All Stories
Copyright 2003 & 2010
Karlene Kubat




UNCAGED SONGBIRDS
By
Karlene Kubat

A diverse selection of the author’s short stories.













Page
CONTENTS: THE HEIRLOOM.......................... 1


THE UNTAMING OF THE SWAN.............. 22
GRANDMA IN THE WOODS.................. 40


A FAVOR...............................
55





THE UNFINISHED BOAT...................
68


WHO GOES HOME.........................
84





THE HEIRLOOM
The children were at play under the swollen spring
branches in the filbert orchard. A March wind rushed down
the long rows, rattling the limbs and muffling the excited
cries of the little ones. Something in the distance sent
them running toward the big white frame house below the
orchard. Their unclasped boots and scarves flapped with
each short bounce of their rushing feet as they came
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beneath a spreading yellow forsythia bush in the yard.
Under its luminous arching branches they huddled together
with hushed, wondering voices, their faces turned toward
the road running below the western edge of the orchard.
A man’s gray head rose and fell above the bank of
wind-torn grass, coming on until his figure was telescoped
in the long gravel driveway. There he paused, a bony hand
sliding into the open front of his faded jacket and
fluttering over an inside shirt pocket to withdraw a
stained pipe and a thin pouch. A little tobacco was deftly
pressed into the bowl. Hunching over, he turned away to
save the flame flickering below pale, half-closed lids. A
few white puffs of ignited leaf whirled away as he started
up the path.
From their hideaway the children watched his tall
figure lean into the wind as he moved nearer, watched and
gasped and murmured as he turned toward the stairs leading
up to the front veranda. On either side of the steps grew
massive holly trees that rose, dark and bird-inhabited, to
the eaves beyond the second floor balcony. He climbed with
slow measured steps and stood at the heavy door. No one
ever came to the front door. Their mother went there only
to sweep dry holly leaves from the porch corners. Now as
the man hesitated, high airy giggles tumbled out of the
bright forsythia below. He turned and descended, walking
straight to the golden umbrella of branches.
Erica stepped forward, the second daughter, the second
eldest, growing already out of her sister’s clothes. Her
sister, Maddy, secretive now away in the house, but Erica
gladly out-of-doors, leading the other two little boys in
play; the tomboy, her elders called her.
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“Where’s your daddy, girl?”
“Gone to work. Grandpa’s inside reading the news.”
“The news.” He spat almost over her shoulder as she
thought to step back but did not. “It’s always the same or
a little worse every cussed day.”
“Grandpa knows all about it. He reads everything in
the paper and his news magazine. When daddy comes they
talk about it...the war that’s in your-rope. Grandpa knows
a lot of that news.”
The old man bit down on his pipe and spoke through
clenched teeth. “Waste of time.”
Erica stared at the hand with its swollen knuckles
cupped around the pipe. Thin strands of pale blond hair
whipped over her blue eyes, and more streamed out around
her crocheted woolen cap as fast as she tucked it in.
“I’ll get grandpa. Come on, you kids.���
The old man followed around to the back of the house
as the wary little brood glanced over their shoulders at
his angular frame. He stood under the cherry tree, looking
up through tight-budded limbs at the fast-moving clouds.
Beyond the network of dancing branches, the sky’s airy
white shapes were studded with small blue patches -- a blue
almost the color of the girl’s eyes.
“News,” he muttered, “There’s nothing new under the
sun.”
The back door slammed behind the grandfather as he
stepped forward, pushing a battered felt hat down on his
head with one hand and buttoning a shrunken black cardigan
with the other.
“Well, so it’s you. I could’ve used you in thrashing
season but now there’s nothing.”
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“It’s not work I’m after. You can get the young boys
for that. I’m on my way through to the river and need the
strength to get there.”
The grandfather, short, trim, his body used to
physical labor, looked out of a bland leathery face with
eyes the coloration of his granddaughter’s but a more faded
blue.
“I can offer you sauerbraten and cabbage...maybe a
little grape wine. Come in, then. Wash up inside on the
porch while I tell the woman.”
The mother bent her head with brows drawn together,
listening at the screened porch door. Her auburn hair was
pulled back under a white kerchief. Retreating to her
kitchen, she wiped her floury hands on a towel and moved
back and forth from stove to sink to refrigerator.
The young children vanished downstairs. Erica sat in
a corner next to the woodstove, which was burning now and
which the grandfather had kept even after the electric
stove beside it was installed. She pulled up her jeans and
yanked off her boots. Her eyes followed the old man as he
came in from the pine-scented washroom, his hair slicked
down. His eyes darted around the room, but he averted his
gaze from the curious girl and said nothing, only pulling
up a chair and leaning on the checkered oilcloth covering
the big scarred oak table.
Erica’s mother came from the pantry, carrying in one
hand fresh thickly sliced bread with a broken-topped crust,
and in the other hand an oval green dish of newly worked
butter. The rich yellow butter still glistened with beads
of its finishing ice water. She nodded to the guest, who
straightened up and dipped his head with respect.
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“Are you going to eat, too?” Erica’s mother asked.
“Uh-huh, me too,” Erica said, holding her stockinged
foot high over the woodstove’s open oven door. “The kids
are in the basement. Maddy’s there. My feet are cold.
It’s going to rain. I’m hungry as a bear.”
The grandfather came in with an earthenware jug of
homemade wine. He sat down at the head of the table and
filled two thick old tumblers with the pale rosé.
Erica hurried over and slid into a chair across from
the stranger.
“My name’s Erica, what’s yours?”
The old man had his fingers clenched tightly around
the glass of pale pink wine and was lifting it to his
thirsty tongue. He took one long swallow and answered,
“Bill.”
“There’s two Bills in my school but I’m the only
Erica. Us kids all have unusual names. Did you work for
grandpa? Where’d you come from? Where you going?”
“Here, here, let the man have his wine, Erica,” the
grandfather scolded.
Squirming with an anxious desire to go on talking,
Erica leaned back and began to bite her fingers.
The old man studied the girl, the relief of the wine
in his eyes.
“You musta been pretty small when I was here before,
little magpie. I don’t remember you.”
“Maybe I was just a baby when you came here. I’m
seven. I’ll be eight in September.”
The stranger’s eyes focused more intently upon the
girl.
“Well, this is March. September’s half a year away.
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Don’t hurry it, girl. No, you don’t want to hurry it.
“You help your ma and your daddy, I reckon.”
“Daddy wished I was a boy when I was born ’cause I was
the second girl, but I can do any stuff a boy does.”
Erica’s busy mother paused near the table and shook
her head with amused censure.
“How do you know what daddy wished, Erica, honey?”
“’Cause I heard him say it...how he’d be needing a boy
to help him...how he was worried ’til Sean was born.”
“These little ears hear too much,” Erica’s mother
said.
“I milk our cow. I go to school. I’ve been going a
long time. I can read,” Erica proudly revealed, directing
her conversation to the old man. “I’m learning to read the
news.”
The grandfather waved his arm for silence and shook
his hand at the girl as the steaming plates arrived in the
mother’s agile ruddy hands. Sauerbraten and red cabbage
with apple, vinegar, brown sugar, and bacon pieces filled
