He tossed his open sleeping bag across the hood of the Jeep and made himself a comfortable perch from which to watch the sunset. He lit a reefer. His mind wandered. He thought about his little corner of the earth turning away from the sun. The sudden prismatic refraction of diurnal sunlight altered the colors around him, making the water a richer, colder blue, making the mineral hues of the craggy rock cliffs across the way more radiant. The green on the hillside changed from a grass color to a more royal shade. So did his mood respond with a plunging and soaring sense of renewed excitement. He had crossed the fabled Mississippi twice on his journey West. Deer, Minnesota, had barely passed out of sight in his rearview mirror when he came upon the frail and unassuming first turnings of the mighty river. He had stood upon the bank and thrown a handful of soil over his left shoulder swearing, “I’ll never be an easterner again,” and continued on.
He had been riding all day since then with the doors stashed behind the tire rack at the back of the Jeep. He had tied a red kerchief around his head and taken off his shirt. “Ha-ha!” he laughed loud. He was gone! Deep country! Outta there! “Oooh hoo! Mmmhmmm! Heyhee-ah, hiyee-ah!” he sang in an off-key hoot. He could suddenly see her pretty face, up close, smell the feral and unmeasured richness of her skin, her breath, as she leaned in for a kiss. These colors that emboldened the scene about him were her colors too, her skin, her hair, her eyes. She had interrupted his long ride between his old life and the one he now sought. Standing in the middle of the road wearing a hard hat with a great red flag in her hand as the giant Caterpillars swung and ambled to and fro behind her, she had welcomed him to the new world. What kind of terrible Eden lay beyond he had no idea.
She smiled as she waved him through.
A mile or so down the road he pulled over, studied his map, then doubled back along different roads. She spoke into a walkie-talkie and dropped her flag as he approached. She smiled accusingly as she strode toward him and asked, “Are you lost, mister?”
“Completely. Want to get lost together?”
“No.” Her face and the small patch of tummy that showed under the knot in her workshirt were covered in road grime. A thick leather belt rode her hips over her pants which bunched up at the shins where big muddy workboots were laced only halfway. “But I’ll probably be at Canyon’s later for a beer.”
He raced to the next town and asked around about a place called Canyon’s, got cleaned up at the local hotel, and was on his second beer when she appeared over his shoulder as he played pinball. She wore a man’s dress shirt over a navy-colored leotard, fresh jeans, and motorcycle boots. She took the machine next to his and played hard. They started out talking about road construction but she soon changed the subject.
“The guys who run the bar are friends of mine, so I can feel free to come in here and let my hair down.” To make her point, she pulled the clip at the back of her head and in two or three shakes her hair fell in a breathtaking crimson splash that tumbled over one shoulder and then down in all directions, turning to face him as she did so and finishing off the gesture with her most dazzling look. He simply hadn’t realized that she was so pretty. She knew it, and her little surprise delighted her. He stopped playing and just let his ball go through.
They sat at a table in the middle of the room as the bar filled with people. She was studying anthropology. She loved working outside. She loved all the talk and she especially loved the crazy antics of the men she had been working with on the construction crew all summer. Yes, a few were in love with her. Of course, some had to be beaten off with a stick, who, by the way, were as appetizing as frogs in a bowl of milk. Yes, there had been one or two who had attracted her attention over the course of those months. And there was a guy from school who came looking for her and was just appalled at what he had found her doing. Understand though, he is young and doesn’t know. As a matter of fact, since taking a few semesters’ worth of courses she was learning to see her world with a kind of detachment. She didn’t need to travel halfway around the globe to study human behavior or sociological conditions and all that makes us human. She could get a pretty good start with the terrain right around here. Not that she didn’t want to travel. She wanted to go everywhere.
She kept Zak wildly entertained. Whereas some people use the word “can’t” in every other sentence, or the word “hate” when referring to the countless things that conspire to ruin their day, the word that most liberally flowed from her thin country lips was “love.” She loved this and she loved that, and what she didn’t love she was just crazy about! Her perspective was as intoxicating as the whiskeys they had switched to when they sat down. Zak could tell also that she loved inventing herself for his amusement.
Zachary Harper didn’t realize that his eagerness to listen had charm as well. She appreciated the many crude things he didn’t do or say. She accepted the fact that he was traveling West to get a job on an oil rig. She didn’t pry or challenge or insist he play the same games with her that she played with him. She had decided to make it easy for him.
Sometime after dark, she finished her drink and, laying both palms down on the table, said, “Look, I’m parked out back. Why don’t you let me take you for a ride around town and you can check out the sights?”
“Sounds terrific, what are you drivin’?”
She flared, instantly detesting the idea that he thought what she was driving should matter. He stopped to think. Of course, it stood to reason that if her passions were so easily incited in one direction, they could as easily be unleashed in the other.
“Just curious,” he smiled, “you know, guys like cars.”
“It’s a beautiful old Cadillac,” she said with matronly pride. “You can sit in the back.”
“Do I have to sit in the back?”
“You do if you want the best view. Wait out by the front door and I’ll pick you up.”
