by Jean Andrews
I found myself answering in the same tone. “Don’t you have a boat?”
The woman paused and then laughed, seemingly at something beyond my comment, something she’d remembered. “My aunt asked me to stop by and have a look,” she said, oblivious to her surroundings and staring directly at me.
“And what are you supposed to look at?”
“You,” she said. Her eyes moved up and down the length of me. “Tall, trim, nice broad shoulders, lovely hands, great eyes.”
She glanced up at the sky, talking to someone or something. “Happy?” Then she cocked her head to one side and gave me a sparkling smile, and I smiled back. “I do love the smile,” she said in a tone that was unmistakably provocative.
“Would you mind telling me your name?”
“Levade. It rhymes with odd,” she said, letting me know her reputation.
“Of course.” The words escaped before I had polished them. “Isn’t that a horse jump or something?”
“It’s one of the movements a horse can be trained to execute. My mother let my aunt name me.”
Strange sounds coming through the white cabin’s windows rescued me from any more awkward attempts at conversation. It sounded like a struggle, or a mugging, or God knows what, so we both focused in that direction. I was about to scurry up the embankment and intervene when, completely embarrassed, I realized Marney and Ralph must be having sex.
“Oh, no, it’s the neighbors fornicating.” I made a silly face, and Levade laughed. “Let this be a reminder to both of us that the animal grunts, moans, and gasps of lovemaking are embarrassing secondhand, so always try to be the one having sex, not hearing sex.”
“Thank you for that advice.”
She suppressed a giggle, and I loved that I could make her laugh.
“Why, at this very moment, while I am trying to impress my guest, must Ralph and Marney broadcast their lovemaking play by play, and leave the windows open?” I whispered.
At that very moment, Ralph launched into repetitive ecstasy. “Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby, ooooh baby!”
It almost sounded like the background track to an old fifties tune. Finally, an amazingly robust grunt emanated from Ralph, a glass-shattering scream from Marney, and then, mercifully, silence.
“Damn. I’m glad that’s over,” I said, shaking my head. “‘Oh, baby’ was just about to become permanently lodged in my brain between ‘It’s a Small World’ and ‘Felice Navidad.’”
“Sounds like they’re having more fun than we are,” Levade teased. Those words were like a caress, and I felt oddly shy.
“All I can say is that Ralph has apparently solved his marital dilemmas. He and Marney are no longer ships passing in the night, but more like a maritime merger.”
Why couldn’t I have someone to make love to? And when I did have someone, why did that particular activity never seem very satisfying?
“Cabins were created for Ralph-and-Marney moments,” Levade said sweetly. Then, without so much as a good-bye, she led her horse back into the water, shoulder deep, floated onto his back, and they paddled back onto the lake toward the Point. I watched until they disappeared. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to keep looking at me and never stop.
* * *
That night I dreamed I was in my bed and awoke to see Levade standing on the shoreline. She dismounted and walked up to my cabin and into my bedroom. She shrugged off her white gown and stood naked, smiling at me seductively, and I had an intense desire to hold her. She somehow knew that and slid in beside me under the sheets, then wrapped herself around me, and in the next moment she was kissing me in the most erotic way, rubbing her body against mine. Then she was inside me, and I was nearly orgasmic—hot, and thrashing, and wet. I awoke in a sweat, kicking the covers off, and jumped out of bed as if she were really in there with me.
“Wow!” I said out loud to no one. How long had it been since I’d had a sexual dream about being taken by a man? How long has it been since I’ve had a sexual dream, period? Why am I having an erotic dream about that woman?
Chapter Six
I whispered into the phone, though no one could hear me but Ramona, “Ralph came by one night unannounced and scratched on my screen like a rutting stag. He fell on the porch steps and hit his head and then refused to let me call Marney, because I don’t think she knew he was on the prowl.”
“Ralph on the prowl?” Ramona laughed.
“Then that woman, Levade, the one you think is Angelique’s niece, floated up on shore like an angel on a white horse and then floated off.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I said, don’t you have a boat?”
