Though Steven rode as if pursued, he couldn’t drive the image of Liz from his mind. Facing him down. Flushed cheeks, wild strands of red hair streaked by the sun, boobs alert and seductive as hell under the speckled shirt, green eyes sparking as if afire. Green fire, brilliant, burning, intelligent as all-get-out. How had a woman like her let herself get caught up in all that meek-and-mild, miss-priss, praise-the-lord shit? And why did he give a damn anyway?
Taunting her was the only way to put her at arm’s length after the haircut episode. Her fingers running through his hair, touching his neck and ears and arms, leaning that sexy body into him so her tits mashed up against his bare flesh. Jesus. Worse, he sensed it had gotten to her too. Next thing, she’d be wanting…expecting…demanding. That would never do. Never.
He pushed the Harley hard, watched the speedometer quiver toward ninety, and took the hills and curves of the narrow highway only a breath from flying over the edge. One wrong move, a piece of gravel, a tiny twig under a tire, and he’d be gone. Gone forever. Sailing off into eternity. Hell of a good way to go.
He twisted the throttle, G-force slamming at his chest, threatening to suck the breath from his lungs. Tears filled his eyes and blew away. Still he pushed, heart pounding, adrenaline rushing to sensitize every nerve until it throbbed. With the heavy braid gone, his head felt light. And if he lived through this awesome ride, he sensed that an indefinable something keeping him tied to the past would have been breached. Just a romantic notion? He wasn’t sure. Tossed the thoughts to the wind. Besides, after ’Nam he knew he couldn’t die.
For the moment he left it all behind, became a minuscule mote of dust flying toward infinity, soaring, leaving the ground and heading upward, outward. And tagging along behind, bedeviling his soul, the seductress Liz, chasing him through the hills and curves.
Dusk lay in soft hues of pink and lavender when he drifted slowly into camp accompanied by Lefty and Shadow. Each parked their bike, grabbed a beer from the cooler, and sprawled around the site. He couldn’t help noticing that her car remained in the parking lot. He’d expected her to be gone, and he didn’t know how to feel about her still being here.
Why, out of all the places to be, should she come here at the same time as he? He could drive himself crazy following the chain back to the event in both their lives that had led each of them here at this precise moment.
Christ, you’d think this was Kismet or something. What was, simply was, and that’s all there was to it in this random universe.
He swallowed the last of the beer and plopped down to take off the worn leather boots.
“Going for a swim and wash off some of this crud,” he told the others, plucked a sliver of soap from the litter in their supply box, and headed for the lake.
Wished he could just sit down and talk to her. Wished he could carry on a sane conversation about nothing in particular. Wished he dared to watch her eyes long enough to see if she cared what he thought or how he felt. Maybe even give a damn about what was going on in her world.
Or maybe he’d just go find her and act like a damned jackass again to get rid of those feelings. That was more likely.
Lefty caught up with him before he’d gone very far. “You gonna try to make it with her, ole son?”
Amazing how the man could read his mind. He’d been doing so for all these years, knew Steven better than he knew himself.
“You’re crazy. Screw that,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, be ’bout what I said.”
“That stuck up broad? You must think I’m nuts.” Steven hurried off before the conversation went any further. He expected Lefty to come after him, but he didn’t.
His bare feet made squeaky sounds in the wet sand, and a warm scent drifted out of the woods and over the water. The sensation of coming night fingered through the afternoon heat, and when he raised his face to embrace it, he saw her sitting all hunched over in the sand, hugging her knees. Right at the water’s edge, so the gentle lapping of waves kissed her butt. He’d almost walked right over her.
She raised a graceful hand and wiped at one cheek, so he could tell she was crying.
Aw, hell, he didn’t need this. Not even a little bit, but like the idiot he was, he didn’t turn away. He had to sit beside her, listen to the sound of her voice, imagine touching her. All the while knowing he never would, never could, have anything she might offer. Or offer her anything, either, for that matter.
Stopping, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“No. No, I’m not. But I will be,” she replied, and didn’t make a move to leave. Or, surprisingly, didn't ask him to go either.
