• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1293 0

engaged the motor, and chugged slowly through the outlet to the lake. People were strolling, holding hands, eating ice cream; some of them waved from the sidewalk. We passed under the bridge and then traveled past the marina. Blake was on the deck of his boat, and I waved as we glided out into the open water, feeling contrite because I’d leaked his secret. I’d been angry with him about the land, angry with my mother, too, and I’d spoken without thinking. He waved back, and Keegan pressed the throttle hard. We took off, bouncing over the waves. He was relaxed, comfortable with the lake and the speed, like athletes so born to their sport that they seem to become other creatures when they swim or leap or run. Keegan in a boat had always been that way.

It was twilight when we started, the wealthy homes and the scars on the land all faded into the same dusk. The sky had deepened into darkness by the time Keegan finally slowed down in the middle of the lake. It was a clear night, the stars vivid, and even out this deep the water was smooth and calm.

“You thirsty?” he asked, opening the cooler stashed at his feet and pulling out a bottle of wine.

“Sounds nice, thanks. It’s a pretty night.”

“Doesn’t get any better,” he agreed. He opened the wine and poured some into plastic glasses, and we floated, not speaking, comfortable in the silence, the night growing deeper around us. On a boat, Rose had written, you are no place at all.

Maybe it was the darkness, or the quiet, but I found myself telling Keegan about my dreams, the things I’d lost in the foliage and the trees and could never piece together once I finally found them, the wallet that had been lost and held for me for so many years, my identity sealed inside.

“I had dreams like those once,” he said. “A kind of series, not exactly the same. It was during the time when I was wandering around a lot, after I got out of art school, before I came back here. I was on a ship to Mexico. I’d got on it in California. It was a freighter, and they gave me work, and though I could speak enough Spanish at that point to get the jobs done and even joke around a little with the rest of the crew, I couldn’t really join in when they got together in the evening for a drink. There were a couple of other foreigners on the crew, but they didn’t speak much English, either. So I was alone a lot. Alone at sea. Not much to do but read the couple of paperbacks I’d thought to bring. Read and think. Work and sleep and dream.

“I started having this recurring dream around that time. It was in a forest, too, like yours, except I was always following a path, the trees getting thicker and denser and the trail more faint, and there was always a moment when I looked down and realized I wasn’t human anymore—I’d transformed into some sort of animal, a different one each night. A lynx, a wolf, a panther—something fierce and seeking.”

“And what happened? How did they end?”

“We got to Mexico. I got off the boat. There was a bus, and the name of the company was Linea de Los Lobos—Line of the Wolves. So it seemed kind of like a sign, and I got on. I took it to the last stop, which was a beautiful village in the highlands. I stayed there for a year. Fell in love, learned to speak the language. Then I got word that my mother was sick, so I came back.”

I nodded, drank a little more. I wondered who Keegan had been in love with. The patterns of his life were largely unknown to me, no matter how familiar he seemed.

“You came back,” I repeated. “And how was that, at first?”

Waves lapped at the boat. Keegan finished his wine before he answered.

“Truthfully? I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about it as I was coming back. It was just something I was doing for the time being. Then I met Beth. Even then, I kept telling her I wasn’t planning to stick around, I didn’t want to get serious.” He gave a short laugh. “She’s a good person, Beth. She didn’t deserve a lot of the things I did. Out of sadness, when my mother died. Out of a feeling that I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a life I hadn’t really