Lucy (12 page)

17

THE GIRLS WERE SO EXCITED
that they couldn’t settle down. They lay in bed together, talking for hours and enjoying the relief of having finished school. As they were nuzzling each other, trying to find sleep, Amanda buried her face in Lucy’s shoulder and inhaled.

“You smell so different from other people. It’s nice. Like the forest.”

“That’s cuz I’m the Jungle Girl.”

“My friends at school think I’ve dumped them for you.”

“I’m sorry. You should spend more time with them.”

“No. I’m fine the way things are. They’re just not as interesting anymore now that I know you. Matt asked me if you and I are lesbians.”

Lucy felt a thrill go through her at Amanda’s closeness, the way she used to feel playing with her brothers and sisters. But this was deeper, more urgent. She wasn’t sure how to approach the subject with Amanda. “Go to sleep,” Lucy said. And before she could think of what to do next, she had fallen asleep herself.

In the morning, the girls were yawning as Jenny pulled the car onto the highway. Amanda kept a continuous selection of CDs going into the car stereo, and the girls danced as best they could, rocking in their seats and waving their hands in the air. Even Jenny joined in, swaying from side to side. She yawned and said, “Lucy, we have to get you driving. We could take turns and then I could take a nap.”

“I got my permit.”

“Yeah, but I’m afraid to be in the car with you.”

“And I’m afraid to drive on the highway.”

“I’ll drive,” Amanda said.”

“That would be great.”

Amanda drove and let Jenny doze in the front seat while Lucy slept in back. They woke just south of Duluth. They spent the night in a little town called Superior. In the morning they stopped at the grocery store in Duluth to stock up for the week.

They drove up the north shore of Lake Superior, passing along the orange basalt lava flows and the gabbro on which the waves crashed and shot twenty feet into the air. An hour later they entered the old forest, and Amanda gazed out the window, saying, “Ooh, this looks like Hansel and Gretel country.” It was Jenny’s graduation present to the girls: A trip to the Boundary Waters. They had wanted Harry to come, but he was on call at the hospital.

In another hour, Jenny was in the kitchen unpacking groceries, as Lucy rushed through the cabin showing it off to Amanda. “Little house on the prairie,” Amanda said.

“Mom, can we have this bedroom?”

“Take whichever one you like, girls.”

Amanda and Lucy spent the first few days in lazy contentment, while Jenny chopped wood and paddled around the lake. Then in the long late yellow light, Jenny would lounge on the shore reading while Amanda and Lucy splashed in the water or explored the forest. The girls took the canoe out at night while Jenny built a bonfire on the beach. They paddled to the end of the lake beneath a chalky moon that was gathering light for its journey through the night. There in a small lagoon, they caught walleye. Lucy held one in the net and studied it. “I’m sorry, Wally. I’m sorry I have to eat you.”

“You talk to animals?”

“Yeah. And they talk to me.”

“What’d he say?”

“That if he’d been big enough he’d have eaten me, too. Fish’ll eat anything.”

The girls found their way back to the cabin by the squirming orange light of the fire. They drew the boat up onto the beach and fried the fish. They ate them with steamed rice and the vegetables that Jenny had roasted while they were out.

Early one morning Amanda and Lucy put on their backpacks, said goodbye to Jenny, and set out on a hike that would take them to the cliffs at Saganaga Lake five miles to the north. They made their way along the shore of Flour Lake, then turned north up the forest trail, skirting Hungry Jack. As they turned east, the sun was in their eyes, filtering through the dense woods. The scent of pine rose up, and Lucy inhaled it, feeling at one with the forest. She heard the ravens calling, and once, in a clearing, she and Amanda watched an eagle circle overhead.

They passed Bearskin and hiked up the northeast shore of Daniels Lake. In real wilderness now, amid the low and heavily forested hills of the Boundary Waters, Lucy stopped and put out her hand to Amanda. They stood still as Lucy sniffed the air.

“Wanna see a moose?” Lucy whispered.

“Sure.”

They crept softly through the forest until they reached a rise above a swampy area. The cow was immense and dark, her antlers decked with weeds. Her calf was cute as she dipped her head into the water and made lowing noises. Amanda took a camera from her pack and snapped a photo. Then the girls slipped away unnoticed and hiked back to the trail.

