The Silken Web Page 8

  “Then so am I,” he said.

  “Suit yourself.” She turned her back on them all and, after returning her tray to the window, left the hall.

  He was impossible! How dare he be civil! All but laughing at her! She had wanted to shun him, to put him in his place, and he hadn’t even had the gallantry to give her that trite satisfaction. He had forced her to be polite.

  How could she have ever entertained the idea that she was falling in love with him? She didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. She would put him out of her mind and think about something else.

  Why, then, when she returned to her cabin, did she forget things? Why, when she started searching for something, did she forget what she was looking for? Why, when she stretched out on her bed, did she recall vividly how his gentle hands and burning mouth had delighted and tormented her body?

  His mustache wasn’t prickly at all. It was soft. When he closed his mouth over her nipple, his mustache nudged the plump mound of her breast in a caress all its own.

  She rolled over onto her back with a feeble groan, willing her body not to throb with remembrance. Unable to stop herself, her hands sought out the places that had known his touch and tried in vain to rub out the recollections. But the nerves were too alive, too raw, and rather than help, her hands made her even more agitated.

  She flopped over onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow, unable to rid herself of his image. It was hours later that her mind finally slipped out of the real world into the one dominated by dreams.

  And, still, Erik was there.

  Chapter Six

  The morning dawned bright and clear. Kathleen had wished that some whim of nature might prevent today’s trip to the Buffalo River. Apparently, that wasn’t to be, so she dressed and packed a small duffel bag to take with her.

  Preparing for any emergency, she crammed Band-Aids, antiseptic lotion, insect repellant, suntanning cream, zinc oxide, for those who asked for the suntanning cream too late, tissues, Chapstick, antacid tablets, aspirin, extra towels, extra socks and a change of clothes for herself into the canvas bag. Certain that she was forgetting something she would critically need, she zipped the bag, slung it over her shoulder and left her cabin for the center of the compound.

  Breakfast was routine, and she ate resolutely, striving not to notice Erik as he came in and became a part of the noisy, active beehive. The children who were scheduled for the trip were almost too excited to eat, and when the bell rang, they raced for the bus parked outside, competing for the choice seats next to the windows.

  “Have a good time, but be careful.” Edna waved to the children hanging out the windows.

  “We’ll get back in time for dinner, which I’m sure they’ll be ready for,” Kathleen said, laughing.

  “I’ll look for you then.” Out of the corner of her eyes, Edna noticed Erik climbing aboard the bus. She looked at Kathleen as though she wanted to say something, but only patted her on the hand and said, “Have fun today.”

  Kathleen spoke pleasantly to the driver, who had driven the ancient school bus for her in years past. Erik’s extra equipment had been secured on one of the vacant seats near the back of the bus, but he had insisted on keeping his camera with him. He took the seat across the narrow aisle from Kathleen.

  At last, everyone was settled, the driver engaged the reluctant gears and they pulled out of Mountain View’s gates. Conversation was impossible while the children loudly sang, argued, challenged and scoffed, accompanied by the unique clamor of the bus.

  In her seat directly behind the driver, Kathleen became more relaxed with each passing mile. When she finally deigned to look at Erik, she saw that he was watching her unabashedly. He smiled at her tentatively at first, and then, when she didn’t turn away or stare back at him stonily, his grin widened and she couldn’t resist answering it.

  Every few miles, they drove through one of the many sleepy mountain towns that lined the two-lane highway. The names of the towns were unimportant. They all looked the same. Each had a gasoline station combined with a grocery store. Some had a post office. Often it was nothing more than a mobile home converted for that purpose, yet the American flag flew proudly from makeshift flagpoles.

  The houses, which were usually situated directly on the highway, all looked the same, too. Washing hung on outdoor lines to dry. The front porches—and each house had one—were equipped with chairs suitable for rocking away the evening hours. Each home, almost without exception no matter how humble, was blessed with a panorama of the mountains. Gardens, heavy with summer produce, nearly all sported scarecrows. The crops in those small plots weren’t for sport. They often provided a family with food for many months.