“No wonder she left. That was just damned weird. You don’t know her. She probably thought you were making fun of her. People up North are different. Maybe she can’t afford a boat.”
“You’re overthinking it. It’s been a week, and I’ve gotten jack done. It’s the same as New York—people doing weird shit, talking too much. It’s like everyone here just has their mind on getting laid.” And, it’s starting to rub off on me with all my sex dreams of late. “In fact, Marney and Ralph had screaming-ass sex with their windows open, and I had to hear all of it, including, the ‘Ooooh, baby’ aria.”
Ramona laughed loudly. “Good for Marney! The woods will do that to you. It’s as if you’re on another planet and you’ll never see these people again, so why not take off your clothes and fuck like fish. Are you writing?”
“Yes,” I said, which was true, despite it being only one new sentence.
“Do I need to come see you? I miss the cabin. Great times, and very studly men, if memory serves.”
“God, no. That’s all I need is you here. I’m busy writing.”
* * *
Around noon, I heard a polite knock at the back door, and, as if Ramona had conjured him, a handsome, muscular man, in his early forties, with piercing blue eyes, who was small in stature by Viking standards, introduced himself as Frank, the Muskie Champion. He wondered out loud if I’d like to pay him to take me on a guided tour of the area by boat, see some of the wildlife and his taxidermy shop. He was dark-haired, and he moved with the physical confidence of a man who knew he’d accomplished something in life.
“Most people see only the part of the lake they live on. Muskie Lake is eight miles long, with more than a hundred coves and all kinds of beautiful wildlife back off the shore.” I glanced at his shirt, and the ball cap he was wearing that proclaimed him Muskie Champion three years running. He noticed I was checking out his clothing billboard. “I’ve caught the largest muskies in Minnesota. One was over five feet long and weighed more than sixty-five pounds, a monster for a freshwater fish. I’d be happy to show it to you. A lot of men want me to take them on muskie expeditions. I charge them and make them travel blindfolded in the boat, so they can’t steal my fishing spots.” He cracked his knuckles for emphasis and gave me a winning grin.
“How much?” I asked.
“A hundred dollars for the day.”
“Can we go now?” I was sold when he mentioned getting to see animals back in the woods. Further, I was making it a point not to delay any new experience. He seemed delighted we were going immediately—instant income, I assumed.
Frank’s big, yellow, fiberglass boat was the cabin cruiser of lake boats, with sonar and radar equipment and big, leather armchair seats. He put the motor in full throttle, and we thrashed across the open waters, then suddenly slowed as he hit a lever and the motor quickly tilted, lifting the propeller into the air as we coasted over a wide stretch of sand only a foot below the surface.
“Lot of guys come out here, don’t know where the sandbars are, sheer a pin on their first time out, and have to be towed. Kind of puts a kink in their macho.” He grinned and I laughed. He waved me over to look at his elaborate dashboard and tapped the cover of the dial, focusing me. “Spot we’re on now is about 160-feet deep.” He showed me how the depth meter worked and how he could use it, not only t
o navigate but to find the best fishing grounds.
“Only the sheriff’s boat has equipment even close to this. Sam uses it to rescue tourists. A few have drowned out here because they don’t understand drop-offs. You can be walking along sure-footed for a hundred yards off the shoreline, chatting away, and the next step you’re in Beijing.” He grinned at me again. “You take in water and drown.”
“So where are these little animals you were going to show me?” I changed the subject, not wanting to think I was sailing across the surface of bloated tourist bodies.
Frank whipped the boat into a cove in dramatic fashion, sending a spray of water into the air. He shut down the motor in an instant, and the water dragging behind us made a huge whooosh before slapping up on the shore “Beer?” he asked, pulling one from the ice chest, his eyes focused on the land. We sat in total silence for about ten minutes.
A rotund skunk waddled through the woods. Then along the water’s edge, I spotted a creature that looked like a beaver, and it caught Frank’s eye too.
