The Weirdo

  He put her down on a chair by the kitchen table and brought the phone over.

  ***

  "OH LORD, Sam, we've been so worried. You're all right?"

  "I'm okay, Mama. I swear I am."

  "Where are you?"

  "At the spillwayman's house."

  "Hang on a minute. I've got to tell your papa. He's with a search party moving south. There's another going in from the east...."

  Then Sam heard her mother on a walkie-talkie: Samantha had called and was okay at John Clewt's house. She heard her father say a relieved, tinny, "Well, thank God! Thank God!"

  Delilah came back on the phone. "I jus' knew you were in the swamp when Buck showed up looking like he'd been in a threshing machine."

  "He's okay?"

  "I doubt he'll ever go into the Powhatan again."

  "I'm glad," Sam said. "For both our sakes."

  "You sure you're all right?" said a still-worried Dell.

  "My feet feel like they were in that threshing machine with Buck. Otherwise, I'm fine."

  "You spent the night in the swamp?"

  Sam laughed. "It sure wasn't at a Holiday Inn. I was in a hollowed-out stump."

  Dell said, "As soon as your papa gets back, he'll come up there and get you. Don't try to walk out, Samantha."

  "I can't walk across the room."

  The boy had listened and now said, "Tell your mother I'll bring you out to Dunnegan's."

  "You don't need to do that," Sam said.

  "I don't mind."

  Sam shrugged and nodded. "Mr. Clewt's son will bring me out. I'll call you just before we leave." The ride down the three-and-a-half-mile Feeder Ditch would take thirty minutes.

  Dell said again, "I'm so relieved, Samantha."

  Beginning to feel like herself once more, despite being weary and hungry, Sam said, "Likewise. I'll call you."

  ***

  AS SHE placed the phone down, Clewt's son said, "I'm Charles. People call me Chip." They also call you something eke, Sam thought. She wondered if he knew.

  "I'm Samantha Sanders. People call me Sam. I prefer that."

  "Sorry about the dogs. They're here to guard, and they do it well."

  "I'm a living example."

  "You said you spent the night in the swamp. You must be hungry."

  "I'm about starved. Last bite I had was yesterday afternoon."

  "We're vegetarians. Watercress sandwich okay? I'll make you two."

  So they didn't eat the birds. "Even plain bread would be great." She'd never had a watercress sandwich. She'd never even known a vegetarian.

  "Diet drink?"

  "Fine."

  He limped across the room to the refrigerator and opened it.

  "Your father not around?"

  "He's in New York for a few days for an art exhibit."

  John Clewt, the Powhatan spillwayman, in New York City for an art exhibit? Sounded pretty farfetched, but Sam decided to let it pass.

  "I heard you lived back here with him."

  He was busy at the countertop. "I've been here a year and a half. I lived in Ohio the last eight years."

  "You don't go to school?"

  "I finished high school two years ago."

  "You don't look old enough to be out of high school two years ago."

  "I'm seventeen. I studied year-round."

  A brain, she thought. A huge brain. A bulging brain. Out of school at fifteen! As her mother often said, "Don't be so nosy, Samantha."

  "Where'd you live in Ohio?"

  "Columbus, with my grandparents. It's okay," Chip said. He added, "If you like big cities."

  Oh, oh, Sam thought. Another one of those. "Well, I think I'd like to live in a big city," she said with purpose. "New York, Chicago..."

  "Where do you live?"

  "Five and a half miles due north, if a rotten buzzard flew a straight route. On Chapanoke Road. We live on a farm. But my papa's not a farmer. Not until he retires. He's in the Coast Guard."

  Chip limped back across the kitchen with the watercress sandwiches and a 7-Up. She noticed he'd taken the cotton glove off his left hand. It was the light leather color of the left side of his face and just as shiny. It was also partially withered. What had happened to this boy? He looked as though he'd been horribly burned.

  She thanked him for the food and drink, then asked, "What were you doing on the south side of the lake?" That wasn't being too nosy.

  "Checking on the bears."

