“Girl,” he broke in. “You deaf?”
I said I wasn’t and passed him up his hammer. His jeer broke me out of my risky mood. Fuck him, I thought. Like a teenager I thought this. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him. I began to think of things falling down. I had so recently been looking up. “You got that screwdriver? I need to pry this to fix it, looks like.”
I plucked a screwdriver and passed it up too. Thingy sprang out the back door and wound around my legs before investigating the perimeter of the outhouse.
“Standard’d be better than a Phillips,” Haw said with a light, mean snicker.
I’d never called myself a handyman, nor fixed much of anything at all. I took the one that was flat and passed it up and replaced the Phillips alongside the other jangly metal shit. “Here!” I said too loudly, and started to think about what would happen if I took both hands off the ladder, let it fall.
Instead I put my hand back on the ladder and I held it with whitening knuckles till he was done. Thingy meowed at the margins, then disappeared back up front. When Haw came down, he said “Thanks,” and did a weird thing, which was that he kissed me where the side of my face met my ear. He smelled like leeching chemicals, or the landfill on a windy day. Or did I imagine this?
“No problem,” I said. Though of course it was one.
THAT FIRST NIGHT he made us a canned stew he’d brought with him I imagine. It was brown but did not smell brown. Rather, its odor was some colorless burp. I gave my portion to the cat who began to sup directly.
“You like it that much?” He laughed.
“What do you have against this cat?” I asked.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me, having a pet like that up here in the middle of nowhere.”
He stooped to grab at the cat and picked up its hindquarters. Thingy suffered this admirably though it was in the middle of dining. “What’s up with this?” he said, pointing to the wound, whose stitches were now translucently abutted by new pink skin.
“Found it like that,” I said. “Put it down.”
Haw obeyed and went back to eating. “Gnarly,” he said, after a moment.
“You grow up with pets?” I asked him.
He shook his head, his curls flipping. What a haggard Shirley Temple!
While watching him gather the dinner dishes, I began to let myself understand that I was attracted to him. I was no sex maniac. Rather, I was a sex alarmist: It was only the alarm that turned me on.
I wondered what he thought of me. I had been going about in Earl John’s overalls, cold but pleasurably risky. I was serviceably covered, but only just, and only if I didn’t move one way or the other. I did wonder what Gene would’ve said of my indelicacy.
Haw cleared his throat from where he was standing by the stove. “I figure I’ll take the bunk in the back, if that’s okay with you,” he said. “You can have the sofa. Fire just got fed so it should be more cozy.”
I nodded and let him hustle on back. In the heap I found a shirt and underwear and no pants, and put the damp overalls in the corner. Mercifully I discovered some blankets, too, gorged with indoor heat. In these I wrapped myself and got down into the sofa’s creases. I slept quickly and hard and all at once.
Some time later in a thick dark I awoke and saw the hummingbird knife and the gun, still set on the table side by side in a faint glint of moonlight. I was surprised Haw hadn’t taken the gun with him to bed, saw he didn’t consider me a threat. When I shifted the sofa springs groaned low and the Thing nestled down around my legs.
There was now a new protective warmth I was feeling for this little animal. It felt important to recognize and stay attentive to this feeling, especially with an interloper like Haw in the mix. I got up and put some fresh water in a dish and put it down on the floor. Thingy approached and drank intently.
I began to stare then at the gun and the knife, which on their surfaces sucked up the thin moonlight coming through the front windows. Pretty, I thought to myself, and with my thumb emptied the magazine, letting bullets loll in arcs across the table. Then I picked up both the pistol and knife, and went back to sleep with one in each hand. Returned, I was trafficking in something new.
I WOKE THE next morning with Haw standing over me. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” It was morning and everything was light. I had, it appeared, been snuggling with the two weapons like teddies.
“You gonna shoot anyone today?” he asked, and smiled like a crook.
“Are you?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Shucks.”
“You were looking forward to it?”
“I was.”
“Well.”
“Yeah, well.”
“So what do you want to do instead?”
“Do?” I wanted to sleep. I was drunk on exhaustion. I was fighting my way to the surface.
“You’re a real livewire, huh?” He snorted and so I sat up and looked around, in what I felt was an exaggerated, comic way. He ignored me; I wondered why I’d tried to make a sight gag so early in our acquaintance, or ever. “You want some tea or some shit?” he asked. “We’re out of coffee.”
“Yeah,” I said, and put the knife and gun on the floor beside the sofa, then wrapped my hips in the blanket. Soon he brought me the tea. I held the mug, which steamed. “What are you doing here?” he asked. I noticed that at some point, when I had not been paying attention, he had put the knife and the gun back on the kitchen table. They would stay there for a while, bullets astride.
“Hanging out,” I said.
“You know what I mean.” I was still waking up and so it was my turn to shrug. “What does a girl do to end up in the woods?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and went to drink some tea, only it burned my lips.
“It’s hot,” he said.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“See, for example, I’m here because I don’t have anything better to do. I mean, look at me.” I didn’t know what he meant, but I looked at him anyway. His nose was sharp and beaky, his eyes hooded and green and wide set. “You get born with this,” he said. “And then what?”
