Osprey Island

The shock she felt first was the shock of what was not happening— the shock that what was inside her was not the slim pencil-cool of his finger, as though that was something she’d been anticipating for hours or days, and not just seconds, fragments of seconds. It hit her like disappointment first—the largeness, the hotness of it—and then she felt the dig of the zipper on his jeans into her ass, and the sand from his jeans grinding into her skin. She tried to say something but couldn’t, like in a dream when you scream and nothing comes from your mouth, the horror of that, her mouth crammed down into the sandy towel, lips scraping grit as she tried to move but couldn’t shape a word with all the weight from above. And though she could breathe, somehow, through her nose, she panicked, her body seizing up in terror like one drowning, and she thrashed, trying to lift her head and open her mouth to the air.

He should have rolled off her then. He should have rolled off when she jerked like that, realized from that spasm that something was wrong—she couldn’t breathe!—rolled off her and checked to make sure she was OK: Honey, what’s the matter, oh, jeez, sorry, was I crushing you there? In fact, if she’d heard his voice, alone, with no accompanying movement, she’d have actually thought he meant to soothe her, because that’s what it sounded like when he whispered, “Shhhh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh,” blowing those shushes into her ear like reassurance. But as he shushed, his breath hot, she felt his hand clamp down on the back of her neck, hard, like he meant to hold her there, his fingers around the side of her neck pressing in too deeply. It panicked her further, the desperation of being unable to breathe, her face pushed into a towel, her throat constricted under the pressure of his grip, and she thrashed harder, and he held her harder, his grip tightening as he braced himself, kicking a foot deeper into the sand for purchase, all the while cooing “Shhh, shh, shh, shh, shh,” in her ear, the sound changing into something lordly and dominant, a farmer trying to calm a struggling chicken as he holds its neck steady against the chopping block.

Brigid squirmed under the weight of his body, tried to wrench her head around with such force—such impeded force—that she bit down fiercely on her own tongue and that absolute, terrible, thudding pierce of pain replaced everything else the way a scream shuts down a roomful of conversation, the pain in her mouth filling with hot blood, stopping everything else in her body. When she stopped kicking he let up the pressure on her neck, and she found she could turn her head into a pocket of air, and the pocket of air calmed her enough that she could breathe and feel the blood drain from her mouth, hot into the sand under her face. The blood-pulse in her tongue seemed to match the one inside her, hot throbbing mixed with gritting sand, sand in her mouth, sand inside, rubbing as he thrust, grating against her, and it seemed that she just lived inside that pain, the rhythm and tear of it, until somewhere something changed and he arched his back up as he came, and then fell again into her, gratefully this time. He lifted his hand from her neck and moved it through her hair, combing and rubbing and kissing the side of her face and her neck as he rubbed, still kissing, nuzzling, cooing, “Angel, angel, angel,” as he pulled himself out of her and rolled away, onto his back, breathing hard. She lay on her stomach, almost as she’d fallen asleep, almost nothing changed— just the towel wrenched away, one arm dead beneath her, her tongue swelling in her mouth, her crotch grated raw, and her bathing suit bottom hitched to one side and wedged up in the crack of her ass. She couldn’t move her arm to pull it down. She couldn’t move at all. She lay there, and she breathed.

After a time Lance sat up. He tucked himself in and closed his pants, and then he leaned over to her, and pressed his face into the flesh of her exposed buttocks and breathed in deep before he tucked a finger inside the elastic and pulled it out for her, settling it around the curve of the cheek as though with that act, that gesture, he could make it fine. Snapping the elastic back into place, he pushed himself to his feet. She could hear him walking back toward the trees, then the sound of a flip top cracking. She could hear him return, flop down into the sand again beside her, and then she felt him place a beer, the can warm, on her back, try to balance it there on her as if he was playing a game. When he took his hand away the beer stayed upright for a second as she breathed, then toppled and fell, rolled off into the sand.

There was still sun on the water, and Lance unlaced his boots, strode down to the shore, pulled his shirt over his head, slipped off his jeans, and went naked into the salty sea at Dredgers’ Cove.

Brigid heard the splash and summoned the strength she had to pull on her shorts and shirt, slip into her beach shoes, and gather her things. She would have been thankful to dive into that water. It would have made the ride back easier somehow if they’d both been clean. But to follow him, naked, into the water was not an option, so neither was cleaning herself. She stood and walked into the woods, past the food and the beer to the truck, and she climbed in the passenger side and slammed the door and waited.

Lance dove shallowly, then twisted around under water and came back to where he’d begun. With both hands he rubbed his face with water and then stood and marched back onto the beach. He shook himself off like a dog, paused to judge the results, then shook again before shimmying back into his clothes.

And then he was there, opening the driver’s side door, pushing in the rest of the beer and the bag of food and climbing in behind them. Brigid was grateful for those packages on the seat between them; they were something in the way—not much, but something. He hoisted his hips up from the seat to reach in his pocket for the keys while Brigid watched him, aware of every move he made as though she had to keep track of it all from now on. She watched him as if it was the only thing that mattered: to account for every single thing Lance Squire did from the moment he got into the truck. This focused her second to second, gave her a purpose then, second to second to second. It took a great deal of focus, this accounting, to notice every detail, every twitch and glance, and Brigid was able to lose her sense of herself. In her awareness of him she was able to forget a bit of who she was, what she might look like, how she was sitting, what sort of expression she wore. As she watched, she lost her self. She made herself invisible; she watched him like prey.

He put the keys in the ignition, turned the engine over, put the truck in reverse, and began a five-point turn to get them headed back in the other direction down the logging road. A few minutes along, when he’d gotten the feel of the ruts and bumps again, he looked to her, then back at the road, and said, “You pissed at me now, Pissed-Off Girl?”

Brigid said nothing. She watched. She did not know how he might read her expression. She did not know what her expression was.

“Hey,” he said, like a plea for clemency, “you don’t have to worry: nobody ever gets pregnant off me.” He laughed a little, smiled over at her winningly.

Brigid turned away, realized she was mashed up against the passenger door, putting as much space between herself and Lance as the truck allowed. She leaned her head out the window and let the wind rush by, blowing back her hair, the air heavier with pine the deeper inland they traveled. She would go back and take a shower—a very hot shower—and she’d sober up, and sleep. She concentrated on the shower without imagining it too fully, because imagining the water scalding on her body made her want it so badly she thought she might cry out.

When Lance stopped for cigarettes at the gas station and paused outside the truck to lean back in the window and smile at her and ask, offhandedly, “You need anything, darlin’?” and she shook her head no and watched him turn and enter the store, heard the ding-ding of the door, saw it fan slowly closed behind him, she was cognizant enough to marvel at the macabre absurdity of the moment. She thought: I’ve lost my mind. She thought about simply saying to him, when he got back to the truck and offered her a smoke, which she might accept— she thought she might let him light it for her, inhale, then simply say: Is it my imagination, or did you just hold me by the neck and fuck me? But when he did get back with his pack of Merits and offer one to her, leaning across the packages on the seat to light it, she said nothing. If someone asked, later, she’d have said