Night Navigation Page 31
"We're almost there," Mark says. "What do you think it is?"
"I have no idea. Not a dead shark or dolphin. Not a beached whale in these shallow waters. Something for me to draw."
Mark helps her climb down off the wall. Luke appears on the other side.
"There." He points. "What you've been waiting for."
"Oh," she says and goes up close. "Horseshoe crabs. Spawning."
Dozens of large females laying their eggs: many are almost completely dug in, moving mounds of sand all along the water's edge. Often three or four males waiting to fertilize the hundreds of eggs in each hole. Many more females are crawling forward out of the tide, with the much smaller males clasped to their backs.
"You know they're not really crabs at all," she says. "More related to spiders. Been at it for millions of years."
"Got the basics down," Mark says.
They walk along the beach. Luke stays well back from the horseshoes, regards them with suspicion. One of the largest females has tipped onto her back, her legs waving in the air, her tail switching back and forth leaving a fan of effort in the sand.
"Aaron should be here," Mark says. "He would have appreciated all the metaphorical possibilities. Especially all these puny males."
Mark reaches down, takes hold of the rim of the overturned female's helmet of a shell, slowly lifts her, and sets her right side up.
"You remember the time Dad picked up the hummingbird that had knocked itself out against the pole barn window? He had it cupped in his closed palm, sure it was dead. Trying to keep it from Coal's curious nose. Then he opened his hands to show us its red throat…"
"And it flew away."
Mark opens his hand and raises it to the blue sky so they can see the bird's ruby iridescence flash up again.
"You know what we ought to do?" he says. "We ought to write a book together. For god's sake, let's do something."
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Epilogue : June
FIRST LIGHT. The surrounding hilltops are hidden by morning mist. The brook is silent now; only a few pools stand still beneath the sycamore roots. Across the brook, the meadow, locusts bloom all along the abandoned log road just beyond the old Cobb barn. The grandfather maple beside the stone house shades the loft and the kitchen below in summer-green light and spread out on the front lawn, dozens of spider-web handkerchiefs, their drops of dew ready to be jeweled by the first rays. Bursts of lavender phlox bank the path up to the gravestones. The hemlock woods beyond is dark.
If she still lived in this house, she'd hear the faint scratching, the muffled chittering and muted cries. She'd rise from her bed in her upstairs room to watch through the long landing window, the flutter of hundreds of dark wings wheeling about, their desperation and confusion at not being able to gain entry. She'd watch for many long minutes the air, full of the flying commotion of all those pregnant mothers with their now pregnant children, and then, just as the sun rises orange over the trees, she'd see them vanish.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to express my thanks to my first mentors, Charlotte Zoe Walker and Russell Banks. Always I am grateful for the comments of my West Kortright Centre and Cedar Key groups. My thanks also for the gifts of time without interruption granted to me by Blue Mountain Center, Hedgebrook, Ucross, and the Saltonstall Foundation. Thanks also to my agent, Alice Tasman, for her availability and enthusiasm, and to my editor, Ann Patty, for her invaluable help. Finally, much appreciation goes to the other writers who have critiqued the work along the way: Mermer Blakeslee, Robbin Thompson, Sue Spivack, Forrest Bachner, Bertha Rogers, Wayne Somers, Stephanie Dickinson, and Alice Lichtenstein.
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