Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  “I love you,” I said, knowing something momentous had just strengthened our bond.

  “I love you,” he replied. I sensed he knew a discrete miracle had just occurred, unleashed on top of him, but I never asked if he knew what had happened. Instead, I gazed a dreamy love-filled gaze into his eyes and kissed him harder.

  Reese tweaked my rear left cheek.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, teasing, yet self-conscious.

  “What?” he said. “It’s nice.” Reese flashed a smile.

  “It’s fat.”

  “No it’s not,” he said, appreciating my glutes once more.

  I was silent, sure that it was.

  We went to Busch Gardens that day, another amusement park to cling to each other and hold hands in the long lines while awaiting the hurl of G-forces, tantalizing our young-adult stomach’s with thrill rather than wretchedness.

  In line for a lemonade, I hugged Reese from behind.

  “I’ve got money in my pocket,” he said, his own arms busy, reaching awkwardly behind to hug me in return.

  Pretending to be his second set of arms, I fished in his right front pocket, digging for coins.

  “Camryn,” Reese playfully admonished, laughing while the kiosk lady watched his pants jump around as my fingers found quarters at the innermost thigh.

  “Found ‘em!” I removed my hand, victorious. Kiosk lady appeared conflicted between a smile and being horror stricken by the appearance of indecent fondling. A furious blush swept my cheeks as I realized what I had looked like. Reese and I burst into another round of laughter, resuming our place in line in a full frontal hug, sharing the lemonade.

  I dropped Reese at the base early Monday morning for work, feeling a domestic twinge of him working while I took care of things at home, except that he worked odd shifts with no time off until Easter weekend. I picked him up Good Friday afternoon with another happy reunion, ecstatic to see each other again after a four-day eternity, yet dismally aware we only had two days left.

  “I’ve been looking for summer jobs,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Reese said, interested.

  “I found this really great one in Alaska—at a fishing lodge,” I said, enthused. “I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska. And the job pays well too, room and board included.”

  “What would you be doing at a fishing lodge?” Reese asked with a you never cease to amaze me attitude.

  “I’d be a maid. And maybe a waitress,” I said, unafraid of hard, menial, and thankless work. “I’d work ten hour days, six days a week.”

  “That’s pretty far,” Reese said, contemplating that I would be even that much farther away than I already was. “I don’t have any more time off until fall anyway,” he said, thinking aloud. “Whatever you want to do.” Reese’s pat on my hand told me he was fine with it, fine as he could be given our circumstances. “Send me pictures.”

  * * *

  Brad fell asleep Saturday night in the recliner during a late-night rerun. When the sitcom characters began a discussion of safe sex and condom usage, an uncomfortable sensation jolted my whole body up to my ears as Reese sat watching beside me. It seemed like a prudent discussion we should have, yet didn’t—a topic too embarrassing to discuss. After the show, Reese clicked off the television, leaving the room dark and quiet except for the sound of Brad breathing. Reese’s roaming hands and gentle, deep kisses transfixed me into a state where I didn’t care who was sleeping six feet away. Reese pulled off my shirt for the first time and then his. Our chests touching, skin to skin, intensified the already heated moment so that when Reese eased down my sweats, this time I didn’t stop him. It was just like the zenith of Palm Sunday, only this time in bare skin during the wee hours of Easter Sunday. Swimming in hungry lingering kisses, the elusive simultaneous climax that Dr. Ruth lectured about quickly rushed over us in coursing waves—a mystical union of body and soul that only made me want him more, sensory on all six levels, zero regrets.

  Sleep, hiding between thrill and excitement, finally took hold. But Reese woke me again, nuzzling me with his delicate and loving touch for encores twice more before dawn.

  Reese again said, “I love you so much.” He slipped on his sweats under the covers. Brad had snuck away somewhere in the night, so we lay alone watching the spring sunshine peek through the blinds. When Reese excused himself to use the bathroom, I quickly dressed in his absence. We exchanged bright smiles as he came out and I went in, and I thought that I never wanted to let him go.