At lunchtime they ascended the low hills behind Rose Lake. Lucy could smell Amanda’s sweet summer sweat. They found a flat rock and ate lunch on a high perch overlooking Canada. Lucy held up a finger and said, “Listen.” A spring litter of wolf pups barked faintly in the distance.

They spent the afternoon exploring the forest floor below. Lucy showed Amanda the imprint of a deer’s hoof, the burrow made by a vole, and unearthed the skull of a red fox. Then Lucy heard something and told Amanda, “Don’t move.” Lucy put her hand out on the earth, palm upward. Amanda watched and waited for what seemed a long time. But at last, a rabbit crept out of the underbrush and made its way cautiously toward them. It approached Lucy’s outstretched hand, sniffed, and then crawled into her palm. Lucy lifted the small creature up to her face and began to stroke its fur.

“How the hell do you do that?”

“I just learned how to communicate with animals. You know, in the jungle.”

“Can I touch him?”

“I don’t know. You can try. It’s a her.”

Amanda reached out to pet the rabbit, but it bolted, arcing high in the air and vanishing into the brush. The rabbit’s claws left a scratch on Lucy’s arm.

“Oh, you’re bleeding. I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing. I heal fast.”

Lucy caught walleye at dusk as the fish began to feed. They made a fire on a high rock and threw in some potatoes that they’d brought from the cabin. They roasted the fish on hot stone. The stars overhead made it taste that much sweeter. And when they were done, Amanda opened her backpack and brought out a plastic bag. She handed it to Lucy with a smirk.

“Sweet.” Lucy opened the bag and held it out to Amanda, who popped a grape into her mouth and winked.

Late that night the girls lay on their backs in the grass watching the stars wheel across the sky. Lucy missed her home terribly then. Most humans, she knew, saw the jungle of Congo as a vast, humid trap of malarial mosquitoes. But to Lucy the forest was home. Her father had taught her how to read the waves of weather that promised a rich harvest of pink mushrooms and swarms of delicious termites, how to follow the itaba vine to its sweet roots. She learned the faint insect sounds that led to honey. All of that bounty came to them from the forest. And when the forest was done with them, it took them down and redistributed their materials to other creatures, no less deserving. That’s what her father had told her.

But humans must have forgotten all of that long ago, he had said. The forest had come to seem hostile, impenetrable, perhaps evil. They had cut it and burned it and denounced it. They became a homeless people filled with longing and bedeviled by a subconscious craving to get back to the rich tenderness of the forest. And now Lucy wondered if she believed any of that at all. Those were her father’s thoughts, not hers. But what did she believe?

“I gotta get some sleep,” Amanda said.

Lucy rose from the forest floor. A big moon had come up to light their way. She took Amanda’s hand and led her deeper into the forest, saying, “Now, since you’ve spent so much time teaching me the ways of your culture, I’m going to show you a jungle trick.”

Lucy skittered up a tree so fast that Amanda said, “Dude, you really are so the Jungle Girl. How’d you do that?”

“Come on up.”

“What on earth for?”

“We’re sleeping up here.”

“Are you crazy?”

But at length Lucy coaxed Amanda into the tree. With great difficulty she began to climb, muttering curses under her breath. “Crap, I’m gonna have to get my nails done again.” Lucy directed her to sturdy branches. As Amanda came within reach, Lucy grabbed her wrist and pulled her up.

“O-M-G. Okay, this is really high. What now?”

“Now I make you a bed.” Lucy began breaking branches and weaving them together.

“No way. How do you do that?”

“Just practice.” Lucy built her own nest close enough to Amanda’s so that they could talk.

“You slept like this in the jungle?”

“Yeah. I slept in a bed sometimes, too.”

“What did your parents think?”

“Well, my mother slept with me.”

“What? In the trees?”

“Yeah, she taught me.”

“What was she, some kind of Congolese tribal person there?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Wow.”

And at that moment Lucy felt the same urge that she’d felt in bed with Amanda, and it made her want to blurt out the truth. Lucy felt cheated. Here they were at last with the vastness of this old forest embracing them, their shared solitude, the perfect moment of communion. Yet Amanda had no idea who Lucy really was. Lucy wanted to rebel against it, to claim and use what was rightfully hers. She desperately wanted Amanda to know her now.

“So what about your dad?” Amanda went on, seemingly unaware of the momentous transformation that was about to take place.