the heavy white ironstone plates -- the grandfather had
eaten from this thick stained old ware in his childhood.
Erica held the large wooden-handled knife and fork in
her small hands just the way her grandfather did, both
angled over her plate as she chewed, then both utensils
worked over her food, a little clumsily but unfailing.
After the main course came thick slices of gooseberry
and grated lemon rind pie and two mugs of hot black coffee.
For Erica there was milk still warm and frothy from the
pasteurizer. The thin white strip of milk above her mouth
made Bill smile for the first time.
“So...you read the news, girl.”
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“Ach!” the grandfather exclaimed, waving his hand.
“I do so read, grandpa. I can read a little of it.”
“Ja...maybe a little.”
“You stick to fairytales, girl,” Bill said. He
reminded Erica of a mad rooster.
“My teacher, Mrs. Hayward, says the news is going to
be history. History is just old news, I guess, so we keep
on getting more of it. Sometimes it makes me laugh. I
like funny stories. I bet grandpa could find one in
today’s paper. He’s always--”
“Here now, be quiet, Erica.
“How’s the wife, Bill?”
Bill stiffened, staring past Erica and straight ahead
at the wall which held a rack of copper pans.
“Passed on.”
“No! I’m sorry to hear that. Was it sudden?”
“Yes...sudden. In the night.”
Bill reached for the jug and filled his glass to the
top. He gulped down half the wine, his hand trembling as
he continued to stare toward the pans. Blood swiftly
infused his cheeks, flushed little spots of red reminding
Erica of a rosy-cheeked Santa Claus. He tipped the
remainder slowly back and forth then tossed it down and
began to talk.
“When I lost the farm we still had the hired man’s
cabin. Hired on...workin’ like that, we had just enough
for livin’. Anna made a garden...vegetables and
flowers...like always. She loved flowers...and them tall
hollyhocks...made her happy to see ’em against the sky. We
even laughed about it all...sometimes. Didn’t matter no
more. Anna is sure somethin’, not a quitter. Every day
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the country got worse. Anna went right on, so I did, too.
Right on...until... Huh...the wine...makin’ me talk.”
Erica struggled with the difficult phrases: passed
on...lost the farm...country got worse, but she felt only
the heavy sadness of the old man. Did he mean the wife
died or went away? Sometimes people died. Once a newborn
calf got caught in the underbrush and died. It was stiff
when she discovered it, its legs stretched out, its fur
matted and dry. Flies buzzed around the bloated body in
the sun, and the terrible smell, the dark birds in the
trees. She ran away. Her father came with a shovel. She
couldn’t go near those thick willows after that without
remembering, without imagining the calf struggling to live.
The whole scene came into her dreams for a while, over and
over until finally it stopped. At about that time, her
wrinkled great-aunt Melba told her stories of people who
died and came back somehow. How could they? It gave her
goose bumps.
Erica commenced a nervous squirming with the memory of
the calf and of Aunt Melba’s ghosts. She wanted old Bill
to laugh. He was not a family elder demanding obedience,
but someone she could charm and tease, the way her mother
sometimes did with friends. She had seen it happen when
she was lucky enough to be taken along to grange
potluck...her mother arranging her baked beans on the table
filled with tempting casseroles and pies and cakes. Her
mother looking so pretty in her good navy dress with the
white lace collar and the small corsage of imitation red
cherries, smiling as the side lamps winked on her auburn
hair, the rosy faces of laughter around the hall and the
admiring eyes of the men.
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“Well, I give a heap a thanks for the meal, folks.
Now I’m on my way.” Bill stood up and shook hands with the
grandfather, who had stood up too. He nodded polite thanks
to Erica’s mother.
Erica was busy, hurriedly putting on her boots. She
grabbed her hat and coat and followed Bill out.
“I’m walking to the crossroads with you.”
“That’s two miles down and the same two back, girl.”
“I do it all the time.” She pulled on her woolen cap.
Her mother leaned out the door with her mittens.
“Here, put these on. I think a storm is coming. See
that black cloud? Button your coat. Your hat’s not
enough; put up the hood if the rain comes. And you come
straight home now. Hear me?”
“I hear, mama.”
Together the old man and Erica walked down the long
driveway, with the penetrating east wind rushing at their
backs.
“She tells me that every time I go outside. I guess
she forgets, but I never do.”
“If you was mine I’d do the same.”
“Don’t you have any kids?”
“No. If I did they’d be older than your mother. It’s
a good thing I don’t.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t wish anyone into this world.”
“I’m glad mama had me...even on cold days like this.
If the sun comes out I really feel good, like old Tiger cat
when he finds a patch of sun to sleep in or lick his fur.
He just loves it. You can tell.”
Erica felt the bony hand grip her shoulder and had a
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twinge of fear.
“Enjoy it now, girl. It goes fast and life comes down
hard.”
“What does that mean?”
“Things happen that keep you from gettin’ where you
want to go.”
Erica looked up at Bill, her blue eyes widening.
“Where’s that?”
“Well, huh, I guess a place where there’s a kind of
peace and not very much to need.”
“But where?”
“Ain’t really a place...just the way you feel.”
“Then why can’t you just feel it?”
Bill’s eyebrows arched up, forcing even deeper lines
than those already etched across his forehead. He fell
silent and stopped to light his pipe. Puffs of blue smoke
instantly whirled away in a sudden gust of wind.
“You might grow up to be a fast talker. That’s how
they got my money...fast-talkin’, silver-tongued devils.”
“If I had some money I wouldn’t let anyone take it
away...not unless I wanted to give it to ’em.”
“Then you’d have been a help to me when that slicker
sold me shares in the gold mine.”
“A gold mine? Did you see the gold?”
Bill’s mouth fell open and he grabbed for his pipe in
amused surprise.
“You shame me, girl. Nope, never saw a single speck.
Some friends invested and swore it was fixin’ to be a real
payload. Friends, they was. Hah! I was a handsome lad,
see, with a pretty young wife and bound to give her
everything under the sun. The mine was down in Arizona.
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They just kept sinkin’ more dough into that loser ’til
there was nothin’ left to sink. Leastways, we thought they
did. Most of it wound up in their pockets. Them kind
never lose nothin’...but the folks they con. Yeah, they
lose those fast enough. Never did catch up to my debts.
Hell for that. It’s water under the bridge now.”
“Are you still mad, Bill...’cause a that old empty
mine?”
“Not now. Once I wanted to break things...fight.
Almost killed a man over nothin’ at all. Kept havin’ the
urge to bang my head against a wall...sit down and howl
like a wolf.”
Old Bill’s fierce laugh choked up in a fit of
coughing.
“Did you howl?”
“No more talk. I’m tired.”
They walked on in silence, passing a tall fir where
crows were beginning a spring nest. The angry birds took
turns swooping down and squawking at the intruders,
circling over Erica’s and Bill’s heads in diving feints of
attack.
Erica danced around, waving her arms and laughing.
“They do that all the time now...same old racket.
They’re making a nest. They lay green eggs.”
Bill careened doggedly ahead, showing not the least
sign of interest in the birds or the girl. In a few more
steps he stumbled to the side of the road and half sat half
fell on the knoll beyond the ditch.
“Hootch went to my head...can’t do it anymore...used
to be a little wine was nothin’...woozy...got to rest a
spell. All that food and wine...didn’t taste a
