Chapter 4

Carter Canoe Rental

Blue Creek's stony bottom showed clearly through the cold spring fed water swirling past the canoe rental.  The creek was down due to a late summer drought, common to the eastern Ozarks.  Soft red light from the late fall sunset slanted at a low angle through the trees making the weathered clapboard cabin almost glow.  Shane carted the last of the scraps up from the dock and dumped them on the burn pile.  Though the air was moist, the brush was dry, and the day far too windy for burning.  He leaned the wheelbarrow bottom side out against the east, upriver side of the house and went in to put supper on.  Just before dark, Raven came as he was taking it off the stove.

"Hey.  How was your day?" she asked, dumping books on the table before smoothing her skirt.

"Good.  It was nice out today," he said, giving the cottage fries a final flip.

"How's the work going?"

"About finished.  I need to talk to Richard about that leak, though.  He might want to have the cabin reroofed."

"I don't think he and Jill can afford it just now."

"All he'll need is ten squares of shingles.  Maybe three hundred dollars," he said as he removed the pan to the back of the stove and turned around.  "I can put ‘em on."

She looked exactly as she had in the morning, so beautiful it made him ache.  He tried not to stare because that made her uncomfortable.  None of what had happened to her showed except in her most unguarded moments.  It made him want to shield her from ever being hurt again, to hide her away from all possibility of sorrow.  Of course that was impossible and exactly the opposite of what she wanted. 

"Is that meatloaf?" she said, moving past him with lowered eyes.

He had stared too long.  But they were both trying.

"It smells wonderful and I'm starved," she said over her shoulder as she opened the refrigerator.  "Want me to make a salad?"

She knelt to open the crisper.  "It will have to be simple.  All we have is this."

She surprised him by playfully pitching him a large tomato without standing up.  "Dice that while I tear the lettuce."

The sounds of knife on the chopping board and the lettuce tearing filled the silence.  A normal couple wouldn't notice such minutia, and they certainly wouldn't feel threatened by it, but he and Raven were far from that.  They lived as husband and wife, but were not lovers, and would perhaps never be.  Yet they loved each other.

"I wished all day that I was at home with you," she said suddenly, breaking the silence.  "It's all I could think of."

"You think of this as home already?"

"Yes," she said a little too brightly without looking up.  "It is our home, and you . . . you're making it look really nice.  I like what you did with the windows."

He smiled, immensely pleased.  All the time he was working on them, he wondered if she would like what he was doing.

"I'd like to do more, but Richard just wants to get the place ready for spring.  Think we can run it?"

"The canoe rental?  Of course," she said, reaching for the cutting board.  "Good grief, Shane.  I asked you to dice these, not puree them."

"Got carried away, I guess."

"You were thorough," she said with a laugh.  "They'll be fine.  Just like the canoe rental, we can do it because you're good with people."

A lie.  Shane was painfully shy.

"Come on.  I'm starved," she said, laying a hand tentatively on his shoulder.

Remarkably, she had initiated physical contact.  Before he could decide what it meant, her hand was gone, leaving a tingling of psychic energy lingering there.  To forestall an awkward silence, he spoke.

"Maybe when the season opens I'll make more money.  We could sure use it."

"We have enough," she said, forcing her eyes to meet his.

"Yeah, but I'd like for you to afford better stuff . . . you know, some nice things to wear and stuff like that.  Kinda makes me feel bad . . . you making most of the money."

Her eyes teared.  No one had ever put her first the way Shane did.  She knew that he loved her, but didn't know if she had the right to do what she was doing to him.  They were living together because they needed each other---but in totally different ways.

"I'm not doing anything I don't want to, Shane."

"I know."

"How about you?"

"This is what I want, Raven."

She nodded, but knew it wasn't all he wanted.  As for herself, she didn't know for sure what she wanted except that she didn't want him to leave.  The problem was that she was satisfied with their static relationship, and intellectually at least; she knew that no stable relationship was ever static.  They were meant to go somewhere---to develop---and she knew how he wanted them to develop.  Like any normal man, he wanted them to become intimate---she knew a dozen cruder, more honest ways to describe that.  In a sense, she wanted that too---which was as laughable as an acrophobe thinking he wanted to bungee jump.  The absurdity of her analogy brought an involuntary smile.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Me," she said, her smile tightening as tears glazed her eyes.  She hurried from the room.

What did I do wrong? he asked himself.

He tried to unravel the conversation in an attempt make sense of what had just happened.

If I can't even figure out what's going on, how can I ever hope to change things?

A short time later Raven came back to the supper table, but made no attempt to explain what had just happened.  Instead, by mutual consent they pretended nothing had gone on.  They talked as always, but it was strained, each concerned mainly with trying not to say the wrong thing.

"Think you'll go back to college next fall?" she asked.

