The next evening, Judith the law professor stopped by the cabin to see if I’d be interested in a night-time swim, making good on her assertion that we needed more fun in our lives. She was wearing blue capri pants and a tight blue T-shirt and carrying what looked like scotch and water in a drink glass.
Apparently sensing my trepidation, she said, “I haven’t taken a moonlight swim since I was a kid, but I know where all the sandbars and drop-offs are, so you’ll be perfectly safe.”
“I didn’t bring a suit,” I said.
“Even better! We’ll skinny-dip. Haven’t done that since my high school graduation.” She slurred the word skinny, and that was enough to make me worry that she might try to swim drunk. For a split second I envisioned Marney staring out her cabin window at naked Judith lying on the shore, as I performed CPR on her, my butt-naked, skinny-dipping ass in the air. “Meet me down on our dock at midnight. Are you game?”
I snapped back to reality. “Sure.” I was already deciding if a pair of shorts and a T-shirt would work as a makeshift swimsuit. I could always say I was cold.
* * *
I locked the cabin, hid the key in the screen door, and walked down to the lake. Judith was in the water at the end of the dock paddling around when I arrived, which I thought was incredibly brave. What if I hadn’t shown up and she dog-paddled to death? What if she bumped into bloated tourist bodies bobbing around in the dark? What if a sixty-five-pound muskie bit off her toes, mistaking them for minnows? Clearly, I wasn’t the adventurous type, but I made up for it with a bizarre imagination.
“You’re here!” she called out as I dumped my rubber flip-flops and started to wade into the water. “No, you don’t! I’m out here buck naked, and I’m not swimming with a fully clothed person. Shrug the shorts.”
I slung the towel over my shoulder toga style and slipped my shorts off behind the towel, then wrapped it around my waist and yanked my shirt off, tossing shirt and towel onto the beach only after I was sitting in the cold, shallow water. I had always been shy about my body, for no rational reason. Years without positive feedback, I thought. But I could give myself positive feedback.
“Are you afraid of leeches?” Judith laughed. “I wouldn’t put my bare derriere on that clay in the dark.”
“Ahhhh! I forgot.” I dove out into deeper water to the harder sandy bottom and away from what kids used to call bloodsuckers. They were black or dark brown, and could be eight inches long and an inch wide, or they could be very tiny and hide in your bathing suit. Either way they “leeched” onto you like a suction cup. When pried off, they felt disgustingly gelatinous and left a small bruise where they’d attempted to suck blood. I was freaked by them as a child, and even more so as an adult.
I was no sooner out in the lake, flopping around naked, than a long, slender, black leech swam by. I shrieked and swam toward Judith, who caught me mid-stroke. “Well, I have worse news for you,” she said, clutching my waist and holding me vertically in the water as we both dog-paddled. “You have one on your arm.” I began thrashing around like a spastic chicken as Judith laughed. “Here, here. Settle down for a minute, and I’ll pull it off.” I closed my eyes and paddled, shivering in the cold water, as she plucked the leech off my arm and tossed it farther out into the lake.
“I’ve always loved Minnesota because there are no snakes, but I don’t remember this many leeches when I used to swim here. I wish I’d brought an inner tube so I could get my legs out of the water.”
“You’re drawing them to you because you’re afraid of them.” She brushed against my chest and bent her knee, sliding it up between my legs, nesting it in my pubic hair and suspending me in the water. “You okay now?”
“I think my midnight swim is over.”
“Too bad. I was kind of enjoying it. You have a very nice body,” she said, like someone assessing a car. “Don’t be so shy! Show it off.”
“Thanks.” I clambered onto the shore. As I was toweling off and yanking on my shorts, I caught a glimpse of a figure in white on the dock on the Point, facing our direction. My heart raced.
“I think I’ll call it a night. Thanks for the leech rescue.”
“I’ll think of something more fun we can do. Take care.”
I yanked on my T-shirt and flip-flops and covertly made my way through the woods to the Point, but the porch lights were out now, and I didn’t see a sign of anyone.