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thing...that goes, too...everything goes.”
Erica frowned as Bill muttered to himself and sank
back on the damp earth. He stared at her, his faded gray
eyes hardly blinking. She was like a freshly opened flower
come upon among the rough grasses, a daisy small and
innocent, yet soundly abiding.
For a moment, Erica thought Bill was going to cry. He
reached out a long finger to touch her cheek.
“Now I’ve got to close my eyes a little. If you’ve a
mind to stay then wake me when the rain comes. No, better
go on home. Yeah, git.”
He pulled his knees up against his chest, like a very
old unearthed skeleton Erica had pored over in one of her
grandfather’s magazines. Without another word he lifted a
hand to cover his face and dozed off.
Erica removed her coat and pulled it carefully around
him, stretching forward on her knees. The white, lifeless
hand over his face evoked a strange fear in her. She
watched him with anxious attention, but then it was like
spying. She turned away, shivering a little.
The sound of the water burbling in the ditch caught
her attention. She pulled off her mittens and stuffed them
into her pocket. Stirring up the red silt with a dry weed
stalk, she watched fascinated as it coiled into the clear
puddles in muddy curls. She set about damming the
trickling water with stones from the road shoulder. As she
squatted at her task she hummed a low, uneven working tune.
After a while she sat up and studied old Bill. He was
disturbingly motionless, without even a sign of breathing.
Shaking him gently, she pointed to a dark cloud.
Bill opened his eyes and stared up in silence. He lay
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looking deep into the sky, with a dread in his pale eyes
so immense it left the girl in cringing awe. Then his
eyes fell on Erica’s spread coat covering him and he heaved
himself forward, grasping her slight body and rebundling
her quickly as he shook his head. Struggling to his feet
he teetered a moment, centered himself over the opposed
earth, and set off in slouching, falling-forward steps.
Erica trotted along at his side, glancing up at his
face for any sudden change.
“Mama says winter is depressing and spring makes her
happy. Are you depressed like that?”
“Maybe.”
“Winter’s okay with me. I like the way snow comes in
the night. It’s so quiet...so surprising in the morning.
This winter the snow came before I went to bed. I turned
on the porch light and stood on the steps looking up.
Oooh, I like to do that. If you stick out your tongue, big
cold flakes land on it and melt real fast. They float down
right out of the black...little dancing things. If you
keep your head back, you feel just like you’re flying up
through the sky. You even get dizzy.”
Erica gazed out at the distant clouds. The black edge
of an eastern storm moved overhead, driven by the wind. On
the western horizon pale rays of sun still slanted down in
glassy shafts. They shot straight into dark-forested
hills, making spots of summery lime.
“Oh, look there! I’d like to be there,” she cried,
pointing to the far sun-spotted mountains.
Old Bill grabbed her arm. “Under those pretty patches
is damp cold forest.”
“But there’s sun. If I was an eagle I’d fly there.”
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“Right fast you’ll see the way things are,” Bill said,
tightening his grip on her arm.
“I don’t want to be like you!” Erica shouted, pulling
free.
“Hah! Your tongue will be worse trouble than your
wild fancying. There’s the crossroads, magpie. You’d
better be hightailin’ it home before the rain gets to your
tender hide.” Along with his warning came a little shove,
but Erica stood firm with a stubborn glance at his grim
face.
“Where’ll you sleep tonight? Won’t you get wet?”
“Don’t give a damn if I’m wet or not. If I don’t
stand here jawin’ I’ll make it to Bel Air Farms, where I
can sleep in a worker’s cabin. Mind what I say: enjoy
it while you can.”
“Enjoy what?” Erica asked, walking backwards.
“Your eagle trip and your little patch of sun.
“Hold on a minute. I just thought... Come back here,
girl. Got somethin’ I’ll give you to pass on to your own
boy some day.”
Bill slid his hand into his hip pocket and drew it out
with the fingers clasped around something quite shiny. He
stretched his hand toward her and in the trembling palm
Erica saw a gleaming circular bauble, about the size of her
grandfather’s silver pocket watch.
“What is it?” Erica asked, stepping forward, now a
little shyly, with her hands crossed behind her back.
“A double-case 18-carat-gold Waltham pocket watch.
Soft gold, but I took good care of it...hardly any dings.
The only gold I ever had. See why it makes a man crazy?
Look here. You just wind it every day at the same time.
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Before you go to bed, maybe. Wind her up ’til she feels a
little tight.”
Erica took the watch into her small nervous hand. It
was heavy and warm and oily smooth.
“I don’t think I can keep it.” Her lips tightened in
a fine line of doubt, pushing out her plump rosy cheeks.
“It’s so heavy. Don’t you need it for the time?”
“Nope. Time’s nothin’ to me.”
“Mama would make me give it back. I know she would.”
“Keep it and don’t tell her for a while. Now let’s
have a shake on it, and you get on home.”
Erica slipped the watch gently into her pocket and
offered her hand. The two hands, one large, bony, and
wrinkled, the other quite small and slightly soiled, moved
slowly up and down.
“Gee thanks, Bill. Come back and eat at our house,”
she invited, but his piercing gray eyes quickly made her
friendlier eyes dart away.
She walked backwards as old Bill continued to stand in
the road, looking hard at her. A little further on she
stopped and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Read the
newspaper when you get one. I bet you find something so
funny.”
“You read it for me...but don’t lose your spirit,” he
called over his shoulder as he turned away at last.
Erica walked along, kicking at small, angular rocks
that had been thrown up on the road. Some flew into the
ditch where veins of water trickled along over the red mud.
Large drops of rain began to fall. She pulled the jacket
hood over her woolen cap and stuck her mittenless hands
into her pockets. In the left pocket she encountered the
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cool liquid smoothness of the watch. Her heart leapt.
Shouldn’t she run and give it back? Bill was far away
around a bend in the road now. What would mama say? She
didn’t like to keep things from her mother. Daddy might
get really mad. The heavy timepiece was wonderful to touch
and hold, and it had a nice clear ticking, like a
heartbeat.
Climbing the steps, she found her mother at the door
with an anxious look. Erica quickly evaded her mother’s
scrutiny and ran to her room, hanging her jacket on a wall
peg, with the watch still inside.
That evening after dinner, Erica listened to her
family gossiping around the table as they sipped their
steaming mugs of coffee. The little boys were asleep in
their bunk beds. Her sister, Maddy, went off to her room
to immerse herself in her world of cowboy music and
daydreams. The two girls had so frequently annoyed each
other that they had been given separate rooms in the large
upstairs. Erica watched from her pillow on the staircase,
where she liked to sit and look down into the dining room
through the sliding oak doors of the hallway. The doors
were always left open. Under the hanging lamp, her
father’s big hands reached into a dark wicker basket filled
with gleaming mahogany filberts from her grandfather’s
orchard. He cracked a fine-grained shell, extracting the
meat with a delicate silver pick. His hands seemed much
whiter in the artificial light, and almost like those of a
giant, wielding the shiny little nut pick.
“I feel sorry for old Bill,” her grandfather said.
“He’s lost without his wife...not much work to do now.
When that gold stock came to nothing he was finished. He
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was a scrapper before that little Anna came along. She
