In front of the trailer again, I hesitated for a moment near the door. Then I set down the black suede boots I’d taken from my backpack. I wondered if there was any way to leave a note and decided immediately there wasn’t. Bending down, I arranged the boots under the awning on the front step: toes pointed forward, heels lined up. I gave one of them a quick stroke on the flank before I took off running down the road. I’d collected them from the lost and found last Thursday after class, carried them in my backpack in the canoe across three lakes, brought them all the way here for Lily. I think I’d meant them as a kind of gift. I think I meant them as some token of secret understanding or agreement. But as I hurried down the gravel road, as I headed toward Lake Winesaga and my boat, I glanced back once, and there they stood—the boots I’d stolen for Lily. Their effect on the trailer step was very different from what I expected. They looked like an invisible, implacable person standing watch at her door. Accusing, blocking the entrance.
*
The lake, when I got back to it, was rough with waves. My stomach rumbled. There was nothing in my backpack now save my Swiss Army knife and the rain slicker. I’d brought no provisions. I plucked a small unripe raspberry from a bush near shore and rolled it over my tongue before spitting it out. It was haired and hard. I thought of Paul. I thought of Paul in his cabin—taking down the tent with Patra, Leo presiding with the spatula—and I decided to practice survival, right then and there. I practiced being starving, stranded, a hundred miles from civilization, from people. I shoved off with my paddle in the canoe and headed straight to the center of Winesaga, where waves crushed against the prow and mist wetted my face. The boat bobbed, and I dug in deeper with the paddle to straighten my course. To my right, to my left, the black-arrow faces of loons appeared over and over. Or maybe it was the same loon, diving under my boat, trailing me. Loons have been known to do that.
This time around the three lakes ran together. All the RVs on shore looked alike. Clotheslines whipped with towels, fishing boats nodded on ropes. The occasional beer can or milk carton skated across the water. To pass the time, to distract myself, I counted eleven (plus one) RVs and eleven (plus one) boats. I counted eleven minus two ducks on the bank, eleven strokes of the paddle to the portage: it’s easy to make a pattern if you fudge. You can take eleven breaths and then hold it. You can see eleven stars appear over the horizon if you don’t look for more.
I only have one real memory from when I was four. It involves Tameka, who was a year or so older, who slept with me in a bottom bunk in the bunkhouse until the commune broke up. Tameka had a drapey orange sweater with big alphabet letters, which she rolled into fat donuts at the sleeves. The scar on her left elbow was purple. Her hands were a deep brown on the backs, white on the heels. Of course, there were lots of Big Kids around, faster and older than both of us, who moved in a pack and hit. But Tameka was quieter, lovelier. Mine. She bit her nails off into a pile, saved them in a clear plastic Baggie she squashed into a ball and put in her armpit. Her stash, she called it. Don’t tell, she whispered. Of course I wouldn’t. Of course not.
“You’re so lucky to live like this,” everyone was always telling us. The Parents, as they went by with axes.
“Lucky ducks?” Tameka wondered.
Ducks, I agreed. We flew away into the woods.
Here’s what I remember best from that time. For a few weeks when I was almost five, Tameka and I were sick together. We lay in our bed and slept, we swam into dreams and out, we woke up coughing at the same moment. I remember the heat, the endless strangling blankets. I remember sucking the tip of Tameka’s braid. I remember Tameka deciding that we didn’t have to speak to each other anymore: we knew each other’s thoughts just by being in the same world together she said. The way loons did or the sneaky pike—you know how they always dive down at exactly the same moment? They’re mind readers, they see into the future and avoid disasters, that’s what being sick is. Okay?
In bed, Tameka pulled the tip of her braid from my mouth and waited for me to agree.