The man wore a baseball cap, and he swung with a calm efficiency that showed he’d done this many times before. The cap was low over his eyes, so I couldn’t see his face, but his back was to me anyway. Nearby was a tractor, which he no doubt intended to use to drag home his prize. He must have been building something back at his farm.
I sat for a long time, fascinated, and thought about all the gossipy stories I’d heard about men from women. A common phrase among the women I grew up around was something along the lines of She’ll never catch herself a man. It was something women said of other women when they wanted to feel superior, when she was following an independent course that no one could understand. A variant was, How does she ever expect to catch a man when she goes around like that? More than likely this had been said of me in the past. But the idea of “catching” a man had always seemed ridiculous. Men were not high-flying, unattainable creatures who resisted every attempt at domestication. Matter of fact, they were never too far off, especially when they smelled food. To me, huntress extraordinaire, catching a man seemed about as complicated as trapping a cow. No matter. None of that had anything to do with me. I was only going to scare this one off, not keep him. I had no use for a man at all.
I had, by this time, become adept at imitating a number of animal sounds. I sorted through my repertoire now, trying to find one that would be suitably threatening. Nothing came to mind except Bear, and I was afraid to throw his voice lest he hear me and think he was receiving an invitation.
What would be even more frightening to a man than a bear?
That’s easy, I thought. I’ll pretend I’m another man, a bigger one. I’ll scare him off by pretending I’m human. I would say, Get out! in my loudest, deepest, most terrifying howl. Nothing is more frightening to people than one of their own kind, provided they believe that human is insane, violent, or possibly a returned spirit.
Just as I was clearing my throat, the man turned for a moment. He took off his cap and reached for a bottle of water under the tractor’s seat, still clutching his ax, and I had a clear view of his face.
It was Adam Schumacher.
I was stunned. How long had it been since I’d seen him? At least a year. Our last meeting had been at his farm, on the Fourth of July. Embarrassment swelled in me as I remembered how I’d felt when he and Roberta disappeared into the barn, the same barn he and I had shared the year before. Blond-haired bastard. Well, I would show him.
I had completely forgotten that I was naked, of course. Without another thought, I stepped out of the brush, strode toward him—his back was to me again—and shouted: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It had been months since I’d said that many words, and the effect was not what I had hoped for. I did a fair amount of talking to myself, but my voice was still unused and out of shape, and instead of a stentorian lioness’s roar, what came out instead was a pathetic kind of meow, the noise an irate kitten might make if you stepped on his toes.
Still, I managed to scare the daylights out of him. Adam spun around and stared at me, bug-eyed. He didn’t recognize me. I had lost a lot of weight since seeing him last, and my personal hygiene left a great deal to be desired. I’m sure my face was literally invisible under the layers of dirt. It’s a wonder he didn’t smell me coming up behind him. And Lord only knows what raced through his mind as he stared at me.
It was only then, when I felt his eyes on me, that I remembered I wasn’t wearing a stitch. Well, it was too late to do anything about that now. He’d seen me. I wasn’t feeling in the least self-conscious. In fact, I was thinking that he looked a bit silly, wearing all those clothes when it was a perfectly beautiful day out.
Adam’s eyes were huge. He couldn’t move. One hand held the water bottle upside down, so that the contents trickled out, and the other held the ax. It was the ax I wanted. I intended to stop him from chopping down any more trees. These were my woods. So I stepped forward quickly and put my hand on his wrist, partly also to keep him from chopping me in half. I could tell that thought was running through his mind, too. I was sure now he hadn’t recognized me. He thought I was Bigfoot’s wife, maybe, or some kind of mutant being that was going to suck out his brain.
He didn’t try to move. His nostrils widened as he took in my odor, but he must not have found it unpleasant, because there was no expression of disgust on his face. Slowly, he dropped the water bottle and moved his hand up to my breast, cupping it in his warm, callused hand.
I was completely unprepared for that, I can tell you. Nor was I any better prepared for the way it felt. No one had touched me like that before. The last fellow to put his hand there had, in fact, been Adam himself, but that had been different. It was in the barn, and it was sweaty and hurried and really more for fun than anything else. This was a different story. We were both older now. Certain things were more immediate, and more clear.
What happened next is still unbelievable, as many times as I’ve gone over it in my mind. Unbelievable and exciting. Exciting and animalistic. I had known all along that I was an animal, but Adam had yet to learn that he, too, had more in common with our forest brethren than he thought.
I think it must have been my smell that took over and made him crazy. There was no denying that my smell was as strong as it could be, that it proclaimed to everyone far and wide who I was. I knew Adam had never really smelled a woman before, that I was washing over him like a tidal wave, a force of nature. Something else took him over, some part of himself that he didn’t know he had. I had awakened the caveman in Adam, with predictable results.
There was no question of kissing. It was not that kind of encounter. I watched in amazement as Adam ripped off his own clothes, tossing his T-shirt off into the bushes, yanking his jeans down to his feet. He was already erect. He stood there before me for several seconds, letting me look at him, waiting to see my reaction.
