I NEVER TOLD anyone the whole story of the muskie, just said I hooked one but lost him when my lure came apart. It was probably selfishness on my part, and I don’t really know if I was afraid of making what happened smaller by talking about it or if there was some other reason, but I ended up keeping most of it for myself, like a miser hoarding his coins.
In the morning Don let Diana and me take the boat out again for a picnic. Marge looked worried, and for a second I was uneasy over how much she knew about my thoughts.
“Are these two going to be all right, Don?” she said.
Don was busy at the end of the dock shaking ashes out of the grill into the water. “Long as they leave the bears alone,” he said without looking up.
“Bears,” said Diana, swallowing. Reconsidering, maybe.
“Islands only, Jimbo,” Don said, shooting me a look for emphasis. “It’s a really bad time of year, with the cubs as young as they are.”
I nodded and pushed the boat away from the dock with an oar, thinking there might be a lot of things for Don to worry about, but us messing with any more bears wasn’t one of them. I pulled on the starter rope a couple of times and the motor growled and blubbed smokily in the water. I eased the boat backward out into open water and brought the bow around to head us out toward the far end of the lake.
We cruised along like old people, with Diana leaning over to trail her hand in the water, until we were out of sight behind the point, then I gradually opened the throttle to get us up to speed. Diana took off her sweatshirt, and I saw she had on a light green swimsuit under it. She threw back her head and held her arms out wide, her hair flying in the wind. The sun was already warm on my face.
When we got to the little island where we had caught the walleyes I cut the motor and we coasted in to the beach side. The island was partly covered with trees and had a long tail of beach on one side and some kind of dark green grass growing here and there in the water around it. When Diana jumped ashore with the bowline, half a dozen goldfinches spilled away from the high branches of a poplar at the water’s edge and scattered across the sky above us like chips of sun. She tied us up to a limb on a big piece of driftwood as I tilted the motor up out of the water, and we carried our stuff up to a dry flat spot under a couple of pine trees. I set the cooler down as she spread the two big blue and white towels on the pine needles.
Diana took off her sandals and slipped out of her blue jeans, then got out two small bottles and poured mosquito repellent and sun lotion into her hand, rubbed her palms together and started spreading the oily stuff over her skin. I stripped down to my own trunks and picked up the fishing rod. I opened the tackle box, pushing aside the damaged muskie lure and finding a perch-colored River-Runt. I tied it on, then walked over to the other shore to cast into the deeper water on that side. I cast a few times, got a backlash, picked it out and cast again. Then, realizing I didn’t care whether I caught anything or not, I carried the rod back to where Diana was sitting on one of the beach towels.
“Wanta go swimming?” she said.
I was a little doubtful. The water seemed pretty cold, but then I couldn’t afford to show cowardice either.
“Okay,” I said. “You go first. If you survive, I’ll come in too.”
“You are my hero,” she said. She walked to the edge of the water and stood looking across the sparkling lake for a few seconds. She tested the water with her toe and instantly jerked it back out. She considered for a while. “I’ll have to wash my hair again, but I don’t care,” she said, and ran splashing out into the lake until she was deep enough to dive in. When she came back up she shook her head and said, “It’s not too bad once you’re in. But there’s a few weeds under the water. Feels like feathers.”
Having no alternative now, I charged out and dove in too, surprised by how bearable the water turned out to be. I swam out along the spit a little way and then back to where Diana was putting her face under the water trying to see fish. She raised her head and said, “There’s not anything down there that bites, is there?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, remembering the muskie and the lost fish from our stringer. I was semi-sure whatever was in the lake didn’t attack people. Except possibly little kids. And dogs. I looked at Diana standing waist-deep in the water in her wet bathing suit. The small valley of her navel showed through the fabric just at the waterline, and all my thoughts about water monsters melted away to nothing.
Diana bent down to look under the surface again, but almost instantly jerked her head up and screamed. She ran splashing back up to the beach, slapping at her legs. I caught up to her, mental images of dog- and walleye-eating muskies coming back to me in a blood-freezing rush.
