Big Bend Page 11

  “Oh, were you at the movie?” Her face lit up suddenly. She squinted over Porter’s shoulder. “Ricky!” she cried, and danced away to hug a handsome boy who had just come in the door.

  Was Porter at the movie!

  He had given his apology. He would respect the young woman’s feigned nonchalance. She stood talking volubly to Ricky, a quick friendly hug as he shrugged out of his brightly colored ski jacket. Ricky did not seem yet to be her boyfriend. He was a big taciturn football boy with a natty crew cut and the number eleven on his chest. The girl liked him a lot, was lit and afire with her effort to please him.

  Ricky wasn’t half so interested in her, just listened aloofly with one eye on the crowd, the stud’s lookout for other girls, for any girl, for a look at some legs in a skirt.

  Porter stepped to the bar and ordered a pint of stout, which he drank rather too quickly. He ordered another, watching in the mirror. The reflection of the girl and handsome Ricky appeared just above the cash register. She was telling him an animated story, gesticulating, very serious, a hand to her forehead. She turned to look for Porter—the subject of her tale—turned to try and find him in the knot of drinkers at the bar. He crouched to be hidden by the patrons beside him, turned to watch TV. Basketball. Quickly, Porter was absorbed.

  A time-out after a foul brought a commercial. The man next to him, a burly Knicks fan in a Con Ed uniform, shook his head at the team’s poor showing, expressed his hope that what had occurred thus far in the proceedings was no indicator of outcome. Porter smiled easily and agreed—though he’d never liked the Knicks much or even basketball—then stepped back a little and turned to see what was next with Ricky and the young woman. Ricky was hidden by the crowd, but the girl was in the midst of pulling her sweater over her head. Her shirt rose with her arms. There was some trouble with the sweater and her hair. Her shirttails, white, pulled out of her tight pants, parted, and Porter saw her belly button, which was all belly buttons, and caught him unawares. He cocked his head in omphalic wonder and delight. Where had she gotten her tan? Her sweater popped free and she caught him again, caught him staring abstractedly at her middle. He turned back to the bar. Oh, stupidity! He was making things worse. He ought to get out more often—he was turning into a pig.

  He should have gone home after the movie. He put his head in his hands, thought again of Janine. He must ask Janine out. He sat up, planning this, sipped his beer. In the mirror he saw Ricky offer the young woman a green bottle of beer which she declined, pointing unhappily at the door. Ricky waved off her protests and put the beer in her hand, began again to scan the room. Porter was relieved to see that Ricky saw no one to worry about, watched in the mirror as Ricky dismissed the young woman’s fears with a little wave of his hand: enough of this complaining.

  The young woman, liking Ricky very much and with no command over him (so Porter surmised), had to forget about leaving. She put her sweater down on the radiator over her purse and coat, went back to Ricky. He got her laughing, and her new happiness relieved Porter entirely.

  He looked away, ordered another beer, decided to forget about the whole thing. Vile movie! Getting everyone worked up for nothing but the profits to be made at nine dollars a head. Vile loneliness! Turning him in to something he was not. He got to talking to the Con Ed guy—the Knicks fan—and they watched the game on the TV at their end of the bar. Con Ed didn’t find Porter odd in the slightest, in fact happily told him his theory about the higher scores produced in these late-night West Coast games. So sweet to have a friend! Porter tried to forget the girl and forget women in general and forget Sarah and feminine navels and if necessary think of Janine, with whom he at least had some sort of chance at a friendship, perhaps a date.

  The Knicks won in a rambunctious overtime brawl. Con Ed pounded Porter on the back, as pleased as a lottery winner, excited as a father with a winning kid. The beer had made Porter garrulous, too, and he was pleased to bark back at Con Ed, the two of them laughing, shouting with the other Knicks people, their eyes on the silent TV. Con Ed bought a shot of Irish whiskey and another beer for Porter. In his turn, Porter bought a shot of Irish whiskey and a beer for Con Ed. At length Porter looked back down the bar and into the mirror. Different faces, but oops! there she was, trying valiantly to get that fool Ricky interested in her, smiling, laughing with him and now with some of his friends, all in their football numbers. But how good to see her happy, after the trouble he had caused. She stepped laughing to the bar, caught him and his eye in the mirror. Her face fell. Porter didn’t flinch and didn’t smile, but nodded at her happiness, and the two of them held a long reflected gaze that the bartender interrupted, taking her order. She ignored Porter then, accepted her green bottles, handing over her money (buying drinks for boys!), stepped back to Ricky and his growing group of pals. When she looked back, Porter (pleasantly potted, let’s admit it) was still watching, interested in the scene in a kind of cinematic way.

