Yesterday, when Wyatt wandered into Harriet’s Golden Horizons senior apartment wearing nothing but an old fishing cap, Harriet shielded her eyes with the morning paper and told him to leave.
And Wyatt did.
After a polite tip of his cap, Wyatt backed into the hallway, pulled the door shut softly behind him and left.
How considerate, Harriet later thought. Although to be fair at the time she was so startled she’d nearly picked up the phone and dialed Dolores. Because even for a free spirit like Wyatt, whose behavior often veered off into the wavy edges of normal—humming “Home on the Range” with his head bowed over his dinner plate, madly jotting notes into a journal while his cottage fries and fruit salad sat untouched, waving a cloth napkin over the table while simultaneously professing his love for matadors—naked exploration was extreme; not simply a stretch, but a leap into wild and risqué waters.
But where others might have taken offense, Harriet took it in stride. Wyatt was no stranger; he was a friend. Which was why, as she would tell herself for years afterward, she did not call Dolores, or the staff at Golden Horizons, or anyone else. Tolerance is a virtue, she thought. Live and let live. Which was also why today, when Wyatt once again wandered into her apartment just after breakfast, naked as a newborn, fishing cap in hand, his bald head gleaming under her florescent kitchen lights, Harriet did not ask him to leave. Instead, she looked up from her paper, removed her reading glasses, placed her hands neatly on her lap and allowed him to linger. Where was the harm, honestly? Wyatt was no predator. He was a poet, a cowboy, a true Renaissance man. Eccentric to be sure, with perhaps a touch of dementia, perhaps, but a gentleman nonetheless. Why make a fuss?
Sunlight crept into Harriet’s living room through sloped cracks in the blinds and long shadows striped Wyatt’s bare bottom as he stood not ten feet away, staring at a framed print on the wall. “The Gulf Stream,” a reproduction of a famous 1899 painting by the artist Winslow Homer. Her late husband Bruce believed the painting had become overpopularized, but it was still one of Harriet’s favorites. In the painting, surrounded by ravenous sharks in the foreground, a shirtless young black man rode a rudderless white fishing boat through a sea storm like a rodeo cowboy might ride a raging bull, tugging on the anchor ropes with his bare heels dug into wooden creases on the boat deck, braced for the next jolt. Meanwhile, waves surged all around him, dark and scary water. Yet above him, in the distance, the sky was lighter, kinder, hopeful. On his smooth face was a look of determination. It was impossible to see this painting and not root for the young man. Hold on! Keep going! You’re almost there!
Minutes passed, and in the thin strips of sunlight, Wyatt stood stone still studying the print while Harriet, dressed in a flannel housecoat with an afghan draped over her knees, sat in her glider chair and studied Wyatt. For an older man, or for that matter any man, Wyoming Wyatt, as Harriet liked to think of him, was well-proportioned, a David, as Bruce would say. Wyatt was certainly leaner than Bruce, leaner than even at the end when Bruce had lost most of his extra weight. And Wyatt was strong. But not beefy or bulky, not like a bull. More like a stallion, explosive, as if he might sprint a mile at a pistol shot. Tendons ran like cords down the sides of his rangy neck, vanished in the square edges of his shoulders, then reappeared below the ropey muscles of his upper arms. Inked into the tan skin on the back of his left shoulder, in a murky shade of army green, was a large snake—a rattler, or a python perhaps—coiled inside what looked to be the faded remnants of a human skull. Most of the image was like this, blurred and faded to the point of being almost unrecognizable, all except for the head of the snake. Slithering out from a hollow eye socket, the head was strangely vivid.
Tracks of sunlight on Wyatt’s bare backside grew brighter. Shadows shifted. Harriet leaned forward, squinted, and now on the steps of his spine, protruding from the snake’s scaly lips, so vivid it appeared almost animated, alive, was the snake’s forked tongue, where a pair of prongs thin as blades flickered in a single strip of sunlight.
How exciting to be with a man with a tattoo! Bruce had a thousand freckles but no tattoo. Bruce, who loved art, taught art, lived for art, abhorred needles. And though Harriet didn’t recall specifically discussing the pros and cons of tattoos with her late husband, she doubted he would have considered human skin, which wrinkles and thins, a proper canvas. Proper, however, was not a word for which Wyoming Wyatt had much use. Polite? Always. Proper? Now that was a fuzzy word.
