“My parents are gone. Two sisters are in school in Wisconsin.”
“I’ve heard my father and Leonard talk about someone named Woodrow.”
“My uncle. He is gone, too.”
She nodded, and her eyes rested on the deep green that reached to the horizon. “My mother died when I was a little girl. Since then I’ve lived in boarding schools, mostly in the States.”
“I know about boarding schools,” Henry said.
“Nuns.” Maria made a sour face, and Henry laughed. “You don’t do that much,” she told him.
“What?”
“Laugh.”
He thought about it. Woodrow could make him laugh. Since his uncle had passed away, Henry hadn’t felt like laughing.
She sat down on the rock and hugged her knees. Henry sat down and laid his rifle on the ground.
She said, “They’re hunting gold, you know.”
“I know.”
“Leonard is a geologist. He knows where to look, but he doesn’t have the money to prospect. My father foots the bill. They met in a casino in Havana. My father was probably throwing away money, as usual. He loves to gamble. I’m sure that’s part of the attraction of looking for gold. They’ve found it twice already. First in Australia, but it turned out not to be a very rich strike. Then again in South America, but they lost that claim somehow. They won’t talk about it. Anyway, I thought maybe if I came with him this time, it might be a chance to get to know him.”
Henry didn’t like her father and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to know him better. Family made a difference, he supposed.
“I should be in college, a place called Bennington. It’s in Vermont. My second year there. But I have no interest in it. Not right now.”
“What now?” Henry heard himself asking.
She smiled and it made him burn with happiness. She opened her arms. “This. Something that’s not Paris or New York or Havana. Something… transcendent.”
Henry didn’t know what the word meant, hut her voice told him and he understood.
Her face glistened with a sheen of sweat from the hike and the climb. Henry’s body was damp, too. The wind pushed over the ridge and fanned him cool. Maria’s hair rippled like black water, and she closed her eyes.
“Would you like to hunt with me?” Henry asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen an animal killed?”
“In Cuba once. I watched a pig slaughtered for roast.”
“To your eyes it might not be pretty.”
“I can take it. What will you hunt?”
“We passed through a meadow on our way here. I saw rabbit droppings.”
She stood eagerly. “Hasenpfeffer for dinner?”
Henry looked up at her dumbly.
“Fancy roast rabbit,” she said.
“I don’t know about fancy.” He smiled and rose beside her.
They returned to camp in the early afternoon with a fat, dead snowshoe rabbit in hand. Its coat was dark brown. Henry had explained to Maria that in winter, the fur would turn soft white to match the snow. He set about the skinning and cleaning and quartering, and Maria did not turn away. When he’d finished, he made a fire, settled a pot of water at the edge, and put the cut-up rabbit in to stew.
Maria said, “I’m going for a swim. Come with me?”
Henry laughed, thinking she was joking. The nights were cold and the lake would be like ice.
“All right then.” She disappeared into her tent and came out a few minutes later dressed in shorts and a man’s white undershirt. Her feet were bare, and Henry saw that her toes were painted red. “Last chance,” she said.
Henry shook his head. “You’ll be out fast enough.”
“Think so?”
She dashed toward the lake and dove in. She disappeared for a long time. Henry left the fire and ran to the rocky shore. He was about to go in after her when she burst through the surface and began stroking evenly away. He watched her, admiring how smoothly she moved through the water, leaving a wake like a comet’s tail.
Henry went back to the fire and cut onions and carrots and potatoes to add to the stew. All the while he kept an eye on Maria. She stayed a long time in water Henry knew would make his own muscles cramp.
Finally she returned to shore and climbed from the lake. Strands of her black hair clung to her cheeks. Beneath the thin wet cotton of her undershirt her skin was visible and pink. The dark areolas of her breasts were like eyes behind a veil.
Henry looked away, but not before she caught him looking and not before she smiled.
TWENTY-SIX
Henry couldn’t sleep. He lay in his tent staring up at canvas that was drenched in silver moonlight. It wasn’t the canvas he was seeing. It was Maria, stepping soft and pink from the lake. He didn’t understand what was happening to him or the way he felt. Strong, but also very weak. Full of fire and at the same time ice. Hard in every muscle but yielding deep inside. He’d never felt anything like this, not even during his brief courtship of Dilsey.
He threw back his blanket and stepped into the night. The ground was cool against his bare soles. The four tents had been arranged in a semicircle around the campfire. He crossed to Maria’s tent, his shadow crawling up the canvas. He longed to see her, even a glimpse, and he considered pulling her tent flap aside just for a moment.
But he was afraid.
Instead, he walked to the lake. The water was silver fire. The ridges on the far side stood gray and ghostly against the black southern sky. Henry glanced back at the camp, then quietly undressed. He stepped into the lake. The cold hammered his legs, but he pushed on, farther and deeper. He wanted the icy water to kill the fire that wouldn’t stop burning in him. He let out his breath and sank toward a place where the moonlight didn’t reach.
He felt a disturbance of the water and came up quickly. He looked toward shore and saw her slender figure slipping into the lake. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she was naked. She swam toward him, her face a pale, beautiful bubble. Henry stared at her, too amazed to speak. He felt the loop of her arms around him and the press of her warm body. She kissed him, her lips the softest touch he’d ever known.
“You’re freezing,” she said. “Come with me.”
Out of the water and in the moonlight, her naked skin was jeweled with shining droplets that rolled down the line of her spine, along the curve of her buttocks, and fell from her like pearls off a broken string. She stooped and gathered her clothing and his and led him to her tent. She drew aside the flap and slipped inside. Henry hesitated. Her hand appeared, beckoning him in. He followed.
Her sleeping bag was open. She lay on it in the silver-green light of the moonlit canvas. She reached out and took his hand and drew him down to her.
“Let me warm you,” she murmured.
She rolled on top of him, blanketing him with her own body, her breasts against his chest, her thighs cupping his. She kissed him again, and he grew hard and kissed her back. Her lips broke away and drifted across his cheek, his neck, his chest.
“Maria,” he whispered, desperate and grateful.
She put her finger to his mouth. “Shhhh. No noise.”
She pushed herself up to straddle him and looked deeply into his eyes. Her own eyes were full of silver-green fire. She moved ever so slightly, and he was surprised and amazed to find himself inside her, a place warmer and more welcoming than he’d ever imagined. He grasped her hips and tried to push deeper, but she laid a hand on his
