The Dark Place (22 page)

"You’re not, but you can get away with it if you’re careful."

"And if you’re the chief ranger."

"That too." Julie spooned the steaming stew into a couple of plastic bowls and handed one to Gideon. She was as hungry as he, and for a few minutes they sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent without speaking, energetically cramming the hot vegetables and beef into their mouths.

When the heat began to flow through him, Gideon sighed luxuriously and slowed down, looking up from his bowl to watch Julie eat. She was wonderfully healthy and happy, her skin golden and rosy, her eyes sparkling. She caught him looking at her with her mouth full, and she waved the big spoon happily at him. She laughed while she chewed, without opening her lips. In a baggy, shapeless sweater, with her cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk’s and her damp hair pasted flat to her forehead, she looked so heartbreakingly beautiful he could hardly swallow.

"I love you, Julie," he said.

Finally.

Her mouth was too filled for her to speak. She frowned, chewing harder, and swallowed prodigiously, then washed the food all the way down with some hot tea.

"I heard you the first time," she said, smiling.

"The first time?"

"In the sleeping bag. You were speaking to the back of my neck at the time, but I assume you meant the rest of me, too."

"You
heard
me? I thought you were asleep."

"I was, but there are certain things you don’t miss even in your sleep."

"But why didn’t you say anything?"

"Well, it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing to sweep me off my feet. ‘I love you, I think.’" She laughed and shook her head.

Gideon laughed too and spooned a chunk of potato into his mouth. "It does lack somewhat for lyrical expression, doesn’t it? But," he said more soberly, "there aren’t any qualifications this time."

"Are you sure? It’s not just my beef stew and my tent? You’re not just glad to have a warm female to take care of you on a cold, wet night?"

He shook his head. "No qualifications. I love you, Julie Tendler. And that’s something I don’t say very often, believe me." Not once out loud in three years.

"’I love you, Julie Tendler’?" she said. "Why would you say that very—?"

"Shush, you." He leaned over to kiss her softly. They moved apart and looked at each other, then kissed again, longer this time but no less gently. Her fingers rested on his cheek, radiating shivery tendrils; his hand cupped the warm, downy nape of her neck. When they paused at last to breathe, he brushed the tip of her nose with his lips. "Now," he said, "what was that about taking care of me on a cold night?"

"Men," she said. "It’s one thing after another. Get them dry and they want food. Get them fed and they want…well, something else."

"Precisely," said Gideon. "Maslow’s concept of human needs as a hierarchy of prepotencies. Very succinctly expressed."

"Is that what I said?"

"Yup."

"What does it mean?"

"It means let’s go to bed."

She laughed. "Don’t overwhelm me. I can stand only so much lyrical expression in one night. Let’s clean up the dinner things first."

They did it quickly, scraping the pots and dishes and putting them outside to rinse in the rain.

"I think," she said, looking out into the pouring near-darkness, "that we’d better bring your sleeping bag inside."

"It’s already wet. Doesn’t matter. It was a $12.95 special ten years ago. Made of genuine, reconstituted Kleenex."

She closed the tent flap and crawled back on her knees. "Some anthropologist.
El cheapo
sleeping bag, five-and-dime tent, sardines for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Are you ever lucky I came along and found you!"

He smiled. Then his brow furrowed. "Julie, what the heck are you doing here?"

She began to undo the ties on the sleeping bag. "Coming after you. I had visions of you sitting wet and cold and hungry in the dark…absurd as it may seem. My nurturing instincts were aroused. I even thought you might get lost. It’s a rough trail.
Did
you get lost? You haven’t gotten very far."

"Of course not," he said disdainfully. "All you have to do is follow the path. Did you get lost?"

"Uh-uh," she said with transparent honesty, unrolling the bag.

"And so you lugged all this stuff on your back, hiked all this way…"

"For you," she said simply, with a soft, quiet smile. "I love you too, you know."

The muscles in Gideon’s throat tightened. Once again she had made his tears come close to spilling over. "But how," he said gruffly, "did you know where I was?"

"I saw the envelope on John’s door. I recognized your handwriting and I opened it up."

"You opened my letter to John?"