Harriet reached into the wicker basket on the floor beside her chair, fumbled through stacks of loose papers and strands of stray yarn until she found her book of crosswords. She set the book on her lap, and in a tone she hoped sounded simply conversational said, “So, Mr. Kramer, I gather you like art?”
Wyatt scratched his pale rump. “I like boats.”
“Boats? Yes, boats. Of course, me too, I love boats.” To stop her chair from gliding, Harriet jammed her heels into the carpet. “My husband and I used to paddle our old Wenonah up and down the Mississippi every summer. Right here in the middle of the city and you’d never know it.”
Wyatt cleared his throat and—his bare backside facing her still—began to sway. Then in a gravelly baritone, he began to sing, “How’d ya like to stay up late, like the Islanders do, waiting for Santa to sail in with your presents—in a canoe!” He paused, turned slowly, and looked at Harriet. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time. Tiny specks of sunlight rippled on the pools of his dazzling eyes like sun-sparks on windswept water. His eyebrows came together, perhaps in recognition, and he donned his fishing cap, twisting it down until the ragged brim straddled the bridge of his nose. On his face there was a pleasant smile. Harriet looked down and pretended to work a puzzle.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so, you do look lovely in this light.”
Harriet fished a ball point pen from the pages of her book and nervously depressed the flimsy plunger, again and again and again. Little plastic clicks filled the room. For nearly a minute, Harriet said nothing. The polite response, she knew, would be to make eye contact with Wyatt and reply in kind. The proper response would be to keep her eyes on her “work.”
“Ma’am?”
Tolerance, she decided at last. Live and let live. She looked up. “It is a beautiful day, Mr. Kramer. Lovely indeed.”
Wyatt, apparently satisfied with this response, gave a courteous nod. Permission, Harriet assumed, for her to look, to study him, to admire him, her reward for not making a fuss. She let her eyes wander. First to his chest. Smooth, flat, all muscles and ribs and wonderful, wonderful skin. Then lower. Five, six, seven gray wires of chest hair marked a sloped trail to his navel, which was perfectly, impossibly round, like a penny. Above the holsters of his hips sat the arched handles of his pelvis, steady and sharp as fists. His penis was limp and long as a rib.
She felt herself blush. Dear god! “I’m sorry, Mr. Kramer, but I think you best put something on.”
“Ma’am, I reckon you’d be doing this old man a good turn by taking me out on your canoe today. It’s much too nice to be cooped up in here like a pair of wet chickens.”
Harriet again felt herself gliding. “Wyatt Kramer, listen to yourself. We can’t just leave. What about Dolores? I imagine Dolores is pacing your apartment as we speak, wondering where in god’s name you’re off to.”
“No, ma’am, not today. She’s out with her Red Hat ladies till supper.” Wyatt removed his fishing cap, stepped one foot forward and performed for Harriet an elegant bow. In the bright bars of sunlight, fishing cap in hand, his extended arm held stiff as a statue, he looked quite distinguished, like an old-English actor, like a true gentleman—albeit a naked gentleman.
“What’dya say, ma’am?” he asked, maintaining his pose while at the same time peeking up to gauge her reaction. “You and me on this lovely day? Just the two of us in that old canoe, sailing on down the Mississippi?”
“Do you even remember my name?” Harriet asked suddenly. She could not recall Wyatt ever once using her name.
Wyatt stepped back, paused, and smiled. He had a wonderful smile. “Harriet Vogel, adventurer extraordinaire. Canoe connoisseur, and a beauty beyond compare.”
Harriet set her pen on her book. “Mr. Kramer, you are truly one of a kind.” She pointed to the front closet. “Listen, before we go any further with all this, you need to put something on. Take one of the overcoats from the closet. Then go back to your apartment and close the door.” She glanced at the digital clock on the side table. “In an hour, say 10:30, I’ll come and knock, like this—” She knocked on the armrest of her chair, three times. “If you are fully dressed, and you remember my name, and you can repeat the following three words, I will consider driving you to the river.” Harriet was quite familiar with the three-word memory test; everyone at Golden Horizons was. Doctors used it all the time. A quick and reliable tool, they called it. An easy way to identify the early onset of dementia. “Okay, these are your words: Clock, coat, crazy.”
“Clock coat crazy, got it.” Wyatt went into the front closet, removed a beige overcoat from a wire hanger, slid his bare arms into the sleeves, cinched the belt tight around his waist and turned. “How do I look?” Below the hem of the coat, his skinny legs and bare feet poked out like some exotic bird.
