Though Greg could have stayed in the house he had every intention of reconciling with Wendy, and had compunctions of bringing her into what essentially was Ray’s home. He figured he would make the move if she wanted nothing to do with him. So while Ray packed his bags Greg spruced up the trailer. They stored away the dredging gear in the shed for next year which cleared up a good amount of space so he could arrange a sitting area next to the window beside the ‘kitchen’ (a propane cook stove and a mini-fridge.)
The morning he left, Ray gave Greg his PO Box key and told him he would send correspondence on the status of his travels. His departure took forever, like a nervous parent leaving his kid alone for the first time he reminded Greg of all the resources available to him in a pinch. When Greg answered ‘yes, mom,’ Ray shook his head with a smirk, offered his hand for a good-bye shake and told him to take care of himself. He looked like he wanted to say more, but kept it to himself.
Barely had the sound of his truck crunching down the hill faded in the distance, Greg set off with resolve to find Wendy. No one poked their heads out of the hovels as he walked resolutely through the clearing towards the shed where Wendy had disappeared that day. He half expected to get shot, no questions asked, and since they gave him the courtesy not to, he decided to check the main house first, in a display of his honest intentions to her father. Had she come home the day they last parted and filled her family with complaints of him, a straightforward apology to her father may earn him some backing. Besides, the guy didn’t look like a teetotaler, and may be able to argue in his favor against his daughter’s overreaction.
The door left dirt on his knuckles after he knocked. A spider had made its home between the knob and the frame, and its family lurked in every other available corner. The oriental rug slung over the banister looked like someone hung it there to dry five years ago.
“That door hasn’t been used in years,” called out a voice from below. Wendy’s father stood smirking at him from under the rug.
“I guess it was my first option,” Greg said.
“Good enough as any, nobody we know knocks. You want us, just holler,” he said.
Though Greg had every intention of making small talk with her father, the purpose of his visit crowded out any conversation topics from his mind.
“I’ve been out of town for a bit, but before I left I guess I had a little misunderstanding with Wendy that I wanted to repair,” Greg’s last word fell out of his mouth as he caught sight of a three legged chair leaning against the shed Wendy had escaped to that day.
“That’s no matter, she don’t really care about nothing, probably forgot all about it,” her father responded.
“Well, sir, I do care. I’m an honest man and don’t like being mistaken for otherwise, so I’d like to make it up to her if you could tell her when you see her next.”
The crows feet gathered around her father’s temples in an expression Greg recognized as respect. “What’s your name again,” he asked.
“Greg.”
“Brock,” the man said, extending his hand.
Greg carefully descended the staircase and shook it.
“Well, Greg, Wendy’s a free little chickadee around here. She comes and goes who knows when or where so I can’t tell you when she’ll get your message but I’ll make sure she gets it….It’s good to know that she has such a dedicated friend.”
Greg felt honored by this regard and somewhat guilty of the cause. “Is there anywhere else you can suggest I may find her?” The moment he said it Brent’s expression made him regret it. He assumed that it made him sound too desperate, and probably made Brent suspect that the subject of his apology was worse.
After a moment, the man’s downturned mouth answered, “I know you’re new around here but just a word of advice, if people want strangers on their porches they move to the towns. Lots of people living in these mountains moved down a dirt road because they prefer more privacy.”
“Got it,” Greg said, but even as he walked away he found himself chuckling at the irony of that man’s statement and his daughter’s behavior.
The next day Greg woke with the sun and gathered his supplies for the cave, but entering it in daylight gave him a revelation. He noticed that the stones that closed the end of the cave held no weight, and he only needed to work, or blast, the one real problem boulder to pieces to follow the vein. Often at night he would hear the sound of water trickling from that direction, which he had always assumed just resounded off the walls from the entrance, but what if that wasn’t the case, what if the cave descended deeper? With Ray gone and Wendy’s return uncertain, Greg felt just impetuous enough to do something.