  It was in one such town that Kathleen took time to let the children use the restrooms in the gas station and pick a cold drink out of an antiquated electric cooler chest with “Grapette” emblazoned on its side.

  Ever sensitive to his presence, Kathleen suddenly missed Erik amid all the confusion, and looked around to see him crossing a dusty lane toward a lone house perched on a tree-shaded hill.

  Instinctively following him across the road, she saw what had attracted his attention. On the rickety front porch of the house sat an old man playing a fiddle. His seat was a metal bus-stop bench with a faded Rainbo Bread sign barely distinguishable in its rusty, peeling paint.

  His skin was brown, dry and rivered with deep wrinkles. Sparse white hair stuck out from his head at comical angles. He wore denim overalls, with only one shoulder strap clasped. Without a shirt to hide it, his flabby chest jiggled as he played the fiddle.

  Possibly in a more refined setting, the instrument tucked under his double chin would have been classified as a violin, but Kathleen was sure that no instrument, even a Stradivarius, had ever been more cherished. With callused fingers that were dirt- and nicotine-stained, he coaxed a lilting melody from the fiddle, though none but he knew the tune.

  When he saw Erik approach, he smiled a toothless welcome and patted his horny, bare foot on the unpainted slats of the porch.

  Kathleen stood in awe as Erik’s camera began to hum. He moved toward the old man, who wasn’t in the least affected by this contraption that seemed not of the same century as he. Erik moved closer until he was crouched on the porch near the old man’s feet, pointing the camera directly into the intriguing face.

  The screen door opened and an equally old woman came out, drying her hands on a dingy towel. She smiled and, when she saw Erik’s camera, self-consciously brushed back wisps of white hair that had escaped the tight bun on the back of her head. Her faded calico dress hung loosely on her spare frame; her feet were as bare as her husband’s and almost as callused. She flipped the towel onto her shoulder and began clapping in rhythm to the music.

  When the man finished the tune, she leaned over him and kissed him smackingly on the cheek. “That’s my favrit,” she cackled.

  Erik stood up to his full height and took the woman’s hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it softly. She laughed and fluttered her scanty, colorless eyelashes at him like a coquette at a ball.

  “Thank you both,” was all Erik said before he turned around and hopped off the porch. Three lazy hounds lying in the shade under the porch did no more than raise sleepy eyes at the intruders.

  Erik spotted Kathleen standing between him and the rutted road. When he was even with her, he smiled and touched her face with his free hand before silently indicating with his head that they should return to the bus, the horn of which was honking imperiously.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked when they were once again underway. “Why did you want to put them on tape?” The children had lapsed into a less rigorous camp song, and conversation was easier.

  “Because they were beautiful,” he answered simply. “Didn’t you think so?”

  She did now. But she wouldn’t have thought so before. She wouldn’t have even noticed them, unless Erik had guided her to them.

  “Yes,” she sai
d gruffly. “They were beautiful.”

  His steady gaze shifted down to her mouth, and a fleeting expression of despair and longing filled the cerulean eyes. “And so are you,” he said, for her ears alone. When his eyes met hers again, she melted under the impact. “I’m sorry about the other night,” he said in a low voice. “It was your prerogative to say no.” He and B. J. had shared a can of beer and a lengthy conversation before dinner the previous night. It had been an enlightening discussion for Erik. He understood her refusal now, and that understanding had doused his anger.

  More than anything, Kathleen had wanted to hear him apologize, to see him groveling at her feet, begging for forgiveness. Now that she heard the remorse in his voice, she admitted her own blame. “I wasn’t playing fair.”

  “I threw the rule book away when I met you, Kathleen Haley. From now on, we make up our own rules as we go along. Is that fair enough?”

  The gentleness of his smile and the earnestness in his eyes were too hard to resist, and Kathleen agreed eagerly, “Yes, Erik. Yes.”

