thinned, driven through by rocks and branches, and now the trees crowded in, making a canopy that blocked out the sky. With no trail to follow, she simply continued on, and before long a clearing appeared. Oval-shaped, its floor was thick with bright orange pine needles, its borders enforced by tall trunks in single files, their lower limbs black stumps while the uppermost ones still whirled alive, green and feathery, high above her head.
The river had followed them, wrapping itself around the land, hugging tightly to the edge of the clearing closest to them, which sloped down steeply to meet it. At the far end of the clearing, near where the trees took up again, was a tent. It looked anachronistic there, like something out of the Civil War era, made as it was of bare canvas, with a long triangular prism shape. From its closest face a low awning protruded, held up by two of the fallen pine branches. It looked long ago deserted, and the clearing around it so quiet and still only emphasized the feeling that they’d not only traveled deeper into the woods than they’d ever been before, but also that they’d traveled back in time.
“Daa.” The boy wriggled in her arms, and slowly she lowered him to the ground. But barely had he touched it when there came an explosive flurry of sound and she snatched him up again. A dog hurtled past them, bounding down
the slope to the river, and shortly thereafter reappeared at the top with a ball in its mouth. It shook itself, sending water droplets flying from its black fur before trotting over and dropping the ball at her feet.
“Daa!”
“Yes, that is a dog. It seems friendly, I guess. Do you want me to throw its ball?”
The boy nodded.
Still holding him, she bent and picked up the dog’s toy. It watched her, panting cheerfully. The ball was sodden and appeared homemade, fashioned out of what she thought was the same canvas as the tent. Neatly bisected by fat string stitches, it was packed inside with what felt to her fingers like beans. She tossed it lightly into the clearing, and the dog scrambled after it.
The boy wriggled. “Daa!”
“Okay,” she said, letting him down again. “But don’t touch it.”
Despite her admonition, the moment the dog came trotting back the boy grabbed two handfuls of the hair along its back. Laurelie hurried between them but the dog only sat, and suffered the subsequent slaps and pats with a panting smile. The boy even captured its thick tongue once and it only slipped the pink flesh back into its mouth before immediately loosing it again, much to the boy’s delight. After inspecting its black-speckled gums and teeth, the boy wanted to throw it the ball himself. Although most of his efforts landed behind him, still the dog went after them, circling them with close quick strides that made the boy reach for her legs and squeal.
Rain abruptly ended their play.
“Time to go,” she said with a glance at the sky, but even as she spoke, it began to come down hard.
The boy grimaced, trying to wipe the rain from his face and eyes.
“It’s only water,” she said, bending to take him in her arms, “but we’re going to have to run now, okay?”
“You can wait in here. It won’t last long.”
She nearly ran then, seeing the hiker crouched beneath the awning of the tent. But the escalating whimpers of the boy in her arms punctured the swell of her own fear, so that instead of the trees, she ran for the awning.
She scrambled beneath it, but it was too small to shelter them all. With rain drumming on her back, she hesitated only a moment, then pushed the boy through the curtain of doors and followed him inside. Her first impression was of warmth and spaciousness. As wide as the height of a man, the tent was twice that long, and high enough at its center for her to stand, with deep shadowy corners where the ceiling came low. Apart from some bundles and things at the back, it appeared mostly empty.
She hardly had time to take this in, however, for now the hiker’s large dark body filled the opening. He seemed to take up so much space that she gathered the boy and backed as far into the corner as she could go. But the hiker came no farther; rather he turned around and crouched at the door with his back to them and began tying the door flaps open.
Soon the whole front of the tent gaped wide. Cold wet air blew in, but she welcomed it. The canvas walls and floor were surprisingly dry, and this close she could see why; they had been painted with wax. She could actually follow the stripes of the brush, and for a moment imagined she smelled honey.
Eyes wide, the boy pressed his hand to the wall behind her. It was vibrating visibly beneath the hard rain. Now she became aware of the drumming sound, so loud it swamped her at first with its physical pulse. But slowly other sounds wove through. Her own heart, and then the boy’s breaths, and finally a shallow panting sound she believed was the dog until she located it beyond the hiker, curled beneath the awning with its head on its paws, and its mouth closed.
The boy heard it too. He stood in her arms and tried to go, even as she tried to keep him. For a moment they struggled silently before he pulled free and went looking for the dog.
Hardly had he taken a step when the hiker slid through the doorway and folded himself into the shadows of the corner on the other side. Now the empty opening lay before them like a prize, rich with the scents of rain-drenched ground. She followed the boy to it, where he sat in her lap with his hands reaching out through the door, lifting the dog’s paws and touching their black tufts of fur, their dry malleable pads and dull curves of nail, while she softly spoke their names and salient features, feeling in the familiar game a palliative, even as the hiker’s presence magnified every detail.
