April '88

The First Sight of Her

Something had drawn the dogs attention away from the field and I saw the muzzle turn in the direction of a solitary young woman perched on a log overlooking the water like the White Rock girl, beneath a feathery aromatic Eucalyptus. She was bent in ernest effort over a clipboard - a student artist, I imagined, trying to catch the texture of an aristocratic redwood spire roote ina dark ferny glen on the other side of the creek.

Seeing the advancing animal she moved with a quaint lack of grace to her feet, looking up, greenish eyes and the slightest brown tint to her untanned skin. Rushing at her, the dog jumped and pawed with mindless love, while I noted in the merest fleeting moment from the aversion of head and absence of any sign of that gush of maternal affection that sometimes followed, that there had been unwanted trespass and invasion, that the young woman -- her face seemed familiar -- was offended and that some apology was going to be required.I was embarrassed at the mistake... Well, that is not quite nothing but the truth, for the fact is that there was something that I had taken in even at a distance. Perhaps it was the particular thrust of her jaw, the grey-green cast of her eye, the eyebrow oddly plucked in a face that otherwise had no sign of makeup, the cut of hair that suggesting a low awareness of or indifference to style, conservatism, and budget consciousness... I waited to see whether the slight blush that was spreading appealingly upward into her face and the sardonic smile that was working across her mouth was more the annoyance of one sensitive to rude interruption that a sign of fixed program of ideological hostility.

"I'm sorry. I usually keep him leashed but by the time I saw him head for you it was too late. He's young. Uncivilized."

"Well," she said, looking down at some pebbles coated with drying salts next to the bubbling creek. As if there were more to be sai but it wasn't worth saying to a stranger.

"I hope it didn't ruin your sketch." She looked down at the clipboard. It was a penciled diagram of some sort, on blue graph paper with dimensions. There was a paw full of mud smeared across it.

"No." She looked at me directly. The anger had bled away but there was still plenty of reserve, but then she said, looking up at me "I don't think it was working anyway." My heart flooded at this inadvertant invitation.

"Can I help? I know this part of the creek pretty well. We're standing about 100 feet from the old Stanford house. Young Leland used to look for arrow heads down in the creek." She seemed to consider this.

"No. I don't think so. Thanks anyway." She started to put the clipboard and pencil into her book pack, a ritual of cessation and departure. I tried to read her feelings; was she angry? I said, "I'm sorry for the trouble."

At that moment the dog stopped at her feet, lowered his head, and dropped an object on the grass. I leaned down, catching a glimpse of ankle, picked it up and turned it in my hand. It was a bone.