“And who’s this? Hubby?” He studies the photo again. “No, not hubby. He’s a stopgap, a fly-by-nighter, Amelia. I know his type. I can tell just by looking at him that he’s not for you.”
As he’s returning it to the wallet, he finds the other photograph. Veined and crumpled. Me as a two-year-old on my father’s knee taken out the back of our house, the house later foreclosed on by the bank after he left.
“Oh, this is sweet.”
“Put it back,” I say.
He stares at me. “You were close to your pop.”
“I said put it back.”
“You’re right. I apologize, Amelia,” he says, returning the photograph. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
He hurls the apple core into the brush and takes out his own wallet.
“Since were sharing—”
He shows me a photograph of a boy about six standing next to a black BMX.
“That’s Noah,” he says, face darkening. “He’s older now, thirteen. I get emails sometimes. He’s stayed strong, despite his mother’s lies. She was never my wife, just a waitress, a nobody. You look like her but I won’t hold that against you.”
He touches the photo. “I wear my heart on my sleeve, I know that, but when it comes to Noah I can’t help it. I sure miss him a lot.”
He takes a final look then returns the photo to his wallet and falls silent, staring morosely into the fire.
Finally, he lifts his head and looks at me.
“I’m sorry, Amelia. About before, about what occurred at the river, it won’t happen again.”
He’s so earnest I almost believe him.
13
Rightly or wrongly, his words have given me hope. If he says he won’t touch me again, maybe there is a scrap of humanity in there. Maybe I can reason with him. Maybe I can gain his trust.
So when he asks me if I want to go fishing I say, “Yes, sir,” and try for a smile. He nods, happy, and says, “That’s just swell.”
He laces up my boots and we set off, my wrist secured to his, weaving through the towering pines, between narrow openings, up and down the undulating terrain. All around there’s the shriek of unseen birds, the shuffle of hurried, retreating steps. The vastness of the place is overwhelming. I know that if I was to zoom out, then zoom out again, we would be nothing, mere arthropods in the undergrowth. I want to reach out and touch everything—the bark, the soil, the sticky pungent sap. Scrape the ground until I fill my fingernails. Roll the fallen leaves against my cheeks. I glimpse myself as I was meant to be—the trekker, fresh-faced and eager, at one with nature.
“Turn left here.”
We go into deeper, thicker woods, and I begin to worry I’ve miscalculated his intentions and I’m actually walking to my death. We carry on and follow a path between the trees and I keep my eyes out for landmarks, any sign of a road that I can return to later, but it all looks the same.
He takes me past thickets, up to a ridge, then we circle back down to emerge on the other side to face a lake as smooth as glass.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says, laying the fishing rod on the ground.
I can’t deny it. It’s more than beautiful. The picture book lake is bordered with elegant maples dripping fall-ripened leaves into the water. Water lilies float in clusters on top. But the most spectacular thing is the water itself—it is the most dazzling shade of crystal blue I have ever seen.
“There’s a spring down there. If you dive deep enough you can actually feel it bubble up from the rock bed aquifers.”
After leading me to the riverbank, he undoes the wrist tie, rolls out a blanket, and sits me down. He slips out of his jacket and hangs it on the hook of a tree branch. There’s a gun tucked in the back of his belt. He turns to me.
“Ever fish?” he says.
I shake my head. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
“You’re in for a treat then. How about it? What to give it a try? Say yes.”
He’s playing with me. I can see his eyes dancing.
I nod. “Sure. Thanks.”
He puts the rod in my hands. I think hard about how I can use it as a weapon but decide to stick with my original plan of befriending him. He circles me and I avoid cringing when his body engulfs mine. He clamps his hands on my wrists and swings the line back and forth in powerful strokes, the stones of his biceps flexing against my arms.
The bright red feather lure lands in the center of the lake.
“Oh, you’re good at this, Amelia,” he says.
I think of his son, Noah, and wonder if he ever stood where I am standing, with his father’s voice in his ear, telling him what a great job he was doing.
I hold the rod on my own, the line ballooning in the breeze, that gaudy red feather lure so out of place among the rest of the surroundings. Moonboot crouches to wash his face in the water, lifts his cap, and runs some over his head. He stands and looks out at the lake.
“This is what the world needs to get back to, Amelia,” he says, “simplicity. Taking only what you need. No commercial production. No profit-driven culture. Think how much happier the world would be without Wall Street and multi-national corporations and bankers and lawyers. I feel nothing but pity for those people. They’ll never experience real happiness, not like this. Feeling the wind on their faces, the earth between their fingers, tasting meat caught with their own hands. But you know what I’m talking about. You were part of it. All of that lust.”
“I wasn’t,” I say it before I can stop myself.
“No? You sure? You didn’t want a pair of those Jimmy Choos whats-its? I bet you pressed your nose against that polished glass and imagined slipping your pretty toes into that soft baby calf leather to send a signal to the world that Amelia Kellaway had finally made it.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
And he didn’t because for me it was never about the money or status or accumulating meaningless material things. For me it was about accomplishment, proving myself, quelling that corrosive sense of not being quite good enough.
Moonboot stares at me. “You’re right, Amelia. I apologize. You’re not like them. I know that. That’s why I chose you.”
I shudder but try to rise above it and remind myself that I’m supposed to be gaining his trust.
“Do you mind if I ask your name?” I say.
He looks at me for a long time and does the thing when he lifts his forefinger to rub the spot just above his top lip.
“It’s okay, forget I asked, it’s none of my business.” I say.
“Rex.”
It’s his real name, I just know it, and I feel violently ill. Why couldn’t he have just made something up? Not only do I know his face, but now also his name, and he doesn’t seem to give a hoot. Don’t go down that road, I tell myself. Keep him talking. Get him to let down his guard.
“What do you do for a living, Rex?”
“Chatterbox today, aren’t we?” He pauses. “Take a guess, Amelia. What do you think? Doctor? Lawyer? Candlestick maker?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see you in an office. You work on the land?”
He seems pleased with my answer. “In a manner of speaking,” he says, but before he can elaborate he shouts and points at the water. “You got a bite!”