"Maybe.  I just don't want to start anything until everything's settled legally."

"I thought your lawyer said you have nothing to worry about."

"That's what he says.  But that's what the public defender told me when I was a kid.  Then they sent me to the Sears center."

He rose to take the dishes to the sink.

"Here, let me do that," she said.  "You cooked.  I'll clean up."

He went outside as much to let the uninvited tension dissipate as for a smoke.  The autumn night was all washed out grays in the half-light of a full moon not yet risen beyond the eastern ridge.  He walked down to the creek, stopping momentarily to light up before walking out on the repaired dock.  Riffles murmured beneath the floats, soft, but distinct in the autumnal chill.  Overhead, limbs laced a star stippled sky with slashes of intricate tracery.  First one then another star blinked out, momentarily puzzling him.  A mournful solitary honk solved the mystery---night flying geese.  A puff of wind stirred the crisp leaves behind him, sounding like the turning of a page, the passing of another year.  He was already nineteen.

Are you making a mistake? he asked himself.  She as much as told you it would never get any better.  What if things are never normal?  Maybe you're just holding on because she's so beautiful.

But that wasn't true.

Maybe she just let's you hang around because she feels sorry for you.

His friends envied him for having Raven.

Having her!  What would they think if they knew?

He wanted to punch something.

Why in the hell does it have to be this way? he asked himself, not being old enough to have discovered the foolishness of the why questions.

Shane walked to the end of the dock, feeling the floats rise and fall with his footsteps.  The creek murmured soothingly.

She's the best thing that's ever happened to you---the only one who has ever cared.  Besides, what you've gone through is nothing compared to what she has.

He took a last drag, held it deep, and flicked the glowing butt out toward the current.

I'll be there for you---and some day---some day it'll be all right.

The dream last night had been so real.  When he closed his eyes it came back:  She smiled as she came to his room, naked and glowing in the soft light.  There were no words, but an urgency of mutual desire.  He could see her and feel her and taste her and---

Shane pulled himself away.

Don't take Freud to interpret that one.

He took out another cigarette.

"I'm damaged goods," she had once told him.  "I hate the way I am, but there's nothing either of us can ever do about it."

Maybe she was right.  Maybe all that was already decided.  Maybe he really was just fooling himself.

But if that's so, why do you go along with it.  Is it just pity, Raven?

The light came on in her bedroom.  From the end of the dock where he now stood, he could see her clearly as she walked into the room.  In the brief instant before she picked up a towel and went to the bathroom for her shower, she stood clearly visible from her narrow waist up.  She was wearing the sweater he bought her.  Feeling like a voyeur, he decided to leave the dock before he actually became one.  Not that he didn't want to see her, but he didn't want to take from her what he hoped would one day be her someday gift to him.  It sounded schmaltzy, but it was sincere.  Tomorrow he'd get a curtain for her somewhere, and he'd have to stay off the dock when she might be undressing. 

A brief flash of them entwined, an image from the previous night's dream came again.

She touched me tonight---which means what?  She's trying, Shane.  That's what she's doing.

Later that night Raven lay open-eyed beneath the covers, hypersensitive to the sounds of Shane moving about the house as he checked the doors, used the bathroom, undressed.  She listened compulsively, alert for any sound out of the ordinary---any sound betraying a change in his routine.  It was silly and she knew it, but that did no good at all.  Just having him in the house at night made her uncomfortable.  She was waging a battle he knew nothing of.  The near panic she had once felt now only roiled beneath the surface---only threatening to break forth.

It helped to consider it clinically.  The physical manifestations were still there, the elevated blood pressure, the adrenaline rush---all the fight or flight muscle tension.  She understood what was going on, and that helped.

It's all silliness.  There is no one you can trust more than Shane---and you love him as much as he loves you.

You're lying, Girlfriend.  She heard her so-called mother say.  What happens when your big experiment fails?  Love?  What do you know about that?  They all want the same thing, Baby---and it's not like you haven't done it before.

"Got a great imagination there, Raven," she told herself.

She rehearsed it again like an incantation.

Do you really love him?  Yes.  All I have to do is think of him going away---think of him not being here.  Then I know.

But the logical part of her wouldn't be denied.

Not so fast.  How do you know it's not just the thought of him that you need?  Maybe you're only using him in an attempt to imagine yourself as normal instead of an emotional freak.

Before she could stop it, her mind wrenched her back to childhood, to Starry Dawn and her endless succession of gentlemen friends---friends with whom she shared everything, including her twelve year-old daughter.

You know better than this, she told herself.  It happened---okay, it happened.  Nothing can change that, but that was then---get it through your thick head---that was then, not now.  It was them, not him.

In the darkness she saw Starry Dawn's drug-ravaged face, crinkled into the semblance of a smile, her eyes lit with the confident insight only a burn-out can project.

