by Deb Davies
“Laurel! You have the worst taste in men! My sweaty brother?”
“Yup,” Laurel said. “I hadn’t been physically close to many boys. I kept trying to time my breathing to rise and fall in counterpoint to his, but he didn’t notice.”
“That one park—near the mouth of the Platte—did have a fall like this.” Claire closed her eyes, remembering. “The river pours out into Lake Michigan, with warm shallows and cool incoming waves. There were places where we stood on sandbars and places where we could swim.”
“Do you miss Lake Michigan?”
“I guess not,” Claire said, rubbing her nose in thought. “The beach kept getting more and more crowded. The last time George and I went, I forgot my sandals, and we had to park on the drive. I got blisters the size of silver dollars on my heels and the balls of my feet. At least the DNR roped off piping plover breeding areas.”
“What’s Doyle doing now?” Laurel asked. “Is he still an outdoorsman?”
“He is. But he’s in Oregon, working for their DNR. He does fish counts, like swim-underwater fish counts. Fish census work.”
“The rest of your sibs?”
“Jan’s in California. She taught for a while, but now she’s got kid complications and is a stay-at-home mother. My parents live with Mark and his wife in North Carolina; he manages their condominium complex and turns a blind eye to my dad’s eccentricity. Brian is an assistant recruiting director for the Chicago Bears. Big money, but he’s on the road a lot. Matt’s an air traffic controller with the Navy, stationed in Germany, up for twenty-and-out soon. Jimmy—we never know, with Jimmy. Last I knew, he piloted a whale sighting charter boat off the coast of Washington. He’s a wanderer. I think he’s been in every state.”
“We went on our own adventure that summer. You remember.”
“God, yes,” Claire replied. “I have never had such a prolonged encounter with saw grass. One side of a dune all sandy and friendly, and the next side, burrs and thorns.”
“Bathing suits—not the right attire to hike the dunes.”
“It didn’t seem as though we walked that far, when we were walking and talking,” Claire said. “We walked the dunes because the beaches were covered with dead alewives and flies.”
Laurel added. “I still loathe flies. Thank God planting salmon solved the alewife problem.”
“Back in the dunes, there was a little breeze. But if the rain hadn’t started,” Claire recalled “we would’ve been a lot more sunburned.”
“If it hadn’t rained, we would have melted.”
“And when we were exhausted, walking north, there were those dogs playing on the beach by a river. We could swim in the rain and frolic with somebody’s pets, because dogs were allowed on that section of the beach. Remember the couple that walked their black labs most mornings, three seasons of the year, to look for Petoskey stones? Anyway, the dogs were shouldering each other in and out of the water. One of them almost did a dog somersault. ”
“Too bad we got halfway down the hill before we figured out we were seeing bear cubs.” Laurel sighed. “I nearly had a heart attack trying to run back up that hill, with sand sliding out from under our feet every step we took.”
“It worked better turning our feet sort of sideways,” Claire recalled.
Arnie sat up. “How close did you get?” he asked.
“You’ve been listening,” Claire exclaimed. “We thought you were sleeping.”
“I slept through the part about Doyle’s sweat,” he said.
“We were probably seventy yards away,” Claire said. “We ran back over a ripple in the dunes, closer to the trees and farther away from all that tasty, rotting salmon. That’s why we got so scratched. There were more burrs and even wild roses.”
“We saw a fox,” Laurel said.
“But you never saw the mother bear?”
“No, thank God,” Laurel answered him.
“The lampreys are controlled now,” Claire said. “So not many dead fish. Fewer chances to meet Br’er Bear.”
“I wish we could have gone down to that river,” Laurel said. “It would have been a great place for an Indian village. I think there are whole villages buried under some dunes, especially where rivers cut through the forests. Families could fish, hunt, and follow the river back to farming plots and berry bushes, and willow and ash for basket making.”
“I think we’ve missed our chance. We walked seven miles north,” Claire said, “and going back was harder. I don’t think either of us could do that now. Could you, Arnie?”
