Sputterpub's Blog

She was a sales representative for a payroll service, and the meeting ahead was likely to be the biggest deal of her six month career. She turned to say goodbye as they neared her stop, and she noticed the monogram on his briefcase. “Like the president,” she observed.

They continued closer as they approached Simon’s place. When he drove into his carport she released her seat belt and curled over him. He pulled her face to his and her skirt to her waist and they might have done it right there except another tenant entered the parking area. They went up to his apartment instead, and in the course of the next seven hours inaugurated their relationship in his living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The utility porch was simply too small and too cold.

They were 22, unattached, and employed. Together they had a nest and plenty of money. The sex the first year was very nice; the promise from that first night hovered around their romance. They soon married.

There was some talk of graduate school for him but nothing came of it. There was some talk of camping and biking but nothing came of that either. They continued to advance in their marketing jobs. Simon sold the Camry and leased a Saab convertible. Monica traded in the Civic for an Acura.

As the campfire alters its state, from curlicues of red-glowing coals to licks of blue and gold, Daphne alters hers from outgoing to in-turning. She becomes very quiet, and she begins to sense the pathways of her nerves, the connections of her muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, the coordination of her immune system. She visualizes the patterns of her own ankles and feet.

Gail isn’t touching her. But she’s reaching with her heart toward Daphne and at the same time trying to pull Reese’s spirit along with her. Reese jolts slightly, as if something struck her at the base of her neck. All three of them become very still and silent. For about four minutes, the only movement is the dance of the fire, and the only sounds are the cracks of oxidizing wood.

Daphne closes their trance when she stirs the fire with a crooked stick. “I think you got it, Reese,” she says. “Can you keep it up?”

Reese nods as she examines her ankle. Gail leans closer to see. “It feels much better,” Reese murmurs as she circles the flesh with her hands. “And the swelling seems already less. I’m sure I’ll be able to hike tomorrow.”

They’re all tired enough to sleep well. Gail is the only one who wakes because of the faint gunshot at 3 a.m. She wonders what roused her, as she falls back to sleep.

Reese’s ankle is only slightly swollen in the morning. She says it really doesn’t hurt. They bandage it for support, feed her aspirin, and break camp. They hadn’t intended to hike back out for another four days, so their packs are heavier than they’d planned; Gail and Daphne take on extra weight to lighten Reese’s.

Their trail out takes them past their original campsite. They pause in disbelief. Apparently the hunters were disappointed to find the camp abandoned. The area has been trashed. There’s broken glass, paper and foil litter, big gashes in nearby trees. Even gentle Gail is stirred to hatred.

As they hike, they discuss alternative plans. Reese’s ankle is doing well, but backpacking is out for this vacation. By the time they get to Reese’s car, they’ve decided to head for the coast. Daphne’s family frequents the area, and she knows where they can get a good room that they can afford.

Gail takes the wheel. Daphne hates driving and Reese should rest her ankle. They decide to have a real meal before they leave the area. They park at the local restaurant/saloon. There’s a banner hanging off its porch: EARTH FIRST – THEN WE’LL LOG THE OTHER PLANETS. They enter the dimly lit room anyway. They find a table, order chili and fries, and then take turns using the bathroom. They each appreciate the plumbing.

Gail is the last to use the bathroom, and she’s coming back to their table when a man walks into the place excited with news. Daphne and Reese stop their own conversation to listen to the guy report to the bartender/owner. He says the rescue squad had to go in this afternoon and fetch two hunters. There had been four in the party, two were injured last night, and the other two came out to get help. Reese and Daphne goggle at each other as Gail sits.

The man says one of the hunters turned his ankle while peeing in a rock pile last night. He fell exposed and lacerated his penis, but it was his ankle that required the squad. The other hunter actually shot himself in the foot. Apparently, he was trying to shoot a snake with a handgun. No one knows why he wouldn’t leave the snake alone, if there really was a snake, but he’d been drinking, so maybe reason is irrelevant. He may have been hit by his own ricochet, but the paramedics thought the wound looked too close for that; they hypothesized that he tripped on the same rocks as his buddy, and shot himself while trying to regain his balance. They had to use the county helicopter to get the injured men out of there.

Incidentally, the man reports, the two who went for help were such morons that they took a short cut through an area of thriving poison oak. They didn’t realize it yet, but they’d be erupting in an agonizing rash in three more days. “I know. I know. Our local economy depends on the hunters,” the man acknowledges to the bartender. “But these guys were obvious idiots. I gotta believe they deserved it.”

Daphne grins at Reese and Gail. She makes a fist with her thumb up. “I feel like a goddess,” she says. Reese and Gail return the gesture with happy faces, as the waitress arrives with their hot food.

