The Spirit Wood

by Robert Masello

  “How ya doin’, boy?” Peter asked. He expected the dog to bound up excitedly.

  Instead, the dog regarded him with dull attention.

  “You still asleep?” Peter said, coming into the room. “It's me, Dodger.”

  The dog stayed right where he was, watching Peter approach. Must be still dreaming, Peter thought. He crouched down and extended one hand for the dog to lick but perhaps as an after-effect of that crack on the banister, his hand came, not below Diogenes's snout, but above the crown of his head, as if he were about to grasp him by the ears or skull. He hadn't meant to do it that way, and the dog, startled, reacted by dropping his head and pulling away.

  “Come on, boy,” Peter said, already becoming annoyed. “What is this shit?”

  The dog must have sensed the edge of hostility in his voice. When he reached out again, stiffly, his elbow still cocked, Dodger growled and back-pedaled off the mat. Irritated, Peter brushed at the hair on the sides of his head; Leah had left it rather long there. Joan Caswell had said that it made him look very bohemian. “Do you wanna go for a walk or not?”

  Dodger barked, his butt pressed hard against the side of the refrigerator.

  “All right,” said Peter, straightening up. “Screw it, then.” He slammed out of the kitchen by the other swinging door, Diogenes following him closely with his eyes. He moved through the black-floored room that Meg had come to refer to, because the floor was so slippery smooth, as the “skating rink,” and out onto the lawn. The light in the boathouse was still burning. He kicked off his shoes, left them on the ledge of the fountain, and with his arms spread out like wings so that he could feel the cool night air coursing all around his body, trotted down the hill.

  The slope was greater than he imagined it, and he quickly felt himself moving faster than he'd anticipated. His feet were acting almost independently of his body, racing along, carrying him not in a straight line toward the boathouse, but in broad, sweeping arcs that moved him only gradually down toward the water. More than once, he felt sure he was about to stumble again, to trip and roll down the incline, but each time he managed to recover from the imminent fall. Each time he regained his balance, his arms extended like a tightrope walker's, and he started to laugh, at the absurdity of it, at the speed he was traveling, barefoot and alone in the cool darkness, back and forth across the wide lawn. At the gazebo, he grabbed hold of one of the wooden posts and swung in a full circle, an aerial pirouette; more amazing than that, he wasn't even out of breath. He felt, if anything, more invigorated than ever. The night air was like a bracing tonic, expanding his lungs, pumping the blood through his veins. He laughed again, louder, and shook himself all over, like a dog throwing off water.

  Why hadn't he ever run like this before?

  The light was still shining through the boathouse window; he pranced across the lawn, soundlessly, and then crept to the window, like a burglar, to peer in. Someone was there—not Meg but Leah, sitting on Meg's wooden stool, at Meg's work table. She was dressed all in white: white blouse, long white skirt; her black braid looked like a wet snake coiled across her shoulders. On the table in front of her were two sculptures of some sort; Peter couldn't quite make out what they were. She appeared to be studying them, occasionally reaching out to touch one or the other. Her back was to the window, and he considered stealing away without letting her know he'd ever been there, or seen her. It was a sort of trespassing, he thought, sneaking into Meg's studio without her okay; if he disturbed Leah now, what would she say? How would she explain what she was doing there?

  He shifted his weight and something, a twig perhaps, snapped under his foot; he felt a tiny sharp pain in one heel. A splinter. Leah turned on the stool, slowly, not with alarm, and looked directly at him. For a moment, he wondered if she could actually see him, there in the dark, but she smiled and pointed at the door, as if to say that she had left it unlocked. Embarrassed at having been caught so—though he tried to remind himself that Leah had even more reason than he did to feel uncomfortable—he circled around to the door, limping slightly, and stepped inside.

  As Leah herself said nothing, but simply folded her hands into her lap like a ready pupil, Peter found himself doing the talking. “I saw the light on,” he said, “from the bedroom. I thought Meg might have left it on. Or come back early.” He felt foolish, Leah was so impassive.

  “No. I turned it on,” Leah said matter-of-factly. Then, at least acknowledging the situation, she said, “I probably shouldn't have. But I was curious. And I hadn't been in here at all for so long. I just wanted to look around again.”