They had brought some dynamite early on, which they had never used because they opted to go the water route. Greg considered using it, but afraid of the attention it might attract to his secret spot, he tried a good trusty shotgun instead and was surprised to find that the impact did crack the boulder enough to break it apart. The boulder itself held nothing valuable, and he was disappointed to find it had a few friends behind, but when he moved that first one aside, the cold breath of a deeper cave sighed out, and the sound of dripping water increased, and though he couldn’t see into the blackness of the widening crack, his hello came back to him.
The time consuming task of blasting and grappling the rocks tested his patience, but he figured he had nothing but time and without heat, the physical exercise of shimmying the boulders out of the way and rolling them to the entrance of the cave, where he conceived of an idea to create an optical illusion of a rock wall to hide it, kept him warm and unaware of the day’s passing. But pass it did, and when the sun set, and he returned to the trailer to find it empty without the least sign of a visitor, he decided to fix himself a dinner and bed down as early as he could possibly pass into sleep, just so he could feel more refreshed at sunrise.
The next day followed the same way, and then the next. Though the hole became wider, he needed to make it large enough to peek his head through to see the inside. The meager flashlight beam stuck through the hole revealed a deceiving reflection of its one golden light back on itself. On the fourth day, he had opened enough of a hole to squeeze his shoulders through, and was disappointed to find himself in a corridor which appeared to widen after a couple body lengths. It would prove a tight slow squirm, where all throughout images of everyone he knew going about their lives without him flashed through his mind. All he had was what was in front of him, and what he saw in front of him was gold.
These mountains often appeared like a jumble of rocks stacked upon themselves, where what he learned in school about earthquakes and plate tectonics did little to explain this arrangement of odd shaped boulders here and there as if God was cleaning house and scooped up all these rocks into a pile in order to clear some way for the valley below. The ‘cave’ he came to looked like just another space where the rocks came together awkwardly like a teepee, and out of every crack dripped water, which gathered into a pool at the bottom the size of a little kid’s inflatable, only it shimmered with gold.
Greg spied the nuggets from the outset, and quickly scooted himself down from an apparent ledge into what he discovered to be a frigid pool to retrieve them, but once standing there with four good sized nuggets in his hand, assessing that this was in fact the end of the cave for now, he looked back at the ledge from where he had wiggled himself down and claustrophobia immediately closed in when he realized his rashness. The walls were slick, and he had practically slid down the side on his belly to get in. Now, getting out involved climbing back up to the ledge, and no obvious step presented itself. He could reach the ledge with his hands, but the opening was small and awkwardly angled to the roof of the cave, upon which he hit his head again and again. After the third time he turned off his flashlight just in case his efforts extended into the night.
The first thought that came to this farm boy well raised with morals and manners, was regret for not sharing the cave with Ray. Without Ray, he never would have found this gold, but greed kept it to himself. Not that this fecundity would do him a lick of good right now but without the prospect of this to work on, and Wendy of course, he may have joined Ray on his road trip. He could see the winter being quite boring otherwise. As he contemplated this, the wall opposite, to the right of the entrance, slowly came into view as his eyes adjusted to the little light filtering from above. More dimensions gradually protruded out from the rock face, because while the left side gave him a good slide down, the right side, while not so accessible from the top, had a couple good rocks at the bottom that had the chance of elevating him just high enough to get a better grip on the edge. A couple more goose eggs on the head proved him wrong in this aspect though. With disappointment returned the remorse, and the slime of blood in his hair reminded him of his brother, and his brother reminded him of the farm and the farm gave him an idea. With his back to the entrance, he propped his hands on the crest of the tallest rock of the bunch and kicked his legs backward up the wall. Extending his arms and legs up, his feet found their way out, and due to the angle, he could prop his right knee against the wall, and in one explosive move he pushed up and off the rock enough to wiggle backwards to his waist and shimmy out.
The old wheelbarrow game gave him the inspiration, the one where kids divide into teams and one kid holds another kid’s legs and the wheelbarrow kids race on their hands. Except his brother used the opportunity to run Greg into walls. Greg wished he had a wheelbarrow, and even someone as malicious as his brother to drive him home. Thrilled by his find, but still cowed by the guilt that hung in his heart even after his release, he unzipped his pocket and fondled the little nuggets all the way home vowing to do better for the others who helped him gain them.