“Beavers burrow in the lake banks because the water’s too deep for dam-building. They build their dams in ponds where the water’s shallow.”
Around sundown, Frank lifted the motor, and we drifted through the narrows, a shallow, skinny part of the lake known to have patches of quicksand beneath the surface. Along the banks, the narrows were home to six-foot-tall stands of cattails with their brown, fuzzy, hot-dog shaped tops. Giant water lilies covered the lake’s surface, and here and there remaining stalks of wild rice protruded from the water, having obviously missed the harvest.
“You ever find yourself in quicksand, don’t struggle,” Frank said. “Look around and try to find even the tiniest cattails or twigs, something you can get hold of, and slowly, no matter how long it takes, try to get your feet up and parallel with the water’s surface. Getting dark, so I’ll take you by my shop before we call it a day.”
We navigated out of the narrows and blew through the water, then slowed for the occasional fishing boat. “If you have to cross in front of them, slow down and do it as far away as you can, and at a ninety-degree angle, because a small boat can cross that angle of chop, but a big parallel wake will rock them side to side and tip them over.” I was impressed with all the things Frank knew.
We pulled into his dock where the shoreline ran right up to the back steps of his cabin. From the boat, I could see an array of taxidermy animals through the picture windows, the bears with their paws in the air as if waving to us. They stood like frozen sentinels watching for him to come home.
His door was unlocked, and we walked into his cabin that could have been a museum exhibit on north-woods animals and their habitat. I pivoted 360 degrees. I’d never seen so many dead, but preserved, animals. It’s Country Bear Jamboree purgatory, I thought, but I couldn’t help but walk around and touch their fur. Every animal was placed in a staging area with tree branches, logs, and rocks surrounding them, giving the sense that they were still alive in the woods. And this is the guy’s house? It would be like sleeping in a pet cemetery.
“Deer, bear, wolf, fox, muskies, of course—there’s my sixty-five-pounder. And otters, muskrat, beaver, porcupine, wild hog—anything that ever lived up here.” Frank was still in tour-guide mode.
I glanced at three fluffy, foxlike creatures. “They’re so darling and so lifelike, I can’t stand to see them dead. What are they?”
“You sound like my wife.” He chuckled good-naturedly. “Taxidermy wasn’t her thing either. She died a year ago, and I really miss her. I don’t like being alone.”
“I’m so sorry. How did she die?”
“No one really knows.” He gave me an ironic grin. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I understand.” I was feeling uncomfortable for no particular reason. “Well, it’s been a great day. Thank you.” I instinctively checked for a door that would take me out of the cabin and onto the road.
“I didn’t mean to cut you off when you asked about her. I’m sure I’ll marry again. You know, I bought her a lot of expensive clothes, and I saved them all. I want to marry someone her size so they don’t go to waste. You’re about her size.”
My body went cold, the way any woman’s body temperature shifts dramatically when she senses danger.
“Well, it takes more than a pant size to make a marriage work. I’m still getting over my divorce. I need to get back home. I’m waiting for a business call. Mind if we drive?” I paid him in cash, not wanting him to have a check with my name and New York address on it.
“It’s your day.”
We walked to his truck and climbed in. I clutched the door handle and made note of every twist in the road on the drive to the cabin. Just beneath that veneer of politeness, something about him was chilling. I mentally moved him to that column of people who “aren’t quite right” and should be avoided.
When he pulled into the drive at my cabin, the sun was about to set. I hopped out, thanking him as I moved quickly to the cabin door.
“Let’s do it again!” he sang out, and I didn’t answer but just waved good-bye.
What had possessed me to go out on the lake with a man I didn’t know anything about, simply because he’d shown up at my door wearing a freaking logo shirt that said he catches big fish? No one even knew I was out there with him. He could have thrown me in the fricking quicksand bog!
