Big Bend Read online

  “Dating” meant fucking him, of course. Owen’s heart welled. Eyes filled. He read, his heart pumping in his chest. A long letter. She told of other adventures, trips and museums and dinners out with a new gang and a sweet girl from Austria he would love who was her best friend already. At the end of the letter, again she said she loved him and missed him. “If I don’t hear from you I’ll assume you don’t mind and I’ll pursue this new relationship. He wants to get closer but I’ve said I need to talk to you first, or hear from you first. But if I don’t hear from you by, let’s say, July 1, I’ll just assume it’s okay.” And she wrote she was crying now and had to stop writing.

  July 1 was last week. Owen popped out of the bathroom unshowered. He found Dr. Clark in the kitchen putting dinner on.

  Owen said, “May I use your phone and pay you later on?”

  Dr. Clark looked at him a long time before nodding. Owen knew what to say to Nancy. He felt luck was with him. Facing a corner in the darkened dining room, he dialed the rotary numbers. Three in the morning in London, but Nancy wouldn’t mind, he knew it; in fact, she would be thrilled. Owen had plenty to say, and he would listen, too.

  But he was too late. The sleepy roommate, Bavarian accent, said: “Nancy? She’s out with Timothy.”

  And Owen said, “He’s Irish?”

  “Oh, Irish? Yes. She’s not been here since Tuesday week!”

  There wasn’t much more to say with the doctor there behind him and Enzio right in the kitchen. Owen dropped the heavy old handset into its cradle on the phone. This lesson was going to keep coming.

  Big Bend

  That night Mr. Hunter (the crew all called him Mr. Hunter) lay quietly awake two hours before the line of his thoughts finally made the twitching conversion to mirage and hallucination that heralded ease and melting sleep.

  Primarily what had kept him up was a worry that he was being too much the imperious old businessman, the self he thought he’d conquered, even killed in retirement, the part of himself poor Betty had least admired (though this was the part that brought home the bacon). This area of worry he packaged and put in its box with a resolution to ask only questions for at least one day of work, no statements or commands or observations or commentary no matter what, to Stubby or anyone else, no matter what, questions only.

  Secondarily, Stubby, who was now asleep and snorting in the next bunk of their rather nice but rustic staff accommodations here at Big Bend National Park. Stubby was not hard to compartmentalize, particularly: Mr. Hunter would simply stop laughing with or smiling at or even acknowledging Stubby’s stupid jokes and jibes, would not rise to bait (politics primarily), would not pretend to believe Stubby’s stories, especially those about his exploits with women. Scott was Stubby’s actual name, his age fifty-three, an old hippie who’d never cut his ponytail or jettisoned the idea that corporations were ruining the world and who called the unlikely women of his tall tales “chicks” and “chiquitas.” Strange bedfellows, Stubby and Mr. Hunter, having gotten the only two-bed room in the worker’s dorm by dint of advanced age.

  Thirdly, Martha Kolodny of Chicago, here in blazing, gorgeous, blooming, desolate Big Bend on an amateur ornithological quest. Stubby called her Mothra, which at first was funny, given Ms. Kolodny’s size and thorough, squawking presence, but which was funny no longer, certainly, given the startling fact of Mr. Hunter’s crush on her, which had arrived unannounced after his long conversation with her just this evening and in the middle of a huge laugh from the heart of Ms. Kolodny’s heart, a huge and happy hilarious laugh from the heart of her very handsome heart. The Kolodny compartment in his businesslike brain he closed and latched with a simple instruction to himself: Do not have crushes, Mr Hunter. He was too old for crushes (sneakers, he’d called them in high school, class of 1945). And Ms. Kolodny not the proper recipient of a crush in any case, possibly under forty and certainly over one hundred fifty pounds, Mr. Hunter’s own lifelong adult weight, and married, completely married, a stack of two large rings on the proper finger, large gemstones blazing.