  Surreptitiously, he mimed a kiss, and she blushed, lowering her eyes briefly before raising them once again to the warm directness of his.

  A few miles beyond the town of Jasper, the driver turned right and wound the recalcitrant bus down a dirt road that eventually led to the banks of the Buffalo River.

  Eons ago, the river had gouged a deep canyon out of the Ozarks. At many places along the Buffalo, cliffs rose out of its banks and towered over the swift-running water. Gray stone walls, clothed with vines, hung over the river and were reminiscent of the Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon. The Buffalo was popular throughout that part of the country for canoeing, fishing and other water sports.

  Kathleen had been coming to this particular spot for years, and had seen it grow from a playground known only to locals to a thriving tourist attraction. During each of the two-week sessions of the camp, she brought the children for one day’s fun on the white water rapids. Inner tubes were rented from a nearby store. The sporting tuber climbed up the rocky hill along the bank until he had gained the area above the smooth rocks over which the water boiled. Then, sitting in his inner tube, he rode it over the rocks and let the swift current carry him about a half-mile down the river where the rushing water finally calmed enough for one to stand up.

  It was quite an adventure, but since the water was never more than three or four feet deep, it was safe. Nevertheless, Kathleen was ever watchful. Today Mike Simpson’s group and another one, under the supervision of a female counselor named Patsy, came along, making the number of children close to forty.

  Erik spent the first hour after their arrival with his camera, climbing the rocky ledges with the children, recording the anticipation in their faces and voices, then catching their elated expressions as they rode down the white, roiling water. When he had all he needed, he returned his equipment to the bus for safety and then stripped down to bathing trunks.

  His physique was perfect, his skin without blemish. He splashed, played, hollered and thoroughly enjoyed himself with the children, who vied jealously for his attention.

  After a picnic lunch, the counselors and Erik insisted that the children rest a half-hour before going back into the water.

  It was about two o’clock when Mike Simpson pulled himself out of the river and plopped his inner tube on the rocky shoal. “Hey, Kathleen, we haven’t had a head count since lunch. Think we should?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. Everyone had been having so much fun that she hadn’t thought about it. At Erik’s insistence, and much to the campers’ delight, she had ridden the rapids a few times herself. Now she, Erik, Mike and Patsy began ticking off names and heads bobbing in the water.

  “Someone’s missing,” she mused aloud, not quite ready to panic.

  “Some of them are still up there above the rapids,” Erik said reassuringly.

  But the minutes went by, and though they counted again and again, they always came up one short.

  “Jaimie!” exclaimed Kathleen. “Where’s Jaimie?” She looked about her frantically, as though willing him to appear. “Has anyone seen him?”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mike said. “I’ll ask around and see if anyone has seen him.”

  “I’ll do the same,” Patsy offered.

  “Don’t alarm the other kids,” Kathleen cautioned. “Keep it low-keyed.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Mike jogged away.

  Erik said, “I’ll go up into the woods on the opposite bank. You look around here.”

  “Thank you. Erik…” She placed her hand on his arm.

  “I know,” he said with uncanny understanding. “We’ll find him.”

  She walked to the concession stand and asked about for Jaimie. Nobody had seen him. She went into the store where the inner tubes were rented. The owner hadn’t seen Jaimie, but someone had brought in a tube they had found in the river tangled up in some low-hanging branches. Fear gripped Kathleen’s heart. Had Jaimie been sucked into the swift river and washed downstream before he could regain his footing? He was so small. Not athletic. He could swim, but not very well.

  The thoughts that raced through her mind were out of her worst nightmares. Jaimie! her mind screamed. No! She ran back to the river, hoping against hope that Mike’s search had produced the lost child. But his face was as grim as Patsy’s when she rejoined them at the riverbank.

  “Kathleen, what should we do?” Mike asked. For the first time since she’d met him, his open, optimistic face was showing signs of stress.

  “We should call the police. The forest rangers.” She spoke with more calmness than she felt.