  “I didn't know you'd ever spent any time in here,” Peter said, fidgeting near the door; there was no other seat in the room. “You aren't the one who used to work in here, are you? The stuff about the previous tenant isn't a joke, is it?”

  “No,” Leah replied, looking at the two statues, maybe two feet high, that stood on the worktable. “She is,” she said, tapping the base of one of them.

  “Who is?”

  “She is,” Leah repeated, tapping the statue again. “This is the girl who used to work in here—Demetria.”

  To Peter, who came around now to Leah's side of the table, gingerly avoiding stepping on his injured heel, the two statues looked like Leah herself, except that the hair on one was loose and not braided. The contours of the figures were certainly the same as hers, but the rough, seemingly hasty execution of the pieces—particularly of the nude figure, which was unlike anything Peter had ever seen Meg do—made any sort of identification of the model ultimately impossible; the facial features were only hinted at with a few expert cuts of a sharp sculpting tool.

  “I don't think that's possible,” Peter said. “Meg couldn't ever have met this Demetria person.”

  Leah didn't reply. She ran one hand fondly down the side of the nude figure, then got up from the stool and, one at a time, carried the sculptures to the shelves near the door and replaced them there.

  “I'd have guessed you were the model,” Peter persisted.

  “Demetria and I look pretty much alike,” Leah said. “We're related.”

  This family goes on forever, Peter thought; maybe his grandfather had just imported the whole lot of them, all at once, from the old country. But why, he wondered, would anyone have gone to any trouble to acquire Nikos as a caretaker? Or Angelos?

  Leah, at least, he could understand.

  “Did you have a good time at the Caswells?” Leah asked, turning toward him again.

  He couldn't remember having told her that that's where he was going that night; as far as he could recall, he'd only said he would be having dinner out. Nikos, who had been in the kitchen when he'd mentioned it, had looked chagrined.

  “Yes, I did,” Peter said. Skip it, he thought; he must have said something to give it away. “I got a lot of compliments on my haircut, by the way. I was told I look very Byronic with it long on the sides.”

  “Like Byron? I don't think you look like Byron at all,” she said vehemently, as if defending him from anyone who would make such a charge. Peter laughed and explained that it was Lord Byron he was being compared to. “In fact, he died while defending your homeland from the Turks. Sometime around 1820.” He half-expected her to know this; he'd always thought Greeks were brought up with a special appreciation for Lord Byron. But Leah looked utterly unimpressed, and he dropped it.

  Something else crossed his mind. “I thought that Meg had the only key to this place,” he said, half to himself, then quickly raised one hand to his mouth to cover a sudden burp. He had an unpleasant aftertaste of Joan Caswell's osso buco and Jack's twelve-year-old Scotch. “Was the door unlocked?”

  “Yes,” Leah replied. “You don't think I'd break in, do you?” She glanced down at his feet and noticed that he was favoring one leg. “Is there something wrong with your foot?”

  Peter glanced down, too, and saw to his own surprise that he was holding his left foot with the toes to the floor and the heel cocked upwards, like a
dog with a lame paw.

  “I think I stepped on something outside.”

  “Let me take a look.”

  He propped himself up on the worktable. Leah raised his leg by the ankle, pushed up the bottom of his trousers, and inspected his sole. “Do you know you're bleeding?” she said. “You also have a splinter in there.” She looked around for an implement with which to remove it. Her fingers rapidly rummaged through the small modeling knives, wire brushes, pencils, rulers, spoons that Meg worked with. “There's nothing here,” she said, before raising the foot again and studying the wound. “If you think you can stand it, I could probably get it out with my fingers.”

  “You don't have to do that,” Peter said, embarrassed again and feeling as if he were back in the barber chair at Nikos's cottage. He was beginning to feel as though he was always in their hands—Leah's, Nikos's, even Angelos's. It was Angelos he had to ask to do the groundskeeping chores. He wondered how he appeared in their eyes—as some sort of buffoon or incompetent? “It's okay,” he said, “I'll get it myself, later.” But when he tried to stand up on the foot, he found an involuntary whistle of pain escaping his lips, and he immediately lifted it up again.

  “It's really very deep,” Leah said. “Let me try.”

