The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(28)
Slowly the lines on Trisha's forehead smoothed out as she realized what they were. She forgot all about being in the swamp, about being wet and muddy and tired, about being lost.
"Tom," she whispered a little breathlessly. "Those're beavers! Beavers sitting on beaver-houses or beaver tepees or whatever you call them. They are, aren't they?"
She stood on tiptoes, holding the trunk of the tree for balance, staring and delighted. Beavers lounging on top of their stick-houses... and were they watching her? She thought they were, especially the one in the middle. He was bigger than the others, and it seemed to Trisha that his black eyes never left her face. He appeared to have whiskers, and his fur was a luxuriant dark brown, shading almost to auburn around his plump haunches. Looking at him made her think of the illustrations in The Wind in the Willows.
Finally Trisha stepped off the root and got moving again, her shadow trailing out long behind her. At once the Head Beaver (so she thought him) got up, backed away until his hindquarters were in the water, and slapped down smartly with his tail. It made a whacking sound that was incredibly loud in the still hot air. A moment later they were all diving off the stick-houses, going into the water in unison. It was like watching an aqua-diving team. Trisha gazed at them with her hands clasped against her breastbone and a big grin on her face. It was one of the most amazing things she had ever seen in her life, and she understood that she'd never be able to explain why, or how the Head Beaver had looked like a wise old schoolmaster or something.
"Tom, look!" She pointed, laughing. "Look at the water!
There they go! Yeah, baby!"
Half a dozen Vs formed in the murky water, moving away from the stick-houses in bow-waves. Then they were gone and Trisha started moving again. Her current land-mark was an extra-large hummock with dark green ferns growing all over it like wild hair. She approached it along a gradual arc instead of walking in a straight line. Seeing the beavers had been great - totally ghetto, in Pepsi-ese - but she had no desire to encounter one while it was swimming underwater. She had seen enough pictures to know that even little beavers had big teeth. For awhile Trisha uttered a shriek each time a submerged bit of grass or weed brushed against her, sure it was the Head Beaver (or one of his min-ions), wanting her out of the neighborhood.
Keeping the beaver-condos always on her right, she approached the extra-large hummock - and as she drew closer, a sense of hopeful excitement began to grow in her.
Those dark green ferns weren't just ferns, she thought; she had been fiddleheading with her mother and grandmother three springs in a row, and she thought those were fiddle-108 heads. Fiddleheads were over in Sanford - had been for at least a month - but her mother had told her they came into season quite a bit later inland, almost up until July in espe-cially marshy places. It was hard to believe anything good could come out of this smelly patch of creation, but the closer Trisha got, the surer she became. And fiddleheads weren't just good; fiddleheads were delicious. Even Pete, who had never met a green vegetable he liked (except for frozen Birds Eye peas nuked in the microwave), ate fiddleheads.
She told herself not to expect too much, but five minutes after the possibility first occurred to her, Trisha was sure.
That was no mere hummock up ahead; that was Fiddlehead Island! Except maybe, she thought as she drew closer, wad-ing slowly through water that was now thigh-deep, Bug Island would be a better name. There were lots of bugs out here, of course, but she kept replenishing her mudpack and had pretty much forgotten about them until now. The air over Fiddlehead Island absolutely shimmered with them, and not just minges and noseeums. There were a gazillion flies as well. As she drew closer she could hear their somnolent, somehow shiny buzz.
She was still half a dozen steps away from the first bunches of plump furled greens when she stopped, hardly aware of her feet settling into the muddy mulch under the water. The greenery bordering this side of the tussock was shredded and torn; here and there soggy uprooted bunches of fiddleheads still floated on the black water. Further up she could see bright red splashes on the green.
"I don't like this," she murmured, and when she next moved it was to her left instead of straight ahead. Fiddle-heads were fine, but there was something dead or badly wounded up there. Maybe the beavers fought with each other for mates or something. She wasn't yet hungry enough to dare meeting a wounded beaver while gathering an early supper. That would be a good way to lose a hand or an eye.
Halfway around Fiddlehead Island, Trisha stopped again. She didn't want to look, but at first she couldn't look away. "Hey, Tom," she said in a high trembling voice. "Oh hey, bad."
It was the severed head of a small deer. It had rolled down the slope of the tussock, leaving a trail of blood and matted fiddlehead ferns behind. It now lay upside down at the water's edge. Its eyes shimmered with nits. Regiments of flies had alit on the ragged stump of its neck. They hummed like a small motor.
"I see its tongue," she said, and her voice was far away, down an echoing hallway. The gold suntrack on the water was suddenly too bright, and she felt herself swaying on the edge of a faint.
"No," she whispered. "No, don't let me, I can't."
This time her voice, although lower, seemed closer and more there. The light looked almost normal again. Thank God - the last thing she wanted was to faint while standing almost waist-deep in stagnant, mucky water. No fiddle-heads, but no fainting, either. It almost balanced.