Chapter Seven
The visit to Frank’s cabin troubled me so much that the following day, I drove to town to see about buying a shotgun and a couple of boxes of shells at the hardware store. The entire “Frank experience” reminded me of how vulnerable I was. Living in New York, every woman is on alert all the time about her surroundings, and where she is after dark, and who’s in the elevator with her. When the fast-food woman was pushed in front of the subway train, while none of us could stop it, people were there to take immediate action. In the woods, you’re lulled into a sense of tranquility, and when something happens, no one’s around. There was certainly no one in my cabin I could run to for help, not even a dog. So a gun seemed logical.
The rifles and shotguns were lined up on the wall behind the clerk, their stocks seated in wooden cradles and their barrels pointing skyward like steel soldiers. I asked a few questions about how hard they kicked, having heard the recoil of some guns can bruise your shoulder, and which gun in particular would be best suited for a woman my size.
“What are you intending to shoot?” The clerk, a wiry lady in her fifties with frizzy hair and an infectious grin, asked me point-blank.
“Whatever comes at me in the night.”
“I should tell my husband that.” We both laughed, and she introduced herself as Gladys Williamson. “You know a ‘blast and scatter’ is going to be your best bet, if you’re just warding off animals. I’d say this 12-gauge, and it’s got a padded stock that would probably be more comfortable for you.”
“I’m sure I won’t have to fire it.” I took the shotgun from her and ran my hand over the sleek polished wood, keeping my fingerprints off the steel that had a beautiful scene of deer in the woods etched into it. “This will be fine,” I said. “I took a tour of the lake with this Frank fellow. You know him?”
“Sure do,” she said emphatically, and immediately busied herself writing up my ticket and then straightening the boxes of bullets on the back counter, signaling conversation closed.
“Who’s the local sheriff?” I asked as I wrote a check.
“Sam Lindhurst. And his office is right across the street and down a block.”
I thanked her, left the store, locked the gun in my car, turned around, and there she was.
“You bought a gun. Do you know how to use it?” Levade asked calmly, and her blue eyes completely captivated me.
“Hello! Every idiot in the woods has one, so it can’t be that hard. Anyway, I’m on the way to the sheriff’s office to see if he’ll give me a lesson, so I can avoid shooting myself in the foot.” My God, she is strange, and so
gorgeous.
“I think you’re smarter than that.” She gave me her beautiful smile. “Just remember that a few hours at a shooting range is fine if you’re thinking of scaring off animals, but if you’re thinking it will scare people away, it takes a lot more. Please be careful. Don’t take any more tours of the lake, okay?” She seemed genuinely concerned yet didn’t wait for my answer. She merely walked away and got in her Jeep. How did she know I toured the lake with Frank? I’d just told Gladys, but she’d had little time to inform her. Frank must have let her know himself, and why would he do that? I watched her drive off wondering if she was crazy, or eccentric, or prescient, or just simply unnerving.
I headed for Sam’s office. He sat behind a battered metal school desk that held his name plate and an old telephone. I liked him right away. He had a nice gray handlebar mustache and twinkly eyes, reminding me of Sam Waterston, if Sam Waterston were ten years younger and fifty pounds heavier.
“I wondered if I could pay you to give me a couple of shooting lessons.”
He took his feet down off the desk and rose to greet me with a mannerly handshake. “Someone in particular you’d like to shoot?”
“No. I divorced him.”
Sam grinned and agreed to meet me at a practice spot out in the woods in half an hour.
“How big’s the sheriff’s department?”
“You’re looking at it. Me and maybe two ole boys who volunteer. When I leave, I just put a note on the door telling people where they can find me. Most of the time they don’t want to find me.”
* * *
Sam gave me directions to the wooded area north of town known to hunters as a target-practice zone; the trees could bear witness to that, each sporting dozens of holes and lacerations. Sam picked up a few rusty cans off the ground, set them on a stump, and we started in.
I got the hang of loading and shooting and learned the safety tips pretty quick. Sam was a friendly, no-nonsense guy, and we worked for only about an hour.
