Jaguar (28 page)

But then she talked with her locker partner, Jane Heynen; or, more accurately, she listened. Jane talked constantly, and most of her talk was absolute, bald-faced sexual fantasy. Maryellen thought that Jane would make a perfect candidate for a one-year gift subscription to Dr. Mark. Whether Jane really knew anything first-hand about sex or not was hard to tell, but it certainly was her favorite subject.

Jane told her all about it. How Eddie had taken her for a walk down by the river, and kissed her, and how one thing led to another and before she could say “no” she was swept away in a whirlwind of passion. In fact, that was exactly how she’d put it.

“I was just swept away in a whirlwind of passion.”

Maryellen didn’t know what to say, so she tried the obvious.

“What if you’re pregnant?”

“D’you think I’m stupid? I know how to take care of
that.
”

Maryellen was sure that Jane was making it up. Jane’s eyes glittered and the right one lazed outward the way it did when she got excited. Just the same, Maryellen’s imagination conjured them down by the river, squirming and sweating together,
naked.
Maryellen had her first PE class with Jane, And a naked Jane Heynen was not a pretty sight.

“How?”

“Well, I don’t want to go into the whole thing, but it takes a bottle of Pepsi and some paper towels.”

“Pepsi!”

“Well, you could use Coke if you want, but it’s awful strong.”

Jane put up her hand to indicate that she really didn’t want to go into details.

Maryellen knew she should’ve made the first move long ago, down by the river or up at the lake. But she didn’t really know what that first move was. The matter never really came up. He’d kissed her a few times, sure, but more like a brother than a lover. Neither of them became a whirlwind of passion.

Jane’s half of the locker was stuffed with
True Romance
and
True Confessions
magazines. She’d never seen Eddie with Jane at all, and logic told her that nothing happened. Or, whatever happened was not what Jane described.

Maryellen picked Eddie up at daybreak the morning after Thanksgiving and they drove the hundred miles to the mountain in her father’s old Chevy pickup.

“My parents weren’t suspicious at all,” she said. “They liked all the talk about Disneyland, it’s something
normal
. I was afraid they’d be up early this morning, but they drank quite a bit yesterday at dinner.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I wanted to be alone for a change, take a trip with my girlfriend, Jane.”

She stole a glance his way, but he stared off into the rain.

“I told them a trip would be a good time to decide about college. My stepmother’s such a bitch, though. She always thinks I’m up to something.”

“This time, you are.”

“Yeah, and it’s the
first
time. She makes me so mad I could spit.”

Rain washed out the dawn and became a full-blown storm before the Elbe turnoff. Eddie was very quiet and drowsed off easily. For the first time since she’d known him, Maryellen felt uncomfortable with his silence. She wondered what he must think of her, planning this weekend in cold blood, so matter-of-fact. They vowed to trap the Jaguar, and the nobility of that mission excused the subterfuge for their rendezvous.

Jane had shown her an illustrated sex manual and a cheap snapshot of a Latin couple astraddle a chair and one another. She knew Eddie better than she knew anyone, yet she was afraid.

What am I afraid of?
she wondered.

That it would be like that cheap snapshot,
came the answer.

Maryellen was very protective of her body. Both her father and stepmother hit her, and her stepbrother grabbed at her body whenever he could. That was how the people closest in her life touched her. She knew Eddie was probably different, but she was afraid, all the same.

She didn’t have the nerve to ask him about sex, and she would never hop the dreamways and snoop.

If I don’t have the nerve to talk to him, how will I have the nerve to go to bed with him?

At this point, going to bed seemed the easier of the two. And going to bed wasn’t the problem; sex was the problem. The closer the cabin, the slower she drove. Midmorning, climbing into the mountains, and her headlights were no match for the storm.

“It’s the rain,” she said, “I can hardly see down the hood.”

“Want me to drive?”

“No, I can drive. I’m just being
careful
, that’s all.”

Eddie knew, when she emphasized being careful, that he should have bought some rubbers. He thought a lot about this trip in the last couple of days, and most of that thought focused on their sleeping arrangements. They hadn’t talked about it, and because they hadn’t talked, he was sure she’d left the option open.