smoothed out his feathers right quick, and he never took to
the bottle like some...like old Prebstly who lost money
hand over fist. You know, they came to me, those robbers
with their phony stocks. I said, ‘No thanks. I haven’t
got it to spare.’ They said I’d be sorry. Hah!”
Her grandfather knocked a thick white ash from his
cigar and retreated into a quiet, thoughtful mood, his
drowsing head propped against his hand.
Erica tiptoed back to her room. She was just dropping
off to sleep with the events of the day drifting through
her head when she came to the watch and sat up. A pang of
guilt stirred her heart, for she had already forgotten to
wind it. She got up and crossed the room, reaching into
her coat pocket. There was the cold metal sliding into her
hand. She gently pried open the back of the case, using
the metal tip of her hair barrette, and watched the
movement clicking away with its tiny teeth, measuring,
measuring time. She was deeply engrossed in this
fascinating little engine when her mother entered the room.
“What’s that you have?”
Startled, Erica closed the watch. She stood up
quickly and tried to hide it.
“Let me see that. What on earth... Erica where did
you get this beautiful old pocket watch?”
“Old Bill gave it to me.”
“Why, Erica, how could you do such a thing? Haven’t I
taught you anything? This is a family heirloom.”
“What’s an earloom? It was his father’s. He didn’t
want it anymore. I tried not to... You gonna tell daddy?
I’ll give it back.” Erica started to cry.
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“An heirloom is a fine old family possession, like a
dish or a piece of furniture or a jewel that gets passed
along from parents to children over and over again.”
“Bill doesn’t have kids.”
“That doesn’t matter. I have to tell daddy. Put on
your robe and come downstairs.”
“I don’t know what got into her,” Erica’s mother was
saying as Erica came into the dining room and stood before
her father.
Erica’s father, a stocky, blue-eyed man with sandy
hair and ruddy cheeks, leaned forward in his chair,
clamping a large scarred and weathered hand over his knee,
“Well, Erica, you can’t keep this fine old timepiece.
Maybe you’re not old enough to know how such things work,
but now you have to learn.”
“Are you going to spank me?”
“No. This isn’t the kind of thing that calls for a
spanking. You didn’t understand. You’re getting too old
for spankings anyway.”
Eric caught her father’s wink at her mother and began
to feel a small amount of relief.
“The thing is, I’m puzzled as to why old Bill would
want to part with this. Where did you say he was headed?”
“He was just going to the river...going to sleep at
Bel Air Farms.”
“Wednesday, grandpa is going to the feed store. Now
you’ll go with him after school and look for Bill. When
you find him, you’ll apologize and hand the watch over.”
“I will, daddy,” Erica said, brightening.
“Good. Now wind this fine old piece carefully and go
to bed.”
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Erica was quite relieved to be let off so easily, but
she began to worry. What if old Bill got mad at her? She
didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She felt dread deep in
her stomach, the same as expecting to go to the dentist.
She would have to go all the way through tomorrow, which
was only Monday, and then the next day and part of the next
before she could get the dreaded exchange over with.
On Tuesday morning Erica sat at the breakfast table,
going over sections of the newspaper with her grandfather.
“See, girl, here’s a story about a goose that follows
a little kind to school.”
Her grandfather folded the paper and laid it beside
her plate, but as she was going over the words and looking
at the picture her grandfather threw up his arms and
exclaimed, “Gott in Himmel! It’s poor old Bill. They
found his body in the river.”
“You mean he drowned?”
“Ja, dead...dead!”
Erica sat very still, trying to imagine what Bill
looked like in the river dead, but she couldn’t get beyond
the last wave of his hand as he disappeared around the bend
in the road.
“Poor Bill. Poor old Bill! He won’t get his watch
back now, grandpa. How can I give it back?” Her pale
forehead crinkled in frustration and worry. “There was
something the matter with him. He wasn’t paying attention.
That’s why he fell in the river.”
“I don’t think he fell.”
“What then, grandpa?”
“He must have jumped.”
“But it’s so cold and deep...all that water. Old Bill
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wasn’t crazy.”
“Maybe just crazy enough to commit suicide.”
“What’s sooside?”
“It’s...never mind what it is. He just meant to
jump.”
“You mean he was thinking about it eating here...and
on the road and when he gave me the watch, he was thinking-
-”
“That’s just it. He was going to the river, only we
didn’t know why.”
“Then he wanted me to keep the watch...’cause he
wasn’t coming back. We’ll never see him again. Oh,
Grandpa--”
“Don’t think about it, girl.”
“But why did he do it?”
“Your mama will sure be mad I told you. I was so
excited I didn’t think.”
All day at school Erica thought about Bill jumping
into the river. How could he do it? How? She thought
over the things that Bill had told her. At recess she ran
far out into the field and stood by a fence that separated
the playing field from a thick forest of tall firs. It was
the first day of April, April Fool’s Day, when mama always
managed to play a trick on everyone before the day ended,
something that caught everyone off guard and made them all
laugh. The sky was overcast and gray without even a
pencil-shaft of sun to light the woods. She heard Bill’s
voice: “Your eagle trip and your little patch of sun.”
Nearer the schoolhouse, the children were screaming,
playing April Fool’s jokes. She did not want to go back,
as if first she had to find something lost. She looked up
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at clouds. Their shapes changed faster than she could make
up names for them.
That night Erica’s father said, “Well, it looks like
you can keep the watch now...unless some relative turns up,
but I don’t think old Bill had anyone. He was all alone.”
Erica sat still and quiet on the braided rug before
the snapping fireplace. A chunk of damp wood hissed at
her. When no one was looking she began to bite her
fingers.
After some quiet reflection, her father told her,
“We’ll put the watch away until you’re older.”
“But I promised to wind it and never let it stop!”
Erica cried out on the verge of tears.
Her father knelt and patted Erica’s troubled head.
“All right, honey, you can keep it on your dresser,
but don’t carry it around.”
Erica raised her bent head. The flames dancing on the
shining hearth reflected across her somber face.
“Daddy, you know what, old Bill said the news was
always bad, then he got printed and it was awful.”
“All right, enough of this. Off to bed,” Erica’s
mother called, frowning and shaking her head at Erica’s
father. “Tomorrow is a school day.”
The usual approach of late night sleepiness would not
surround Erica as she tossed nervously in bed. She had
learned two new words. One was wonderful, like a gift at
Christmas. The other made her shiver with its strangeness.
Deciding to sleep with her lamp on, she stared up at her
favorite picture, which had hung over her bed for as long
as she could remember. It was a black and white photograph
of real monkeys with glossy black and white fur, playing in
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a dense forest. One monkey had eyes that looked right at
her. Sometimes she whispered to him as she fell asleep.
From the dresser nearby, she heard the clear ticking
of the large gold timepiece. It had a voice that called to
her. She threw off the covers and hurried to hold the cool
watch against her flushed face. Tenderly, as if it were a
small living thing, she rubbed it over her cheek, then
wound it slowly, carefully.
Settled back in her bed she whispered, “I’ll keep it
beating for you, Bill.” She pulled the covers over her
head, a little afraid but wishing he could answer.

