I sighed again and promised he’d have the remaining chapters in forty-eight hours. After we hung up, I stared balefully at my laptop, the pinpricks, an army of ants, crawling over every square inch of my skin. I couldn’t sit there—my brain running a loop of Graeme. It wasn’t healthy.
I changed into running shorts and twisted my hair into a knot. Esther had left a can of bug spray in my bathroom, and I sprayed and sprayed until my skin glistened. I grabbed the earbuds and my phone and started out. I stopped when I noticed my copy of Kitten lying facedown on my nightstand.
I knew I really should read some more—I’d left off at the part where they’d found poor little Cappie, the Native American girl, dead. Maybe I could get a few more chapters in before I ran. Get my mind off Graeme.
I picked up the book, and noticed it had been opened to a new chapter. A later section, midway through the book. I skimmed the passage. It was about a carved-rock ashtray that Fay had found hidden in the hotel library. Susan Doucette, Age Twelve, had made a notation in pencil out in the margin.
William/Frances.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 6
Kitten wiped her mouth. “Indians do eat them. Real Indians.”
She sent Cappie a sideways glance as Fay examined her all over. The girl seemed perfectly fine, and, after glasses of lemonade, Cappie went home. Fay decided not to tell Delia about the acorn-eating episode since Kitten seemed unharmed, and later, when tucking Kitten into bed for her afternoon rest, she gave her an extra kiss.
“Did the acorns give you a headache? I read they can make you quite sick if they’re not cooked first.”
Kitten rolled away from her. “I don’t want to play with Cappie anymore. She never wants to do what I want to do.”
“You’ll feel better tomorrow,” Fay said and gave her a little pat.
She went downstairs and out to the porch to straighten up the children’s mess. While she was cleaning, she found a pile of smashed acorns under a corner of the grass mat. She felt a momentary pang of confusion, then a cold, seeping realization.
Kitten hadn’t eaten the acorns at all. She’d only wanted Cappie to think she had.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Fifteen
After tearing through several chapters, I tucked my paperback copy of Kitten under a bench at the edge of the lawn, then found a path that led into the woods for my run. It was a rut, really, layered with pine straw and twigs and the occasional fallen tree. Running was slow going—I had to hold my arms out like a tightrope walker to keep from twisting my ankle and toppling into the trees that flanked me. Also my lungs had to extract enough oxygen from the humidity that threatened to suffocate me.
After twenty minutes, I stopped, scratched all over and bathed in sweat.
Instantly, a blanket of mosquitoes descended on me. They were enormous, long-legged, prehistoric creatures, bigger than any I’d ever witnessed. I tried to slap them, but within seconds, my skin lumped with their weird island voodoo poison, and I was covered in wheals. The bug spray had been completely ineffective; I was being eaten alive.
I hightailed it back in the direction of the house, hoping my movement would discourage the little fuckers or at least disorient them long enough for me to make it back to cover. It seemed to work for a while, then, suddenly, I became aware that the rutted trail had taken an unfamiliar turn, and I was now in a cooler, deeper part of the forest.
I slowed and ripped my earbuds out. A choir of bugs—the mosquitoes, maybe—chirruped around me. Above the canopy of trees, a gull cawed. I couldn’t stand there trying to decide which way to go, or the bugs would suck every last drop of blood out of my body. Or the sun would go down and I’d be eaten by . . . something else in this godforsaken tangle. I reinserted the earbuds and pushed ahead.
After another twenty-five or thirty minutes, my pulse was thundering in my ears, and my legs ached. I was spent with exertion and fear. Too tired to keep going, too scared to stop. The undergrowth in this part of the woods was thick, palm fronds and ferns crowding the path, tripping me up. Which must have been why I didn’t see the horse—the mare that was lying on her side—until I stumbled, pitching against the high, hard curve of her belly.
“Jesus,” I squeaked and scrambled back into the matted greenery. The grass around her, a circle roughly the size of a kiddie pool, had been flattened. At her hindquarters lay a foal, small and slick. Newly born, from the looks of it. I clapped both hands over my mouth. “Jesus,” I said again, softer, more reverential. Like a prayer.
The foal was all the way out but still partly encased in the birth sac, which looked like a plastic shopping bag around the lower half of its body. I leaned closer. The slimy creature was breathing but just barely, its head resting on its knobby front knees. The mother arched her neck and nosed back at the foal, nipping her rubbery lips to remove the sac. The task accomplished, she dropped her head back down on the ground with a loud shudder.
She’d already bitten the umbilical cord—I could see the frayed end snaked through the grass, and the two of them were just resting there. Which was probably normal, I thought. I hoped. I didn’t know anything about horses giving birth, but I couldn’t imagine getting a gangly, knobby, hoofy thing like that out of your body was easy.
I squatted, staring, my fingers woven over my mouth. I was entranced. I’d stumbled upon this rare, private moment, here in this wild place. Life was happening here, without the help of doctors—vets—or shots or pills or any other kind of man-made props. Life was pushing its way forward, no matter what, everywhere.
Suddenly, the mare groaned, and the afterbirth slipped out. I gasped.
She whinnied and thrust out her front legs—two stiff, trembly lengths of tendon and matted hair—then heaved herself up and twisted back, searching for her baby. That’s when I saw something rustle behind her. A snake.
It curved and coiled between them, the mare and the foal. The mare thrashed, and the snake drew back and raised its diamond head. I watched in horror as one of the foal’s ears flipped forward in curiosity and then the foal nosed at it.
I cried out just as the snake struck the foal dead between the nostrils. The baby snapped back. I stood and screamed again. To my horror, the snake slithered toward me. I pedaled back, ramming into something solid. It caught my arms, and I screamed for a third time, then felt my earbuds ripped out.
“Be still,” a low voice said. Koa.
Hefting a shovel with one hand, he maneuvered me out of the way with the other. I scuttled behind him just as he brought the shovel’s blade down on the rattler. The body split free from the head and spiraled through the grass, flipping belly up. I could hear the dry rattle, still going.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I chanted. That sound was definitely going to give me nightmares.