Thunder Bay

TWENTY-SIX

Henry couldn’t sleep. He lay in his tent staring up at canvas that was drenched in silver moonlight. It wasn’t the canvas he was seeing. It was Maria, stepping soft and pink from the lake. He didn’t understand what was happening to him or the way he felt. Strong, but also very weak. Full of fire and at the same time ice. Hard in every muscle but yielding deep inside. He’d never felt anything like this, not even during his brief courtship of Dilsey.

He threw back his blanket and stepped into the night. The ground was cool against his bare soles. The four tents had been arranged in a semicircle around the campfire. He crossed to Maria’s tent, his shadow crawling up the canvas. He longed to see her, even a glimpse, and he considered pulling her tent flap aside just for a moment.

But he was afraid.

Instead, he walked to the lake. The water was silver fire. The ridges on the far side stood gray and ghostly against the black southern sky. Henry glanced back at the camp, then quietly undressed. He stepped into the lake. The cold hammered his legs, but he pushed on, farther and deeper. He wanted the icy water to kill the fire that wouldn’t stop burning in him. He let out his breath and sank toward a place where the moonlight didn’t reach.

He felt a disturbance of the water and came up quickly. He looked toward shore and saw her slender figure slipping into the lake. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she was naked. She swam toward him, her face a pale, beautiful bubble. Henry stared at her, too amazed to speak. He felt the loop of her arms around him and the press of her warm body. She kissed him, her lips the softest touch he’d ever known.

“You’re freezing,” she said. “Come with me.”

Out of the water and in the moonlight, her naked skin was jeweled with shining droplets that rolled down the line of her spine, along the curve of her buttocks, and fell from her like pearls off a broken string. She stooped and gathered her clothing and his and led him to her tent. She drew aside the flap and slipped inside. Henry hesitated. Her hand appeared, beckoning him in. He followed.

Her sleeping bag was open. She lay on it in the silver-green light of the moonlit canvas. She reached out and took his hand and drew him down to her.

“Let me warm you,” she murmured.

She rolled on top of him, blanketing him with her own body, her breasts against his chest, her thighs cupping his. She kissed him again, and he grew hard and kissed her back. Her lips broke away and drifted across his cheek, his neck, his chest.

“Maria,” he whispered, desperate and grateful.

She put her finger to his mouth. “Shhhh. No noise.”

She pushed herself up to straddle him and looked deeply into his eyes. Her own eyes were full of silver-green fire. She moved ever so slightly, and he was surprised and amazed to find himself inside her, a place warmer and more welcoming than he’d ever imagined. He grasped her hips and tried to push deeper, but she laid a hand on his chest and shook her head.

She leaned to his ear and whispered, “Let me.” She kissed him for a long time.

The first time was over quickly, and Henry wasn’t sure if he’d done things right. He’d been divided, worrying about what he was doing with Maria and worrying about whether the white men would hear. But Maria smiled and snuggled into his arms and whispered he was wonderful, and like magic he was ready again. This time he did not worry about the white men.

Since he was sixteen Henry had had dreams full of animal desire from which he woke breathless and emptied. The first night with Maria was like nothing he’d ever dreamed, nothing he could ever have imagined. Their desire was a well without bottom. Henry had never been as happy as he was with Maria in his arms.

Long before dawn, long before the white men would be stirring, he rose and returned to his own tent, but he couldn’t sleep. He was too full of Maria.

She didn’t appear at breakfast. Wellington and Lima ate the biscuits and the oatmeal Henry had prepared. As sunlight began to climb the distant ridges, they set off across the lake. When they were out of sight, Henry went to Maria’s tent. He reached out, but held back from opening the flap, suddenly unsure.

“I’m awake,” she said from inside.

He found her still in her sleeping bag, looking at him with a tired smile on her face. He lay down beside her.

“You smell like smoke,” she said. “Take your clothes off and sleep with me.”

He dreamed of a snowfall that covered the forest, so deep he could barely move. Among the trees, wolves circled and he knew he could not escape them.

“You’re shivering,” she said, and that woke him.

They made love again. The tent was warm in the sunlight, and, afterward, they lay together, wet with their own sweat.

Henry heard the sound of music, a muffled chime.

“What’s that?” he said.

Maria reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a small box. Inside was a gold watch.

“It’s a present for my father,” she said.

She snapped it open and handed it to Henry. Opposite the face of the watch was Maria’s face, a small photograph behind glass.

“His birthday is next week. On the front, see the writing? It’s Spanish. It says, ’To my beloved papa.’ I wish it said ’To my beloved Henry.’ I wish I had something to give you. A present.”

“You already gave me a present, the best I ever had.”

He handed the watch back and she put it away.

That afternoon she swam again while Henry plucked the feathers from a grouse he’d killed. He could barely take his eyes off her. She swam naked now. She told him women had more fat on their bodies than men and could stand the cold, but Henry could see no fat on her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of reflected sunlight among the trees on a point a quarter mile to the west. It was a prolonged and brilliant glinting, the kind that came from glass or polished metal or some other thing that didn’t occur naturally in the forest. Henry laid the half-plucked grouse on the ground. He grabbed his rifle, slipped into the woods, and worked his way soundlessly toward the point. Fifty yards away, he slowed and moved like a big cat hunting-creep and pause, creep and pause-while his eyes dissected every nuance of light and shadow.