  Scant blood showed up on my toilet paper which must have come from the pressure I remembered causing me to let a happy desirous gasp rather than one of pain. I had no idea why my girlfriends said the first time was overrated. I showered off, imagining that if we were in a hotel, we wouldn’t have to shower alone.

  * * *

  Reese held me tight while we said our goodbyes at the airport that afternoon, as if letting me go meant that he’d never see me again.

  “You’ll be out in November,” I said, while sniffing up my tears, trying to convince both of us that there was a bright side.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said, giving me one last kiss before I disappeared down the jetway. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” I said, still managing a smile while wiping my tear-ravaged cheeks.

  Virginia was for lovers, real lovers, not one-night stands.

  * * *

  Dear Megan,

  It has been five weeks since I lost my virginity, seven weeks since my last period and five weeks since I have heard from Reese. Normally I wouldn’t care I was late. I’m highly irregular. But seeing how I’m supposed to go to Alaska in three weeks and I have reason to worry, I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood. They offer free pregnancy tests. I wouldn’t be caught dead buying one in the store, plus, they are expensive. This caused a slight logistical problem since you are supposed to bring in a fresh first-pee-of-the-morning sample. They said if I couldn’t get there first thing in the morning, I could refrigerate it and bring it later. Like I could really stash some whiz in my dad’s fridge without raising questions. So, I made my own cooler with some ice in a bowl and kept it in the car until my lunch break at school when I could go over there. Before the lady would tell me the results of the test, she asked me if I wanted to be pregnant and I said no. Then she told me the test was negative (to my great relief), but still gave me a lecture on courses of action had the result been different. She gave me some condoms too. Of course I won’t need them. I won’t be seeing Reese again until the fall and I plan to be on birth control by then. I’m kind of concerned and disappointed that I have not heard from Reese. Maybe he is busy. I miss him so much.

  I’d better go. I have to get to work. How are you, by the way? Write soon.

  Love, Camryn

  * * *

  Father and Jo said goodbye a week before I left. “We’ll send you a postcard from Mackinaw Island,” Jo promised.

  Ten hours after boarding the O’Hare bus, I set foot in Alaska. A handful of others made the connecting Ryan Air flight that let us off on the tarmac, which was dirt. Upon arrival, our supervisor, a.k.a. “Mrs. Hitler,” let it be clear that the two job classifications for scum of the earth like us were kitchen help and maids. Our status was below that of guides and we were not to speak to the guests unless spoken to first, be seen and unheard.

  “And there will be no fraternization with the male crew,” she said, followed by, “Do not put anything but excrement down the toilet. We are on a shallow septic here. When you are finished, put your toilet tissue in the wastebasket.”

  The other maids and I slept in guest rooms the first night, our own quarters not quite ready. We flipped the mattresses after first un-mummifying the beds which had been wrapped in white fabric-softener dryer sheets. “Save those. We can use them later,” she said.

  The women’s first task was to clean the lodge from top to bottom and everywhere in between, scrubbing our hands raw, while the men pulled off the winter p
lywood shutters, serviced the generator, landscaped, painted, and mowed.

  The next night, in our own living quarters, one of my three roommates, Emily, woke to a drip on her head. Healthy rain beat against the picture window which rattled and creaked at the head of my bunk as the gale wind blew from the lake.

  “My bed’s wet,” she said. At the same time we heard a separate drip onto the carpet.

  Our crew-quarters ceiling was a sieve, permanently repaired with a clear plastic tarp stapled to the inside. The puncture in the center funneled leakage into a trashcan catch basin.

  With fraternizing out, after a while the resort was just like Dirty Dancing except that the only thing dirty was the mold in our quarters and the fish-cleaning station where gulls bickered and swooped down, lakeside, carrying off entrails. And there was no dancing except by anglers who caught sixty-pound King Salmons. We caught minnows, barehanded, in shallow pools and held bonfires in the twilight of midnight on the pebbled beach—one time watching a Loch Ness monster swimming in the distance become a cow moose as it emerged close to the shore, then trot away.

  Emily and Greg, her boyfriend who had come along for the adventure, snuck into a vacant guest room for a bathtub tryst. They felt brave and amorous after Greg presented her with a carved caribou-antler engagement ring. I thought it romantic, being proposed to under the midnight sun. I wondered if Reese would have thought so, but four weeks in, he still hadn’t answered my other questions, so I didn’t ask.

