Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald Page B

able to listen to her and even take pleasure in learning her.
    It was about her father, “… killed when I was four. I don’t remember much
about him. They say he was big. I remember him as big, the way the house shook
when he walked. There was Irish in him, and French-Canadian and some English I
think, and some Mohawk Indian. His grandfather had been a trapper and guide, up
near Saranac. We all lived in the house at Frenchman’s Lake that his father had
built. When I was ten, twelve, fourteen, around there, they were still talking
about the way he died. They talked around the stove in the store in the winter.
He was topping a big tree. They do that, climb up and saw the top off so there
is just a straight stick standing that they use to fasten the cables to when
they use the donkey engine as a sort of hoisting engine. He had his safety belt
around the tree. He sawed and as the top started to go, the stub split. It
expanded inside his safety belt. They used to tell how he screamed twice and
then there was silence and then he gave a great laugh and he was dead.”
    And her mother, “… was pregnant and LaRue ,
that’s my brother, he was six and I was four. One time she had cooked for the
camps. She turned our house into a restaurant. She looked sort of weak, but she
could work twenty hours a day and sing while she worked. She named it Doyle’s
Pinetop Restaurant. It was a long time before it made any money at all. In the
winter we’d get the local trade and hardly break even, but in the summer with
the cottages and the camp grounds full, we’d make money. I quit high after two
years because she started getting too tired and I had to do more and more of
it. Then two years ago some people wanted to buy us out but Mom didn’t want to
sell. We borrowed money from the bank and had a big addition put on and hired
more girls for the summer trade. Then a year ago a big restaurant firm came in
and put up a big chain restaurant on the corner diagonally across from us, with
a big parking lot and everything. I think that’s what killed her, but they said
she had been sick for a long time without admitting it. She worried so much. LaRue came back for the funeral. We couldn’t get enough
business to keep the place going. The bank took it over and it was sold to meet
the mortgage thing for the addition, but it didn’t bring much on account of the
new place being so close. After it was all settled up, LaRue and I got four hundred dollars each. I didn’t want to stay up there. I mean
working all those years and then nothing. We lived off it, but it had been
hard. So I came down here and got a job as a waitress. Then one of the other girls
quit and came to work at the mill because the pay is better. She said I should
try it and after a while I did.”
    And about herself, “Me? Gosh, I don’t know. I guess I was always sort of
shy and funny. I couldn’t walk down the road without thinking people were
looking at me and talking about how skinny my legs were. And it was awful
forcing myself to leave the kitchen and go out on the floor and wait on
strangers when I was old enough. I liked it best to go off in the woods alone.
I love the woods. Then I was always pretending. You know, making up kid games.
I was a princess and a wicked witch had changed all my subjects into birds and
animals. When you stand still for a long time, they stop being afraid and come
out. Red squirrels, porcupines, and beavers working. The best was finding a
fawn once. All flattened out and hardly breathing. They don’t have any scent
when they’re little. I hid where I could see. After a long time the doe came
and got him out of there and pushed him along. He wobbled on his legs.”
    She talked and then she yawned and so they left, dressing in the
darkness, going yawning to the car. They went back once, but it was not a good
place even if it was the first place. They talked and they decided they both
wanted a place where they could be safe and alone