St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

When Sawtooth Bigtree receives a notice that he’s been selected as an elder buddy in a program for at-risk mainland youth, he initially scoffs. He also scoffs at his buddy’s name, Augie Roddenberry, referring to her simply as “the girl” instead. But he immediately finds himself drawn to Augie, an “apple-cheeked” junior with a criminal record that she refuses to divulge and eyelashes so long that Sawtooth “could fish with them.” She reminds him of someone he used to love, though he can’t remember who. His dodgy memory is one of the reasons he’s at Out-to-Sea, a flotilla of decommissioned vessels that serves as a retirement community.

Sawtooth wants things to be perfect whenever Augie visits. On this morning, he swings outside on his crutches (the lower half of his left leg was amputated years earlier) to chide Miss Markopoulos, his neighbor, for chumming the water to attract stingrays. Not only is this against Out-to-Sea regulations, but Augie finds the stingrays off-putting and Sawtooth has come to agree. Besides, he considers Miss Markopoulos a fool for getting attached to creatures that cannot return her love.

The houseboats that comprise Out-at-Sea sit enclosed by a seawall which protects them from the weather, currents, and waves of the real ocean. A machine circulates the water within the seawall as gentle, manmade waves. The brochures heralded Out-to-Sea as “the perfect balance of privacy and community.” But its social activities mainly consist of spying on one’s neighbors through binoculars and peering wistfully toward the distant beach where children play in the summer. 

In preparation for Augie’s visit, Sawtooth places little things—a $10 bill, a pile of Demerol pills—strategically around the cabin. Augie started stealing things on her very first visit. He doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s been enabling her for months. He likes it best when she steals worthless items, like his grocery list or hair clippings. When he realized she was taking the painkillers his doctor prescribed to help with his phantom limb syndrome, he started hoarding them for her. He tells himself that letting her steal them is little different from offering a visitor a candy dish. Besides, he’s lucky Augie is only a kleptomaniac. Mr. Kaufman’s buddy is an arsonist.

The silence of the day—which Sawtooth found so unbearable when he first arrived at Out-to-Sea, but which isn’t so bad when he knows that Augie’s coming—is broken by the moans of Ned Kaufman, a faker who’s always trying to get himself admitted to the Medic Ship. Sawtooth wouldn’t admit it, but he likes being there, too. Zenaida Zapata lives between Sawtooth and Ned. Hearing Ned’s groans, she offers to pray for him to Underwater Mary. Underwater Mary used to be the buxom figurehead of Zenaida’s boat. It fell off in a storm before Zenaida’s arrival. Zenaida fished her out of the water and now venerates her as the Virgin Mary. Underwater Mary resides in a makeshift shrine on the deck of Zenaida’s boat, keeping her company, she boasts, so that she has no need of a buddy.

When Augie arrives at quarter after four, Sawtooth runs his hands through his hair and opens the cabin door with a flourish. Augie throws herself down onto the couch and doffs her ballcap to show Sawtooth the flamingo-pink streaks she’s had dyed into her reddish hair. Much to his relief, she’s in a good mood, so Sawtooth starts a game of “This Object Is Older Than You Are.” Augie isn’t interested. She wants him to follow through on his promise to show her the stump of his left leg. She’s been curious ever since he mentioned his phantom limb syndrome.

Sawtooth rolls up the leg of his pants and Augie reaches out toward the place where the rest of his leg should be. She drops to her knees, opens her mouth, and sticks out her tongue as if to lick the missing flesh. Desire threads through the usual discomfort Sawtooth feels when anyone looks at his stump. Augie wants to know if he feels her tongue. He does. But he lacks the words to describe what he feels, both the physical sensation in the missing limb and the emotions in his chest. Augie muses that his body is like a house haunted by the ghost of his missing leg. 

To change the subject, Sawtooth asks how much community service Augie has left. Standing up, she says that her sentence has been reduced for good behavior. In fact, if Sawtooth can just sign the form she pulls out of her pocket, today can be her last day. Sawtooth can’t find the words to tell her how devastated he is. He stumbles down the hall to the bathroom, swaying in time to the mechanized waves rocking his boat. He can hear Augie poking around the living room in his absence.

Across the bay, a lost stingray glides into the Wave Assuager, clogging it and causing a rogue wave which rocks the Out-to-Sea houseboats violently. Ned cracks his skull. Undersea Mary topples overboard. Sawtooth falls through the bathroom door and into the living room. Startled, Augie jumps back, dropping Demerol pills onto the floor. As she frantically gathers her things, Sawtooth says he didn’t see the pills in her hand, says that he knows she’s been stealing and doesn’t care, says that he used to be a thief, too, when he stole muskrats from other boys’ traps during the Great Depression. He chokes out an anguished declaration of his love.

Much to Sawtooth’s horror, Augie merely mocks his declaration. She leaves him lying on the floor with abandoned Demerol tablets pressing into his back. He dozes off and endures a nightmare in which stingrays gently caress him, but he can’t enjoy the feeling because he’s scared of their stingers. When he wakes up, it’s dark. He stumbles to his deck chair and looks up at the sky. As a boy, he could pick out all the constellations. Now the stars, the lights of the Out-to-Sea boats, and their reflections swirl disconcertingly around him as he bobs “alone in the darkness.”