The Passion Season

by Libby Doyle

  “To love you like this, here in this place, it is like stopping time,” he said.

  I don’t even know what that means, but god, how I love you.

  When Rainer and Zan got back to camp, Victor was arranging wood for a fire. The other adults were sitting in camp chairs drinking wine, while the children crouched by the lake’s edge in the fading light trying to catch minnows from the shallows with a small net. Mel glared at them as they walked up. Zan looked at Rainer.

  Uh oh. Obviously, Mel is pissed at us.

  “Well, here they are, the wanderers,” Mel said. “I guess we should start thinking about dinner, but we need to head to the pump to fill up our water containers first,” Mel drained her wine and stood up.

  “You two, help me with the water.” She went over to a picnic table, grabbed three containers and shoved them at Rainer. He took them, obviously perplexed. Mel walked off in the direction of the pump, followed first by Zan, then by Rainer. When they had moved some distance away, Mel wheeled on them.

  “What the hell is the matter with you two?”

  Zan did her best to look contrite but Rainer seemed surprised.

  “Why are you angry?” he asked.

  “Why am I angry? Give me a fucking break. Are you going to try to tell me that you didn’t go back to that waterfall and screw each other’s brains out?”

  “So?”

  Jesus, Rainer, please shut up.

  “So? So?” Mel said, sputtering with indignation. “This is not that kind of gathering. We didn’t come out here to fornicate under waterfalls. There are children here.”

  “The children had no idea what we were doing.”

  “That is beside the point,” Mel said, her voice creeping louder. “I’m pretty sure the grown-ups knew what you were doing, and even if they didn’t, I’m mortified. I bring you along on this family camping trip and you act like delinquent teenagers. Honestly, Zan, what has gotten into you? You know better.”

  Rainer tipped his head back and looked down at Mel, his lips in a hard line.

  I know what that look means. He thinks she’s way out of bounds.

  “And what if someone had seen you?” Mel said. “A ranger. You would have been thrown out of the park.”

  “You’re right, Mel, you’re right,” Zan said. “I’m sorry. Our behavior was completely inappropriate. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Rainer shook his head and blinked at her.

  “I feel like a jackass,” Zan continued. “And don’t worry, we’ll be on our best behavior for the rest of the weekend.” She caught Rainer’s eye and jerked her head toward Mel.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry if you thought our behavior was inappropriate.”

  Oh no. The classic non-apology apology. This is a fucking disaster.

  Mel’s eyes became slits. She looked at Rainer for what seemed like a long time. Finally, she smiled at Zan.

  “I’m glad you understand. I shouldn’t let it ruin our weekend. Let’s just forget about it.”

  They walked off toward the pump to get the water.

  By nightfall, Mel’s dinner was taking shape. She’d brought a cast-iron Dutch oven to cook a spicy vegetarian stew with seitan. She planned to roast potatoes and vegetables on the open fire, with steaks for the meat eaters, which was everyone but Rainer. He thanked Mel for being so considerate and offered to chop all of the vegetables for her, but she curtly turned him down. Zan could not believe the trip that was supposed to end with a Mel-Rainer friendship had gone so wrong.

  I need to talk to her about this.

  Zan got her chance when Brian bemoaned their lack of beer.

  “Wine is nice, but we’re going to be sitting around a campfire, eating steak. Doesn’t that just cry out for beer?” he asked.

  “I agree,” Rainer said. “For steak, we should go find a nice Rauchbier.”

  “I always defer to Germans when it comes to beer, so you should come with me on a run. We’ll take my car. I have an empty cooler in the back.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Emmett said. “I want to try out my German-language skills.”

  “Auf wiedersehen,” Mel said. “But if you keep speaking Deutsche after you get back, Zan and I will start talking almost entirely in initials.”

  “Yep. Because the FBI’s JTF needs to get with the DEA before the HBC gives all our money to the ATF,” Zan said.

  “Please, no,” Emmett said, laughing as they walked off towards Brian’s car.

