Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

“Why don’t you think it over?” she said. “Stay here overnight and think about it. Maybe we can talk about it some more, later on.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll stay until tomorrow.” I glanced out the window.

“I’d better camp off by the edge of the trees, there,” I said. “Sunday isn’t going to take to your dogs just like that—or they to him.”

“Sunday?” said the woman. “Is that what you call him? I think you heard me say my name. I’m Marie Walcott and this is Wendy.”

“I’m Marc Despard,” I said.

“Marc, I’m pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand and I took it. It was a strange feeling to shake hands after the last few weeks. Her hand was small but firm, and there were calluses at the base of her fingers. “Are you French?”

I laughed. “The name’s French-Canadian.”

She let go of my hand and looked at the girl.

“I didn’t hear...”

“She’s never told me her name,” I said. I looked at the girl. “How about it? Do you want to tell us now?”

The girl was absolutely silent. I shrugged.

“I’ve just been calling her ‘Girl,’ ” I said. “I guess you’ll have to do the same.”

“Maybe,” Marie smiled at her, “she’ll tell us her name—later on, when she feels like it.”

The girl stood without a word.

“Don’t count on it,” I said to Marie.

I had rigged a backpack-style tent for the girl and myself from some of the canvas in the boatdock before we left the deserted lakeshore house. I set this up at the edge of the trees, upwind of the dogs. Sunday had already begun ignoring the dog pack; and Marie rode herd on them through the afternoon, commanding them to be quiet any time they started to get worked up about Sunday or the rest of us. Once the camp was made, I left the girl with Sunday and went to the house alone.

Marie took me around and introduced me individually to each of the dogs. I spoke to each and petted each one briefly while Marie stood sternly over them to make sure that they behaved. Occasionally I got a brief tail movement by the way of acknowledgment but most of them merely rolled their eyes up at me and only endured both my touch and my voice. I guessed that I smelled too much-of cat for any of them to be really comfortable; and I mentioned this to Marie. But she shrugged it off.

“They’ll get used to you,” she said. The tone of her voice indicated that they had better.

She left me then, to get dinner ready. I spent a little time trying to make friends with her daughter. But Wendy was a quiet, shy child who—like the dogs—evidently found me too strange and potentially frightening to warm up to, on short acquaintance. She was obviously relieved when I left her at last and went back to camp.

Sunday was there, tied to the trunk of a large tree with a length of our heaviest rope, ending in a loop around his neck. He was lying down and, to my surprise, did not seem to mind being restricted this way. Since he was not objecting and it was convenient to have him anchored so, I left him the way he was. The girl must have tied him up so that she could wander off by herself, because she was nowhere to be seen.

She had not returned by the time Marie stuck her head out her door to call us to dinner. I waited a little while, but she still had not come back when Marie called a second time; and I decided not to worry about her. There was no counting on her, anyway. Sunday was still not objecting to being tied up—which was ideal from my point of view. He had dozed off kittenishly lying on his back with his paws in the air, as if there was no dog within a thousand miles. I got up and left; and all he did was open his eyes sleepily to look after me.

The good smell of cooking reached me before I opened the door and surrounded me as soon as I came in. Marie had produced a ham—it had to have been a canned one—heated and glazed it, and filled out the meal with what must have been home-grown tomatoes, potatoes and a salad made with some greens I didn’t identify, but which, with a cheese dressing, tasted magnificent.

“She didn’t come with you?” Marie asked, as she sat down at the table with Wendy and me.

“She’s gone off somewhere. Sunday’s tied up,” I said.

She nodded, evidently reassured. She did not know that Sunday was capable of chewing through any rope that tied him in no seconds flat, if the notion occurred to him. But he was not likely to wander off; and he had sense enough not to start trouble with the dogs, but to pick his way among them, if he got the urge to free himself and join me in the house.

It was a marvelous dinner. Marie had gotten rid of the slacks and shirt. She was wearing a soft, yellow dress that went well with the color of her blond hair, which—while still short—was smoothed out somehow and looked less as if it had undergone home barbering. She had used a touch of lipstick too, and possibly a hint of other makeup. The total result was enough to bring back the past in a way that the scotch and sodas I had made in the lake-front home never had.

I had been regretting all afternoon that I had not had the sense to bring at least one bottle from the liquor stock of the lakeshore home. But as it turned out, Marie had her own supply. She had not produced any wine with the meal; but afterwards she came up with a bottle of rum, after everything was over and Wendy had gone off to bed. It was not great rum, but it went well with the coffee.

We sat on the couch in her living room and talked, about our situations—and a lot else. Under the influence of the rum, I remember telling her more about myself than I had intended to ever tell anyone. But in the warmth and privacy of the living room, I was lulled into a sense of security. I knew very well that Marie was only out after her own advantage. I knew what was going on with both of us; but I did not give a damn. In fact, I remember thinking that I deserved something like this, after wet-nursing an insane leopard and a wild girl all these weeks. Somewhere along there with the rum and the coffee, I put my arm around Marie; and only a little later we turned the lights out.

I don’t know how late it was. It was certainly sometime after midnight when I left the house. Marie followed me naked to the door in the darkness to put her head out and hiss the dogs into silence when they roused on seeing me. I gave her a last kiss and went across the dark ground under a young moon to the camp.

Sunday was curled up under the tree to which he had been tied; and there was a lump on the ground beside him that was the girl, come back. The groundsheet out of our tent was a black pool under them on the semi-moonlighted ground; and some of our blankets were spread over both of them.

I shrugged, drunkenly. If the girl wanted to lie out there and get soaked through with the morning dew, that was up to her. I crawled into the tent and wrapped myself as well as I could in the remaining blankets. I was either not quite asleep and hallucinating, or else I was already asleep and dreamed the whole thing; but it seemed to me that just before I dropped into a deep well of unconsciousness, Sunday raised his head and looked me right in the eye, speaking to me.

“You stink!” he said distinctly, in the girl’s voice.—And that was the last I remember.

When I woke, someone was standing over me. But it was neither Sunday nor the girl. It was Marie; and she handed me a cup of hot coffee.

“Sorry to wake you,” she said. “But I can use your help if we’re going to get off today.”

“Get off today?” I echoed stupidly. She stood there, looking down at me for a long second.

“That’s what we talked about last night, wasn’t it?” she said. “Do you remember?”