Red From Green
Malie Maloy, 2009
The summer she turned fifteen, Sam Turner took her last float trip down the river with her father. It was July, and hot, and the water was low. Hardly anyone was on the river but them. They had two inflatable Avon rafts with oaring frames—Sam and her father in one, her uncle Harry and a client from Harry’s new law firm in the other. In the fall, she would be a sophomore, which sounded very old to her. She’d been offered a scholarship to a boarding school back East, but she hadn’t accepted it yet. Applying had been her father’s idea, but now he looked dismayed every time the subject came up. Everyone said what an opportunity it was, so much better than the local schools, but she couldn’t bring herself to fill out the forms, and neither of them could talk about it.
Sam had been down the river every summer for as long as she could remember—in a dozen rainstorms, and in hot sun that burned the print of swimsuit straps into her shoulders. (…) It was a four-day float trip, or five if you dawdled, or three if her father had to get back to work.
Her uncle’s client was the reason they were on the river so late in the summer, when it was all sandbars and rocks. Sam hadn’t been told that, exactly, but it was the feeling she got, that they were going for this client. He had come from somewhere else, and was staying in Montana only for the case. She met him at the put-in, unloading the gear. Harry introduced her as his niece.
“You got a name?” the client asked.
“Sam,” she said.
“Layton,” the client said. He was younger than her uncle, and he wasn’t tall, but he was big in the chest and arms. He set a full cooler on the ground and put out a hand to shake hers. (…) “You have perfect teeth,” he said. “Did you have braces?”
“No,” she said. She was awkward at fifteen, and praise made her suspicious.

Layton said, “This is gonna be fun.”

Her father and Harry drove both empty trucks downriver to the place they’d take out three days later, to leave one and bring the other back. Sam stayed with the rafts, and Layton volunteered to stay with her—to keep her safe, he said. They sat on the bank with the gear, sliding the coolers along the grass as the sun moved, to keep them in the shade. Sam was reading (…)Layton took out a shotgun to clean and oil it. “I bet you’re a crack shot,” he said. “Montana girl like you. I bet you’ve got your own guns.”

Sam shook her head and kept reading, and he brought the gun over to show her the sight, which was just a notch of steel on the barrel. He crouched close to her shoulder, and she could smell the oil on the gun.
“You don’t need a fancy sight for a shotgun,” he said. “You ever fire one?”
“No,” she said. Her father had guns, but he hadn’t been hunting since her mother died (…) She sometimes wondered if her father had quit hunting because he’d been busy taking care of her, or if he’d just stopped liking to shoot things.
“Ho, boy,” Layton said. He stood up. “We gotta take care of that. Get you a pheasant.”
“It isn’t bird season.”
“No one’ll know out here,” he said. He ran a cloth over the barrel.
“There are houses on the river,” she told him. “It’s not very remote.”
Layton laughed. “Re-mote. That’s a good word.”
She felt her cheeks heat up, but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t need very remote,” he said. “Just a little remote.”
Sam knew that her father wouldn’t tolerate poaching, so she left it for him to take care of. But when he and Harry drove up, her father just looked hard at the shotgun and started loading his boat.
They put in that afternoon, and in spite of the low water they got to the first campsite before dark. Her father had a two-man tent for himself and a burrow for her—a waterproof sack just big enough for a sleeping bag, with a mosquito net at the top. She set up the burrow with her sleeping bag inside, and Layton and Harry built a fire and talked about the case.
(…)
The next morning, Layton was in the water before breakfast, fishing in waders, which no one ever brought in a boat on the river—you just waded out in shorts. He caught a little brown trout, clubbed its head, and threw it in the raft. Sam’s father held the fish to the marks on the raft’s rubber bow, and said it wasn’t big enough.
“Pull on the tail a little,” Layton said. “It’ll stretch.” (…) Sam saw Harry give her father a look, and her father put the fish in the cooler.