Wendy was in the trailer when he got there and broke out laughing when she saw him, “Oh, what happened to you!” she exclaimed sporadically through her laugh. He told her he had slipped and fell down a ravine, plausible enough, which only raised her mirth more.
Since only the house had a shower, and since he had looked forward to that shower the whole way home, he opened it up and she followed him in.
Though his decision to quit the farm seemed impetuous at the time, he had actually considered it rationally, weighed the pros and cons in his head and advanced accordingly. None of what happened in the months that followed the day he found the four nuggets in the pond within his cave received nearly a fraction of such attention, though he equated it all as a natural course of events extenuating from the first.
Wendy prowled around the house, opening cupboards and drawers while he showered, calling out comments on everything that she found. He told her that being his cousin’s house, she shouldn’t touch anything but she didn’t listen as usual. Instead, she asked when Ray would be back. He told her that Ray was on vacation and he didn’t know. He then felt tickled at the thought that she must have missed him, she had never asked this many questions about himself before. When he emerged from the shower and grabbed his pants from the floor, one of the gold nuggets fell out and rolled to her feet. It seemed fitting. After all, he had first met her at that waterfall, they had met there often. A romantic thought gripped him that she was the actual gold at the end of that rainbow. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to divulge about the cave, so he told her he found it in the creek, and in his guilt, told her she could have it. She squealed in delight, picked it up and kissed it, and then kissed him.
Every morning when the sun hit him through the window he thought about going back to the trailer, but once he got the fire started and slipped back into Ray’s bed with Wendy, all guilt left him. She, however, did not. They played house, cooking in the real kitchen and eating at the real table, and only when he needed to go to town for more provisions did she leave his side, or rather, he left her. She preferred to stay home, or she would wander but always come back to the cabin at night. The winter set in this way. Ray sent him postcards of places warm, as the snow piled around him.
Strangely enough, Greg found himself busier than ever. He chopped a lot of wood, storing the shed full. He did a lot of cleaning and running to town to keep up with all that Wendy went through. She had a million little, as he called them, arts and crafts projects, though she made nothing of value, and her culinary experiments were barely edible. They passed a pleasant winter this way, but by February Greg knew he needed to cash in his last remaining nuggets to get him though to May. He delayed as long as he could, but finally packed his bags for Reno. He told Wendy he had investments there to check on, and would only stay one night but when he returned he would have enough money to last them until summer when he could look for gold in the creeks again. Yes, he had told her that much. He kept his income stream vague though, in fact he adopted Ray’s status in life, gave credit to a wealthy extended family and said he had a bunch of investments. He knew he needed to spend one night in Reno, but couldn’t imagine leaving Wendy alone for longer, not that he questioned whether she could fend for herself, but he feared breaking the consistency they had formed.
Sure enough, when he returned the house was cold, and the food stuck to the dishes in the sink had forged with the ceramic. He kept awake all night waiting for her. Many times he started from bed at the sound of snow crunching outside, but the door never opened. Three days passed this way, and finally, worried, he headed out towards the homestead only to find the snow was too deep to work his way through. He headed back home to look for the snowshoes in the shed and as he was doing so he heard the sound of an engine approach, and then the slamming of what sounded to be a jeep, an as he came around from the back of the house Wendy was walking in.
“Guess what,” she said the moment she saw him, “I’m going to have a baby!”
Stunned, Greg watched her plop an old backpack on the table and start pulling out things, talking all the while, “I knew something was up and Kimberly said sure enough, that’s what it is.”
She pulled out some baby toys and a crumpled book of baby names and a dirty baby blanket. She shook the book at him, “You have to help me pick out a name, Amber likes Cyrus, isn’t that a weird name?” She always threw out names of people she knew like he knew them too.
He asked if she went to a doctor and she laughed at him. “You don’t need a doctor to have a baby, it’s not like my leg is cut off.”
“I’d like you to.” He said, “Just, it would be more healthy for both you and the baby.”
