Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [70]
Between the guys somewhere behind us, word spreading around about us and the plane above us, I was starting to get uncomfortable.
A funny smell rose up my nose. I looked down at Abbie and she was painting her toenails with clear polish. I chuckled.
“What’re you laughing at?”
“Where did you get that?”
“You don’t think I left home without it, do you?”
“No, but everything we had was made into a bonfire about twenty miles ago.”
She smiled. “Not everything.” She started on another toe. “Girl can’t go around with dull toes.”
I scratched my chin and found myself laughing again. She pointed her brush at me. “You’re still laughing.”
My face felt better, and while my eye was no longer swollen shut, my lip was still puffy. I tipped my hat and laid back. “When Gus first hired me, I guided these guys from Stokes Bridge to St. George. A good group—bunch of weekend warriors with wives at home—but they’d never really spent much time in the woods. After a long day, and then a longer night on hard ground, one of them came to me and said, ‘What do we do about a bathroom?’ I didn’t know how much detail to give him so I handed him a small shovel, pointed to the woods and said, ‘Just dig a hole and cover it up when you’re done.’ He looked at me and one end of his lip turned up. He glanced downriver. ‘How long before we come to a public bathroom?’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe tonight.’ A few minutes later, I looked upriver maybe a hundred yards and the guy was sitting on the beach reading a magazine. His shorts were at his ankles and his bare butt was pressed into the hole he’d dug. I just shook my head. Anyway, the others soon followed suit. Maybe I should’ve said something. That night one of the guys came to me and said, ‘Ummm…hey, uh…do you have any bug bites? Like little red bites?’ He was scratching himself as he talked. ‘No. You?’ He nodded without letting on. ‘Where?’ I asked. He pointed down. ‘Everywhere.’ He crossed his arms and whispered, ‘Like…every square inch. And it’s itching so bad I’m about to lose my religion.’ I asked, ‘Big red bumps?’ He nodded. I reached in my bag and handed him a bottle of clear fingernail polish. ‘They’re called chiggers. You can’t see them. They’re little bugs that seek out hot spots, burrow into your skin and hang out for about two weeks unless you smother them. Put that on every one and keep it on there.’ He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. ‘You’re yanking my chain, right? This is one of those rights-of-passage things that you river guides do to city boys like me.’ I shook my head. ‘No. I wouldn’t kid around about chiggers. Come midnight, if you don’t do something, you’ll be itching so bad you’ll…well, you’ll be in a bad way.’ He took the bottle and asked, ‘Every single one?’ I nodded. ‘Yup.’ I cleaned the breakfast dishes, broke down the tent and loaded the canoes. When I returned, all five of them were standing around the fire, pants at their ankles, fanning the polish dry. It’s one of those images I could do without. One of them, a skinny guy that ran power plants around the country, said, ‘What happens on the river, stays on the river…right?’ ‘Yeah, but you’re going to have a hard time convincing your wives of that.’”
Abbie finished, spun the cap back on the bottle and blew on her little toe. “What in the world got you to thinking about that?”
“The smell.”
“Well”—she waved the bottle in the air—“if you find yourself in need, you can get your own. I’m not letting you”—she twirled her index finger in the air, making a circular motion and pointing it in my general direction—“paint yourself, and then expect me to paint my toes with it. A girl’s got to have her boundaries. You’re on your own.”
“Can’t say that I blame you.”
23
Because of her travels, Abbie had seen some of the greatest art ever created. She’d stood right in front of it. Stared, laughed, cried. Hence, she understood it better and appreciated it on a level exponentially deeper than I did or could. While I might have understood the painters’ lives, Abbie understood