“She’s one powerful-looking lady, Danny,” the builder said.
“How big is she?” Daniel Baciagalupo asked.
“We’re talking giantess category,” Andy told him. “Hands like paws-boots bigger than mine. You and I together could fit in her parka; there would probably be room for Hero, too.”
“I suppose she looks like an Arctic explorer,” the writer guessed.
“She’s sure got the right clothes for this weather,” Andy said. “The snowpants, the snowmobiler’s gloves-and her parka has a big old hood.”
“I don’t suppose you saw the color of her hair,” the writer said.
“Nope-not under that hood. I couldn’t even be sure of the color of her eyes,” Andy said.
“And what would you guess her age was?” Danny asked. “About my age, maybe-or a little older?”
“Nope,” the builder said again. “She’s way younger than you are, Danny. At least what I could see of her. She’s really fit-looking.”
“With all the clothes she had on, how could you tell she was fit?” the writer asked.
“She came into my office-just to look at my map of the bay,” the builder told Danny. “While she was locating Turner Island on the map, I lifted her backpack-I just picked it up off the floor and set it down again. It’s about a seventy-pound pack, Danny; that pack weighs as much as Hero, and she left here carrying it like a pillow.”
“She sounds like someone I met once,” Danny said, “but her age is wrong. If she were the woman I’m thinking of, she couldn’t be ‘way younger’ than I am-as you say.”
“I could be wrong about that,” Andy told him. “People age differently, Danny. Some folks seem to stay the same; others, if it’s been a while, you wouldn’t recognize them.”
“Oh, it’s been a while-if she’s the one I’m thinking of,” Danny said. “It’s been almost forty years! It can’t be her,” the writer said; he sounded impatient with himself. Danny didn’t dare to hope that it was Lady Sky. He realized that it had also been a while since he’d hoped for anything. (He had once hoped that nothing terrible would ever happen to his beloved Joe. He’d also hoped that his dad would long outlive the cowboy, and that Ketchum would die peacefully-in his sleep, with both his hands intact. Daniel Baciagalupo didn’t have a good record with hope.)
“Danny, it’s dumb to think you can even guess what someone’s going to look like after forty years,” Andy said. “Some people change more than others-that’s all I’m saying. Look,” the builder said, “why don’t I come out there? I could probably catch up to her on my snowmobile. I could bring her the rest of the way, and if you don’t like her-or she’s not the person you’re thinking of-I could bring her back to Pointe au Baril.”
“No, Hero and I will be all right,” Danny said. “I can always call you if I need help getting her to leave, or something.”
“You and Hero better be on your way to the back dock,” Andy told him. “She left here a while ago, and she’s got a real long stride.”
“Okay, we’ll get going. Thanks, Andy,” Danny told him.
“You sure I can’t come out there, or do anything for you?” the builder asked.
“I’ve been looking for a first sentence to my first chapter,” the writer answered. “You wouldn’t have a first sentence for me, would you?”
“I can’t help you with that,” Andy Grant said. “Just call me if you have any trouble with that woman.”
“There won’t be any trouble,” Danny told him.
“Danny? Take that old Remington with you, when you go to the back dock. It’s just a good idea to have the gun with you-and make sure she sees it, okay?”
“Okay,” the writer answered.
Hero was excited, as always, to take a walk with Ketchum’s.30-06 Springfield carbine. “Don’t get your hopes up, Hero,” Danny told the dog. “The odds are she’s not a bear.”
The snow was knee-deep on the wide-open path to the writing shack, and not quite as deep on the narrow path through the woods from Danny’s workplace to the back dock.
When he passed his writing shack, the writer said aloud, “I’ll be back, first chapter. I’ll see you soon, first sentence.”
Hero had run ahead. There was a grove of cedars, out of the wind, where a small herd of deer had bedded down for the night. Either Hero had spooked them, or the deer had moved on when the wind dropped. Hero was sniffing all around; there were probably deer turds under the snow. The snow in the cedar grove was flattened down where the deer had huddled together.
“They’re gone, Hero-you missed them,” Danny told the bear hound. “Those deer are on Barclay Island by now, or they’re on the mainland.” The dog was rolling in the snow where the herd had bedded down. “If you roll in any deer turds, Hero, I’ll give you a bath-with shampoo and everything.”
Hero hated baths; Danny didn’t much like washing the uncooperative dog, either. In the Cluny Drive house, in Toronto, Lupita was the one who washed the dog. She seemed to enjoy scolding Hero while she did it. (“So, Señor Macho-how do you like having only one eyelid? But that’s what you get for fighting, Mr. Macho-isn’t it?”)
There must have been three feet of snow on the roof of Grand-daddy’s cabin, to which neither the writer nor the dog gave more than a passing glance. If that cabin had been haunted before, it was more haunted now; neither Danny nor Hero would have welcomed an encounter with Ketchum’s ghost. If the old logger were a ghost, Danny knew that the poacher’s cabin was just the spot for him.
The snow had drifted thigh-high onto the back dock. Across the frozen bay, parts of the mainland were visible in the whiteout, but the far shore didn’t emerge distinctly; the mainland was blurred. The clarity of the shoreline was fleeting. In the distance, fragments of the landscape momentarily appeared, only to disappear the next instant. There were no identifying landmarks that allowed Danny to see exactly where the snowmobile portage from Payne’s Road came into contact with the bay, but from the vantage of the dock, the writer could make out the shape of the ice fisherman’s shack. It had not been blown away by the storm, yet the shack was so indistinct in the steadily falling snow that Danny knew the snowshoer would be halfway across the reach of the bay before he could see her.
What had little Joe said that day at the pig roast? “Plane. Not a bird.” And then, because Danny had been watching Katie instead of the small airplane, he’d heard Joe say: “Not flying. Falling!” Only then did Danny see her: The skydiver was free-falling, hurtling through the sky, when the writer had first spotted her, only seconds before her parachute opened. And Amy herself had come consecutively more and more into view. First, it became clear she was a woman skydiver; then, all at once, she was naked. Only when Danny was beside her, in the pigpen-in all the mud and pig shit-did he realize how big Amy was. She’d been so solid!
Now the writer squinted across the bay, into the falling snow, as if he were waiting for another little airplane to appear on the vanished horizon-or for another red-white-and-blue parachute to pop open.
Whoever she was, she wouldn’t be naked this time, the writer knew. Yet he also knew that, like the skydiver, she would suddenly just be there-the way an angel drops down to earth from the heavens. He was looking and looking for her, but Danny understood that in the whiteout of the snowstorm, the woman would just plain appear, as if by magic. One second, nothing would be there. The next second, she would be halfway across the bay and coming closer-one long stride after another.