Then somehow the boy had slipped from her grasp and was entirely out the door, scuttling toward the end of the awning and the branches that held it up. But even as she realized this, the hiker was sounding a low whistle, and the dog rose and blocked the boy. Gently it herded him back to her, the boy giggling every time their bodies brushed, and once he was safely back in her arms the dog lay down on the ground in front of him with a contented sigh.
“Thanks,” she said, after a while.
“Sure.”
His voice was low, clipped. Close. Now the confines of the tent drew nearer. As a kind of calming exercise she forced herself to recall exactly what was behind her. The floor, she remembered, was mostly bare, nothing scattered or piled, just a sleeping bag and a hiking pack against the far wall. In her mind’s eye these were made of the same canvas as tent and ball, even down to the same neat fat stitching. Except the top of the sleeping bag had been folded over—and now her mind began to whirl, resolving the turned-down layer to a dark, shining fur. She tried to stifle a shiver, felt her clothes suddenly clammy on her skin. Imagined him silently approaching. Waited until she could take it no more, and then in one swift motion, turned and looked at him.
Returning her gaze out the door, his after-image burned against the backdrop of rain. He sat cross-legged in the shadowed corner with his hands in his lap, and they had fisted as her gaze passed over him. His bones in the storm light were as sharp as knife edges, and his eyes had been watering and his nostrils had been flared as white as two sails in a strong wind. His lips had been parted and now she could hear it; he was mouth-breathing again.
The air felt wonder-struck after the rain. She limped with the boy over the bright saturated needles, her legs cramped after sitting in the same position for so long. From behind them came a loud zipping sound, and she glanced back to see one slanted wall of the tent slide halfway down. Airing us out, she thought, for the effect was that of an enormous window, and still giddy with the sense of reclaimed freedom, she had to fight back an urge to laugh crazily.
Halfway to the edge of the clearing a whooshing sound above their heads had them both looking up, just in time to see the ball soaring down the slope of the riverbank. In the next instant the dog was racing after it, and the boy was catapulting himself between her knees. When the dog reappeared, dripping, grinning, the boy ran to it. It trotted back to the hiker, who then threw the ball once more, sending both boy and dog back her way again.
She stood watching them racing this way and that, taking in the dog’s muddy paws, the boy’s muddy clothes, the streaks of mud on the hiker’s own pants, the simple cloth and cut of which suggested they too were homemade. She took in the clearing and the river around it, this space he had made his temporary home. She wondered where the bobcat was hidden, if it was watching them right now. She imagined that when she and the boy left it would come out for dinner. She imagined the hiker sitting before a campfire, with his dog on one side of him and his bobcat on the other. She imagined three skinned rabbits roasting on spits, and then hurriedly blocked this image with another, one of them in the morning, walking together down to the river to bathe. Then she spoke all in a rush, seeking a nonchalance her voice belied. “So did the bobcat have its kittens yet?”
“She did.” The hiker’s reply was almost too low to hear.
“Oh. Well, if you have laundry you need to do . . . or anything . . .”
Flushing hard, she lowered her head so that her hair covered her face, and went after the boy.
They’d reached the trees before the hiker answered.
“Sure,” he said. “Okay.”
6
Sunday dawned without a fleck of cloud. The sky was blu
e and the land was fluorescing green after so much rain. All the trees were blooming or dropping seeds, their bright lace covering the river road, scattering into swirls and eddies as Laurelie swept past on her bicycle. Inside the little general store she wandered the aisles. She was no chef, and even an image of a home-cooked meal escaped her now. The slabs of raw meat edged in thick fat rebuffed her, as did the whole fish with their shiny dead eyes. But the shrimp looked somewhat interesting, and easy enough besides, already peeled and steamed after being freshly caught that morning from, of all places, Maine. Now thinking in terms of circles, she was able to flesh out the rest, adding plump tomatoes to her basket, a small wheel of soft cheese, and a round of boule bread.
Home again, the hours gaped. She tried sketching the hiker in the tent, backed into its shadowy corner with his hands fisted in his lap, but she didn’t know why he had behaved this way, couldn’t imagine what thoughts bubbled from his mind. Now spring distracted her, shimmering at every window, and so she gave up and went out and spread a blanket on the lawn. She sketched panels of her yard instead, à la Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delight, the long grass cluttered with brightly fantastical insects, the branches of the lilacs and sugar maples heavy with hidden birds and squirrels watching her with large intelligent eyes. She drew them falling silent upon her entrance and then slowly resuming their ruckus until it drowned out the sounds of her pencil scratches, the hot sun bathing them all in soporific waves of light.
The boy cat woke her later, meowing from the window behind her head. He lay pressed against the screen with his fur poking through it like soft quills, and he licked her finger, making a rasping sound when she touched it to the place where he pressed his nose.
The Bobcat Page 4