The Moose Jaw (22 page)

“Mmmm,” she said, “they look just right.”

I killed the flame under the pan and filled our tin plates. To each I added half a muffin I’d toasted directly over the burner, then carried the plates, steaming, into the cabin.  She followed, bringing her mug in one hand and the coffee pot in the other.  I indicated the green cook stove, its pipe now glowing a soft rose in the dim interior.

“You can set the coffee on there to keep warm.”

She did, then removed the jacket, hung it on one of the wall pegs and came to join me at the table.  I watched her as she moved.  It was the first time I’d seen her in her own clothes since that first night.  Then they’d been sodden rags, covered with mud.  I’d laundered them during the first few days, wondering as I did, if she’d ever recover to wear them again.  Watching her approach the table, it occurred to me how very happy I was she had.  I looked at her with open admiration.  She noticed and a blush touched her cheeks, visible even in the dim light.  Once again, I marveled at the complexity of women.  She knew full well she’d been naked for the better part of her time with me and that I’d bathed and oiled every inch of her many times.  Just last night she’d slept naked in my arms and yet, now, catching my eyes on her, fully clothed, she blushed!

The hint of a smile touched her lips and her eyes fell coyly to the floor, then quickly back up to meet mine.  She covered her moment of awkwardness with a radiant smile, and echoed the words I had spoken last night.

“I know – I clean up nice.” 

I returned her smile and admitted, “That you do.”

As we ate our breakfast I noted that she had excellent table manners.  She sat primly and quite erect, one hand in her lap while she chewed.  She also held the fork in her left hand and knife in her right when cutting, European style.  I had always been embarrassed by the dining habits of my fellow countrymen when visiting Europe.  They tended to lunge forward, mouth agape, to meet each forkful.  They took it like a trout hitting a fly.  She, on the other hand, simply inclined her head slightly forward as the fork came up.  When it neared her lips, her mouth opened, the fork went in, her lips closed, and the fork came out clean.  Then she would place it quietly on the edge of her plate and, keeping her mouth closed, chew.  She’d either been to a good finishing school or she’d spent some time abroad.

Again, she caught me watching her.  She was delicately dabbing the corner of her mouth with a paper towel; I didn’t have napkins.  This time she didn’t blush, but met my gaze fully and with the confidence of a beautiful woman, secure and on her own ground.

“You’ve been watching me a lot this morning.”

There was no hint of annoyance in her voice.  She was simply stating a fact and offering it as a topic for discussion. 

“I’m sorry...” I began, but she cut me off with a smile and a shake of the head.

“No need,” she said.  “It’s nice.”

She paused to sip her coffee, but she kept her eyes on me as she did.  Then she set the tin cup back on the table, and once again, patted her lips.

“Last night was nice too.  I needed holding.  I think you knew that was all it was, and I want to thank you for being – well, for being a gentleman.  There were times, during the night, I could tell that it was hard for you.”

At the double entendre we both blushed.  She laughed and buried her face in her hands.  We both laughed.  The ice was broken.  We had been being quite formal all morning.  Now we relaxed.

She went to the stove and lifted the coffee pot and shot me an inquiring glance.  I nodded and she brought it to the table.  I held out my cup.  She rested her left hand on my shoulder as she poured with her right.  Then she refilled her own cup and put the pot back on the stove.  When she was settled back in her chair she sipped at her coffee for a bit, then, looking me straight in the eye, she took a deep breath.

“You’ve been very patient, in many ways.  And I appreciate it.  Last night I had dreams, but they were more than just dreams.  I was remembering.  It was frightening and awful.  That’s when I joined you under the blanket and asked you to hold me.  I know what happened now, and I’m going to tell you.  But first, there’s something I need to do.  After, I’ll tell you everything.”

I didn’t know where all this was going, but I’ve learned that the best thing to say in these situations is nothing.  So, I said nothing.

She must have taken my silence for acceptance.

“Good,” she said.  “Have you finished your breakfast?”

I nodded and pushed my plate a few inches away to indicate I was, indeed, done eating.