  "Checking on the bears?"

  He nodded.

  "One of them got me into all this trouble." She told him what had happened with Buck.

  "That was probably Henry, Bear 56-89. He comes over on this side quite a lot. We've captured him twice. His original number was 1-88."

  "You have names and numbers for them?"

  All she knew about bears was what her father and grandfather had told her. Bear grease was good for cooking doughnuts and softening boot leather. The fur wasn't worth saving. They had a sweet tooth and ruined trees. Keep away from them. Far away.

  "Human names?" That was ridiculous.

  "I name them for the fun of it. I've been helping a graduate student, Tom Telford, from NC State, keep track of them. He's gone back to Raleigh. Did that bear have a radio-collar?"

  "I haven't the faintest. It was too far away." She'd heard about that graduate student and his bear study.

  "If he had a collar it was probably Henry. I know him well."

  "You track bears every day?" Was he putting her on?

  "Seven days a week."

  Didn't sound like much fun. "And your father's an artist?"

  Chip nodded.

  Sometimes Albemarle gossip was correct.

  "The real reason he's back here is to paint the birds," Chip said. "The spillway job is extra, so he can live in this house."

  More than two hundred species lived in the Powhatan. "He kills birds, then paints them?"

  Chip shook his head. "The birds die naturally or from disease, then he does taxidermy on them. Sometimes they're shot and fly on until they drop. He's never killed even one."

  "How about the ones in the cages?"

  "That's my hospital. Chip Clewt General. Those are injured or sick, and I try to nurse them back to health, then let them fly off."

  Keeps his eye on bears, tends sick birds, a vegetarian? Not your ordinary seventeen year old. At least, not like the ones she knew. The ones she knew ate cheeseburgers and blew birds out of the sky and would like nothing better than to line up a sight on a big Powhatan black.

  "What I do is no big deal. Passes the time." Then, looking down at her feet, he said, "Let's take care of what ails you."

  "I'll do it when I get home."

  But he'd already moved toward the sink and was reaching under it. "Maybe they're infected." He drew out a tin basin and turned on the water tap, then left the room.

  Though kept by a pair of hermit males, the kitchen wasn't in too much disorder. Dishes were stacked. A faint onionish smell lingered. Eating slowly, she wondered how often the senior Clewt went away.

  Chip returned with a bottle in his hand and dumped the contents into the basin as it filled with warm water, saying over his shoulder, "Epsom salts. We don't have much of a medicine cabinet."

  "You don't need to do this," Sam said, feeling uneasy. What he was doing felt personal. Too personal.

  "Soak your feet for a few minutes, and then we'll get the socks off," he replied, ignoring the half-protest.

  The warm water immediately eased the pain and she murmured an "Umh."

  "See," he said.

  "You seem to know what you're doing."

  "I've spent some time in hospitals."

  He left the room again. She'd tried not to look at his scarred face, the drooping eye, the withered hand, wanting to save them both embarrassment, but she found it impossible. Was she supposed to stare out the window or up at the ceiling when talking to him? Okay, he did look weird.

  He returned with a pair
of fleece-lined bedroom slippers. "You can't go home barefooted."

  "I could."

  "That'd be foolish," he said, kneeling down by the basin. "Now, this'll hurt...."

  The water had turned brownish red from the blood-encrusted socks.

  "There's two ways to do it, slow or quick. Quick is better, I've found."

  She yelled as he jerked a sock off, skin coming with it. The pain shot up her leg, but at least the dog bite didn't look as bad as it had felt.

  "We'll wait a few seconds, then grit your teeth again."

  "You should be a doctor."

  "I don't like doctors or hospitals. I've seen too many of both."

  The fingers of his right hand grasped the upper part of the other sock, and she yelled again as he pulled it off. A stab couldn't have hurt any worse.

  He'd spread a towel down. "Put your feet here while I dump this water and get some more."

  Eyes closed, Sam sat back on the hard chair. Only her mother had ever repaired hurts and wounds, the usual childhood scrapes and bumps. Here was this total stranger...

