Regiment of Women (37 page)

Back in the clearing he told the girl, who sat in the sun on the fender of the Rolls, “You're right. It Was certainly, invigorating. Now how about breakfast? The rest of the bread and liverwurst is in the glove compartment.” He raised his shoulders. “I know you don't like liverwurst, but that's all there is.”

“Then it'll have to do.” She had mellowed, perhaps because of the sun. She put her arms behind her and leaned back, her nipples marking the blouse front.

He made two sandwiches. She ate hers without complaint. He had not been hungry until he bit into his, and then instantly became ravenous and even finished the crusts, something he seldom did in civilization.

The girl's eyes were closed and the sun was brilliant on her fair face. She had pulled the long skirt above her knees. He now saw that her legs were not completely hairless, but showed a fine golden down.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Do we start driving again and look for gas as long as the car keeps going?”

“It might stop in a worse place,” she said. “And then where would we be?”

“What about food?”

“I saw some berries back in the woods.” She opened her eyes slowly and looked at him with a hint of derision. “And also what I suspect you called a rat. It was a rabbit.”

“I know what a rabbit looks like. It's got big ears.” He squinted. “But what were you suggesting, anyway?”

“We kill it and eat it.”

“Oh, come on.” He rolled his eyes.

“Would you rather starve?”

“What about those berries? I don't care that much for meat anyway.”

She shook her head. “How do we know they aren't poisonous? Anyway, you'd have to eat gallons of those little things to fill your belly.”

“Sorry I brought up the matter,” he said. “You were so happy there in the sun. Go back and sit there again. I'll try and think of something. It's my responsibility.”

“Why?”

“Men are traditionally responsible for food, aren't they? I was once a pretty good cook.” Suddenly he felt the perverse urge to confess he had been Pauline Witkovsky's mattress as a young man, but in resisting it, he went too far. “And I hijacked the car and drove all the way up here and got you into this.”

Her hitherto friendly expression chilled. “You make it sound as if I'm so much baggage.”

He had offended her again. She tossed her head and climbed onto the fender. Before he had decided what to do, she cocked an ear.

“Hear that?”

“What?”

“It's a car.”

He heard nothing, then the drone of a distant insect.

“Get your ass out on the road,” she cried.

“Don't give me orders!”

She cried out in desperation. Actually, it did sound like a car now, and very close. In fact, before he got halfway to the road, the vehicle went by.

It was a battered green pickup truck, driven by someone with a profile of hatbrim, long nose, short pipe, and pointed chin. She looked straight ahead and did not seem to see them or the Rolls Royce.

Cornell ran onto the road to chase the truck. It was a futile act, but served to postpone the moment when he would have to face the girl. When he reached the asphalt, the truck had disappeared. The reason was that scarcely fifty yards beyond the clearing the road descended a hill, which he had not seen in last night's darkness.

He ran to the beginning of the slope and looked down. At the bottom, less than a quarter mile away, the woods gave way to a village. He watched the truck enter it, then trudged back to the clearing.

After accepting the girl's glare, he jerked his thumb at the Rolls. “Come on. I'm not going to starve here. Let's take our chances on the road.”

Sullenly she climbed down and got in. He pulled onto the asphalt, drove fifty yards to the declivity, and began to roll down.

The village consisted of little more than everything they needed: a general store with a gas pump in front of it. The pickup truck was being refueled by its driver, the crusty-looking old character Cornell had seen speed past him. Apparently she was the storekeeper. He left the Rolls and walked all the way up to her before she saw him. She must have had a sort of tunnel vision.

But then she smiled briefly and said, in an unusual accent: “Maanin',” which he was pleased to identify as “Good morning” and responded to in kind. She kept the gas hose in the filler hole and sucked away at the black pipe that fortunately was not lit.

“You sell food as well as gas?”

She took the pipe out of her mouth and pointed at the store. “I don't, but she does.”

“Excuse me,” said Cornell. “I thought you were the proprietor.”