“Teresa!” Daphne sang out.

Of course they hadn’t heard her, but now she made noise. “Don’t call me Teresa. Please. Not Tracy or Terry, either. I implore.” She limped into the clearing and began to dress.

“What’s the story? And why are you limping?”

“I think I did something to my ankle. I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything, but I was paying more attention to the hunters than to me. It gave me some trouble in the last quarter mile or so. I’m sure I just need to rest it.

“It was a good plan for us to move. Those guys could be dangerous. They were talking about partying with us. Remember the tall one, with the red shirt and the two guns? They called him Buck. Just as I got there, he was advising his buddies that with four of them to three of us, and with their weapons, sex was a sure thing tonight. It looked to me like he’d have no trouble convincing them to come after us. Especially after they’d had a few drinks.”

“I thought I heard gunshots.” Daphne stood and added wood to the fire.

“You did. Idiot Buck thinks he saw a snake in the rocks and fired his handgun. He shot twice and didn’t hit any snake, but the bullets ricocheted around in the rocks for awhile.”

They savored their escape as the campfire burned down. They agreed to hike far away from the hunters tomorrow.

Now Reese stands to look down on the dying fire. “Ouch,” she expels as she tries to walk. “I’m sorry to say this ankle may be a problem.”

Gail and Daphne speak at the same time. “Oh shit,” Daphne blurts through Gail’s “Sit down, Reese. Let me see.”

They remove her boot. The ankle is swelling. They figure Reese couldn’t have broken it; though in her a break wouldn’t have announced itself with a snap, it also wouldn’t have allowed her to walk. But it starts to look like a disabling injury. They can’t ice it, and the nearby creek is too steep and rocky for a night soaking.

Gail sits by Reese while Daphne unpacks their first aid kit. The only aid it offers is aspirin and an ace bandage. Daphne looks at her friends, blonde heads close together, and laments, “If this had to happen, I wish it had happened to me.”

She isn’t speaking some sort of charity. Daphne has the sturdiest ankles of the group. She also has the sturdiest ego.

She’s always had a strong sense of herself. She can recall clearly back to the age of two. She says she can remember discovering language. No matter what her experiences have been, she has remained unshakably her; even at five and a half years of age, when parents, doctors and hospital staff grossly mishandled her stay for a tonsillectomy, she knew they were incorrect in behavior, and that their errors were not her responsibility.

She can’t act. That would involve being someone else. She can’t lie. She’s incapable of having an identity crisis. She’s dense, in that she’s a concentrated personality. If she had sprained her ankle, she would have turned her focus inward, marshaled her powers of integration, and bullied the injury enough to hike out of there.

Gail speaks. “Daphne, do you suppose…do you think we could work together on this? Maybe it’s possible for me to translate healing from you to Reese.”

Daphne understands where Gail’s going before Gail finishes speaking. She grins as she pulls her bushy dark hair away from her face. “It can’t hurt to try,” she says to Gail. She feeds the fire to burn another half hour.

Gail says. “This fire’s wonderful. I’m glad we’re here.”

“I’m real glad we came away from the first campsite. Now that we know. For which we thank you,” Daphne bows toward Reese as she finishes. Gail seconds the gesture.

Reese is an inaudible woman. Her body makes no noise. Her skin doesn’t whisk when it’s rubbed, her stomach never rumbles, her joints don’t crack, and she never involuntarily belches or farts. As a result of her condition, she is intensely aware of the sounds her clothing makes. Even those who are often near her start to notice the swish of her silk blouse or the rasp of her corduroy trousers.

Reese can make noises. She can talk and snap her fingers and engage in all the voluntary body functions. She’s 18 years old and has certainly learned how to make sounds. But if it’s dark, and if Reese leaves clothes behind, she is an extraordinary spy.

She returned an hour ago from a sort of sortie, and her report made them glad they moved from their original choice of campsite. When they first arrived at that clearing in the late afternoon, they declared it perfect. They eased out of their backpacks with relief, set the frames against the furniture-sized boulders that dotted the area, and loosened the laces on their hiking boots. They noted the fast-running creek nearby; it was probably clear enough to drink from without filtering. They appreciated the absence of mosquitoes; they had expected the pests would find them at dusk, but since they’d been attacked even at noon in most of the pasture-like areas through which they’d passed, they thought the place a keeper.