“You do what you can, I imagine.” I was for a second flattened by his self-aware candor; I took another run at the tea, which was still too hot. I admit: I was interested in a man who used his homeliness to excuse his poor life decisions. It seemed like a clever interpretation of Western beauty standards, but perhaps that old inside-the-Beltway/college-speak didn’t belong in my new life. I tried the tea again and singed my lips, yelped unseemly.
“Don’t burn yourself or anything.”
“I won’t.” And put the mug on the floor beside me.
“Wanna go walking?” he asked.
“Gimme a second to wake up,” I said. “Is it cold out?”
“Not too.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s too bad. I’m looking forward to winter.”
“You’ll have to wait, if you even last it,” he sighed.
I looked up at him. “You spend a lot of time on mountains?”
“No. Sometimes.” He exhaled tightly. “So do you wanna go walking?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “But not too long. My feet are kinda fucked right now.” I was aware of mirroring his speech. “And my ribs or something.”
He looked at me like he was making an inventory. “You were really up there during that storm?”
“Uh huh.”
“How’d you manage to climb? Takes a lot of upper body strength—”
“Ropes,” I said. I picked the mug up and found the tea had cooled slightly, enough.
“Ropes?”
“Yep.”
“I like a girl who knows her ropes,” he said, and winked at me. Winks are the currency of the overconfident, I find. See: overwinking Hill, the garter snake edition of the copperhead now here in front of me. Still, I felt myself flushing and turned my face. He made no further comment on this, but said: “You get yourself ready. Then we’ll go walk
ing.”
Haw disappeared into the back again. I wondered if my other abandoned clothes were back there too. For another moment I sat there, drinking the tea, finishing the tea, watching the shifting light of the fire reflected through the stove vents, the Thing sleeping in the flame’s glaze.
Then I looked out the window, to see one branch still dressed in sweetly green leaves, on a tree otherwise brown. This filled me begrudgingly with a notion of hope. I guess it felt religious in a small and remote way. How funny, I thought to myself. What a surprise. I thought maybe this was me finally having my own life in the nick of time, here at what had so recently seemed like the end of things. Did I wonder if Pop was already dead? No, but there was a small packet of darkness in my chest which I could not reach with any near thought. Or, I didn’t try.
Unfolding from the couch I got up, holding the blanket around me, and crossed the little front room—once my own little front room—and listened to the boards creak with my progress. I poked my head around the half wall and saw Haw undressed, stretching in the light coming through the back door’s gaps. Looking at his body there were clear demarcations of bone structure and muscles; his butt was flat, smooth and unembarrassed: a young grown ass. “I think my pants are in here.” My voice was flat too.
Haw nodded to another pile in the corner. “Go on ahead,” he said, making eye contact. My skin chilled itself. I crossed the room and turned my head only when I got to the pile, fished out a fresh shirt and a pair of pants, a sweater, two mismatching woolen socks. It took me longer than I wanted it to, all the while feeling him regarding me. Like I was the naked one.
“Thanks,” I said. I went back to the front room to get dressed, no longer molested by his open stare.
Soon, dressed yet no more respectable, we walked into the woods. It was warmer that day. We walked for a long time without discussing where we were going. I ventured it was north, but then east. I remembered the map in the tower, how close and far we were from anything. My feet complained without a word. We went on and on and I wondered if there was a destination or if we would go on walking as my blisters burst and then built callouses and, moving this way, we might reproduce, our offspring gestating in my uterus and then delivered, and carried, until they themselves could walk, and we, multiplying this way, might go on walking, in this snarl of a forest made impressionist by aimlessness and fatigue and motion, for goddamn ever.
So, yes: I was surprised when out from a thick stand of evergreens my lake revealed itself, surprising me for the second time in two days. Still it was like encountering a friend unexpectedly. I arranged my body to greet it: The lake’s edges were silent, motionless. The water looked thick and still as a bowl of syrup. The water level has reduced slightly, I thought. No: we had come at it from an entirely different direction, and I could see on the far shore the little failing pier, just a few dense shadows in the distance. If only, all the rest of my life, I could rediscover this lake, over and over, and within this ritual discover also an endless, deepening knowing. It seemed possible. I was getting soft on the mountain, or softening from ossified.
“You been here?” Haw asked. I nodded and mm-hmmed. “You follow the creek up?” I shook my head. “We can do that sometime when your feet feel better. It’s a nice walk. There’s caves.” I felt sickly flattered he’d thought of my feet, and a future time, all in one sentence. We weren’t looking at each other, just at all the great outdoors. I wondered if I was supposed to fall in love with him and learn empathy at last. I wondered what was supposed to in the absence of an organizing power.
“Hey,” Haw said softly from his throat’s base. “Hey hey hey hey hey.”
I turned to look at him, standing beside a tree. He had his cock out. Though I did not address it directly. I wondered if I should feel threatened or turned on or surprised. I felt none of these things.
Could I feel love right then? No. Though I felt we could please each other. I wanted for a sort of violence, its sweet edge. I assumed he was up for it. I did not say anything but looked out at the lake and willed the surface to move, to eddy, to wave. It didn’t.