"Don’t look so shocked. I knew you were going to do something like this, and I thought that’s what the letter was about. So of course I opened it. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing if you thought I was out here alone?"

"You better believe it," he said, "but I thought getting anywhere near the Yahi was the last thing you wanted to do."

"I changed my mind. Woman’s privilege." She patted the bag into place and sat back. Her expression became serious. "Do you…do you think they’re near here?"

Gideon smiled at her. He loved her when she was an efficient, capable park ranger, and he loved her—maybe even a little more—when she seemed a frightened little girl with big black eyes. "No, I think they’re miles away, and I don’t imagine they’d be out wandering around on a night like this."

"But what about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, Julie, you’re going back to Quinault."

"The heck I am! If you think I came all the way out here for nothing—"

"Nothing? You’ve brought me sustenance, physical and spiritual, you’ve—"

"Damn you, Gideon, don’t talk to me like a child!" Her cheeks flushed a dull red, and he could see she regretted saying it, but she remained silent.

"Julie, tomorrow—"

"Let’s talk about tomorrow tomorrow," she said.

"Fine," Gideon said. They were both testy now. "I’m tired. Let’s call it a day."

There wasn’t room enough to stand in the tent, and with the sleeping bag and gear in a corner, there was hardly any floor space. They sat back to back on the sleeping bag and undressed themselves.

"You get in the bag first," Julie said, not turning around.

Gideon scrambled in and squeezed over, leaving her ample room. He lay on his side looking at her smooth, naked back, waiting for her to make a peace offering.

"Close your eyes while I get in," she said flatly.

"Why?"

"I don’t know. Because I feel bashful."

"Why would you feel bashful?" An inane remark but a good question. Why did
he
feel bashful?

"Just close them, please."

He shrugged, although she couldn’t see him. "Fine," he said, unhappy with the tiny, silly tension. He could see from the mopey way she moved that she was sorry too.

He watched her, of course, through his eyelashes, as she crouched on her knees to loosen the top flap of the sleeping bag. It was not quite dark, and her smooth thighs were dusky and gleaming. She bent forward to throw the cover back, and her small, perfect breasts swayed gently, pointed and exquisite, only a few inches from his face.

"You’re peeking, aren’t you?" she said, looking hard at him. He could tell she was searching for a way to make friends again, as was he.

"I can’t help it," he said honestly. "You look…I can’t tell you how beautiful you look, leaning over like that, your breasts pendant—"

"Pendant?
Pendant?
What do you mean, pendant?"

"Don’t get angry. I’m trying to say something nice."

"I hope I never hear you say something rotten. Pendant!" She jabbed him in the ribs with a knuckle. The spat, if that’s what it had been, was over, and he grabbed for her, getting his arms around her back and bringing her breasts down to his face. She pummeled him a little more and then stopped, stroking his hair and watching him with avid eyes while he slowly moved his head back and forth, brushing her breasts over his forehead and cheeks and against his eyelids. He kissed each nipple gently, feeling her tremble, and looked up at her face with a smile and a sigh.

"When I said pendant," he said, "I didn’t mean it in the sense of ‘droop,’ I meant it in the sense of ‘depend from.’"

"That’s better," she said. "I like it when you talk like a dictionary."

They both laughed, and she slid into the bag alongside him. Gideon moved his hands down her sides and cupped a round buttock in each palm, pressing her close to him. She kissed his throat and rubbed her cheek against the hair on his chest.

"Julie, Julie…" he murmured.

"Oh-oh, I think I hear a lyrical flight coming."

"You’re right. Let me rephrase it." He pretended to think. "Okay. You have a big, beautiful ass that I love to squeeze. And I really like it when your breast droops over my arm like that. How’s that?"

He had said it to make her laugh, but she lay on her side and looked at him with liquid, ink-black eyes. "I love you so very much," she said tightly, and pressed her head to his chest again. To his surprise, and to hers, too, he was sure, they fell asleep like that.

In the morning they made love the moment they awakened, or perhaps even before. When they were dozing afterward and Gideon lay sprawled on his back with Julie’s head on his shoulder, he jerked suddenly.

"What’s that?" he said.

Her lashes brushed his shoulder as she opened her eyes. "I don’t hear anything."

"No…maybe I was dreaming…" He realized abruptly what it was. "It’s not raining anymore."

