two days after my birthday, November 12.
My father and Mr. Guiles were old friends. But we never came out here
again after Van died. Maybe that was because his own son, Billy, had
the bad grace to survive intact while Van went down in a burning
helicopter over Khe Sanh. Maybe it was just too many memories. But we
stayed away.
I remembered it, though. It hadn't changed much. Forest roads take a
longtime to change. A little rockier, maybe, but just the same. It
gave me a pleasant feeling, like coming home.
Steven cursed the road so hard you'd have thought it was his car and
not Casey's. But it opened up soon and got smoother, and then there
was that familiar little stretch of meadow and the cabin we used to
call the Picnic Basket. Steve pulled over and parked, and we took the
food from the car. Casey was first to discover the view. I walked
over to her.
'Pretty good, isn't it?'
'Wonderful.'
We stood thirty feet above as hallow bay with all the Atlantic back
dropped behind it. Directly below was a rocky beach. There were
boulders and crumbled slate.
When the seas were rough the water rose to maybe fifteen feet from
where we were standing. All the contours would seem to change
overnight. If you came here as infrequently as I did, it was never the
same place twice.
I led them down a path to the sea. We found a spot beside a thick
column of slate ten feet from the rock face and deposited our stolen
merchandise and our towels. I climbed to the top of the column.
The gulls had been here, as I'd thought they would. They smashed the
shells of crabs and clams and oysters against the rock to get at the
softer stuff inside. It was littered with tiny corpses^
I saw Casey watching me and waved her up. She was a good climber.
'See this? Seagulls' restaurant.'
She stooped to examine the dry empty shell of a blue-claw crab.
'They fly over here and drop them. Their aim is very good. Usually,
that does it. If not, it will crack them a little. So they find
cracks and do the rest with their beaks. They'd probably be here now
if it weren't for us. See?'
We watched them wheel through the blue-gray sky a quarter of a mile
away.
'You know about things like that?'
'About the sea? Some.'
'What else do you know about? Tell me.'
I shrugged.
'Lumber. Wood. Henry Miller. Dostoevsky. I can make a fire with a
couple of sticks if I really have to. I build a pretty comfortable
campsite. I know about Dead River, what there is of it. I cook a
pretty decent fried egg. Not much, actually.'
'What about me?'
'What about you?'
'What do you know about me?'
'I can guess some things.'
'Yes, but what are you sure of?'
'Nothing.'
'Liar.'
She stood up and moved her hand around behind her back and saw her
halter shudder free. She slipped it off and tossed it away. It
drifted down the rock and settled below.
Her breasts were small, firm, with a high lift to them. Beautiful.
She stared at me. There was hard challenge in the blue eyes.
Challenge but no mockery. She stooped a little and drew down the white
shorts over her hips. She wore nothing underneath. The pubic hair was
sparse and delicate, a light golden brown. She watched me through all
this and then smiled.
'Now you know more.'
'Now I do.'
She turned away and moved easily down the rock, agile as a cat.
She walked toward Steve and Kimberley. I watched her. There was a
stupid grin on my face and very little immediate possibility of making
it go away. I watched the easy grace of her. There was nothing to do
but stand there until the muscles of my face worked again.
The others got out of their clothes.
Kimberley had larger breasts than I'd have expected. They were
heavy-nippled, slung low and wide apart but very pretty, very lush.
She had a prominent mound of red-gold pubic hair. A little more in hip
and thigh than I'd have asked for in the best of all possible worlds,
but very much a green-eyed eyeful. Steven was hung like a ranch
animal. And he wasn't shy at all.
I have cheap thoughts sometimes. They just come to me, unbidden. I
had one now. I thought I was beginning to understand why Kim kept
looking at him so fondly.
But I couldn't keep my eyes off Casey.
She waded into the sea and I watched the frigid water tighten her skin
again. I thought I'd never seen anything so beautiful. She looked up
at me, and I felt a clear silent summons. The grin was gone by then,
so I climbed down off the rock. Compared to her I felt clumsy. A
little muscle but no style.
'Come on in.'
'You're kidding.'
'Oh, come on. It's no big deal.'
'Neither is pneumonia.'
She swirled the water gently around her calves.
'Now look. Steven doesn't swim and Kim's a chicken. Are you going to
make me do this all by myself?'
'I'll get my jeans wet.'
'So take them off.'