You really think you can let him crawl on top of you without seeing all those---

"Stop it," she said aloud.

A moment later she heard footsteps, then a soft knock at her door.

"Raven?"  he called gently, his voice filled with concern.  "Are you okay in there?"

"I'm fine, Shane.  Just . . . I'm fine."

"Are you sure?  I mean, do you want to talk or something?"

"No.  I'm good."  Raven got up as silently as she could, tiptoed barefoot across the darkened room.  "Just need to get to sleep---have to get up early."  She checked the lock.  "Good night."

A slight hesitation, then: "Good night."

She listened to make sure he had gone back to his room.  Only when she heard his door shut did she make her way back to the bed.  Shivering, she slipped back beneath the covers, but lay awake for a long time.

Not far away, someone else found it difficult to fall asleep.  Like Raven, his thoughts were on someone of the opposite sex, only not on someone living in the same house.  He crept to the window and looked across the yard hoping that his neighbor's light was still on.  It was.  He couldn't see her, but a shadow fell on the curtain and he felt a stirring.  He could go out the back, stand in the shadow of the house, and maybe see her better.  His face burned at the thought.  He could feel the pulse in his neck.

Silly---and real stupid.  You can see more---and a lot safer---if you just go to the movies or buy a nudie magazine.  This is dirty, something a sneaking loser would do.

Yet, he didn't turn away at first.  He knew her, and the thought of seeing her when she didn't know he was watching thrilled him.

"No way," he said aloud, turning his back on what he was about to do.  "No way," he repeated and felt better as he went back inside.  He felt virtuous for having denied himself.

September 30

Jill sat at the kitchen table, morning coffee in hand, grading the last of the essays from last night.  She glanced at the clock over the sink.  Seven-thirty, in an hour she had to leave.  Raven was late.  A throaty rumble nearing the house drew her to the window where she saw a rust-eaten 60's vintage pickup backing up the drive.  Instead of Mr. Shelton, who usually came on Tuesdays, a thin balding man, who may have been anywhere from forty to sixty, stepped down from the cab and shambled stiffly to the trash barrels.  He looked oddly out of place somehow.  Then she saw it.  Instead of coveralls or jeans, he wore light tan slacks, now begrimed with permanent stains.  Instead of boots, he wore low cut leather shoes.

He tipped one of the overfilled containers and rolled it awkwardly on its bottom rim toward his truck, spilling some of the contents in the process.  Wood scraps in addition to the normal household trash made them heavy.  She'd talked Richard out of burning the carpentry waste yesterday, brushing aside his argument that everyone in the county burned brush and old wood to get rid of it.  Now she felt guilty as she watched the frail man struggle with the additional weight.  Finally having wrestled the heavy container to the rear of his truck, he paused as if considering how to heft it up over the tailgate.  Jill worried that he might hurt his back trying to lift it.  He teetered, nearly losing his balance, but righted himself and used his knee to boost it up, just barely catching the upper rim on the edge of the tailgate.

It balanced precariously as he paused to catch his breath, and then he tipped it over to spill the contents.  Evidently it failed to completely empty because he stepped on the bumper and reached inside.  Suddenly he jerked his hand back with a cry, and let the barrel drop to the ground.  He jumped down, clutching his right wrist in his left hand, shook it a couple of times, and then peered at it intently.

"Oh my!" said Jill flinging the door open.

"Are you hurt?" she called down to him.

He looked up, blinking in surprise as if he didn't understand the question.  For a moment she thought that he was feeble minded.

"No, ma'am . . . not much anyways . . . just a scratch, I think."

"Let's take a look," she said coming down the stairs quickly without bothering to pull a jacket over her bare shoulders.

"It's okay.  No need to bother about it, ma'am."

Jill took his hand the way a mother would a child's.  More a tear than a cut, the wound was shallow, but definitely more than a scratch.  It wouldn't require stitches, but the accumulated grime on his hand made her wince.

"You'll get yourself all dirty if you ain't careful, ma'am."

"Have you had a tetanus inoculation recently?"

"Don't rightly know," he murmured almost inaudibly.  "They give me some kinda shots here awhile back."

"You need to check with your doctor, then.  With your job you surely need one.  Come inside and let me at least clean and bandage it."

"It's just a commonary scratch.  I'll take care of it when I'm through.  Only got me a couple of more pickups before I go to the landfill."

"Nonsense.  You come in the house and let me take care of this.  It was a nail, wasn't it?"

"I think so," he said, seeming less reluctant than before.  "Sure you want me in your house?  I'm awful dirty."

"That's okay.  This is my husband's fault.  He should have pulled the nails out before putting the boards in with the trash."

"I should of watched what I was doing, ma'am," he said, holding the door open for her.