Harriet stifled a giggle. “Ridiculous. Now go.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ten-thirty. Clock coat crazy. And if you’d like, Ms. Vogel, I’ll even spell them out.”
Before Harriet left her apartment, she debated what to wear. Slacks? Too warm. Shorts? Those were out too, she didn’t own a pair, hadn’t worn shorts in years. A sundress? Too formal, too suggestive. In the end she decided on a long black skirt and a flowered cotton blouse, her black leather sandals and her straw sunhat. In the bottom of her sock drawer, she found a tube of pink lipstick she hadn’t touched since Bruce’s funeral a year ago March.
Standing now in front of Wyatt’s door, she checked her watch. 10:28, early. She felt a flutter in her chest, something she hadn’t felt in years. This is not a date, she told herself as she ran her hands down the front of her skirt, it’s an outing. She remembered the day she and Bruce snuck away from his tenure party at the lake. It was summer and broad daylight and they were both a little tipsy when she pulled him into the trees and kissed him hard on the mouth and unbuttoned his pants. God, that was more than forty years ago! She couldn’t remember a time she’d been so spontaneous, so lustful, so cavalier since.
Harriet took a breath and again checked her watch. Time. She stepped forward and knocked.
Wyatt pulled the door open. Dressed in a crisp black tee shirt and a pair of blue jeans, brown leather sneakers and his floppy fishing cap, he looked appropriately casual yet utterly prepared. On the floor at his feet was an open canvas duffel bag stuffed full of white tube socks, old dime-store paperbacks, a metal flashlight and at least two green apples. Below his chin he held up a handwritten sign, hastily drawn in cursive on the back of a Golden Horizons activity calendar. This is what it said:
Dear HARRIET VOGEL,
I’ve been watching the CLOCK, wondering if you’ll show.
You will, I think
You are a woman of your word.
Also, I have your COAT.
You’d be CRAZY not to go.
Sincerely,
Your friend,
Wyatt Kramer
Harriet was touched. Although it later occurred to her that by writing the words down ahead of time Wyatt had clearly cheated, the truth was she’d decided to go the moment he suggested it. And why not? She knew the river. She knew canoes. Her health was good, her mind sharp, her knees much better these days thank you very much. She deserved a little adventure, a quiet afternoon on the river with a capable man. Wyatt deserved it too, time away from this place, time with a woman who understood him, a woman happy to be at his side, a woman who would not judge.
The university boathouse was nicer than Harriet remembered. Maroon now instead of gold, larger and with more windows. Parking was a cinch too thanks to a new paved lot just off Riverside. When Harriet pulled in, the lot was practically empty.
“Good news,” she said, leading Wyatt to a big oak tree near the dock, “we’ll have the whole river to ourselves.”
Wyatt meanwhile managed to twist the brim of his fishing cap so far down it now covered his eyebrows completely. He stood motionless, his arms stiff at his side, staring out at the river.
Harriet stepped back. “Why don’t you wait here while I take care of the rental. I won’t be long.”
Wyatt said nothing, but this was not altogether unusual. Oftentimes he’d sit through entire meals without saying a word, humming softly while jotting notes in his journal or composing stories in his head, dreaming of ranches and mountains and endless western skies. Yet considering how talkative he’d been in her apartment, and on the drive over, to be suddenly so silent seemed strange. Recently the staff at Golden Horizons had recommended that, for Wyatt’s own safety, he move into memory care. Dolores of course could keep their current apartment and visit whenever she liked. Harriet thought the plan sounded ridiculous. Wyoming Wyatt locked in memory care? But now she wondered if they had a point.
“We don’t have to do this, you know. We can come back another day.”
Wyatt put his hand on the tree, leaned over and with his eyes still fixed on the river spat into the yellow grass. “How much of this water you reckon reaches New Orleans?”
“New Orleans? Gosh, I don’t know. That must be a thousand miles from here.”
“Listen, hear that?”
Harriet looked downstream, then across to the far bank, and up the steep slope to a line of white poplars huddled together at the top of the gorge. “I don’t hear anything”
“I’d bet my two front teeth that’s a saxophone. Trumpet, too. Old-time jazz floating on up the Mississippi, clear up from New Orleans.” Wyatt set his duffel bag on the grass and walked a dozen feet to the edge of the river, then lowered himself onto a knee and dipped his finger into the slow current.
“Wyatt, please, that’s not funny.”
Wyatt either didn’t hear Harriet, or he was willfully ignoring her, because instead of retreating from the river, he got onto his hands and knees, cocked his head to the side, leaned forward and touched the brim of his fishing cap onto the water.