I stayed. I couldn’t help it. I was too fascinated. I found myself pondering his penis, never having seen one before—not in this state, certainly. It was shortish and thick, the soft sack of his testicles descending through a mass of blond fuzz, heavy and pendulous in the heat. I took his cock in my hand, amazed at its rigidity, its length, the way the blood pulsed through it with the ferocity of a river. I stepped in closer. Large parts of me were screaming that I ought to run, but other parts were urging me to stay, that it was all right, that it was supposed to be this way.
I moved closer to him until I could feel his member pressing into my belly. He rolled his eyes back and shuddered at my touch, and the next thing I knew I was on my back, looking up at the sky, and Adam had entered me and was thrusting energetically, with simultaneous purpose and abandon.
I will not say I was raped. I may not have intended it to happen, but I certainly didn’t object to it. Nor will I say it hurt. True, he was entering parts of me that had never been entered before, and the sensation was indeed painful and overwhelming, but overall not unpleasant. I had the distinct impression that he was getting more out of it than I was, that he knew what he was doing, whereas I did not. This did seem to be unfair, but I could hardly blame him for that.
Also, I hadn’t the slightest idea what was expected of me.
Apparently, not much. After perhaps a minute of his pushing, I felt him explode in a great burst of moisture, and his seed trickled deep. Then he collapsed in a moaning, heaving heap on my chest. I still hadn’t done anything other than lie there, my legs first hoisted up onto his shoulders, now spread out wide on the ground with him between them. I became aware that I, too, was breathing hard. A warm glow had come over me during what I would come to think of later as The Event, and I knew that this was something I could eventually enjoy, once I learned more about it.
But that wasn’t going to happen just now. We were slick and overheated, and I wanted him to get up off me. I pushed on his shoulders. He stirred and mumbled something. I tried to wiggle out from under him, and only now did I feel the first faint rumblings of fear: W
hat if he didn’t let me go? What if he decided to keep me there, as his prisoner? I still had my knife and scissors in my belt, and one hand strayed down to feel the haft of the knife, just for reassurance. If he didn’t get up off me, I would cut off his head. I would carry it around by those fine, blond hairs, as a warning to men everywhere.
But he got up, brushing his bowl-cut hair out of his eyes, leaving a smear of dirt on his forehead. His chest, freckled and broad, pink and nearly hairless, was wet with our mixed sweat.
“Jesus, Haley,” he said. “That was amazing.”
I shot to my feet. So he did know it was me. Well, of course he would—we’d known each other forever, and sooner or later he would have figured it out. You might even say that sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen. Him and me having sex, I mean. Him penetrating me. Us mating. I had been physically ready for some time now, after all. I was of an age.
“Why are you going around like that?” Adam asked.
He was kneeling now, naked from the ankles up, his shrinking penis dangling between his thighs, still dripping the last remnants of his essence into the dark earth. Wood chips from the tree he’d been cutting littered the ground, and a few of them had adhered to his legs. I could feel them on my back, too, stuck there by the sweat that was like glue.
I couldn’t answer. Answering would have been ridiculous. I had said everything I’d had to say to him with my actions. I hadn’t fought him off. I had come closer. It was as if I had urged him onto and into me, and that was as clear as anything I could ever say. What else could I possibly tell him that would be clearer than that? We were animals, and animals didn’t have to explain themselves.
So I got up and ran.
I had no fear of him tracking me. His pants were down around his ankles, and he had exhausted himself with his efforts, whereas I had done almost nothing. He did call after me—“Haley, wait!”—but I was already gone by then, invisible in the protective cover of the woods. I ran the entire way, not to the grove of oaks but to the rock face, where I sat in a small pool and let the cool water soothe my bruised self, what Mother referred to as my womanly parts.
It occurred to me only then that I had never thought of my own name for my genitalia. I had always used hers. I would have to change that. A woman should have her own names for things, especially things that were uniquely hers.
Should I give it an actual name? I wondered. Why not? Something silly, I thought. Vaginas were taken all too seriously.
I know. Henrietta.
I giggled out loud at that. “Henrietta” was stupid enough that it would have to remain a private joke forever. But at least I had named it, and made it my own. That removed the image of Mother from the equation. Because I could hear her already, as if she’d been there watching me. And the things her image was saying were horrible. My womanly parts had been ruined, she was saying. I had been polluted, I hadn’t saved myself for marriage. The temple had been desecrated, its doors battered down, bucketfuls of milky fluid emptied on its floors. I had been fucked but good…and I liked it.
Since becoming an animal, Mother’s notions had been revealed to me for what they were: pure, ridiculous convention, nothing more. Women believed in saving themselves for marriage because it kept things orderly, a lot more so than if we were all slutting around like a bunch of Jezebels, which if you want my opinion was probably the natural state of things before we started living in cities and so forth. Already, though I had committed the act just one time in my life, I was eager to learn more, and to experiment. What if we had done it such-and-such a way, for example? These were questions that would have to be answered.