  Fourthly, fifthly, sixthly, seventhly, eighthly, up to numbers uncountable, many concerns, placed by Mr. Hunter carefully one by one in their nighttime lockers: the house in Atlanta (Arnie would take care of the yard and the gardens, and Miss Feather would clean the many rooms as always in his absence); the neglect of his retirement portfolio (Fairchild Ltd. had always needed prodding, but had always gotten the job done, and in the last several years spectacularly); the coming Texas summer (he’d lived through hot summers in more humid climes); his knee (but his knee hadn’t acted up at all—he was predicting, and predicting was always a mistake and a manufactured basis for worry and to be abolished except when proceeding from reasonable evidence, of which there was none in this case, his knee having been perfect for nearly thirty years since surgery after hyperextension in tennis).

  Many concerns, more and less easily dismissed, and overshadowed all of them by Bitty (he always called her): Betty, his wife, his girl, his one and only love, his lover, his helpmate, his best friend, mother of their three (thoroughly adult) children, dead of stroke three years. They’d planned all they’d do when he retired, and when he did retire she died. So he was mourning not only her loss but the loss of his long-held vision of the future, the thought that one distant day she would bury him. No compartment big enough to compartmentalize Bitty, but a kind of soft peace like sleep when he thought of her now and no longer the sharp pains and gouged holes everywhere in him and the tears every night. Count your blessings, Mr. Hunter, he had thought wryly, and had melted a little at one broad edge of his consciousness, and had soon fallen asleep in the West Texas night.

  The United States Forest Service hired old people—senior citizens—as part of their policy of nondiscrimination based on age and so forth, pleasant jobs at above minimum wage. And because they didn’t accept volunteers for the real, honest work that Mr. Hunter had decided to escape into for a salutary year, he signed on for pay, though he certainly didn’t need the money. And here in Texas Mr. Hunter found himself, rich as Croesus and older, shoveling sand up into the back of the smallest dump truck he’d ever seen, half shovels so as not to hurt his back, and no one minded how little he did: he was old in the eyes of his fellows on the work crew, a seventy-something, as Stubby razzed him, $6.13 an hour.

  The crew was motley, all right: Mr. Hunter, assumed to be the widower he was, assumed to be needy, which of course he was not. In fact, the more he compared himself to his new colleagues the wealthier he knew himself to be: Dylan Briscoe, painfully polite, adrift after college, had wanted to go to Yellowstone to follow his ranger girlfriend, was assigned here last summer, lost girl, met new girl, spent winter in Texas with Juanita from Lajitas, a plain-spoken Mexican-American woman of no beauty, hovered near Mr. Hunter on every job, and gave him his crew name because constitutionally unable to associate the word Dennis with such an old geezer; Freddy, a brainy, obnoxious jock taking a semester off from the University of Alabama, fond of beer, leery of Mr. Hunter, disdainful of Stubby, horrible on the subject of women (“gash,” he called them collectively), resentful of work, smelling of beer from the start of the day, yet despite all well-read and decently educated; Luis Marichal, the crew boss, about whom much was assumed by the others (jail, knife fights, mayhem) but of whom little was actually known, who was liked awfully well by all, despite his otherness, for saying “Quit complaining” in a scary voice to Freddy more than once and who for Mr. Hunter had a gentle smile always; finally, Stubby, short and fat and truly good humored. Nothing had needed to be assumed about Stubby, for Stubby told all: he’d recently beat a drug habit, was once a roadie for the Rolling Stones, had been married thrice, had a child from each marriage, had worked many tech jobs in the early days of computers, had fallen into drink after the last divorce or before it, then cocaine, then heroin, had ended up in the hospital four months in profound depression, had recovered, had “blown out the toxins,” had found that work with his hands and bac
k made him sane, and sane he was, he said. This work crew in Texas had made him so.

  $6.13 an hour all of them, excepting Dylan, hired on some student-intern program with a lower payscale, too shy to ask for parity, and of course excepting Luis, who’d been crew here many years though he wasn’t thirty, and was foreman—Luis made probably nine bucks an hour, with four young kids to support. And in a way excepting Mr. Hunter, who in addition to his $6.13 an hour from the Seniors-in-the-Parks Program was watching his retirement lump sum grow into a mountain in eight figures. His $6.13 and a great deal more he was feeding purposefully back to Luis in deals on genuinely exquisite paintings by Luis’s tubsome wife, improbably named Cleopatra, religious tablitas of the sort Bitty had loved so well, and so Dennis Hunter.

