Women & Other Animals (10 page)

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The Fishing Dog

At first Gwen thought it was Jake coming downstream in the boat, but it turned out to be his brother Dan. At the noise of the boat engine, the yellow Labrador retriever across the river moved up the lawn toward its house, and a great blue heron who must have been fishing on the other side of the cabin launched itself into flight. Gwen watched it ascend, wishing she'd known the bird was nearby so she could have spied on it. There was another guy with Dan, but she could see he was about half as big as Jake. Maybe they'd brought food. She'd like to eat something besides fish that didn't come out of a can. She reeled in her line and grabbed Dan's prow as he idled alongside the dock.

"What do you think?" yelled Dan over the engine noise.

"You got a new boat, Dan."

He cut the motor. "She's pretty, ain't she? Got a steal on her from a guy getting divorced."

"Where's Jake?" Gwen didn't usually talk to Dan. Usually she stood by while Jake and Dan talked to each other.

"That's what I come to tell you, honey. Jake's in jail."

"For what?"

"For killing a man."

"You're lying."

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''I ain't going to lie about a thing like that. Jake didn't mean for it to happen."

"If it's an accident, they'll let him go."

"Except this ain't the first time."

Gwen pointed at the fivegallon fish pail that Dan was lifting off the boat. "Give me that."

"Gwennie, are you crying?" He rested the bucket on the dock and put his arms around her. Dan was fatter than his brother, but he didn't feel all that different close up.

Gwen thought of pulling away from him, of running in the woods until she fell into stinging nettles and poison ivy. She thought of smashing her fists into Dan's chest. If she'd had an axe in her hand, she'd have swung it into a tree.

She grabbed the bucket, sloshing water on herself and Dan. Two of the three catfish inside were longer than her forearms. Their seaweedy whiskers brushed against the sides as they slid over one another. "I've been waiting for a catfish," she said, holding her head up to let the tears drain through the backs of her eyes.

"These come from Willow Island," said Dan. He seemed even fatter suddenly, unsure of himself, waiting for a cue from Gwen, who wasn't accustomed to giving cues, especially not to men twice her age.

"Who you got with you?" she asked. The other man made no motions to disembark.

"That's just Charley. He works at the plant with me." Charley was skinny and had no teeth so his lips caved in.

Dan took the fish from the bucket one by one and held each carefully as he nailed its head to the nearest oak; the three tails strained and curled against the bark. The men stood by while Gwen stunned one with the hammer and began tearing off its skin with pliers.

"Tell me all of what happened." Though she knew better, Gwen brushed against the catfish fins and her fingers burned.

"Well, we left the Pub and was at the Tap in Roseville having a few beers, and Jake and this guy he's playing pool with gets to fighting, and Jake knocks him against a wall. But Jake don't seem to notice the guy is passed out so he picks him up and keeps hitting him."

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Gwen could imagine Jake, crazyeyed and drunk beyond talking to, slugging like a slugging machine gone haywire. When he was in that condition, he'd even pick a fight with Dan. Or Gwen if she didn't keep out of his way. Gwen's fingers trailed again across a catfish whisker. The pain was so sharp she was surprised not to see blood on her knuckle.

"Next thing you know, the sonofabitch is dead. Brain hemorrhage or some shit like that. So the cops show up and they figure out right away about the other charge."

"What other charge?" asked Gwen.

"The manslaughter charge."

"What manslaughter charge?"

"Well, whatever the hell they're calling it. Up in the U.P. last winter. Jake must've told you about it. Why do you think he's been out here in the woods since February?"

The trees became thicker and taller around her. She tugged on the second catfish skin, trying not to let it split, but she stung her wrist and made a mess of it.

"Hey, Charley, toss me a beer," said Dan. Gwen looked up to see the can fly through the air. When Dan opened it, foam poured all over his hand. "How you coming there, Gwen?"

She worked slowly with the pliers on this last, smallest one, tugging around the sides evenly, removing the skin in one piece down to the tail. If what Jake had done in the U.P. was an accident, why hadn't he mentioned it to her?

"All the police had on that trouble up north was a description including them spaghetti scars on the back of his hand. It was the same deal, Jake drunk and not knowing when to quit."

"Can I see him?"

"It'd be better if you didn't, honey."

What else hadn't Jake told her about in the last five months? A wife, maybe?

