The Northwoods Chronicles (19 page)

“This is what I think,” Doc said, leaning across
the table and drilling John with his brown-eyed stare. “I think
it’s time you came out of the woods, got a job, got a house and got
a woman. I think it’s time you left your voodoo juju out there in
the woods, and brought your dental floss to a real house with a
real goddamn toilet and a real kitchen and made a life like a
normal goddamn human being. I think you’ve been doing this damaged
vet thing long enough, and the gods have decreed you fit for
society.”

John was stunned. He’d never heard Doc speak
like this to anybody, and had no idea he felt this way. But Doc
being his best friend, his comrade, his brother, his big brother in
a sense, John listened and considered.

“So you go home and pack up what things you
think you need, and you move here into the spare bedroom. I could
use the company. I’ll give you a few months to get a job, get
acclimated, then you can start paying rent.”

“I don’t—”

“
Listen to me,”
Doc said, and leaned over
the table in seriousness. John listened. “You took a big hit back
in Nam. We all did. You’re more fragile and took longer to recover.
But now you’ve recovered. If you don’t step out and take advantage
now,
right now,
you’re going to twist too far the other way.
This bone thing, losing a simple goofy monkey jawbone, has thrown
you for a loop, and that’s a strong indication that you’ve gone too
far, John. Come back to reality, boy. Do it now.”

John sat back. If the universe had taught him
anything, it had been to listen, to pay attention, and that Truth
came from many sources. Perhaps Doc was speaking the truth right
now.

“Okay,” he said.

“Fine,” Doc said. “Go get your stuff and
tomorrow we’ll buy you some clothes.”

“I guess I don’t need any of that stuff,” John
said, thinking about his belongings out there in the woods. Ragged
sleeping bag, tent with mildew in the corners, dented saucepan, a
few sets of faded fatigues, probably three dollars in change, some
dental floss—everything else he had gathered to make his campsite a
home he had gathered from the woods, and to the woods it could
return. None of it was important. Only the jawbone, and its
disappearance had left him naked. If he was going to begin a new
life in a new place with a new code, he might as well do it
complete.

“Good,” Doc said, and pointed the way to the
guest room. “Hang out here for a while, and when you’re ready, I’ve
got work.”

“Thanks,” John said, went into the guest
bathroom and ceremoniously set his toothbrush in the holder. It
felt like a religious ceremony. The start of a new life. He looked
in the mirror and decided it wouldn’t hurt to be warm, shave
regularly, get a haircut, bathe in warm water for a change. There
was an edge to his looks that he had admired in years past, but now
he just looked like a graying old man, sharpened to a point by
life’s rasp. Doc didn’t have that edge. Doc looked softer, and
while John never wanted to lose his reaction time or instinct to
stand with his back to the wall at all times, he could use a little
softening.

He barely slept that night, in the luxurious bed
with sheets and pillow. He felt too vulnerable, sleeping in a box
with hard walls. He couldn’t relax. When Doc got up to go to the
toilet several times in the night, John heard every sound. When Doc
got up to make breakfast, John followed, and ate heartily of bacon
and eggs and drank filtered coffee. “Think I’ll get a haircut,” he
said.

Doc nodded. “Extra razors in my bathroom,” he
said.

~~~

Natasha slipped out of her silk lounging pajamas
and pumped a palmful of moisturizing lotion from the bottle on her
nightstand. She creamed first her elbows and shoulders, then arms
and hands, then pumped out some more, and did her feet, her heels,
calves and shins. When she got to the meaty part of her right calf,
it felt sore. Bruised. She angled the nightstand light on it, but,
because of the awkward angle, she couldn’t see anything. Must have
bumped into something, she thought.

“Something wrong?” Mort was reading a magazine,
propped up by a half dozen pillows.

“A bruise or something on my leg is all,” she
said, then she slipped out of her lace bra, and wearing only pink
bikini panties, got into bed next to him and turned out her
light.

She watched him read, wearing those goofy little
half-glasses, his eyes going back and forth across the page.
“Baby?” she said.

“Hmmm?” He lowered the magazine and looked at
her, then smiled. It was as if he couldn’t help but smile when he
looked at her, and that made her feel very good.

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

“I do indeed,” he said, and kissed her forehead.
“You’re my chocolate delight,” he said, “and I’d be less than
nothing without you.”

She smiled at him. He always said something like
that at bedtime, but though it was ritual, it wasn’t insincere. She
turned away on her side to get a head start on sleep before he
turned out his light and started to snore. She tried to think about
the act that she was surely soon to commit, and tried to justify
it, tried to get up a head of righteous indignation in order to
justify it, but none of that was in her anymore. She just felt sad
about it, in spite of the tiny bit of excitement she always felt in
the face of a new adventure. Sad for herself, sad for Mort.