  And Dennis shoveled sand with the rest of them, a wash of sand from the last big rain that had made nearly a dune in the shoulder of the road for a hundred yards, a dune dangerous to bicyclists and this a national park, so the crew shoveling into the small dump truck, Luis driving, if rolling the truck ahead a few feet at a time could be called driving. Dennis Hunter in comfortable and expensive relaxed-fit jeans, shoveling, which he preferred to the jobs the other Senior Program folks got: cashier at the postcard stand, official greeter, filing associate, inventory specialist, cushiony nonsense along those lines.

  “Fucking say-and,” Freddy said. “Endless fucking say-and. Why don’t they drive down the backloader?”

  “Then only one person would have a job,” Stubby told him with elaborate superciliosity. “Five of us are cheaper than the machine to run. Even ten would be. Don’t you wish your only job away, Homecoming King.”

  “Fucking endless fucking desert of fucking say-and,” Freddy said.

  “Quit that bitching,” Luis said.

  “Spic,” Freddy said, under his breath such that Mr. Hunter heard. No excuse, an educated boy like that.

  “It is nice and cool today,” said Dylan, peacemaker.

  “What kind of work would you most prefer, Frederick?” said Mr. Hunter slyly.

  “Love slaaaave to Sharon Stone,” Freddy said unwryly.

  “She’s like, my age,” Stubby said.

  “She wouldn’t like no Freddy,” Luis said.

  They shoveled a while and Dylan was right; it was a good day for it, cool under high cloud cover, a rare day of breezes in the desert. Around them here in April after a wet winter all was in bloom: prickly pear, cholla, century plants, scores of others, colors picked from the sunset and the sandstone cliffs and the backs of birds.

  “Lovely here indeed,” Mr. Hunter said.

  “I’d fuck her so fie-est,” Freddy said.

  “I’m not so sure women like it fast,” Stubby said slowly.

  “From Freddy, fast is the only way woman gonna like it,” Luis said. “The faster the better, and gone.”

  Freddy grew redder, but didn’t say it. He’d said it once early on and Luis had scared him, just a look in his eyes that Freddy was not going to forget. Alabama football: tough. Texas border town: tougher.

  Stubby put a cheek on the handle of his shovel, grew dreamy in a way familiar to all of them: “Sticky Fingers tour one time I swear I was crating the JBL’s when this little spacey chick comes up under the tower and squeaks, like, Where’s Mick? and she was so sincere and I go, Mick’s already in the Concorde flying home, baby, and she goes, You know him? And I did know him a little, of course. I go, He’s a nice man, a little vain. And I look down and realize she’s got her shirt off and she’s got these goofy little boobs and she’s dancing and taking her pants down. If Mick’s not around, she’s thinking I’m good enough!”

  “Yeah, right,” Freddy said.

  “And she goes, The show got me so hot. And we go back behind the speakers and I swear her goofy little bush is trimmed off shape of a heart and she’s sopping as the bog end of a beaver pond and I take her behind those crates and …”

  “Penthouse Letter,” Dylan said, risking all, and Mr. Hunter laughed for him, and Luis, though Mr. Hunter and probably Luis had no idea what the referent of the joke actually was. Dylan needed the laughs badly, soaked them up.

  The Stones groupie turned out to be a long story, her twin sister and all, and everyone teased Stubby and threw shovelsful of sand up into the bed of the small dump truck, none of them working hard, but together making progress down the road, exposing its shoulder wetly.

  “Oh Lord, I gotta dip this thang,” Freddy said.

  “You take off the gas cap,” Luis said.

  “Fuck a truck,” Stubby said, and everyone laughed and laughed, as if this were the wittiest crack ever made.

  Such an inefficient team! The likes of which would in the past have made Mr. Hunter smolder. But he shoveled as lightly as anybody and did not laugh at Stubby’s stories and thought of Martha Kolodny for no reason he could make sense of, her laugh from the center of her heart and soul and her large frame that oughtn’t to be alluring to him at all but was indeed. And her braininess—intelligence always was sexy to him. She was smart as Bitty and as quick, though Bitty would have called her noisy.

  Luis said, “Dylan, what about you? Who is your perfect mujer?”

  And Dylan blushed and said, “Juanita,” with evident pride and huge love for her.