He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “I could if I had to, but I would not consider it an adventure. By the way, ‘the worst taste in men,’ Claire?”
“Have might’ve been the wrong verb tense for me to use, Arnie. We got you a sub. Mayo, lettuce, and mustard?”
“You get napkins?”
“Sorry, we used them.” Laurel was watching a family of ducks on the far side of the park. “Wait, this one’s not too bad.”
“Your brothers must have been jealous of you,” Arnie said, taking the mustard-stained napkin.
“My brothers didn’t believe us. They were moving out of the ‘Claire is our buddy’ stage and into one of their ‘Guys rule, girls drool’ stages. That was the last summer that I wasn’t self-conscious about how my bathing suit fit, or how my hair looked, or if bits of me bounced when I ran.”
“My mother would’ve had a fit if she’d seen what we looked like,” Laurel said. “That was our last summer of scorching hot dogs, spitting watermelon seeds, eating your mom’s lard crust pies, and never looking at a mirror.”
“After that—summer jobs,” Claire said. “I worked at a mom-and-pop restaurant.”
“I sold lingerie in an upscale store,” Laurel said. “My mother got me the job. I had a 15 percent discount, and she encouraged me to shop.”
“I drove a mowing machine,” Arnie said. “Bet I made more money.”
Both women favored him with a withering look.
Claire was chewing on a grass stem.
“Working at the restaurant helped me get a job at the Embers when I was at Central,” Claire said. “Not much salary, but great tips, especially from bourbon drinkers.”
“I didn’t work in college,” Laurel said. “There weren’t many jobs around Albion. My parents didn’t want me to work. They wanted a hothouse flower.”
Arnie snorted the last of his sub up his nose.
“Ow,” he protested. “Ow. Salambi in sinduses ’urdts.”
“Drive me back to the hospital,” Laurel suggested. “A doctor with long, sharp-tipped tweezers can reach right up your nose and tweak that salami out.”
Arnie drove them both back to the hospital and dropped them off.
“If I go home to snag some clean clothes, will both of you promise to go straight to Jen’s room? I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
He peered at both of them. “No walking the dunes, and no bears that look like dogs.”
“No dune walking,” Claire said. “I can’t wait to see Jen.”
His truck pulled away, bumping over ruts in the parking lot. They stood side by side, watching him go, and then Claire turned to Laurel. “What if,” she suggested, “we went on a very small adventure. Let’s steal five minutes and visit the Dominican Sisters’ labyrinth.”
“You’re weird,” Laurel said.
“What can happen? It’s right behind the hospital. Maybe on hospital grounds. The last time I was there, I was with George. I swore I’d keep George from dying, but that promise didn’t work well. Let me try again. Let’s renew our ninth-grade pledge we’ll always stay friends.”
“Sounds good,” Laurel said. “In the face of ghosties, ghoulies, and things that go bump in the night—”
“We’ll trust each other,” Claire said.
The labyrinth was a simple brick path winding in diminishing circles to a center where once, a statue or plant had been raised on a plinth. Perhaps the small garden had once been more grandiose,
because there was a marble cherub’s head, missing one ear and its nose, lying on its side in a clump of scraggly asters. A pair of cement doves lay on the ground near a bench. Clusters of ragged cedar trees shaded one side.
Claire reached down and adjusted one of the doves so that its winged side leaned against its mate. The day she was here with George, there had been a twig wreath holding the doves in position, but the wreath now lay outside the circle. Someone—a girl, she guessed—had woven in a clover chain.
Outside the path, order—the wreath, the statues, the wilting flowers—changed to long grass and nearby swamp-loving shrubs she was sure led to the river.
Claire wasn’t particularly religious. Exposure to church had inoculated her when she was young, and left her heart open to people without expecting good and bad points would be kept by God on a tab behind a bar. At that moment, though, cloud shadows and sunlight flickered like a procession across the brick path, and she shivered in recognition of everyday miracles.
“We gotta keep looking for portents,” she said. “It’s easy to overlook them.”
