“There’s a little cove on the far side,” she went on. “There’s all these blueberry bushes. If you drag the boat up onto the land, it won’t be difficult to conceal it in the brush. Then you can stake out the placewhere they’re likely to go. It’s all the way over on the other side. Wait in the blueberry bushes till they show up. Just keep an eye out for poison ivy. It’s everywhere on that island.”
Even to me, a girl with a big capacity for drama, this sounded like a wild scheme. This idea of Forrest and Brenda going to the island was just a hunch. They might not show up at all, and if they did, what if they spotted me? Not to mention, the island was a long way from shore.
“How am I supposed to get there?” I asked her.
“You know how to paddle a canoe, right?” she said.
“I guess so.” I didn’t add that I’d only done it once.
“Our Old Town is totally reliable,” she said. “And if anything happens, you’re a good swimmer.”
None of this reassured me. But when you’re a spy, you don’t ask questions. You fulfill your assignment.
56
Moss
Though in the days since Forrest had begun his affair I hadn’t been getting up as early as before, that day I made sure to be out of the house first. On the chance that what Regina imagined was actually going to take place, I had to be out of sight, out on the canoe, and around the point by the time Forrest set out to pick up Brenda and head to the island.
The trip across the lake to the island was an ambitious one. At first I had a hard time keeping the canoe on course, but after a few minutes I started getting the hang of it. The trick was alternating which side of the water you dipped your oar in, and alternating sides often enough to keep a steady course.
I started to enjoy it. Nobody had told me, but I figured out things went a lot better in a canoe if your strokes were long and you kept your paddle close to the boat. When you lifted the paddle out of the water, the idea was to turn the blade sideways, just over the surface of the water, before you dipped it in again.
Stroke, turn, dip, stroke.I got a nice rhythm going. At the moment Regina had suggested this plan, I’d been disappointed that I’d have to miss tennis time with Jonathan. But once in the canoe, I surprised myself by enjoying the experience. Even in the middle of the mess ofForrest and Regina’s marital problems (or maybe in part because of them), I experienced a feeling of peacefulness from the slow, steady motion of the paddle in the water. Lost in the beauty of the early morning—mist over the water still, the sun just coming up over the trees, a lone fisherman way out on his boat—I almost forgot the nature of my mission.
By this point in the summer, I’d become familiar with the long, sorrowful sound made by the loons when they called to each other across the water, as they were doing now. Forrest had explained to me that loons had several different calls, each distinct. One of these was a simple hello to some other loon. Then there was the mating call—longer, higher, more insistent. Then came the rarest loon call, the one signifying danger.
A pair of eagles lived at the lake. They knew not to go after full-grown loons, who possessed the ability to dive deep under the water to safety. But the babies were vulnerable. Once, sitting on the dock with Regina, watching the children play Marco Polo with their friends from a nearby house, I’d watched an eagle dive for a baby loon who’d been swimming alongside his mother.
There was a frantic flapping of wings, and a sound coming from the mother loon—mother and father both, I think—that sounded almost like a human scream. The eagle circled a few times, lower and lower. I got up from my chair, transfixed. There was nothing I could do but watch a murder taking place. An attempted murder, anyway. The loon parents succeeded in driving the eagle away, though whether they did this before he’d got his prey or after, I couldn’t be sure.
The loon who called out that morning—just one, though he must have felt the presence of a fellow loon, too far for me to see—conveyed no sense of danger. He didn’t seem put off by my presence either. I couldn’t have been more than a few feet away from him as he sat there, lower in the water than a duck and larger, his beautiful feathers, black and white, glistening in the early morning light.
I dipped my paddle in the water again. He dove under, gone for over a minute. When he surfaced again, he did so in a whole other spot on the lake, far from the one I’d seen him in before.
It took me close to an hour to reach the island. My arms were sore by then, but it was a good feeling. The weeks I’d spent on the tennis court had strengthened my muscles and tightened my body without my having realized it was happening.
I found the cove Regina had told me about—the blueberry bushes, the tall grasses, the sandy bank where I dragged the canoe up onto land. A person would have to look hard to spot it, and more than likely, the two people visiting the island today—if they did come here, which felt like a long shot—would have other things on their minds. One, anyway.
Prudence had packed a lunch basket for me—an egg-salad sandwich, potato chips, a bottle of Snapple, and a blue-and-white-checked napkin. I had not explained to her the nature of my mission, naturally. She thought I was just taking a few hours off to have a picnic.
Now I lifted this out of the canoe, along with the Polaroid camera, the mini tape recorder, my spiral notebook, and my Stephen King book. Once on land, it took me a while to locate the place Regina had told me about, the mossy spot where she and Forrest used to come to have sex. “Make love,” was how she put it. When referring to the activities of her husband and Brenda, she employed a different term.
Once I saw the place, there was no mistaking it. I’d seen plenty of moss before, but nothing like this: Tucked away inside a circle of pine trees and ferns, the moss formed a deep, spongy bed, green and damp from the dew, with the most wonderful rich, earthy smell. Even if you hadn’t come to this place with a person you planned on having sex with, it was a spot that made you want to take off your shoes—take off all your clothes, even. Lie down, roll around, breathe it in.
I couldn’t stay on the open patch of moss, unfortunately. If Forrest and Brenda actually did show up, I had to remain hidden. There was alarge rock thirty or forty feet back, with a thick tangle of brush behind it. I could sit here with my book and my sandwich, waiting.
The morning passed. I didn’t have a watch, but based on the position of the sun, and my hunger, I guessed it was probably lunchtime. If Forrest was going to bring his lover to the island, I figured he’d be here by now. Still, I’d wait a little longer. It was a long way back.
Squirrels came. I spotted a bush with wild blueberries on it, low to the ground. Just six of them, but they were ripe and sweet.
I heard a woodpecker tapping his beak against a dead tree. Then something else: the sound of a motorboat—the unmistakable low whir of a Chris-Craft—far off at first, then closer, slowing down, pulling up to the shore.
I heard the splash of the anchor hitting the water. Then voices. Forrest and Brenda. As they got closer, I could make out the words.
“It’s so beautiful here. How did you ever find this spot for us?”
This would have been the moment for Forrest to explain that the island belonged to his wife and her family. He might have told Brenda about coming here with Regina, long ago. He didn’t.
