White Horse Point

by Jean Andrews

  I made the excuse that I had to shower and get into town and suspected she wanted to ask why, but I had the door closed before she could.

  On the drive in, I began creating ways to avoid her without insulting her. I was in town before I came up with a good plan.

  I stopped in front of a tall, colorful totem pole growing up out of the sidewalk at the entrance of the Muskie Trading Post, where Native Americans sold shirts, blankets, and jewelry. I bought a loose-fitting, pale-green shirt with red ponies on it from Little Man, ironically an overly tall Ojibwe Indian, and he liked my choice. He said the shirt was covered in the Lac La Croix ponies that were once indigenous to his tribe.

  “Are the ponies still around here?” I asked.

  “No, almost extinct. Some in Canada.”

  “Do you know anything about White Horse Point?

  “The Point is haunted.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Who haunts it?”

  “The story goes that the horsewoman, Angelique, was in love with someone she couldn’t have. There was talk about him being her groom, and someone else said her farrier. She died never knowing love, and now she’s back constantly looking for him.” The way he said it made me think that was his official tourist spiel.

  “Do you believe that?”

  He paused, and I remained silent. “I believe it is a place where spirits come in.”

  I wanted to ask if he’d seen a spirit there, but he walked away, clearly having said all he intended.

  Angelique. What are the odds of that name popping up again? I locked my packages in the car before walking two blocks toward the post office and the water company. My mind replayed what Little Man had said about the Point being haunted, and he’d called the woman Angelique, the name of the woman on the plane who’d disappeared. A brisk breeze ran up my arms and sent a chill down my spine. Had I seen Angelique? How would that be possible?

  The town appeared to be less planned and more sprung up. A house with a tiny yard filled with wildflowers that stood taller than a ten-year-old child was sandwiched between Muskie Boat-Motor Repair, with its gasoline fumes and motor noises, and the Muskie Water Department, which was one small room with a lady at the counter who greeted me as I entered. She was a pretty, middle-aged, solidly built woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and a too-tight dress of blue and white flowers.

  I introduced myself and said I didn’t want to bother Marney, but “I found a minnow in my tap water.” I spoke very calmly when actually I wanted to scream a fucking fish flew out of my faucet, and it was still breathing, and I could have swallowed the damned thing if I’d been drinking. As it was, I put the offending fish in a coffee cup, took it down to the lake, and threw him back in, which was a humanitarian act I didn’t want to have to repeat.

  The woman, her blond hair roped in a halo around her head, said crisply, “You just need a tighter mesh screen on the end of your lake pipe…that’s a handyman job. I’ll see if one of the boys can do it, and I’ll send him by. Both of them look about the same, except one’s bald and one’s real bald.” She laughed. “Good workers, both of ’em. They do odd jobs for guests in the cabins. About the minnows…just scoop ’em out. They won’t kill you. Old Maynard eats them.” She laughed, but I wasn’t sure she was joking.

  I was beginning to understand what customer service sounded like up North with women like this one at the helm, who, despite her jolly attitude, looked like she might smack me if I continued to make a big deal out of a small fish.

  As I drove back to the cabin, I thought about Minnow-Munching Maynard chomping live fish in his drinking water and started to gag. I made a mental note to check the sink’s filtering system. If a minnow made its way out of the sink faucet, what the hell was the system filtering, crawdads and leeches? I’ve got to buy bottled water.

  No sooner had I pulled into the drive than the curtains separated at Marney-the-Lake-Elf’s place. She was poised for a visit, so I dashed across the lawn with the speed and intensity of someone either headed for the bathroom or a stove fire. Marney receded into her cabin as I hit the back door. I had to find a way to let her know I needed space.

  Too late. She was on the steps, and I had started to rise to new levels of anxiety just as she extended her hands, offering me a plastic plate of fresh fish right out of the frying pan.

  “We were having fish, so I thought you should too. Can’t come to the cabin and not have fish. Walleyed pike. The best,” she said, and I thanked her profusely.

  Nice lady brings you dinner, and you’re ready to kill her for invading your space. You’re a dick, Taylor, I said to myself. Let the fuck up.

  * * *

  I sat on the enclosed porch after dark with the lights off and watched the moonlight on the mirror-like water. It was so bright it lit up the white stand of birch trees at the edge of the hill, before the land sloped down into the lake. The birch trees’ snowy skin peeled back and hung loosely off the trunk, daring me to pull the bark free and write on it like parchment, or make a toy canoe out of it, like I’d done as a child. But too much bark removal would leave the trees vulnerable to disease, so I resisted. The light on their white trunks was magical.

  Suddenly I spotted something white on the lake, moving away from the Point toward me but still several hundred yards away. The shape was so odd, like a giant amoeba expanding and contracting, that it was almost scary. I grabbed the binoculars, and the contrast of the dark lake against this white object moving closer and closer through the water was surreal. It wasn’t a boat. I stood up, focusing the lens. It’s a white horse, and it’s paddling across the water. And on its back sat a woman riding bareback across the lake, her bare legs visible beneath her white nightshirt, the collar up, and her blond hair in the moonlight making her look like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad. Silent ripples formed behind her, as she and the horse swam closer, and closer, then away from the shore but across from my cabin, circling, looking, then heading back to the Point. It’s the Lake Goddess. I immediately wondered if she was crazy, but I was captivated by her nonetheless.