“Nawp.” She put the pipe between her ill-fitting false teeth. “I'm the game warden.”

He started towards the store, then turned and went back to the car. “You come along this time,” he told the girl. “I don't want to hear again that you don't like what I bought to eat.”

At the entrance she stepped in front of him, opened the screen door, and held it for his passage. She had very nice manners when she wanted to show them.

He had never seen such an establishment as this store, with its huge wheel of cheese, rackful of axes, bins of dried beans, coils of rope, whole hams, and a full-sized canoe, all cheek by jowl. Behind the counter was a wide but not really fat woman, her cheeks naturally as red as if she had used men's rouge. The sleeves of her plaid shirt were rolled up to her meaty biceps, and on the right one she had a tattoo: “U.S. Marines,” on an elaborate scroll.

“Maanin',” said she.

Cornell answered, and the girl nodded. She then began to point: “One of those hams and an axe and ten pounds of those beans and a sack of flour and—” The woman seized a pencil and started scrawling the list on the end of a mounted roll of wrapping paper. Cornell was astounded.

“Twenty feet of rope, a dozen cans of condensed milk, a sack of sugar, a side of bacon—”

Cornell had never heard the like. He walked away from her obsessive litany, finding himself at a rack of cellophane bags of potato chips and Fritos. He loved the latter and had not eaten any since he went to the sperm camp. He unclipped a small bag and took it to the counter.

The girl was saying: “And a jackknife, a shovel, a skillet, some pots and pans—” She saw Cornell's bag of Fritos, and said: “Put that back.”

The big woman raised her eyebrows. Cornell realized instantly how it looked—the girl had forgotten she was dressed as a man and he as a woman—and not wanting to complicate matters further, he responded: “No, dear, I know you love them, and you should get some reward for memorizing that grocery list.”

He smiled brilliantly at the storekeeper, who asked: “Whereabouts is your camp? Loon Lake?”

He was stopped momentarily by the implications of the question. So that was what the girl planned: camping out. He looked at her, but she had gone to the far wall and was examining the lanterns that hung there.

“Actually,” he told the storekeeper, “we just came up from New York. We haven't found a camping place yet.”

“Loon Lake is your best bet. It's a real nice place.” She threw up a big arm. “You go right out of town heading east. Twenty-eight and three-tenths miles, there's a dirt road to the left. It's an old logging road, is what it is. About seven miles in, there's the lake. Full of bass and a lot of dead wood there for fires. I'd get me a saw, though, to cut it with. That axe will raise a few blisters if you ain't used to handling one. And what aboudt clothes?” She pointed. “My dry goods department's in the back That real nice suit of yours won't do for campin'.”

“True,” said Cornell.

“Work shirts and jeans. Also stuff for your boy friend.” She jerked her chin at the girl. “That finery's for town. Pretty little thing, ain't he?”

The girl came back with a lantern. She had heard the comment, and Cornell was happy to note a change in her style.

“We'll need this, too, don't you think?” she asked.

The order when completed filled the trunk of the Rolls and the back seat as well. Finally the big woman filled the gas tank. Attached to the pump she found a note.

“Huh,” said she, sticking it in a rear pocket of her corduroys. “That Mabel. She's our game warden. You'd think she'd come in for a few words when she gasses up. Not her. She writes how many gallons on an I.O.U. and drives off.”

“Are there many people up here?” Cornell asked.

“Not many. There's a lumber camp fifty-two miles to the northwest. They drive in a truckload of them lumberjacks every Saturday night. They're eunuchs, you know, except for the forewomen. It's a big treat for 'em to come in here. I got a lunch counter in back and a jukebox. They have their hamburgers and listen to the jukebox and think they're having a big time. Pathetic. Still, I'm glad to see them. I'm glad to see anybody by the end of a week. Most of the few women who live around here are peculiar, like old Mabel.”

The gas pump's whirring stopped with a
clunk
. The woman read the amount on its face, got out a bill for the food and gear, computed with the pencil stub from behind her ear, and said: “All told, $3,382.76.”