~~~

When Doc went to the tackle shop, John filled
the bathtub with hot water, threw in some of the scented salts
Sadie Katherine had left on the shelf, then climbed in and soaked
until the water turned chill. Then he rummaged around in the
drawers in Doc’s bathroom until he found fresh razors. He shaved,
clipped his fingernails and toenails, and plucked a few eyebrow
hairs that had sprouted on his nose. He smeared deodorant under his
arms, spritzed on some musky scent, then, reluctant to get back
into his tattered fatigues, he fumbled in Doc’s bureau until he
found a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt he could wear.

Doc had left forty dollars on the kitchen
table.

John went shopping, and when he came home, he
had a haircut, two pair of jeans, a long sleeve wool shirt, new
underwear, socks, shoes and three T-shirts. He felt good, and when
he looked in the mirror, he looked like the average guy on the
street. He was still gray-haired and too thin, but without his
mustache he looked younger. He looked like he could be an
executive. He’d be invisible in White Pines Junction, because
nobody would recognize him.

He washed his old clothes, folded them and set
them on top of his boots in the corner of the closet. He was going
to give this new life a serious go.

When Doc came home, John had washed the whole
kitchen, including the floor, and had vacuumed the rest of the
house. Clearly, Doc approved of the way John utilized his
forty-dollar investment in both his appearance and his actions. Doc
broiled steaks for dinner, and a domestic partnership was born.

Over the following week, John got up with Doc,
they breakfasted, then John went around the house, fixing things.
Doc was handy, but he was busy with the shop and didn’t have much
time or energy left over for the details that needed attention at
home. John stacked the firewood, and fixed the leaky garage roof.
He installed a new toilet, fixed the faucet in the kitchen, caulked
windows and finally painted the whole interior of the house.

It didn’t take long for John to get used to his
hot showers and warm bed and the nice fleece slippers Doc brought
home for him one day. He also got used to the companionship when
the two of them would eat a satisfying meal then sit down to watch
television together.

When the nights turned warm and the leaves began
to bud, John dreamed about the winters he spent in the woods—cold
and alone—and he would marvel at himself and his stubbornness.

Now and then he would think of the monkey’s jaw
and wonder if he’d been wrong about it all these years, or if the
jaw was still working its juju on him, from wherever it happened to
be. He preferred to think the jaw was still working. To think he
had been wrong about it would mean that his whole philosophy of
life had been faulty; that he had lived for all these years
standing on a false floor. While he thought he might one day be
willing to accept that, living in a house instead of his tent was
adjustment enough for now. He enjoyed the good luck the jaw
continued to provide, but worried that the other shoe was about to
drop. He tried not to dwell on it, however. It didn’t really
matter, whether or not the jaw was more than just an old bone, he
decided. He was about as happy as he’d ever been, happiness being
the illusion it mostly was. He just went about trying to earn his
keep.

Then the snow began to fly again, and Doc kept
short hours at the shop. Nobody fished on the weekdays, and only a
few went ice fishing on the weekends. There wasn’t enough money for
him to hire John, but it was clear that John was out of projects
around the house.

Over breakfast, Doc casually mentioned that he
saw a Help Wanted sign up at the Fish Haven Motel. John got the
hint.

