Man Camp

by Adrienne Brodeur

  Adam’s right hand never leaves the dashboard.

  Near Bear Mountain, they stop at a scenic overlook to eat a couple of turkey and Brie sandwiches Lucy packed.

  “Have I told you recently that you make the best sandwiches in the world?” Adam says, chomping into his, the corners of his mouth shiny with mayonnaise.

  “No,” Lucy lies. She loves that Adam thinks she’s a wonderful cook.

  The flurries have stopped for a moment and, in the distance, Lucy sees a pair of bald eagles leaving an aerie on the other side of the river. She points them out to Adam. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she says, holding his hand. Whatever lapse of confidence she’s been feeling about their relationship is buoyed by the sight of the birds. “They’re kind of like people, you know. Eagles mate for life.”

  “That might be the least scientific thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Adam replies.

  Lucy wonders if this comment is meant to bring her down a peg professionally or personally. It smarts on both fronts and she tries not to sound hurt when she says, “I wasn’t making a scientific observation.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did. It was supposed to be a joke.” Adam looks genuinely contrite, but the mood has changed. They eat their sandwiches in silence for a few moments until he asks if she’s read an article in the current issue of Nature. “It’s about a new genetic fingerprinting technique that tracks birds. It’s on your side of the bed.”

  Lucy shakes her head. There are stacks and stacks of biology magazines all over her apartment; she’s forever trying to catch up.

  “The new technique proves that only ten percent of birds that biologists used to believe mated for life are actually monogamous.”

  Lucy’s stomach twists into a knot. What’s Adam’s point? She wishes she’d never mentioned the bald eagles and turns on the ignition. “Actually, how about you take over for a while?” She leaves the engine running, opens the door, and walks around to the other side.

  When Adam’s been driving for about fifteen minutes, Lucy is struck by the realization that she’s never seen him drive before. How New York is that? she thinks, and scrolls through the trips they’ve taken in their two years of coupledom: A week in Paris; no car was necessary. A Christmas vacation on Cape Cod; she drove her mother’s. Several brief escapes to the Hamptons; they were given rides by friends. A couple of business trips; they took trains.

  Lucy watches as towns pass by her window: Newburgh, Marlboro, Highland, New Paltz. She’s mesmerized by the swirling snow, which is getting wetter and heavier as they travel north. In this dreamy state, she imagines that they’re already at the yellow farmhouse, sipping red wine in front of a roaring fire tended by a shirtless Adam. Just as she’s about to stroke Fantasy Adam’s well-muscled side, Real Adam hits the brakes and Lucy lurches forward, her seat belt catching her, as it has several times in the last twenty miles. She feels a wave of nausea from listing back and forth, and remembers Martha once telling her that everything you need to know about a man can be gleaned from how he drives: Is he confident? Self-centered? Reckless? Lucy wonders what to make of Adam’s indecisive foot on the gas pedal—on/off, on/off, on/off—and tries not to draw any conclusions. She does, however, grow to dread every on-ramp and merge, where only after a series of jerky hesitations is Adam able to insert himself into the flow of traffic, much to the aggravation of the drivers around him.

  Straining to cling to the shirtless, fire-tending vision of Adam, Lucy puts on her sexiest voice. “What’s the first thing you want to do when we get to the farmhouse?”

  Adam doesn’t even glance Lucy’s way; he’s leaning forward, gripping the wheel. “At this point, my only concern is making it there in one piece.”

  The snow gets heavier as they near the Catskills. They get lost on some of the smaller roads, passing old houses, dilapidated barns, country stores, and a ramshackle tavern with a neon BUD LIGHT sign in the window. Neglected stone walls, built hundreds of years ago, resemble long, crooked smiles with missing teeth. Friendly, earnest signs give directions to local ski areas, recommend restaurants, offer solutions to legal problems. There’s even one with three smiling tomatoes kicking up little stick legs Rockette-style over the message: LOCALLY GROWN, LOCALLY KNOWN. Utterly charmed, Lucy’s ready to move to Ulster County.