"Thanks," she said.

"Welcome, ma'am."

"I appreciate your courtesy," she said lightly, "but that's enough of the ma'ams.  My name is Jill, Jill Carter."

He nodded his head, looking down after making brief eye contact.

"And what's your name?"

"Porter . . . Harold Porter, ma'am," he said without looking up.

Jill mistook his almost painful reticence for the country shyness she had encountered in some of the older inhabitants in the hills.

"There," she said, smoothing the last of the overlapping adhesive strips across the palm of his hand.  "Those will probably stay on until you are finished working.  Do you have gloves?  That would help."

"I'll get some before it gets real cold---first thing after Mr. Shelton pays me."

"Just a minute," she said, going quickly to the front closet.  "I think Richard has an old pair.  Yes, here they are."

He took the well-used thick gray suede work gloves with downcast eyes.

"Awful nice of you, Miss. Carter.  I'll get them back to you soon as I get me some of my own."

"Just keep them, Mr. Porter.  Richard has a newer pair he uses."

"They probably won't be fit for much after picking up garbage anyways," he said, studying the gloves as if he'd never seen anything like them before.

"Sorry to be so much trouble."  A quick glance up, then away.  "Appreciate your kindness, ma'am."

He went to the door quickly, as if eager to escape.  Jill wondered what she had done to make him uncomfortable.  She watched through the window as he rearranged the empty barrels and then pulled away without so much as a backward glance.

"Sad little man," she said aloud.

Before she let the curtain fall, she saw Raven coming up the drive.  Simultaneously, Mirabelle gave a quick short squall followed by her customary pause while she waited for someone to respond to her summons.

"Yes, little tyrant.  Mommy is coming."

She was in the process of changing diapers when Raven came in.

 

Pine, in the Irish Wilderness, Saturday noon

Richard accompanied his wife because it was his day off.  Beyond the gravel road, a scattering of tumbledown houses marked what was left of the town, now populated by many more dead than living.  Near the graveyard stood a forlorn little padlocked building.  A faded sign beside its rusty-hinged door proclaimed it the "Pine Community Center," testifying to someone's attempt at civic revival.

The cemetery sprawled across a once cleared hilltop being reclaimed by native vegetation.  Sassafras and persimmon sprouts spiked through thickets of blackberry brambles in the wilder, unmown portions of the field.  Elsewhere tufts of broom sedge overspread the uneven surface amid a jumble of broken, fallen, and skewed markers.  The newer ones, dating from nineteen-sixties, were of polished granite, but there were few of those.  Eroded concrete evoked the wretched poverty of the depression era, while the oldest graves attempted dignity via limestone markers, now darkly streaked and weathered beyond legibility, indecipherable unless one took a rubbing.

An old man hobbled toward them accompanied by a mixed breed hound, one of whose parents had been a black and tan, as Jill knelt trying to make out the faint carving on one of the older ones.  The dog arrived first, slowing to a subservient half crawl with a tail that couldn't decide if it should wag or tuck itself between the legs in apology.  Richard clicked a greeting and bent to stroke the craven pooch reassuringly.

"Hi," said the man, thrusting out an arthritis twisted hand to Richard.  "Name's Ira Wade."

"Richard Carter," he replied, grasping the cold bony hand firmly but lightly, noticing as he did the bruise purpling the base of the man's disfigured thumb.  "Glad to meet you.  This is my wife, Jill."

"Ma'am," he said nodding.  "Y'all got relatives buried here?"  His breath came audibly.  The traverse of no more than a hundred yards of uneven ground had winded him.

"No," said Richard, bending to pet the dog.  The mixed breed luxuriated in the attention.  "Is this your dog?"

"Thinks he is," said the man with a short rheumy laugh that slid into a hacking cough.  "We just keep each other company and I feed him.  Can I help you good folks with something?"

The man was being polite, but obviously wasn't leaving until he knew what they were doing in the graveyard if not looking for relatives.

"My wife is researching the old Irish settlement.  She teaches over at Blue Creek Community College."

"The Irish Wilderness, huh?" he replied with a hint of pride unaccompanied by further information which Jill read as an inability to say anything substantial about the history of the place.

"I've read all I can find about it," she said.  "But there really isn't that much.  I thought maybe I could find some Irish names here in the cemetery.  Is there a registry?"

"A what?"

"A registry.  It was a Catholic settlement, and I'm sure they kept a registry of the births, christenings, and deaths.  There wouldn't be anything like that in your community center, would there?"

"All that's in there are a few folding chairs, a couple of rickety tables, maybe some starving mice."  He sighed.  "Pine ain't rightly a town no more---no work or nothing else to keep young folks around---only memories to bring old ones back.  Some get carried back to be buried, but even that don't happen much anymore.  Be like the wilderness itself afore long."

