Whose Woods: Take 2

Patty arrived by horseback.

The trailer arrived an hour later.

That’s how the story goes for how she found Tom. He was standing where the horse stopped. It was a greyish-blue dirt country road, smoothed from morning rains, near Lincoln Gap. I’d met Tom in the woods during my last visit. A surreal conversation.

As I navigated my way past the skunk cabbage, ferns unfurling at my ankles and yellow stars-of-Bethlehem winking, I noticed paw marks and boot prints in the mud. Fifty feet past spiraling brush and bramble which had overtaken the land since May, I saw movement.

Then I saw the dingo.

And a crouched figure.

I approached. Deep grooved skin, cotton green frock, sandals, no bra, leaning over the stream, scooping the blue silt by hand to spoon into a bucket.

She wasn’t startled but stared at me. She poured more clay from the stream into another bucket. I asked if she needed help. She looked up at me and, grinning slightly to reveal two missing front teeth, told me I didn’t belong there.

I told her I was visiting her neighbor. She told me she didn’t have no neighbors that no one in these parts has neighbors. She told me she had just returned from her latest trip to the reservation and she was helping the FBI.

I asked what she was making and explained that I was an artist.

“Bowls,” she said.

“They must be beautiful with the slate in this earth,” I said.

“I paint them,” she said.

“Do you sell them?”

“Givemaway.”

The dingo, an asymmetric creature, had been gnawing grass in circles and approached.

“He’s friendly.”

I did not want to pet the dingo. I grabbed a stick and threw it far for him.

“You’re Tom’s friend, right?”

“Howdyaknow Tom?”

I shared how I had met him by the river. She shrugged.

“His daily walks,” she said.

The Dingo came bounding with the stick. It shifted past her dress, tipping her bucket and rammed my thigh. Fucking dingo.

I threw the stick again and bent to prop the bucket upright. It had a crack in the side.

She looked over.

“Fancy lady you ain’t so bad,” she said and eased into her no-tooth smile. She grabbed the dingo (which she called Dog) under her arm, while I helped her replace the spilled silt. Once the bucket was filled, I stood to head to the river.

“Nice to meet you, good luck with the bowl making,” I said.

She looked up, wiped her hands on the grass and placed them on her hips.

“Never trust an imaginary person,” she said.

I nodded and turned away.