tiny sounds: an owl calling, the faint sound of laughter at the bonfire, the pines creaking, cicadas screeching, resting, screeching. Rodents rustling in blackberry brambles. Pebbles clinking. Leaves shifting. Even clouds marching. Andbeneath, the murmuring sea benched in fog. This is indeed a full world, Dorotea. It overspills. She breathes, tastes the salty ocean cycle of rot and birth. Takes up her rod and feeds the line clumsily through the guides. Whips it behind her. It snags on something. She turns.
The boy is there. His fingertips on her shoulders, the sleeves of her cardigan. His eyes on hers.
Her mother stands in Dorotea’s room in the dark. Her hands on her hips like she is trying to crush her own pelvis. Her black shoes planted firmly. Dorotea straddles the window frame, one leg in, one out. Her fly rod half into her room. Her dew-soaked sneaker stuck all over with pine needles.
I thought I told you not to see that boy.
What boy?
Who called you Dorothy.
The boy in the canoe?
You know what boy.
You don’t. You don’t know him. I don’t either.
Her mother stares. Her body quakes, tendons in her throat stand out. Dorotea holds her breath. Holds it so long she feels sick.
I wasn’t with him, Mama. I was fishing. Or trying to. I got a terrible tangle in my line. I wasn’t with him.
Pescador. Pescadora.
I went out fishing.
From then on Dorotea is imprisoned after dark. Her mother does it herself: she screws long bolts into Dorotea’s window, hammers it shut. Dorotea’s door locked at night. She stares at her maps.
The summer rolls forward in silence. The rented housecramped and creaky. Every day her father leaves at dawn, comes home late. Dinners are eaten silently. Her mother’s face retreats inside itself like a poked sea anemone. Silverware clinking, a platter on the table. Beans with the life boiled out of them. Tortillas wrung dry. Please pass the peppers, Mama. The house creaks. The pines whisper. I went fishing today, Daddy. Found a lobster claw long as my foot. Really.
Dorotea leaves the house just after her father does and she stays out all day. Fishing. Telling herself she is fishing and not looking for the boy. She tramps all the way to South Harpswell, muddy-ankled, walking the sea edge, turning over shells, jabbing anemones with sticks, learning the tiny tricks of shore life. Don’t squeeze a sea cucumber. Scallop shells break easily. Stone crabs hide under driftwood. Check periwinkles for hermit crabs. Snails stay tucked inside murex shells. Stepping on horseshoe crabs doesn’t do anybody any good. Barnacles are good traction. From a hundred feet up a cormorant can hear you split open a sea clam and will turn and dive and land and beg for it. The sea, Dorotea learns, blooms. She learns and relearns it.
But mostly she fishes. Learning the knots, catching a barbed streamer in her hair, crouching on driftwood to pull out wind-knots or undo massive tangles of leader. Gets her line caught on brambles, on branches, one time on a floating detergent bottle. Learns to walk with her rod, guide it through brush, over rocks. Didn’t even know she needed a tippet. The cork handle on her rod goes dark with salt and sweat. Her brown shoulders go the color of old pennies. Her sneakers rot off her feet. She walks the sea’s edge barefoot, head up. This new Dorotea. This seaside Dorothy.
She catches nothing. She tries Popham Beach, the long faded spit of sand there, the estuary at ebb tide, at slack tide. She casts from rocky points, from a wooden dock; she wades to her neck and casts. And nothing. Sees men in boats haul in twenty, thirty stripers. Beautiful striped bass with charcoal stripes and translucent mouths gasping. And nothing for her own streamer hooks butgreenweed or flotsam. And those awful tangles of leader; line wraps itself around her ankles; knots from nowhere spoil her tippets.
Never a sign of the boy.
She sees fish out of the water, sturgeon leaping. Sees the ocean
The boy is there. His fingertips on her shoulders, the sleeves of her cardigan. His eyes on hers.
Her mother stands in Dorotea’s room in the dark. Her hands on her hips like she is trying to crush her own pelvis. Her black shoes planted firmly. Dorotea straddles the window frame, one leg in, one out. Her fly rod half into her room. Her dew-soaked sneaker stuck all over with pine needles.
I thought I told you not to see that boy.
What boy?
Who called you Dorothy.
The boy in the canoe?
You know what boy.
You don’t. You don’t know him. I don’t either.
Her mother stares. Her body quakes, tendons in her throat stand out. Dorotea holds her breath. Holds it so long she feels sick.
I wasn’t with him, Mama. I was fishing. Or trying to. I got a terrible tangle in my line. I wasn’t with him.
Pescador. Pescadora.
I went out fishing.
From then on Dorotea is imprisoned after dark. Her mother does it herself: she screws long bolts into Dorotea’s window, hammers it shut. Dorotea’s door locked at night. She stares at her maps.
The summer rolls forward in silence. The rented housecramped and creaky. Every day her father leaves at dawn, comes home late. Dinners are eaten silently. Her mother’s face retreats inside itself like a poked sea anemone. Silverware clinking, a platter on the table. Beans with the life boiled out of them. Tortillas wrung dry. Please pass the peppers, Mama. The house creaks. The pines whisper. I went fishing today, Daddy. Found a lobster claw long as my foot. Really.
Dorotea leaves the house just after her father does and she stays out all day. Fishing. Telling herself she is fishing and not looking for the boy. She tramps all the way to South Harpswell, muddy-ankled, walking the sea edge, turning over shells, jabbing anemones with sticks, learning the tiny tricks of shore life. Don’t squeeze a sea cucumber. Scallop shells break easily. Stone crabs hide under driftwood. Check periwinkles for hermit crabs. Snails stay tucked inside murex shells. Stepping on horseshoe crabs doesn’t do anybody any good. Barnacles are good traction. From a hundred feet up a cormorant can hear you split open a sea clam and will turn and dive and land and beg for it. The sea, Dorotea learns, blooms. She learns and relearns it.
But mostly she fishes. Learning the knots, catching a barbed streamer in her hair, crouching on driftwood to pull out wind-knots or undo massive tangles of leader. Gets her line caught on brambles, on branches, one time on a floating detergent bottle. Learns to walk with her rod, guide it through brush, over rocks. Didn’t even know she needed a tippet. The cork handle on her rod goes dark with salt and sweat. Her brown shoulders go the color of old pennies. Her sneakers rot off her feet. She walks the sea’s edge barefoot, head up. This new Dorotea. This seaside Dorothy.
She catches nothing. She tries Popham Beach, the long faded spit of sand there, the estuary at ebb tide, at slack tide. She casts from rocky points, from a wooden dock; she wades to her neck and casts. And nothing. Sees men in boats haul in twenty, thirty stripers. Beautiful striped bass with charcoal stripes and translucent mouths gasping. And nothing for her own streamer hooks butgreenweed or flotsam. And those awful tangles of leader; line wraps itself around her ankles; knots from nowhere spoil her tippets.
Never a sign of the boy.
She sees fish out of the water, sturgeon leaping. Sees the ocean
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