Loon Lake by E. L. Doctorow Page B

holding his hand up, forefinger pointed. The dogs are gone. She smiles and accepts this as something he’s done. Sitting Indian style, she leans forward and touches his face. Her robe has fallen open over her thighs like a curtain rising. He kisses her hand as it is withdrawn. I’ve loved three times in my life, he says. Always the same person.
    I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, she says. But I see I’ve got a live one here.
    Then she is lying on the floor in his arms reading his face with judicious solemnity, her eyes gathering up the dim light of the room so widely open that he feels himself pouring into them. Because her spirit is strong he is surprised by the frailty of her. She is a small person. Her breasts are full and her thighs rather short. He can feel her ribs. Her buttocks are hard with a thin layer of sweet softness over them, like a child’s ass. Her mons hair feels lightly oiled. He touches her cunt. She closes her eyes. A queer bitter smell comes off her body. He kisses her soft open mouth and it’s just as he knew, she is here and he’s found her again.
    Like many large overweight men he has surprising agility. She is obviously entranced. But the lack of practice is too much for him.
    She says with characteristic directness: Is that the whole show?
    He laughs and one way or another maintains her interest. Eventually he is ready again. Later he will try to remember the experience of being in her and will find that difficult. But he’ll remember them lying on their backs next to each other and the feel of the hard nap of the carpet on his sweaty skin. He’ll remember that when he turned on his side to look at her the silhouette of her body in the dark was like a range of distant hills.
    Yes, she said, as if their fucking had been conversation, sometimes nothing else will do but to drive as flat out hard and fast as you can.

 
    Annotated text Loon Lake by Warren Penfield.
If you listen the small splash is beaver.
As beaver swim their fur lies back and their heads elongate
and a true imperial cruelty shines from their eyes.
They’re rodents, after all.
Beaver otter weasel mink and rat
a rodent specie of the Adirondacks
and they redistrict the world.
They go after the young trees and bring them down—
whole hillsides collapse in the lake when they’re through.
They make their lodges of skinned poles, mud and boughs
like igloos of dark wet wood
and they enter and exit under water and build shelves
out of the water for the babies.
And when the mahogany speedboat goes by
trimmed with silver horns
in Loon Lake, in the Adirondacks,
the waves of the lake inside the beaver lodge lap gently
against the children’s feet in the darkness.
    Loon Lake
was once the destination of private railroad cars
rocking on a single track
through forests of pine and spruce and hemlock
branches and fronds brushing the windows of cut glass
while inside incandescent bulbs flickered
in frosted-glass chimneys over double beds
and liquor bottles trembled in their recessed cabinet fittings
above card tables of green baize
in rooms entered through narrow doors with brass latches.
    If you step on a twig in a soft bed of pine needles
under an ancient stand of this wilderness
you will make no sound.
All due respect to the Indians of Loon Lake
the Adirondack nations, with all due respect.
What a clear cold life it must have been.
Everyone knew where he stood
chiefs or children or malcontents
and every village had its lover whom no one wanted
who sometimes lay down because of that
with a last self-pitying look at Loon Lake
before intoning his death prayers
and beginning the difficult business of dying by will
on the dry hummocks of pine needles.
The loons they heard were the loons we hear today,
cries to distract the dying
loons diving into the cold black lake
and diving back out again in a whorl of clinging water
clinging like importuning spirits
fingers shattering in spray
feeling up the wing along the rounded body of