The Northwoods Chronicles (20 page)

When John was finishing the tile on unit
thirty-four, Mort popped his head in to see him. “I’m headed for
the city,” he said. “Be back in a week. Help Natasha out if she
needs anything, will you?”

My chance,
John thought, and felt his
face grow hot with deception. “Mind if I took her out to dinner?”
he asked.

Mort straightened up in the doorway as if a
casual bit of information had just turned into a conversation.

“Sure,” he said slowly. “Do whatever you want.”
Then he looked at John with a disappointed expression, as if John
had just forced Mort to admit to knowing about the two of them. If
John didn’t rub Mort’s face in it, then Mort could claim innocence,
and it would all be a plot against him. But by making him
complicit, he was responsible and couldn’t blame Natasha for it
all.

Interesting, John thought, as he went back to
work, that instead of romancing the beautiful Natasha and dreaming
about bedding her, he had as much sex as he wanted with her, but
what he longed for was the rest of her. The important part.

~~~

Recon John had been a folk legend in White Pines
Junction as long as Natasha had lived there. Who’d have thought
he’d come out of the woods, clean himself up and be ripe, randy and
ready for a daily discrete romp? Never in a million years would
Natasha have considered Recon John as her necessary diversion, but,
as it turned out, he was perfect. He was a little on the thin side,
but still looked good in a pair of Levi’s, his equipment was in
excellent working order, and he seemed to appreciate her the way
she wished Mort would. It was good, if she could keep it to just
the two of them, and not be obvious in front of Mort. She hadn’t
had that talk with John yet, but knew she had to soon.

~~~

When she brought him coffee an hour later, he
kept his distance and invited her to dinner.

She turned coy. “When?”

“Tonight. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“A date?” She smiled slyly and trailed a finger
down the buttons on her blouse.

“Dinner,” John said, and it was hard to resist
her, but he managed it. “I got permission from Mort.”

“You didn’t.” All her coy seductiveness
vanished.

“It was my attempt at honor in this situation,”
John said.

Natasha stared at the floor for a time, then
looked up at him. “Seven,” she said, turned and left the room.

When he came out of the bathroom, dressed in
fresh jeans and T-shirt and smelling of Doc’s aftershave and
mouthwash, Doc gave a low whistle. “Date, eh?”

John nodded.

“She’s married, John.”

“I know.”

“This is a small town.”

John didn’t know how to explain to Doc the
complicated mess his relationship with Mort and Natasha had become,
so he just let it be. The thing was, he didn’t want more sex with
Natasha. Hell, he didn’t even know her.

He shrugged into his old fatigue jacket which
was worn and threadbare, and took the time to trim the threads that
hung down at the cuffs. At least it was clean, now that he had
access to Doc’s washing machine, then he walked the short distance
to the motel. The night felt mild. The snow had melted, and spring
was so close he could hear it.

Natasha was a good two inches taller than he in
her spike heels, and she wore a silver slinky dress that was low
cut in front and cut low in the back. She wore a plain black ribbon
around her throat and diamond studs in her ears. “I ought to be
taking you someplace fancy,” he said.

“I’m not dressed up for any place,” she said.
“I’m dressed up for you.”

Good answer.

They walked across the street to the diner where
Margie giggled her little girly laugh when John asked for a wine
list. She brought back two mugs of coffee and the sugar dispenser
and left them to their talk.

“Do you believe in luck?” Natasha asked.

John had been admiring her beautiful teeth when
she asked that question, and a sinking feeling in his gut replaced
his feeling of good will. He had just about gone beyond the luck
thing, gotten over the missing jawbone, successfully put aside the
superstitions that a solitary life in the woods had led him to
develop. He wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit that place that was so
newly raw inside him, that wound where his belief system had been
so freshly ripped away.

“Why? Do you?”

Long fingers with red nails felt aimlessly
around the coffee cup. “Not really, but if there is such a thing, I
think I’ve hit a bad patch,” she said. “But I’m sure it’s only
temporary. And I’m not sure it has anything to do with luck, good
or bad. I think it’s just life.”