“It’s got me!” she yelled, yanking at a slippery black leech that was attached to the inside of her thigh. “Help me, Biscuit!”
I pulled at the rubbery leech, but it was stuck tight. Diana’s teeth chattered with fear and cold. I said, “Come on over here, maybe we can get it off.” I remembered Don saying something about leeches in the lake but I hadn’t realized how tough they could be. While I went over to the tackle box, Diana sat on her towel, still trying to get a grip on the leech with her fingers. In the bottom of the box I found the metal tube filled with waterproof matches next to a little jar of red salmon eggs. I grabbed it and came back to kneel beside her. She lay back with her eyes shut and her arms at her sides, looking like a pagan sacrifice. Her teeth were clenched and she had goose bumps on her arms and legs. I struck a match and stretched the leech out from her skin. When I held the flame under it, it let go, and I tossed it away into the grass. Then I sat back and looked at Diana until she opened her eyes.
“Is it off?” she asked, shivering.
I nodded. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I saw that her nipples were pushing up under the fabric of her suit. Her legs were smooth and tanned except for the small pink circle where the leech had been. There were sparkling drops of water all over her. I was beginning to get a strangled feeling in my chest. I bent down and kissed her, tasting the lake on her lips. She held my shoulders and kissed me back, groaning under her breath, then pulled me against her, and I felt her whole body tremble. I moved to lie beside her and we kissed again, longer this time, the world seeming to stop its turning as we held each other. After a while I pulled back and lay on my side looking at her, at her wet hair and the way her swimsuit followed the shape of her body.
Diana watched me for a minute, just breathing. She said, “What are you thinking, Bis?”
I could barely speak. “All I can think about is how much I wish I could see you without your bathing suit,” I said.
She looked at me without saying anything or showing any expression for so long I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, or I hadn’t really said it out loud. Or maybe she was just deciding whether to smack me or not. I couldn’t believe what I’d said, myself. I heard the air moving through the trees above us and birds calling somewhere.
Finally she said, “You can.”
She didn’t ask me to turn around or anything, just stood up, unhooked the top straps and worked the swimsuit down until she could step out of it, then lay down again on the towel. She was white where the suit had covered her, and the hair between her legs was almost exactly the same sandy color as the hair on her head. The sun caught the golden fuzz on her arms and stomach and the perfect curves of her breasts.
“You too,” she said.
I got out of my trunks, found my billfold and tore a condom from its package, remembering what Hubert had told me about how to put it on.
Watching me, Diana said, “Doesn’t that tickle?”
I shook my head and lay back down beside her. We kissed again and I cupped her small soft breast in my hand. The nipple felt firm and warm, exactly as I’d imagined it would. She spread her legs a little to let me touch her. It was all so much easier and so much better than my daydreams that I felt dizzy. She accepted me between her legs as I moved over her, her breath hot on my neck.
When I entered her, she yelled, “Yikes!” sucking in her breath and grabbing the hair on the sides of my head, her eyes squinched shut. “Yikes!” she said again, this time her voice only a squeak.
I’d never actually heard anyone say that before and had thought it was only a cartoon word. It scared me a little. “Should I stop?” I said.
“No, dummy!” she hissed through her teeth. “Don’t stop. Never stop.”
In a little while I began to feel as if I was drifting, slowly at first but then faster and faster, on a river of pleasure deeper and wider than the Amazon, toward a tremendous waterfall rumbling over the edge of the universe, with no control over anything and no awareness of anything but the irresistible river. There were colored spots in my eyes and everything sounded far off, like the time I got knocked out, and then I didn’t hear anything at all. Diana’s skin and hair smelled like the water and the pine needles and the lotion she’d put on, and her breath was sweet on my face and neck. She opened her mouth wide and wrapped her legs around mine. And then I did go over the edge of the world, because I couldn’t possibly stop myself, and I fell and fell and fell through soundless white thunder until I knew I’d never breathe again, never even want to breathe again—just keep on falling like this forever.