Inside the cabin, Gwen fried the fish the way she would have for Jake, with cornmeal and flour in the last of the bacon grease. About the time they finished eating, Dan turned on his batterypowered fluorescent lantern. Gwen was surprised at how bugstained the Page 65

walls were, how ratty the rug looked in the cold light, and how grimy she had let her arms and legs become. She asked Dan to tell her more.

"There ain't nothing more to it."

"Does Jake own this cottage?" she asked.

"Me and Jake own it together. You can stay here as long as you want, Gwennie. Don't you worry your pretty head about that."

Dan and Charley drank beer while Gwen washed dishes with water she lugged in and heated on the propane stove. Gwen, who didn't usually drink, managed to get down three beers before she felt herself nodding off. She awoke with her forehead on the table, with Dan stroking her hair. Dan told Charley he could sleep in the rocking chair on the screen porch and threw him a sleeping bag from the boat. Then he halfcarried Gwen into the tiny bedroom with him. She felt obliged, as though refusing to go to bed with him would've been inhospitable.

Early in the morning, she crawled out of bed and heated water for powdered coffee. There wasn't much propane left. When it ran out she'd have to take the boat to Confluence to get the tank filled, which would cost twenty dollars she didn't have. She walked past Charley slumped sideways in the porch chair—he'd have a terrible stiff neck when he woke up. From her dock she watched the green Jeep pull away from the house across the river. This evening when the man got home she could watch his yellow dog hunker down again at the river's edge. Since Jake had gone, she'd seen it catch a fish in its jaws five times.

After more than two weeks without Jake, Gwen had forgotten how a big man generated heat around him; the bedroom had been stifling last night. She'd never meant to sleep with Dan, but she'd let herself forget who he was when he rolled onto her. Guilt pricked her, as sharp as the catfish stingers. If Jake found out, he'd punch her like she was a man, and maybe she deserved it. She pushed those thoughts below the surface. The steam rose off her coffee as mist rose from the water.

Gwen found her siphon hose and sucked gas out of Dan's tank, enough for a trip up to Confluence, two maybe if she rowed back Page 66

down without the motor. Or maybe she'd take a fishing trip to Willow Island where last time she'd seen a heron carry a little snake up to its tree nest. She rinsed the fuel taste from her mouth with coffee and spat it into the river. Back in the cottage, she lifted three beers out of Dan's cooler and hid them in the kitchen cupboard. Dan called her name, and she stepped into the tiny bedroom. He didn't look as much like Jake as he had yesterday; he looked more like a swollen possum washed up on her river bank.

"Come here, beautiful," he said. She hesitated, but the room was small enough that he was able to reach across, grab her arm, and drag her to the bed. He pulled off her loose jeans without unzipping them and pushed her Tshirt up around her shoulders. She bent her knees and tried to sit up, but he held her down with one hand and ran the other over her breasts and along her stomach. He pushed her knee out to the side and heaved himself onto her, then worked his hand beneath her buttock to tilt her, pushing deeper. He sighed her name in hot breath. She turned her head to look out the window but saw only empty sky. She wondered how she had let this happen. "Oh, Gwennie," he moaned again, and she felt his sickening heat over her face, through her hair, filling the room. She longed to see a heron fly across the sky framed by the window, its neck pressed into a tight S. She needed to feel that prehistoric swoop or hear the monster shriek of an angry male. A flash of bluegray wing and she would survive this.

After Dan rolled off her, he fell asleep. Gwen pulled away from him and picked her clothes up off the floor with shaking hands. In the kitchen she sifted weevils out of the flour for pancakes—she needed to do something measured. Each time she let herself think of Dan lying in her bed, she had to sit and hold her head in her hands.

She thought about grabbing the butcher knife with the burned handle and going back in there. She'd feel for a place between two ribs and sink the blade in. When Charley appeared in the kitchen with his gummy smile, holding his neck, she invited him to sit at the table. She opened a beer, poured half of it in her batter, then handed the open can to Charley. His company calmed her stomach. "Are you hungry, Charley?" she asked. "Did you sleep good?"

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"You's got a toilet around here?" asked Charley. Gwen directed him to the outhouse.

When Dan and Charley first powered away, Gwen was relieved. But as soon as the boat rounded the bend, she felt lonesome and nauseated. Dan had given her the food from his cooler—cheese, summer sausage, and sleeves of crackers—before pulling away to return to his wife. Later Gwen discovered two twentydollar bills on her pillow. She wished Dan had said something like, "Jake wanted me to give you this."

