‘Great,’ he said, and then, gravely, like a man doing a job, he kissed her cool wet cheeks high up and in toward her nose — first under her right eye and then under her left. His kisses were as soft as fluttering eyelashes. She had never felt anything like them, and she suddenly put her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely, with her face against the shoulder of his jacket and her eyes, still trickling tears, shut tight. He held her, the hand which had been pressed against her back now stroking the plait of her hair.
After awhile she pulled back from him and rubbed her arm across her eyes and tried to smile. ‘I don’t always cry,’ she said. ‘You probably don’t believe that, but it’s true.’
‘I believe it,’ he said, and took off his own helmet. ‘Come on, give me a hand with this cooler.’
She helped him unsnap the elastic cords which held it, and they carried it down to one of the picnic tables. Then she stood looking down at the water. ‘This must be the most beautiful place in the world,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe there’s nobody here but us.’
‘Well, Highway 27’s a little off the regular tourist-track. I first came here with my folks, when I was just a little kid. My dad said he found it almost by accident, rambling on his bike.
Even in August there aren’t many people here, when the rest of the lakeside picnic areas are jammed.’
She gave him a quick glance. ‘Have you brought other women here?’
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Would you like to take a walk? We could work up an appetite for lunch, and there’s something I could show you.’
‘What?’
‘It might be better to just show you,’ he said.
‘All right.’
He led her down by the water, where they sat side by side on a big rock and took off their footgear. She was amused by the fluffy white athletic socks he had on under the motorcycle boots; they were the kind she associated with junior high school.
‘Leave them or take them?’ she asked, holding up her sneakers.
He thought about it. ‘You take yours, I’ll leave mine. Damn boots are almost impossible to put back on even when your feet are dry. If they’re wet, you can forget it.’ He stripped off the white socks and laid them neatly across the blocky toes of the boots. Something in the way he did it and the prim way they looked made her smile.
‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Come on, show me your surprise.’
They walked north along the shore, Rosie with her sneakers in her left hand, Bill leading the way. The first touch of the water was so cold it made her gasp, but after a minute or two it felt good. She could see her feet down there like pale shimmering fish, slightly separated from the rest of her body at the ankles by refraction. The bottom felt pebbly but not actually
painful. You could be cutting them to pieces and not know, she thought. You’re numb, sweetheart. But she wasn’t cutting them. She felt he would not let her cut them. The idea was ridiculous but powerful.
About forty yards along the shore they came to an overgrown path winding up the embankment, grainy white sand amid low, tough juniper bushes, and she felt a small shiver of déjà vu, as if she had seen this path in a barely remembered dream.
He pointed to the top of the rise and spoke in a low voice. ‘We’re going up there. Be as quiet as you can.’
He waited for her to slip into her sneakers and then led the way. He stopped and waited for her at the top, and when she joined him and started to speak, he first put a finger on her lips and then pointed with it.
They were at the edge of a small brushy clearing, a kind of overlook fifty feet or so above the lake. In the center was a fallen tree. Beneath the tangle of the soil-encrusted roots lay a trim red fox, giving suck to three cubs. Nearby a fourth was busily chasing his own tail in a patch of sunlight. Rosie stared at them, entranced.
He leaned close to her, his whisper tickling her ear and making her feel shivery. ‘I came down day before yesterday to see if the picnic area was still here, and still nice. I hadn’t been here in five years, so I couldn’t be sure. I was walking around and found these guys. Vulpes fulva — the red fox. The little ones are maybe six weeks old.’
‘How do you know so much about them?’
Bill shrugged. ‘I like animals, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I read about them, and try to see them in the wild when I can.’
‘Do you hunt?’
‘God, no. I don’t even take pictures. I just look.’
The vixen had seen them now. Without moving she grew even more still within her skin, her eyes bright and watchful.
Don’t you look straight at her, Rosie thought suddenly. She had no idea of what this thought meant; she only knew it wasn’t her voice she was hearing in her head. Don’t you look straight at her, that’s not for the likes of you.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Rosie breathed. She reached out for his hand and enfolded it in both of hers.
‘Yes, they are,’ he said.
The vixen turned her head to the fourth cub, who had given up on his tail and was now pouncing at his own shadow. She uttered a single high-pitched bark. The cub turned, looked impudently at the newcomers standing at the head of the path, then trotted to his mother and lay down beside her. She licked the side of his head, grooming him quickly and competently, but her eyes never left Rosie and Bill.
‘Does she have a mate?’ Rosie whispered.
‘Yeah, I saw him before. A good-sized dog.’
‘Is that what they’re called?’
‘Uh-huh, dogs.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Somewhere around. Hunting. The little ones probably see a lot of gulls with broken wings dragged home for dinner.’
Rosie’s eyes drifted to the roots of the tree beneath which the foxes had made their den, and she felt déjà vu touch her again. A brief image of a root moving, as if to clutch, came to her, shimmered, then slipped away.
‘Are we scaring her?’ Rosie asked.
‘Maybe a little. If we tried to get closer, she’d fight.’
‘Yes, Rosie said. ‘And if we messed with them, she’d repay.’
He looked at her oddly. ‘Well, I guess she’d try, yeah.’
‘I’m glad you brought me to see them.’
His smile lit his whole face. ‘Good.’
‘Let’s go back. I don’t want to scare her. And I’m hungry.’
‘All right. I am, too.’
He raised one hand and waved solemnly. The vixen watched with her bright, still eyes .. .
and then wrinkled back her muzzle in a soundless growl, showing a row of neat white teeth.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re a good mama. Take care of them.’
He turned away. Rosie started to follow, then looked back once, into those bright, still eyes. The vixen’s muzzle was still rolled back, exposing her teeth as she suckled her cubs in the silent sunshine. Her fur was orange rather than red, but something about that shade — its violent contrast to the lazy green around it — made Rosie shiver again. A gull swooped overhead, printing its shadow across the brushy clearing, but the vixen’s eyes never left Rosie’s face. She felt them on her, watchful and deeply concentrated in their stillness, even when she turned to follow Bill.
4
‘Will they be all right?’ she asked when they reached the waterside again. She held his shoulder, balancing, as she removed first her left sneaker and then her right.
‘You mean will the cubs be hunted down?’
Rosie nodded.
‘Not if they stay out of gardens and henhouses, and Mom and Pop’11 be wise enough to keep them away from farms — if they keep normal, that is. The vixen’s four years old at least, the dog maybe seven. I wish you’d seen him. He’s got a brush the color of leaves in October.’
They were halfway back to the picnic area, ankle deep in the water. She could see his boots up ahead on the rock where he’d left them with the prim white socks lying across the square toes.
‘What do you mean, “if they keep normal”?’
‘Rabies,’ he said. ‘More often than not it’s rabies that leads them to gardens and henhouses in the first place. Gets them noticed. Gets them killed. The vixens get it more often than the dogs, and they teach the cubs dangerous behavior. It knocks the dogs down quick, but a vixen can carry rabies a long time, and they keep getting worse.’