She went to the shelf, took down the can of goose grease, and brought it to me.  I accepted it.  Then she walked over to the bearskin and began undressing.  I watched in disbelief as she slowly, deliberately, unbuttoned her shirt, took it off, and dropped it to the floor in a heap.  She kicked off my shoes, then slipped out of her jeans and dropped them on the pile.

As she stripped, she said, “When I was “sleeping” those first days after you found me, I wasn’t truly unconscious.  There were times I was conscious of everything.  It was as though I was suspended in darkness on the other side of a curtain.  I couldn’t move or talk or open my eyes, but I could smell and hear and feel.  I was so hungry the smell of the soup cooking nearly made me cry.  When you fed me I wanted so badly just to say “Thank you, thank you”, but I couldn’t.  When you’d wash me you were very gentle, and your voice was soothing, and your words told me what I needed to hear.  I knew you were a kind man.  And, when you’d pull back the blanket and start rubbing my toes with the oil I wanted to cry out with pleasure.  I could feel your hands, working slowly up my legs, and then on my belly and my breasts, and I wanted you to do more, to go farther.  I could feel it in the pressure of your hands that you wanted it too.  But, you always stopped, and I thought I might go crazy.  This isn’t my way of thanking you.  I need this for myself.  Please.”

What could I do?  After all, I am a gentleman
; and she did say please.  I began, as always with her toes.  I won’t bore you with the details of the next hour or so.  At any rate, it’s none of your business.  You have an imagination; use it.  I will tell you that I used the last of the goose grease.  And, at her request, I promised to murder a flock of geese before the sun set.  It was nearing ten o’clock when, spent but happy, I emerged from the cabin and went through the motions of my daily routine.

My feet found their way up and down the creek bank, and my eyes looked at the yellow of the willows and the blue of the sky and last night’s caribou tracks in the mud.  My mind, however, was still back in the cabin, on the bearskin rug, where I had left her dozing.  I didn’t notice the cub until it bawled.  Instantly, I snapped out of my reverie.  Then I saw the sow, perhaps fifty yards downstream, wading and fishing with her other cub.  I froze.  Her nose came up and she sloshed a little way upstream, swinging her big head, sniffing the wind and looking my way.  The wind was in my face and there was a willow bush between us that provided a good enough screen that she hadn’t yet seen me.  Her crybaby brat darted across the gravel and plunged into the water, apparently unconcerned at my presence.  The sow stood watching it for what seemed an eternity and then, apparently satisfied all was well, she turned and resumed the fishing lesson with the one nearest her.  I faded into the willows and quietly made my way back to the cabin.  My heart was pounding.  That was too close.  I had to keep my wits about me.  You don’t often get a second chance in Alaska.  I was now working on my third with this old girl.

After taking the first load of firewood to the cabin, I hauled the foam mattress off the porch and lay it on the willow drying frame.  The wooden rack had worked well with the caribou quarters.  It had good exposure to sun, when it shone, and wind, when it blew, which was nearly every day.  Its open grillwork provided excellent circulation beneath.  The day had warmed and the clouds had broken up and blown away.  Now the sun was high in the clear blue sky.  Barring rain, the mattress would be dry by nightfall.  I gave a fleeting thought to tonight’s sleeping arrangements, but recalling my recent encounter with the sow, kept focused on the here-and-now.  Still, as I went about my chores, I whistled.

When I went back inside with another load of firewood, Morgan was up and dressed, and busy clearing the table of our breakfast dishes.  She looked up and smiled softly as I entered.  I took the wood to the box near the stove and dumped it in.

As I filled my pipe bowl with tobacco, I asked her if she minded my smoking inside.

“Not at all,” she said.  “It has a pleasant aroma.  But, you’re very kind to ask.”

I settled into my rocker, lit the pipe and rocked and puffed, and watched her move about the cabin.  I was content.

“Mattress should be dry enough to sleep on tonight,” I told her.

She said that was nice.

I told her about the bear and the cubs, and warned her to be careful when she went outside.  She said she would, she knew about bears.  By now it was clear she wasn’t really listening.  She was thinking of something else.  I shut up and just puffed and rocked for another five minutes while she kept puttering and moving things from place to place, and dusting dusty surfaces.

Finally, she put down the kerosene lamp she had been slowly polishing with a rag and said, “That lotion you call goose grease… What is it really?”