  He leaned against the table, and Leah, sitting on the stool, held his foot steady on her upraised knees. Her skirt slipped back, revealing several inches of smooth, olive-colored skin. As she probed at the splinter, she asked him questions about his evening at the Caswells: who else had been there, what had been served for dinner, what their home was like. It was the first time he had seen her display any curiosity at all about life beyond the gates of Arcadia; he assumed she was doing it to distract him from the pain in his foot. Which was considerable—he could feel the bit of wood, like a needle, being manipulated between Leah's fingers. When she pressed hard on the skin around it, cutting off the neural impulses, the pain was lessened. But when she let up again, to concentrate on catching and drawing out the splinter, it was difficult to resist yanking the foot away and squeezing the ankle like a vise. There was blood, he noticed, on Leah's fingertips.

  “I've almost got it,” she said. “Don't move.” He felt her with exquisite care pinning the sliver between two of her fingernails and drawing it slowly out. Now he wished that he could have another taste of Caswell's Scotch.

  “There,” she murmured, inspecting the culprit between her fingers. “It looks to me like a piece of the boathouse.” She held it up for Peter to see: a slim shard of wood the length of a match, dyed a pale pink with his blood. It did appear to be a sliver of board, rather than a twig. Leah flicked it onto the tabletop. “We've really got to wash your foot off now,” she said. She crossed the room to the work sink, directed the faucet away from the old coffee can in which assorted tools were soaking, and returned with a wet paper towel. She dabbed the blood away. “It still needs an antiseptic.”

  “I'm sure there's something up at the house,” Peter said. “Thanks for getting it out.”

  Leah lowered his foot again. “Even bathing it in salt water might help,” she said softly, without raising her eyes.

  Peter, though still a little foggy from the excessive food and drink at the Caswells, took note of her embarrassment. Along with a tiny flutter in his own stomach. A midnight swim—that's what she was suggesting. His first impulse, natural and ingrained, was to decline. Thanks, but no—that way lies trouble. He remembered her in the blue bathing suit. But the impulse, quickly as it had come, was engulfed and destroyed, as if by some new and powerful antibody in his bloodstream. It was gone without a trace, and he was hobbling toward the door, one hand on Leah's shoulder, one of her arms loosely wrapped around his waist; they turned out the light, pulled the door closed with a loud whomping sound in the swollen frame, and made their way around the back of the boathouse and then along the shore to the secluded gate that Leah had first shown him.

  By night, the glade was even more mysterious, a pocket of darkness etched in silver by the light of the nearly full moon. The trees that surrounded it formed an impenetrable black wall, the gaps between them even blacker than the trunks themselves. Leah helped Peter to the edge of the water, where he lowered himself onto one of the larger flat rocks and, with his pants leg rolled to the knee, dipped his foot in. The water was warmer, and the salt less stinging, than he'd expected. He moved the foot back and forth, languidly, feeling only the slightest bit of resistance from a tiny flap of open skin. Leah had disappeared behind him, and when he turned to look for her, all he saw was a spot of whiteness—her skirt and blouse—left neatly on the ground. Of the girl, there wasn't a sign.

  Except for a laugh, a trilling sound, almost like a gurgle, that came to him now from somewhere in the water. Somehow she'd made her way out of her clothes and into the water in a matter of seconds, without his seeing her and without making any noise whatsoever. Not even a splash. He scanned the rippling pool and thought he saw, like the Lady of the Lake, one hand poised and beckoning above the surface. The hand slipped out of sight, but the laugh, oddly enough, came again. And from a place some distance away; it had to be some trick of the night wind, Peter thought, puzzled. Then he saw another hand—the same hand?—tilted back at the wrist, the fingers spread, as if the swimmer were skimming along underwater with her face to the night sky. How could Leah have covered such a distance so quickly? He remembered what a natural, expert swimmer she had seemed the first time they had come to this pool. But still, he was amazed at her incredible prowess.