By doing and saying nothing, I made Haw think of this moment as a challenge or a game. It was soft, his cock, a less game appendage, but as he tugged it turned rigid, its finger of flesh rising against gravity courtesy of what they call a cremaster. As I watched the cock, and the man working so peacefully, so intently, on it, I remembered myself floating in the lake, my body suspended, the busy flies, the warm fall. I wanted to swim!
“You have no idea,” Haw said low. I had no idea what I had no idea about. He was smiling and shaking his head like his mouth was full of a secret.
As he advanced I began to bargain with my body, who could hardly remember me in any erotic way. Hello, I said to it. You must remember what to do. It has not been so long since you were in a condo, being advanced upon, and accepting. You have done this and you can do it again if you’d like to. My body decided why not.
Still I felt a little weak and so lodged myself against the nearest trunk. In my ears were the sounds of rousing bugs, the infinitesimal mutters of wilderness. His mouth opened and he was in front of me, his car accident teeth presenting themselves. Did I feel his warmth? Did I want it?
Before kissing me he put his hands around my waist and touched his forehead to mine. Somewhere against my thigh—another island, approachable only by boat—I felt his erection. That some could feel the hardness of their desire, that others settled for spuma at their legs’ nexus, an ooze from inside. How unfair! I wished for hardening in excitement. My muscles flexed in response. His body had a savory smell.
Haw paused, as we touched head to head, and asked me was this okay. Consent in the age of self-annihilation. When I nodded his head went up and down with mine. Then we kissed so suddenly I was sure I could feel my teeth chip.
From there I barely moved and by the time I did my pants were at my ankles binding them. Haw told me to turn around. As I turned I looked at the pine trunk with its elephant skin, the spots of sap, the smoothness where a twig had once long ago been divorced, a knot also. With a broad hand he pushed me down so that I was bent ninety degrees. I took a low branch with my left hand, palmed the trunk with the other. “You wanted this,” he breathed, not unkindly. I questioned myself silently and found that I agreed.
As he pushed into me it was rough and remote, and went on like that, every in-stroke until my body got used to the idea. I could feel it at the base of my spine, his pressures and work. My ribs sparked with minor pain. “How come you’re such a slut?” he asked. “Just giving it up for anyone.”
“Huh,” I breathed, unsure how to play along, with not enough wind to form a word. I could see what he might think, from the outside of this—I did capitulate and welcome quick. “I do what I want,” I lied with a new excitement. Or perhaps in that moment it was true.
“Yeah,” he said. “Take it, slut.” The way he said it wasn’t mean. He moved his hands around my ass, palming every inch, territorial. Did I like it? I liked it enough to stay put, to see where it was going. His voice was far away and then very close, as he bent over to my ear and then bucked away. I turned but couldn’t see him, only his middle third, my hips, his pelvis in bristle-curls. His balls played a vaudeville tune on my thighs. Haw asked, “You like that, huh?”
I grunted in response and pushed back into him at the right and wrong times.
We both got there, it is worth saying.
So much so that at the end of it I found it difficult to let go of the tree. “Hey,” he said gently from behind. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, breathless and at last straightening. “That was nice.”
“You’re good to look at, even how banged up you are.”
I stepped out of my boots and pants, and pulled my socks from my tender toes. I removed my sweater and shirt and looked back at Haw only once as I walked up to the lake’s edge. “Water’s gonna be really fucking cold!” he called from behind me. “Probably too
cold for you.”
I considered my lake. Nothing moved in the water, the tall grasses shuffling themselves confidentially. Then I didn’t want to get wet anymore. So instead on the shore I squatted and peed, watched the urine rivulet into the marshy lake, waited for my own body to stop pulsing. Then I rose. The sun had gotten high while we’d been out. I wondered how much time I’d lost. There was a hawk or vulture on a far tree, a robin on a near one. Just like a girl, I wondered if we’d do it again, and how soon.
I came back to shore and saw Haw examining me. “You’re real tore up, huh?”
I said I didn’t know what he meant.
“You look like you’ve been in a bar fight. Look at you!”
I obeyed, looking down at my own body. He was right. But my body was not the issue, or an issue, really. I had used it. I can afford to use it up now, I thought. I felt I was waning. It was not that there was any clear threat: Now that we’d been around one another enough I didn’t think Haw, when bored with my body, would kill me. Rather I no longer had any sense of the future, of anything that came after this, who I was now, and where, in this banged-up condition. Prior there had been that vague notion of a lonely glow in a small cabin: only me until I expired.
I had a continental map of black-and-blues across my hips and thighs, banged up arms with a few sinister-looking scabs; I found I could feel my nose peeling. The crisp air emboldened each infirmity.
“You eat anything lately?” he asked. I shrugged. “You’re even skinnier than me.” He wouldn’t stop evaluating. By this I was miffed.
“Finally,” I said. There have been times in my life that my body has subordinated my mind, and times in my life when my mind has subordinated my body, and still other times when I remember when we are one and the same. “Goal weight.”
Haw shook his head. He didn’t think the joke was funny. “Don’t worry. I like skinny girls,” he said. “But then again I like any girl’ll have me.” His grin was tender and awful.
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