Ruth walked slowly across the lawn to the grey wooden dock. The sun beat down on her head as she flipped her fiberglass kayak upright and pushed it into the cool green water of Lake Rasbeaux. Sweating, she threw her paddle into the boat and then hopped down into it herself. She set a lazy course toward a small island just outside the quiet cove where her house sat. Halfway there, she laid the dull black paddle down and leaned into the cloth seat to rest her back a little. A family of Canadian geese skirted around her as they glided toward the tree lined shore on the far side of the lake. Ruth thought about how tiny she would look to anyone standing at her living room window. Boats always looked like bathtub toys at that distance.
Cool greenish water ran down her arms as Ruth dipped her double ended paddle in and out of the lake, propelling the red kayak toward the island. She pictured what she would do when she got there: hop out into the shallows near shore, pull the boat up onto the small sand bar, maybe tie it to a low lying tree branch. She looked around her. No one else was in sight. Good. She wouldn’t have any trouble skinny dipping, then. Sometimes, if a fisherman was close by, she had to swim in her bra and panties. A matching set looked almost like a swimsuit, anyway. Ruth tried to remember whether or not the underwear she was wearing that day matched. It didn’t matter. No one else was there.
The sand bar was only a couple of feet away. Ruth dipped her paddle deep into the water and pushed hard with each stroke until the kayak’s nose caught on the sand. Quickly, she put her feet over the side and stood up. The water was ankle deep and had an oily scum on top of it. “Not good for swimming,” she thought, and tugged the boat up farther onto the small beach.
When she was satisfied that the boat wouldn’t float away, Ruth pulled her t shirt off over her head. She unbuttoned her denim shorts and let them fall to the ground before stepping out of them. The sand burned the bottoms of her bare feet, so she stood on the thick shorts while she peeled off her underwear. Naked, she stood on the shorts for a minute and sniffed the air the way she had often seen her dog, Blackie, do before taking off into the water. She half expected someone to step out of the woods and scold her, but no one did.
Ignoring the iridescent sheen on the surface of the cool water, Ruth crossed the hot sand in three big strides and walked out until she was in the lake up to her waist. Then she dropped down and began a slow crawl around the island. She always hugged the shore, in case she got tired. She could probably have swum all the way back to her own dock without any problem, but she liked the idea of having land right there practically at her fingertips. That way she could get out any time she wanted to.
When she finished swimming, Ruth just floated in the shallow, oily water by the sandbar for a while. Every once in a while a tiny fish would nibble at the long strands of hair floating out from her head. Somewhere in the distance a beaver slammed his tail on the water, making a loud splash. Ruth kept floating until the skin on her fingers was wrinkled. Then she dog paddled over to the edge of the sand bar and stood up, shaking herself a little so that she would dry faster. Her skin was shiny from the oil on top of the water. She wondered if there was any shampoo left in the shower at her house. If not, she would have to get a new bottle out of the small linen cabinet in her closet.
She stood on her shorts for a while, letting the sun dry her off. While she was standing there, a loud rustling sound came from the woods to her left. No animal would crash around like that; it had to be a man or men. There was no time to pull her shorts up over her hips. Her t shirt lay on the ground several steps away. Ruth heard the rustling sound again. It seemed closer this time. She quickly stepped across the tiny sliver of hot sand to reach the shade of the trees to her right. A tall oak seemed to stretch its arms out in welcome. Ruth hid her body behind its trunk. She kept her head poking out so that she could see what was coming, though.
Two deer burst from the tree line onto the sandbar. One was bigger than the other one and stayed in front. A mother and her fawn, then. The bigger one turned her head toward Ruth and sniffed. Keeping her eyes on the pair, Ruth stepped deeper into the shadows. She felt something round and thick like a tree root under her foot. Whatever it was moved. Ruth felt a stinging pain in her calf. When she raised her leg to try to get away from the pain, she fell forward into the light. Something by the oak’s big roots slithered deeper into the woods.
The doe and her fawn shot forward into the green lake water. Ruth raised her head and watched them swim toward the far shore. She got to her knees and put her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. The deer were still swimming but they had slowed down a little bit. Ruth watched until they had climbed out of the water and disappeared into the trees across the lake. Her leg was hurting a lot now, too much to stand up on it. There was a patch of shade by the kayak. Ruth crawled across the hot sand to it, dragging her throbbing leg behind her. She looked down towards her feet. Her left leg was almost black and it was more than twice as big as the other one.
Ruth lay down in the shade next to the boat. The sand was not so hot there and the sun wasn’t in her eyes. Ruth closed her eyes anyway. She thought about her husband coming home from work and not finding her in her usual place by the kitchen sink. She hoped he wouldn’t be too upset to remember to feed Blackie.