  Was he at the movie!

  Porter sipped his beer, the best he had ever tasted. Con Ed was looking back at the TV, hoping for some highlights. Porter asked for a pen from the bartender and wrote quickly on a thick paper coaster: Janine. Way to ask. A Friday lunch. Ask her Tuesday. To Campagnola’s or quiet place by new theater?

  When he looked up after a struggle with pocketing the coaster, Ricky was at his side. Several of the other football boys stood around him, too, and the bartender’s face was only inches away. “Time to go now,” the bartender said.

  “He’s bothering my date,” Ricky said, looking in Porter’s eyes but addressing Con Ed, who looked on quizzically, not sure whose side to take.

  “A misunderstanding,” Porter said, knowing fully how close he might seem to being a stalker, understanding clearly everyone’s concern, unable to find the words to defend himself, though surely he was innocent enough, surely, surely. “Loneliness,” he said.

  “He’s been following Anne around,” Ricky said. “Following her all night.”

  “Out, then,” the bartender said in a thickening Irish accent.

  Porter rose, shrugged into his coat, shook his head a little to let Con Ed know it was all a mistake, found himself hustled along the staring bar and past the young woman to the door and onto the sidewalk where the football boys pushed him roughly over the dirty snowbank and into the street between parked cars. Other types might have punched Porter or kicked him or shouted names, but these boys were chivalrous about their violence, stood unassertively and waited to see what he would do.

  What Porter did was slowly stand. At his full height he brushed his coat and said, “I apologize. Gentlemen, I’m sorry.”

  The boys sneered for one another’s benefit and turned back to the bar as Con Ed came out through them, bearing Porter’s cap. Porter smiled meekly, greeted his compassionate colleague. He said, “Well, at least those boys have a story to tell their friends now.”

  Con Ed laughed and helped him over the snowbank, helped him brush his coat, laughed and said nothing, still not sure of Porter’s innocence.

  Porter said, “Those boys have a story for life.” He put his cap on his head, shook Con Ed’s hand, walked away down the sidewalk and safely home.

  And he thought of the football boys’ story all week at work, thought of the story they’d tell about him, told Janine all of it over Friday’s lucky and leisurely lunch: the night the old team rushed a pervert to the pavement, the night Ricky finally fell for Anne.

  Fog

  Twice I have been lost in the fog in a boat, once with Cara, once with Peter Pearson and both times scared shitless. Cara’s canoe the first time in Blanchard Cove (we call it Fast Cove) with harbor seals around us playing and snorting, swimming under us and coming up way ahead, dunking when we got close, coming up way ahead again, calling us out farther, farther yet, we paddling farther, they lurking, farther yet, two seals playing us out, though her dad had said, “Stay in the cove.” Cara paddled in front in her bathing suit, a bottom piece cut high and a top piece t
oo big for her, very strong colors in it. And, no matter what, I did like watching the straps of the top piece, the way one strap fell off her shoulder when she paddled this way, and the other fell off when we switched hands, so she had to switch the paddle and put her strap back up each time. And she already had a good tan that came up from Greenwich with her, Connecticut. We were new to each other, a regular boy from Maine and a rich summer girl, last July, not even a year ago, not even a year.

  Now, this was at high tide and the tides in Fast Cove are big so it was easy skimming out and the sun was bright and we paddled all the way to the deep gut by the lighthouse, which is where we ought to have turned back. But there was time and the morning was warm now after the fog had moved offshore. We followed the two seals playing their game with us, but past the breakwater there were no more seals, just the sea and Great Island and Foster Island far away and whitecaps.