  Just then, Patsy said excitedly, “There they are!”

  Kathleen followed the direction of her pointing finger and whirled around to see Erik and Jaimie climbing down one of the steep cliffs on the opposite side of the river. “Thank you, God,” she prayed as they waded into the river and made their way across.

  When they reached her, she didn’t know whether to clasp the boy to her or scold him. She did neither. Erik seized control again.

  “Hey, Kathleen, look what our little scout found!” Erik said to her cheerfully but with a warning in his eyes.

  “Yeah, look, Kathy,” Jaimie chimed. He held out a piece of stone, roughly resembling an Indian arrowhead. “Erik says it could have been from the Creeks or the Cherokees or the Chickasaws. Do you think it’s real? Erik says he’s sure it is. What do you think, Kathy?”

  The eager brown eyes looked up at her guilelessly, and she longed to reach for the thin, little body and hug it to her.

  She spared Jaimie the embarrassment by answering in as calm a voice as she could muster, “I’m sure it’s real, though I don’t know which tribe it could have come from. Maybe you could look it up in one of B. J.’s books when we get back.”

  “Okay,” he said, scampering away.

  “Jaimie,” she called after him. “We’ll be leaving before long, so don’t wander off again, please.”

  “Okay,” he called back, and ran toward the river to show off his prize to his comrades.

  Now that the ordeal was over, she felt the weakness in her knees and would have collapsed onto the hot rocks of the shore had Erik not put out supportive arms to draw her against his hard body.

  Mike and Patsy, looking somewhat embarrassed, hurried off to watch the children. Everyone had been sobered by the last hour’s worry.

  Kathleen turned around to face Erik. “Where did you find him?” she asked tremulously.

  “Come here,” he said and, taking her hand, pulled her behind the parked bus to afford them some privacy. When they were out of sight of the others, he cradled her against him as though she were the one who had been lost and was now home.

  The hair on his chest tickled her nose as he pressed her head into it, and he stroked her back with a comforting hand. “Jaimie didn’t know he was missing. That’s why I signaled you not to chastise him. He told me he had to go to the bathroom.” A ru
mbling chuckle formed deep in his chest. “Number two, he said. Wanting absolute privacy, he decided to go into the woods. After he had done the deed, he got a little carried away with his exploring, and I found him investigating that piece of rock, which I assured him must be an arrowhead. He was in a world all his own and didn’t realize how long he’d been gone or how worried we’d been.”

  “Erik, if anything had happened to him… to any of the children, I…” She shuddered, not able to complete the thought.

  “I know, I know, but it’s all over now and no harm’s been done. Later today, I’ll tell Jaimie that he shouldn’t ever go wandering off by himself like that.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered into the hair-roughened skin beneath her lips.

  “Don’t I get a reward of some kind?” he asked tenderly, and placed a finger under her chin to lift her face up to his.

  He was close. He was strong. She needed him, his strength. And she only nodded numbly in answer to his question before his head descended toward hers and she felt his warm lips move over hers. It was a kiss rife with caring. When he withdrew his mouth, Kathleen continued to cling to him for a few moments.

  They walked back to the riverbank with his arm secure around her shoulders. Kathleen tried to behave normally, but for the remaining time they were at the tubing site, she was jumpy, nervous and overcautious with the children. The hands on her wristwatch moved with infinite slowness, but at last it was time to blow the whistle and call everyone for the trip home.

  She sat beside Erik on the way back and made no pretense of not wanting to. As soon as everyone was aboard the bus and she had made the final head count, she plunked down on the uncomfortable seat beside him and didn’t refuse when he offered her his hand to clasp tightly.

  When they arrived at Mountain View, everyone was already in the dining hall. For this day, the rules were suspended, and the children were allowed to have their dinner without having first showered and rested. They clambered off the bus, eager to share their day with the other campers. The weary adults were less exultant, and they made a bedraggled picture as they entered the hall.