﻿ Wyoming by Jeffrey Anderson Copyright 2013 by Jeffrey Anderson Smashwords Edition Smashwords Edition, License Notes Though this e-book is being distributed for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the author. If you like this book, please encourage your friends to download a copy at Smashwords. For additional information, please visit the author’s website at http://jeffreyandersonfiction.wordpress.com Chapter 1 Thirty-two hours on the road with only five short stops for gas, take-out food, and bladder relief didn’t keep Zachary Sandstrom from bolting upright in the motel bed just two hours into a sound sleep that should’ve lasted at least ten. All his senses instantly on edge, he struggled to figure out where he was and what had waked him. Pale light leaked in around curtains and gradually revealed a room perhaps twelve feet square with a door to his right beside the curtains and another to his left. Straight ahead, a dark hole in the slightly lighter wall resolved itself into a T.V. screen atop a dresser. This slow unmasking of his surroundings did little to assuage Zach’s fear, as everything he saw in the dim light seemed charged with threat, or at least a possible hiding place for it. Then he noticed the pale white shape resting at the foot of the bed and instantly knew it was Gina, his five-year-old Brittany spaniel in her normal nocturnal spot even if this wasn’t their normal bed or room. Then he saw the dark silhouette of a body beside him and realized with sudden calm, as if this knowledge were the single most important piece of information he’d ever gained or ever would know, that this was his wife of just over two days—Allison Mayes, now (he reminded himself) Allison Sandstrom. He leaned over and inhaled the herbal fragrance of her freshly washed hair and the earthier scent of her skin. He knew both scents well, felt like he’d known them all his life. In fact, he’d known Allison almost four years, since they’d begun dating when he was a junior in high school and she a freshman. But he’d never awakened in bed beside her. Last night, they’d been on the road in Pennsylvania and Ohio; two nights ago, their first as a married couple, they’d slept apart in their old beds in their old rooms, separated by five miles of country roads he’d nearly worn out with his frequent trips back and forth in courtship and betrothal. But he’d never known her as wife, never waked beside her free to extend a hand unimpeded by the old sexual mores (however much they’d ignored them over the years) and claim her skin as his own, make for themselves one flesh in a manner practiced but now suddenly and strangely new. Yet Zach did not extend that hand, did not claim that chance now offered for the first time—he did not know why. If asked, he would’ve replied casually—let her sleep; she’s earned her rest. But that wasn’t the reason at all. The real reason lay far, far away and buried deep—farther away than Zach had ever been, buried deeper than he could or would dig: a treasure waiting a map. So instead he reached out and touched his dog, found unerring the soft spot behind her floppy ears. Gina, perhaps every bit as deserving of her rest as Allison, still managed to rouse in the old familiar way, returning the press of his hand with a slow tilt of her head and a quiver of her stub tail he could feel from beneath the sheets. He rose from the bed and in the dim light pulled on his jeans and T-shirt from where they lay across the chair’s arm. He hooked Gina’s leash to her collar and gently lifted her off the bed so she wouldn’t have to jump into the unfamiliar dark. Then he silently opened the door and led her outside. She’d have to pee sometime during the night—might as well be now, since he was awake anyway. He stood on the walk and looked across the well-lit parking lot. Their beat-up Chevy carryall van was parked directly in front of their room. A few other cars anchored slots in front of other doors. On the far side of the lot, a couple tractor trailer rigs consumed whole rows of spaces with their length and girth. It hardly mattered, though; empty parking spaces abounded despite those sacrificed to the rigs. Beyond the broad parking lot, the Omaha skyline lurked in mostly shadow. The rare lit window in one of the office buildings ringing the horizon only accentuated the prevailing darkness. Clearly Omaha slept after dusk, its residents still governed by the diurnal cycles that prevailed in the surrounding plains. Zach felt a brief shiver start at his bare feet and move up and over his calves and thighs and torso and neck and head. The shiver arose not from cool air, for it was a warm and humid night, but from a combination of the foreboding he’d felt on waking and the loneliness he felt now in this dark and dormant city. Yet, on the flip side of this foreboding and loneliness, perhaps as much a cause of the shiver as these, he felt a sudden and unprecedented excitement. The world within this ring of darkened buildings and, most emphatically, the world beyond was now finally and fully his to explore, to engage, to know. Gina strained against the leash and led him down the walkway to the right. He trailed her lead past empty rooms with curtains opened, occupied rooms with curtains drawn. He couldn’t help but wonder who lay in the beds beyond those closed curtains, not five feet from his striding. Were they young or old, handsome or homely, thrilled as he by new environs or jaded by frequent travel? What would they tell you if you asked? What could you see if you looked? But in all the rooms with curtains drawn, only darkness framed the edges—no answers offered, no tales shared. Gina found a patch of wilted weeds between the parking lot and a boarded-up gas station, and squatted to do her business. Zach looked around, then unzipped his pants and left his mark, thinking, “The adventure starts here.” He finished, took one more look at the broad dark horizon, and turned to the motel. By then, Gina was tugging back toward the room and sleep. Chapter 2 Allison’s Uncle Nick stood holding a metal tray with six large bowls of steaming chili and a basket of cornbread. His barrel-chest and thick arms made the tray look small and delicate despite the sizable bounty it carried. Zach and Allison were seated on one side of the table, Allison’s Gramma Jane and cousin Cindy