  When they had gone, Sarah, Caroline, and Victor decided to take all the kids to the bathhouse so Mel could prepare dinner in peace. Zan stayed with Mel.

  “You’re still pissed at Rainer, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “He gave me a non-apology apology.”

  “I know, in its most egregious form, too. I’ll talk to him. He wasn’t listening to either of us. I could tell from the look on his face. I mean, at first I think he really didn’t understand, but then he thought you were criticizing me and he got his stubborn look.”

  “He sure did. But what do you mean he didn’t understand? He’s a grown man.”

  Zan shrugged. “Rainer has an extremely permissive attitude towards sex,” she said. “I think it’s good for me. Healthy. I’ve never heard one judgmental word come out of his mouth about anything that anyone might want to do as long as it’s consensual, so I don’t think he understands how uncomfortable our behavior made you. But I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him I know where you’re coming from. He’d never want to upset you.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Are you going to give him the evil eye tonight?”

  “No, but you warn him that my nonna is Calabrian, so I know from evil eye.”

  Zan chuckled and let it drop. She built up the fire to make it hot enough for the Dutch oven and put some hot dogs on the grate for the kids. By the time they got back from the bathhouse, the hot dogs were ready. The kids were eating when Rainer, Emmett, and Brian came back with the beer.

  “Did you get your Rauchbier?” asked Caroline.

  “Ah, no. Limited selection,” Rainer said.

  “We should have warned you about the beer choices out here in the sticks,” Victor said.

  “Yet another reason I choose to live in the city.”

  Beers were handed out all around. When the stew was ready, Mel ladled it out. It was a big hit.

  “Delicious,” Sarah said. “How did you make a vegetarian stew so rich?”

  “Cashew paste and avocados.”

  “You’re cooking is so creative, Mel,” Rainer said. “You should open a restaurant.”

  “Thank you, Rainer.”

  Zan sighed into her mug of seltzer.

  She’s mellowing.

  After dinner, the kids ran around. Brooks tried to get away from the little girls before he gave up and chased them, leading to delighted squeals in an extremely high register. As much as Zan liked Lucy, she was glad when the girls finally went to bed. Brooks stayed up but went into his tent to play his handheld video game. They didn’t hear another peep out of him.

  The adults sat around the campfire drinking beer. Emmett, Sarah, and Brian talked about the university. Evidently, Emmett had been trying to get a seminar in the poet Wallace Stevens on the roster for the spring semester with little success.

  “They told me the students won’t go for it, that the only poetry classes that get any interest these days are broad survey classes,” Emmett said. “I told them survey classes are meant as an introduction, not the sum total of a student’s education in poetry, but what can I say? The market is the market.”

  “Stevens can be difficult,” Sarah said. “He’s thematically complex, which might scare some kids off.”

  “Most of his poems are short. Perhaps that fact could balance the complexity and work in your favor,” Rainer said. Emmett and Sarah looked at him in surprise.

  “You know Wallace Stevens?” Emmett asked.

  “Yes. Sunday Morning is one of my favorit
e poems.”

  “I had no idea you had an interest in poetry,” Emmett said.

  “You could say I was obsessed some years ago, but it faded. I tried to write some poetry, but my themes were so grim all I did was depress myself.”

  “I have a similar problem,” Brian said, chuckling. “So, why is Sunday Morning a favorite?”

  “I grew fascinated by Stevens’ idea that people shouldn’t look beyond sensuous life for fulfillment or meaning or be frightened by nature’s impermanence. That ‘Death is the mother of beauty,’ as he put it.”

  “Good lord, Rainer. You weren’t kidding about grim themes,” Mel said.

  “Well, do you agree?” Sarah asked. “Is death the mother of beauty?”

  “To devote oneself to the religious notion of an afterlife is a waste of the beauty and purpose we can find in the world. Life follows death, just as death follows life. The two are equally impermanent, at least in terms of systems.” Rainer lowered his eyes. “Not individuals.” He looked lost for a moment before he raised his eyes to Sarah again. “We can find something like divinity in natural systems.”