  “No fair,” Roxanne said to Emily as she sipped scalding hot chocolate we made straight from our bathroom tap. “You got a bath . . . with a guy . . . and we’re stuck with shower shoes and celibacy for four months. How was it?” she asked eagerly.

  I would have loved to tell Reese about how the boss lady fell and broke her hip and how Maddy, the truck driver woman from Wyoming, fantasized about hiding beneath the stairs, yanking the crutches out from under Mrs. Hitler, whom Maddy called Thump Drag because of her subsequent hobble. And I wanted to tell him about sneaking chocolate chip cookies meant for the guests; and how I saw beautiful rainbows almost every day; and about the time Mrs. H. nagged Richard so badly that he ruined an omelet, setting it sail into the trash, a three-pointer, shot straight from the frying pan, and how she shut up after that; and how we gathered twice a week, unpacking pallets of groceries flown in from Anchorage like an army of ants; and how on my afternoon run, delivering ice door to door, Mrs. Mooreland, our most elderly guest, sat up in bed, covered up to the armpits, bare-shouldered, while Mr. Mooreland stood in only a towel waiting for me to fill their bucket.

  But I didn’t.

  “Here’s your mail.” Emily threw a stack on my bed. “What’s Mumsy got to say today?”

  I opened Mother’s letter, ripped it up and threw it in the trash. “The end of the world is near.”

  Mail arrived, flown in almost daily, right after the guest rooms had been cleaned. Maybe Reese hadn’t gotten the address, yet everyone else had. Everyone else, Father, Jo, Brad, Chris, Megan, Mother, Karla, Kurt, even Sarah, wrote to me more than when I had been in Australia. “It’s all for you,” Mrs. H. would say, handing me the mail—not an uncommon occurrence. Sometimes she even sent me to the post office, and when I went, not only did I look right and left to cross the unpaved street, but I also looked up as it doubled as a runway.

  I wanted to know what Reese thought about the time Emily nearly vacuumed up a guest’s fishing pole, catching the fly and winding the line around the roller, or the time I found a used rubber in the one of the guest rooms.

  “Don’t four guys share this room?” Amy asked when I called her over to see my revolting discovery. The bathroom smelled as if they had poor aim. She held her nose.

  Rather than succumb to a state of total grossed-out-ness, I said, “I don’t care who’s in this room, this is disgusting!” and picked the scum bag up with a stick, depositing it into the trash, shivers crawling up my spine.

  “Here you go,” Roxanne said to Gary, the lead fishing guide. “The guests in Room 5 left these behind.” She slipped him a few Swedish porn mags which made their American counterparts look like Ranger Rick.

  Tucking them under his arm, he turned to me and said, “Your day off tomorrow, right? We have space on the airplane if you’d like to fly out.”

  Strapped into the de Havilland fitted with floats, I donned my headphones and listened to the rugged, chain-smoking bush pilot’s pre-flight. We taxied in waving bobs, then he pumped the throttle, coaxing the Beaver into the air. I took comfort knowing my life was in the hands of a rumored ex-con, convicted of killing his wife’s lover in a jealous rage. To buzz brown bears feeding on Kamishak River salmon, and beholding glacial blue ice with a bird’s-eye view was worth the risk.

  It was my last day off—Roxanne quit.

  * * *

  At season’s end, we boarded the puddle jumper to Anchorage, an evening flight to ensure they’d squeeze as much labor out of us as possible. The evening sun drew long shadows to the east of stunted evergreens. Iliamna Lake grew small in our wake, but not in significance—an endurance test passed. It was just twelve hours until I’d be home, home to resume my interim life until Parks College started in January. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the cold airplane window until touchdown in Anchorage jolted me awake. Flight 808 to Chicago was held at the gate for our arrival. I found my seat, stowed my carry-on—including the frozen blueberries I harvested fresh from the spongy tundra the day before—and settled in. The lights flickered, ventilators blew, and engines revved. Then it went dark. We all stared at each other, at least stared at the black space where others were, until our eyes adjusted to the dim terminal lights seeping in from outside. Shadows of neighboring passengers emerged. There was a hum of inquisition until the announcement came. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have encountered a mechanical difficulty. Thank you for your patience.” Thirty-five minutes later, the airline pacified us with a complimentary meal ticket and an apology for the inconvenience of having to bed down at the airport until a repair part arrived the next morning. Richard stood at the gate as I again entered the terminal, returning from a short trip to nowhere.