Eddie would have to get her to stop on the way, and only one town remained between them and the cabin. He’d never bought rubbers before, but he knew better than to buy them in the valley. Everyone would hear about it the next day.

Not that anything could ruin our social
standing
.

When they stopped, she’d want to come in, and he couldn’t ask for rubbers with her standing there, even if she was reading a magazine or something.

Eddie, you shit, you should’ve thought of this before.

He
had
thought of this before. That was his usual problem, he’d overthought it.

Eddie leaned over and kissed her on the neck.

“Thank you,” she said, and took his hand.

A peculiar buzz rose in Eddie’s ears, one that he’d felt a couple of times when he had been especially tired. He drowsed a little, daydreaming them already inside the cabin. A tumble of blue light flickered in the background, hovering like a pair of wings.

Eddie shook his head. The daydream could lure him off. He felt a strong pull right now, something especially bad must be happening on the other side, and he did not want this to be the time.

“I left a list at home with my things,” Maryellen was saying. “Like a checklist for a trip, and gas station stops. I mapped out a great drive to Disneyland and it really looks like fun. Too bad my dad is so hard on you; Disneyland would be a good thing to do without having to lie about it.”

The log dumps that marked the Morton city limits lined the roadway. Fat logs glistened like slender whales in the rain. After nearly two days without sleep, he was rummy and could barely keep his head upright.

Maryellen pulled the truck into a parking lot.

“Why are we stopping?”

Maryellen pointed to the red SAFEWAY over the store.

“We need supplies,” she said. “Stay here and rest.”

She got out without looking at him and splashed her way to the store.

“I’ve got an errand, too,” he said. “Back in a minute.”

He slogged towards the Rexall up the street—a long slog.

Eddie stood by the magazine rack waiting for the lady clerk to leave the counter so that he could be alone with the pharmacist in the back. One old woman was buying Milk of Magnesia and a box of candies. The candy was wrapped in a gold and red foil, on sale for 79 cents. The pharmacist took off his lab jacket, put on his coat and said to the lady clerk, “See you this afternoon.”

“Good luck at the dentist.”

“Thanks.”

She turned her attention to Eddie, then, the dark young stranger.

“May I help you?” she asked.

He couldn’t think of how to put it right away.

“Well,” she persisted, “can I find something for you?”

“I’m making up my mind about this candy,” he said. “You could wait on that lady.”

The old lady smiled, bought her candy and her Milk of Magnesia and left. The little bell tinkled the silence after her.

Eddie and the clerk were the only ones in the store on this dark Friday midmorning, the day after Thanksgiving. Rain pounded down like the fists of God, he was in a Rexall in Morton with a lady clerk, and he needed to buy some rubbers.

“Well, young man?”

He picked up a box of candy and a
Sports Afield
and put them on the counter. She rang them up.

“Will there be anything else?”

He sighed, inhaled deeply and said, “I’d like a box of Trojans, please.”

The hand on the register stopped, stone-still. The fluorescent light in the middle of the store stopped flickering and not a drop of rain fell.

“Will that be regular, or tipped?”

His cousin always bought the ones with the tips. They filled them with hydrogen in chemistry class and bounced them off the ceiling.

“Tipped, please.”

The hand, still poised above the register. The light and rain, holding.

“Will that be a box of 12 or 24?”

He thought he might be getting the hang of this.

“How much for 24?”

“Twelve forty-five, plus tax.”

“I’ll take twelve.”

She totaled the bill, put the candy, the magazine and the rubbers into a sack. He paid her.

“Thank you,” he said.

Eddie walked quickly to the door. Just barely, over the tinkle of the bell as it closed, he heard her say, “Good luck.”

By the time he got back to the Safeway, Maryellen was already in the truck.

“Took you long enough. I thought you were going to be gone a minute.”

“I had to get some things. Here, this is for you.”