across from them, and Aunt Ruth at the far end. Nick gave a sly grin then said, “We’ve got hot, medium, and mild. What’s your pleasure, Zach?” His words had a forcefulness that may or may not have been intended. Zach shunned spicy food, but couldn’t bring himself to request mild. “Medium sounds good,” he answered. Nick feigned surprise. “You’re sure?” Zach looked to the women for guidance but found only gently grinning faces. “This is western chili, Zach. None of that east-coast pansy stuff.” Zach saw he was trapped now. “Medium’s good.” From the corner of his eye he saw Ruth stifle a chuckle. Uncle Nick passed out bowls of chili to each of the women, then gave Zach his, and ended by setting a bowl at his own place at the head of the table. Once he set the tray on the kitchen counter and returned to sit down, Aunt Ruth said, “Mamma, would you please bless the food?” Gramma Jane bowed her head and said with sharp annunciation and full volume, “God of life, give us the grace of your Son and the power of your Spirit along with these gifts of food and drink, that we might use them to meet the challenges ahead, till the day we find ourselves at your heavenly feast. Amen.” Nick said, “Let’s eat.” Well, Zach’s chili was hot—hotter than anything he’d ever tasted or dreamed of tasting, though the sensation of having his mouth on fire hardly qualified as tasting. Worse, the large glass of water he quickly downed didn’t help relieve the fire; it only made it spread down his throat and into his stomach. The cornbread he wolfed to try to smother the fire didn’t help either. He saw Nick watching him. He did his best not to show his discomfort. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead; he wiped them away with his napkin, then grabbed another napkin, then another. He kept eating the chili. Eventually his mouth grew numb. After a while, he reached the bottom of the bowl. Nick nodded approval from the head of the table. “Want more, Zach?” Zach said, “Sure.” “Want to try the hot?” “Medium’s good. Need to work my way up to the hot.” Nick brought him back a bowl of chili that was not nearly as spicy as the first. Zach found himself almost missing the kick—almost. After dinner, Allison and Zach lingered at the table with Nick and Ruth while Cindy and Gramma washed dishes in the kitchen. Nick and Ruth had big mugs of steaming coffee in front of them; Ruth had found some teabags buried in the pantry for Allison’s tea, and Zach stuck with water—his fourth glass. Nick said, “Now let me get this straight—you want to camp on the prairie?” Zach looked to Allison, who was looking at her tea, gently pushing the teabag against the side of her cup with a spoon. He said, “That’s the plan, yes.” “No shade from the sun during the day, near freezing overnight?” Zach said, “We’ll manage.” “Ticks, scorpions, rattlesnakes.” Allison looked up quickly, splashing a few drops of tea from her cup. Ruth said, “Nick, stop.” Nick shrugged. “Just telling it like it is. Seems like a strange honeymoon to me, but what do I know?” Ruth looked to Allison. “Hardly any snakes out there nowadays, Honey. Snakehunters got most of them.” Zach said, “We want to try it.” What he didn’t add was that he thought he wanted to be a homesteader, at least in a recurrent dream of his; and he’d imposed this dream on Allison who, six weeks out of high school, had no clearly defined goals to counter Zach’s. So this camping venture would be a test for them both. Nick looked at Allison. “And you, Sweety?” Ruth said, “Nick!” Allison said, “I’ll try it,” but with little conviction or enthusiasm. Nick said, “O.K., then. In the morning I’ll lead you to our camp by the river—best piece of land in our summer range. There used to be a sheepwagon down there, if hunters or the coyotes haven’t torn it up.” “Sheepwagon?” Allison asked. Ruth said, “A little like a modern-day Conestoga wagon—with rubber tires and a curved tin roof. Set up with a small woodstove for cooking and heat, and a raised platform across the back for a mattress: cozy, but functional. I kept house in one for a couple weeks, when Nick and I were first married and he had to cover for a herder in the hospital with appendicitis.” Zach said, “See.” Ruth smiled. “Never so glad to get back to a real bed—with room to roll around!” Zach said, “We have a mattress in the truck. We can sleep there and use the sheepwagon for cooking.” Nick nodded. “I’ll come by Jane’s in the morning to get you—5:30 sharp.” Zach nodded. Allison looked at her empty cup. Chapter 3 With a pink dawn breaking over the sage desert and the mountains in the distance already showing snowy peaks, Zach thought he’d waked into the heaven of his oldest dream—wide-open spaces of beauty and rigor, no sign of human habitation or contamination (except for Nick’s truck kicking up dust ahead on the twisting gravel road). Allison was curled into a ball on the passenger side, her head on a pillow against the door. “Wake me when we get there,” she’d said two minutes into the hour-long trip, though the twists and turns and ruts and potholes would pretty much guarantee she’d not be able to sleep. Gina sat between them, leaning eagerly into each turn and slope, her nose twitching excitedly at all the new smells. Zach slowed a little to get out of Nick’s dust and afford himself a better chance to survey the broad new landscape revealing itself in all directions. From the spine of hills they travelled along, he could look to the east at an endless plain of sage desert, glowing pale grayish-green in the dawn light. How could anything not the ocean stretch for that far? He could start walking into the sun and go for days without crossing a person or house. How could land be this big? And to the west, between these low hills and the lurking shadows of the Wind River Mountains in the far distance, the land took on shape and variety—two stark buttes thrust up from the valley floor like altars, twisting thin lines that must’ve been roads but looked like marks made by a child with a stick, a meandering stripe of dense green that must’ve been a river in the middle distance, then low beige hills undulating into a dim horizon claimed by the mighty mountains. This was a different planet from the close confines of his childhood in the Connecticut River valley, where every inch had been repeatedly marked by human touch or