“Gut your hair that way,” I said, still with that feeling of being unable to stop myself.
“Are you a barber?” she asked coldly.
“No. But I could do a better job than that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of troubling you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it isn’t any of my business. I just couldn’t help it.”
She shoved a hand through the dark confusion of the hair and turned abruptly away from me. “It’s all right,” she said. “I—I guess I’m just nervous.” She walked over in front of the fireplace and threw the cigarette in it, remaining there with her back to me.
“I guess I’d better run along,” I said tentatively. There was no answer except the ticking of the clock as my words hung and died in the stillness of the room. I turned toward the door.
“Thanks again for taking the hook out.” She said nothing at all and didn’t even turn around. I went on out, across the clearing in the hot sun, and down the trail to the boat.
It wasn’t until I was all the way back to camp that I suddenly remembered the pliers. I had left them there.
Four
I should have broken camp and got out of there, but I didn’t. Fishing had lost its magic and I was only going through the motions, but still I stayed. I kept seeing that disturbing picture of her coming across the clearing in the wet bathing suit with that deadly stillness in her face. Who was she? And what were they doing here?
I awoke once during the night, and for an instant I could have sworn I heard the rhythmic beat of someone’s swimming past out in the channel, and then I knew I must have been mistaken. I lay on my back looking up at the stars, and then for some insane reason I couldn’t understand I suddenly saw that forlorn and pathetic morning-glory vine before me in the darkness, its base freshly watered, and the girl walking up that long trail from the lake carrying bucket after bucket of water to pour on it to keep it from dying like the rest of the pitiful flower bed. I’m going nuts, I thought.
It was the second night before I would admit it to myself. I was waiting for him to go back down the lake. Why? I thought. I never did a thing like that before.
Friday morning I awoke at dawn, determined to pack and leave. I’ll get out of here before he goes down the lake again, I thought, and never come this far up again. I was still lying there twenty minutes later when I heard the sudden cough and sputter of his big motor up the lake. The boat came on around the long bend and then it was going past the camp, and when I looked up I saw him sitting with his big floppy hat in the stern of it, turning his head to stare at me. Neither of us waved. I lay there listening to the sound of the motor going farther away, getting fainter and fainter in the distance, and even after it was miles down the lake I kept imagining I could hear it. I should have gone, I thought.
I fought it until ten o’clock before I knew for certain I’d never leave here until I saw her again. I tied the boat up at the landing and went up the trail and along the dusty path through the grass. She wasn’t swimming this time. As I came near the house sprawled dejectedly in the hot morning sun I could hear her inside, making some repetitious, scraping sound that rasped across the drowsy quiet of the clearing.
“Hello,” I called out, as I had before. There was no answer but that same sound, that whusk, whusk, whusk from the front room. The old hound came around the corner and looked at me with listless indifference and then went back to the shade of the walnut tree. I stepped up on the porch and looked in the door. She was down on her hands and knees in the center of the floor of the front room with a bucket of soapy water and a stiff brush, scrubbing the floor with such an absolute fury of concentration she hadn’t even heard me. She had on the same old sloppy dress and was barefoot again, and the wealth of lovely, dark, and mutilated hair