  “Better go back in,” Cara said, and we turned the canoe expertly and paddled but made no progress; we paddled hard but still moved out to sea, backwards: two powers to fight, the tide and now a big wind.

  Cara said, “Faster.”

  We did paddle hard but the lighthouse zoomed away anyhow and shrank, and the shore sped away, and now a high sheet of clouds made the sun colder (but we were warm enough from paddling) and we flew out to sea, backward as hell in that heavy old canoe, paddling against everything.

  “Michael …” She called me Michael. “Michael, we are getting nowhere fast.” Not scared, not really. Saying more than just what her words said, saying something like, Together we are in this danger. She turned and laughed and we caught eyes strongly and of all the moments coming and all the moments gone in my life, this is the moment I remember most. After the laughing we just looked at each other a long time.

  True that the wind was stronger yet and gooseflesh on my arms, and I could see gooseflesh on her legs and her color coming blue, and I thought she wasn’t going to like me much after this, unless.

  So I said, “Let’s paddle over that way.” And now the wind went down a lot and we made toward the beach at Mares. I thought I saw a seal but it was not a seal, it was a cormorant floating. The beach at Mares Cove was two miles away easy. By now we’d lost Fast Cove totally. Not a chance. But the sun was back. And it was hot on my skin and shone on hers and on the strings of the bathing suit she’d switched with her one-piece the second her father drove off, undressing and then dressing magically inside a towel while I didn’t look.

  “We can hitch back,” Cara said. “Can we?” And then she laughed and turned around once again, and we laughed and laughed, laughed out loud, eyes locked and seeing the part that did not laugh. The straps of her suit both fell down and she crossed her arms to put them back and we laughed. She was sleek as a seal, she was, no great bosomy breasts on her, a good thing no matter what anybody says, her shoulders wide from swim team. Swim team and her ribbons she’d told me about when we met our first time at the band shell in town. And her hair was plain straight and almost red. Around her ankle a gold bracelet that I wanted to know who gave her.

  “You be back by noon for lunch,” her father had said. He would pick us up in their van. And help us lift the beautiful old wooden canoe—the perfect old wooden canoe, made by Old Town Abenaki Indians in the last century, her father had said, “So be careful as heck!” That canoe lives in their boathouse (which is as big as our whole house), gets used about once every summer if that, since they’re all so busy with games on lawns and pool parties and what to wear.

  And he would take me home. Then tennis lessons for Cara. Then a pool workout, one half hour, and clean her room in their cottage, which is big as the old Milbridge high school, twenty rooms. Then clamming, he said. Me in the summer, I just let the day come. Cara’s dad had life scheduled so it was nothing but a day’s work. And Cara whispered to him on her tiptoes, begging, and he reluctantly invited me for clamming at four and dinner at six. And he called dinner “sup-pah” to make fun of me, fucking summer fudgie.

  Now past noon and Cara in big trouble anyway, and the sun back out, so we paddled slowly and just noodled and splashed around, heading for Mares on the tide. “Let’s sing!” she said. And we sang a camp song of hers, I cannot forget the tune. The sun came out and dried out the landy landy. Is all the words I can get back in my head.

  And just as it’s going right, trouble again. The fog. Hot days like this it will sit on the cold water and move in, move out. First a wisp, then we were in it thick, then out, then very thick, and I couldn’t see Cara at the bow of the canoe. And then out, the canoe all turned around and pointed out to sea in just that short time, then in again, and Jesum Crow, in for long minutes until we were cold again, like ice. We paddled hard to warm up, and I knew which way to go for about five minutes, then I did not.

  “Which way?” Cara said.

  I shrugged when she looked back.

  And she said, “Point to Mares.”

  I pointed.

  Cara shook her head and pointed in the other direction. And that’s what we had, just the canoe, and each other, and two ways to go, and one trillion droplets of fog. Smoothed waves carrying us, sea swells, not whitecaps. We paddled the way Cara pointed. We were blind.

  But it was only just past noontime: so many hours till dark. Close to dark would have been bad. Still, even at high afternoon such a big canoe was small and the waves were sea waves, and they did carry us. Cara was a champion swimmer, I not a swimmer at all. I spat in the water and the white spot of it shot forward, so I knew we were still moving backward over the water, no matter how hard we paddled. If we were still in the Mares tide, we should turn around. If we were in the Fast Cove current, we were heading out to sea backwards again.