He lowered himself beside her, and wondered in his heart what the hell was wrong with him.
Chapter Six
For a long while after Steven sat down beside her Mary Elizabeth remained quiet, staring out over the still water while the tree line darkened against a spun-candy sky. It was difficult to remain angry with him for the earlier stunt with the bikes and his aloof mockery. His solemn presence belied those actions, as if she had dreamed them up, yet she couldn’t resist remarking on his behavior. The schoolteacher in her felt it necessary to scold for bad manners.
“Almost didn’t recognize you without your sneer.” She didn’t look at him.
“I left it with Lefty. He can use it better than me.”
A grin twitched at her lips. At least he sounded contrite. She dragged a finger through the wet sand between them, took a deep breath of air redolent with summer warmth and growing things. And him. This man who affected her so strangely, so unexpectedly. A pair of blue butterflies flitted to the water’s surface, then danced off. The need to cry abandoned her, leaving a desire she embraced with a feeling that, if she didn’t know better, might be called happiness.
“Feel better?” He gazed out across the lake. Could be talking to himself.
The question, spoken so softly she could barely make out the words, held an unexpected compassion rather than his earlier sarcasm. “Oh, sure. Fine, thank you. Just feeling sorry for myself.”
“Bad shit?”
Laughter caught in her throat. Bad shit, indeed. Sometimes his language did more justice to a situation than hers.
“Not so bad as some. You know…”
“Yeah, I do. We all carry our own burdens. Just ’cause someone else’s are worse don’t make ours any easier.”
Resisting an urge to correct his grammar, she twisted a glance his way. “Quite the philosopher.”
“Oh, well. I’ve always thought that was a crock of shit, you know. ‘I cried ’cause I had no shoes till I saw a man with no feet.’ Both got reason to cry, don’t they? You got no shoes, your feet get cold, you got no feet, well, at least you don’t need shoes.”
“A bit coldblooded, but I guess you’re right.”
“So…?”
He wanted her to tell him about her “bad shit,” that was evident. But she wasn’t sure she could. For too many years, she’d kept the sorrow and frustration of her unhappy marriage buried deep, not daring to open up because the only friends she had were also friends of her husband. They couldn’t wait to run to him and tell him anything she might say.
“I’ve always been good,” she finally said.
“Not exactly news.”
“I mean—”
”I know what you mean. Now you feel bad ’cause you’re no longer being good?”
A nod would suffice because he stared at her with a penetrating look that prevented her speaking. It said, “Be bad with me.”
And she was, oh, so tempted. She was grateful he didn’t say it aloud and further entice her, but he remained quiet. Silence embraced them. Shades of lavender darkened to purple. The shimmering sky reflected in the lake’s surface while all else faded to black.
The night was so beautiful, with its pinpricks of distant stars flickering on, that she felt like crying again, but didn’t. Instead she said, “I was baptized, not once but twice.”
“Just in case, huh?�
�
“I guess. Maybe Reudell wanted to be sure it took, wanted to witness first hand my being reborn. After the first time—I was just a kid—Mama wouldn’t let me go fishing with Daddy and the boys anymore. It was the worst thing that happened to me growing up. Isn’t that sad?”
“That it should be the worst thing that ever happened to you? No, not at all. That it still sticks in your craw is what’s sad.”
Not in the mood to defend herself, she hugged her knees and gazed at the mirror surface shimmering with reflections of stars like fireworks. “Isn’t it lovely?”
Only his breathing replied, like he anticipated her saying more.
She complied. “He put his big hand over my mouth and nose and I thought I might suffocate. I knew what to expect. I’d seen baptisms before. I would be saved, born again. Free to sin and still go to heaven, long as I was sorry later.”
“If you believed that, you—”
Not willing to hear what he meant to say, she rushed on. “The water was up around my thighs, cold, and then he bent me backwards and pushed me under. I could see him through the water, mouth open as he shouted about my salvation. And I thought... I thought, ‘Suppose the Lord doesn’t want me in heaven, suppose I’m not good enough for him? Will I drown?’ Then he lifted me out and I choked and spat. I was reborn.” She paused for a moment. “He kept looking at my breasts, and I wanted to burst out laughing.”