  She’s like a trip back in time, where the water and the fog were backdrops for mystical power. She looks powerful, I thought. It must be the white horse that makes her appear so strong. But what the hell is she doing?

  Chapter Five

  The old house phone gave off a loud, metallic clang that startled me. Ramona was on the line checking to see how I was doing and if I’d heard any lake gossip she needed to be made aware of. Like all good publicists, information was currency, and by those standards, Ramona was rich.

  “It’s beautiful here and so relaxing, but everyone’s a bit off. This nice old guy, Maynard Swensen, invited me to the ‘stuffed-fish café,’” I said, casting aspersions on the coffee shop with so many mounted fish. “He told me Uncle Jake had an affair with his wife.”

  “That is such old news. He needs to get over it.” Ramona sounded disgusted.

  “You knew that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Now, how would that topic ever come up?”

  “Marney’s like Velcro. You didn’t warn me about her. And then there’s the Lake Goddess. She rode a white horse bareback into the lake in her nightshirt at midnight, paddled over toward the cabin, and then went back to the Point.”

  “That’s odd, but it speaks to a certain talent—bareback in the middle of the cove at dark.”

  “Maybe I should go back to New York. I could be nuts by fall and dead by winter.”

  Saying “nuts” reminded me of the chipmunks, and I moved toward the porch to feed them while we chatted. Instantly I was yanked back, losing my balance, as the phone cord wrapped around my neck, nearly strangling me before I managed to plop down in a chair. “Holy shit. I was nearly decapitated by the fucking wall phone!”

  Ramona ignored my drama and remained focused on the woman in the lake. “I didn’t know anyone was on the Point after Angelique died. Maybe she’s a transient.”

  “Transient!” I laughed. “I don�
�t know any transients who own horses and hang around waiting for thirty-below-zero winters. Transients are on foot in places with coconuts and sand,” I said, rubbing my neck where the cord had lashed it.

  “You know, I bet that’s Angelique’s niece. She was a little kid the last time I saw her. Was this woman pretty?”

  “Gorgeous.” The adjective just popped out.

  “Must be the niece. What are you doing to relax?”

  “I have two free tickets to the church dinner. Want to fly in?”

  “The altar would melt. When you’re through with the church dinners, write something, will you?” That was Ramona’s version of “Talk to you soon.” She hung up.

  * * *

  Finally I concocted a tall tale to break the cycle of Marney visits, telling her Ramona had called, which was true, and that I was on deadline this week, which was sort of true, and this meant I would be sleeping during the day and working late into the night while it was quiet. Marney looked dejected but said she understood. So now I had to make good on my lie or simply pace around the cabin all night.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, I pulled my laptop out of my duffel. The internet was working, but my email was scant. When Ben and I divorced, most of the people I knew were his friends, and when they sided with him, I destroyed their contact information, blocked them on Facebook, and basically cut off the world. It didn’t matter that I knew they sided with him because he was quick to donate money to their charity events or help them with attorney advice. I still felt like I’d been thrown over the side of the boat for lack of anything they needed.

  I opened the Word document to the beginning of the story and stared for several minutes at the words I’d written two years ago. They no longer seemed right, and I sat there contemplating that fact. After a while my fingers, apparently tired of my brain’s inability to direct them, decided to do something on their own. They typed, “I feel like I’m just waiting.” I stared at the sentence as if it were automatic writing and being directed by an alien presence.

  What am I waiting for? What? I don’t know how long I sat there, but the scratching on the window screen in the bedroom off the living room snapped me back to the present. The cabin was built on two-foot cinderblocks, to keep the logs off wet winter ground, and the windows were intentionally constructed neck-high from ground level, to keep people and animals out, so what was scratching on the screen? Whatever it was, it would have to be tall. A bear! Is it a bear? I grabbed the phone to call Marney, but the shadow outside spoke.

  “It’s Ralph, from next door.”

  I put the phone back in the cradle and tried to settle my pounding heart.

  Cracking open the screen door, I saw him rounding the corner of the house to the back steps. “You scared me to death!”

  “I’m so sorry.” He hugged me, reeking of so much aftershave I thought he’d fallen down in a drugstore. “I just saw your light on in the living room and didn’t know if you were okay.” He put his hand on the screen-door handle to hold the door open.

  I explained that I’d told Marney I was going to be working nights.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Marney didn’t tell me. We kind of pass in the night any more. So you’re a writer.” He uttered the dreaded phrase that meant he intended to park his short, wide, middle-aged frame on my doorstep and maybe tell me how he wanted to be a writer too, so I stepped out of the house to keep Ralph and the mosquitoes from entering. He must have mistaken that for some sort of personal interest, because he came forward instead of backing up. I kept going, taking a firm step toward him, saying, “I have got to get back to work. Thanks for checking on me.”