“Wyatt, stop! You’re making me nervous!”
After what felt like a long time, Wyatt inched his way back from the river, stood, and walked, head down, back to Harriet. “You sound like Dolores.”
Sounding like Dolores, treating Wyatt like a child, stifling his freedom, these were the last things Harriet wanted. “I’m sorry. You deserve your space. So, if it’s not too much to ask, please wait here. I won’t be long.” She winked and added, “This will be fun. I promise.”
Ten minutes later, Harriet came out of the boathouse with a pair of puffy orange life vests cradled in her arms. Wyatt, thank god, had not budged.
“Hurry and put this on. We need to meet the young man at the dock.”
Wyatt looked confused. “I don’t want that.”
“They won’t let us take out a canoe unless we’re both wearing one. Those are the rules.”
“Rules? On a river? Huck Finn didn’t bother with rules.”
“Maybe not, but for your information, Huckleberry Finn didn’t travel in a canoe. Look, I’m putting mine on. See? How do I look?”
“Like a big orange tulip.”
Ha! This was the Wyatt she knew. Wyoming Wyatt, good to have you back! “What do you say we go and be tulips together, mister? Chase your music into Wisconsin, into Iowa. Paddle hard enough and we might just make St. Louis by sunset.”
Wyatt made a circle with his hands and pressed them to his lips and shouted into the sky, “Hear that? We’re going to St. Louie!”
“Shhh,” Harriet whispered, intentionally letting her hand rest on Wyatt’s bare forearm. “This can be our secret.”
“We’re off to St. Louie,” Wyatt announced to the young man in the maroon staff polo as he braced their canoe against the dock.
“It’s a half-day rental,” the young man said, reaching a wooden paddle back to Harriet who was seated in the stern. “Most people go—Whoa, sir, please sit down!”
Wyatt, standing in the bow, had taken it upon himself to retrieve his own paddle off the dock and nearly tipped the canoe in the process. “Fine,” he grumbled, plopping himself onto the seat before shoving his duffel bag between his feet and dunking his paddle, handle first, into the water.
“Sir, you’ve got it backwards. You need to turn your paddle around.”
“Son, there are many ways to break a horse.”
Baffled, the young man looked back at Harriet. I hope you know what you’re doing, he seemed to say.
“I used to paddle here all the time,” Harriet said, exaggerating slightly. “Anyway, we’re only going as far as Longfellow Island. We’ll be back by two. No later than three.”
The young man, one hand still clutching the gunwale, took the yellow lanyard off his neck and offered it to Harriet. Dangling from the end was a cherry-red whistle.
“You keep it,” she told him. “We’ll be fine.”
“Safety first. I insist.”
Harriet removed her sunhat and slipped the lanyard over her head. “Happy?”
“Thrilled.”
The heat on shore vanished the moment they pushed away from the dock. It was always this way. A cool breeze on the water, the whole day ahead, paddling from her place in the bow while Bruce manned the stern. But not today. Today she took the stern. Today whatever happened, it was up to her.
Wyatt meanwhile jabbed his paddle like a pitchfork into the water, all arms and no trunk, as if he was trying to rope a fencepost, toss and yank, toss and yank. But at least he had the correct end of the paddle in his hands. And although his strokes were choppy, his balance in the canoe was sublime, a skill undoubtedly honed, Harriet assumed, from a lifetime in saddles.
“Reach the paddle out past your toes,” she told him. “Use your stomach. Use your back. Better. Good. See? You’re a natural.” If only the young man on the dock could see them now. This fit, capable, attractive couple. “When you get tired, switch sides, I’ll follow suit.”
They paddled for some time in silence, then Wyatt said, “Where again are we meeting Dolores?”
“You’re teasing.”
“Let’s meet on Bourbon Street, like the song.”
“Very funny. I promised to have you home before supper and I plan to do just that. Dolores won’t even know you were gone, unless of course you tell her.”
Wyatt leaned forward and made three swift strokes while whistling the first bars to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Then he said, “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I saw its muddy bosom go all golden in the sunlight.”
“That’s beautiful, Wyatt. Did you write it?”
“No. It’s from an old poem, by a black fellow, I think. Can’t recall his name.”
“Is that what you’re putting into your journals? Poems?”
“Words, just words, ma’am. Words on lines.”
“But don’t words make poems? I bet you write beautiful poems.”