  When they pull into the driveway, Lucy gasps with delight. The yellow farmhouse sits at the edge of a large meadow that is dwarfed by hills on the other side. For a moment she just takes it in, then she unbuckles her seat belt and hugs Adam. “We’re here!”

  She leaves him to unpack the trunk while she gets the key, hidden beneath a stone in the window box. With a push and a creak, the front door opens into a musty-smelling cabin, with uneven floorboards and unfinished beams.

  Adam traipses in after her, kicking the snow off his boots in a way that sounds like a complaint, but when Lucy turns around, she sees that he’s carrying some holly branches.

  “They’re beautiful,” she says, taking them from him and putting them in a large pitcher on the kitchen table. She rubs her hands together. “How about you start the fire and I unpack?”

  The house is one large room. A denim futon that doubles as a sofa sits in front of the Franklin stove, and the skin of some extremely fuzzy animal lies on the floor in between. The rug looks incredibly soft, and Lucy wonders if they’ll make love on it later. The kitchen area has an old farm table, a basin for a sink, and pots hanging from hooks on the clapboard wall.

  “Don’t you think it’s adorable?” she asks.

  “Adorable?” Adam takes in the Wolfs’ odd assortment of antique tools propped against walls and hanging from beams: a two-tined pitchfork beside a dented shovel, an ax, a sledgehammer and wedge, a bow with horn tips and lots of arrows in a decaying quiver. “These look like props from a horror flick. And what the hell’s that?” he asks, pointing to a metal device hanging from a hook on the wall.

  Lucy examines the old animal trap, the kind that works on a spring and snaps shut on the animal’s foot. There’s a tiny bone, most likely a toe joint, suspended delicately between its metal jaws.

  “Interesting,” she says.

  “More like gruesome.”

  Adam kneels down in front of the Franklin stove and Lucy watches him lay folded sections of the newspaper on the bottom of the hearth.

  “Need any help?” she says, willing him to scrunch up the paper into balls, but remembering Cooper’s admonition—You Yankee girls need to let men be men—she doesn’t say a word.

  “I’m fine.”

  Wine, Lucy thinks. A glass of wine will make everything okay. She opens the better of the two bottles she brought and finds a cupboard full of old Dundee Marmalade containers that apparently serve as mugs for all occasions. She fills one and kneels down on the rug beside Adam, who’s lighting the corners of the newspaper. She hands him the mug and, after he’s taken a sip, wriggles into his arms and kisses him. “It’s your job to keep me warm until this fire gets going,” she says. They embrace and sink into the rug, kissing and moving against each other, until Adam abruptly pushes her off him. Smoke is spewing from the stove in great curlicues and the wood is smoldering without any flames.

  “What the hell!” he says, leaping up.

  “Did you open the flue?” Lucy asks.

  Adam glares at her and drops to his knees, placing his head near the mouth of the stove so that he can see inside to find the lever.

  Lucy finds it first, on the outside of the chimney pipe. “I got it,” she says, flipping the lever so that the flue opens and the smoke starts to flow out. She tries to cozy up to Adam again, but he gets up and clomps across the room to open the door and clear out the remaining smoke. His heavy steps reverberate against the floor, causing a log to dislodge and roll onto the lip of the stove. While his back is turned, Lucy pushes the log back with the fire tongs and jams a few balls of crumpled newspaper underneath the wood so that the fire catches in earnest.

  Th
e house warms quickly and they grill a London broil over the stove and bury two tinfoil-wrapped potatoes deep in the hot coals. They open a second bottle of wine and get slightly drunk as they feed each other dinner.

  Before going to bed, they decide to brave the outhouse together, and though Adam did remember to bring the flashlight, he forgot to check the batteries, which are all but dead. The light casts no beam, making it useful only as a glow stick to announce their whereabouts to any hungry animals lurking in the dark. They huddle close together and trudge across the lawn, sinking shin-deep into the snow, neither admitting to being scared.

  “Ladies first,” Adam says, standing guard while Lucy ventures in.

