The River at Night(12)

“Up by the ridge. Got up in my lucky tree, looked down, and there she was. Like it was meant to be.”

Rachel, head down, emerged from the bathroom while I grabbed a couple of mealy apples from a bin and a miniature Mr. Goodbar and set them on the counter. The bathroom held its own horrors, but I wouldn’t let myself look at them. At that point I would have peed on a pile of body parts.

Old hands at this now, Sandra threw some Wrigley’s spearmint on the counter and sped by me as I headed out of the john. Laughing at something the hunter said, the fat man rang up our purchases and tossed them in a paper bag. Pia was bent over the case of bullets.

The hunter sidled up to her, puffing himself out in his red lumberjack vest.

“You hunt?”

She turned and folded her arms. “No. I don’t murder beautiful helpless animals.”

My stomach churned. Good God, Pia, don’t be an idiot.

The hunter smiled and took in her height, shape, and heft in a glance. “But I bet you go ahead and knock back a big juicy burger, right?”

“Actually, no. I’m a vegetarian.”

Such a lie.

Sandra skittered out of the bathroom. The hunter narrowed his eyes, reached into the soda case, and pulled out a can of Genesee cream ale. He snapped off the tab and mouthed off the foam. “So, where’re you muff munchers headed?”

“Ease up, Gray,” the fat man said, handing Pia the paper bag. “That’ll be $8.98.”

Pia paid, her hands shaking.

“Let’s go,” Sandra said, as if we needed encouragement. We stumbled over each other in our rush to the door, where the hunter had placed himself, blocking our exit.

“I didn’t hear an answer,” he said.

Standing inches from his sweaty armpit, I inhaled the hoppy burp of beer, his unwashed hair; watched the veins pop on his forearm as he drank. Half of his ring finger was missing, the end purplish and bruised looking. No one moved.

“We’re rafting the Winnegosset,” I said so softly I almost couldn’t hear myself. Even as I said it I wanted to slap myself.

He shifted his weight. The boards groaned under his feet. “Some asshole named Rory?” He said Rory like he suddenly had shit in his mouth.

“Yes, he’s—”

“Don’t tell me, you’re paying for the privilege?”

“We—”

He stared into me, his eyes rheumy and rimmed with red. “That Ekhart bastard’s got no right to the Winnegosset, no more’n me or you or anybody else. That’s God’s river, just like the Penobscot and the Dead.” His voice was even. “Rich pricks like him and his dad should be shot and hung up to bleed out—”

“Gray, what did I just tell you?” the proprietor said in his signature monotone. He finally looked at us. “Have a nice evening, ladies.”

With a lusty “Fucking bitches,” the hunter dropped his arm heavily to his side and stepped away from the door, just enough for us to pass through.





6


We were still howling with laughter when we turned onto Round the Pond Road, which—according to our directions—led to the lodge. After ten hours of driving, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful. Outside our windows, mountain lakes mirrored what light remained, ghost clouds in a denim sky. Night was upon us. Only our headlights and the dotted yellow line helped us navigate the way to a warm dinner and bed.

“Hey, Pia, you old muff muncher,” Rachel blurted. “Are we almost there?”

We all guffawed. “You know, the thing is,” Pia said, tapping her brakes as the road narrowed and hugged the banks of a pond where bullfrogs croaked and plopped, “you fucking bitches need some patience, okay? We’re about a minute away, I think.”

“?‘I’m a vegetarian,’?” Rachel singsonged. “Yeah, right, Pia! You’re half bacon, for crying out loud.”

“Don’t talk about food,” I chimed in from the back. “I’m freaking starving.”

“For some muff!” Sandra tossed in, and we all cracked up again, helpless.

We arrived at a cleared patch of land and something like civilization. Industrial lights glowed greenish in the windows of a long, low building, while a few spotlights near the roofline attempted to breach a profound darkness. Half a dozen cars huddled in the lot. Smoke, caught by an evening breeze, twisted up to the sky.

“So, Pia,” Rachel said, “who else is staying in this place?”

“Day hikers mostly. School groups, lots of Scouts. But the river’s a good fifteen miles from here, which is why Rory’s driving us most of the way before we hike.”

Stiff and sore, we tumbled out of the car into night air at least twenty degrees colder than Boston’s balmy high seventies we’d enjoyed that morning. Pia and the others gamely hefted their packs and headed to the lodge while I tried to hustle mine to my shoulders. Not happening. Finally I cradled it in my arms like an enormous baby and carried it up the stairs into the warm light of the building.

A ragtag collection of comfortable-looking couches and beat-up La-Z-Boy chairs crowded the lobby. The place smelled of cedar and turkey and mashed potatoes, a touch of pot. Beyond the couches stretched two rows of cafeteria tables, benches on either side. A crowd of eighteen or twenty people, a mix of college-and middle-aged along with a couple of families with kids, had already sat down with their meals. Latecomers stood among various chafing dishes, chatting as they piled food on metal plates. Talk and laughter animated the place, made even noisier by the clatter of a wide-open kitchen area where young people stirred giant pots of stew and pulled bread from an oven that seemed to take up the better part of one wall. Such a pleasure to heap all that unpixelated homey chow on my plate and dig into its sloppy, steamy deliciousness.