“Poems want nothing to do with words on lines. Poems are circles, the good ones anyway. That first word curves into the next and the next until the last word ends right where it all started. I’m not interested in circles, not anymore.” Using his heels, he wedged his duffel bag under his seat and reached his paddle out past his toes and made another swift stroke. “I reckon if I find the right words on the right line, they’ll lead somewhere new, like a road, or a river.”
Harriet played along. “Say you do find these words, where do you suppose they go?”
Wyatt paused. “Where the music is.”
They came around a bend in the river and in the distance caught their first glimpse of Longfellow Island, maybe a quarter mile ahead. Harriet grit her teeth, crossed and uncrossed her ankles, shifted in her seat. “This is a little embarrassing, but I really need to pee. I’m going to take us over to the island. How do you feel? We still have some time.”
“Like a million bucks.”
Harriet smiled and together they paddled to the island and then into Half Day Cove, where Harriet steered them around a barely submerged boulder and onto a flat landing site on the beach. The moment they hit the sand, Wyatt hopped out, raced ahead and pulled their canoe entirely out of the water.
Harriet set her paddle on the thwart. “Such the gentleman.”
“Just doing my part. You’re the captain, ma’am.”
“If I was a better captain, I would’ve packed us a lunch.”
“Hadn’t crossed my mind.” Wyatt unzipped his life vest, bent over and plucked an empty beer bottle off of the sand, put his eye to the brown glass lip and held the bottle up to the sky like a telescope.
“Wyatt, that’s filthy!”
Wyatt aimed the bottle at Harriet and grinned stupidly. Then he put his mouth on the lip of the bottle and blew.
“Great, now you can signal for me if I don’t come back.”
Harriet had read that Longfellow Island was designated as a wildlife refuge for migrating waterfowl in 1936 and was therefore something of a novelty, an undeveloped urban oasis. Exploring the island was technically illegal because of its protected status, but this law, as far as Harriet knew, was hardly enforced. Certainly she and Bruce had picnicked here many times over the years and never had a problem. Still, considering there were no official trails on the island, finding a suitable place to pee could be a challenge.
Harriet walked a good twenty yards down the beach before spotting the semblance of a primitive trail in the buckthorn. She stepped into the brush and hiked head down, stumbling over roots and ruts while shielding her face with her sunhat until at last she came to a clearing where the land sloped up to an impressive stand of Norway pines. The hill up to the pines was steep, but at least now she could see her feet.
At the first large pine she stopped, hiked up her skirt, slid down her underwear, and leaned back against the trunk. Worried her troublesome right knee wouldn’t hold her weight, she shifted left and squatted. She heard the nylon on her life vest scrape along the bark, then she heard a crack and her knee gave way and suddenly she was on the ground.
Weirdly, there was no pain. Even hours later it wasn’t so much that her knee hurt as that it just didn’t work. Afterward, when they’d ask, she never could quite piece together how it happened. Stepped on a pinecone? In a snake hole? Longfellow Island was a haven for snakes. She felt dumb, and if she was being honest, more than a little scared. What would Bruce say? He’d have a good laugh and say, “Get up, Miss Earhart!” Then he’d offer his hand and they’d both have a good laugh. Bruce could be pompous at times, but out on the water and in the woods, they’d always made a fine team. But now things were different. Now she was in charge, and despite Wyatt’s eccentricities, they too made a fine team. Or at least they could have, in a different life.
No! We have today! And tomorrow! If I can just get myself going, Harriet thought, Wyatt will find me. She rolled onto her side, reached under her life vest, fished out the lanyard and brought the whistle to her lips.
Wyatt heard the sharp moans, the sounds of a saxophone, and a trumpet, old-time jazz floating clear on up the Mississippi. He cocked his head and listened, then dragged the canoe into the river and took a seat in the stern. With the flat end of the paddle, he pushed off the sandy river bottom until the canoe came around in the cove and the bow pointed downstream. He paused. And again, he listened. Yes, he thought. Yes. On the starboard side he made eight confident strokes, brought the paddle blade out of the water and on the port side made eight more, timing each stroke to match the rhythm of the horns.
Soon the music grew faint, and eventually fell silent. Still, he paddled on, following the gentle current south. South. South. Sunlight shimmered off the ripples ahead and although he couldn’t remember when exactly, he was reminded of a sunset from many years ago. How those last waves of golden light had settled into a rolling sea of foothills to the west, beyond the plains into those deep, dark creases of the black rocks at the very edge of his view.