“Oh my gosh,” Laurel said, pointing, then dropping her hand and walking with a fixed gaze toward the opposite shrub line. “I found a sign,” she called back to Claire. “Look what I found, Claire! Over there in the grass, the book I use! The text for my creative writing class. It’s not my copy, either.”
Claire followed after her. Stepping over the bricks wasn’t easy in sandals. Laurel turned an ankle and stumbled on.
“What are the chances someone else in Grayling, Michigan, would love this book?” she asked Claire. “Maybe it’s a sign that I should stick around.”
“So instead of a burning bush, a soggy textbook?”
The trade paperback lay near scrubby bushes. Now that neither Claire nor Laurel was talking, they could hear the river flowing nearby.
“Steering the Craft,” Laurel murmured, waiting for Claire to catch up before she picked up the book. “It’s by Ursula K. Le Guin. You know, dragons and much more. We both read her. She’s an actual, real writer who wrote a textbook. Most textbooks read as though robots shat them out. Wow!” she exclaimed. “This is like being ten years old and finding someone else believes in magic.”
“See if there’s a name in the front,” Claire said. “Maybe you can find the owner.”
“It’s been out in the rain, maybe? The front edge is discolored. There’s a bookmark, I think,” Laurel said. “It’s got a bulge in the middle.” She bent and scooped up the book, walking back toward Claire and holding it for a moment to show her the cover was still mostly white, the sailboat—“the craft”—outlined in black ink.
She was standing near the center of the labyrinth when she opened the book at the bookmark. A stinking, wet ooze splattered over her. At the same time, the small massasauga inside writhed onto her hands. As she shrieked and flung the book away, it dropped loose and clung to her feet.
Laurel kicked out and stumbled back, flailing. The limp, black-and-gray sinuous form flopped from her feet but landed only inches away. The elegant diamond pattern on the rattlesnake’s back and sides was alarmingly clear. She could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, hear her own inhalation. Twisting to one side to run, she lost her balance and fell, hitting her head on the stone path.
Arnie’s arm was around her shoulders when she came to.
Claire knelt beside her, clasping one of her hands. “It’s dead, Laurel,” Claire kept repeating. “It was dead. The snake was dead when you found it. Dead.”
“Don’t try to get up yet,” Arnie said. “You’ve got a great fat lump on the back of your head. The emergency room found you a cup of sugary tea.”
“How did you get here? You left,” Laurel said.
“I drove from my house when Claire called me. She said you’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. I pictured something three feet long, but thank God, this one was a baby, and long past biting anything.”
Laurel’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m an idiot,” she said. “Of course it had to have been dead to be stuck in that textbook. But it—it seemed to lunge out. And it f-f-fell on my ankles. And I’m not that scared of snakes, but I panicked. Ugh.” She shuddered with revulsion.
“You got some distance between you and the snake. That was a healthy reaction.” Arnie rubbed her back. “I don’t know if your snake was glued in or just stuck on with its own dried visceral juices, but it must have dropped out when you opened that book. Whoa. Don’t throw up on me. Is that tea cool enough? If it is, take a sip.”
Claire scrubbed tear tracks from her face with muddy hands.
“What’s that smell?” Laurel asked. “I think it’s me.”
“That snake had been dead a while,” Claire admitted. “And it was full of—full of rotty little frog parts.”
“The rotty little frog parts had been in the snake for a while,” Laurel guessed.
Claire pulled off her tank top and used it to gently wipe Laurel’s hands and face and the front of her dress.
“Hospital windows, indecent exposure, Claire.” Laurel looked worried.
“Blinds are closed to keep out the sun,” Arnie reassured them.
“I’m wearing a sports bra. Have you seen what teenagers wear now? And anyway, I don’t give a damn,” Claire said.
“I’m covered with frog and snake guts,” Laurel said.
“I wiped off most of the bits,” Claire told her.
“How did the snake’s innards and its food get outside of the snake?”
“Sip more tea. You’re pale.”
“How, Claire? Had someone run over it with a mower?”
