Erica bright and Erica green-eyes

By this time I had separated Erica into two personalities: Erica Bright, who was sweet, playful and girlish (and who liked me), and Erica Green-Eyes, who could best be described as prowling and competent. Green-Eyes was the one whom I continually offended; and it was Green-Eyes who made my first thoughts so filled with dread as I lay beside her in the small hours of a sunny morning, knowing that in minutes she’d awake and hustle me along to another river crossing, snapping at me, glaring at me, shoving me because I was slow and we had to cross before the glaciers began their morning melt. It maddened Green-Eyes that I continued to lose tent stakes, that I had no sense of balance, that I was a poor map reader. — “Come on! ” Erica said as we canoed up Moose River. “ Hard, deep strokes! Dig into that water! Come on; there’s a tribe of hostile Indians behind us and we have to stroke for our lives! They’re going to catch us at this rate! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Hard, deep strokes! They’re coming closer; they’re cocking their bows; let’s see you put yourself into your stroke! Dig in! Bend at the waist, move your shoulders; STROKE! ” —As we went farther upriver, my stroke actually began to get smoother and better. Erica was happy, believing that maybe I’d actually learned something. I paddled us around for a little while as she lay back and watched the clouds. Presently we felt an impulse to piracy, so we tied up at a private dock, tiptoed into somebody’s garden, and stole a handful of strawberries. — “Now stroke…, ” said Erica very sleepily, laughing and yawning in the sun, and the sunbeams danced on the water and a faint breeze stirred her hair. — Going back downriver, I also stroked creditably. We had a good time until we reached the landing. I jumped out to pull the canoe up onto shore. Still inside, Erica giggled as it wobbled, thinking that I was playing, and as I summoned my energies for a return smile I stumbled, tipping it and her into the water… “God damn it, ” she said… — In general, no matter whether I did or did not learn things from Green-Eyes (and I do remember a few occasions where she nodded at me in a satisfied way, and once because I had located our position so accurately she gave me the McGonagall Pass topo map for my own), the lessons were neither easy nor pleasant. I would look down at the ground, apologizing for my latest stupidity and feeling a strange tightness in my chest which I thought then was pure self-loathing (but which I now suspect was anger, too); and Erica threw her head back despairingly, reached to me, and cried, “Think! ” Then she would feel a pitying impulse to rally me, would make herself smile and say, “Your river crossings are a hundred times better than at the start.”

“Thank you, ” I said.