Free The Naked Gardener by L B Gschwandtner Page A

damp, flashlights, a hatchet, Swiss Army knife, and tents, towels, soap, shampoo, and whatever personal items each of us needed. Along with the essentials, I had packed one bag with something I hadn’t discussed with the others. Just in case. I loaded this into the canoe with my other duffels and laid the paddles against the canoe’s gunwale. Maze leaned against the car with his arms folded, his face a dark cloud.
    “So you’ll meet me at the town put in above the falls in three days.”
    Before he could answer Erica’s minivan pulled up with two canoes tied to the roof racks. Erica waved to me. She was wearing balloony overalls and red sneakers. Her hair was braided back around her head. A burly man with an ample gut got out of the driver’s side. He looked out at the river and then turned and walked toward Maze, as if he couldn’t get away from a car with five women in it fast enough.
    “Hi,” he stuck out his right hand, “Will Marston.”
    They pumped each other’s hands and immediately started talking about fishing on the river. They walked over to the water’s edge. Will pointed at an eddy in the middle of the water. Maze gestured as if to show a fish swimming into and out of the eddy. They nodded and wandered along the bank.
    It surprised me, as it always did, how Maze could so completely mask his feelings the moment another man showed up.
    “Wonderful, isn’t it?” Erica came to my side. “All the way here in the car all he could do was complain about me going away for three whole days. You’d think he didn’t know how to open a can of tuna by himself.”
    ***
    After we loaded the canoes, said goodbye to the men, and watched the cars pull away, it was like we had been released from boarding school. The six of us gathered around a large flat rock where I spread out a chart of the Trout River. I can only describe the atmosphere as giddy. Like we were young girls again.
    “Here’s where we are.”
    I pointed to a spot on the chart.
    “And here’s where we’re going to end up.”
    I looked from face to face.
    Erica. Big, friendly, outspoken, hard-working Erica. Who would always tell you exactly what she thought. Who would always be there for anyone who needed help. Self effacing, funny, with a big heart that matched her body.
    Roz. Curt & to the point. A bit tomboyish, she had short, curly black hair, wore khaki shorts, a tight-fitting tank top, and Teva’s. A small ankh hung on a silver chain around her neck. Her body looked athletic so I assumed she worked out or perhaps was a runner. She had a small tattoo on her left shoulder. It looked like a bat or maybe a moth but I hadn’t gotten a close look at it. “If the river stays like this and we paddle leisurely what do you think we could cover in a day – about twenty miles?”
    “I think that’s about right. If we don’t want to push it.”
    I went back to the map.
    “What if one of the canoes can’t keep up with the others?”
    Timid, cautious Hope. She was slender, fragile looking, no muscle on her at all and pale, as if she’d spent her life indoors. She wore her straight, mousy, brown hair hanging to her shoulders. Her green khaki pants didn’t fit her body. She had on a faded logo T-shirt with the name of some lobster restaurant in Bangor, Maine.
    “Don’t be scared, little girl, we won’t leave you behind.”
    Roz patted her on the arm.
    Hope blinked and shrugged a little. I wasn’t sure if this meant she was nervous about keeping up a steady pace or just rattled by Roz.
    “Who cares how fast we can go. Let’s just get started.”
    Charlene the executive type. Charlene was a lawyer. When we were unloading the car with all the gear, Charlene took over, telling the others how to pack the canoes, whose bags to put where, how to position the canoes at the river’s edge. She made a face when Will Marston pushed one of the canoes too far past the water’s edge and told him to lash it to a tree branch so it wouldn’t float