  And everyone at once said, “Juanita from Lajitas,” which was fun to say and which had become a chant and which they knew Dylan liked a lot to hear. Not even Freddy from Alabama would say anything that might harm Dylan-boy’s spirit at all.

  “You are like me,” Luis said. “A steady heart and a solid love.”

  And Stubby, damn him, said, “Mr. Hunter, what about you?”

  “Have you noticed that I’m only asking questions today?” said Mr. Hunter.

  “But I saw you stalking Mothra. Mothra, Queen of the Birdwatchers Bus. She’s a cute one, she is. Tall drink of water, she is. I’ll bet she was one athlete in her day! Iron Woman! Anchor in the Freestyle Relay! Bench press 200 pounds, easy. What do you say, Mr. Hunter? You were gabbing with her nearly three hours yesterday in the parking lot there. You were! No, no, sir, you were! You’re a better man than I! More power to ya! She won’t give me the time of day, you she’s laughing and shouting and joking! And she was scratching her nose the whole time, which Keith Richards once told me is the sure sign you’re going to get a little wiggle in.”

  And all work (such as it was) ceased. Mr. Hunter made a game smile and smiled some more and enjoyed the breeze and the attention, really. He asked a question: “Do you know that right at the beginning of Plato’s Republic there’s a discussion of just this subject, of love and sex? And do you know that one of the fellows sitting around Socrates says something like, I saw Sophocles—the old poet, he calls him—I saw the old poet down in town the other day, three score and ten, and I asked him: At your age, Sophocles, what of love? And do you know what Sophocles told that man? Sophocles told that man: I feel I have been released by a mad and furious beast!”

  The crew stood with eyebrows raised a long time, absorbing this tale from the mysterious void of time that was Mr. Hunter’s life.

  After a long silence, Stubby said, “Oh, fuck you.”

  Mr. Hunter knew what Stubby meant: the implied analogy was faulty. And Stubby was right. Martha Kolodny was certainly on Mr. Hunter’s mind, Martha Kolodny of all women, and the mad and furious beast had hold of Mr. Hunter certainly. And though it wasn’t like he’d had no erections in the past affectionless three years, the one he’d had this morning had caught his attention surely. And it wasn’t all about erections, either, it was that laugh from the heart and the bright conversation and something more: Martha Kolodny could see Mr. Hunter, and he hadn’t been seen clearly in three years nor had his particular brand of jokes been laughed at nor had his ideas been praised, nor had someone noticed his hair like that (still full it was, and shiny, and bone-in-the-desert white), nor looked at his hands so, nor gazed in his eyes.

  At the Thursday Evening Ranger’s Program a very bright y
oung scientist lectured about Mexican fruit bats with passion, somewhat mollifying Dennis Hunter’s disappointment. Oh, in the growing night the assembled travelers and Rangers and tourists and campers and workers (including Stubby) did see bats as promised. And among the assembled listeners there were a number of birders from Martha Kolodny’s bus. But Martha was not among them.

  Dennis Hunter lurked on a back bench in clean clothes—Hong Kong-tailored white shirt, khaki pants, Birkenstocks (ah, retirement), eight-needle silken socks—trying to remember how long Martha had said her birding group would be here. Till April 17, was the date he remembered, almost his second daughter’s birthday, his second daughter who was, yes, about Martha’s age. Five more days, only five. That bats don’t get in your hair, that they have sonar, that they are rodents—all this was old news.

  Then there was a sweeping presence and a suppressed laugh from deep inside the heart of someone’s capacious heart and Martha stood just beside him. “May I sit?” she said. This was a whisper, but still louder in Dennis’s ear than the Ranger’s lecture. She sat on his bench and slid to his side like an old friend, got herself settled, deep and quiet, perfume expansile, put her chin in the air and raised her eyebrows, seemed to try to find her place in the stream of words as the passionate Ranger introduced a film.

  The heavy narration covered the same ground the lecture had, with less fervor and erudition, but the pictures of bats were pleasing to watch, all sorts of camera tricks and lighting tricks and slow-motion tricks and freeze-frames and animation. Bats streaming out of Carlsbad Caverns, not eight hours from here. “Always wanted to see that,” Martha said, leaning into Dennis. “Always, always.”