16. The Great Outdoors #2
Clem shook her head again, her mouth twisting. “I don’t take anything on faith, not anymore. If there’s a god that knows everything, sees everything, understands everything, then he’s a cruel son of a bitch who knows how I feel, and there’s an end to it.”
“Oh.” Kizzy felt the blood rush from her head. She looked for a place to sit, but not in time, collapsing on the sandy beach. She ran a hand over her eyes, chuckling. “You knocked my legs right out from under me.”
Clem held out a hand and helped her up. “I figured it would shock you, but I’m still the same person I was ten minutes ago when you didn’t know I’m an atheist. Don’t let it worry you. Let’s enjoy this lovely day, each in our own way, okay?”
“Okay, but together.” Kizzy hugged the woman she’d grown so close to over the last few weeks, wondering why it didn’t bother her Clem was a nonbeliever.
Why should it? What she thought, felt, knew, made up the sum total of her. Kizzy liked Clem just as she was, and didn’t want her to change. And she wasn’t asking Kizzy to change her views to suit hers, either.
“It’s just another new thing to learn about the world and its people, isn’t it?
” She kept her arm around Clem’s waist as they continued walking until they found a downed tree leading out past the water’s edge.
“I used to think I was smart, but there’s so much more to the world than I ever imagined. ”
“Takes a pretty smart person to realize how little they know,” mused Clem, as she leaned on the higher trunk of the log. “An even smarter one keeps learning.” From her pocket she pulled a coil of strong, dirt-colored line, fishhook already attached. “For instance, can you tie this to the pole?”
“Sure.” She tied it in a bow around the pole.
Clem laughed, nodded, and plucked it loose. “Okay, let me show you another knot.” While Kizzy watched, she attached the line and had her tug on it. “The way I’ve got it now, a fish can go back and forth and fight, but the line won’t slip off the pole.”
“What’re you going to use for bait?”
“Nature provides.” Clem plucked a caterpillar from its stalk of grass and threaded it, still wriggling, on the hook. “Hold this,” she said, thrusting it at Kizzy with a playful grin.
She held it at arm’s length while Clem pulled off her boots and socks. In her element, her tall husband leaned down and kissed her. “Thanks.” She took back her pole and skittered barefoot along the log, past the waterline, out to where it sank into deeper water, then tossed in her line.
Kizzy sat and watched, wondering about their strange similarities and odd differences. What does it take not to believe in God? How would that feel? Freeing, she imagined, looking at the sky spreading to the horizon. And lonely. She heard a splash.
“Got one!”
Clem clambered back across the log, holding up a large yellow-gray fish with an orange spot near its head.
“Sunnies, there’s a group of them over there.
” She maneuvered the hook from the gaping fish’s mouth, then tossed it in the pail, where it flipped and flopped.
She searched through the grass until she found another bug, this one a tiny grasshopper.
Holding the pole out to Kizzy, she offered, “Would you like to try?”
“Yes, I would.” She kicked off her boots and jumped up, watching Clem thread the wiggling bug on the hook, then took the pole and, balancing on her toes, passed along the log until standing where it bobbed in and out of the water.
“Go get me a big one,” she said to the grasshopper before throwing it in the same direction Clem had.
She stood there, watching her line, when the pole jerked in her hand.
She jerked back, and as the line wriggled and circled in the water near her feet, she pulled up a fish.
“I caught one,” she cried, dashing back across the log to show Clem. “It’s bigger than yours,” she crowed.
“Well, I’ll be,” she grinned back. “It sure is. Guess I’ll have to go get me an even bigger one.
” She unhooked Kizzy’s fish, put it in the pail with the first, and plucked a moth from a nearby branch.
“You’re going to have to wrangle up your own bait next time, if you think you’re going to beat me.
” She laughed as she took her place at the end of the log.
After a few minutes with nothing happening but puffy white clouds scudding by in the sky, she pulled her line in, checked to see if the drowned moth was still hooked, and threw it in the opposite direction.
A fish jumped out of the water to grab the bait before it even landed, swimming down with the hook in its mouth.
Clem laughed and jerked on her line, but the big fish tugged back.
