When she reached a level place, she looked into the hood, sure she would see nothing-she had lost the other fish, as well, Must have, girls didn't catch trout, even baby ones, in the hoods of their ponchos, she just hadn't seen its getaway. But the trout was still there, swimming around like a mollie in a goldfish bowl.
'God, what do I do now?' Trisha asked. This was a genuine prayer, both agonized and bemused.
It was her body that answered, not her spirit. She had seen plenty of cartoons where Wile E. Coyote looked at Roadrunner and saw him turn into Thanksgiving dinner. She had laughed, Pete laughed, even Mom laughed if she was watching. Trisha did not laugh now. Berries and beechnuts the size of sunflower seeds were all very well, but they weren't enough. Even when you ate them together and told yourself they were granola, they weren't enough. Her body's reaction to the four-inch trout swimming in the blue hood was radically different, not hunger exactly but a kind of clench, a cramp that centered in her belly but actually came from everywhere, an inarticulate cry
(GIMME THAT)
which had little to do with her brain. It was a trout, just a little one far below the legal limit, but whatever her eyes saw, her body saw dinner. Real dinner
Trisha had only one clear thought as she took the hood over to the remains of the poncho, which was still spread on the outcrop (a paperdoll without a head now): I'll do it but I'll never ever talk about it, If they find me rescue me I'll tell them everything except how I fell into my own shit ... and this.
She acted with no planning or consideration; her body brushed her mind aside and simply took over. Trisha spilled the contents of the hood onto the needle-covered ground and watched the little fishie flop about, strangling in the air. When it was still she picked it up, put it on the poncho, and slit it up the belly with the stone she'd used to cut off the poncho's hood. A thimbleful of watery, mucusy fluid ran out, more like thin snot than blood. Inside the fish she could see tiny red guts. These Trisha levered out with a grimy thumbnail. Beyond them was a bone. She tried to pull it free and got about half of it. During all this her mind tried to take over only once. You can't eat the head, it told her, its reasonable tone not really masking the horror and disgust beneath. I mean ... the eyes, Trisha. The eyes! Then her body brushed it away again, and more roughly this time. When I want your opinion I'll rattle the bars in your cage, Pepsi sometimes said.
Trisha picked up the small flayed fish by the tail, carried it back to the stream, and dipped it to get rid of the pineneedles and grime. Then she cocked her head back, opened her mouth, and bit off the trout's top half. Small bones crunched under her teeth; her mind tried to show her the trout's eyes popping out of its head and onto her tongue in little dark dabs of jelly. She got one blurry look at this and then her body banished her mind yet again, this time slapping instead of merely pushing. Mind could come back when mind was needed; imagination could come back when imagination was needed. Right now body was in charge, and body said dinner, it's dinner, it may be morning but dinner is served and this morning we got fresh fish.
The trout's top half went down her throat like a big swallow of oil with lumps in it. The taste was horrible and also wonderful. It tasted like life. Trisha dangled the trout's dripping lower half in front of her upturned face, pausing only long enough to pull another piece of bone out of it, whispering: 'Dial 1-800-54-FRESH-FISH.'
She ate the rest of the trout, tail and all.
When it was down she stood looking across the stream, wiping her mouth and wondering if she was going to puke it all back up again. She had eaten a raw fish, and although the taste of it was still coating her throat, she could hardly believe it. Her, stomach gave a funny little lurch and Trisha thought, This is it. Then she burped and her stomach settled again. She took her hand away from her mouth and saw a few fish-scales gleaming on the palm. She wiped them on her jeans with a grimace, then walked back to where her pack lay. She stuffed the remains of her poncho and the severed hood (which had turned out to work pretty well, at least on fish that were young and stupid) into it on top of her food supply, then reshouldered the pack. She felt strong, ashamed of herself, proud of herself, feverish, and a little nutzoid.
I won't talk about it, that's all. I don't have to talk about it and I won't. Even if I get out of here.
'And I deserve to get out,' Trisha said softly. 'Anyone who can eat a raw fish deserves to get out.'
The Japanese do it all the time, said the tough tootsie as Trisha set out once more along the side of the stream.
'So I'll tell them,' Trisha said. 'If I ever get over there for a visit I'll tell them.'
For once the tough tootsie seemed to have no comeback. Trisha was delighted.
She made her way carefully down the slope and into the valley, where her stream bowled along through a forest of mixed firs and deciduous trees. These were thickly packed, but there was less underbrush and fewer bramble-patches, and for most of the morning Trisha got along well. There was no sense of being watched, and eating the fish had revitalized her strength. She pretended that Tom Gordon was walking with her, and they had a long and interesting conversation, mostly about Trisha. Tom wanted to know all about her, it seemed-her favorite classes at school, why she thought Mr. Hall was mean for giving homework on Fridays, all the ways Debra Gilhooly had of being such a bitch, how she and Pepsi had planned to go trick-or-treating as Spice Girls last Halloween and Mom had said Pepsis Mom could do whatever she wanted, but no nine-year-old girl of hers was going out trick-or- treating in a short skirt, high heels, and a cammi top. Tom sympathized completely with Trisha's utter embarrassment.
She was telling him about how she and Pete were planning to get their Dad a custom-made jigsaw puzzle for his birthday from this company in Vermont that made them (or if that was too expensive, they would settle for a Weed Whacker), when she stopped suddenly. Stopped moving. Stopped talking.
She studied the stream for almost a full minute, the corners of her mouth drooping, one hand waving automatically at the cloud of bugs around her head. The underbrush was creeping back in among the trees now; the trees themselves were stuntier, the light brighter. Crickets hummed and sang.
'No,' Trisha said. 'No, huh-uh. No way. Not again.'
The stream's new quietness was what had first distracted her from her fascinating conversation with Tom Gordon (pretend people were such good listeners). The stream no longer babbled and brawled. That was because the speed of its current had slowed. Its bed was weedier than it had been above the valley's floor. It was beginning to spread out.
'If it goes into another swamp, I'll kill myself, Tom.'
An hour later Trisha pushed her way wearily through a snarl of mixed poplars and birches, raised the heel of her hand to her forehead to crush a particularly troublesome mosquito, and then just left it there, hand to brow, the image of every human in history who is exhausted and doesn't know what to do or where to turn.
At some point the stream had spilled over its low banks and drowned a large area of open land, creating a