footprint, including his own. Here those marks, where they existed at all, were few and far between. Here was room for new marks, press of flesh against that which had only known the touch of God. Nick’s truck, now nearly a half-mile ahead, slowed then turned right onto a black asphalt highway. He stopped in the middle of the highway to wait till Zach had turned onto the pavement, then raced ahead at what seemed warp speed after the slow bouncing trip along the gravel road. The now familiar endless expanse of sage desert bounded the highway on both sides, and the only signs of human activity besides the asphalt were the long lines of barbed-wire fencing occasionally broken by entrances with cattle-guard grates. A few miles ahead, they passed a low diner and gas station to their left, then crossed a bridge over a narrow river with thick brush along its banks. A quarter mile farther, Nick turned left and crossed one of those cattle guards and began kicking up dust again on an even narrower and more deeply rutted track than the one earlier. They crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over what must’ve been the same river they’d crossed on the highway, curled over a low hill, then descended a long slope down toward an oasis of green in the midst of the gray desert. By then, they’d abandoned any hint of road and were simply driving across the desert, stirring up sagebrush and tumbleweeds as they went. Zach couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to them and their van if heavy rain turned this dry firm desert into a quagmire. But he quickly forgot this fear as Nick circled around a clump of scraggly trees and pulled alongside a wagon with a tin roof glinting in the early sun. Nick was out of his truck and checking out the wagon even before Zach pulled alongside the pick-up and cut the engine. He looked to Allison, whose head was buried deep in her pillow. “Wake up sleepyhead; we’ve arrived at our honeymoon paradise.” Gina was jumping on his lap, sniffing out the open window and pawing at the handle. He opened the door and the two of them—dog and master—half-fell, half-stepped out into the desert morning. Nick poked his head out the wagon door. His bulk filled the entire opening and he tilted his head to one side to keep from hitting it on the door jamb. “In better shape than I expected. Roof is tight, no mice nests, even got firewood.” He gestured toward some sticks and small branches next to the pot-bellied stove with a rusty stovepipe sticking out the roof. He jumped to the ground, skipping the two narrow steps up into the wagon. “Tires are flat.” Zach looked at the cracked rubber tires on rusty rims—all four flat and sunk into the sandy soil. “But then I don’t guess you’ll be going anywhere.” Zach smiled. “Nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to be.” Nick looked at him for a long moment. Zach wished he could see his eyes, but they were masked by his reflector sunglasses. Allison appeared from behind the van, still clutching her pillow. She seemed a little wobbly in the brittle clear air. “You O.K. Sweety? Look a little pale.” She smiled. “Still waking up, Uncle Nick. Not quite used to these frontier hours.” “You’ll get used to it out here—no way to sleep past dawn, no way to stay awake past dark.” “Guess I will.” Zach said, “Look.” The others turned to see Gina locked tight as a statue, on point about fifty yards away beside a clump of low bushes. Nick grinned. “Grouse.” Sure enough—a dozen pigeon-sized birds suddenly flushed from the bushes and flew off low and fast in all directions. Gina, her training still in place despite the strange environs, held her ground but looked around as if to ask, “What do I do now?” Zach waved his arm, a signal that freed her to continue her hunt. Chapter 4 “Got to be here somewhere,” Zach muttered as he hacked his way through some thick brush, swinging a bat-sized branch like a dull machete. He finally gave up trying to hack through the tangle of branches and turned around and pushed his way backwards into the thicket, determined to break through by brute force. He leaned into the tangle and pushed with all the strength in his legs. The wall suddenly gave way and he fell into a clearing with the sun beating down mercilessly. Allison walked up and stood over him, shading him for the moment from the sun. “Maybe we should go back to Gramma’s. We can come out here during the day.” He looked up at her while he caught his breath. Backlit by the sun, her face was a featureless silhouette. Gina ran over and licked his cheek and mouth. He rolled over and stood, brushed off his jeans and T-shirt. “We’ll find it,” he said, and dove back into the brush with Gina fast on his heels. The “it” he was referring to was a spring Nick said lay somewhere between the sheepwagon and the river. It would be their source of drinking and cooking water; without it, they’d have to periodically return to civilization to replenish their water jugs. They’d already found their way to the river, running fast and shallow through its pebbly channel. Nick had said they could probably drink from it, but they might pick up a stray molecule of fecal matter from the livestock and wildlife that frequented its banks. That implicit prospect of having the trots out here with only a hole in the ground for a toilet guaranteed that they wouldn’t be using the river for drinking water. They’d have to find the spring or return to the highway and beg or pay for water from the diner owner. Allison shook her head and headed back for the van, where she’d try to find enough shade and cool to read or take a nap. Zach broke through into a small clearing and discovered a bleached ram’s skull hanging a few feet off the ground, the curl of its horns hopelessly tangled in the brush. With no sign of the rest of the skeleton, the skull hung there like a signpost, a totem that Zach couldn’t help but read as warning. But warning of what? To steer clear of this thicket? This camp? This wilderness trial? Gina came around from behind and trotted ahead. She too saw the skull and ran forward to it, paused and stretched her neck to sniff the bleached bone. She then sniffed the ground below, suddenly threw herself on her side and rolled onto her back, thrashing in an almost ecstatic trance, her paws pointed to the sky. Then just as quickly she righted