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"Can't you stay a few minutes longer? I promise to stop complaining about women. Here, I'll make you another piece of toast."
She sat back down but kept her weight on the balls of her feet. She felt she was stretched across the river like a shock cord, ready to snap back.
"You act like a girl who was raised by wolves." He smiled. "They don't like to be in enclosed spaces."
"Thank you for the food." Gwen stood and hurried out the kitchen door, leaving the toast to pop up behind her. She broke into a run across the yard, and by the time
she reached her boat she was panting. Out in the middle of the river, she felt a momentary sense of freedom, but upon reaching her dock the first thing she noticed
were rotting catfish heads still nailed to the big oak. Then she remembered she had meant to buy matches. With her second to last match she started a fire in the wood
burner, but she dozed off on the floor before it really got going. When she woke up, the sky was fully lit, so she moved to the dock for the sun's warmth. She looked
down and was surprised to be wearing Michael's clothes. After his Jeep rolled away across the river, she pressed her face into the clean sweat shirt.
When darkness muscled in again, she used her last match to light the kerosene lamp, but it only seemed to intensify the darkness outside. She heard a sampling of rain,
and it occurred to her, as if for the first time, that Jake really wouldn't be coming back. She thought of her dad's trailer in Snow Pigeon and the shoulderhigh stacks of
wood her father must have already cut and split, which
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Paula must have stacked by herself against the trailer for the winter. Her own winter supply was about two armloads of broken branches, and once the river iced up
Gwen would have no transportation. She ought to cross while she could, walk to the road, and hitchhike someplace warm, Florida maybe. All evening she watched
the lights in Michael's house: the kitchen, the hall, the bedroom that was supposed to be a living room. His silhouette sat hunched over the table where they'd eaten.
She wondered, had girls really been raised by wolves?
Even though it was late, she had to get out of the cottage for a while. She pulled one of Jake's stretched wool sweaters over Michael's sweatshirt and carried her quilt
to the boat in case it got really cold. Past Willow Island, almost to Confluence, her engine sputtered out of gas and died. She didn't protest, but let herself be pulled
back down river. If she fell asleep out here, and slept long enough, she would wake up in Lake Michigan. The river was quiet and dark. The herons were asleep in
their trees. Nobody danced on lawns, no stars shone, and cold rain began to pour down on the river. By the time her quilt became soaked through, she realized she
should have kept rowing to reach Confluence to buy matches and boat gas for her next trip. And some food too, a burger and fries for starters. Instead she'd be stuck
in a dark cabin with cans of beans and oily sardines. She reached into her pants pocket to feel her money and found nothing she had left it in her jeans on Michael's
bathtub. She drifted with a numbing sense of her own stupidity. Rainwater collected in the boat and pooled around her feet. Instead of going to her own side of the
river when she rounded the last bend, she pulled up at Michael's oilbarrel float. Surely he'd loan her matches, and maybe he even had gasoline in his shed. She tied
her boat and tucked the oars inside but found the shed locked. With the blanket around her, she approached the house and looked in through the sliding glass door.
At first she could see only the glowing numbers on a digital clock. As her eyes adjusted, she saw King lift his head from the floor at the foot of the bed.
As quickly as King began to bark, Michael was standing on the other side of the glass in shorts. His chest was as hairless as the chests of schoolboys she had known
before Jake. She had fooled
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around with boys back home and had always been afraid of her father finding out.
Michael switched on a blinding light and slid the door open. "Gwendolyn? Don't you ever sleep in a bed?"
"I'm sorry."
"Well, come on in. Be sorry inside."
She stepped up and puddles formed on the plywood.
"Damn, I've got to finish this floor. I'm going to put down oak like in the kitchen."
Gwen hadn't realized how cold she was until she stepped into the warm house.
"This blanket's soaked let me put it in the dryer. I'll put your other clothes in there from this morning I washed them. Talk to me, Gwen."
He looked at her until finally she said, "That omelet was good."
Michael laughed. "Take a shower now, and you can thank me for that tomorrow." Gwen closed her ears to his babbling and followed him to the bathroom. He started
running the water, and she remembered only after she had peeled off her shirts that she shouldn't undress in front of a stranger. Michael looked away and abruptly left
the room. Gwen hardly recognized the thin, dirty creature in the mirror. Her once dark, soft curls were matted, and her complexion was ruined with scratches and
poison ivy scars. Three times she shampooed her hair before the water rinsed clean. She put on the dark terry cloth robe which hung on the back of the door, then
padded across the hall to the room with the boat skeleton. It looked too big to fit through the doorway. The room didn't even have a view of the water, so it was no
wonder he didn't sleep in there. She returned to the living room and lay with King on his rug. Michael came in and sat on the foot of the bed and looked amused.
"Maybe you really are a wolf girl."
"I watch King fish from my house."
"Why do you call her King?"
"Her?"
"I never had a dog before Renegade." He stroked the dog's head. "It was the craziest thing. When I closed on this house the old owner asked if I'd keep her, because
she loved the river." Mike tugged on
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