They had already set up their tents when the dog came through. He was a friendly retriever, but he was followed by four hunters. They looked young enough to be okay but they acted like assholes. They couldn’t have been more than 25 years old, and they weren’t bad-looking, but they called the young women girls, they offered booze in the most offensive (hey, honey) way, and they seemed to think their rifles were remote penises, they handled them with such boyish pride. Two of them had handguns in holsters, too. One had a bumper sticker plastered diagonally across his pack; “Gun control means hitting your target,” it asserted.

The men moved on, threat-promising to return for a party after they set up their camp. It didn’t take long for the young women to agree that they’d better shift their campsite. Of course they resented the move, but it seemed necessary. They collapsed the tents, repacked their heavy frames, and slogged another mile. Their second campsite was farther off the trail than the first had been, past two water crossings, and upwind of where the men were; even the dog would have trouble finding them.

They ate their dinner after establishing that second camp. By the time they had finished their pasta and dirt-scoured the pot, it was full dark. Reese announced her intention to scout the men’s camp.

“Oh, let’s leave well enough alone,” Gail protested gently. But Reese was older than Gail, and her personality was more stubborn. “Come on,” she argued. “I’ve been doing this all my life. It’s one of my pleasures and one of my skills. I want to know what those assholes are up to.”

Reese began disrobing as she spoke. She’d spent so many evening hours naked and successfully eavesdropping, she was accustomed to being unclothed. Her willowy body emerged from her T-shirt and shorts, pale like the moon in the morning. She’d wear her boots until she got within range of the hunters. She said “later,” to her friends and disappeared into the surrounding foliage.

Daphne built a campfire while Reese was away. Gail foraged for fallen wood. Neither worried about Reese until an hour had passed. Then Daphne got antsy. She thought she heard faint gunshots. She fretted aloud. Gail was serene as usual. “She’s not that far away,” Gail reassured.  “I’m sure I’d sense something if Reese were in trouble.”

“Do you really think so? I mean, their camp’s at least a mile off.” Daphne knew that her friend could read people’s feelings, but Gail wasn’t telepathic. She wasn’t even an empath, as she described herself. They’d examined and discussed Gail’s special skill for years, and they used “sympath” to name it. Gail was able to feel “with” another, to the degree that she could even act as emotional translator between individuals. She did her best with people she loved, but they’d never tested her range.

“If a friend is close by, I can get feelings without attempting anything,” Gail said. “But I’m reaching for Reese right now, and I’m sure I’d know if I needed to know.”

“Know what?” came the voice from the surrounding bush.

Now Ray’s in school again. It seems to Sharon that he may be slipping back into something like his Tet Offensive or R.O.T.C. weirdness with talk like today’s. It’s happening more and more. She wonders if she should call her uncle. Ray and his father could be closer, but Uncle Ron was there 25 years ago, when it started before…

Sharon pulls her sweatpants off then to throw them into the washer and rediscovers Nancy’s barrette. She looks at its small picture again and starts for the wastebasket, but she deposits it instead in her jewelry box, even though it carries the fine grime of ten years under the doorframe. She has a sudden desire to see Nancy.

“You always were a witch,” Sharon addresses the idea of her stepdaughter. “Now I discover this artifact you planted here, and I’m forced to remember you, now, when I have so many other things to do. Witch.” She’s exaggerating, but the barrette is having a strong effect upon her, and she’s doing whatever she can to reduce that effect. She feels uncomfortable.

Sharon didn’t love Nancy. She met the baby girl expecting to love her, intending to, but it just didn’t happen. At the time she wondered if it could be jealousy; Pete’s only daughter would always have his love, something that Sharon as his second wife wanted assured to herself. Or maybe her coolness was some sort of maternal competition. Since Sharon loved her own child to distraction, how could she do other than (in her heart) disparage other babies as less perfect than Timmy? She has looked inside herself to the best of her ability, and she doesn’t think her problem with Nancy came from jealousy or competitiveness. The little girl just wasn’t very likeable.

Nancy was a colicky baby, a fussy toddler, and a tantrum-throwing tot. She was terrified of anything new, which made her less than fun to take places, and she was amazingly stubborn. They left her once sitting in the middle of a sidewalk, because she refused to walk any farther and demanded to be carried. They acted like they were deserting her and then hid behind the corner of a building to watch what she would do.  After 25 minutes, they gave up. Three-year-old Nancy never budged in that time.

She didn’t even cuddle correctly. She had a rounded high forehead and she liked to burrow with it into Sharon’s side. That would have been awkward but bearable if Sharon weren’t so ticklish, but as she was, the cuddle didn’t work. Every time Sharon tried to adjust her position Nancy objected, flailing with her plump hands and sometimes scratching Sharon until Sharon, ashamed to admit it, came to hate the sight of Nancy’s fat baby fingers.