  "Okay, put 'em back in for a while. Then I'll bandage them loosely, just wrap some gauze..."

  "I should be going."

  "They know you're safe."

  She looked at him directly. "Thank you for what you've done."

  Smiling crookedly, he shrugged. "Who knows, I might end up on your roof one day."

  "Just don't come through the lousy swamp."

  "I think the swamp's beautiful. It's like the sea. It has a different face every day. I'll bet I can show you things you never knew existed even if you've lived around here for years."

  "I don't doubt that a bit. I've stayed out of it as much as I could."

  "You don't know what you're missing."

  Sam uttered a half-laugh. "I think I do. You want to hear something strange and scary that happened this morning back here in your beautiful swamp?"

  "Tell me."

  "Yesterday, about dark, I heard two shots ring out. Didn't pay much attention to 'em at the time. Then just before daylight a man came by me carrying something over his shoulder wrapped in a cloth or blanket. I thought I saw a foot sticking out beneath it, but maybe it was only a trick of the light."

  "Where did you see him?"

  "A couple of miles north of here, near a place we call the Sand Suck."

  "I know where it is, just off Trail Six."

  Sam nodded.

  "You weren't dreaming in that stump?"

  "I don't think so." She paused. "I know I wasn't."

  "Every once in a while we'll meet an oddball back here. But oddballs are everywhere, not only in swamps. I saw plenty in Columbus. You sure he wasn't carrying a bedroll?"

  "And getting rid of it in the Sand Suck? No."

  He shrugged.

  She studied him. "Mind if I ask you a question?"

  "What happened to me?"

  "I shouldn't ask. It's none of my business."

  "I was in a plane crash ten years ago. I look a lot better now than I looked for a long time. Plastic surgeons. Skin grafts..."

  Then he dismissed it, abruptly. Slammed it shut. "I'll get some gauze." There was a sudden turn of annoyance in his voice.

  She'd guessed right. He'd been burned. Horribly burned. Sam had been looking into mirrors for a long time wishing she could see another face. Maybe a Julia Roberts with lips that would drive boys crazy. Imagine him looking into the mirror. She wondered whether or not he just turned away.

  He was gone five or six minutes. She heard him outside talking to the dogs. She definitely shouldn't have brought it up. Nosy Sam.

  ***

  "WHY'D you put her up on the roof?" he asked them. "You're going to have to learn between friendlies and enemies. She's a friendly, I think."

  But Chip was surprised at his own reaction to Sam Sanders. Normally he was shy and avoided contact with strangers, not wanting to see the inevitable looks on their faces, the almost revulsion at the scarring. He'd stayed away from crowds. He'd walked lonely paths. But this unplanned meeting hadn't given him time to think about reactions. She'd been in obvious trouble and needed rescuing.

  "Behave yourselves," he said to the dogs and went up the ladder, hooking her other wader off the roof.

  Back on the ground, he stood looking out across the lake, thinking about the girl inside. It was the first time he'd ever had a girl in his arms; first time, that he could recall, he'd touched one in ten years. Conscious of how he looked, he'd never even tried to date. No sooner had he healed from one operation than he was under the knife again—eight long years of it, to try to repair the whole left side of his body—and during that time he hadn't appealed to most girls. Tom Telford had said one day one might come along who...

  He sighed, laughed gently at such a thought, then went back to the kitchen and patted her feet dry in silence.

  "Sorry," she said, looking down at him.

  He began gently winding the gauze around her feet. "You wanted to know, didn't you?" His eyes were hidden by the cap. The annoyance was still in his voice.

  "I was curious," she admitted.

  He continued wrapping the bandage in silence until he finally said, "There."

  Sam's feet looked mummified.

  "These slippers will be a little big, but that's good," he said, easing them on.

  "Ill get them back to you."

  "No hurry. Why don't you call home now? Then we'll start down the ditch."