A moment later he was standing in the doorway of the bar staring up and down the empty street. All was dark and quiet. So quiet he could hear the breeze coming from far across the field opposite. So dark that the two streetlamps at either end of the block only made a small dome of light that was surrounded on all sides but one with pitch darkness. He put his hands in his pockets and took a deep satisfying breath. How completely cool. He didn’t even know where the hell he was and he didn’t care. Life is good, he thought. He listened for the low rumblin’ purr of that old Cadillac engine to break the silence. After a few nervous moments out from the alley someone on a bicycle glided around the corner making only the sound of slender rubber tires on the grainy cement road. She skidded to a stop right at his feet, her cheeks rosy and her breath coming hard.
“Well?” she said, her eyes gleaming.
“Well, got me.”
“You ride on the seat.”
He sat as she pedaled standing up with his hands on her hips. She had been right about the view, her perfectly round derriere bobbed up and down right in front of his nose. To be polite, he leaned far to the right and left but there was no escaping it. Beautiful! She pedaled like a demon and his legs stuck out with the heels of his boots just an inch from the ground. They rode through small-town streets, past the IGA and the Woolworth’s, past the gloomy old bank that stood at the center of town, through the quiet neighborhoods where all streets led to the main road and the Legion Hall, and beyond that to the railroad terminal at the outskirts of town. They bumped hard over the tracks to where naked kernels of corn lay in huge piles, three stories high. His legs were wobbly as he stood on firm ground.
“Where are we?” he asked.
She let the bike fall carelessly when she stood down.
“Home,” she answered and turned her head in the wind until her hair whipped his face. She stood there waiting, staring at him defiantly until he caught on. When he moved forward to kiss her, she met him halfway and kissed him hard and long. Her mouth was wet and her skin was cold. Her thin lips gr
ipped his, forcing open his jaw. The taste of whiskey was soon exhausted and replaced with the sweet overpowering aroma of her breathing. A second later she pulled away and dashed up the nearest mountain of corn.
As he scrambled over the top after her, she grabbed him and pulled him into the depression she had made. The lights atop the grain elevators cast moonlight blue shadows. Clothes came off. A jacket under her ass. A shirt behind her head. Feet dug in.
“The farmers say that sometimes the corn opens up and swallows a person whole. That there’s no way to dig them out before they suffocate,” she breathed, bit into his ear, and gripped him hard with her strong, wet cunt. Their pelvises locked. A dewy estrual film coated them. Filled his mouth and nostrils. She led him and turned him this way and that. She took control, then abdicated, then surrendered completely, to see what he had learned, only to incite new rebellions that caught him off guard and helpless. They fought as they fucked. She taught him how to fuck her proper, knowing that, being a man, he would not know how otherwise. When she came, she bit into his neck. She cried and she screamed and clawed his buttocks and back as her orgasm wracked her strong young body and sent tremors all through his limbs. When he came he left her and rose up on his knees and finished into the air, into the night.
“I love that,” she said quietly and pulled him back to her. They exhausted themselves and the night that held them. At dawn they made love.
That morning she watched from her kitchen window as he staggered down the side of the corn mountain and dusted off his clothes, scattering handfuls of kernels. He scratched his head. He looked around. She allowed him a moment of bewilderment before hollering and waving from her back porch.
Later, over coffee, he gazed out the window and laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” she wanted to know.
“Oh nothin’, I was just wondering where that pile of corn is going to end up. The Soviet Union, Africa, Asia.”
“More’n likely in the belly of some hog or cow. Or that Jeep of yours.”
He was staring out the window at that huge pile of precious manna. His face then darkened and he asked, “What if I had climbed down the other side? You wouldn’t have seen me.” A hard little corn pellet fell from his collar and landed with a plop in his coffee cup. He scooped it out with a spoon.
“That’s nothing,” she said, ignoring his question, “you should have seen where I found some of those this morning.”
She studied his face. Her hair was not lustrous or bouncy as it had been the night before but weighted down and darkened with human oils and ultra-fine corn powder. It framed her face in shadow, hiding it from the sunlight.
“I have a bad feeling about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a bad feeling because I believe you are a good man. That I’ve somehow come upon you in the act of becoming lost. I don’t believe there are very many good men left in the world. I have a sense that I may be the last person to ever know you. That would be a shame.”
They sat in silence.
“I have to leave for Morris today,” she said as she handed him a bowl of melon squares. “School starts next week and I’m already a day or two late in getting out of here. But before you go I have a little present for you. Wait here.”
She left the room, was gone for some minutes, and while Zak was waiting he took a look around. The kitchen cutlery was stacked in a box, ready for her departure. Through a doorway there was a small living room. Beyond that he could see into the bedroom. The bed was stripped and the bed clothes were piled in a heap. There was laundry ready to go and a couple of suitcases standing by. In the center of the living room stood a pile of things packed and ready. A stereo, a box of books, a beanbag chair, and a curious wooden box about knee high with a pleasant feminine face crudely carved in the lid. He lifted the lid and inside was another box. He lifted it. No. It was a small table. Under the table was a large brass chalice and beside it a long pointed knife in its sheath. Cloths of different sizes and textures were folded neatly, and resting upon these there was a wooden bowl with a lid. The bowl was filled with small rocks, and on top of these were small bundles of aromatic leaves, herbs. A large leather-bound book and a large stack of letters in their opened envelopes were tucked neatly inside as well. The name of the addressee was Jackie something. He suddenly got the notion that he was violating a very private space and felt a little ashamed.