“He slept in our cabin.” Lucy’s voice was flat and dry now. What is there in life, she wondered, if not this moment, this friend, this time? It had to be now.

“So you and your mom would … what? Say, G’night, Pa, we’re heading for the trees?”

“Yeah, more or less. He was used to it. See, my mom was an ape.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

The truth hung between them, invisible to Amanda. And Lucy realized that there was nothing, really nothing, that she could add that would have convinced Amanda in that moment, no stigmata she could show that would settle the matter once and for all.

“Okay, climb in.” Lucy felt empty and alone. For Amanda could not even entertain the possibility that what she’d heard was true. To her it was nothing more than an offhanded joke. Lucy understood: If she could find no place to live in Amanda’s mind, how could she live in her heart? She lay her head down and closed her eyes.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Okay. I think on the whole I prefer a nice hotel with cable TV and a shower, but what-ever.”

In the morning they climbed down and hiked through moraines of granite and glacial debris. They climbed to the top of an esker and walked its ridge, looking down on balsam and spruce. They descended into a forest of thin aspens and saw pink and white lady’s slipper growing in the understory. When they reached the shore, they heard a loon calling from afar. The day was warm, and they had both sweated through their shirts. At Daniels Lake, they set down their packs and took off their clothes to splash in the shallows, shrieking at the shock of cold water. After they’d washed off the sweat and dirt from the hike, they sat naked on a rock to dry their dripping hair in the sun. They nibbled on dried fruit and nuts and shooed away a whiskey jack that came begging.

They sat in silence for a time, breathing in the forest air, and watching a soft breeze make patterns on the water. After a while, Lucy stiffened and said, “Watch this.” She pointed at the sky.

“What?”

“Just watch.”

An osprey fell from the sky and hit the water like a stone shattering a ceramic dish. A moment later the bird was airborne with an improbably large fish in its talons.

“Wow,” Amanda said, “that was really intolerably cool. How’d you know he was going to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Amanda passed Lucy a plastic bag of nuts. “Lucy, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What does it feel like when you wrestle guys?”

“Well, I get all excited, and it makes me quicker and stronger.”

“It always seems like it would, you know, turn you on and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”

“I think when I first wrestled with Wes it was like that. I’m not sure. But the excitement I feel focuses me. When I’m in a match it’s like the other guy is moving in slow motion. I can see what he’s about to do and take my time to plan my next move. And it gets very quiet except for certain things that I can hear very clearly.”

“Like what?”

“Like his breathing. I can smell him and know if he’s afraid. And sometimes it’s like I’m looking at him through a tunnel. It’s really cool. The room goes away. I don’t hear the crowd. All there is in the world is this lonely guy, placing himself in front of me like a king about to be checkmated.”

“Damn.”

They fell silent and watched the water. Then Lucy asked, “Amanda. Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Are you kidding? Everybody thinks you’re beautiful. Haven’t you noticed the trail of boys fainting in your wake?”

“Get out. You’re making fun of me.”

“A little. But you are beautiful. You don’t look like anyone else I’ve ever seen.”

“I think you’re beautiful, too.”

Amanda lifted her chin, exposing her neck, and said, “Aww …”

“No. I really mean it.”

Again they fell into themselves, picking at the dried fruit. Lucy traced her finger along the patterns that were etched into the flat expanse of rock.

“Wanna go?” Amanda asked.

“Sure. Let’s take a different way home.”

“You know the way?”

“Yeah.”

They dressed and shouldered their packs and hiked south along the western shore. After a mile, they entered the old forest, dark and strange. Lucy felt her heart quicken. She knew this place, northern jungle. As they penetrated into the interior, its darkness stole the sky and left them in a chaotic world churning with life and destruction. Where any light came, it dropped in great pillars and slim shafts, illuminating a mist that smelled of clove and myrrh mixed with the aroma of dying leaves.

“This is so beautiful.”

Lucy led on through heavy old pine and fir, hung with ancient streamers of silver moss, towering out of a maddening tangle of deadfall, brush, and vines. They left the trail and entered an eternal twilight, where they saw a radiant darkness escape the forest and overspread the open land beyond. And only when the breeze came up to ripple the water did Amanda recognize that she was seeing a deep black lake, alive with fish. They made their way to the shore and stopped.