Secret Salvage
“Perch again?” And on the hubcap we reserve for company, Aloysius Caine thought but did not say aloud, as he suspected that prolonged isolation had severely eroded Lucinda Metz’s sense of humor.
She handed it off to him with a straight face. “Naw, this here is a fancy filet with a wildflower garnish.” She crushed said wildflowers over the hubcap and resumed chewing on the stalk, reminding him that some sense of sarcasm, at least, had survived.
Yesterday’s mist had risen, and he was disappointed to see from their place in the twin Adirondacks that he had no trouble making out the highway, and even a few individual cars and trucks.
Could any driver or passenger see them? Probably only as distant specks, easily misjudged as an animal or a piece of flotsam. There was plenty of the latter in the Mississippi that washed up on shore, and not just the blackened and partially melted poker chips he preferred not to look at. Perhaps the Adirondacks Lucinda had pressed into the Illinois side of the hillock, those two chairs in which the two now whiled away the afternoon together like a pair of Manhattanites in Maine, had once counted as flotsam.
But if so, these had to be two of the nicest castoffs Ms. Metz had ever found. The cushions were faded and the wood was pitted, but they were as scrupulously clean as anyone living in the wild could imagine, as clean as Lucinda herself, in her dirt-friendly way. It was only natural that someone walking around in bare feet all day would accumulate a dry coat of dust in place of shoes, and she was no exception. But Caine was surprised to note that only the hem of her shift, which occasionally joined her feet in communion with the soil, gathered any extra dirt at all. The rest of her apparel and exposed skin - and hair - might be threadbare, sun-freckled, or frizzed, but her ability to stay clean with such simple resources was a mystery - or a cheat.
Lucinda must have detected his latest glance at the green canoe in the bushes.
“You know, you’re not a prisoner here. Swim across, or let me ferry you to shore - we can take the canoe any time you want.”
“I know!” It was sharper than he wanted to be. “I know,” he repeated, feeling like he still hadn’t reached his conciliatory best. “I want get out of your hair, really - not that I’m not grateful to you - you’ve been a great host these last two days… I’m just not sure what to do when I get ashore, and I was hoping it would become obvious.”
“Obvious? Sounds simple enough to me already. Tell the authorities that there was a problem with the boat. You tried to warn everyone, they didn’t listen. Sad, but not uncommon.”
The canoe was nowhere near as compelling as the fishing net on the largest tree. It was folded several times, but the visible weave defied easy expectations. Just when one thought the tessellation was complete and replicated, a dissimilar strand asserted another evolution, suggesting to Caine’s way of thinking that “pattern” might not be a foregone conclusion. He stood up and shrugged off his oxford.
“You’re right. There’s nothing to figure out, I’m just not looking forward to it. I’ll swim to shore.”
Thunk! He pulled his head free and blinked at the canoe, spreading ripples in the water. Lucinda waded into the water and took hold of the stern before it could drift too far, and slid a pair of paddles behind the seat.
The trip didn’t require much paddling. For the most part Lucinda seemed willing to simply drift and course correct from time to time. Since she had the stern, he couldn’t look directly at her, which made the asking that much easier.
“I guess you want me to leave out the part about you and that island, right?”
“Guess that would be nice.”
“Is there anything you need? Maybe I could drop something off later on, secretly.”
“Self-sufficiency is kind of my thing.”
He rowed a bit harder on his side for a few minutes, and they pointed the craft toward a finger of land to the south. Beyond it they could see signs of more major development, so their time together was coming to an end.
“And why is that, Ms. Metz?”
She set her own paddle sideways across her lap and let them drift.
“I always provided for myself, and my children, Mr. Caine. But about five years ago I got tired of waiting for them to get into trouble before they would come to see me. So I got this brilliant idea to exaggerate some trouble of my own, and bring them all together to fix it.”
He gently pushed his paddle into the mud, and turned the boat parallel to the bank. “And instead, they fixed you, right?”
They turned the canoe again until it faced north, now minus one passenger. Lucinda shifted a bit closer to the center, and he pushed the craft back out.
“Good luck, Mr. Caine. It was nice talking to people again, even if they snore as loud as you do.”
Caine waved at first, but dropped his arm when she did not look back. And then she did half turn her head.
“I owe you two fish dinners,” he called, and thought she might not have heard him. He could only imagine Lucinda’s lips might twist up at the corner of her mouth, muscles working overtime to remember a forgotten expression of mirth.