Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

For three nights fires smoked downriver in the twilight. Victuals were put out for me on a flat stone or a log. The first night it was trout and crawfish. The next I believe I ate a vole of some kind. The animal had a similar skeleton to critters I had exhumed from stacks of old newspapers and gardening periodicals in Mother’s basement after she passed. On the third night it was a cleaned and halved feline. Its big ole head had been left on and it had a numbered yellow tag in one of its ears, and I am nearly certain it was the very bobcat that had been tailing me. I believe the number was 147, if I recall aright, but I cannot put my life on it. I have a powerful memory, but this has been some time ago now.

I never could get enough to eat. I was working up a mighty big appetite even on my pitifully slow pace across the floodplain. The masked man had said that I would not see any more of him, and sure enough he had not showed himself since instructing me on how to get to the highway. Every night however while I had the supper he had provided I kept my eyes on the woods. I suspected he was watching me.

One day I saw a fox chase something through the grass. I recalled a dog we had when I was a girl, a spirited little dog with a happy face. Before long the dog grew old and very ill and I overheard Father tell my brother it had outstayed its welcome. Davy cared a good deal for that little dog. Pepper, its name was. I thought about how we had all loved this dog when it was playful and well, but when it got to knocking blindly about the house, dragging its hind legs and messing behind the furniture, we were ready for it to be gone. Father took it out to the pasture and shot it. I have had occasion to think about this; about how conditional we are when it comes to love and affection.

On the fourth day I came to an inviting shallow in the river that led out to a braid bar of red sand. At that time I did not smell at all like myself. Or perhaps I smelled more like myself than I ever had in the civilized world of soap and detergents. Whichever way it was, the sun was high and hot, and I took it in my mind to cool off and have another bath. I had not had one in some days, out of modesty, being that I had the idea the masked man was out there watching me. At the riverbank I kept an eye out for him. But there were only the mountains and the eternal snow blown from their peaks, the valley, the nice grass. The valley was narrowing and yellow-flowered shrubs grew thickly in the fields. Firs and pines bordered it all. It was a mighty fine spot.

I took Terry’s coat and the zigzag sweater from around my waist where I kept them cinched by the arms when it was warm enough. I unbuttoned my blouse. The masked man could be watching me right then. I went ahead and disrobed all the same and there I was in my pitiful undergarments. The holes in my stockings made funny shapes of my skin. Since I had grown old my body had gone soft and misshapen like the crab apples at the foot of my crab apple tree in our backyard. Like most women my age I wore practical undergarments. The manufacturers like to call the color flesh color , though I am not sure whose flesh they had in mind when they decided to call it that. Maybe there is some poor person out there who is this color they call flesh color , but I do not think it is likely. I have never worn dark-colored underclothes, and I have always had hard work believing, as I know many do believe, that we are primarily on this earth to attend the sexual purposes of men.

When I was a girl, not more than eleven years old, Mother and Father would take me and Davy to a swimming pool in Amarillo. There was a small changing room that smelled of surfactants and chlorine and the floors were slick and rocky such as the inside of a cave. It often happened that a bald man with a sunburnt head would watch me from a little oval window at the top of the wall. Either he was a giant or he must have had to climb up on a chair to see in. Only the crest of his pink head and his beady eyes were visible in that foggy little oval window. I did not holler and I did not say a word to anyone. I have wondered from time to time about myself and why it was that I disrobed even though I knew that man was watching me. I suppose most everyone likes to be desired, often even in the most undesirable of circumstances. Perhaps it is our greatest flaw as people.

I removed my brassiere and rolled down my stockings and folded my clothes in the grass. Feeling strangely light, I did a turn, entirely naked to the natural world. I have always had a slight figure and I have always taken care of it as best I could. But out there in the Bitterroot, for the scarcity of provisions and the great deal of walking, I had grown so thin I had nearly misplaced my shadow.

I looked down at myself. I will admit here in this account that as a girl I often had prideful and immodest thoughts. I have since learned that is considered by many psychologists to go hand in hand with what is thought to be the natural development of a woman. I never knew much about psychology until in recent years when people became interested in mine. It is curious to see how people try to understand one another with what seems to me a confused science, not much better than phrenology, which was popular in my parents’ day. A mind endeavoring to understand another mind is like using a hammer to fix another hammer. Anyway, psychology might be closer to poetry, but less helpful. Particularly when it comes to discussing sex.

Nowadays women are allowed their sexual desires. Back when I was young the existence of a woman’s sexuality was a dirty little secret that everyone shared. I recall wanting men to notice me when Mother would walk me and Davy down Main Street to the old First Methodist church house dressed in our Sunday clothes. That was before they tore it down and built the one on Washburn Street. I preferred the old one. I had a blue cotton dress that I thought looked just darling on me for how it complemented the color of my eyes. One Sunday when I was fourteen years old, Mother took me aside and warned me that I was not to walk in the manner I had been walking, or to look at men in the manner I had been looking. She called me a little fire ant and was sure that I would find trouble someday. In one way of looking at it, she was right, but I never did half of the things that Phyllis Stower did, and she ended up more or less the same as myself, except that God gave her four healthy children, all of whom are alive and well as I write this and have children of their own.

I stepped out onto the sandbar. The water came up to my ankles. It was mighty cold, but I was determined to have a bath. I waded out and it came up to my knees. When you get older your balance is not what it used to be, and the current was stronger than I had anticipated. It took me by surprise and toppled me, and I went under!

My body seized up in that cold like I had been stuck with a cattle prod. I kicked and clawed at the rocky riverbed. Suddenly there were no rocks to grab ahold of. I struggled to the surface and got my head above it. The trees and the riverbank had changed and now it was all rushing by. I could no longer see where I had folded my clothes.

I endeavored to holler out but I was too cold and water filled my mouth anyway. I gulped and spat and coughed like a crazy person. Locked helpless in that current, I caught my breath before plunging underwater again. It was terrifically difficult on my lungs and my arms. I was very scared. Just before I went under again a figure sprang past me along the riverbank. Dear me! That is what I said to myself.

Something crashed into the water ahead of me. I wiped my eyes best I could and made out a great big rotted log. A deep voice hollered for me to grab on. I swam in earnest and reached for it. I grabbed the end of it just in time! Suddenly the water rushed past me. I had disturbed some insect, perhaps a centipede, that lived in the log and it stung me right between the fingers. I did not let go even though it was terribly painful.