WOLF’S HEAD LAKE

I t ’ s an ear ly dusk at the lake because the sky’s

marbled with clouds and some of them are dark,
heavy, tumescent as skins of flesh ready to burst. It’s
an early dusk because there’s been thunder all after-
noon, that laughing-rippling sound at the base of the spine. And heat
lightning, quick spasms of nerves, forking in the sky then gone before
you can exactly see. Only a few motorboats out on the lake, men fish-
ing, nobody’s swimming any longer, this is a day in summer ending
early. In my damp puckered two-piece bathing suit I’m leaning in the
doorway of the wood-frame cottage, #11, straining the spring of the
rusted screen door. You don’t realize the screen is rusted until you feel
the grit on your fingers, and you touch your face, your lips, needing to
feel I’m here! Alive and you taste the rust, and the slapping of waves
against the pebbled beach is mixed with it, that taste. Along Wolf ’s
Head Lake in the foothills of the Chautauqua Mountains the small cot-
tages of memory, crowded together in a grid of scrupulous plotted
rows at the southern edge of the lake that’s said to be shaped like a giant
wolf ’s head, sandy rutted driveways and grassless lots and towels and
bathing suits hanging on clotheslines chalk-white in the gathering
dusk. And radios turned up high. And kids’ raised voices, shouting in
118 i am no one you know

play. He’s driving a car just that color of the storm clouds. He’s driving
slowly, you could say aimlessly. He’s in no hurry to switch on his head-
lights. Just cruising. On Route 23 the two-lane blacktop highway,
cruising down from Port Oriskany maybe, where maybe he lives, or
has been living, but he’s checked out now, or if he’s left some clothes
and things behind in the rented room he won’t be back to claim them.
You have an uncle who’d gotten shot up as he speaks of it, not bitterly,
nor even ironically, in the War, and all he’s good for now, he says, is
managing a cheap hotel in Port Oriskany, and he tells stories of guys
like this how they appear, and then they disappear. And no trace unless
the cops are looking for them and even then, much of the time, no
trace. Where do they come from, it’s like maple seeds blowing. And you think
What’s a maple seed want but to populate the world with its kind. He’s wear-
ing dark glasses, as dark comes on. Circling the cottages hearing kids’
shouts, barking dogs. He might have a companion. In the rooms-by-
the-week hotel in Port Oriskany, these guys have companions, and the
companion is a woman. This is strange to me, yet I begin to see her.
She’s a hefty big-breasted woman like my mother’s older sister. Her hair
is bleached, but growing out. She’s got a quick wide smile like a knife
cutting through something soft. She’s the one who’ll speak first. Asking
if you know where somebody’s cottage is, and you don’t; or, say you’re
headed for the lake, in the thundery dusk, or sitting on the steps at the
dock where older kids are drinking from beer cans, tossing cigarette
butts into the lake, and it’s later, and darker, and the air tastes of rain
though it hasn’t started yet to rain, and she’s asking would you like to
come for a ride, to Olcott where there’s the carnival, the Ferris wheel,
it’s only a few miles away. Asking what’s your name, and you’re too shy
not to tell. Beneath the front seat of the car, the passenger’s seat, there’s
a length of clothesline. You would never imagine clothesline is so
strong. Each of them has a knife. The kind that fold up. From the
army-navy supply store. For hunting, fishing. Something they do with
these knives, and each other, drawing thin trickles of blood, but I’m
not too sure of this, I’ve never seen it exactly. I’m leaning in the door-
way, the spring of the screen door is strained almost to breaking.
Mosquitoes are drawn to my hot skin, out of the shadows. I see the
headlights on Route 23 above the lake, a mile away. I see the slow pas-
sage, he’s patient, circling the cottages, looking for the way in.