  The door shuts behind her and the outhouse—a glorified shed, really—is pitch-black inside. Lucy imagines this might be a blessing, but it takes considerable willpower to pull down her pants and perch above what she knows is a numbingly cold seat. She shuts her eyes and concentrates by humming softly to herself. The wind howls and she hears branches snapping under the weight of the snow outside. Then she hears a louder sound, a thunk, and without warning, the door swings open and Adam leaps inside with her, stepping on her foot before landing solidly on his own.

  “Jesus!” she says, standing and yanking up her pants.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” He turns his back to her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something out there. I heard it in the woods.” Adam’s breathing is shallow and fast, and Lucy strains to hear what he’s heard. All is quiet.

  “Maybe it was just a big limb that fell,” Lucy says, inching toward the door. “It’s wet, heavy snow, that’s for sure.”

  “Jesus, Lucy, it wasn’t snow. Something’s out there.”

  Lucy pushes open the door a crack, sees nothing. “Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now. Want me to wait outside while you go?”

  “Out there? Alone? Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t really have to go anyway. Let’s just get back to the house.”

  Adam steps in front of Lucy and sticks his head out the door, shining the dim flashlight into the darkness. He looks both ways before sprinting back to the farmhouse, not realizing Lucy isn’t by his side until he reaches the front door. He waves for her to hurry up, but Lucy can’t see him in the dark and walks back at her own pace.

  “I really did hear something,” he says when she gets to the door.

  “I know you did, honey.”

  Adam locks the door behind them and announces that he’s going to bed. He climbs onto the futon without undressing and lies on his side, facing away from her. He closes his eyes and, in a few minutes, is fast asleep. Or pretending to be.

  Lucy slowly takes off her shirt and swings it over the pitchfork. Surely Adam is joking. She wriggles out of her jeans, unhooks her bra, and peels off her underwear, tossing it onto the bed. Nothing! Could he really be asleep? She can’t decide whether to be mad or hurt, and slides under the covers beside him. She stares at the back of his neck where hair sprouts out from under his T-shirt and concentrates on how much she hates back hair.

  Lucy wakes up early, cold and with a full bladder. Adam’s head is partly under a pillow and he’s pulled most of the blankets off her during the night. She slips into her long johns and tries to start a fire, crinkling up the sports section into neat balls and placing it on top of last night’s ashes. She tosses on some kindling and three logs, which she arranges tepee-style, and soon the fire catches. She puts on a pot of water for coffee.

  Still asleep, Adam looks angelic in the twisted sheets, and Lucy vows to make this a better day. One of his feet sticks out and she covers it with the blanket.

  Adam stirs. “Morning,” he says.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  “You too. Sleep okay?”

  She nods. “You?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “I’m going to the outhouse. How about some coffee and a cuddle when I get back?”

  “Sounds good. Want company?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Lucy says.

  Adam’s smile vanishes and he rolls over onto his stomach.

  When she returns, he’s sitting on top of the folded-up bed.

  “What about my coffee and cuddle?”

  Adam hands her a Dundee mug full of hot coffee and pats the spot next to him on the sofa, as if being beside him is cuddle enough. His notebook is opened to a page of scribbled equations.

  “Hey, no work on Valentine’s Day,” Lucy says, prying the notebook from his hands.

  Adam looks perplexed. “Brain not warmed up. Need numbers to function.”

  “I’ll give you numbers,” Lucy says, raking her fingers through her blond hair. “I’m going to teach you Valentine’s Day math. One.” She kisses him on the mouth once. “Two.” Both eyelids. “Three.” Cheek, nose, cheek. “Three times three.” Nine rapidfire kisses down his chest. “Warmed up yet?”

  “Maybe a little,” Adam says, coming around. “But you know I left simple arithmetic thirty years ago. I need the kiss equivalent of quantum chromodynamics.”

  “I can do that,” Lucy says. And she does.

  It’s almost noon when they finish their breakfast and Lucy suggests that Adam find the well. They need to hook up the hoses to wash the dishes and themselves. He puts on his peacoat and dutifully trudges up the path with the Wolfs’ directions in hand. He’s gone for twenty minutes before Lucy pulls on her boots and ventures out after him, following his tracks into the woods and shouting his name.

