The Naked Gardener (13 page)

CHAPTER TEN

THE VIRGIN

In the middle of the day, when the heat was too oppressive to paddle, we tied our canoes together by the riverbank under a large oak tree. I tossed a line over a low hanging limb and secured my canoe to a tree. Erica handed out sandwiches she had made that morning and we opened a couple of bottles of wine we had been dragging in the cold water under one of the canoes. We cut open and sliced up a melon, passed around tiny sweet pickles and Greek olives and enjoyed the day. If we hadn’t been naked and painted up like some escaped tribeswomen, we would have looked like any ordinary campers on the river. As it was, we looked as if we’d come to life from a Botticelli painting, vines wrapped around our bodies, and moth wings painted on our thighs.

“I just don’t see how you can have gone this long without ever having been with a man.” Of course that was Roz talking to Hope. More precisely talking at her.

By now Hope had finished three plastic glasses of wine and it seemed to have loosened her up.

“You,” she pointed her index finger at Roz and waved it up and down a little, although that could have been the rocking of the canoe. “are a sinner. In the eyes of the Lord that is what you are.”

“Oh, man,” Roz just laughed. “You,” and Roz pointed her finger at Hope, “are drunk.”

“It’s true,” said Hope and giggled. “and a virgin. I am a drunk virgin.”

“What you need to do is get drunk with the gardener and then you won’t be a virgin anymore.” That was Valerie. “I remember the first time I had sex. I was seventeen. My parents were away for the weekend and I stayed at my girlfriend’s house. She had an older brother who was so cute. All the girls were after him. Well,” she paused.

“Well?” Charlene broke in. “Well what?”

“He went after me. Got a friend of his to take his sister to a movie and leave me there. And he sweet talked me right out of my clothes and before you know it there we were, in the family playroom, naked and writhing around on the floor with some dumb TV game show blasting. I didn’t even know what happened. One minute he was telling me how beautiful I was and the next he was panting and shoving himself at me and then it was over. He got up and left the room and never spoke to me again. I was so humiliated I found some reason to pick a fight with my girlfriend so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. But I don’t think she ever knew.”

Valerie sighed and tipped her plastic cup up and emptied the rest of her wine. It was ironic, listening to her tell this sad story and yet she was so lovely especially with her body all painted in soft greens and yellows with false eyespots in white on the wings.

Hope patted her arm from the canoe next to hers. “That’s OK Val, I love you even though you are a big green moth.”

“Oh, that was just the first time. It wasn’t always like that.” Valerie looked across at Hope but I could see her eyes were a little wet.

“What about you, Katelyn?” Hope turned to me. “What do you think I should do?”

“Sex and virginity are not the issues. The issues are what do you want for your own life and how do you want to go about getting it? You have a strong moral base already. But that shouldn’t prohibit you from finding pleasure and love and all that goes with it.”

“Katelyn’s right.” Erica filled her empty plastic cup and dumped the water out over and over like a child playing. “I may make fun of Will, of his golf and his gut, and his kowtowing to the developers, but he’s just doing his best for his family. Is it any more wrong than anything I’ve done? We’re both part of the system. I didn’t refuse the money he made that way. I married him knowing what he was and I bought into it.”

Then her voice dropped and she was almost whispering. “It’s not fair that I started questioning the system when my son went over to fight for what he believes is the way to defend it. If I lose him, how can I then blame the system for my loss? It’s belonging to someone and with someone that makes a life. Without that, what are we? Just dust in the wind.”

It may not be fair but it’s when something goes wrong within the system you’ve bought into that you do start questioning it. I didn’t question my life with the music man until he changed the rules of our game. If he had stuck with what we agreed on when we started, I would still be there with him, within the system we had created. The world does operate within laws. Natural laws. Man’s laws. Both flawed. Neither reliable all the time. If the universe is spinning in an expanding spiral pattern as the physicists say it is, if our solar system will one day, some unfathomable millennia from now, blow apart and cease to exist, then the systems we rely on most heavily are falling apart at the same time we are counting on them. And yet, everything looks so normal. The seasons come and go. The sun rises and sets. The stars stay put in the heavens above us, even though some of them are, in our time, actually dead. Planet earth is four and a half billion years old now and likely to last another few billion so what’s the use of worrying about how things may change in my little life? Maybe this is what those physicists mean by chaos theory. Ever since I had read about it, the thought kept coming back to me.

Systems are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved
.
We are predictable based on our initial conditions.
Chaos theory. Funny name for a theory about predictable outcomes within a system.

It seemed to me that Maze and I were inside such a system, fully defined by its initial conditions. His loss fueled his need. My loss fueled my reluctance.

***

Before we set up camp for our last night, we stepped into the river to wash off the paint that covered our bodies. We used sponges we had brought to clean our mess kits. We soaped them up and took turns cleansing each other with the cold bubbly water. I had expected us to giggle and tease but this process took hold of us and we washed quietly in the river as if at a christening of some kind. We stood knee deep in the river on a bed of pebbles that sloshed under our feet as we moved about. The paint came off easily in streaks of color that slid into the water as if we were working in washes on a wet canvas. It flowed away from each of us, now red, now lilac, now dark blue, now green and yellow, this last from the sunflowers on Roz. And strangely the color did not dissipate as one would expect but each band remained a separate stream of color in the dark, clear water. I thought of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic and the Humboldt Current in the Pacific, currents that remain separate from the surrounding sea, each carrying abundant life that depends on the environment within its particular water. The Gulf Stream with its warm water and the Humboldt with its low salinity, how cleverly the planet protects life and provides for its renewal.