  “What about God?” Sarah said.

  “How do you define God?” Rainer leaned his head back and spread his arms. “Look around us. We have a natural system here where all things join in an endless cycle of creation and destruction, everything necessary, everything expendable. This balance is beautiful to me.” He gazed at Zan. Pain flitted across his eyes.

  “But I don’t know anymore. I’ve changed,” he said. “Now I can understand the desperate need for there to be something beyond death.” He rested his hand on Zan’s thigh. She squeezed it in return.

  Mel is right. You’re strange, Rainer, but I don’t care.

  An hour later, everyone had retired to the tents. Zan snuggled into Rainer’s arms as they lay on the air mattress, but when he rolled on top of her to nuzzle her neck, she stopped him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Loving you.”

  “Well, stop it. No hanky-panky allowed, so please don’t get me all revved up.”

  “Seriously?” He sat up, so she did too. She could just make out his face in the dim light.

  “Yes. Didn’t you hear me tell Mel we would be on our best behavior?”

  “I thought you were referring to sex in the forest.”

  “No sex in the tent either. Tents don’t exactly give you privacy of sound.”

  “We’ll be quiet.”

  “Good god, man, don’t be such a sex fiend. We can screw for hours straight when we get home.”

  “Promise?”

  “I guarantee it,” she said. “But right now, I want you to understand why Mel was angry. I figure you thought she was being unreasonable.”

  “Yes. You do not deserve to be taken to task because Mel is uptight about sex.”

  “But I agree with her. We shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why? Why should those in love not experience a beautiful communion? People need to shed this notion that sex is something self-indulgent. I’ve always found Americans to be especially prone to this fallacy.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that.” Zan pushed a piece of hair away from his eyes. “Don’t look at it that way. Look at it like this. Mel is our friend. Our actions made her uncomfortable, mostly because of the children. I should have known it would make her uncomfortable, and convention says she is right. We were inconsiderate.”

  Rainer thought about it for a few moments. He grimaced. “She was considerate enough to make that delicious stew for me, but I didn’t even try to understand.” He touched Zan’s face. “I’m sorry, my love. You’re right.”

  “That’s my sensitive soul,” she said, as she pulled him down to lie again beside her. “You should offer a sincere apology tomorrow.”

  “I will, and I will behave myself, but we should come back here. Listen to the forest now, the animals and the insects. We are surrounded by life. We should come back here alone to lie on the moss and love each other in the dirt.”

  “You’re the only person I know who gets turned on by insects and dirt,” Zan said. She burrowed closer.

  Rainer disentangled himself from Zan’s limbs and kissed her softly when she stirred. He whispered to her to go back to sleep. She had said Mel was an early riser, so he got up to make coffee.

  My idea of a peace offering.

  By the time Mel emerged from her tent, Rainer was sitting at the picnic table grinding beans with a hand grinder.

  “Good morning, Mel. Would you like some coffee? These beans are Sumatran. Smooth and rich.”

  “Uh, thanks, Rainer. They smell wonderful.”

  Rainer put the coffee in a French press and retrieved the boiling water from the camp stove. As he poured he watched Mel from the corner of his eye. She smiled at an eruption of bird chatter from a nearby copse. A good sign.

  “I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday, and also for my insincere apology,” he said. “I am unused to being around children but that is no excuse for my unwillingness to listen. Zan spoke to me last night. She made it clear that what we did was rude and selfish.” He stopped pouring the water. “I’m sorry.” He took a step toward her to deliver his most persuasive smile. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Well, Rainer, you’re kind of hard to resist.”

  “You didn’t say whether you forgive me.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Good!” He kissed her on the cheek and finished up with the coffee. When they both had mugs in hand they walked to the edge of the lake to watch the mist slowly curl along its surface.

  “So lovely,” Rainer said. “Our own little paradise.”

  “I think your paradise is still sleeping in the tent.”

