When Women Were Dragons(63)

The nuns told us to be careful down there. Never go to the river alone, they said. There were men there, after all, hiding in the shadows and squatting in the ditches. Winos. Vagrants. No-goodniks who couldn’t find jobs due to bad skills or bad character. Beatniks with their un-American thoughts and lascivious devotion to poetry and chain-smoking and jazz (granted, no beatniks had actually been spotted in this part of Wisconsin in 1963, but everyone knew that if any ever did show up, one would likely find them by the river). But I loved being next to the river. I still do. The remains of the old paper mill, from before they moved it upstream, still stood, giant and hulking and covered with birds. There had been talk of converting it to a park, but the lovers of industry couldn’t bear the thought of the river decoupled from masculine notions of productivity. Best to wait, they said. In case another captain of industry came along and wished to use that space. And so, it sat, existing solely as a haven for mink and foxes and dark clouds of crows. I hooked around the edge of the complex and walked out to the flood wall. It was usually empty. Every once in a while, I’d see a group of students from the University of Wisconsin taking water samples or soil samples, or gazing at the dark skies through their telescopes.

I walked along the flood wall to a place where a set of stairs led to the river. It looked like no one was there, which was a relief. I sat halfway down, leaning back on my elbows, and staring into the dark. The marsh and cranberry bog on the far bank were invisible. Even the river slid and rippled by in darkness. With the town lights behind me blocked by the hulking old factory, the night sky opened up, and the stars, one by one, asserted themselves.

It’s dangerous by the river.

Girls aren’t safe on their own.

And maybe they were right. Still, it felt good to be silent. And it felt good to be alone. And it felt good to be uncontained, the way a bird must feel when it realizes that the thing constraining it was nothing more than an eggshell—delicate and fragile, and just waiting to be cracked open.

I was angry, but not, I realized with a start, at Mrs. Gyzinska. So who was I angry at? I didn’t even know where to begin.

Something moved in the bog on the other side of the river. Something large in the tangle of birch. I couldn’t see, but assumed it was likely a cow escaped from one of the farms not too far out of town, though it could be a deer or a moose. Whatever it was, it moved about in the muck with a lumbering gate and a heavy step. I leaned back on my elbows and looked up. It was cold, and getting colder, and the breeze bit my skin. But the stars shone sharp and clear above, an aggressive clarity. My embarrassment over my behavior that day settled on my chest like a heavy weight. I groaned, loudly.

“Hush,” a voice said, a ways off to my left. “You’ll scare her.”

I scrambled to my feet with a yelp.

“Shhh,” the voice said. I squinted in the dark. Not thirty feet away, a man sat on a small folding stool at a tiny desk—just a rectangle barely larger than his lap, on extendable legs. He held a device that looked a bit like a pair of binoculars, but larger and heavier—they needed to rest on a stand, which sat on the desk. He also had a steno pad open in front of him, and a small penlight. He looked through his strange binoculars. He took down notes. Again and again.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. Was I interrupting him or was he interrupting me? “I’m sorry?” I said at last.

He waved me away. “No need,” he whispered. “I don’t think she heard you.”

I looked around. I didn’t see anyone else. Of course, earlier I hadn’t seen him either. “She?” I asked.

He pointed across the river. The birches swayed. I could still hear the sound of deep, wet footsteps in the muck. “Over there,” he gestured. The moon was thin, but what light there was bounced off the water. The man was very old. He wore a thick sweater and what looked like a military coat. His warm cap was pulled down over his ears. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

I squinted again. “I don’t see anything,” I said. “Is it some kind of animal?”

“No more than you or I,” he murmured. He underlined whatever he was writing and then sat up straight, turned, and faced me. “My apologies,” he said with a smile. “I’m being terribly rude. My name is Henry. Henry Gantz.”

Why did I know that name? “Hello,” I said, ignoring the itchy feeling at the back of my brain. “I’m Alex.” I didn’t tell him my last name.

His smile widened. “Ah! Of course! The orphan. I’ve heard of you. The librarians all speak so highly of you. All day long, they pepper me with stories about the bright girl with the brighter future.” He paused a moment. “I assume they must be correct, but I would need data to verify their assertions.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks?”

“You’re quite welcome.” He smiled indulgently. “They’ve taken me in, your librarians, and your library, I suppose, and given me space for my research. I’m a bit of an orphan myself, but of the scientific variety. And a political orphan too, I suppose, but that is another tale.”

I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I bristled a bit at being called an orphan—though functionally, it was true enough. The word, I knew, originally meant “bereft,” a fact I filed away after I learned it in school. And while that was an accurate enough word—I lost my mother, after all; my father was absent; I had an aunt who no longer existed; I had to do this alone; bereft basically summed it up—at least I had Beatrice. We had each other.