  And that’s when Ralph went airborne, getting his feet tangled up as he stepped backward off the porch, losing his balance, arms flailing, his torso banging into the thin pipe railing, and finally his forehead smashing onto the cement. Oh, my God he’s bleeding like the subway woman. I’m being stalked by head wounds! Well, I’m not turning my good shirt into a tourniquet!

  I ran into the kitchen, grabbed sheets of paper towels, dampened them, and applied a compress to his head. “Sit down right here on the steps,” I ordered him, and he obeyed, his rumpled Bermuda shorts and jungle-flowered Tommy Bahama shirt collapsing into a heap, making him look like a human laundry bag. “I’ll get Marney.”

  “No! No! I’m fine. Don’t bother her. She’ll take care of me when I get home.” And with that he staggered off into the dark. I sat down and contemplated Ralph racing across the lawn holding his bloody head. What would he tell Marney, and what would she think? And what was he doing over here in the dead of night? Did she even know that he’d left the cabin?

  I was sitting on the enclosed porch holding my laptop as if it might start to write for me again, when I saw a faint light on the Point and grabbed the binoculars that always sat on the window ledge. I adjusted the focus, and a large campfire became visible, casting a bright glow over the blond woman sitting beside it. Two large dogs, one on each side of her, kept watch. Even from this distance, I could see the light bounce off her white slacks. Little Man, the tall Indian man from the trading post, was seated nearby, and he seemed to be performing some kind of ceremony, offering something up toward the sky with both hands.

  For a moment, I thought a taller woman in riding clothes was sitting beside them, and I was sad that I couldn’t join them. Then I asked myself why I would think that. So you want to squat in the woods by a fire and be bitten by a thousand mosquitoes? I looked through the binoculars again, and the image of the second woman quickly proved to be smoke, or fog, or nothing at all.

  Despite Little Man’s presence, the blond woman seemed to be talking to someone who wasn’t there. Or maybe she was talking to herself. That was spooky. And then, as if she knew I was watching, she looked directly at me. It was more than a glance in my direction. She literally stared right at me, my eyes connecting with hers, which I knew was completely impossible from this distance and in the dark. I froze, wondering if she really knew I was here looking at her, and was she trying to pull me toward her? “And how is that even possible when I’m looking through fucking binoculars?” I said out loud and quickly put the binoculars down as if they were possessed. But regardless, I could see her looking at me.

  That idea so unnerved me that I slept with a pillow over my head. Alone in the woods during the day was delightful, but alone in the woods at night was eerie. How does that woman live way out on the Point all alone?

  * * *

  The next day, Marney came over dragging Ralph, who had a gauze bandage wrapped around his head at a forty-five-degree angle, making him look like a hospital pirate, and I was unsure how this encounter was going to play out. Maybe Marney didn’t know her husband was scratching on windows late at night until this happened, and now she wanted an accounting of our late-night rendezvous.

  She bustled up to me and seemed about to cry. I waited. She took in a deep breath and said in adult baby-talk, “Look at my poor Ralphie.” I cringed, which she took to mean I understood how horribly hurt he was, when in fact, it was just that an adult talking baby talk, even if they were addressing a baby, was like nails on a chalkboard.

  “He fell off the dock and hit his widdle head.” She pursed her lips, becoming an adult toddler.

  Ralph didn’t look at me, and I managed not to grin.

  “He was trying to save some silly boy who swam over from one of Jensen’s rental cabins drunk and exhausted, and my Ralphie was a hero.” She beamed and hugged him, and he seemed to enjoy the attention. I glanced down and realized the top step still had some of Ralph’s blood on it. I slid my foot over, to cover the worst spot, and reminded myself to hose off the incriminating stain.

  Ralph must have left my place, gone down to the lake, waded into the water to get the blood off him, and then had to find a way to weave his wet clothes into his alibi.

  I reached for a phrase that would ring true. “I hope you heal quickly.”

  Marney assured me that, under her
care, he would, and she said they’d only dropped by to say if I had any odd jobs I needed Ralph’s help with, they would have to wait for the next couple of days, because Ralph was incapacitated. Looking at him, I wanted to say he was the last man I’d call to air up an inner tube, but I just nodded, indicating I understood he was out of commission.

  And they were off, bouncing back across the yard, bumping into each other playfully, like two tethered balloons, and disappearing into the white cabin.

  * * *

  That night, I heard another sound on the lake side, as if someone was moving through the pinecones. I headed out the door, vowing that if it was Ralph, trying for an amorous double dip, I’d kill him.

  Instead, it was the woman in white, the Lake Goddess, at the water’s edge, where she dismounted and stood in the moonlight looking up at the cabin, apparently checking on something. She was startlingly beautiful, and I was afraid she would disappear, so I hurried out the door and scrambled over the embankment and down to the water to greet her, losing my footing on rocks, pinecones, and underbrush and skidding into view on my butt. Embarrassed, I got up and dusted myself off.

  The woman looked up at me, and I thought she was the most exquisite creature I’d ever seen. Why is someone that beautiful in the woods, in the water, in my soul? I caught myself. In my soul? The high drama of that thought nearly made me laugh.

  “Don’t you sleep?” Her intonation sounded more like an invitation not to sleep.