Karen Fowler - Black Glass

“Well, there’s just a trail here,” said Mattie doubtfully. “I don’t suppose you can get into trouble as long as you stay on the trail. Your shoes don’t really fit well. I’m afraid you’ll blister.”

“I once spent three days alone in the woods without food or shelter and it snowed. I was getting a merit badge.” The day pack was finally in place. “Thank you,” Lily said.

“Wait here. I’m going to get some moleskin for your feet. And I’m going to send Jep along with you. Jep has a lot of common sense. And Jep knows the way. You’ll be glad of the company,” Mattie told her. She disappeared back into the house.

“It was in Borneo,” Lily said softly, so that Mattie wouldn’t hear. “You want to talk about blisters. You try walking in the snows of Borneo.”

Jep turned out to be a young collie. One ear flopped over in proper collie fashion. One pointed up like a shepherd’s. “I’ve heard some nice things about you,” Lily told him. He followed Lily out to the gate and then took the lead, his tail and hindquarters moving from side to side with every step. He set an easy pace. The trail was unambiguous. The weather was cool when they started. In an hour or so, Lily removed her sweatshirt and Jep’s tongue drooped from his mouth. Everyone felt good.

The sun was not yet overhead when Lily stopped for lunch. “Eleven twenty-two,” she told Jep. “Judging solely by the sun.” Katherine had packed apple juice and cold chicken and an orange with a seam cut into the peel and a chocolate Hostess cupcake with a cream center for dessert. Lily had not seen a cupcake like that since she had stopped taking a lunch to school. She sat with her back against a rock overhang and shared it with Jep, giving him none of the cream filling. There was a red place on her left heel, and she covered it with moleskin. Jep lay on his side. Lily felt drowsy. “You want to rest awhile?” she asked Jep. “I don’t really care if we make the caves, and you’ve seen them before. I could give a damn about the caves, if you want to know the truth.” She yawned. Somewhere to her left a small animal scuttled in the brush. Jep hardly lifted his head. Lily made a pillow out of Katherine’s red sweatshirt and went to sleep, leaning against the overhang.

When she woke, the sun was behind her. Jep was on his feet, looking at something above her head. His tail wagged slowly and he whined once. On the ground, stretching over him and extending several more feet, lay the shadow of a man, elongated legs, one arm up as though he were waving. When Lily moved away from the overhang and turned to look, he was gone.

It unsettled her. She supposed that a seasoned hiker would have known better than to sleep on the trail. She turned to go back to Mattie’s and had only walked a short way, less than a city block, when she saw something she had missed coming from the other direction. A woman was painted onto the flat face of a rock which jutted up beside the trail. The perspective was somewhat flattened, and the image had been simplified, which made it extraordinarily compelling somehow. Especially for a painting on a rock. When had Lily ever seen anything painted on a rock other than KELLY LOVES ERIC or ANGELA PUTS OUT? The woman’s long black hair fell straight down both sides of her face. Her dark eyes were half closed; her skin was brown. She was looking down at her hands, which she held cupped together, and she was dressed all in red. Wherever the surface of the rock was the roughest, the paint had cracked, and one whole sleeve had flaked off entirely. Lily leaned down to touch the missing arm. There was a silence as if the birds and the snakes and the insects had all suddenly run out of breath. Lily straightened and the ordinary noises began again. She followed Jep back down the trail.

“I didn’t get to the caves,” she admitted to Mattie. “I’ll go again tomorrow. But I did see something intriguing: the painting. The woman painted on the rock. I’m used to graffiti, but not this kind. Who painted her?”

“I don’t know,” said Mattie. “She’s been here longer than I have. We get a lot of farm labor through, seasonal labor, you know. I always thought she looked Mexican. And you see paintings like that a lot in Mexico. Rock Madonnas. I read somewhere that the artists usually use their own mother’s faces for inspiration. The writer said you see these paintings by the roadside all the time and that those cultures in which men idolize their mothers are the most sexist cultures in the world. Interesting article. She’s faded a lot over the years.”

“You don’t often see a Madonna dressed in red,” Lily said.

“No, you don’t,” Mattie agreed. “Blue usually, isn’t it?” She helped Lily out of the pack. “Did you get blisters?” she asked. “I worried about you.”

“No,” said Lily, although the spot on her heel had never stopped bothering her. “I was fine.”

“You know who might be able to tell you about the painting? Allison Beale. Runs the county library but lives here in Two Trees. She’s been here forever. You could run over tonight and ask her if you like. I’ll give you the address. She likes company.”

So Lily got back in her car with Allison Beale’s address in her pocket and a map to Allison’s house. She was supposed to go there first and then pick up some dinner at a little restaurant called the Italian Kitchen, but she turned left instead of right and then left again to a bar she’d noticed on her way into Two Trees, with a neon martini glass tipping in the window. The only other customer, a man, stood with his back to her, studying the jukebox selections but choosing nothing. Lily sat at the counter and ordered a margarita. It came without salt and the ice floated inside it uncrushed. “You’re the lady staying with Mattie,” the bartender informed her. “My name is Egan. Been to the caves?”

“Lily,” Lily said. “I don’t like caves. I can get lost in the supermarket. Wander for days without a sweater in the frozen foods. I’m afraid to think what would happen to me in a cave.”

“These caves aren’t deep,” the bartender said, wiping the counter in front of her with the side of his hand. “Be a shame to come all the way to Two Trees and not even see the caves.”

“Take a native guide,” the other man suggested. He had come up behind her while she ordered.

She slid around on the bar stool.

“Henry,” he told her. He wore a long black braid and a turquoise necklace. The last time Lily had seen him he had been dressed as a policeman. She’d had no sense of his hair being long like this.

“You’re an Indian,” Lily said.

“Can’t put anything past you.” He sat down on the stool next to hers. Lily guessed he was somewhere in his thirties, just about her own age. “Take off your wedding ring and I’ll buy you a drink.”

She slid the ring off her finger. Her hands were cold and it didn’t even catch at the knuckle. She laid it on the napkin. “It’s off,” she said. “But that’s all I’m taking off. I hope we understand each other.”

The bartender brought her a second margarita. “The first one was on the house,” he said. “Because you’re a guest in Two Trees. The second one is on Henry. We’ll worry about the third when you get to it.”

Lily got to it about an hour later. She could easily have done without it. She was already quite drunk. She and Henry and the bartender were still the only people in the bar.

“It just intrigued me, you know?” she said. The bartender stood draped across the counter next to her. Henry leaned on one elbow. Lily could hear that she was slurring her words. She tried to sharpen them. “It seemed old. I thought it intrigued me enough to go talk to the librarian about it, but I was wrong about that.” She laughed and started on her third drink. “It should be restored,” she added. “Like the Sistine Chapel.”