Steven chuckled. “And so it was a sin to go fishing?”
“No. Oh, no. Not exactly. What she said was, ‘Young ladies do not sit on the bank of a river with their brothers and father, the men of the family. Young ladies wear their Sunday best all afternoon after church. They listen to the sounds of men going off to play.’ ” She cringed, hearing her mother’s voice in her own words. So alike, so pious. “For God’s sake, I was seven years old. A child. After that, I never played again.”
“Never?”
“Oh, no. Instead I huddled with the ladies, left behind by their men, listened to them speak of the evil lusts of the fathers, of wicked, lustful men who are not unlike animals.”
“Jesus.”
“Exactly. He should have specified the sins He died for, so those men would be forgiven by all the self-righteous women. Forgiven for their lusting ways by such women, who only did it to procreate.”
“Jesus Christ. You mean you…? Jesus H. Christ.”
“Can’t you think of something else to say besides that?”
“I’m speechless. Astounded. You must’ve lived in another world from mine. A way different world.”
“I lived...I lived in the world of my mother and father. Then I went to live in the world of my husband. I never found Mary Elizabeth’s world. And that’s what I’m doing here, out here, a woman alone.” She sent him a sideways glance, could scarcely see his features in the blackness of night. “In case you wondered.”
He chuckled and she liked the sound. “I did.” He stood. “Going to take a bath. Want to join me?”
“Lord, no. In there? In the dark? They have showers here.”
“I prefer the lake. It’s cold, makes me know I’m alive.”
A vivid memory of floating under the water, drifting so willingly toward death, drove shudders through her. Because of him pulling her out she would never know if she had truly intended to take her own life, and somehow she felt as if he had cheated her out of that knowing.
He ran into the darkness and she couldn’t see him but heard his body hit the water with a flat slap and imagined him diving into the lake. Only the slightest of splashing sounds bridged the void between them, and then she could hear him no more. Suddenly, she wanted to be out there with him, naked, swimming in the cold water with only the stars as witness to their transgression. Instead, she stood, brushed the sand from her behind, and strolled back toward the battery-powered light she’d hung outside her tent. Maybe she should buy a new lantern, replace the one those hooligans destroyed.
****
Steven kicked over onto his back, bobbed there awhile watching stars, then hung listlessly, treading water and listening to strains of “Puff the Magic Dragon” from Lefty’s battered old tape player. He’d worn out a dozen Peter, Paul, and Mary tapes playing that song. Each time they tried to find another, the search was more difficult. Hard to believe the popular trio was all but forgotten.
He wondered if they were dead now, with their gentle voices and heartbreaking sound. They didn’t play music like that any more, songs sad enough to make the heart break. All jerky, freaky stuff today, like kids were afraid to look inside their own souls and find what they really cared about.
“Stupid shit,” he muttered, and swam into the shallow water, where he stripped out of his shorts and washed all over with the tiny sliver of soap.
She was gone when he waded to shore, and he was vaguely disappointed.
As he approached the tent he heard Lefty talking. He spied Steven and hollered, “Hey, man, remember Puff the Magic Dragon? How she could fly. If a plane ever deserved a medal of valor, that regal old bitch did.”
Too much beer tonight. Lefty going all sentimental about ’Nam and the ancient bucket of bolts they all grew to admire for her courage and stamina under fire. Shadow loved tales of ’Nam, ate them up, but Steven wished they never had to talk about the place again.
“Tell me about her,” Shadow begged.
Steven sighed, rummaged around until he found a can of Vienna sausages, and popped the top.
“A DC-3,” Lefty said. “Army, he call ’em C-47s. In ’Nam we dub her Puff the Magic Dragon. She thunder and snort, and her wings, son, they wobble like hell. She wasn’t supposed to be a battleship, but that’s what we made of her. I remember standing butt deep in mud watching Puff wallow across the sky, flying low, spitting fire from her guts. The lady, she...damn, man, she flew with a bellow that ripped a hole in the mystical kingdom.”