herself, shook vigorously, and ran ahead into the brush. Zach followed her lead, leaving the ram’s skull where it hung. He found the spring a few minutes later, in another small clearing, this one covered with thick, lush grass fed by the spring’s run-off. He knelt beside the shallow depression and reached down into the pool. The shockingly cold water numbed his fingers. He cupped a little in his hand and raised it to his face. He sniffed it. It smelled clean and, he thought, almost soft (if water could smell soft), especially when compared to the brittle and sharp edges of everything else in this new land. He touched it to his chin, brushed it against his lips, finally licked it with the tip of his tongue. It tasted cold and clean and sweet. He nodded to himself, then to the sky above. He could dig out the spring with their camp shovel, line it with clean rocks, and use it for water long as they stayed. Back at the camp, he opened the side door to the van and saw Allison lying on the mattress reading. “I found it,” he said. She nodded but didn’t look up from her magazine. He got the shovel from under the seat and returned to their new-found water source. Chapter 5 Who would’ve thought that fried Spam, cornbread griddlecakes, and pintos out of the can simmered with a little sidemeat, all served on a plastic plate, would taste like a meal fit for a king? But that’s exactly how Zach felt as he sat in the prairie twilight in the lawn chair Nick had left them basking in the sated glow of that meal heavy on carbohydrates and not much else. At least part of his satisfaction derived from the frontier-style self-sufficiency that had produced the meal. He’d brought their drinking and cooking water up from the freshly cleared spring, made the fire in the cookstove, and managed to prepare the entire meal while only scorching the first two griddlecakes (which Gina was nonetheless happy to devour). So now, as that self-crowned king, he leaned back against the nylon chair strapping and gazed past the sheepwagon out over his new kingdom, across the broad plain of sage prairie to the snowy peaks beyond which the sun had just set. This was certainly a different and, in many ways, surreal world; but its prospects looked good. “Is this a vacation or something more?” Allison asked. She was sitting in the open doorway to the sheepwagon, her feet on the steps. In the evening shadows, with the wagon backlit by that fading sunset, it was difficult for Zach to see her silhouette, and her face was totally obscured. He looked again at the distant mountains. Their peaks had already faded from pink to lavender—that fast. “This camp?” “No, this state—Wyoming.” “Do we have to decide now?” “We should’ve decided before we ever left home.” “Why?” “Mom wants to know. Gramma and Aunt Ruth want to know.” “So what.” “Zach, I want to know.” “Because?” “Because it matters. Because I want to know how long I’ll be living out of two shoe boxes and a milk crate. Because I want to know when I’ll have a shower and a toilet that flushes. Because I want to know if I’ll have a bedroom where I can stand up or a kitchen bigger than a coat closet. Because I want to know—that’s all.” The prairie had turned into an unbroken plain of charcoal sameness, the mountains obsidian teeth gnawing at the ink-blue sky. Stars had suddenly appeared—hundreds, thousands. Zach lunged forward out of his chair, closed the few yards between them in two long strides, found Allison’s pale face out of the deeper dark of the doorway, and gently cradled her chin in his two warm hands. “Soon,” he whispered, then kissed her forehead. He found his way to the van in the new dark and opened the driver’s side door, releasing the dome light’s three watts on the potent night. He switched the ignition to accessory and pushed a Renaissance cartridge into the eight-track tape player. The plaintive instruments and haunting soprano of “Ocean Gypsy” blossomed into the stillness. Somewhere out there on the prairie the music would fade to silence; but right here, between the van and the wagon, these familiar notes were all the assurance Zach needed. He left the door open, its light on. He moved around to the back of the van to unhook Gina from her chain latched to the trailer hitch, then walked off with her into the shadows. When they got back from their walk—a slow circuit at the outermost edges of the van’s pale light—the music was off and Allison was in her pj shorts and tanktop sitting cross-legged under the blanket of the van’s mattress playing solitaire by the light of a battery-powered lantern. Zach lifted Gina onto her bed on the front seat, then slid off his boots and stripped down to his boxer shorts while standing just outside the van’s rear doors. The desert air had cooled quickly with the setting of the sun, and Zach started shivering uncontrollably. He opened the van’s doors and leapt onto the mattress, slamming the doors behind him and pulling the sheet and blanket over his freezing body and all the way up over his head. In the process, he sent Allison’s cards flying in all directions. “Zach!” He peeked out from under the covers, holding the two of clubs in his mouth like a prize bone, or peace offering. “I would’ve won,” she said, collecting the scattered cards. “Give me that,” she added, grabbing the card out of his mouth. He slid his hand under the covers and found the softness of her bare inner thigh. “I did win,” he whispered, his shivering fading. “You always do,” she said as she set the cards on the wheel well and switched off the light. How do bodies know? And what do they know? And what do they tell? Or keep secret? All the parts were the same, the nerve endings too—smell and taste, purr and moan and request, light streaks just back of closed eyes, and the touch, oh the touch, luscious precious touch, again—familiar lips to lips, cheek, earlobe, eyelid brush, tongue to tongue, along teeth, hollow of neck, shoulder, breast, navel, gentle parting of already parted seas. All this the same. Yet, different, a difference known first in the skin: The place—threatening wilderness pressing in from all sides and above and below, past glass and steel, floorboards and mattress, past coarse woven wool and finely weaved pima, pressed up tight against joined and joining very skin. And the distance—more than two thousand miles removed from the