They saw an otter once, floating belly up in the floodwater, feet pointed
downstream, grooming the fur on its chest - a little self-contained canoe
of an animal. As it passed, the otter realized it was being watched and
raised its head. Round eyes, oily and black. The current swept it away
while their gazes were locked in mutual surprise.
For days after her return from the hospital, Trudy lay in bed
watching raindrops pattern the window. Gar cooked meals and carried
them to her. She spoke just enough to reassure him, then turned to stare
out the window. After three days the rain let up but gray clouds blan-
keted the earth. Neither sun nor moon had appeared since the stillbirth.
At night Gar put his arms around her and whispered to her until he fell
into a sleep of exhaustion and disappointment.
Then one morning Trudy got out of bed and came downstairs and
washed and sat to eat breakfast in the kitchen. She was pale but not en-
tirely withdrawn. The weather had turned warm and after breakfast Gar
talked her into sitting in a big overstuffed chair that he moved out to the
porch. He brought her a blanket and coffee. She told him, as gently as
she could, to leave her be, that she was fine, that she wanted to be alone.
And so he stayed Almondine on the porch and walked to the kennel.
After morning chores he carried a brush and a can of white paint to
the birches. When he finished painting the cross he used his hands to
turn the dirt where paint had dripped. The slow strokes of the brush on
the wood had been all right but the touch of the earth filled him with
misery. He didn’t want Trudy to see him like that. Instead of returning
to the kennel he followed the south fence line through the woods. Long
days of rain had swelled the creek until it topped the second strand of
barbed wire. He found a tree to lean against and absently counted the
whirlpools curling behind the fence posts. The sight provided him some
solace, though he couldn’t have said why. After a while he caught sight
of what he took to be a clump of leaf litter twisting along, brown against
the brown water. Then, with a little shock, he saw it wasn’t leaf litter at
all, but an animal, struggling and sputtering. It drifted into an eddy and
bobbed under the water and when it came to the surface again he heard
a faint but unmistakable cry.
By the time he reached the fence, the creek water was over his knees -
warmer than he expected, but what surprised him most was the strength
of the current. He was forced to grab a fence post to keep his balance.
When the thing swept close, he reached across and scooped it from the
water and held it in the air to get a good look. Then he tucked it into his
coat, keeping his hand inside to warm the thing, and walked straight up
through the woods and into the field below the house.
Trudy, sitting on the porch, watched Gar emerge from the woods.
As he passed through a stand of aspen saplings he seemed to shimmer
into place between their trunks like a ghost, hand cradled to his chest.
At first she thought he’d been hurt but she wasn’t strong enough to walk
out to meet him and so she waited and watched.
On the porch, he knelt and held out the thing for her to see. He knew
it was still alive because all the long walk through the field it had been
biting weakly on his fingers. What he held was a pup of some kind - a
wolf, perhaps, though no one had seen one around for years. It was wet
and shivering, the color of a handful of leaves and barely bigger than
his palm. The pup had revived enough to be scared. It arched its back
and yowled and huffed and scrabbled its hind feet against Gar’s callused
hands. Almondine pressed her muzzle around Gar’s arm, wild to see the
thing, but Trudy downed her sternly and took the pup and held it for a
minute to look it over, then pressed it to her neck. “Quiet now,” she said,
“shush now.” She offered her littlest finger for it to suckle.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
Full Story