  ***

  With water that same oxblood, dark tea-color of the lake, the George Washington Canal, which dates back to 1793, is still in business, affording safe inside passage for yachts on the Inland Waterway to Florida. They travel south each fall and north in the spring. Dunnegan occasionally comes out from his store across from the Feeder Ditch to watch the traffic.

  For almost two hundred years, the waters have borne trade from states below North Carolina. Steam packets chuffed along it loaded with produce and cotton. Barges full of timber were towed through it, as were schooners. There were watermelon boats and potato boats and boats full of fresh corn bound for Norfolk and Washington and Baltimore. A showboat once plied it every summer, offering evening performances at canalside hamlets.

  No longer is it used for commerce. Now only pleasure boats sail up and down its placid surfaces. I watched them, too, now and then.

  The serenity of the days of George Washington remains. Trees grow down the banks in thick walls of foliage on the swamp side, and bears sometimes emerge from them to swim the canal. For their own sake, Dunnegan wishes they'd stay in the swamp. So do I.

  Powhatan Swamp

  English I

  Charles Clewt

  Ohio State University

  ***

  "DUNNEGAN'S, in about forty-five minutes," she told her mother. The convenience store—deli, with video rentals as a sideline, was less than ten minutes away from home.

  Sam got to her feet and took a step, then closed her eyes in pain.

  Seeing the grimace, Chip quickly said, "Don't try to walk. I'll piggyback you."

  "That's ridiculous," she said.

  "You'd rather walk?"

  "No."

  He bent down, and she climbed aboard.

  Going through the front room, he stopped a moment. "My dad works in here."

  A large window and skylight let in the morning sun. There were sketches and watercolors of birds everywhere. Three or four mounted specimens, roosting or in flight, looking alive, stood on pedestals.

  "He does the necessary taxidermy, uses them as models, then gives them to museums."

  "Stuffed things have never appealed to me." Some of her father's friends had walls covered with deer heads, game birds, and fish.

  "Me neither."

  Chip carried her on out into the yard, telling the dogs he'd be back soon.

  They bumped along toward the little dam and the spillway chutes.

  "Don't you get bored back here?"

  "Right now, I'm so busy
between watching the bears and working on my project that I barely have time to sleep."

  Sam knew she was being nosy again. "What project?"

  "That five-year moratorium on hunting and shooting in the Powhatan will end next fall unless we—Tom Telford and myself—can persuade the Wildlife Service to continue it another five years."

  Tom Telford was grit in her papa's eyes. An ache in his ear.

  "I've talked to the National Wildlife Conservancy a dozen times. They weren't even aware the ban was going to be lifted."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Absolutely. They'll give me help and money."

  Whoops, Sam thought. Collision course with all the hunters and fishermen in the area. There'd been rumors that an environmentalist group was being organized to keep the ban. One hunter and fisherman named Stuart Sanders would be livid when he found out a seventeen-year-old kid was behind it.

  A few minutes later, Chip deposited her in the Feeder Ditch boat and started the motor. They headed east down the waterway, past tangles of berry bushes and thom thickets wound with dead honeysuckle vines.

  He shouted above the racket of the outboard. "You know how much the bear population has increased in the last four years?"

  Facing him, Sam shook her head.

  "We think somewhere between a hundred and one-fifty...."

  "We?"

  "Tom Telford and myself..."

  Sam remained silent. Tom Telford again.

  "That the white-tailed deer have tripled is a guess...."

  His shouting echoed against the sides of the ditch.

  "And we think we can count thousands more wood ducks, mourning doves, bobwhites...."

  All shotgun targets.

  "So we can't allow people to come back in here and start killing again...." He was looking over her head.

  We again.

  The boy lapsed into silence for the remainder of the trip.

  EMERGING out of the Feeder Ditch, Chip steered across the canal, driving the bow of the boat on shore down the bank from Dunnegan's.

  "I can walk up," Sam said.

  "You can also walk on broken glass," he said, getting out of the boat and putting his back to her. "Climb aboard."

  He struggled up the bank and then crossed the highway, sitting her down on the green bench outside Dunnegan's.