  “I thought you were on this flight,” he said, confirming his hunch. “Want to win back that dollar you lost in the bet?” He stood there with a deck of cards in his hand.

  “I’ll win it back. And I’ll get a letter too.”

  “Sure you will.”

  “Shut up.” I punched him in the arm, smiling, since he’d been fun to pass the ‘concentration camp’ time with and we had become friends. We played cards until 1 a.m., me losing each round, then pulled up the comfiest piece of hard terminal floor and slept, side by side.

  Homecoming from the fishing lodge was like stepping into someone else’s reality. Father and Jo, and my friends, had been living their lives, business as usual. I was jerked from working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, to begging for at least 40 hours a week at the card shop. Father did a good job of not making me feel guilty for taking a semester off as my summer job lasted into fall, causing me to miss the beginning of classes. My pockets were full of a semester’s worth of tuition and living expenses, a nice start, but hardly enough for two more years of college.

  Dear Reese,

  I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, well, all summer really. I’ve missed you, and missed hearing from you. I miss sharing my days with you, if only on paper. I purposely cut down on my writing because I wasn’t hearing from you; I thought you might not want to hear from me. Where have you been? Not in my mailbox. I waited all summer for a letter from you. I even bet the chef at the fishing lodge that I’d get a letter from you during the summer, but none came. I got letters every day I was there, thank God, but none came from you. I’m lost. I love you so much, but if you aren’t going to be in this relationship, neither can I. Please write. I don’t want to let you go, but if I don’t hear from you by the end of the month, I’ll take that to mean we are no more.

 
; What happened? I ask myself that every day. Hopefully you will answer.

  Take care and love you.

  Camryn

  I kissed the seal of the envelope, then nervously dropped it in the mailbox, staring into the space where it fell. Whiskers walked with me on this solemn journey. I knelt down to pat her furry head. “Did I do the right thing?” I whispered. She licked my hand.

  We walked home at half the pace of a stroll. “Are you bummed too, Whiskers? You’re usually pulling my arm off.” Whiskers seemed to share my mood. She stopped to sniff a rubbed-out toad on the sidewalk. “Yuck, don’t do that.” I tugged on the leash, but not before she was able to sample the toad spot with her tongue. “Gross!”

  * * *

  Dear Camryn,

  I’m sorry I have not written in so long. That was wrong of me. I shouldn’t try to shut you out, but things have not gone well for me and I didn’t want to trouble you. I have missed you so much.

  My job has been terrible. The people here are so unfair—makes me not want to wake up each day and go to work. I can’t wait until I’m sprung, smelling sweet freedom again.

  In addition to that, my parents’ divorce has hit me hard. It’s like my whole family support network has disintegrated. I didn’t know where to turn or how to deal with it. I’ve never told you this, but what’s worse is that I could never count on my dad and now Ryan can’t count on him either. Ryan hasn’t been playing ball as well as he used to. It’s like there’s something wrong with him. He’ll be sitting on the bench most of this season. Dad said, “I knew it wouldn’t last. He won’t amount to anything more than Reese has.” I felt bad for Ryan because he’s just now getting a taste of Dad’s medicine. I’ve dealt with it my whole life. When I was just six I heard my parents arguing and my dad said, “I never wanted kids in the first place!” Do you know how much that hurt? I’m alive only because my mom tricked him into getting her pregnant. She wanted another child so badly. She always said I was the sweetest boy she knew, but I don’t know how far that’s gotten me. Mom is so preoccupied about picking up the pieces of her life and starting over, it’s like I don’t exist anymore. Sometimes I wonder why I exist. She’s gotten back together with Edward, a guy she was engaged to before dad, and plans to marry him, but I’m worried he isn’t good enough for her.