John Casey - Spartina

“Almost full. I looked.”

When Elsie was unlocking the boathouse by the Wedding Cake, Dick thought maybe this was what she’d had in mind all along — her asking to go to the Neptune was just to use up his saying no. He was thinking of digging his heels in; he couldn’t think of a reason, except he didn’t like to be managed.

He saw a shooting star. Elsie said, “Look!” but she was looking at the water, which was shot with phosphorescence where she’d dumped the canoe in.

When they got in front of the breachway they could see flashes of white where the larger waves broke on the bar. The wind was fresh, the tide still running so hard it almost swept them up Pierce Creek. Dick, in the bow, paddled hard to nose them over into Sawtooth Creek. Elsie laughed. “Now, there’s another story … ‘Look what the tide washed in.’ ”

They glided up Sawtooth Creek. They only had to paddle enough to steer. They reached the pond with the flounder hole, and the current grew vague. They drifted. The wind in the grasses shut out the sounds from Route 1. It was the dark of the moon; the tide was going to brim up well into the marsh. It was bright with starlight. Another shooting star, and another — the August meteor shower.

He felt the canoe wobbling. He turned toward Elsie, who was taking her jeans off. She had to stand up to work them over her hips. She sat down again to pull her sweatshirt over her head. Before he could say anything, she put a hand on each gunwale and flipped herself over the side. The phosphorescence bubbled around her. She came up, brushed her hands over her face, and then dove down. He could see her go deep through the water, outlined by the glow of plankton she set off, her legs elongated by the trail of light she left in her wake.

She came up. She said, “Come on in, it’s great.”

“I don’t want to get wet.”

“You’re no fun.”

“How you plan to get back in?”

She reached up across the canoe, put some weight on her far hand, and rolled in. She flicked water at him.

He said, “I don’t want to get wet.”

“Come here. I remember that story now. Come here, in the middle.”

Dick turned around on his seat. She took his hand and pulled him closer. She sat on her heels on one side of the center thwart. He knelt on the other.

“I can’t remember what it’s called … ‘La Marée.’ Maybe. Two cousins, a boy and a girl, in Brittany. They’re wading in the sea, the tide is about to come in. The boy is like you, he can feel the tide. Maybe they are in the water, that’d make it … No, they’re in a marsh , I seem to remember having to look it up … roseaux , reeds. The boy makes her take his prick in her mouth. But he makes her stay completely still. Nothing can move except the tide. He can feel the tide coming in. He feels himself as the tide, her as the — what? — the land about to be flooded? Anyway, he holds her still. She’s scared, but she adores him. No — we don’t know what she thinks, maybe that’s what I liked, I had to imagine her.… The tide comes up to her waist — which is to say his shins — then up to her breasts — I may be making this part up — then up to her shoulders. It’s Brittany, the tide comes in faster than you can run. He can feel the tide in his body, his blood expanding. He feels her terror, but then he feels her change, she feels the tide too. I did make that up. He can feel the water on the fingers of the hand that’s holding her hair. His body is taut. It’s unbearable.” Elsie stopped. “What do you think?”

“You’re just full of your bad French novels tonight.”

“This is a short story. I remember reading it, I was in college, I’d never been good at French, I had to look up a lot of words. Frantically. ” Elsie laughed.

Dick said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the next part is they both drown.” He was in a rage. With everything. With his clothes, with his leather work shoes he didn’t want to ruin with salt water, with his body, with her stories, with how beautiful she’d looked underwater, with her playing with everything — she was like a kid in a workshop, picking up everything she didn’t know what it was for.

The canoe drifted up the pond, got caught sideways in the creek to Mary Scanlon’s restaurant. He looked up at the thick stars.

Elsie said, “Fine. Good. I see that you’re …” She turned and pulled her sweatshirt on. When she stood up with her blue jeans in her hand, he stepped out into the mud and wrenched the canoe. Elsie tilted out.

The creek was chest-deep. She had trouble getting to the far bank; once she started to wade, her feet got stuck. She swam free and got a hand on the bank. She said, “Shit! Where are my pants? The key to the boathouse … You asshole!”

He swam across. She started to pull herself up the bank by tugging on the solid spartina roots above her. He got his knees on a shelf of mud and grabbed her. She shoved him hard with her heel, but her shove made her slide back too. She dug her hands into the bank. She still slid belly-down into the mud, now awash with salt water. Dick pulled her sweatshirt up around her head and arms, held it with one hand like the neck of a gunny sack. He scooped mud onto her back, onto her butt, onto her legs. It spread like very thick paint, thick as toothpaste but black, even by starlight you could see it was black.

Elsie wriggled back out of the sweatshirt. She spun around and threw a handful of mud. She dug into the bank for another handful. He picked up her feet and twisted her over onto her front, holding her legs up like the handles of quahog tongs. Her arms sank into the mud halfway up to her elbows. He let her legs down and straddled her, slowly poured ooze onto her shoulders, the back of her neck. He reached over her shoulders and pulled a wave of mud under her breasts, under her stomach, up into her armpits. He unstraddled her and sifted mud onto the bare spots on the back of her legs, smoothed it out.

“Okay,” Elsie said. “Pull me up.”

He slithered his arms around her and raised her to her knees. She caught her breath, then stood up and slowly smeared his cheek. She unbuttoned his shirt and painted his chest. She pulled at the waist of his pants and ladled in a handful of mud. She said, “On second thought,” and undid his pants and tugged them down. She smeared his legs.

“I see,” she said. “You’ve been painting me black to make me disappear.”

His pants were around his calves, his work shoes stuck in the mud. She yanked him over. He caught himself on his forearms so his hands didn’t sink in but a couple of inches. She put her hands on his back, climbed over his shoulders on her knees to bog him down. She started to pack him with mud. He wriggled forward and raised himself on his forearms. She slid down his back. He raised his legs, trying to catch her between them, to snare her in the triangle of legs and furled pants. She squirmed sideways, slid off his legs. He curled around on his side and grabbed her leg. His hand slid down her calf as if her leg was an eel, but he got a good grip on her ankle. He pulled it back past his waist. He could hardly see her. She was disappearing like an eel in mud. They were both disappearing. His hands were blurred with fine mud. He put his free hand on the back of her other leg, trying to get his fingers around it so he could slide down to her other ankle. His hand slid on past the inside of her thigh, the last bit of paleness in the dark. His hand slid on into the cool mud, but on the top of his forearm he felt heat, which startled him as though it was light.

They lay still.

His feet were in shallow water. He felt the creek stirring against his feet, tugging his pants as it flowed by, pushing up into the marsh. He felt Elsie move. The outside of her thigh brushed his face. She slid toward him a little, onto the thicker part of his forearm. He lay his forehead on her as she rocked slightly, like a boat on a rippled pond.