Just then, she called out from the bathroom for him to bring his breakfast in and join her. She had drawn a hot bath and lit several candles around the small bathroom. He sat on the closed toilet seat and fed her melon pieces as he watched her bathe her perfect body by candlelight. He remembered thinking that the tips of her breasts looked like plump wrinkled apricots. The water darkened her long auburn hair and her brilliant green eyes shimmered as he sat there in silence breathing the steamy air, listening to the water and watching it run rivers and streams over valleys and through crevices.
“Would you like to whack off?” she asked invitingly.
He thought about it, smiled, and shook his head no.
She handed him the sponge.
“When I’m an old man and have forgotten everything else,” he laughed, “I’ll remember this.”
“I think so,” she said.
THE STARS EMERGED FROM THE deepening blue sky over the Sather Dam one at a time, then in clusters. He lit a cigarette. He imagined her going through long registration lines, hustling from building to building, attempting to reason with condescending administrators. Somehow he thought she would look ludicrous and out of place in a dormitory, like a tree in a flower pot.
He suddenly felt stupid and sad. Remembering her he realized she hadn’t been at all forthcoming about who she was or where she was from or what her plans were other than her very general impressions of things and her current circumstances. Fine. She had taken the encounter for what it was and that was clearly the way he was supposed to take it as well. He was a big boy, he could do that. However, the proximity of his thoughts of her made him suddenly very lonesome.
They had something in common though. Perhaps that she was older than her years. Something about what she chose to reveal to him of herself. Something about him accepting that, whatever it was. More stars made themselves visible at the top of the sky. Somewhere out there, right this minute, she was probably getting the old gang together. He tried to imagine her with other people her age. How she might act, talk, the things she would say. He tried to imagine college boys trying to solve the riddle of her sensuality. How she would have to hide herself and masquerade to just be understood by them superficially. Still, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her getting excited about—pizza.
Zachary Harper laughed out loud and tossed his cigarette away. He could still laugh, thank God. Days, weeks, months ago he would have “fallen” in love with her. Allowed that misperception of desire, lust, and ego to tangle into an unrealistic obsession to pursue and “possess” her. But now he was capable of possessing nothing. Those ambitions had evaporated. In another era they might have gone on from there to build their lives together, using their differences to keep their relationship new. In another life she might have been content with that. In this life they were both looking for something very different, though neither could say just exactly what that was. He held her gently in his memory, his arms instinctfully reaching around him to each opposite shoulder, and she soothed his frightened and insecure thoughts.
It was getting cold.
Zak did a few exercises, then drove back to town, stopping at the Badlands Exxon for a shave in the men’s room before heading on to the Sagebrush. Nothing was happening. Rather than spend a precious dollar, he made it back to the monument grounds, which were deserted and virtually his, did a few more exercises and slept hard.
IN THE MORNING HE HIT the Sagebrush and the City Bar. He was developing a keener eye in selecting whi
ch fellas to approach for work and which to avoid. The final outcome was in the hands of fate, or the gods, or whatever, and this morning, rather than waste away in the bars, he decided to go back out to Teddy’s Park where he had found a source of inner peace and strength, where he could at least relax. On a bluff overlooking the Missouri River thousands of feet below, he found an old lookout shelter made entirely of stone by men employed by Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act. He climbed up onto one wall, legs dangling, and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As he sat there, he lifted his arms and closed his eyes and released his senses to the currents of air and energy that flowed through the great chasm of rock and greenery that reached for miles down and back again. He could taste grass, and water, and trees, and then an unfamiliar stink. He opened his eyes. A thrilling bolt of energy shot through him. His nose moved with the breezes that brushed past his face, and then he found it again.
Buffalo.
Nothing else could smell like that, except maybe an elephant. He looked all around expecting to see one nearby; nothing. He grabbed his stuff and walked back up the hill to the Jeep, keeping his eyes, ears, and nose on the alert. Across the road the grassy prairie stretched on out of sight, yet he could see no sign of anything. But the smell was strong.
Just then a three-quarter-ton Ford four-wheel with a camper on the back came winding through the park kicking up dust. Unusual for anyone to come out this far, Zak thought. As it got closer, Zak could see three men sitting in the cab. One he recognized as Blackie but the other two were strangers. When they pulled up, Blackie introduced the driver as Vic Earlman, a buddy who had worked with O’Mally and him. Vic was a big man but the other fella, Danny Waller, was huge. As Danny climbed into the back to make room for Zak up front, Zak asked about the buffalo.
“They’re all over the park here, it’s a preserve, and yeah, you can smell’m for miles, that is unless Danny’s nearby. Hey wasn’t Purvis tryin’ to raise beefalo once upon a time?”
Roughnecks Page 3