She grabbed the line with a hand, dropped her pole, and pulled hand over hand, slow and steady, lifting it out of the water.
“Aha, this one’s as big as yours.” But as she started back across the log, the big fish leaped out of her hands, wriggled off the hook, and dove back into the water.
“Hey, he took my bait.” She shook her fist at the water, and Kizzy fell over on her side, laughing.
They spent the rest of an hour enjoying their fishing, catching more than they lost, until their pail was full. As they put their socks and boots back on, the sound of shouting, splashing, and laughter came from the direction they’d come.
“I figured it wouldn’t be long,” said Clem with a mischievous grin. “Some of the men are bathing in the lake.” She laughed. “They don’t know there’s a woman out here, so they’re all stark naked, swimming if they know how, splashing around if they don’t. You want to peek at them?”
“I’ve never seen a naked man.” Kizzy felt herself coloring from her toes to the roots of her hair. “Besides you,” she amended, glancing around for listening ears, reminding herself never to let her guard down.
Clem gave her a smile Kizzy had started to crave, accompanied by a twinkle in her eye that promised intimacy to come.
“But would you like to, my dear? Isn’t your inner artist curious?
” She gave Kizzy a hand to stand, and a hug that lifted her off her feet.
The hand on her back dropped to pat her bottom. “Feel like being a little naughty?”
Curiosity warred with decorum. Kizzy looked up at Clem, considering. “Yes,” she said with a decisive nod of her head. “Given the same chance, they’d sure as hell peek at me, so yes, let’s go see what all the fuss is about.”
Moving with stealth through the trees, they returned to where the creek emptied into the lake. Crawling into and through thick brush that grew right to the water’s edge, Clem parted it enough for them to look through without being seen.
A dozen men were already in the water, washing hair and beards, scrubbing pits and privates, serene in their male enclave. A few more scooted around in varying stages of undress, piles of dirty clothes dotting the bank, before running into the water like boys on holiday, whooping and hollering.
“Ew,” Kizzy said, staring with fascination as one man dropped his pants before remembering to remove his boots, dancing around from foot to foot, freeing himself. “What’d you call it? Their johnsons are small and pale.”
“They live shriveled up in pants all day, but rage red and huge once released.” Clem laughed. “Or so they tell each other.”
Kizzy gulped. “Have you looked at naked men’s bodies before?”
“Better.” Clem smirked. “Two weeks ago in Boston, I bought a bathing costume and wore it at the men’s end of the beach, where half wore suits and the other half didn’t.
No one was any wiser. I wore a smaller johnson, careful it angled down, and it looked much the same as the other men’s swimming outfits. ”
“That seems very bold,” said Kizzy, impressed. “What if they’d discovered you were a woman?”
“Short of ripping off my one-piece swimwear, how could they know? I built muscle working in the gold fields, and had more than some of them. I bound my breasts flat, and wore my johnson.” She turned and nodded toward the men.
“I wanted to see the shape of their bellies, thighs, butts, and hips, compare them to mine.” Turning back to Kizzy, her eyes danced.
“Every now and again I meet a man who’s good looking, but I’d rather look at you any day.
Your body arouses me, their bodies do not. ”
“Me, either,” Kizzy agreed, watching a youth toss his long hair back and forth after washing it.
With the soft bloom of youth, coupled with the grace of a lithe body, he might pass for a woman in the proper clothing.
If he turned and bent his face to the water, she might believe him a woman.
Kizzy shook off the notion. Why would any man pass for a woman when he didn’t need to?
She looked at Clem’s excited profile, studying the swimming men using broad overhead strokes and full kicks, and had her answer. Because he wants to.
After a few minutes, Clem backed out of the brush. “Come on. After we eat, we can come back and find someplace private to take our own bath.”
“I’ll make a tasty dinner with these fish,” Kizzy grinned. “Wait.” She clapped her hands. “I saw some spinach and wild onions growing down where we were fishing. I’ll go back and pick some.”
Clem looked concerned. “Out here by yourself?”
She lifted the hem of her skirt to mid-thigh, showing her pistol secured in a short holster buckled around her waist and tied to her thigh. “I wear it every day now.”