"So there's nothing here?"

"Only things Irish you'll find here is arsh taters," he said.  "Know what them are, don't you?"

Jill shook her head, which he took as his cue to proceed with his joke.  "They's two kind of taters---sweet taters and arsh taters."

Once she understood the corruption of the word Irish, Jill smiled in polite appreciation of the old man's attempt at wit.  "So, there are no records here?"

"Never was that I knowed of---and they ain't no Irish names on the tombstones here neither.  Don't know where they buried them folks."

"That's what I feared," said Jill.

"The funeral home over to Doniphan might be some help.  Old Frank Graham has buried folks all through these hills.  He knows ever abandoned church and family graveyard in a hundred miles of here."

The old man had warmed to them.  Or perhaps he just didn't want his company to leave just yet.

"You know, if you was to need to find any of the old home sites I know how to do it, but you'd have to wait ‘til springtime to do her."

Intrigued, Jill asked, "How would you do that?"

"Get one of the fire patrol pilots to take you up---say in late February or early March---notice the spots you see bunches of Easter lilies down on the ground."

"Easter lilies?"

"That's what folks around here call jonquils and daffodils," explained Richard.

"They're tough little flowers.  You know how these women like their flowers," he said, turning to Richard.  "Jerlene surely did---she was my wife---good woman.  Anyways, them things grow where nothing else will.  A house can rot down or burn up---place be abandoned for a hundred years and them little flowers just keep on doing what they do.  They's almost immortal, I guess---kind of like the lilies of the field that are arrayed more gloriously than Solomon."

He shook his head.  "Would you listen to me go on?  Anyway, that's how you could spot lost house and cemetery plots, I think."

"That's quite ingenious, Mr. Wade," said Jill.

"An old man ain't got nothing else to do but think of foolishness," he said, trying to disguise his pleasure at her compliment.

"You wouldn't happen to know where the Catholic church was?"

"Not sure," he said turning to squint back across the road.  "See that patch of evergreens down and across the road?  Well, when I was a boy they called that the Catholic church, even though they wasn't no building or anything.  I remember wondering where all the stones went."

"Stones?  You mean grave markers?"

"No.  The church stones.  Catholics make church houses out of stone, don't they?  You seen them big ones they got over in Europe, haven't you---I mean, you being a teacher and all?"

"Oh yes," she said, trying to keep from sounding condescending.  "But sometimes I think the---um-uh, frontier Catholics, in small communities like this, may have built more modest church houses, perhaps even of logs."

"Do tell?  I never knowed that.  No wonder we never found no stones.  "Log churches, you say---just like ordinary folks."  He shook his head.  "Wonder why they picked up and left---always been a mystery to me."

"Not a mystery. Mr. Wade.  It was the Civil War.  Most new immigrants sympathized with the Union and most people around here were probably southern sympathizers."

"The War Between the States, you say?  Well.  I'll swan."

"Mr. Wade," said Jill.  "We have to go.  You couldn't tell us how to get to the town of Wilderness, could you?"

"Sure," he said, turning to Richard.  "Only it ain't no town.  You go back down this gravel road you come in on, young fellow.  Then you take the blacktop on south.  There's a sign down the road a piece.  Wilderness is off to the west not far.

After giving the instructions he turned back to Jill.  "But there ain't no Catholic church there neither, not even a grave yard."

As they walked back to the car, Wade stayed behind, perhaps communing with the spirits of  departed friends who had been "carried back" for burial.  When they were out of earshot, Richard put his arm around his wife and drew her close.

"You knew where Wilderness was.  Why did you ask him?"

"The same reason I ask you things sometimes." she said, leaning against him.  "Men like to be needed.  It made him feel good to be able to help us."

"You really think you'll find enough information for a paper?" he asked once they were back on the road.

"Not locally, but one could hardly write about it without visiting the site.  I came because I need a feel for the setting, though, of course, it's not the same as it was.  I need to find hard information, probably in Kansas City.  Very little has been published.  So far I just have the bare bones of the story, nothing to flesh it out---no specifics.  We know that a Father Hogan brought in forty families of Irish immigrants to settled land bought by the Church, and that the community of farmsteads more or less flourished until the Civil War.  Then, guerrilla warfare, religious persecution and the predation of bands of hooligans called bushwhackers caused them to abandon their farms."

"They run ‘em off, is the way you say that around here."

"That's how the area became the wilderness," she said.  "It was owned, and hence not open to further settlement."

"So it became a sort of unofficial national park in the days before there were such things."

"Right.  What I have to do is find the names of those forty families.  They may be filed away in the local courthouses, although most of those burned at one time or another.  Father Hogan went to a parish in the Kansas City area.  If church records are extant, that's probably where I can pick up the trail.  I should have already contacted the diocese.  I'm sure they'll be helpful."