I was pleased to know where her mind had been. I wasn’t the only one basking in the afterglow.

“Goose grease,” I told her.

“Goose grease?”  She looked doubtful,
like she suspected I was pulling her leg but she wasn’t quite sure.  “As in the grease of a goose?  A real goose?”

I nodded and continued to rock.  My pipe had gone out so I knocked out the dottle in the open door of the stove.  We had let the fire die down to gray coals.

“I thought you were joking when you said you’d have to kill more geese.”  She paused, musing for a moment. 

Then, still dubious, “Well, whatever it is, it certainly worked wonders on my skin.  I can’t remember when it’s felt so soft and silky.  You should bottle it and sell it.  You’d make millions.”

I smiled.  “Can’t,” I told her.  “Special stuff.  Sacred even.  Not for the masses, they’d abuse it.  Probably use it in kinky sexual foreplay.  Simply wouldn’t do.”

“Unthinkable,” she agreed.  “We should probably keep a little on hand though, for emergency situations.”

We both knew it was time to have our serious chat, but we were reluctant to break the spell.  We made more small talk for a while, and finally we just fell silent.  She came over and sat on my lap and put her arms around me and snuggled her face into my neck.

“Just for a little while longer,” she said.  “Hold me.  Then I’ll tell you all of it.”

So I held her and rocked her for…  I don’t know how long.  At length, I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she raised her head and kissed me on the lips and slipped off my lap.  She went to the table and sat in one of the chairs.  She folded her hands in front of her, took a deep breath, and began.

“We came up here for the trout and the salmon.  We were floating the river in a raft and fly-fishing our way downstream.  Jason and I.  He’s a friend from work.  We flew up from Seattle the last week in August.  Spent a day in Anchorage, drove up to Fairbanks and flew in here.  A bush taxi put us in somewhere called Panner’s Bar.”

I knew the place; it was thirty miles upstream and popular with the bush pilots because of the long flat gravel bar and relatively small rocks.

She went on.  “On the second afternoon a bear attacked us.  We’d run aground in the shallows trying to avoid the sweepers on the cut bank.  We got out of the raft and were both standing in the water trying to pull it back into the deep channel when this enormous bear came out of nowhere.  It hit the raft first, and lunged across as we both dove away into the middle of the river.  It raked my back with its claws just as I went under.  Jason had been quicker, and the bear didn’t get him.

We let the current take us downstream around two or three bends, and then Jason helped me ashore and saw I’d been hurt.  All our gear was in the raft so he made me as comfortable as he could and then went back upstream.  He found the raft still grounded with two of its bladder tanks punctured, but almost everything was still aboard.  He waited until he was sure the bear had gone, then waded across and got our river bags and came back to where he left me.  He had to leave the raft where it was.  There was no way to move it with two flat bladder tanks.

We had a first-aid kit in one of the bags, and he cleaned my wounds and dressed them with bandages.  He was wonderful.  He made us a camp there, and tended me all the rest of that day and through the night.  But, in the morning, I was running a fever and the pain was quite bad.  We didn’t have any painkiller so he gave me aspirin, four at a time.  It helped a little.  Then he went and tried to repair the raft, but it was torn and punctured in more places than he had patches.  We knew we’d have to get help.

Two days after the bear had attacked us, two hunters came upstream in a canoe.  Jason hailed them and said we were in trouble.  They came ashore and looked at my wounds and said they better get me back to their lodge where they had medicine and more bandages.  Jason asked if they had a radio and they said they didn’t, but they had a bush plane bring in supplies once a week and it was due in a couple of days.  We could wait at their lodge until the plane came.

They looked pretty rough – scary really.  Both had beards and bad teeth and Okie accents.  The smaller of the two looked at my back and did all the talking.  The other one was a giant.  He seemed a little slow, but did everything the small one told him to do.”

‘The McCaslins, without question,’ I thought.  At this point I had a good idea what happened when they got back to the lodge, but I let her go on.

“They asked Jason about the bear that attacked us.  They also wanted to know where it had happened, and where we’d left the raft and what was still aboard.  He answered all their questions but, I could tell, they made him very nervous.