Edward Lee - The Backwoods

A flock of crows squawked overhead, and at the crest of the riverbed she noticed butterflies sitting idly atop tall blades of grass. Down here near the water the always-heard but seldom-seen cicadas flew to and fro in dramatic numbers. Patricia felt staggered by this outburst of raw nature that she’d banished from her mind long ago. But then she frowned at the dichotomy. Nature untouched right here . . . and another condo project over there . It was the way of the world, she supposed, and as a real estate attorney she was as much a culprit as Felps.

She dawdled on, the sun in her face. A half mile of ambling through the woods eventually brought her to the widest spur of the Point—Squatterville was the area’s nickname. There, surrounded by trees, was their little plantation; so to speak, a crude but close-knit community of shacks, tin sheds, and age-old trailers. Set in the background stood the Stanherd house; it was the oldest dwelling on the Point, and it looked it, dating back to the original plantation days when Virginia broke from the Union. A rickety wraparound porch defined the home’s shape of sloping angles and high, peaked rooftops. A century of periodic whitewash left its wood plank walls more gray than white, shingles blown off in storms had been replaced with cedar slats and tar, and most of the functional shutters had long since been nailed shut. Judy had no use for the house, so she let Everd Stanherd and his wife live there for nothing, along with several other elder couples of the clan. Judy, in fact, charged no rent of any kind to any of the Squatters; nor did she charge for electricity—which was wired to every dwelling—nor water or sewage, which was provided by the communal washhouse where Squatters could shower, get water for their homes, and go to the bathroom. It wasn’t much, but it was better than welfare, and the Squatters themselves couldn’t have seemed more content with their lives here, however unsophisticated those lives were.

Looks like happy simplicity to me , she mused, looking down at the ramshackle community. Women were taking laundry out to hang on myriad clotheslines, chatting, laughing amongst themselves as they worked. Patricia thought a moment then. Was it really happy simplicity, or ignorance and oblivion that milled before her? It was easy for an elitist attitude to dismiss the Squatters as subcitizens with no education and unable to achieve anything more in life. Maybe this happy simplicity is just holding them back, blocking them from any real achievement.

It was an idealistic concern, to say the least. You’re a metropolitan lawyer, Patricia, she told herself. Don’t pretend to be a sociologist. . . .

She saw no men down among the quiet network of trailers and shacks, but of course she wouldn’t. Most of the male Squatters would be out on the water right now, hauling in today’s take on the crabbing boats Judy provided. Maybe it’s just like anything else, she considered. Give and take. Judy gives them a free place to live, and they work to keep her company profitable. Judy owned the boats, the land, the processing plant and warehouse and delivery trucks—everything. And. the Squatters worked it all for her.

A closer look showed children prancing around their mothers and/or grandmothers, squealing with innocent exuberance as they played tag amid the sheet-flapping labyrinth of clotheslines. Older children emerged from the woods with armfuls of wild berries, edible greens, duck eggs, and even rabbits and squirrels they’d caught in traps handmade by their fathers. Other children returned with stray firewood they’d culled from the forest; though the shacks and trailers all had electricity, the Squatters often preferred to cook their family meals outside in cauldrons braced over communal fires and long barbecue pits. What Patricia was looking at now seemed like a hidden crosshatch commune that gladly let the modern world slide over them without notice. Primitive yet undeniably efficient, tribal yet organized. It was a system that worked.

She traipsed down the hillock toward an outer footpath, and when she turned the corner around the washhouse, several Squatter boys—ten to twelve years old, they appeared—broke off in the opposite direction the instant they noticed her. What was that all about? she wondered without much interest. It was as though she’d surprised them; they ran off the way children did when caught doing something bad. But what? She made her way along the white-painted brick wall that formed the rear of the washhouse. The long, clean wall stood unblemished, except . . .

Hmm . . .

A squint showed her there was a blemish of sorts. She walked up closer. What is that? The wall seemed to bear a single pock; the closer she got, the more she thought she heard something. A steady hiss.

And voices?

Patricia wasn’t sure.

She looked right at the “blemish.” It was a hole, not even a half inch wide, drilled into the mortar between two of the wall’s cinder blocks.

And she realized the hiss was a running shower.

A peephole, she knew. She put her eye to the hole and looked in. Three hardy Squatter girls in their late teens stood in the long shower room, sudsing themselves with soap, and chatting and giggling obliviously. This would explain the fleeing youngsters; Patricia had caught them spying on the older girls inside, and though she didn’t know the boys at all, she was certain they knew who she was: the sister of the woman who gave them a place to live and provided jobs for their parents.

No doubt this peephole had been used for some time for such shenanigans; she couldn’t help but notice what could only be tracks of dried semen streaking the wall beneath the hole. She smiled to herself then, amused. Boys will be boys, she realized.

She walked on, but for some reason felt distracted now. By what? The thrumming cicada trills seemed to wash in and out of her head, and in some strange way urged her to recall the hiss of the shower.

Peepholes. Peeping. Voyeurs.

It was harmless enough, sure—just a few boys about to enter puberty, following their hormonal curiosities. So what was bothering her?

My dream , she remembered then.

Last night she’d dreamed of being spied on herself, hadn’t she? Only slivers of the dream seemed vivid, while most of it had turned to fog by now. I dreamed that someone was watching me from the window , she remembered, while I was touching myself. The more she thought about it, the more clearly it came to mind. She remembered being even more turned on when she’d realized someone was watching; her voyeur remained unidentified, yet the longer she knew he was watching, the more aroused she became, and it hadn’t taken long for her climax to overwhelm her.

The only thing that remained unclear was the sequence of events. Was I masturbating in the dream, she asked herself , or was I masturbating for real, after I woke up from the dream?

Probably the latter, she suspected now. The spate of dirty dreams? Sex with Ernie while her husband watched (more exhibitionism)? Sex with strangers? The sudden flux of heightened sexual moods since she’d arrived ? To the most secret part of herself, she admitted it all now. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt so sexually stoked than over the last two days, and it only reminded her of the senselessness of it all. Agan’s Point symbolized her rape—the ugliest and most unarousing thing to ever happen to her. So why don’t I feel unaroused now that I’m back?

Her musings stretched. She couldn’t help it; she couldn’t get it out of her head. Now she imagined herself in the Squatters’ shower room, alone, and somehow knowing she was being watched from the peephole. That knowledge made her desire burn harder. The fantasy cocooned her; she could not only see herself standing naked in the stark-white, brick-walled room, she could feel her hand gliding the bar of soap between and around her breasts, then down her belly and up between her legs. Soon she was dressed in a suit of lather, her pink nipples and the tuft of soft red pubic hair the only things breaking the surface of the soap’s white froth. She stared fast at the hole in the wall; some ethereal force seemed to emanate from it like a wizard’s totem. Now her hands were sliding all over herself—she was no longer washing; she was making love to herself, her nerves winding up, her nipples en-gorging. Then she stepped back into the cool spray, the lather sloughing off her skin down into the drain between her feet.