"But they won't have anything but names, or records of births, deaths, marriages, christenings?"

"Perhaps I can track down letters, diaries---maybe even living descendants.  I have a lot of work to do.  I shouldn't be so lazy."

The blacktop meandered southward, twisting along ridge tops through dense second growth red oak timber interrupted only by the occasional unpaved road disappearing downward into the trees.  A sign marked the entrance to a camping area.  Then they topped a hill and broke into a clearing.

"There's the turn," said Jill as they approached a county road surfaced with creek gravel.

The houses in Wilderness were relatively new, the styles marking them as sixties and seventies era homes clad in blonde brick and white Masonite for the most part.  The collection of widely spaced houses, all located within spitting distance of the single unpaved road, made Wilderness the proverbial wide spot in the road, rather than the town that its name suggested.  No church, store or public building arrested the eye and soon only the forest and the sunset lay ahead of them.

"Well, that was certainly worth the trip," said Richard, looking for a convenient spot to turn around.

"That's historical research, for you," replied Jill distractedly.

"What's wrong?"

"I feel guilty leaving Mirabelle at home when I could have been with her a whole day.  Let's go home."

"An excellent suggestion." 

"Sorry I made you waste your whole day off for nothing too."

"My day is never wasted when I'm with you, Dear," he said, leaning to give her a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Richard, watch where you're going before you put us in the ditch."

"Not to worry.  You're in good hands."

A patch of dun colored hardpan on what passed for a shoulder caught his eye.  Quickly calculating that it would give him space to turn around, he slowed to pull in preparatory to backing around.  Something dark brown tangled in the dead ragweed brush ahead caught his eye and took his breath away.

Without knowing how he got there, he found himself out of the car and standing in the weeds.  At his feet, protruding from the rumpled cloth, was a head covered with tightly knit hair like overgrown Velcro.  The body lay face down and too still, seeming to have almost melted into ground.  Richard gaped, feeling with dread certainty what would happen next.  With the toe of his boot he nudged the body over, vigilant for signs of life.  But the head lolled limply, dragged along by the fall of the emaciated body as it settled on its back.  A child's dark eyes settled to stare directly into his own.

"Richard!  What is it?  What's wrong?"

A voice.  Familiar.

He came to himself, still seated in the car, with heart pounding, trying to catch his breath.  Through the windshield he saw only an old shirt tangled in the weeds.  Nothing more.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah . . . I'm . . . I'm fine."

She looked at him with concern, shaking her head slowly in negation of his patently false assurance.

"No you're not.  Now what happened?"

"Nothing really.  I just saw that rag and . . . it was kind of like a---"

He stopped, not wanting to say flashback because it sounded melodramatic.

"It just reminded me of the . . . uh . . . kid from Somalia . . . too good of an imagination, I guess."

He frightened her when he was like this.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked wide-eyed.

He looked out the side window.  "Not really."

"Richard if---"

"Let's go home, Jill," he said, cutting her off.

"Okay.  Let's do that."  She took his arm, leaned her head against it.  "I'm here for you if---"

"I know," he said, patting her hand absently before shifting into reverse.

Jill and Raven sat in the cabin and talked while Shane showed Richard the work he'd done and discussed what else needed to be done to the cabin and grounds.  They decided to hold off on the purchase of more materials for the time being, including the shingles for the roof.  Instead, Shane would fell a couple of diseased red oaks and clear brush away from the drive.  The Carter's took Mirabelle home around eight o'clock.  Afterwards Raven did school work at the kitchen table while Shane watched TV in the front room.  By eleven they were both ready for bed.

Raven waited until she heard the door close and Shane moving around in the front room before finally getting ready for bed.  Though she knew it was paranoid, she couldn't get undressed, even with the lights off, until she knew that he wasn't outside the cabin.  She had an almost obsessive need to know exactly where he was at all times, especially at night.  The new curtain blocked view from the deck, but she still thought it possible that someone could look in the one facing the creek.

Good grief, Raven.  The creek bank is steep and the window is so high that he'd have to be seven feet tall to look in.  Paranoid.  Of course, a man in the river with binoculars could---This is ridiculous!

Impulsively, Raven decided to do something in order to force herself to face her foolish fears.

No one is outside, so go ahead.

She paused, held her breath, listening intently until she heard Shane getting ready for bed in the next room.  Then she checked the lock on her own door.  Deliberately leaving on the light, and resisting the urge to hang a blanket over the window, she grasped the bottom of her sweater and started to peel it over her head in full view of the back window.

Even if someone is looking, he can't harm you, so go ahead.  No.  Better---pretend someone is looking.  Show yourself that it doesn't matter.

She turned her back and began peeling off the sweater.  Then she thought she heard something outside.

Just your imagination.