It was off season all over Vargas County; the
tourists begin to swarm a couple of weeks before Memorial Day and
the crowds die out seriously after Labor Day, but old Mort and his
beautiful, much younger black wife Natasha were wanting to do some
remodeling on the rooms at the motel before the new season. Gotta
keep up with the competition, Mort said.

John signed on, and began work the next day. It
was hard, sweaty, satisfying work, and he, by arrangement with Doc,
spent his first couple of paychecks accumulating tools. He didn’t
like accumulating possessions, but figured that was part of the
package of living as a contributing member of society. After he
bought a certain number of things, he’d start paying rent, and that
suited Doc just fine.

He noticed the way Natasha looked at him
whenever he went into the office, which doubled as a part of their
living room, to talk over materials or details or what have you
with Mort. They were an odd couple, Mort and Natasha. He was in his
sixties, balding and kind of greasy and chubby; she was in her
forties, tall and statuesque, always made up and dressed in a
wardrobe that she hadn’t acquired in White Pines Junction. John
often wondered what she saw in Mort and life up in the northwoods,
but he never asked and didn’t much care. He found most things
having to do with personal relations so far out of his arena of
understanding that he didn’t even question them. Like Sadie
Katherine coming into Doc’s life and then leaving just as
mysteriously so many years later. Unfathomable. What Natasha could
see in Mort also mystified John, but then that wasn’t his knowledge
to possess, either.

Natasha liked what she saw when she looked at
John, though, that was obvious, and as he worked, he began to dwell
on her. His curiosity began to sprout—always a danger—and he
wondered how she smelled up close, and what that dark smooth skin
tasted like. It had been years since he’d had a woman. It had
probably been twenty years since he’d been close enough to one to
even fantasize. His hands grew callused with the hard work he did
at the motel, and yet he longed to run those hands over her smooth
inner thighs. At night, he would lie in bed and stare into the
dark, wondering what it would be like to have a woman breathing
softly next to him, warm and gentle, someone whose back he could
rub in the night when the moon wouldn’t let him rest. Little by
little he began to think of a mate, and since Natasha was visible
on a daily basis, he plugged her into that role in his mind.

The second dangerous step.

So when she came in to him with a hot cup of
coffee one day, sat on an overturned bucket and smiled that
ruby-lipped smile, it was only natural that he stop work and fix
his attention on her. So began a daily ritual.

Step three.

He didn’t normally like talking about himself,
but for some reason she drew him out, laughing at his ideas about
life, but not ridiculing him. And then one day, he said, “How about
you and Mort?” He didn’t know exactly what he meant, or what the
question was, but he figured she’d answer whatever her answer
was.

And so she did. “I love Mort,” she said simply,
and that was that.

But, as it turned out, loving Mort was not
synonymous with being faithful to him, and the daily cup of coffee
turned into daily caresses, then kisses, and soon frenzied coupling
on the floor.

John didn’t mind that too much. Although it
wasn’t exactly what he wanted, it seemed to suit Natasha just fine.
John wanted someone in his bed, someone to make leisurely love to,
someone he could get to know from her ankles and toes to the back
of her neck and the tips of her earlobes. He wanted warmth and
friendship and companionship and love. Natasha wanted sex, and John
came to believe that Mort was either unable or unwilling, but happy
to hire John for the job.

The sex was nice. A warm, juicy, sweet-smelling
woman moving and moaning under him was far better than him taking
the edge off himself out by the lake, but when it was over, she
cleaned herself up, he zipped up his workpants, and they both went
back to their daily routines. She went back to the office to Mort,
and John went to his daydreams at Doc’s place.

John dreamed about romance. He lay in bed at
night and dreamed of a romantic dinner with Natasha. He thought of
buying her flowers, and kissing her fingertips at just the right
moment. He thought of taking her to a movie, sitting in the back
row and brushing that long, statuesque neck with his lips during
the love scene. Though she was actually under his fingertips every
day, there was no romance involved. It was an animal release that
was barely even pleasurable.