Then I heard a scuffling sound inside and a male voice arguing with Levade. She opened the door and forcefully pushed the man out of her cabin. Small, tough, and bald as a pipe post, he tumbled down the front steps, and the dogs were on him in an instant, snarling and threatening to tear him apart, as he lay on the ground. He looked like the man with Frank on the island, the night I had dinner there with Levade.
“Don’t ever rifle through my belongings again, Tony, and stay away from my cabin.” She signaled the dogs to let him up.
Maybe there’s a reason for Gus’s trash talk in the tavern. Maybe Levade is somehow involved with everybody on the lake. I wanted to approach her and ask what was going on, but she’d already made me feel unwelcome, and this didn’t seem like a moment that would change that. Besides, she seemed to be in control of her life, throwing a full-grown man out of her house. I watched Tony get in his truck and drive off. Levade, the two dogs trailing her, went back inside, closed the door, and turned off the lights. Just the act of watching her leave made me sad. She’s a complicated woman, I thought. There’s just something about her—alone and so strong willed, fearless and outspoken, sexual and aloof, and I’m drawn to her and can’t seem to help myself.
* * *
As I started back through the woods, the wind picked up. I saw someone in the shadows on the path and stopped, my heart rate increasing. Frank appeared out of the dark, all in black with a hunting knife strapped to his belt. His mere presence completely terrified me.
“What are you doing out here this late at night?” he asked, obviously surprised to see me. I had a feeling his presence in the woods meant he was waiting for Tony. Otherwise his appearance was too coincidental, since he didn’t live on the cove.
“Actually, what I’m doing is nobody’s business,” I said calmly.
“It is if you’re sniffing around Levade’s cabin.” It was a different Frank. Not the man who gave expert tours, or the jovial fellow at the bear pits, but an angry man with an undercurrent of hatred, over what I had no idea. “What were you hoping to get there?” he asked, twitching and menacing, like he was working up to something he couldn’t control. “Maybe this, huh?” He held my neck with his hand so he could kiss me. We were almost the same height, but he clearly outmuscled me.
“Get your hands off me!” I pulled back, and that response seemed to embolden him. I turned to run, and he grabbed my ankle, snagging me like a trip wire and forcing me to the ground, rolling me onto my back, and trying to rip my shorts off. My mind raced. This is a man who’s capable of wrestling a huge animal to its death.
He held me by the throat with his left hand as he unzipped his pants with his right, pulled out his cock, and attempted to shove it into me. I screamed and fought back, scratching, clawing, and beating at his crotch, fighting with what little air I had left, as we tumbled across the forest floor.
My hand found a lake stone, and I grabbed it and hit him in the face. My voice was small and contorted as he choked off my air supply. “You rape me, and so help me God, I won’t rest until I kill you.”
He let up momentarily to check his facial wound. Realizing that I’d drawn blood, he laughed. Something about him found pleasure in pain, even his own pain, and he fought more viciously. The swirling wind blowing through the trees drowned out my cries for help, and for a moment I thought his raping me was the least of it. His rage might make him accidentally kill me.
Then a long, loud whoosh and the crack of wood, and pine needles descended like a blanket on us, followed by a massive tree limb crashing to the ground, hitting his shoulder. He sagged onto me, then rolled off to one side moaning, and I twisted and writhed and escaped. I didn’t know if he got up off the ground and was following me, or if he’d come to his senses, but I ran like I’d never run before in my life and made it to the cabin. Shaking, I fumbled for the key and unlocked the door, then barricaded it and loaded the shotgun. I looked out the window at Marney’s cabin, wondering if I should call her for help, but what could she do but wake Sam up, and what could Sam do but go ask Frank if he’d done what he would deny. Besides if Frank breaks this door down, and I fire this gun, everyone will show up. No calls necessary.
I slept with my shotgun loaded and beside my bed, thinking this is what women have been doing for centuries with men—running from them, hiding themselves and their children, and when all else failed, shooting them. But why was this happening to me now?
I’ve gone from being a woman who was verbally attacked by my ex-husband to being physically attacked by someone else’s. The difference, I thought, is this time I’m forced to fight back.