She told herself, but she stood stock-still clutching the sweater to her chest.  She took a deep breath and deliberately let the sweater fall to the floor.  She turned, and went slowly to the window.  Just as she reached it, she thought she heard something again.  In a near panic, she raced for the light switch.  When the room was dark, she tiptoed to the window and peered out.  But all she could see was the shimmer of moonlight on the creek and the far end of the dock and there was no one there.

October 1

The next morning Raven came into the Carter's living room carrying her usual armload of books just as Richard was leaving for work.

"Coffee's ready," he said, buckling on his holster and grabbing his hat from the peg by the front door.  "You look like you could use it . . .I mean, you look like you're still trying to wake up."

She laughed.  "Jill always says you're too honest for your own good, Mr. Carter.  I am tired---probably look like Frankenstein's bride."

"I didn't mean it that way.  You're like Jill.  Neither of you could look bad if you tried.  Anyway, Jill's running a little late---or Mirabelle is."  He slipped on his uniform jacket.  "How are things going out at the rental?  Shane said everything was all right, but I'd like to hear your opinion.  Anything else to fix up?"

"Nothing.  It's really nice, you letting us stay there.  I just feel like we're taking advantage of you all."

"Nonsense.  I still have another eight month's lease on this place and the rental needs someone to look after it.  The last thing I need is to have someone vandalize the place.  Plus, with winter coming on, it doesn't need to stay unoccupied and unheated."

"Still, after the repair work is over, Shane and I would like to begin paying rent."

He didn't answer right away.  He knew they were having a tough time financially too.  Despite the relatively low cost of in-district tuition, the Pell grant Jill had helped her get barely covered their necessities.  She made a little baby-sitting for them, but Shane was still looking for a regular job.

"We'll decide all that later," he said.

"We don't want to take advantage of you.  That's all."

"Well, you just talk it over with Jill.  She makes all the important decision in this family," he said.  "Gotta go.  Don't let my daughter run over you today."

"According to Jill, you're the only one Mirabelle runs over," she said with a smile. 

"Feminine propaganda," he said as he opened the door.  "See you."

"Bye."

She liked Richard, and that had little to do with the fact that he had saved her life a year earlier.  Oddly, she felt more comfortable with him than any other man, even Shane.  Perhaps it was because she admired Jill so and the two of them were so obviously devoted to each other.

She placed her books on the kitchen table, but knocked them to the floor as she went for coffee.

"Is that you, Raven?" called Jill from the bedroom.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"We're running late in here, I'm afraid.  What's the temperature like this morning?"

"A little cold and there's a pretty good breeze picking up."

She heard a knock as she was pouring her coffee, and carried it to the front door to see who it was.  When she pulled aside the curtain, she saw the garbage man standing with his back to the door, hands jammed into grease stained pockets, hunched against the cold.  He turned when she opened the door and looked at her blankly.

"Is--uh--Miss Carter home?" he stammered, licking his cracked lips nervously.  "I couldn't find the check she usually leaves at the bin.  Thought maybe she forgot or the wind blowed it away or something."

As if on cue a gust blew the collar of his jacket against his cheek and threatened to pull the storm door from her hand.  He hunched his shoulders against the cold, and let his eyes drop to the floorboards on the porch.

"Yes, she's here.  I'll get her."  She held the door open.  "Come on in out of the cold."

"I'll wait here."

Tempted to leave him outside, Raven hesitated.  "No, come on in.  Mrs. Carter wouldn't want you standing out there in the cold."

Harold stepped hesitantly into the front room.  He didn't know the girl, but she looked familiar.

Maybe Miss Carter's little sister come to visit, he thought.  They don't look much alike though.  Real pretty little thing.

When she noticed him staring at her, he looked away, his face reddening.  Raven noticed the blush, but didn't know what to make of it.

"Can I get you some coffee?" she asked.

"If it ain't no trouble," he mumbled.

"Jill," she called out, as she went to get the coffee, "Mr. Porter is here for his check."

Distracted by her search through the cabinet for a clean cup, Raven didn't notice Jill come through the kitchen holding Mirabelle to her breast.

"Where did all the cups go?" asked Raven, her back still turned.

"Look in the dishwasher, Dear.  I'll just go get the check.  I left in the front room, I think." said Jill, adjusting her hold on Mirabelle who was pulling contentedly at her left breast.

She looked up to see Harold, mouth open and cheeks literally burning in a deep blush.

"Oh!" he gasped, turning quickly to avert his eyes.

"Oh my!" Jill stammered before recovering quickly.  "Oh my . . .I've . . . I didn't know you were in the house, Mr. Porter."

"I'll come back later," he mumbled over his shoulder, almost stumbling toward the door.