  CHAPTER 7

  LATER IN THE MORNING, everyone put on boots for a hike along the rest of the Falls Trail. The loop was slightly over four miles, and steep in places. Zan thought it would be a challenge for Lucy and Emily, but it went well. Rainer and Brian only had to carry the two little girls for the last half-mile or so.

  Back at the campsite, Mel produced the components of their dinner from the cooler. Standard burgers-over-the-fire fare, with portabella mushrooms and big slabs of marinated eggplant for Rainer. After they had eaten and cleaned up, everyone gathered around the fire. The exhausted kids sat quietly in their parents’ laps. Brian broke out the beer again. They all had toasted to a successful hike with five-year-olds when Mel remembered there were musicians in their midst.

  “Zan. Did you bring your guitar?”

  “Yep. And Rainer brought his violin.”

  “Oh no. We forgot last night,” Emmett said. “Will you play?”

  “Sure thing,” Zan said. She and Rainer went to the car and returned with the instruments.

  “You are in for a serious treat,” Emmett said. “Zan is an amazing guitar player.”

  “Wait until you hear Rainer,” Zan said. “Let’s see. How about some bluegrass?”

  They’d been working on Salt Creek, a classic, and laid into it as soon as they tuned up. Zan was picking fast and clean, leaning back with a grin on her face, before she handed it off to Rainer, who played a scorching version of the same pattern. They never took their eyes off each other as they zoomed through the happy tune, playing in tandem and then trading off to play intricate breaks. Emmett’s friends from the university stared at them wide-eyed.

  “Wow. You two should be professional musicians,” Caroline said. Mel shot her a faux-sour look, which made Zan laugh.

  “Mel hates it when people say that to me, but she has nothing to worry about. It wasn’t in the cards.”

  After a parade of bluegrass tunes, Emmett suggested that Rainer play something baroque.

  “Zan told us that’s your specialty.”

  Rainer nodded, tuned up for a moment, and then began Bach’s Chaconne, a piece famous for its haunting shades of loss and hope. The onlookers listened in perfect stillness. They remained silent for a
few moments after he’d finished. Zan swallowed and blinked.

  How are you mine? I still can’t believe it.

  Emmett appeared almost as affected as Zan. “‘With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things,’” he said.

  “Thank you, Emmett.” Rainer bowed his head. “Whose words?”

  “Wordsworth. Tintern Abbey.”

  “Hanging out with all you poets and musicians is making me feel inadequate,” Mel announced. “Lucky for me music hour is over because we have some sleepy little girls here, and a sleepy little boy, from the looks of it.”

  The parents took their children off to the tents. Rainer and Zan put their instruments back in the trunk. When the kids were asleep they started to work on their remaining beer. Emmett broke out his scotch and they piled more wood on the fire.

  “Maybe you guys should play again,” Emmett said. “I think the kids would sleep through it.”

  “I don’t know, Emmett.” Mel shook her head. “You know Lucy. If she wakes up, she won’t go back to sleep. She’ll be afraid she’s missing something.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost quiet hour anyway.”

  “We should tell stories around the campfire,” Rainer said. “I’d love to hear one of your FBI stories, Zan.”

  “I don’t know, Rainer,” Zan said. “I don’t think anyone would be interested.” Immediate protests from the others revealed this was not the case.

  “All right, then. What do you think, Mel? Which one should we tell?”

  “You ever heard the Perez story, Rainer? From back when Zan was a pup agent?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “Ugh. Perez? You’ll wonder what the hell kind of a job I have.”

  “Oh, come one. They’ll love it.”

  “Well, it is pretty funny,” Zan said. “Go ahead, Mel.”

  “Perez was this Dominican gangster, a real bad guy, involved in drugs and guns and human trafficking, so we were all working on it,” Mel said. “He had a weakness for beautiful women. Poor Zan had to go all party girl and hang out in his Delaware Avenue nightclub until he noticed her and invited her up to his VIP room.”