She kicked at the dirt. “Are you ready?” she said.
“I’m ready.” I puckered my lips and closed my eyes.
“No, stupid. You’re the boy. You have to come after me.” I bent toward her; her breath in my face was grassy and sweet. She opened one eye. “Don’t you know anything? You’re supposed to put your arms around me.”
I thought of my cousin Marshall, his hand gripping the bare breast of the girl who peed on Arlen’s lawn. I saw the bruises from his rough fingers, the girl’s smeared mouth, lipstick rubbed all the way up to her nostrils and halfway down her chin. This was as much as I knew about kissing.
Olivia Jeanne Woodruff, that strong young woman, lured Elliot Foot off in her Winnebago. Was she wearing him down like Arlen said? Was she kissing him to death?
Nina flung herself into the arms of Billy Elk. Nina threw herself on Jesse and tried to save him with her own breath. This was all I knew of love and mercy. The line blurred. Passion and salvation seemed like the same thing, like something I’d wanted my whole life.
I lurched forward and clutched Gwen’s waist, gave her a fast moist smooch on the mouth — almost on the mouth. My aim took me high and I ended up getting more of her nose than her lips. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and spit on the ground. I was as sloppy as Jesse. She turned and ran. I stood, stupidly staring at the red scar of the setting sun. My eyes burned. I was nothing but a stand-in, a ridiculous failure. Let me try again, I thought. But I was sure she never would.
I watched Gwen’s hair swing from side to side as she sprinted down the road, so you couldn’t help thinking of a horse’s tail, an animal’s rump. Yes, she could have Gil Harding if she wanted. She could have any boy when she was ready. Soon she wouldn’t have to bother with me and my false, clumsy kisses.
I ran after her. It was almost dusk, but she wanted to walk downtown. Boys in trucks and souped-up Mustangs dragged Main. They hung their heads out their windows, whistled at every girl they saw. They didn’t care if she was fat or old, pimple-faced or bowlegged. Anything female was worth a blast of the horn. Gwen didn’t seem to notice their lack of discrimination. She grinned every time they hooted, certain that each call was for her alone.
Later, we lay on our sleeping bags in the trailer. I said, “This is our cabin. We live alone in the woods.”
“I’d be glad to live alone and be rid of my parents,” said Gwen. “Ruby doesn’t do shit now that she’s working four to midnight. She’s a slug all day and gives me hell if I don’t do the laundry and clean up after Zack and Dad. She says it’s high time I learned to do a woman’s job. A woman’s job? Christ. I’m no genius, she tells me, I’ve gotta be able to do something.” Gwen kicked off her shoes and stripped down to her underwear. “Fourteen years old and my mother wants to get me trained so I can marry some fat slob like my dad and wipe up his muddy footprints off the floor when he comes home from hunting and throws a bundle of dead ducks in my sink.” We unzipped our sleeping bags so we could have one underneath us and one on top. “Not this girl,” Gwen said, draping her warm leg over mine, “no sirree. This girl’s going to have a good time before she thinks of promising to love, cherish and obey. Obey? Who thinks up this shit anyway?” She rubbed her leg up and down against mine, and I felt the rough stubble of her shaved calf. I tried to forget our miserable kiss, tried to pretend nothing had happened and nothing had changed.
I stared out the window, watching the sky. “My parents sure as hell don’t obey one another,” Gwen said. “Dad’s been on her back ever since she got the night shift. She says it’s twice the money, and he says, ‘What’re my wages — chopped liver?’ Same conversation, five times a week. She wants her own money, never tells him what she makes. She’s stashing it and I know where. Makes her feel free to have it. I think she’s getting me trained so she can split. Like hell. If she screws, I’ll be right behind her.”
I gazed past Gwen. She nudged me. “What’re you looking at?” she said.
“The sky.”
“What for?”
“I’m waiting for the first star.”
“Tell me the rest of the story,” she said, “about our cabin in the woods.”
“A crazy trapper built a shack in these parts too.”
“Why’s he crazy?”
“He married an Indian girl. They lived near the timberline, but her three brothers found them. They tied the trapper to his own stove and kidnapped their sister.”
“Where’d you hear this story?”
“Everybody’s heard this story. The trapper struggled for a week. The fire burned out. The wind roared through the cracks of the log cabin and the trapper dreamed he was falling down a crevasse in a glacier.”
I kept looking out the window as I talked. Already the sky had gone from blue to black, filling with stars that disappeared behind the ragged ridge of the Rockies. “The ropes cut his wrists and thighs, but he was too numb to feel his own blood,” I said.
“I heard this story before. You’re not telling it right.”
“I’m telling the truth. If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll think the rest to myself.”
“No, go on.”
“He fell asleep. He would have frozen to death, but he cried out from a dream, and a pair of wolves heard him, and knew his voice. Years before, he’d spared the life of the male. The trapper’s rifle was aimed at the animal’s head, but he heard the she-wolf howling in the hills as if she knew her mate was in danger. He emptied six rounds into the dirt and the wolf ran free.”
“Now I remember,” Gwen said. “They found that trapper, and he was still tied to the stove, and he was dead. That’s what you get for marrying an Indian. My father says Indians should be able to join the union at the mill, just like anyone else. Ruby says that if we let them do that, the next thing you know they’ll be wanting to marry our daughters, and the town will be full of women like Mary Louise Furey. Who cares that the trapper died anyway? No one knew him.”
“The animals thought they owed the trapper something. They gnawed through the ropes; they slept beside him to keep him warm. And when he woke, he was changed. He couldn’t talk like a man; he could only bark and howl. He’s still looking for the Indian girl.”
Gwen said, “I heard the girl killed herself when she found out the man had frozen to death. Her brothers locked her up in a little hut and she drowned herself in the pail of water they’d left for her. They buried her in the old way, sitting up instead of lying down, like she was expecting company, wearing all her beads and a doeskin dress.”
“It’s not true,” I told her. “They aren’t dead; they just can’t find each other.”
“I don’t want to be buried. I want to be burned. I want my ashes scattered so no one can dig me up later and look at my bones.”
“I want to disappear,” I said. “I don’t want anyone to do anything with my body.”
“No one just disappears.”
I didn’t answer. I knew how wrong she was. I thought of my mother’s shoe box hidden in the closet, all the pictures Nina destroyed. I imagined her coming home, carrying an envelope with all the missing pieces. We’d sit on the living-room floor and tape the pictures together. She’d stay long enough for the seams to mend and fade like old scars.
“Do you think the trapper will look for her forever?” Gwen said.
“For the rest of his life. Maybe longer.”
“I want someone to love me that much.”
“I don’t. You have to be dead for someone to love you that much, dead or gone for a long, long time.”
Gwen laughed. “It’s only a story.”
In the square of sky there were too many stars to count. I thought each star was a person who was lost. Their eyes watched the world night after night. They were safe and knew exactly where to find us.