  For a while, the pool became perfectly quiet; had he not been aware of her ability to stay silently underwater for as much as a minute or two at a time, he'd have become alarmed. Instead, he lifted his foot from the water, inspected the sole—in the moonlight, the cut appeared as a vertical black crease—then dipped both feet in again. His thoughts returned to the pile of clothes behind him. Was she skinny-dipping out there? Or had she been wearing a swimsuit under her clothes? If she had been wearing something, she probably wouldn't have stolen into the water so stealthily. He looked for her again—and saw, for a moment, her slender shoulders and black hair shining in the moonlight. When she dived down once more, he stretched himself out to full length and was just able to hook her blouse and draw it toward him.

  From the border of trees, he heard, instantly, a low growl. Without thinking, he gathered the blouse to his chest, and then there came a furious bark. It had to be Fifi. Or Fritz. He never could tell them apart. Slowly, keeping low to the ground, the dog emerged from the trees. Where was Nikos? Peter thought. Or Angelos? Was the dog just running loose, for God's sake? Peter pulled back onto the rock, moving very gradually so as not to alarm the dog.

  “Calm down, Fritz,” he said, as gently as he could manage. Then, “Take it easy, Fifi,” to cover both bases. The dog moved closer, toward Leah's skirt and shoes, and Peter slipped off the rock and waded back into the pool. As the dog crept closer, Peter waded further in, over his rolled-up trousers. “Leah,” he called, trying to sound less nervous than amused, “I think we've got a problem. Leah?”

  “Yes?”

  She was several yards away, her head poking up above the water.

  “Your bodyguard's shown up,” and he pointed toward the dog, who was standing like a sentinel above her clothes. Leah looked, and laughed. And laughed again when she noticed that Peter was nearly up to his waist in the water, with his own clothes still on.

  “Fifi—sit!” she called, and the dog obediently did. On top of her skirt. “What's that you're holding?” she asked Peter, and he held out her blouse with the sleeves spread. “Just throw it onto the shore,” she said, and Peter collected it into a ball and threw it. It landed just short of Fifi. “Now why don't you do the same with your own clothes?” she suggested, and, as if to allow him some privacy, glided away with her back turned. “Doesn't the water feel wonderful?” she called over her shoulder.

  Peter fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, then threw that, too, toward the bank; it
landed on the rock he'd been sitting on. When he saw that Leah was still some distance away, he peeled off his wet trousers, leaving his underwear on, and, wadding them into a tight ball, pitched them directly at Fifi. The dog watched calmly as the pants also fell short.

  He dipped himself down, up to his neck, before remembering that he was still wearing his glasses.

  Those, of course, he couldn't throw onto the shore. Nor could he swim, in the usual way, with them on. He tried doing the sidestroke, keeping his head well above the water; the sidestroke had always been par- ticularly easy, and effective, for him. In high school, he'd even been assigned to demonstrate it to the lowerclassmen, pulling himself powerfully—proudly, too—through the indoor pool. Now he found that he was making no headway; his legs were scissoring as well as ever, he felt, but his arms ... his arms weren't straightening out as they had to. Not only the left one, that he'd bumped on the banister, but the right one, too. It was almost as if he'd never learned how to swim at all. His chin sank well below the surface; water filled his nose and splashed the lenses of his glasses. He coughed, and struggled to regain his footing. But he was already too far out, and the bottom was below his reach. Even treading water was difficult, as he couldn't generate enough power or sweep with his arms. This was bizarre, he kept thinking; he'd always been a fairly good swimmer. Now he could barely keep afloat. A wave swelled up, billowing black and silent, and suddenly filled his open mouth. He sputtered and coughed, and kicked harder; through his streaming glasses, he searched for the nearest spot onshore. Another wave slapped him, lightly, but full in the face; the water gushed into his throat and nose, and he felt himself sinking, and tiring, and trying to catch his breath enough to call to Leah for help, when a warm current suddenly welled up from somewhere beneath him, rose up beside him, and two arms slipped easily under his own, lifting him up, above the waves, holding him securely while he cleared his throat and breathed deeply. He felt a woman's body pressed against him, her legs fluttering between his, her arms now clasped behind his back, her breasts rising and falling, evenly, against him. His incipient panic melted away, his breath returned; he wondered how she could so easily maintain them both in the deep, turbulent water. Her face was just below his own, but blinded by his glasses, all he could see was a blur of jet-black hair, a white face. A wave crested, their bodies were buoyed up, and her lips grazed his cheek.