The Backwoods

“Why didn’t they want to go?”

“They said it was ungodly, or some such. To them, crabs, like all food, are some kind of gift from the heavens, and shouldn’t be turned into a sport.”

More weird philosophy, Patricia thought.

She couldn’t imagine more tedious work. Picking crabs all day, every day? But as she looked inside, the women couldn’t have appeared more content, chatting quietly amongst themselves as their hands and fingers blurred through the process. In the background—barely audible—an evangelical radio station murmured oral missives from God.

“Just wait’ll the Squatter cookout,” Ernie promised. “They got their own recipes for crab cakes, Newburg, and cream a’ crab soup that’re better than anything you’ve ever had, even in them upscale D.C. restaurants.”

Patricia believed it, and she could even remember a bit of it from her childhood.

Ernie closed the door and showed her back to the path. “Guess we better be headin’ back to the house— er, I should, at least. Gotta cut the grass. What’choo got planned today?”

“Nothing, really. I’ll go back with you, check on Judy. Then I might go into town, or maybe go for a walk in the woods.” This was another refreshing aspect of being back: not having to follow any agenda. But she knew she should at least check her e-mail and give the firm a quick call. Then she thought: And Byron! I haven’t called him in a day and a half! In fact, she’d actually spoken to him only once or twice since she’d arrived. He’ll be worried. . . . But when she patted the back pocket of her shorts, it occurred to her that she’d left her cell phone back in her room.

The tree-lined path wended further upward; spangles of heat draped across her face and chest from the sun pouring in through leafy branches above them.

“There’s another one,” Ernie said without stopping. He pointed to a tree as he walked on.

But Patricia paused.

A small plank, painted white, had been nailed to the tree in what appeared to be a crude decoration. But out here? In the woods? It seemed so peculiar. A simple but ornate drawing adorned the plank, some squiggles and slashes; they seemed symmetrical, in some disordered way

“Another one of their good-luck signs?” she asked.

Ernie had stopped just ahead of her, looking back. “Yeah. Ya see ’em every now and then out in the woods. The woods are blessed land to the Squatters.”

Patricia peered closer at the design. “It just looks so . . . unusual, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” Ernie said without much interest. “It’s more creepy than anything, if ya ask me.”

Creepy . . . Yes, she supposed it was. The color of the paint used to form the design was odd, too: a tannish slate. Is it even paint? she wondered, touching it. Her finger came away smudged almost black. Doesn’t feel like paint. More like crayon.

Then she realized what it reminded her of. Last night . . . The note she’d found in the garbage, addressed to Dwayne. Since then she’d paid no mind to the weird sheet of paper she’d found, the sheet with one word written on it. . . .

Wenden.

Was it a name? She could look in the phone book but . . . Why? There was no reason for her to care, so why did it seem to bother her now? The word looked as though it had been written in some kind of thin-lined chalk, similar to this good-luck sign on the tree.

“What’choo doing?” Ernie asked with a smile. “Hopin’ some a’ that Squatter good luck’ll rub off on ya^?”

“Maybe,” she said, and broke away.

But Ernie was right. The design was . . . creepy.

A narrow creek broke the path, its crystal water burbling. Ernie stepped over it in one easy stride; then Patricia hopped across herself. She sighed as her mind cleared—a rarefied luxury for a city attorney—and concentrated only on the cicada throbs, the babbling creeks around them, and the steady crunch of Ernie’s boots as he strode onward. This odd sequence of sounds and sensations seemed to tran^quilize her as effectively as a low dose of Valium.

Ernie stopped and turned around. “Well, here’s a problem.”

“What?”

Another creek crossed the trail, several yards in girth and full of jagged, algae-covered stones.

Then it occurred to Patricia that she was barefoot.

“You don’t wanna cut’cher feet all up on them rocks,” Ernie said.

Patricia laughed. “Ernie, I don’t think I’m quite the city priss you take me for. It won’t kill me to walk barefoot through a creek.” She grinned, about to take her first careful step onto the stones. “Of course, you could always carry me.”

She’d said it as a joke, and was completely taken by surprise when he grabbed her and picked her up. “I was only kidding!” she exclaimed.

“Ain’t no trouble.” He chuckled, hefting her. “Us country boys’re strong. Feels to me like you don’t weigh much more than a bag a’ peanut shells anyway.”

“You say the sweetest things, Ernie,” she joked back. “Now, if you’d said I weigh more than a grand piano, I’d know it was time to join Weight Watchers.”

He carried her easily with one arm bracing her back, the other under her thighs. Her feet jounced in the air with each step, while her own arm clung fast to him around his shoulders.

“I hope there’s another creek,” she kept joking. “Then we can try piggyback.”

“Don’t’cha be teasin’ me now.”

But the rocking motion that came with each step lulled her more. She let her head rest against his shoulder. He seemed to grip her tighter under her rump, which increased the friction between her legs—a pleasurable but aggravating sensation—and the position caused her right breast to rub against his chest.

Did the cicada sounds begin to drone louder? She felt deceptively relaxed in his grasp, rocking, rocking, as he stepped over more rocks; she could’ve fallen asleep. Some strands of his long hair brushed her face. The vee of her blouse looped up; then she drowsily realized that one nipple was showing.

She pretended not to notice.

Oh, God. The thought moaned through her mind.

She felt so strange, burning up with pent-up desires but lazy, slothlike. The cicada drone continued to fill her head, and the rocking motion continued to stimulate her sex, her breasts. But he remained the perfect gentleman; he couldn’t have not noticed her nipple. It tingled, felt like it was swelling. . . .

“Here we are. Ten cents for the ride . . .”

On the other side of the creek he set her back down on her feet, and she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing when she pressed right up against him, reached around and squeezed his buttocks, and kissed him, and it was no friendship kiss. It was a famished one, a kiss incited, even crazed by desires she couldn’t identify, just some sexual arcana that had swept her sense of reason away and left nothing but cringing nerves and raw, animal impulse.

Ernie seized up in the sudden shock and leaned back against a tree, his opened hands out—the roots of some moral reaction, perhaps: that though this was a woman he’d been in love with so long ago, she was married now, off-limits. But Patricia only pressed closer, slipping her tongue into his mouth and squeezing his buttocks with even more deliberation. Finally, threads of his resistence began to slacken. She moaned into his mouth, put her arm around his waist, and squeezed her groin to his.

Patricia’s mind raced in a desperate delirium. The suction of her kiss drew his tongue into her mouth. She was never even aware when she unbuttoned her blouse and bared her breasts. It was almost violent then, when she grabbed some of his long hair and urged his head lower.

His lips attached to an already swollen nipple and sucked. “Harder,” was the only word she uttered. She was cringing, like someone in a prickly heat desperate for relief . . . but the prickly heat here wasn’t rash; it was an agonized desire, the crudest horniness that blocked out all thoughts from her mind and simply demanded to be tended. Her groan was barely even feminine when her earlier whimsy came true: after sucking each nipple to a beating soreness, he licked up and down her throat, sucked lines in between her breasts, tonguing off the oyster juice she’d dribbled.