locus of all their previous unions, far as the moon, as Pluto lonely in interstellar orbit wander. And, most different of all, their title—husband-wife, one entity in the eyes of the world, one flesh defined before touching, even without touching. But maybe not one flesh each before the other, maybe now for the first time since mating four years past, two fleshes—the cosmic puzzle pieces shifted, the interlocks not interlocking, no key to fit. Not that any of these lethal challenges halted their gradual slow creep then staccato quickening lunge then ease back then slowly quickened then heart-bursting quickened ecstatic rush into blinding flash collapse, into the soft fall into the practiced familiar cushioned melting that was now irreversibly changed. Yet their skin knew—right there in that wilderness blank, in the first union of their disuniting—what for the longest time their hearts and minds couldn’t decipher. Chapter 6 The sun rose on fourteen hours of uninterrupted sunlight. Then again. Then again. They fell into a comfortable daily rhythm defined, as Nick had predicted, by the clockless diurnal cycle of the wilderness. They would wake shortly after dawn (nothing else to do, with sun pouring through the windows like a searchlight), stumble clumsily and still half-asleep through their waking hygiene (Zach brushing his teeth with water from a tin cup while seated in his boxers on the wagon steps, launching a thin iridescent arc of toothpaste froth into the crisp dawn; Allison scrubbing her face with astringent-soaked cotton balls in the van; both with quick trips to the brush-screened frigid latrine hole with its inverted plastic bucket with the bottom cut out as a toilet seat), then Zach would feed Gina while Allison put together a light breakfast of Cheerios (Allison’s swimming in evaporated milk from the can, Zach’s dry) and Tang mixed with spring water in color-coded plastic cups (Allison’s turquoise, Zach’s gold).They’d wash their few dishes together, Allison scrubbing them in soapy cold water in a plastic dish pan and handing each piece to Zach, who dried it and set it on the wood shelf opposite the stove inside the wagon. Breakfast completed, they’d head off into their mainly separate morning activities. Allison tended to stay near the van, sometimes dabbling in her water color paints, sometimes reading from her six-month reserve of teen magazines, sometimes writing letters to her school chums back home. Zach always went for a hike, sometimes with Gina for company, other times alone. His hikes always started in the direction of the river flowing shallow and fast a hundred yards or so beyond their camp, behind the screen of thick brush. Sometimes he’d head upstream, sometimes down. He could cross to the far side, where the underbrush was thinner and easier to navigate, by walking upstream to the wooden bridge they’d crossed on their way in, or by crossing the river at one of two shallow fords, taking off his boots and socks and shoving the socks deep into the boots and hanging the boots around his neck by the laces tied together and crossing with his pants rolled up and his bare feet and legs quickly turning blue and numb in the frigid clear water. Sometimes Zach would take the fishing pole Nick had left him and catch grasshoppers before the sun had warmed their wings and use them as bait to fish for the rainbow trout he could see pointed like darts into the current where the river curved and cut a deeper channel against the bank. He let most of the fish he caught go, but an especially big one swallowed the hook and after more than five minutes of a bloody struggle to remove it, he gave up and whacked the traumatized rainbow with a stick to put it out of its misery. He used the pocketknife Allison had given him last Christmas to slit open the fish’s white belly and gutted the fish by pressing two fingers tight to the underside of the spine and jerking downward toward the tail. He tossed the guts into the river and saw several fish lunge for the bloody remains. He brought the fish back to the camp to eat for lunch. He lit a small fire in the stove, heated the cast-iron pan, coated the fish in cornmeal, and fried it in bacon fat. At first Allison scrunched up her nose at the prospect of trout for lunch; but by the time Zach had finished frying it crisp and golden brown in the bacon fat, she’d changed her mind. The fish was a tasty treat after all these meals out of a can or a box. After lunch (where the fare, when not trout, included such delicacies as peanut-butter sandwiches or sliced corned beef—from a can—and mustard on bread turned to crisp toast by simply leaving it in the sun and bone-dry wind for two minutes), the two of them and Gina would do something together. This included hikes into the low hills away from the river. Out there they found narrow canyons cut by rivers from ages past, shallow caves hollowed out by those same bygone waters, caves with the bones and scat and other leavings of wild animals and half-wild humans. They discovered bits of jade and other possible semi-precious stones in a freshly opened cliff-side vein. They found the deep ruts of an old wagon trail, probably a spur from the original Oregon Trail, snaking along within sight of the river but not impeded by the river’s thickets and brush. Early in the afternoon of their fourth day in the wilderness, Nick dropped off a box of supplies—mostly more of the beloved canned meat and beans, along with a bag of fresh lemons. “Ruth said you could use the vitamin C,” he said. “Guess she doesn’t want you to get scurvy.” He also gave Allison three letters sent to her care of their Lander address. He paused before getting in the truck and stared at them, then nodded. “I wondered how you kids would fare out here. It’s a long way from New England. But looks like the desert agrees with you.” He paused then added, “But this place can turn on you. Don’t stay out here too long.” Then he smiled that big western smile—big as his barrel chest and broad-brimmed cowboy hat. “I’ll see you in another three days, if not before.” They waved from beside the wagon as his truck kicked up dust on its way back up the hill. Allison trotted off to the van with her letters, closing the door gently behind her. Zach unhooked Gina and grabbed the long forked cottonwood branch he’d found by the river, that