  What you know of the truth, you shouldn’t hide. I said, “We are going backwards.”

  “My father is going to kill me!” Cara was blue gooseflesh again, the mists between us thicker then thinner. I felt in a rush that I was in love with her, felt serious looking at her.

  She had asked me out in the family canoe to see seals. She had begged her parents and done chores and basically bowed and scraped (as my mother calls it) just to get to hang out with me. Why was this? I didn’t think her father could kill anybody with his little fake sea captain hat and their big house and making fun of Mainers. My father, he could kill someone. Yessuh! But certainly would not. What would he care, kids in a boat? My mother, she would be worried if she knew about the fog, that’s all.

  I said, “I’ll take the blame with your father.”

  And Cara said, “Not our fault! It’s this stupid fog! Do you think we’re going farther out? We should have brought life vests!”

  “We won’t need them at all,” I said.

  “I love your skinny legs!” she said. Same tone of panic, really. So we laughed and stopped paddling, and she got both suit straps up once again and it was like she was angry then. She said, “What if we go out to sea?”

  “Well, we won’t,” I said, but I knew the sea was who we should be worried would kill us, everybody knew that. The cold Gulf of Maine.

  “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she said.

  “Well, us,” I said.

  She turned around again and we saw each other.

  “It’s only early afternoon,” I said. “The fog comes in and goes out back and forth on a day like this. Or burns off all the way. So we just have to sit. Then we’ll paddle like hell and be just fine. You have strong shoulders.”

  Cara leaned back toward the thwart and reached and I leaned forward far and reached and we just barely were able to touch fingers in the million drops of fog.

  “I hate tennis lessons anyway,” she said. But she meant something else. And sat up and faced forward and paddled a little, a strap fallen down again. I felt the touch of her cold fingers still. Her father would be angry, see her in that suit, late as hell, clamming would be off, suppah would be off. He wouldn’t want me around.

  I cannot say how long, but may
be an hour of drifting, not exactly afraid. Uncomfortable, my mother would say. (She drives the school bus in winter.) Damp and shriveled and chilly and nearly blind in the fog, except for seeing what water passed alongside our hull and of course except for seeing the canoe and seeing each other.

  After a long time of quiet drifting, Cara turned all the way around, grasped the gunwales, tucked her knees and brought her feet around, turned to face me on the metal bow seat. Then she scooted down and sat in the bottom of the canoe, clowning, leaning back on her seat as if she were in a boat in Venice, drawing her one leg up, putting her one hand behind her head, and singing out another song.

  What I did was paddle. I knew there were many hundreds of boats working the waters here and that the fog would lift at some point and we’d be okay, home before dark. Every lobster buoy we bumped or passed made me feel better: a person had put it there.

  Cara demanded I sing a song. “Something stupid,” she said.

  “Bingo,” I sang. “Was his name-oh.”

  And she sang “We are the Falcons! Brave and true!” from her camp. Her ankle bracelet said KIT. I sang the Milbridge School fight song. She sang “Michael rowed the boat ashore.” I guess I should try to say how pretty she looked to me, but can’t. We laughed and laughed at Michael rowing the boat ashore. No one calls me anything but Mike.

  When we were just about out of songs Cara shouted, “Trees!” I turned (we were going backwards still) and she was right, trees, just when you thought the sea was going to go on forever. Pretty soon we were scrabbling onto some slippery, seaweedy rocks, crunching mussels, trying to pull the canoe up without scratching it too bad. After a lot of work we managed to pull it all the way to a patch of sand and red seaweed. We were saved.

  Cara said, “My dad will kill me!” But we were laughing from relief and sat down (not too close) and for a minute the sand felt warm. But then it felt cold. And the fog was so thick you could bite it. Then we walked up into the trees where the air was a little warmer. I wished I had a jacket, even a life jacket, something to offer Cara. She shivered badly. And her bathing suit looked wet and shrunken and whenever she turned to shrug about how helpless we were I looked up the hill away from her.