And then it was over. For what seemed like a long time I just lay next to Diana and tried to catch my breath. The sounds of the birds and the light wind in the tops of the pines came back. I felt the sun on my skin. I couldn’t believe a feeling like that could happen, or, once it happened, that it could ever end.
Diana lay with her arm over her eyes, breathing a little slower now. Finally she lowered her arm, looked at me for a minute and said, “Wow.” She halfway sat up and looked down at herself. “There’s just a little blood,” she said without sounding too concerned, as if maybe she’d expected this.
“Does it hurt?” I said.
“Not enough to worry about,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. That makes it sound like you did something bad. Or we did.” She looked at me and then down at herself again. “I’m not exactly sure what bad is, but I don’t think this is it.”
“Okay,” I said, not completely convinced. It had never occurred to me until this moment that what we’d done might actually be dangerous, that it might involve bloodshed.
She didn’t say anything for a while, both of us floating along on the feeling. Eventually I started wondering how long we could just lie out here naked as babies like this, nothing over us but the trees and the sky. Surely there had to be some kind of rule against it. On the other hand, I supposed we were in so deep on account of what we’d just done that there was no point in worrying about secondary misbehaviors like simple nudity.
Then Diana said, “I don’t think Mom’ll be able to tell.” She drew in a deep breath. “But Harpo’s gonna know.”
“How’s she going to know?”
Diana just looked at me.
I nodded miserably. In a way it was the story of my whole life—always saying something stupid before I thought, then hearing myself and realizing what an idiot I was. “You’re right, she’ll know,” I said unnecessarily, the dread possibilities inherent in this fact beginning to circle like vultures in my mind.
Diana pulled the towel from under herself to use as a blanket, covering her body from her shoulders to her ankles. Thinking it over, calming down a little, I told myself Diana had it exactly right, we could probably keep our secret from the adults and most, or even with a little luck all, of the other kids except L.A. This limited the problem considerably, but I also understood that what we’d just done wasn’t over, couldn’t be over until all the consequences were in, and I had no idea yet what they were going to be or when they were coming. Sitting up, I took a long breath.
“It feels like she already knows,” I said. “It feels like everybody knows.”
I looked off across the water, understanding that now another divide had been crossed, and there was no way back. It was a different lake now. It was a different world.
WHEN WE GOT BACK to the cabin I felt almost as naked walking up to Marge and Don as I actually had been on the island, but to my surprise and relief neither of them seemed to sense anything different about Diana or me. By the time we had finished the steaks, yams and buttered onions Don cooked on the grill for supper that evening, I had myself convinced we were completely in the clear as far as Diana’s parents were concerned. This didn’t solve the L.A. problem, but she was still over a thousand miles away, so at least for the moment we had some breathing room.
Later we fell asleep in front of the fire again, and of course I dreamed of the—or maybe I should say a—dead girl, not necessarily Tricia Venables or anyone in particular this time, but still as real as ever and still wanting something from me: She stares at me in silence for a long time, her skin blue-gray, the whites of her eyes not really white, I notice for the first time, but pink from the small hemorrhages caused by strangulation. She looks down at the big red and white fishing lure in her hand, and then her eyes come back to mine. She lifts the lure to her mouth, tears off a chunk of it with her teeth and chews slowly, the wood crunching, hooks tearing the bloodless flesh of her lips and tongue, her eyes never leaving mine.
I sat up suddenly, gasping, my T-shirt drenched with sweat, the fading echoes of a scream ricocheting through my mind. I threw the sheet aside, pulled on my jeans and took the stairs four at a time, grabbing the flashlight from the kitchen counter on my way out the back door and running as hard as I could down the slope to the dock and out its length to the boat. I tore open the tackle box, scrabbled around in the bottom until I found the muskie lure and shone the flashlight’s beam on its sheared-off end and the grooves cut by the gigantic fish’s teeth, my hands shaking.
I felt footsteps on the dock behind me, too heavy to be anyone’s but Don’s. “Jim, what’s going on?” he said.
I turned to him, my mouth almost too dry to speak. “It wasn’t Hot Earl,” I said.