“Tell me.”

They talked until the diner closed at midnight,
telling each other their life stories, and when John walked her
home, he took with him her history of abandonment and foster homes,
her experiences with drugs and alcohol and living on the street,
then being rescued by an idealistic priest and finishing high
school at a Catholic girls’ school when she was twenty-four,
getting a job at a deli and meeting Mort. They’d been married for
over a dozen years, locked in an unconventional but close and
workable relationship.

John felt a profound affection for her. He
kissed her cheek, inhaled deeply of her scent, then said good
night. He walked toward Doc’s place without looking back to see if
she was watching him.

Sleep didn’t come at all that night. They should
have stuck to impersonal sex, because now that the personal had
entered into it, he wanted more of her, and he knew that couldn’t
be.

Doc was right. She was married. She loved Mort,
and he loved her. They were a good match, and John had no right to
come between them. Impotent Mort didn’t mind if John serviced
Natasha sexually, but Mort didn’t want anybody falling in love.

And John was afraid that was what was happening
to him. For some reason, he had never felt such an understanding of
another person before. Had he never looked beyond their shells? No.
Not since Nam. You fell in love with people and then they died
right in front of your face. Perhaps this was more of the getting
well part that Doc talked about. He was well enough to want to fall
in love with someone again. But then maybe it wasn’t Natasha he was
falling in love with, it was people.

And perhaps that was worse. Personal
entanglements. He’d just scratched the surface, and he didn’t know
if it was going to get better or worse. Would he become more
practiced at it, more comfortable with it? Or should he retreat now
before he got in too deep?

John was no fool, but he was unaccustomed to
such feelings. He felt as if he’d lost his internal compass. In the
woods, he knew the sounds, knew the meanings of the sounds. Here in
the real world of people and emotions and relationships, he
couldn’t even tell if his back was to the wall. And without the
jawbone, he had nothing to hold that he knew was real.

He tossed and turned, and eventually the bed
became uncomfortable, because it meant he was becoming indebted to
Doc, and he didn’t know the social ramifications of that. He felt
he was flying blind, and when you didn’t know where your buddies
were and didn’t know who your enemies were, people got hurt. People
got killed.

He thought about waking Doc up and talking with
him, but he knew what Doc would say. He’d say that if John wanted a
woman, he ought to practice being with them first, and then find
himself one that was available. Easy to say, but that didn’t help
John out of his current feelings.

He got up, opened the closet and put on his old
clothes and boots. He grabbed his fatigue jacket, tucked his
toothbrush in his pocket, picked up the high powered flashlight and
went outside.

~~~

Natasha couldn’t sleep in their big bed without
Mort. He went away so rarely that she never became accustomed to
his absences, and she never slept well when he was gone.

And now there was John to keep her awake. Maybe
that’s why Mort left, she thought with anguish. He left so I could
work this thing out.

John had a vulnerability that was very
attractive to the frustrated mother inside Natasha. No kids was
part of the bargain she had struck with Mort, and usually that was
fine, but lately the baby hunger had returned in earnest, and even
though she was pushing menopausal, thoughts of becoming
accidentally pregnant by Recon John had overwhelmed her and her
better judgment. She knew that most of the feelings that were
coming up for her had to do with mothering him. She just wanted to
press herself to him and suck out all the hurt. She couldn’t make
Mort better; he was a happy man. But John needed somebody, and
Natasha just had to make sure it wasn’t her.

Automatically, her hand reached down to rub the
sore part of her calf. The bruise—or whatever it was—wasn’t getting
any better, it was getting worse. It was sorer by the day, the skin
blackish purple in an egg-sized oval, and sometimes it flat-out
hurt, with a stabbing pain. Mort would be worried, if she told him,
so she thought she might want to see the doctor before Mort got
back, just so she’d be able to put both their minds at ease.

She tried massaging it, but it was too sore, so
she lay back and thought about how young and carefree she felt
having dinner with John.

Honorable John, who had asked her husband if he
could take her to dinner.

She better leave him just exactly the fuck
alone, before she did something really stupid.

And then a sharp pain in her calf hit her so
fiercely that she yelled.