THE END










THE UNTAMING OF THE SWAN

It was early spring. A man and woman were strolling
down a forest path in a place called Laughing Water Park.
The man’s left leg was in a metal brace visible from the
sides of his shoe below the cuff of his navy corduroy
slacks. His stride was made in a practiced rhythm almost
graceful to behold, like a dancer initiating an expansive
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Karlene Kubat



dance, the forward motion carrying him smoothly into the
next balanced step. His face held a contented, rather
amused smile as he studied both the woman and the tender
green shoots and delicate buds which she carefully noted.
“More queen’s cup.”
The woman pointed at a tulip-leaved plant from which
sprang a few thin stems bearing simple white flowers, each
with six dewy petals.
“Oh, how I love spring...this fresh, fresh air heavy
with sweetness...but a sweetness you can tolerate. And
look there: a trillium already reduced to soft purple.
They start in February.”
She fell silent and glanced at the man beside her. He
appeared to regard the shaded trillium and the fragile
plants pushing up around it with an earnest absorption.
His eyes were a clear, liquid brown, docile for the moment
and full of pleasure. His face was not that of an invalid
but of a man well acquainted with sun and inclement
weather, the soft amiable crow’s feet and smile lines equal
to the furrowed brow of sorrows. Small fingers of breeze
teased at his hair. She noticed how its color matched the
silvery-brown scaly bark of the giant spruces growing
beside the path.
“Are you tired of my chatter? I can’t seem to keep
all of this to myself.”
A Steller’s jay glided near, interrupting their voices
with a raucous cry of “chook-chook-chook” as it bounced up
and down on a hemlock branch just above their heads. Its
sharp jet eyes glittered from a black-crested hood that
dissolved into a twilight-blue back and tail. The restless
wings folded just long enough to display their even black
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Karlene Kubat