Hours later, after the Jeep returned, the fishing dog appeared in his place on the other side of the river. To lighten the boat for rowing, Gwen pulled off the outboard with shaking hands and placed it carefully on blocks so as not to bend the propeller, then rowed across. She had never touched the dog or seen him up close, but when she called him, he jumped into her boat. Gwen petted his head, which seemed to repel drops of water. "I'll call you King," she whispered, thinking of the bigheaded kingfisher bird who lived across the river from her dad's trailer in Snow Pigeon. She didn't consider it stealing when she took the dog to her side and let him out to sniff the water's edge. If he wanted to stay and chase the raccoons up trees, that would be his choice. With a companion like him, Gwen wouldn't mind staying in the woods. But it wasn't long before she heard a man's voice shouting, "Renegade!" The dog plunged into the water and swam the fifty or so yards to the other side.

A week of heavy rain made Gwen a prisoner in the cottage. When Jake was there, she hadn't minded so much being without a phone or a radio, but now she longed for voices. Back in Snow Pigeon, after years of pleading, she and her sister Paula had finally talked their dad into getting phone service. They'd been working on getting him to buy a television next. But even just bickering with Paula would have been entertainment enough now. The rain banged on the corrugated roof, making the same sound as rain hitting their trailer.

Years ago Gwen's father used to take her fishing; Paula was too

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fidgety, too noisy, Daddy said. Gwen used to practice sitting stone quiet sometimes so she could be a good girl in the boat. For the last couple years, though, when Daddy came in from work in the evenings, he just brooded and drank. For months before she left, Daddy, quiet in the best of times, hadn't spoken to her except to yell at her, and Paula was mad because Gwen upset Daddy by not staying away from boys. When Jake had started fishing in the river in front, talking sweet while Daddy was still at work, he had seemed like a knight to the rescue. When he asked her to come down the river with him, she'd hardly hesitated. And since she'd left in April, she'd never dared call Daddy or Paula, even to let them know she was alive. Gwen could still feel their anger flowing with the river's current all the way from Snow Pigeon.

The first day the rains let up, Gwen crossed the river. She called the dog to her boat, and he jumped in. But before she could push off, the man who drove the Jeep appeared from behind the shed and stepped kneedeep into the water to grab the prow of her boat. He was thin and probably only a few inches taller than Gwen.

"Evening," he said calmly. "Where are you taking my dog?"

"Acrcrcross the river. I just . . . I live over there."

"I know where you live, but why are you taking Renegade?" His biceps strained against his bones. Tendons stood out on one side of his neck as Gwen continued rowing in place without speaking. He said, as much to himself as to her, "You're just plain not going to answer me."

Mosquitos lined up on Gwen's legs and arms, and she could feel them settling onto her face and sinking their stingers. She watched two, then three, then five mosquitos land on the man's forehead. His hair fell straight down from a center part; if it were any darker, it wouldn't have been blond. When he let go of her boat with one hand to swat at mosquitos, Gwen was able to break free. The man folded his arms and stood in the water watching her, looking more perplexed than angry as she rowed away. His jeans were soaked up past his knees, and his figure grew smaller as Gwen approached her own side. She parked at her dock, and King jumped out and swam to shallower water to sniff along the muskrat holes and mangled

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roots. The man across the river disappeared and returned with binoculars and walked the plank onto his oilbarrel float. Twenty minutes later he called, "Renegade!"

When Gwen motored to Confluence to buy toilet paper and bottle gas, she didn't go near the Pub for fear of seeing Dan. Partway home, just above Willow Island, she cut the engine and floated downstream with the current, rowing only to fix her direction. The miles of dark, empty river belonged to her, but she'd have traded it all for one party, where music played and people danced under lanterns strung treetotree. She'd drift near the bank or near a big island, and the people would motion her over to join them. Instead, she rounded the last bend above her hut and saw a speedboat there. A bright, cold light shone from inside the cabin—Dan's fluorescent lantern. She steered herself toward the opposite bank, soundlessly maneuvering to the downstream side of the fishing snag just below King's house. She watched her cottage until the light went out, and then she lay her head on a faded orange life vest. Over and over, she shrugged away the memory of Dan's hairy belly and crushing weight.