~~~

Natasha was sitting on Doc’s picnic table,
wrapped in a down coat and a blanket, rubbing her calf when John
stepped outside.

He was surprised to see her there, but then
again, he was not. He thought he recognized her vulnerability.
“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said. “I’ve been looking for the
courage to knock on your door.”

“Come on.”

She climbed down from the table, wrapped the
blanket around herself and followed John to the water’s edge and
along the path through the woods. Shining the flashlight, he
preceded her, and disconnected the snares, trip wires and booby
traps. Squirrels and raccoons had got into his stuff and strewn it
about. John made a small fire, opened the tent, shook out his
sleeping bag and lay it next to the fire. Natasha sat down and
wrapped him up in the blanket with her. A cold moon rose through
the trees.

“I had a good luck piece for a long time,” John
said. “Then I lost it.”

“Did your luck turn?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Yesterday I
would have said no. Now, I think maybe yes.”

“Because of me?”

“You’re married.”

“Yes.”

“Life is complicated.”

“Yes.”

“It was simpler when I was out here.” John
clicked on the flashlight and slowly spotlighted the arc of ground
in front of them. Shadows grew long and moved as the beam traveled.
“I thought I might leave Doc’s place and come on back here.”

“Solitude does nothing to enrich the soul,” she
said.

He looked at her in the firelight. She still had
the diamond studs in her ears, but had changed to black sweatpants
and a red sweatshirt. Her fire-lit profile looked suddenly wise to
him, noble, serene, uncomplicated, self-assured. Her rich skin
glowed.

Almost against his will, he felt his hand creep
up under her sweatshirt to hold a perfect, braless breast.

She smiled at him and gently pulled his hand
away. “No more of that, I’m afraid,” she said. “I can’t risk it.
We’re beyond the physical, and that’s too dangerous.”

He understood completely. Maybe this was the
other side of that mysterious relationship thing. Maybe he’d broken
through. He felt special. It was a feeling he thought he could come
to like. “Does it get easier?” he asked. “Can I learn to navigate
society?”

“You will,” she said. “But I’m not certain it
gets any easier. The subtleties grow ever more complex. Mort and
I—we’ve worked out what works for us. Generally speaking. This is
the first time that . . . something has happened.”

Again, John understood. Again that feeling of
being special. In the Zen of it all, they were all perfect, but in
the reality of the firelight, he was a child and she was the wiser.
And he wanted to learn the ways of the world. For the first time,
he felt as if there were value in being among people. Maybe, he
thought, I’m not falling in love with Natasha or with people.
Maybe, in fact, I’m falling in love with myself.

“I think that I’ve made too many excuses for
myself over the years,” Natasha said. “I think it’s time I grew up
and made forward progress. Like you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Look at you. You’ve been out here
how many years? And now you’ve pulled yourself up and reentered the
land of the living. I need to do that.”

“You
do
do that.”

“Not with Mort, I don’t. I think I kill him a
little bit every day. And I’m going to stop it, because he is,
without question, the love of my life.”

Doc’s right, John thought. I want to hear a
woman say that about me.

Natasha started squirming. She wiggled around
and wiggled around and finally pulled up the sleeping bag they were
sitting on and dug around underneath it. She pulled out a length of
old dental floss, threw it on the fire, and then went back to
digging. “Jeez,” she said, pulling something out of the dirt. “No
wonder. I was sitting on this.”

It was the jawbone.

John was afraid to touch it for a moment. It
hadn’t brought him luck, he realized in an instant, it had
insulated him from life.

“What kind of an animal was this, do you
suppose?” she asked, turning it over in her hands. She looked at
John.

He shrugged, unable to speak, incapable of
telling her about its power over him.