He arrived at the place along the shoreline where he’d spotted the reflection. There was nothing to be seen. Henry studied the ground carefully. It was rocky terrain. The stones that poked through the soil were covered with lichen. On several stones, patches of the lichen had been scraped away by the careless placement of a foot. Henry widened his search. Twenty yards away he found a trail of broken ground cover leading west. In soft earth a hundred yards farther on, he found the imprint of a moccasin.

Henry stood up, certain now that he hadn’t been the only one enjoying the sight of Maria swimming.

His inclination was to begin tracking immediately, but he had no idea how far that would take him or how long he would be gone, and there was still the evening meal to prepare. He held to the patience Woodrow had taught him. When he returned to camp, Maria had finished swimming and was dressed.

“Where did you go?” she asked and kissed him.

“I saw something.”

She looked at his rifle. “What?”

He told her. She didn’t seem frightened.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“We will find him,” Henry said.

“Him?”

He didn’t think a woman would be alone in this deep wilderness, but Maria was right. He had no idea.

“When will we find him?” she asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“What about tonight? What if he-or she-comes back tonight while we’re sleeping?”

“I won’t sleep.”

She smiled. “I’ll help you stay awake.”

Wellington and Lima came back arguing. Henry could hear their angry voices across the water. When their canoe touched shore, they stepped out and continued throwing words at each other.

“The geology’s right,” Wellington insisted. “And don’t forget, Carlos, you heard the same story I did.”

“I am not an impatient man, but I am also not a man without limits, Leonard. That goes for my money, too. And remember what happened in Ecuador.”

“Ecuador was a lesson for both of us.”

“An expensive lesson,” Lima said.

“Education doesn’t come cheap, eh?”

Lima moved close to the other white man. “You think that was funny? A joke?”

“The hell with you, Carlos. I need a drink.” Wellington brushed past him and stomped to his tent.

That night after the meal, Lima went to bed. Wellington continued the drinking he’d begun on his return. Like Maria, he spent time every evening by the fire, filling the blank pages of a leather-bound notebook with writing. In the shifting light of the fire, Henry watched the man’s eyes, which that night stayed dark and brooding as they lifted from his writing and held for long moments on Maria.

“The good daughter,” Wellington finally said.

Maria looked up from her notebook. “I try to be.”

“That’s why you’re here? To be the good daughter? You’re only making him nervous, you know that?”

“Nervous?”

“He wants to get you back to civilization as soon as he can.” He drank from the tin cup into which he’d poured his liquor. “A girl doesn’t belong on something like this.”

“I’m not a girl,” she replied coolly and went back to her writing. Wellington made a sound that might have been a laugh but came out more like a grunt. “I’ve noticed.” His glare shifted to Henry. “What about you, Henry? Bet you’ve noticed, eh.”

Henry burned. Wellington’s tone spoke disrespect. Henry had lived with that tone much of his life and had learned to ignore it, but when Maria was included, that was too much. He’d been sitting near the fire, stirring the embers with a long, thick spruce stick to keep the flames alive for Maria’s writing. Now he stood with the stick in his hand, the tip glowing, an angry red eye at the end of his arm.

Wellington didn’t see. He stared at the fire and drank his liquor. Maria saw, however. She shook her head at Henry, her eyes afraid of what he might be about to do.

Wellington took a final long swallow. “Fuck it,” he said and stumbled to his tent.

Soon afterward, they heard his snores join those of Lima. Henry let the fire die. Maria went to her tent. Henry gathered dried leaves and sticks from the woods and spread them around Maria’s tent. Then he picked up his rifle and joined her.

That night clouds blocked the moon, but Henry knew Maria’s beauty without light. The down of her cheeks, the wet oval of her lips, the curve of her breasts, all of it soft as dreaming. He fit himself to her until he couldn’t feel a separation, couldn’t feel the place where his own body ended and hers began. They were one skin, one breath, one heart.

Her lips brushed his neck. “I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish you’d been my first.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Later he said, “What were they like?”

“Rich. Sophisticated. Spoiled. Weak in ways you’re not.” She laughed quietly. “I guess I’m like that, too. Everything I have I’ve been given. I’ve never had to make my own way. All my friends are like that.” She nestled deep into his arms. “You’re different from anyone I’ve ever known, Henry. I felt safe with you from the beginning. Here we are a thousand miles from everything and I’ve never felt so safe.”

He felt the same. She was like nothing he’d ever known. That they shared their bodies so quickly, so easily, so completely didn’t surprise him. He had the deep sense that being together this way had always been meant for them.

Maria fell asleep with her head against his chest. He was tired, too, but he lay awake, listening. With the dry leaves and the sticks surrounding the tent, even a careful man could not approach without Henry hearing.