“And then put it in the book? No, sweetheart,” Arnie said. “I don’t know what killed the snake. But after it died, someone slit its ventral side from right under the head down to its two little rattles, and left it for you to find when you were visiting Jen. Claire says that’s a text you use?”
Laurel sat up straight and craned her neck around. “Ow. Where is that book now? Where is the snake?”
“Arnie picked the snake and the textbook up with barbeque tongs and put them in a cooler. He just called you sweetheart,” Claire noted absently.
“Cut me some slack, Claire,” Arnie said. “I thought she might have been poisoned. Only two people have died, on record, in Michigan from eastern massasauga bites, but one of you two could have managed it. They’re shy snakes, mind you, either threatened or endangered. I don’t even know if this hospital has antivenom.”
“How did someone get that book?” Laurel clutched Claire’s hand.
“All they’d have to do is look up the textbook you use online,” Arnie said.
Laurel leaned back into the support of his arm, reassured, though Arnie didn’t seem look all that happy about the thought.
“Don’t tell Charles about this,” she said. “He’ll have a fit about the snake.”
“I don’t care a frog’s left foot about Charles’s feelings.”
“Neither do I, in this case,” Claire said.
“I want to get up,” Laurel said.
“Do you need me to carry you?”
“I think I can walk, Arnie.”
“Let me help.” He put a hand under her elbow to help her balance.
“There probably wasn’t much venom,” she said. “Even if I had gotten bit.”
“There was venom, all right,” he told her. “The kind of venom people spew. And from now on, you, as well as Claire, are grounded. Claire, call Jen and tell her that Laurel is indisposed and will no longer be on her visiting list.”
Laurel pulled away from him.
He said, “Do you want to bring your attacker into the hospital and closer to Jen?”
“No.” She bit her lower lip.
“I’ll call now,” Claire said.
Arnie put his arm around Laurel’s waist. “Threatened. Endangered. When I find out who did this, I’ll slit him ventrally.”
Charles said little about the snake, except to reassure Laurel
that much as he admired snakes, if one fell out of a book he picked up, he would have hysterics.
“No rants about endangered species?” Arnie asked.
“No. I feel sorry for snakes, that’s all. Can you imagine what gigantic monsters we must seem to them, like walking electrical conduit towers, making the ground vibrate and waving huge arms and hands?”
“Not really.” Arnie scratched his head. He hadn’t been surprised when no prints had been found on the snake or the textbook. He moved about the house if he was on duty or sat at the kitchen table playing security videos on his laptop. Elaine and Bertram Allarbee bedded down somewhere upstairs if they were too tired to drive home after being on duty, but no one ever expressed curiosity about where they slept.
At some point, George’s T-shirts got mixed in with a tank top Elaine had dyed a vivid green.
“Nice,” Arnie said. “What would Jen call that color—pistachio?”
“No one else has noticed the T-shirt color change but you,” Laurel said. “I keep thinking I smell like snake, and then I take another shower. I burned the dress and sandals I was wearing, so I’m short on clothes. Oh, Arnie, Claire and I were so stupid.”
“You were,” he said. “But whoever left the textbook would have found another place where you would have found it. I don’t think you could have avoided it.”
“Thanks for not yelling at us,” she said.
“God, Laurel. You don’t have that terrible taste in men. Hey, look, I got the ring cleaned for you. I thought you could use some bling to go with the T-shirts.” He pulled the citrine in its newly shining setting out of his uniform shirt pocket, minus the box but displayed on a new, white handkerchief.
Laurel took it, staring at Arnie. He saw tears glisten in her eyes and looked away. She tried to stuff it down her cleavage, realized that would work only if she were wearing a bra, and went back to Jen’s room, where she hid it in the toe of a jogging shoe.
Hours later, Charles found Arnie sitting on the steps that led to the kitchen. Arnie held a cup of coffee; Charles had a cup of herbal tea.
“Don’t sit down next to me with fermented onion crap.” Arnie’s voice was angry, his scowl ferocious.