And twice, Nancy shat in the bathtub. What was that about? She wasn’t sick either time, and even Dr. Spock says babies never move their bowels in the bath. It wasn’t the most unpleasant stuff Sharon ever had to clean up, but it remains in Sharon’s mind somehow emblematic of the Nancy times.

She hasn’t seen Nancy in ten years. Pete insisted on a clean break with the divorce, so Tim and Nancy were wrenched apart after being raised like part-time twins for the first seven years of their lives. For Tim that led to a lot of therapy; Sharon’s grateful that he’s better now. She has heard a little about Nancy, and it hasn’t been good. But today she found a hot pink artifact from child Nancy, and she has a powerful urge to see her or at least hear about her. She knows where Pete is. She could find Nancy. She doubts it would do any good.

Sharon pours in the laundry detergent, shuts the lid, and starts the washer. She glances across her patio as she crosses her kitchen and sees that Ray is still at his table, still in his book, still with his ideas. She may call Pete later. For now Sharon decides to call Uncle Ron.

“The revolution never stopped,” Ray speaks across her thoughts. “The media is us, the politicians are us; there isn’t a them out there to villainize any more.” Ray rises from the table, steps across the minute kitchen to his two-burner stove, and lifts the still-warm kettle to refill his cup. He offers hot water with his raised eyebrows, but Sharon shakes her head. She sits on the vinyl-bottomed chair across from his and rests her forearms on the cool surface of the small metal-edged table.

“Look,” he says as he sits again. “Jung said myth is to the collective unconsciousness what dream is to the individual unconsciousness. Once you posit a collective unconsciousness, you can go places with it! So if a child, say, can be so traumatized by some event that he carries a neurosis or compulsion throughout his life in response to it, well then why can’t a generation, especially one as self-conscious as the post-war baby boom, why can’t a generation be collectively traumatized into response?” Ray leans forward with intensity.

“The Vietnam conflict, among other things, was traumatic. But that betrayal of us, that killing us to protect so-called leaders in their incorrectness, that was the big trauma. What if our generation’s response was to tear down the customs that led to that protection?”

“I think I understand what you’re saying,” Sharon comments, “but what about all the complaints I’m hearing? how the media will print anything that will sell; or that Washington just ought to shut up about the President’s sex life and let him get on with the good job he’s doing – it sounds to me like our generation doesn’t like the stripping away of leader dignity any more than the last did.”

“The key word, my dear… the key word is unconsciousness.” Ray emphasizes his point with the index finger of the hand that is not holding his cup of hot water. His didactic tone annoys Sharon. She doubts that he uses it with his third-graders. She thinks he intends to use it on the college students of his future, if he ever manages to complete the doctorate necessary to have college students in his future.

“You definitely may have something, Ray. But right now I have to finish cleaning. Maybe you’ll join us for dinner?” Ray sits down with Tim and Sharon most evenings, but something about Sunday requires a specific invitation to him; he won’t drop by on his sabbath without one.

He accepts of course, and Sharon returns to her house. He’s still talking aloud as she crosses the small patio, but she knows from experience that she doesn’t have to pay attention. At the moment Ray is talking more to her than to himself, but he doesn’t require a response, and he’ll shift completely to himself within another minute.

Sharon puts the barrette in the pocket of her sweatpants as she resumes vacuuming, and she doesn’t think about Nancy again until she changes to jeans so she can add her sweats to the pre-dinner laundry.

While she vacuums and dusts, while she scours and sponges, she considers her cousin Ray. This is the second summer of his doctoral work, and he seems weirder than last year. She didn’t really know him back in the late 60s and early 70s when he was an undergrad, but she’s heard the family stories. Ray went crazy then. There was something about studying and maybe the times, but he became convinced that the Tet Offensive was the most significant event in modern history, he became obsessed with a fantasy of wrecking the R.O.T.C. building with a bazooka, and he just basically got things out of perspective. Since he didn’t have access to a bazooka no one worried about him; from what Sharon hears, folks found him amusing or tiresome then. But he flipped out right after he graduated, when his mother killed herself.

Ray’s mother, Aunt Emily, was an alcoholic suicide. So were her sister Esther eight years before her, and their father Willem 20 years earlier still. It was like Ray picked up the family curse as soon as his mother dropped it; within months of her death he was diagnosed as manic depressive with suicidal tendencies, and put on psychotropic drugs. He hated them. Eventually he got himself under control without the drugs but with Catholicism and rigid diet-and-exercise routines.

Sharon isn’t related to Ray on his mother’s side. Her mother and Ray’s father are siblings. There’s plenty of dysfunction in that family, as Sharon knows full well, but she’s grateful not to be related to Aunt Emily.