"There's no need for that," she said pulling Mirabelle's blanket higher.  "I mean, we're both adults, and this is . . . I really am sorry.  I don't usually . . . I hope you don't think that---"

His embarrassment seemed to be contagious, and now Jill was blushing.

"I'll come back later," he repeated, yanking at the door.

Before she could stop him, he was out and down the steps.  A cold draft from the unclosed door he left behind skittered a solitary leaf across the hardwood floor toward Raven who came into the room carrying a cup of coffee for him.

"Where did he go?" she asked in surprise.

"Why didn't you tell me he was in the house?"

"I did," said Raven, with slowly dawning comprehension.  "Oh no.  You came in nursing Mirabelle and he---"

"Got more than he bargained for," said Jill, unable to suppress a laugh as she sat down, holding her daughter close.  "You should have seen the look on the poor man's face."

Raven set her jaw, thinking about the way the man avoided eye contact, yet always seemed to be staring at her whenever she looked his way.

"I can imagine," she said. 

"No, Dear.  The poor man was shocked.  He literally ran from the house in embarrassment."

Raven sat beside her, as if in wonder.  "How do you do it, Jill?"

"What?"

"You take everything in stride.  You always know what to do."

"I'm five years older than you, Dear."

  As soon as she said it, she knew it was too facile as well as condescending.

"But mainly I've learned to appear as if I'm taking things in stride, as you say.  Half the time I wonder why I didn't have the sense to do what I should have done instead of the stupid thing that I actually did."

"It doesn't seem that way to me.  I wish I were like you."

"What a wonderful compliment," said Jill as she readjusted Mirabelle's position.  "Especially since I admire you so.  You really don't know how remarkable you are, do you, Dear?" 

"I'm not, Jill," she said softly.

"Yes.  You are.  Believe me---this, I know.  I know you don't like to talk about this, but you are not the kind of person that what has happened to you almost always produces.  You are a loving, caring and sharing person.  And you're my friend."

"My life is an absolute mess," she answered, shaking her head in disagreement.  "I'm taking advantage of a man who loves me and I may never be able to---to return that love.  He thinks he knows me, Jill, but he doesn't."

Her words came chokingly now.  It was the first time Jill had seen her succumb so openly to the despair that always lay just beneath the surface of her sometimes too cool exterior.

Finally sated, Mirabelle pulled away, releasing the nipple.  A welcome distraction for both women. 

"I wish it were different.  I wish I were different.  It's just all so hopeless, and I've dragged him into it."

Jill paused to button her gown, giving herself time to form her reply.

"Shane understands---well, no man can understand---but he knows what has happened to you---and, he knows the risk.  He accepts it because he loves you.  You see you're relationship as flawed, but almost all relationships are flawed---and I know this:  what the two of you feel for each other is more than most people ever have.  You can't lose hope, Dear."

"Funny you should say that," said Raven.  "In my comp class we had to write an essay on something from mythology.  I wrote about Pandora."

"A male chauvinist story about how everything was perfect until a woman's curiosity and disobedience ruined everything," said Jill with a laugh.  "Richard would love it."

"Remember how after all the evils were released, the last thing out of the box was hope?"

Jill nodded, encouraging her.

"People think hope was given to help man bare all the evil that would now come his way, but that is not what I think the myth means.  Where there is life, there is hope?  Well, where there is hope, especially in the face of the inevitable, there is continued suffering.  Hope is the final twist of the blade because it makes one endure and suffer to the end."

"That sounds about right," said Jill.  "The Greeks were gloomy bastards at times---all that fate nonsense.  I think I like the Romans better.  One of them said:  Our fate lies not in our stars, but in our selves."

"But Jill, we are what has happened to us."

"We are not.  We are what we have done when things happen to us.  And you've survived, and gone on.  You have nothing to apologize for---nothing to be ashamed of."

"I've heard how you speak of your Aunt Mirabelle.  Would it offend you if I said that you're like that to me?

"I'm not worthy of the role, Raven.  However, I know what she would tell you right now.  She would tell you that God has sent a good man to love and take care of you."

"And what would she say if I told her that I don't know if I'll ever be capable of loving him in return---at least not the way he wants?"

Jill didn't know how to answer.  "Does he make you feel loved?"

Raven nodded.

"And does that please you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you wish that he didn't?"

"No."

"Then I know what Aunt Mirabelle would say.  She would say that throwing away this man's love is a foolish thing for you to do.  She once told me that the world is a hard place for a woman sometimes.  She said that it is more important for a woman to be loved than merely to love."

"So we're supposed to just make the best of things?"

"Of course.  Remember, we're the foolish creatures who had no better sense than to release hope into a suffering world?" said Jill, trying to lighten the mood.

"Would she tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself?"

"Absolutely," said Jill.

And she would have cried for you, she thought.  But never would she have let you see her tears.