he was slowly carving into a walking stick. They headed toward a dense thicket where Zach knew sharp-tailed grouse rested during the noonday heat. Sure enough, they weren’t twenty yards into the thicket when Gina’s tail started twitching rapidly as she kept her nose close to the ground and started running back and forth in ever shortening arcs before coming to a sudden stop, her whole body stone-still though quivering, her nose and head thrust forward, just a few inches from the ground. Zach slowly approached from behind. “That’s it, girl,” he cooed, barely a whisper. “That’s my girl,” he said as he drew alongside her frozen crouch. He could see her nostrils flaring out, then in; out, then in. Suddenly the whole thicket—sand, bush, sky—was awash in motion and noise. The nine birds that flushed were crowing in alarm, their furious wingbeats striking branches and each other as they fled this paired intrusion. Zach instantly raised the walking stick like an imaginary shotgun, picked out the two birds that were making the mistake of flying straight and high, above the brush, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he pulled the imaginary trigger, then, leaving that bird for dead, swung the stick on the other and clicked his tongue again. He exhaled slowly as he lowered the stick. By that time, all nine birds were well out of shotgun range. Three of them were out of sight below the brush line; the others were in their silent glide, no doubt following the line of the river to some safer hiding place. They’d each find a dense thicket and hunker down for twenty minutes or so, before tentatively rising and moving back toward a central meeting place, directed there by the low, nearly inaudible clucks of the rest of the flock as it slowly reconvened. Zach saw and heard all this in his mind, and nodded at the universal order implicit in this group behavior—fear and scatter, get back together when it’s safe. He looked down at Gina. She’d not moved since locking on point, but her whole body was relaxed and she was looking up to him for instruction. She seemed a different animal from the taut coil of muscle and sinew she’d been a minute earlier. Zach set his stick on the ground and knelt beside her. “It’d be nice to be here in the fall, wouldn’t it, girl?” He gently caressed her nose and scratched under her chin, in the triangular hollow framed by her jaw. “There’d be some good hunting.” Gina’s stub tail twitched from side to side. Zach stood slowly and turned back toward the camp. He saw Allison through the van’s window, lying on her side with her head buried in the pillow. He could tell she was pretending to be asleep. He opened one rear door and reached in and grabbed her nearest bare foot lying atop the covers. She groaned and rolled over slowly, looking at him but not rising from the pillow. He could see her eyes were red. “Everything O.K. back home?” he asked. She nodded. “Everything’s fine at home.” Zach nodded. “You miss your mom?” She shook her head. “I miss people, Zach.” Zach gazed down at her from the doorway. She rolled her head back into the pillow. He turned suddenly and scurried around the camp gathering various items from their meager holdings. He got a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap from the front seat of the truck, a bath towel from the bed in the wagon and a plastic cup off the dish shelf; and he grabbed Nick’s lawn chair and folded it up. He wrapped the soap, shampoo, and cup in the towel, then slid the rolled towel into the fold of the chair. He leaned the chair and its contents against the van, then opened both rear doors. He grabbed Allison’s clogs from beside the mattress, slid them on her feet, then reached down and lifted her into a seated position. She flopped around like a ragdoll, groaning. “Zach, what are you doing?” He put one finger to her lips and said, “Trust me.” He reached under her arms and lifted her out of the van. She feigned collapse, but he wouldn’t let her fall—not even a fake one. When he saw she was steady, he let her go. “Now close your eyes,” he said. “Zach, please.” “Do you trust me?” he asked. She shrugged. “Sure, but—.” “No buts—yes or no?” She nodded. “O.K. Yes.” “Then close your eyes and keep them closed till I say so.” She nodded slowly. “O.K. But if you drop me off a cliff, my mother will hunt you down.” “I don’t doubt that, but don’t worry—no cliffs in your future.” He grabbed the folded chair and its supplies in one hand, and ringed her wrist with his other. Then he paused. “Don’t move.” He ran into the wagon and emerged with Ruth’s mesh bag of lemons. He hooked the bag’s string closer over one arm of the folded chair, then again took the chair in one hand and Allison’s wrist in the other. He led her away from the camp. “Eyes closed?” “Tight as a drum.” “Good.” He led her along his favorite path to the river. It was a little longer than other paths but didn’t involve plowing through brush or ducking under branches. Once on the sandy banks of the river, he let Allison’s wrist go. “Don’t move, and don’t open your eyes.” “You’re the boss.” He quickly took off his boots and socks, then peeled away his T-shirt, leaving only his jean shorts. He set the rolled towel and its contents on the sandy ground, then unfolded the chair and set it in a bubbling pool of water separated from the flowing river by ten feet of bank. The pool came to just below the seat of the chair, and was as warm as bath water—one of the numerous mineral springs in this part of Wyoming. He’d discovered it the day before. He went back to Allison and took her hand. “Still closed?” She nodded. “Good. Follow me.” He led her to the edge of the pool. “Slide off your clogs.” She slid them off. He then slowly led her into the pool. “Oh—that feels nice,” she said as her feet touched the warm water. “Where’d you get the water heater?” “God’s own,” he said as he led her around to the front of the chair. “Have a seat.” She slowly sat down, her legs and thighs now in the warm water. “You can open your eyes.