Cornell paid with four greenbacks from the senator's stuffed wallet. The girl spoke up when the storekeeper was fishing for the change in her pockets.

“Prices are as high up here as in New York.”

“Higher, I would expect. Except for the gas, which Shell comes by with once a month, I truck in the rest of my merchandise from Boston twice a year. Used to go to Bangor years ago, but there's nothin' left there now. Everybody's in Boston, like I guess everybody down south's in New York.”

“How do you make a living?” Cornell asked.

“Them lumberjacks and a few old farts like Mabel. The occasional campers like yourself.” She gave Cornell his change and wished them good camping. The screen door slammed behind her wide, corduroyed rump.

The dirt road to Loon Lake was deeply rutted and full of boulders. Cornell winced with each bang against the undercarriage of the lovely Rolls; it was as if he was being struck in his own lower belly.

“This is awful,” he said. “We're being torn apart.” He drove as slowly as he could and performed a virtuoso job of steering, trying to avoid the worst hazards.

“If we can just get there,” said the girl, “we're O.K.”

She had made the same remark several times, and finally it got to him, even in the midst of his task. He wrenched the wheel one way to avoid a particularly brutal-looking rock, and then the other way to evade a cavernous rut, and said: “You mean we're going to stay here forever?”

“Nothing is forever.”

He shook his head. “You're nuts.”

“Well, why did you take this road? And why do you keep driving? Do you have an alternative?”

“No. That doesn't mean it's any the less nuts, though.”

“It might be fun.”

“Oh, sure.”

After another hour or so they had covered the seven miles and there was the lake.

The girl clapped her hands. “Just look at that.” It really was nice: an expanse of royal-blue water, the surrounding greenery, the golden sunlight, white puffs of cloud.

“Mmm,” murmured Cornell. The road continued, very likely circling the lake, but he doubted if the surface would improve. “Should we stop here?”

“Keep going until we see a good spot for the tent. Someplace with a slight grade, for drainage. Near enough to the shore so we don't have to carry water too far, but not too close, in case there's a storm.”

He commented on her expertise.

“FBI Academy,” she said. “Wilderness survival course. Never tell when that might come in handy, they always said. And here it is.”

They had crawled and bumped halfway around the lake before she approved a campsite. It was on a modest knoll, perhaps eight feet above the shore. Running down to the rocky beach was a natural drainage channel, which also served as a path to the water, a function the girl demonstrated by running down it and stubbing her bare toe on a stone. She sat down and cursed vilely.

“Will you put on those sneakers?” asked Cornell.

He carried the folded tent from car to knoll, then looked down at the beach. She was skipping flat stones across the surface of the lake, having a simpleminded good time while he worked. The funny thing was that he did not resent this. There was something so innocent in her pleasure. Besides, he was built to carry loads.

After a moment, as if she felt his eyes, she turned her head. “Isn't this fabulous?” A flurry of wind blew her hair across her forehead. “Why don't you stop working and come down and throw stones?”

“I'd better get the tent up if I can figure it out Suppose it rains?”

“Look at that sky. Don't be silly.”

He carefully went down the path and joined her. He looked all around the shoreline.

“We're really alone here. I can't see another tent or car or person.

“Here,” said she, “you hold it like this.” She showed him the flat stone between her thumb and forefinger. “Then you snap your wrist when you let it go.” She threw one that jumped three times off the water before it plunked and sank.

It took him a while to get the hang of it By the time they had gone up to erect the tent, following the instructional pamphlet provided, the sky had clouded over. While Cornell was pounding in the third tent peg with the back of the axehead, the rain started.

Among the things they had forgotten to buy was rain gear of any type.

W
ILLIAM
W
ORDSWORTH
, 1807

C
ORNELL
SAT
THERE
on the air mattress, a knee on either side of his face, and stared at the water falling outside the tent door. The girl was in a similar situation on the other mattress. Neither had had the opportunity to change her, or his, impractical attire for the workclothes, and both were soaked.