bars, then the wild masquerade of innate strategy went on
with a fluttering of wings. “Shack-shack-shack-shack,” it
chided, dancing on its swaying bough.
The man laughed and looked down into the woman’s
surprised eyes, which were nearly the same dusky blue as
the jay’s breast feathers.
“I like it when you point out things that interest
you. Then whenever I see them I’ll...” He shrugged and
bent to lift a wayward wisp of auburn hair that blew over
her eyes.
“I’ve taught you the names of flowers, haven’t I? And
you’ve taught me how to live in the present moment. I
didn’t know how...or never wanted to. It was always
tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...”
She spoke with nervous excitement that could suddenly
surprisingly erupt out of a guarded quietness. Her head
was down, half watching red ants stream across the wood-
slatted walkway and swarm around a large dead beetle. Very
quickly they attached themselves to the lifeless black
casement and tugged in unison. A detail of pallbearers.
Her body stiffened and her fingers clenched the hem of the
red flannel shirt that blew against her, clinging to her
hips. A shiver went through her body, and the man noticed
at once.
“You’re cold. You need a sweater.”
“No. It’s almost balmy. It wasn’t that. Something
just...I don’t know.”
Her dilated eyes were drawn up into bright triangles
of misery and joy.
“It’s much more than the names of flowers,” he said,
laying the back of his hand across her cheek.
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She looked quickly away and knelt down to pick up a
slender cone, sliding her finger over its pliant scales.
“Spruce. Its cones hang down from the branch like
those of the Douglas-fir. Neither are true firs. The
cones stand upright on true firs.”
“You amaze me, Kate.”
“I’ve heard that in Russia there’s an expression for
VIPs...funny..instead of the big cheese, they say the big
pine cone.”
He laughed. “God, Kate, you’re a connoisseur of
wonderful trifles.”
He halted, resting casually on his good leg. Then he
hunched forward and gripped her shoulders.
“Spring then summer and you’ll go.”
“But I’ll come back, Hugh...always...always.”
She slipped her hand inside his navy jacket and laid
her head against his chest.
He stood still and held her, looking up at the clouds
sweeping over the treetops.
“Shack-shack-shack-shack...chook-chook-chook,”
insisted their feathered eavesdropper.
“I’m happy,” he spoke into her ear. “Here and now.”
They followed a path which led along a swift burbling
stream at their left. Its bed was mostly shallow and
strewn with rocks, but there were here and there pockets of
deep green. The water swirled around large boulders of
basalt and splashed over the smaller rocks, varnishing them
with a honeyed light. Fast-moving clouds made the sun
appear to dart in and out of ragged openings as it shone
recurrently over the stream, making changing spangles of
gold.
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Ahead, the ground they were traversing fell away into
a steeply descending and narrow canyon. Breaking through
the silence of the forest, and swelling in their ears until
it filled their minds with a pounding white wall of noise,
came the sound of the park’s dazzling centerpiece, a
roaring waterfall. Near where the stream became vertical,
dropping nearly two hundred feet over a cauldron of water-
chiseled rock, the path angled sharply away and ran across
the rim of the cauldron.
They walked around the edge, stopping where the trail
descended, and watching the misty white column tumble in
fast-breaking patterns. These ceaselessly reaching fingers
of white shot straight down into the deep inner side of the
green pool, boiling up and sending out rings of foam that
lapped at the fern-lined banks. The steep path they were
on eventually wound back behind the waterfall, where there
was a large dripping cave containing around its perimeter
smaller, dryer alcoves of near total darkness.
For a while they stood watching Laughing Water give
its noisy, mesmerizing performance. At last he turned away
and started to lead her down the path, but she held back.
“Hugh...you want to go down there?”
“Yes, come on...behind the waterfall. Isn’t it good
luck? Or is that rainbows?”
“Waterfalls make rainbows...if the light is right. We
don’t have to go down. It’s nice here.”
“You think I can’t negotiate that?” He had said it
with a faint smile, but there was a tension beneath his
words.
She blushed deeply in surprise, opened her mouth to
speak, but then remained silent, pondering how she could
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Karlene Kubat



answer.
They pressed back against the railing to let a
heavyset, jolly-faced man in coveralls, and a scarved woman
wearing a long coat and rubber boots, carrying a muddy
white poodle, puff by them on the upward climb.
She had not been thinking of his leg at all. He was
strong...so strong. It was only that she liked being up on
top...on top of the world. The thought of leaving the
sparing sun and descending into the dark rain forest of the
canyon disturbed her. But how could she say this? He
would not believe her now. Anyway, it was a negative,
unpleasant sentiment that tainted her deep happiness.
She moved down, letting him keep behind her, listening
to his footfalls. The expert way that he handled his body
was for her a feat bordering on the heroic, yet she was not
so caught up in heady devotion as to be oblivious to his
occasional irritation or regret. She thought of his hands
touching her, a feeling so new it was startling. She
pictured his high ruddy cheeks and the sensitive mouth that
curved so greedily after her laughter. She wanted to turn
and have him in her vision, but could not for fear of what
he might think. Quite involuntarily and with a jolt, she
thought of her husband. She was soon in the angle of a
switchback and screened by a drooping hemlock. Gripping
the wire of the fence in tight fists, she looked down and
felt her knees buckling. It came to her that she was the
one who could not walk here without stumbling.
He had been moving along easily with just the
slightest splay in his stride. He stared at her rigid
back. Even before the first blush in her cheeks and the
slump of her shoulders, he knew that she hadn’t meant
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Karlene Kubat