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to; it might all disappear.” “Suit yourself. But can I take your shirt off?” A brief frown crossed her face. He laughed. “No peeping Toms for a hundred miles. Just you and me and that horny bull across the river.” “Zach!” “Just kidding. But I think you’d like it better if I took your shirt off.” “O.K. But the bra stays on.” He laughed. “The bra stays on.” He lifted her pink T-shirt over her head. He tossed the shirt on the bank, retrieved the soap and the cup, and started to gently bathe his wife. He poured water on her shoulders and down over her back and chest, then took the bar of soap and rubbed it along her spine. He spread the sudsy water across her back and down over her arms and along the sides of her chest and reached around to her front and massaged along her waist and across her stomach and up to the line of her bra, then over her sides and across her shoulder blades to her neck. She leaned forward in the chair to give him full access to her back and neck. He massaged her shoulders, pressed his fingers and thumbs up under her long brown hair to where her neck merged into her head and behind the ears and up along the sides of her head. He massaged her temples, her forehead, her closed eyes and upper cheeks and the sides of her nose and gently across her lips and chin. He then took the bar of soap and moved around in front of her and soaped up her left leg then raised it and massaged slowly between her toes, across her arch and heel and ankle, massaging her calf, the back of her knee, her kneecap and thigh and hamstring. Then he set that leg in the water and soaped her right leg and massaged it with the same slow care as the left. By then her head was hanging limply, her hair covering her face—a happy ragdoll this time—and she was uttering a sound very much like a cat’s purr. He then stepped out of the pool, opened the bag of lemons with his pocket knife, and cut four of them in half. He returned to the pool and squeezed the lemons’ juice onto her shoulders and hair. The tangy scent, catalyzed by the sun and the water and the gentle breeze, seemed to fill the whole world. He massaged the juice into her scalp and neck and shoulders and cheeks, rubbing it gently into her pores. He then poured some water from the cup over her hair, squeezed shampoo along the line of her part, and washed her thick curls from behind, then moved around and washed her hair from in front, working the lather up between his fingers and the strands of hair, then slowly squeezing the lather out by squeezing her hair between his palms brought together as in prayer, the suds falling across her knees and down over his shorts and thighs. The mix of odors from the soap and lemons and shampoo and sage prairie in the warm pool and warm sun was just about heavenly. He poured cup after cup of water over her hair and scalp till the suds finally dissipated. He sat down in the pool before her, pushed her wet hair back away from her face, tucked it behind her ears, dropped his hands to the water at his sides, and waited for her to open her eyes. She finally did, maybe seconds, maybe minutes later, her eyes at first like one in a trance, but then focusing on his. “Happy anniversary,” he said. She looked confused. “One week.” She smiled. “What a week.” He nodded. She leaned slowly forward till she fell out of the chair and into his arms. He in turn fell backward and they both were sprawled out and splashing in the pool. Their racket scared off two ducks that had been watching cautiously from the far bank of the river. They flew off with much loud quacking. Zach sat up in the pool and Allison turned around and leaned back into his lap. “Disturbing the neighbors,” he said. She grinned, “Probably throw us out.” “Any day now.” They sat in new silence in the pool—Zach’s arms draped over her shoulders, Allison’s hands cradling his in her lap—for the longest time. Finally rising, they collected their things from the bank and headed back to the camp. On the path in the lengthening shadows of the brush, Allison said over her shoulder, “Seven plus one.” Her wet bra left a dark stripe across the middle of her shirt. “What?” “Since we were married. This is the eighth day.” Zach laughed. “A new creation.” Chapter 7 Zach rose from a deep dreamless sleep into semi-waking in a seamless transition. He didn’t know what had roused him and didn’t care. He felt safe and at peace. He knew he was in the van, in the middle of the sage desert. He knew without checking the luminous dial of his watch that it was the dead center of the night—the moonless dark was absolute, no glimmer of lingering dusk to the west, no hint of dawn to the east. Without lifting his head off the pillow, he was able to scan three directions of the compass out the van’s wrap-around windows. And in all directions he saw distant thunderheads flashing, no thunder audible, the sudden flares of their lightning so remote as to seem imagined, like someone striking a match in the dark tunnel of a dream—then again over here, then again over there: nature’s silent full-surround light show. On previous nights he’d waked to see one or two remote thunderheads, and had marveled then at how massive and unimpeded the horizon was out here. But never had he seen so many storms, and so active—not out here, not anywhere. He slid back into a shallow peaceful rest. Later, he couldn’t say how long, he was awakened by the rumble of thunder. It was still fairly distant, but any sound in the desert’s absolute quiet was startling and unsettling. Zach kept his eyes closed and waited for the next rumble. In the taut silence, he noticed other sounds so faint he’d missed them before. He heard the tinkle of the tags on Gina’s collar as she lay panting on her bed on the front seat (she was terrified of thunderstorms). He heard a faint scurrying on metal and wondered if there was a mouse on the roof of the van. A flash of lightning cut through his closed eyelids. He began counting—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. The thunder rumbled, long and much louder than before. Zach started to feel uneasy but chose to keep his eyes closed, trying to will the storm away or, failing that, will himself and by extension the van’s other occupants to calm. He was acutely aware that the van was the tallest structure between the river and the hills, a metal magnet for the lightning’s electricity. Then he recalled reading that tires acted as insulators from the lightning’s path to ground, making a car in the middle of an open field one of the safest places to be during a lightning storm. He took a few seconds’ consolation from that