He handed Maryellen the box of candy and put the sack on the floor. He was a little embarrassed that he didn’t get the candy for her, exactly. If he’d bought candy for her he’d have found something better. He hated candy, especially chocolate.

Maryellen put her lips to his ear, kissed him lightly and whispered, “Thank you. We’re going to be fine.”

Eddie pulled her over to him and held her, stroking her thick hair until a carload of teenagers drove by honking and yelling.

Eddie rubbed the fog from the windows with an old towel, kissed the back of her neck, and she drove them out of Morton to the southeast through the heaviest rainstorm that either of them could remember.

They crossed the Cispus River on the forest service road that wound up to the cabin. At the other side of the bridge they stopped to watch the churn of the dark water tear at the old log supports behind them.

“Water’s right up there to the top,” he said. “That bridge might go if this keeps up.”

As he said it, watching the water laced with red from their taillights, he wished that the bridge
would
wash out and strand them up there. Alone and dry in their private cabin, cut off by this flood and the coming snows, they might hold out until spring. This was one of the few normal dreams he’d had—he and Maryellen, alone with their love and their wits.

“It goes almost every year,” she said. “It might happen.”

Rain streaked her hair and face. She seemed to be standing under the great opening of all the clouds.

He didn’t want to say it, but he thought it had to be said.

“If you want, we could go back. We could do this another time.”

“There is never another time,” she said. “Besides, a washout would be doing us a favor.”

In her dark face and eyes, as she stood under the gray sky in the dull red glow of their lights, he saw the same sadness and urgency that he felt in his own eyes, in his tight throat.

Eddie winked at her and didn’t know whether she saw or not because just then she turned and stepped into the cab.

Thick-mudded ruts sucked at the wheels and tossed the old pickup side-to-side. Ahead of them, the indomitable rain rattled down on its way to No-Name Creek, the Cispus, into the Cowlitz River and through Mossyrock Dam, past Indian fishing shacks, beached nets, a woman crying at dawn on the tideflats, past her muddy coat and gunny sack north and west into the Pacific to warmer streams, the hot southern sun, to clouds and, next season, home.

“Why do we put up with all this rain?” she muttered.

She thrashed at the windshield with her towel.

“Because of the dreamways,” Eddie said. “The fabric is weak here; we can kiss the butterfly and punch through almost anytime.”

“You wouldn’t leave it . . . live anywhere else?”

“No,” he said. “When I go to the other side, that’s enough for me.”

A moss-stained cabin materialized through the rain. The old line cabin was built out of thick cedar planks, and the roof on both ends hung over at least eight feet to cover the stack of wood just outside the front door. The wood looked crisp and dry.

“We’re going to get wet,” he said.

“We’ll just have to move fast enough to beat the drops.”

They peeled back the tarp and unloaded their packs. Eddie leaned against the tailgate in the rain. Rivulets crept under his collar, down his neck and back, down the crook of his arm to his wrists.

Maryellen hurried the bag of groceries up the steps, unlocked the door and set the bag inside. From the doorway she saw the vague outline of Eddie leaning against the pickup, head slumped forward, hands and packs hanging loose at his sides.

At first she thought he might be sick, or crying. Then she saw his head lift slowly from one side to the other, back and forth, as though he was warming up for a dance. Then he shook his head with a
snap
like a dog and his hair spun out and shot a thin, hard spray of water across her hands.

Eddie was fighting off the dreamways, that was clear. So was she. But Eddie had a distracted, haunted look that worried her lately.

Maryellen was grateful for the cabin. He would be safe here if he had to do battle on the dreamways. She believed that the two of them were hot upon the Jaguar, and she, too, wanted to close the gap.

Maryellen did not look at the dreamways the way Eddie did. There was no “other side” for her anymore. “This side,” “that side” were parts of her, she reasoned, and anything that was part of herself was
here
.

“Well,” he asked, “where’s the stove?”

They wrapped themselves in their comfort of rain, filled their arms with firewood and stepped indoors.

Eddie followed her to the cast-iron heater and dumped the wood beside it. Maryellen hurried about the room lighting lamps while he looked for paper and a hatchet.