anything. Why had he said it? He was not even sensitive
about it, sometimes only a little impatient. It was so
long ago. Did he merely want a cutting edge for all his
joy? Something to measure it by? Something to twist
inside until his hands reached out to have her stop it.
The consuming sensation of her was what he wanted.
He knelt down to tie his shoelace and from there he
glimpsed her figure through the sweeping limbs of the lacy
hemlock. Her hands were clenched around the wire, her face
closed and white. She hung there at the edge of the cliff,
like a butterfly impaled on a thorn bush. He found that it
was hard, nearly impossible, to run down such a precipitous
incline. When he reached the place where she had stood,
she was gone. He could see beyond the waterfall. She was
not there and not on the trail. Hunching his tall frame,
he moved behind the blowing mist of the falls. Nearly
crawling through the dim musty alcoves of the cave, he
searched, not wanting to call her name but to find her as
she was. She was kneeling in near darkness on cold dirt
packed hard by curious spelunkers.
“I can’t change anything back...don’t even want to
anymore,” she agonized with her mouth against his throat.
“The names of flowers...if that were all he didn’t want to
hear. Not the name of his wife and hardly the names of his
children. It’s always been tomorrow, tomorrow, a tomorrow
that never comes. I try...no, I don’t, not anymore. I’m
kinder now, and he...he uses kindness very cruelly.”
“Don’t Kate. Christ, not now, not here, not with us.
Don’t hurt yourself like this. You...you still love him?”
“No! No!”
“Then don’t hurt so.”
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She pulled away. Her smooth face was broken now, not
ever pretty but a depth of beauty far more evocative; he
had seen her turn heads with her earthy softness. Part of
it was the caring, the compassion for others, her children.
With him, her eyes always flashed that refulgent light,
filling him with passion and conceit because he had somehow
engendered such credulous luminosity. How could her
husband not see what she was, the gentle opening of self to
love and injury alike? So aware of her that first time,
all he had needed was one glance.
“I didn’t want to come down here...falling out of
heaven. I never meant to say these things. I wanted our
times to be peaceful, full of loving--”
“Kate,” he said, shaking her a little. “I’m sorry I
made you stop...selfish, I’m selfish with you. I’m glad
you let it out. Forgive me for up there. This is where we
learn things...down in dark caves.”
Here, painfully revisiting escaped reality, they still
remained very close, unwilling to separate and resume the
disguise. They had spoken above the roar of the falls
echoing through the cave, and now were silent. His eyes,
growing accustomed to the dimness, roved over her warming
face. Her heart pounded as she saw his serious mouth curve
slightly with a certain smile.
She watched him take off his jacket and spread it on
the moist dirt, which was nearly dustless and hard as
linoleum.
“Are you cold?” she asked as her nervous hands reached
out to unbutton his shirt and slip inside. She touched her
lips to his chest, answering her own question, “No, not
cold, so warm, and your heart is like mine.”
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“Can you hear it above all that?” He jerked his head
toward the rushing water, then placed his hands on her
waist, lowering her down upon his heavy jacket.
***
They were up on top now, brushed and straightened and
drifting in a languid, secretive elation. He leaned
against the crusted amber bark of a tall fir, watching her
as she gazed at the crucial edge where the stream became
Laughing Water Falls.
Looking down the stream at an angle almost parallel,
she had no view of the stone cauldron or the thundering
cascade. She could see the battered and bent wire fence
which had been stretched across Laughing Waters’ wild head
as a safety precaution. There, the stream broke away and
plunged into the sky, sending up a swirling rainbow spray.
Something, probably a log rushing along in a swollen
torrent, had torn a small hole in one side of the fence.
Pieces of flotsam occasionally slipped through. The
captured object would shoot out, balanced for an instant in
space before gravity’s invisible siphon pulled it straight
down, bound for the center of the earth.
Her steady gaze, a question, left his eyes and moved
over the near horizon of clouds tucked above forest.
He knew the question precisely and said in a cautious
voice, “You never ask about her.”
“I guess my asking is the silence...better.”
“There isn’t much she’ll let me do for her...bring her
things for her garden. Sometimes she likes that...if I
manage to get it right. It’s a tidy place. She doesn’t
share it with me or want me there...for a long time now
it’s taken my place. She’s never told me the names of
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flowers or trees or...her plants...suppose I’ve
disappointed her by not already knowing them.”
“What a joy...something I can tell you that you don’t
already know. Whether you want to know or not,” she added,
laughing with hopeful buoyance.
“Everything you tell me is what I want to know.”
Kate thrust herself forward, away from the tree where
she had been leaning and facing him. Stretching her arms,
she planted her open hands against the trunk of his tree,
then threw back her head and stared up at the highest
boughs soughing in the wind. The late sun was burning
itself out on the treetops. Wherever it reached in among
the limbs it left red-gold patterns. A chipmunk crouched
motionless in the crotch of a branch, only his bulging
cheeks working furiously. His tail curled over his back in
anticipation of darkness. His fluffed coat was ticked
orange in the sun’s cooling exodus.
Hugh’s darkened eyes flashed a crimson glint. Why was
he the one? Mystery of mysteries this man who loved to
hear her say the names of flowers. In this moment she
realized that she didn’t really want to share his deflected
thoughts, hear his pained revelations. Perhaps that was
why she had never asked. Please, please let him stop.
“She’s been a good mother,” he went on. “I liked
being a father when the kids were young. They don’t need
much now. I’m there if they do. Esther and I...we never
did achieve...whatever it is that...what I think you and I
have...that makes everything... I was there to make it
work somehow, but not to get involved with her private
world. She never let me in. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t
listen, doesn’t want to hear anything from me. I’ve tried
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Karlene Kubat



to... I think...” He made a careless, apologetic grin to
dispel any notion of morbidity. “I think she’d be relieved
if I just stopped breath--”
“Stop it! Oh, stop it,” Kate cried. “Thank you for
sharing, but please stop now. Please.”
Her taut arms were still propped at right angles to
her body, but her head hung down. Her slopping eyes
rippled over little piles of dismantled cones, scales flung
in small piles or caught in among the roots of the tree.
Chipmunks’ leavings. “If you were mine...”
“If I’m not then what am I? Christ!”
At the sound of his hard-bitten laugh she looked up.
“Maybe,” he said, trying to hold some things back from
her, “I can still go without what I never had...until I
found--”
“Should we stop seeing each other for a while?” she
said, wiping at her eyes.
“No! Well, all right, I guess I can’t go without you.
The more I have, the more I want.”
“That’s why I think--”
“No! Damn it, no.”
He loosened her arms from the tree, in this way
demanding a reassuring response, so sudden a response he
almost chided her for its swiftness.
At the same moment, they knew themselves dwarfed and
insignificant under the abiding deep-rooted fir, the old
tree encoded with its life force. They had no plan, no
tidy method of effecting change, caught in the certain
spiral of life’s relentless coil. He who had always slept
well in his identity now knew it was only a role put on
like a suit, now felt himself tumbling naked, caught in
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Karlene Kubat



forward inertia. His head echoed with the dirge of their
spent years -- rote years obscurely encapsulated -- so much
sleepwalking, then the compliance of her words: “...stop
seeing each other...” No, he was awake now, wide awake.
She stood and let his hands caress her slack body as
though smoothing out time, felt herself slipping into a
pliant languor, as if she had made an innocent choice, the
choice of an animal. Other choices were all without his
hands, without his words, without the freedom to drift
peacefully in his silences. No choices at all. How long
would it go on? Something was going to happen.
Her eyes were opened. He drew back to look at her and
she felt herself an object, an image flattened against a
huge flickering screen. There was the vast field of her
inert face, her own quivering mouth, and then his dark
engulfing profile dissolving that image. Each impromptu
scene was made without knowledge of the next moment, their
bodies unclothed and intimate or riding somewhere in a car,
but always surrounded by a net of tendrils continuing to
grow, as if already entrapping them. In the next scene or
the next, something would happen. They would laugh or weep
or die, but she could not imagine them separated. Her eyes
stared over his shoulder, with a glassy, transfixed gaze.
He lifted her against him and the net vanished. The bubble
of suspended time curved down. It shut out everything but
the other solid body here and now, the oblivion of his
mouth, and, slightly removed, the constant burble of the
stream. Slowly the stream became the feeling of him,
flowing through her mind and body, sweeping everything
before it. There came a piercing scream.
It arced over the forest, splitting the air with the
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Karlene Kubat