Quiet, Mother, I thought.
I spread my tender lips with my fingers and the water ran into me and cleaned me out. Then I lay there on my back, letting the stream run through my hair and into my ears, muffling all sounds except for the beating of my heart. Good Lord, I thought. I only set out on a mission of mercy, and I ended up getting poked like a pincushion. Life certainly was unpredictable in the forest.
How had it happened? There was really nothing to think over, nothing to analyze. I heard the sounds of mating animals at different times of the year, from the very small to the very large. No ceremony was involved in the act, though there was often plenty of foreplay, in the form of singing or dancing. There was nothing unnatural about two people doing it that way. I had been aware for some time before I left home that I was at an age where sex was becoming more significant, if not necessarily for myself then for those who looked at me—like Adam. Even Chester Burgess had looked at me a certain way, although he was an old man and I could hardly have been appetizing in my filthy, ankle-length dress. Fine. So I had stumbled across a male of my species, and the most natural of all things had taken place. If we had met in a museum, or a bar, the courtship ritual would have been much longer, more drawn out. Out here, away from the society that dictated such behavior, there was no need to get fancy. One simply got down to business.
Perhaps some might think it odd that I hadn’t thought about sex more than I did before The Event. To them I would say that I can offer no reasonable explanation for that, except that that is the way I am. I never had an aversion to it, but I never sought it out, either, like some girls did. I rarely talked about it with anyone, especially Mother. I had a vague foreboding from the time I got my first period that someday something of significance would happen in connection with the blood that spotted my underwear, but that had more to do with motherhood than copulation. I’d always had the feeling that when it happened, that would be the proper time; and who it happened with would be the proper person. Well, it had happened now without warning, and it was over in a blink. I was no longer a virgin. And Adam had turned out to be the one.
Another thought occurred to me then, as the stream splashed between my legs and I drifted lazily, hovering scant millimeters above the streambed, barely floating: Would it, perhaps, happen again? And with who?
Thoughts for another day. This was more excitement than I had seen in months, and I was suddenly beyond tired. I was used up, exhausted, depleted. I roused myself from my always-running bath and stepped out of the water, letting the air dry my skin, tying my hair up with a piece of leftover twine. My mind was gradually settling. I went to my bed underneath the rock face, taking care to leave a fresh spot of urine in three or four randomly chosen spots all around—certain local residents had been getting a little too curious lately. Adam’s semen dripped out of me as I peed. I wondered what the animals would make of that. Then, with the sun still peeking over the tops of the trees, I went to sleep, and slept more deeply than I had in a long time.
11
The Bad Thing
For the previous few months, since the arrival of spring, it seemed that no matter where I buried my tampons, no matter how deep, something always got them. I put them in a different place every time, and I tried to hide them better—putting a large rock over them before burying, crushing pine needles to release their fragrance and spreading them over the freshly turned earth to hide the scent. But it never worked. Something out there had an insatiable appetite for my blood. I never found the actual tampons themselves. There was only ever a clawed-open hole, the pine needles brushed carefully away, the rock tossed disdainfully aside.
This, in a word, was gross. Even in my near-animal state I was astonished at the sheer intimacy of the act. Were the tampons being swallowed, like some kind of medicinal capsule? Was my blood now coursing through the digestive tract of some wild beast, filling its nostrils as it calmly chewed the soft cotton, sucking the last drops of juice from it like a delicate morsel of meat before finally gulping it down? And who, among the endless directory of forest residents, was responsible for this outrage? Who was drinking my blood?
Once I set my mind to figuring it out, it didn’t take long to realize that it was Bear. His tracks were easy to spot in the soft soil, and he left a tunnel of broken branches everywhere he went, as obvious to my eyes as a
series of flashing Men at Work signs on a highway. Often as not the broken ends of these branches were festooned with tufts of his fur, snagged and torn from his thick hide as he lumbered along. Bear was big. Bear was massive. And Bear knew me better than I knew him.
That was what was most terrifying about it: With my blood in his memory, he would know my scent anywhere, and if he chose to track me down and eat me, there was little I could do about it. I was terrified that he had gained an appetite for me in particular, that my tampons were only an appetizer. Bears have a very large territory, and they operate methodically, always moving into a new sector before they’ve managed to exhaust the food supply in the old one. If I knew where he was on any given day, I could make sure not to be there. This meant being constantly on guard, always listening, turning my head upwards at every breeze to read the odors that were written on it like a telegram: Here we have angelica, borage, pine, birch, squirrels, something dead, but no Bear. Always a relief. Yet I was always on guard.
I was most on guard, of course, when I was about to menstruate. And I think that Bear had become as attuned to my cycle as I myself was. Two weeks before my encounter with Adam, when the blood was about to flow, I’d heard him not far off, too far to cause immediate flight but close enough that I did not sleep at all that night. He had stopped within smelling range—his smelling range, I mean. He was much better at smelling than I was. I couldn’t get a whiff of him at that distance, no matter how hard I tried. Yet I knew he was there.