East is East

Ten minutes later Roy was out front with his pickup and a boat trailer. A long narrow flat-bottomed boat rested atop the trailer, the legend Pequod II stenciled on its bow, one of Roy’s little jokes. “Mornin’,” Roy said, laconic and slow-smiling, and he handed Saxby a Hardee’s bag and a Styrofoam cup of coffee, black.

Saxby could have opened the trunk of the Mercedes right then and there—and he almost did, and he cursed himself afterward for resisting the impulse—but he decided not to bother. If he hauled out his waders and traps and the O₂

and the rest of it and transferred them to the pickup, it would delay them a precious few minutes, and he was really stoked to get going. And anyway, he’d want his own car down there at the swamp if he did have to stay on a day or two. In the end, he took the coffee and the bag of fast food and shrugged. “Guess I’ll just follow you,” he said. “All right?”

A low pale ghostly mist clung to the road all the way down to Fargo, and then, when they swung onto 177 to head into the swamp itself, the mist turned to drizzle. Saxby listened to the swish of the wet tires, watched the boat sway on the trailer ahead of him. He felt a deep sense of peace, of connection, of calm. Deer stood poised at the edge of the road, wading birds feinted and shook their great wings into flight. He was going to get everything he wanted: he knew it.

The drizzle fell back into the mist, the mist thickened, and then they were there. He followed Roy through the parking lot out front of the tourist center and pulled up ahead of him on the narrow spit of land by the boat ramp. On one side of them was the dredged and widened pond in which the rental boats were kept, and on the other, the channel that led to Billy’s Lake and the infinite shifting maze of watery trails that snaked through the swamp beyond it. It was drizzling still and the sky hung low over the treetops in a dull metallic wash. The place was quiet but for the handful of fishermen loading their boats with a soft murmur of expectation, and the jays and catbirds that cursed one another intermittently from the trees. The water, peat-stained and tepid, was the color of fresh-brewed tea.

Saxby stood at the door of the Mercedes and watched Roy back the trailer down the ramp. When the trailer was in the water, Roy cut the engine, pulled the parking brake and got out to release the boat, while Saxby ambled to the rear of the Mercedes to fetch his gear. He wouldn’t need the oxygen and plastic bags till he headed home with what he hoped would be the nucleus of his breeding stock, but he was thinking of his waders, minnow traps and dip net, as well as the little thirty-foot seine that might just come in handy in a relatively clear patch of water. He hadn’t opened the trunk since he’d hastily loaded it some twelve or thirteen hours earlier, but as he fit the key into the lock he could visualize its contents, already leaping ahead to picture them stowed away in the bottom of Roy’s boat and the boat itself gliding off under the sure silent stroke of their paddles. The lock accepted the key. The key turned in the lock.

It was the sort of thing that happens every day.

A Jungle

What had happened to her? what was wrong with her? where was the visionary who woke up rigid, forsaking breakfast to stride boldly through the dripping forest to the nunnery of the studio, the cross of her art? Ruth didn’t know. All she knew was that she felt as drained of energy as when she’d contracted mono as a teenager. She had a headache—it seemed as if she’d had a headache for days, weeks, the better part of her life—and her limbs felt tentative, as if they weren’t really attached. Maybe she was coming down with something, maybe that was it.

It was dawn, just, the light pale and listless, and she made a groggy but furtive dash for the bathroom down the hall—thank god no one was stirring yet—and then slipped back to her room and fell into the bed as if her legs had been shot out from under her. Thirty seconds more and she would have been gone, pulled back down into the vestibule of sleep, but then the phone rang deep in the bowels of the house and consciousness took hold of her. The sound was faint, distant, the buzz of an insect on the far side of the room—but she knew it was ringing for her. She knew it. Very faintly, and again at an incalculable distance, she heard footsteps—Owen’s footsteps—crossing the downstairs hallway to the phone in the foyer. She fought to keep her eyes closed, to shake it off, but the phone was ringing and she knew it was ringing for her.