They packed up early and got on the river. (…)
At camp that afternoon, her father went fishing and she walked away from the river (…)thinking about boarding school. She had a sense that she wasn’t equipped for it. And she was wondering if she really had perfect teeth, and if anyone but adults would ever care. When Layton came through the trees, she knew she’d wanted him to show up, though she hadn’t known it before. His attention was different from other adult attention.
“I brought you something,” he said.
She waited, but he kept on up the trail, and she followed him. They got over the first hill from camp, and up a second, higher one, and down again into a clearing. There weren’t any farms or houses, and they were a long way from the river. Layton reached under his shirt and pulled out a small pistol, dark gray, with a short, square barrel. There was a fallen tree ten yards away, with small branches sticking up, and he stood an empty beer bottle upside down on one of the branches. The last of the beer stained the bark of the tree. Then he walked back and gave her the pistol. It was still warm from his skin, and heavy.
“Nine-millimetre Ruger semiautomatic,” he said. “My pride and joy.”
“Can they hear it?”
“I don’t think so, with those hills,” he said. “Anyway, we’re legal. We’re not killing anything.”
He took her right hand and shaped it around the gun. “One hand like this, arm straight, just like the movies,” he said. He reached around her shoulders and positioned her left hand. “The other underneath.” He kicked the instep of her right foot. “Bring this leg back.”
Sam stepped back and pointed the gun at the bottle, not really breathing, with his chest against her back.
“Close one eye,” he said. “Cover your target with the barrel. The gun’s going to kick up, but it’ll drop right back where you need it. You only need to squeeze a little.” He let her go and stepped away.
She missed the bottle completely on the first shot, and the kick surprised her: the gun’s explosion shot through her hands and shoulders and down into her legs. The second time, she blew away the upended bottom. The third time, she hit the broken-off neck. Then there was just a little triangle of glass sticking up from the tree.
“Go for it,” Layton said.
She did, and hit it, and there was nothing left but a stub of branch.
“Hit the branch,” Layton said.
And she did. She’d never been so proud of anything. Layton reached out and rubbed the top of her head, quick.
“She’s a sharpshooter,” he said. “You’re not afraid of the kick yet, so you’re not anticipating anything. You’ve got to keep that.”
“O.K.,” she said. She could feel herself grinning like an idiot.
“Those perfect teeth,” Layton said.
She closed her mouth and looked at the scarred tree where the bottle had been, which made her want to smile again, but she didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Layton said.
“That’s O.K.,” she said.
They walked back to camp, and Layton veered off as they got close, so they came from different angles. They said nothing, and her father and Harry asked nothing. Sam thought they must have heard the shots, but she figured it could have been Layton shooting alone. She had hit quarters propped in the tree bark, and made a smiley face in a piece of paper. In the pocket of her shorts, she carried an exploded hollow-point, which Layton said wasn’t legal to buy anymore, and a warped quarter. (…)
Sam’s father was making enchiladas in a Dutch oven, and chipping ice for margaritas with a pick. He made one without tequila for Sam. Layton asked for a virgin, too—alcohol made him nauseated since the work in the lab—and got out a little stereo with batteries. Sam’s father said it would ruin the silence of nature, but pretty soon he was dancing at the cookstove, singing along to reggae covers. It was still light, and the swallows dived in the canyon. Her father two-stepped over with a big plastic spoon and a chip full of salsa, singing in falsetto, “No you ain’t—seen—nothin’ like the Might-y Quinn.” He gave her the chip and kissed her on the forehead. (…)
After a while, Layton said, “I need someone to walk on my back if I’m gonna row tomorrow. I’d ask you,” he said to Sam’s father, “but I’m guessing you weigh about two-fifty.”
Her father didn’t say anything; he kept playing harmonica.
Layton looked to Sam, who looked at the fire.
“It just takes a minute,” he said. “I threw it out on a job, and rowing that boat messed it up.”
Her father kept his eyes closed, the harmonica wailing. Sam stood up.
“Shoes off,” Layton said.