We were all sorry to see the paint mix with the water and flow away from us. We had, for a short time perhaps, become something other than ourselves, beings not so tied to the outward skin we had inherited. Now, in the washing off, we reverted back to our own skin, our own images of our bodies. Still, we had more paint. And limitless imagination. We dressed quickly. I don’t think any of us thought we looked better without the body paint, but maybe we felt a certain release because of it.

We made supper, fresh shucked ears of sweet corn, rice and beans, Erica’s wheat and walnut bread with strawberry jam and the bottle of tequila I had stashed in the duffel along with lemons and salt.

We did some shots and pretty soon we were all giggling over nothing at all and then Hope’s expression turned serious and she wagged her finger at all of us, one by one and said, “I vow to all you girls that by the next time we get together I will no longer be the same.”

“I think that’s a euphemism,” Roz poked me in the rib.

“I think you’re right,” I poked her back.

“Well I vow that by the next time you all see me I will be pregnant,” Charlene sounded a little more drunk than the rest of us.

We all howled and I said, “You already
are
pregnant.”

“Then if you’ve decided to have the baby, you should stop drinking,” Erica told her. “Here, I’ll take your glass.” She reached out to grab it but Charlene pulled her arm away.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said. “This is my last party as a non mother.” Her neck snapped back loosely and her eyes rolled a little.

“Anyone else made any decisions?” She asked and looked around the group.

“I’ve decided to stop drinking tequila,” I said. “And to put you girls to bed.”

Sometime later, I don’t know why, maybe it was the hooting of an owl, perhaps the squawk of a heron, or maybe rustling leaves as a breeze swept past my tent, but something awakened me in the night. The moon was no longer visible. I remembered it had been bright when we crept into our tents, a bit loopy from tequila. And the forest had been strangely quiet. Erica was sleeping on her side, turned away from me.

I could hear the river. It was a peaceful sound. Steady and soft. Far in the distance I thought I heard the rumble of something but it was not clear enough to tell what it was. Certainly we were too far downriver from the railroad trestle to hear any trains. A thunderstorm dozens of miles away perhaps, although I saw no flashes of lightning.

It was not unusual for me to waken during the night, leave the coop to pee in the grass, or just sit at the barn door and look at the stars. So I fumbled around next to my sleeping bag until I felt the small flashlight I had put there before going to sleep. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I slid into my creek shoes and crawled out of the tent into the night air, surprised by the difference between the closeness inside the tent and the cool air on the outside.

I stood and walked as quietly as possible to the edge of the woods where I squatted to pee in some undergrowth. I shined the light around in an arc but saw nothing unusual. Night shapes were always mysterious and a little ominous, yet there was a tranquility to being the only person awake while the night creatures wandered the woods. I knew there must be raccoons and possum, or fox roaming nearby. The scent of people would likely keep them away. There could be black bears but they would only come around if they smelled food and were used to foraging in this spot. Still I watched for signs of bears, which was not easy to do with no moonlight. I wondered if it had indeed set, if it was that late. But I saw no indication of sunrise and I thought I couldn’t have been asleep too long.

I was not the least tired. Whatever had stirred me had not yet receded. I wandered over to the canoes by the river and waited until my eyes became accustomed to the dark. I sat backwards in the bow of the nearest one facing the water with my feet propped up on the thwart. This was our last night together. Tomorrow would be the last day. Then it was back to the farm, the coop, my work, the garden, and Maze. I had not made any decision. It seemed foolish, sitting there in the canoe, staring at the dark water flowing past me, that I had even entertained the thought that I would gain some sort of clarity during three days on the Trout River. Foolish and naïve.

The air had become heavy. I thought it was because dew was falling, a mysterious event to me, the air letting go its moisture during the night to cover the earth. The air was still. No leaves moved, no tree branches swayed. It was as if the night was waiting, holding its breath.

As I sat there alone, the night sounds came into focus. There was the river, whooshing past, sometimes gurgling. A fish snapped at something on the water’s surface. From somewhere frogs croaked to each other. And there was the music of crickets chirping along with katydids. The forest and the river had a secret nighttime life. I heard it all but I couldn’t quite hear my own voice telling me what to do. Not yet.

***

The first boom of thunder woke me from a deep sleep. I was back in the tent zipped up in my sleeping bag. A crack of lightning followed almost immediately. A second ground trembling rumble of thunder woke Erica, too.

“What’s going on?” Erica’s voice was raspy from sleep.

“It’s a thunderstorm.”

I reached forward and pulled the tent flaps open just as another bolt lit the night like a strobe – a flash and then a shorter flash – just for an instant. A long rumble of thunder followed.

“I can’t tell if it’s coming toward us or going away from us.”

Thunder rolled and rolled until it finally faded out and then another bolt hit, bam, very close with the clap almost immediately following. It seemed to be all around us.

When the lightning flashed Erica flinched. “Are we okay in the tent?”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine. Probably just a passing thunderstorm. It’ll be over soon.”

But then another bolt struck and I heard the patter of raindrops on the tent. Lightly at first. Just a slight tapping. A summer storm, no more.

I aimed the flashlight out at the night sky. Not nearly dawn. I thought about the heaviness of the air when I was sitting in the canoe earlier. So this is what it was, an approaching storm.

Across from our tent, Charlene was looking out with her flashlight. Our beams crossed and she yelled to me.

“So what’s this? Should we take the tents down or what?”

“I don’t know how long it’ll last. I think we should hang tight the way we are.”

A third beam crossed ours as Valerie emerged from the tent she was sharing with Hope.

“Hey,” she started to say but an enormous bolt struck somewhere on the other side of the river, followed by a rumble of thunder and a huge crack as another bolt lit up the night.