understanding, then heard Gina panting louder. He wondered if she’d jump over the seat to reach them. He listened for Allison’s breathing, trying to determine if she were awake. He heard no sound coming from her side of the bed. The lightning flashed again, much brighter this time. One, two, three, four, five, six—a loud crack of thunder like a gunshot, followed by an extended and raucous rumble that shook the van. In the brief silence that followed, Zach could hear the beginnings of the wind from the storm—a far off whisper at first, through the brush, steadily growing as it raced across the prairie. Bits of sand arrived ahead of the gale, peppering the doors and windows, then small twigs rattling, then tumbleweeds scurrying over and around the van like fleeing animals. Another flash of lightning, this one so intense it was seared into Zach’s retinas despite having his eyes closed. One, two, three—BOOM! It felt like the ground had opened beneath the van and was threatening to swallow it whole. Then the full force of the gale struck, rocking the van violently from side to side. Gina whimpered and pawed at the seat and the door. The wind slammed into the van in short-cycle gusts, then in a single protracted gust that felt like it was lifting the van off its tires on one side. Every cell in Zach’s body was crying out to do something to save his dog, his wife, and himself from certain utter destruction out here in the wilderness. But in an instant’s clarity, in a rush of calm fatalism and resignation that matched and, briefly, defused his fear, he knew there was nothing he could do. His fate, and the fate of the two living things in the world that he’d been given—had requested—responsibility for, were at the mercy of forces totally beyond his control. For just a millisecond, he felt peace at this brand new realization. He opened his eyes to look at his wife. Then he remembered Gina’s chain grounding the van, a perfect path for the lightning’s deadly track. A bolt so bright that it seemed to originate inside the van seared everything in brilliant white. In that instant he looked at Allison and saw two remarkable things—his wife’s eyes so full of fear that he knew he’d never be able to eradicate it, no matter how long or how hard he tried; and a mouse scurrying through her hair, apparently as desperate to find safety as every other living thing in the vicinity. Zach shrieked, “Oh, my God.” Allison recalled campfire stories from her childhood that told how one’s hair stood on end just before lightning struck to kill you. She’d wondered how anyone knew this fact, since the only witnesses to it were all dead. But she nonetheless accepted it as a fact. So when the lightning flashed and she felt her hair rise up, she knew that she would be dead in an instant. And in that instant before death, she was profoundly disappointed to be dying out here in the wilderness, so far from people and friends. Except, she didn’t die. No living thing in the area died in that lightning strike except the scraggly jackpine on the far side of the sheepwagon, where the bolt found its way to ground (and who knows, tough as that tree looked, it might manage to send a fresh shoot out of the char—next year, or maybe the year after). Immediately after the simultaneous lightning strike and thunder clap, the wind died and the rain came. The deluge on the van’s metal roof was deafening, and yet a relief after what had come before. The lightning and thunder continued but more distant, the pause between flash and rumble steadily growing longer. The rain pounded the roof in waves, as if the ocean that had once lapped these shores had returned, dropped whole from the sky. Gina panted and whimpered and scratched at the seat and the dash. The mouse was gone, returned to some safer, more familiar hiding place. And Allison buried her face in Zach’s chest and cried hysterically, inconsolably, for what seemed an eternity, her sobs continuing long after the storm had moved on and the rain had stopped and Gina had quit whimpering and silence had again laid claim to the land except for Allison’s sobs and sniffles, which also faded in due time as the two of them finally fell into exhausted sleep, Allison’s face lying on Zach’s tear-drenched shirt. Chapter 8 The next day dawned brilliantly clear, dry, and windy—same as all the previous dawns. Zach and Allison rose and went about their waking routines as before. The only evidence of the storm was in the color of the sagebrush—a few shades closer to green, further from gray—and in the splintered pine tree some twenty yards from the camp. The prairie had already shrugged off the violent storm and torrential rain of just a few hours before, tossing it aside as a minor disturbance in a history peppered with upheavals of far greater violence and destruction. After finishing his cereal, Zach paused in front of Allison on his way to rinsing his bowl. “Want to try one more day?” She looked up and shook her head once, her eyes never leaving his. He nodded then turned from her stare. He was actually glad for her decisiveness and her decision, still deeply rattled himself—not only by the storm but also by his lack of preparation or awareness of danger. They cleaned their dishes and gathered up their meager possessions and loaded them into the van. Zach used the small fireplace shovel to scoop the ashes out of the cookstove. He tossed them out the door and watched the wind carry them away. He reloaded the woodbox with branches and sticks he’d gathered from around the clearing the day before. Allison dusted the shelves and swept out the wagon. Zach filled in their potty hole with the shovel, then rinsed off their toilet-seat bucket with what remained of the soapy dish water. He left the bucket tucked under the front axle of the wagon, a token of civilization for the next occupants. Allison waited in the passenger seat reading a magazine. Zach looked around the camp. He saw no obvious sign of their five-day stay. He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing then realized it was just the way it was out here. It would take a lot more than what he and Allison had wagered to leave a mark on this place. Maybe one day they’d return to try again. The End Thanks for reading this story! For more information on my fiction, please visit: http://jeffreyandersonfiction.wordpress.com