  “Over here,” he calls back.

  Lucy walks up a small hill toward his voice and finds Adam kneeling in the snow beside the well, which is partially covered by a piece of plywood. His gloves are off and his bare hands are red from the cold. He holds the hose in one hand and pours well water into it with the other, trying to create the vacuum needed to activate the siphon system, but it’s not working.

  “What’s the matter?” Lucy asks.

  Adam points to his leg, which is soaked. “I slipped when I was lifting off the plywood.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “And I can’t get this bloody thing to start.” He lifts the end of the hose higher.

  “You must be freezing,” Lucy says, taking the hose and jug from his hands. “Why don’t you let me take a stab at this and you go back to the house. If I can’t do it, I’ll be right behind you.” She reads the handwritten instructions, which lie on a rock, and pours water into the funnel. As it gurgles into the hose, she plunges the end deep into the slushy well, which she desperately hopes will cause gravity to suck the water down the hill to the house.

  Adam’s hardly walked twenty feet by the time Lucy has the siphon system up and running. “You must have primed it for me,” she says to him, as if he’d loosened the lid on a jelly jar. They don’t say a word to each other as they walk down the hill; the snow is loud beneath their feet.

  Back inside, Adam removes his wet jeans and long underwear, hanging them over the stovepipe to dry. His legs are skinny and goose-pimply, and he looks like an uncooked chicken, his penis dangling along his right thigh. He stands in front of the fire, now mostly orange embers, to warm up.

  “I’m afraid that’s the last of the chopped wood,” Lucy says, scanning the Wolfs’ note for the part about firewood, which she reads aloud: “ ‘Partially chopped tree in back. Use sledgehammer and wedge in corner by front door to split.’ ”

  Adam pulls on a dry pair of boxers and jeans and grabs the sledgehammer and wedge. For weeks his back has been giving him trouble and he struggles to close the door behind him with his hands full of the heavy equipment.

  Lucy turns on the faucet, and icy-cold water sputters into the basin. She fills a large kettle with enough water to do the dishes and lugs it to the stove to warm. When she returns to the sink, she looks out the window and watches Adam line up a couple of large logs to split. She loves the idea of him chopping wood and anticipates the delicious thwack! of the logs splitting.

  Hunched over, Adam tentatively
tap tap taps the wedge into the flesh of the wood until it’s in far enough to stand on its own. It occurs to Lucy that Adam has never split a log before. He grew up in New York City, after all, with parents in academia, and she can’t imagine that they’d teach their son such a thing. He lifts the sledgehammer, props it on his right shoulder, and lets it fall onto the wedge. It makes a high-pitched, delicate ping sound. He does this again and again. Ping. Ping. Ping. The wedge doesn’t progress any farther into the wood. Adam glances over his shoulder toward the house.

  Busted, Lucy thinks, though she’s not sure he can see her. She stares down into the sink full of dishes and waits a moment before she looks up, this time keeping her head tilted down. Adam raises the sledgehammer again, higher this time, way up over his head, and Lucy holds her breath as he swings it down hard, using muscle to add momentum to gravity. There’s a loud metal-hitting-metal sound, but the hammer lands slightly in front of its target, clipping the outer lip of the wedge instead of striking it dead-on. The wedge shoots back and hits Adam squarely in the shin.

  Adam yelps in pain and Lucy runs outside.

  “Fuck!” Adam shouts, hopping on his right leg, holding his left in both hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Lucy supports him under one shoulder and helps him hobble back inside.

  “Fuck.”

  She sits him down on the futon, takes off his boot, and rolls up his pant leg to unveil an ugly purple lump the size of a large egg. She runs outside and pats some snow into a disk shape, which she covers in a towel and applies to his injury.

  “Fuck.”

  “What can I do, Adam?”

  His look tells her she’s done enough already.

  “Adam?”

  He can’t even speak to her yet, he’s too angry from the pain, and she can tell that he blames her for his bruised shin—for the whole miserable trip.

  “I want to leave,” Adam finally says. “I don’t want to discuss it. I don’t want to feel bad about it. I’ve just had enough and I want to go home.”