Setting Free the Bears - Page 110

And I remember waiting a long time for her to lie down, and finally getting myself sleepy because she sat up so long. I thought: She's probably going to put her bra back on.

So I let myself be carried away with the water in the fast, black, winter river. I dozed downstream; I woke for short spurts and swam against the current. But always restfully, without any struggle, I let myself be coaxed into letting it carry me - past towns brightly lit over the water; paddling past a typical sort of sawmill, with pitch-smelling logs jamming up along the bank; past young girls doing their sheer laundry. And then I was traveling, muffled, through steep riverbanks of snow, and it was almost dark, or almost light, and the deer were coming down to drink. A great buck with a harem of does all meekly herded after him; the buck looked, I admit, a bit like the oryx. He dared walking out on the thin frills of ice offshore. He eased down his great weight; lightly, he placed his carefully aimed, sharp hooves. The herd of does brushed warmly together. I stopped floating by; I treaded water in place.

The does brushed too loudly together, I thought. But it was Gallen, sitting up above me - getting into her frotting bra, no doubt. Except that her legs behaved foolishly beside me in the bag. She is bicycle-pedaling in this bag, I thought. What next? She's getting into her chainmail pants, which are padlocked. This girl takes no chances.

But then she slipped into the bag, out long alongside me, and I felt her knee draw up and lightly touch my hand.

She'd taken off her clothes! I faked sleep.

'Graff?' Gallen said, and her feet clapped like hands round my ankle.

I squiggled a little toward her, still sleeping. Of course.

'You, Graff,' she said. 'Wake up, please.' But except for our feet touching now, she held off my tummy with her hands. Then she moved; she was touching me nowhere. And then she came down from the roof of the bag on top of me; it was her hair, unbraided and falling loose, that fell over me first. Our skin touched very hot or cold; we were flush in a moment. I felt the ice frill break from the bank and cast the great buck adrift.

Gallen said, 'Wake up now, please.' And hugged herself so tight to me that I couldn't move.

'I'm awake,' I said, down in my throat. But I gurgled so meekly, I tried to get my neck off her shoulder bone so she'd be sure to hear me.

But before I could croak again, she crawled down on me a bit and kissed over my mouth. So I gurgled again. Her face was wet against mine; she was crying down over me, of all things.

I was confused, I confess. I said, 'Don't do me any favors - if it's just because you feel sorry for me.'

'I don't, at all,' she said - fierce for her.

'You don't?' I said, hurt - and held her at elbow's length off my chest. Her hair covered her face and mine. Then she kneed me and I doubled up into her, where her body seemed to know I'd be coming - because she caught my shoulders and swung herself off me, and brought me down over her.

Now she was crying out loud and I kissed over her mouth to stop it. We rolled to get leg room in the frotting bag.

I felt obliged to - I said, 'I love you, Gallen, really.' And she told me the same.

It was the only part that felt at all forced - or seemed remembered from a history of necessary prefixes that we didn't use quite naturally between us.

She tied her hair around my neck; she bound my head on her chest - so high and thin and fragile, I thought I'd break through it and fall inside her. I closed one eye on the pulse in her throat; it was running light and fast.

Like the winter river, bearing downstream the daring buck who rode the ice floe that melted beneath him; his does ran apace with him, safe on the shore.

And Gallen said, 'What are these? What did you call them?'

'Hangies,' I said, but softly. I wouldn't, for this world, have interrupted her pulse.

'Well then,' she said (and her hip bone jabbed me; she was turning under me), 'these of mine are called huggies.' No more tears, but she was stalling. Then she said, 'Take them off.'

I thought: If only a poor soul could see in this frotting bag.

But when I looked, I saw the buck, in the balance - his ice cake almost gone beneath him.

And if I hooked my thumbs just over the front of Gallen's waist and touched down the heels of my hands where her hips began - and if I squeezed, hard, - my middle fingers touched, or seemed to, on her backbone. So I lifted her.

And she babbled, as if she were blurting it out in midstream of the running, winter river, 'You, Graff, where did you put my huggies, you - they're bought new for this trip.'

Then she lifted herself when I lifted her. The does ran in step.

Gallen said, 'You, Graff!' And something squeaked in her throat, an inch behind her pulse and stepping it up.

I saw the buck's hard forehoof break through the ice; his chest fell first and split the lace-thin cake in two. He floated down; he passed towns brightly lit over the water, and sawmills smelling thick with pitch - the river dark and musty with slabs of bark. He emerged between spotless banks of snow, saw his does wanting him ashore. He took an easy stroke or two, in no hurry, brushing the frills of ice that fingered out into the current.

I was confused again. I held my breath, for I'd stopped treading water and had sunk too long ago. I got my footing on the blanket-soft river bottom. As I pushed off, the buck reached shore.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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