The only sound was the soughing of a gentle breeze in the high branches. They dressed in the chilly, gray light inside the tent, unzipped the flap, and stepped out. With his first breath Gideon’s antipathy to the Olympic rain forest vanished. The air smelled of moist green leaves and pine bark, and the light breeze had a touch of faraway ocean in it. What they could see of the sky was a brilliant robin’s-egg blue, but it was early, not yet seven, and a morning mist clung to the forest in vertical, pearly sheets, one behind another, with clear spaces between them.

It was so beautiful it seemed contrived, a sfumato masterpiece from the Renaissance, with everything diffuse and muted yet marvelously crisp. Every surface was fresh and clean and covered with droplets of dew like clear glass beads. Nothing seemed sodden. The draperies of club moss and vine maple were translucent and ferny again, and the leaves and pine needles glowed with a thousand different greens—emerald, turquoise, Irish, olive, aquamarine.

"Don’t I hear water running?" Gideon asked.

She nodded. "Big Creek. I think it’s just a few hundred feet away, beyond that rise."

Her hand reached out to his and he took it, and they both stood basking in the freshness. After a while some birds began to sing. The sound was so perfect they looked at each other and laughed. "Winter wren," Julie said.

Ten or twelve feet away a tiny squirrel with its cheeks packed appeared on a log and sat up on its haunches, looking surprised to see them. At Gideon’s burst of laughter it scampered off into the brush toward the creek.

"I couldn’t help it," he said to Julie, still laughing, "I feel like I’m in the middle of a Walt Disney cartoon, with the sun coming up and all the forest creatures beginning to stir. Honestly, I thought that squirrel was about to rub its eyes and yawn and maybe start singing."

He turned to her, smiling and serious both. "Julie, you’re not going any farther. I’m going alone."

"No," she said firmly. "If it’s not dangerous, then I want to go. If it’s dangerous, then I don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to go either."

"It is
not
dangerous, and I am going by myself." He spoke at his deepest, most resonant pitch, and he backed it up with a no-nonsense scowl. "And it is not open for discussion."

"Baloney," she said brightly. "We’ll talk about it over breakfast." She picked up a pot and thrust it at him. "Go and get some water for coffee. I’ll scramble the eggs."

"Now, listen to me, Julie—"

She stood up tall and tucked in her chin. "It is not," she growled, "open for discussion. Now, git!"

   The squirrel, cheek pouches bulging with tiny spruce cones, skittered over the rough ground, its gray tail floating behind it in a graceful, serpentine curve. Almost home, just a hundred feet from its nest in the old cedar, it halted abruptly, startled, and raised itself on its hindquarters. It stood trembling, nervously jerking its head from side to side. Then, reassured, it dropped to all fours and sprinted for the tree again, only to stop once more after a few feet. Again it stood erect and quivering, its forelegs hugged to its pale, furry chest, its nose twitching.

The shining, buttonlike eyes focused on the still, brown heap before it, nearly invisible among the huckleberry and ferns, and the squirrel’s body froze, as if suddenly turned to stone. So it remained for a long time in the quiet, sunshot undergrowth, staring at the unfamiliar, motionless pile. Finally the nose twitched, the whiskers waggled once, twice, and the squirrel, choosing the better part of valor, gave the strange heap a wide berth and scampered for home on a roundabout route.

When it had gone, the heap gathered itself together, got to its knees, and became a man. The man crouched behind the thick brush, brown and rough-skinned, like a part of the ancient forest itself, with damp fragments of bark and dead leaves clinging to the grease that coated him.

Through a screen of matted hair, deep-set eyes watched the
saltu
clamber down the slope to the gravel bar, then walk to the water. The nearly naked brown man swayed slowly back and forth with a high-pitched, singsong muttering. His shoulder muscles jumped and twitched, and on the hand that held the stone ax the tendons stood out like ropes.

   Big Creek was not very big, but it flowed fast and satisfyingly noisily. Schools of small, brown fish, invisible against the brown pebbles on the bottom, briefly twinkled silver when they veered sharply in unison, then vanished again. On the surface, brown leaves billowed and spun slowly on the tiny swells and were borne away toward Lake Quinault.