desperate sound of raw fear. The rending horror of it
jolted them both and filled her ears with pain as her
narrowed eyes searched for its source.
A plump black-haired woman was running clumsily along
the top of the steep bank across and further up the stream.
She tore along the path through thorny creepers, falling,
scrambling up and running blindly until Kate’s red jacket
must have caught her eye. The woman pointed wildly at the
water, shrieking over and over and knocking dirt and rocks
off the high bank, which she was unable to descend.
At first Kate walked forward slowly, as if in a dream,
barely aware of what her eyes saw or how her legs were
beginning to pump faster and faster, so that when she hit
the water her stride broke well off the low bank and
brought her down on top of the brutally hard rocks. For a
moment, she was stunned by the pain shooting up through her
legs, then she struggled forward, her shoes soon gone, her
feet sometimes gripping sometimes sliding over the bruising
stones. Ahead, out in the swifter current of the stream,
floated a small, blue plastic carrier containing a bawling
infant. It was moving rapidly, occasionally whirling into
eddies or snagging here and there on protruding rocks. But
even then she could not reach it in time, still struggling
to bring herself close enough to halt its inexorable rush
toward Laughing Water’s head. Once there, it could pass
easily through the rend of torn-away wire at the base of
the mesh guard fence.
She had to reach it. Of course she could do it. Her
hand was already reaching out when her body stumbled
forward into one of the deep green pockets and she sank
beneath the water as the carrier bobbed away. The surface
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Karlene Kubat



noises quickly diminished as the cold stunned her with its
piercing bite. Stones kicked loose by her scrambling feet
slid into the hole after her, grinding and clicking.
Kicking off the bottom, she rose to the sharp dominion of
air where, with gasping and sputtering mouth, her eyes
immediately began to search for the blue carrier.
“Kate! My God, Kate!” she heard Hugh shout from the
shore, where he had been about to stumble into the water.
But her eyes were locked on the carrier now. A tiny fist
rose up as the carrier turned around slowly and shot into a
faster channel. Would it catch the fence or...No! It was
drifting to the right toward the opening. On all fours
now, bruised, nearly frozen with cold, she thrashed and
crawled through the shallow ripple at Laughing Water’s
head. Half lunging, half falling forward, her stiff
fingers hooked over the edge of the carrier and drew it in.
She had it! Shaking badly, she began to pick her way
carefully over the solid bed of obstructing rocks. Her
feet were too numb to ache anymore. She squinted at the
wide-eyed baby now gurgling cheerfully, then back at the
water to see where the deep pools lay. Splashing out to
meet her, the amazed and weeping mother took the child from
Kate’s arms.
Hugh squeezed the water from her clothes, briskly
massaged her arms and legs, then pulled his jacket around
her shoulders. He rubbed her hair with his handkerchief,
then held her shaking body against him. Her hair smelled
of the sweet, moldering-leaved water. Never again would
that pungent river scent rise in his nostrils without
seeing her in the stream, without feeling her icy, wet
flesh in his arms. After a while they both realized they
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Karlene Kubat



were being anxiously scrutinized.
The Mexican family, probably migrant workers who had
settled in the orchard-filled valley, were lined up and
looking at their rescuer with thankful smiles: the plump
little mother, her small, golden-brown feet planted beneath
dripping black slacks; the squinting old white-haired
grandmother, now in possession of the baby, her shoulders
stooped, her wrinkles smoothed by fat; and the slender,
white-shirted, black-eyed young son, dangling the empty
carrier in his hand. The grandmother rocked the baby back
and forth in her arms and crooned Spanish words into its
staring round face.
Finding herself noticed, the mother dove forward with
outstretched arms.
“Gracias! Gracias! Muchas gracias, señora. Ay, Dios
mío, mi niña, mi niña! Ave María! Me llamo María
Espinoza. Cómo se llama usted?”
“She wants my name,” Kate said to Hugh in a soft and
perplexed voice.
The mother turned to her son and spoke in an eager
voice, then the boy, who spoke English, said, “My mother
will tell others, the papers...newspapers, how you save
Marta. Por favor, what is your name?”
“My name is Kate,” she told the boy with polite care.
“What is your name?”
“I am Carlos.”
“Carlos, my Spanish is so long out of use. Does your
mother speak any English?”
“Only a very little. She is shy to speak.”
“Oh I see. Perhaps she will understand me.”
Kate was frowning, but she offered a smile to the
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Karlene Kubat



young mother and tugged at her arm.
“Señora Espinoza, please come with me, over there.”
She gestured toward the big fir where Hugh had been leaning
earlier. They walked there together.
Hugh stared after them. They turned their backs and
bent toward each other. He watched fascinated as Kate
clutched his jacket against her body with one hand and
gesticulated with the other to encourage the flow of broken
Spanish, which she had apparently once known.
Kate shivered a little, staring into the grateful
brown eyes. She explained with a gentle, imploring voice.
“Sí, sí, señora,” Mrs. Espinoza responded in an
agreeable voice. “You no casada.”
“No, we’re not married to each other. Por eso,
señora, to tell the paper would cause a great
sadness...a...I think muchísima tristreza is how you say
it. You understand? Comprende?”
“Sí, comprendo. I no do this,” Mrs. Espinoza
promised. She glanced back several times at Hugh, with her
dark eyes narrowed in appraisal. “El hombre you amante,”
she said in a light, conspiratorial voice, savoring the
idea of a lover. “You...love?”
“Sí...yes.” Kate laughed, a little embarrassed, and
patted the woman’s shoulder.
“Pero, I...never...never...not know you goodness,”
Mrs. Espinoza said, struggling to be understood.
“Forget,” Kate said with a smile. “You will never
forget. Nor will I.”
“Sí, sí, I not forget you always, Kate.”
They hugged, and the laughter of relief and gratitude
flowed between them, welling up with a pleasurable mingling
Uncaged Songbirds 38
Karlene Kubat



of their sparely voiced understanding.
***
Kate held her hands under the warm blast of air as
Hugh’s big navy sedan rolled smoothly over the winding
country road.
“I’ve no idea where my shoes went. Laughing Water
swallowed them.”
“I’ll buy you another pair, my brave little trout. I
want you to get dry.”
She felt a sudden rush of euphoria combined with deep
tiredness. She leaned back and turned her head to smile.
“I’m almost dry already...just a bit damp.”
He pushed her hair away from her crimson cheek and saw
that her face held a feverish luster.
“I hope you won’t catch cold.”
“Don’t you know about the experiment someone did?
They turned a cold hose on a fully clothed woman and let
her walk around like that. Nothing happened.”
“Probably on a hot summer day.”
“I’ll be all right