“Damn me,” Shadow said.
Steven stuffed a weenie in his mouth. It tasted like mud cooked in chicken broth.
“What was it like, being over there?” On this subject, Shadow could get old Lefty going. “I used to pretend, out on the streets, that I was in Vietnam and these honkies looking to bash in my head was the enemy.”
“Not the enemy, non. The Cong. Charlie.”
“Yeah, that. And I’d sneak around and try to come up on ’em, make like I was cutting their throats.”
“Git you killed, too. What you want to do is frag they asses from a long way off. You wouldn’t a lasted a week in ’Nam, maybe not even a day, non? They’d a shot yore black ass.”
“You done tole me that enough times. You with all them scars. Look like you done got too close to somebody youself.”
Steven swallowed the last weenie, tossed the can toward the fire, and stepped in to stop what was coming. Lefty wanting to ass-whip Shadow for his lack of war experiences. It always came to that.
Touching his buddy’s shoulder, he said, “Hey, Lefty, ’member the night we met ole Shadow here the first time? Over to Memphis in the Blue Bird? And this big old boy the size of a redwood tree took us on, the two of us? And Shadow sitting there peaceful as could be, pulled that comb out of his afro and pronged the old boy in the arm. Stuck those steel teeth two inches deep. ’Member?”
“And like to’ve got our butts whipped good over it, he did. And we didn’t even know his black ass.” Lefty glared at the bone of his contention.
“What you mean?” Shadow shouted. “I saved your butts. Setting around arguing about the best way to kill folks don’t exactly invite courtesy, not even in a hole like the Blue Bird.”
Lefty made a rude sound. “We merely trying to decide which way we rather waste the enemy. Napalm or bombs or one of them crappy M-16s. Wasn’t nobody’s place to interfere. Then that big ape butt in.”
Laughing, Steven popped the top off a can of Coors.
Shadow danced with glee. “What so funny, man? You was draped over the hood of that old pickup, slid right on down in the
gravel on your face like a hunk of noodle throwed there. We had to pour you on your bike, couldn’t even lift your head.”
“Yeah, and you say, ‘I can’t lift my head, man, think they broke my goddamned neck or something.’ And ole Shadow here just get on your Harley—’member that, Steven?—like he own the danged thing, and off we take just ’fore those ole boys pour outta that place ready to pound flesh. And Steven here, he keep slipping so’s we have to stop ever once in a while and prop him back up. Thought we was gonna have to tie you on behind this ole boy’s black ass, there for a while, ole son.”
“I’d prefer it if you quit referring to my hind parts as a black ass and me as ole boy.”
Lefty, who had begun to rattle around in his tape storage box, let out a whoop. “You-all say it amongst yourselves and it’s okay. So I ain’t good enough to be one of you?”
Without paying any attention to Shadow’s indignant sputtering, he came up with another tape, removed Peter, Paul, and Mary, and inserted it. Cranking up the sound, he sat cross-legged on the ground, back to them, while the nasal sing-talk of Bobby Dylan swiveled into the night.
The man didn’t want to talk anymore, and Steven shot Shadow a “shut up” look. Time to end this little trip down memory lane. He wasn’t too crazy over most of those memories anyway. They made him sorely heartsick.
****
When the loud, distasteful music assaulted her ears, Mary Elizabeth was lying on a blanket, staring up at the stars. Earlier they’d played something soft and sweet that brought a lump to her throat. This just made her want to put a lump on someone’s head.
Her belly growled and she remembered she hadn’t eaten since that can of tuna and the crackers. She stirred herself and went to rummage in the food box, came up with a jar of home-canned sausages and a few potatoes. Popping the seal, she drained off the grease and water, plopped the meat patties in the skillet, and lit the Coleman stove. While they sizzled, she peeled and sliced the potatoes and an onion, and dropped them in with the meat. The pan almost overflowed.
Lord, she’d made enough for a bunch of field hands.
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