She slipped off her sandals and left them by the fire. Layton lay on his stomach on the ground. “O.K., step on careful,” he said. “Right in the middle.” She stepped, squeezing the air out of his voice. “Now the other foot,” he said. “Keep your balance.” She could feel his ribs beneath her toes. “Now walk forward, slowly, then back.”
She did, and her father got up from the fire. “I’m beat,” he said. “We should get an early start tomorrow.”
Sam looked at him, and he nodded, as if agreeing with himself. He put away his harmonica and disappeared into the dark, where his tent was pitched. She could hear the rustle of nylon and the whine of the zipper, and then the night was quiet.
“One more time,” Layton said. “That’s so great. Now if you kneel with your knees between my shoulder blades, that’s all I need.”
She knelt like he said, lowering her hips to her heels, looking down at her bare knees and the short hair at the back of his head. “Now hold it there,” he whispered. “Oh, God.”
Then he didn’t say anything. The right side of her body was warm from the fire, the left side was cold. It was too cold at night to be wearing shorts. She heard her father roll over in his sleeping bag inside the tent, nylon against nylon.
Layton’s hand came back and touched her hip. “You’re tilted to this side,” he said. She straightened. “There,” he said, but his hand stayed on her hip. She thought about what to do. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to have forgotten the hand. After a minute, it slipped under the back of her thigh, touching her skin. She took his wrist and moved it away. The hand paused in the air, then slipped back under her thigh, over her shorts, touching between her legs with a shock like the jolt of the gun firing in her hands. She put her hands on the ground to stand up, awkwardly, but he found her calf and pulled her back down. “Stay,” he whispered.
She was on one knee, half-straddling his back in the dust, and he rolled over, facing her. His hand slid up her leg to the small of her back and held tight. His eyes were cloudy and intent, focussed and unfocussed all at once, and she’d never seen a man look that way before.
She pulled away then, and he let her go, and she left the fire and climbed, trembling, into her burrow. She lay awake long after the moon rose, listening to the sounds in the camp: to her father snoring, and Layton finally putting out the fire, and the unzipping of his tent, and the rustle of his going to bed. She kept her hands between her thighs for warmth, and the feeling there was sharp and aching, but she didn’t know what to do about it except lie awake breathing until it went away.
When she woke up, Layton was out in the river again, walking downstream and casting at the banks. It was the brightest day yet, and a mayfly hatch hovered over the water, the current dimpled with the open mouths of rising trout. Her father poured the last of the hot water into the oatmeal in her cup, and she ate standing. In her shadow on the ground, she could see her hair, three days uncombed, sticking out on one side. She smoothed it down with her hand.
(…)
Layton didn’t look at her at the takeout. (…)Her father drove and Harry had the other window, so she was squished with Layton in the middle, his left leg pressed against her right.
They dropped her uncle and Layton at the put-in with Harry’s truck, and drove home in silence. Sam tried to keep her eyes open, but fell asleep. At the house, they unpacked the truck and hosed out the coolers, and when she gathered up her book and her river shorts the hollow-point fell out of the pocket onto the grass.
Her father picked up the bullet, rolled it in his hand, held it between his fingers. It was copper-cased, splayed out in a blossom of dull lead where the tip had been.
“Where’d you find this?” he asked.
“I shot it.” She waited for the next question.
He said nothing, but held out the slug to her, and she took it.

(…)Then she went into the house and filled out the acceptance form for the scholarship to boarding school, and in the morning she put it in the mail.
She said nothing at first, and life went on as usual (…) and then, after a week, she told him that she’d accepted the scholarship.
He frowned at the table. “Oh,” he said. “I mean, that’s great.”
She wanted to ask why he had left her by the campfire, but instead she said, “Orientation is the last week of August. I should get a ticket.”
“Sure,” he said. “Right.” He looked straight at her, and his eyebrows knit together. “I’ll miss you here.”
She felt a flood of warmth for him, an overwhelming feeling that it was a mistake to go away. He hadn’t meant to leave her there. He hadn’t known what would happen. He definitely hadn’t meant for it to happen. Again she wanted to ask, to make sure, but instead she took her dishes to the sink, and the moment was over.
(2009)