She shook a rattle at him, “Isn’t that cute? It’s a little monster.” The rattle was shaped like a dinosaur.
“Just so you don’t have a little monster, we should go to the doctor. I’ll pay for it.” He insisted.
“What are you wasting your money for? Nobody goes to a doctor for a baby.”
Suddenly her natural ways irked him, “Most people do,” he corrected.
“Nobody I know, and Alice has had 9 babies, she has one practically every year, she knows how to do it.” She pulled out a teething ring that looked like the dogs got to it.
Greg backed off. Wendy tended to get exasperated when he tried to tell her how to do anything. Still, the news had cracked the egg in their little nest, and Greg found himself suddenly invested in Wendy’s wellbeing, which, once he started examining it more closely, began to unsettle him.
Greg had brought a number of calves into this world and he did know a few things about gestation, predominantly, that the mother must make a few adjustments to her diet to bring a healthy baby to term. Wendy never had any regard for nutrition, and Greg had indulged her in the past because he never saw anyone rip through so much junk food without gaining an ounce. She loved anything sugary or salty, chips, cookies and candy especially, and pretty much subsisted on those three things entirely, even though he tried to force her to eat the meal items available in the house. He assumed that since her family was so poor, they never could afford the luxury of junk, and he got so much pleasure in watching her delight when he gave her things that she liked. But now he feared for the development of a baby built entirely by Cheetos and Chips Ahoy. Her disregard for cleanliness and hygiene also disconcerted him. She never cleaned up after herself, and considered bathing a recreational activity that she engaged in when she wanted to, not anything she did with any regularity. He could plausibly imagine coming home to find his trailer piled high with dirty diapers and baby spit. He stewed over how to approach her with these subjects. He also feared for her father, expecting every day to find him on the door with a priest at his side and a shotgun in his hand.
Meanwhile Wendy, as always, seemed unconcerned, instead she concentrated on what she called, ‘knitting booties’, which was really just braiding yarn in different ways. He bought her a knitting book and some needles but she never followed directions and ignored them.
Finally, on the first of March, Greg got the letter from Ray. He would be back by the end of the month. Greg needed to act fast. Wendy wasn’t home when he got back from town so he had plenty of time to plan his speech. Only when she arrived she had a broken baby pen with her, which she set to assemble on the floor even though she was barely showing her condition. Greg swept in, what he perceived as a romantic fashion and held her hands to his chest. “Wendy, I want you to marry me. I want us to get our own place in town, just until the baby is born. It worries me that we live so remotely, and I couldn’t live with myself if either of you suffered for want of medical attention and I know how you feel about that but please, just for me, and I will give you everything you want, I promise that you will be comfortable there.”
She laughed at him. “I like it here instead, you’re silly about this medical thing. You worrywart.”
He felt slighted that she had not bit into his first sentence. It was so hard to say he expected some measure of appreciation for it so he challenged her, “when was the last time you went into Sunny Springs?”
“I don’t know.” She said, returning her attention to the pen.
“Then how do you know you won’t like it? Just for a few months, then we can build a house just like this one, on our own property.”
“I like it here. That’s why I’m here. If I liked it in town I would be there.” That ended the conversation.
A few days later he tried a different tactic. Wendy had eaten the house clean out of all the junk and they only had canned soup left which she turned her nose up on, making a distasteful face. Greg couldn’t bring himself to buy the worst of the junk food she liked the last time he went to the store and felt a compunction against getting anything more. He approached her with a deal. “Hey, how about we go get some more food for the house but you have to come with me to pick out what you like because I obviously don’t do a good enough job,” he said.
“Sure you do,” she said, “you get M&Ms and Doritos and..”
“I mean food that will fill up both you and make the baby strong,” he said, ignoring her rolled eyes. “Come on, you can get as much as you want of the other stuff if you get a few good things for the baby.” Eventually, he convinced her to go. However, she refused to go into Arnie’s when he pulled up in front.
“Nope, I’m not going in there, that guy is mean,” she said.
“Arnie?” Greg couldn’t imagine Arnie being mean to anyone.
“You can’t get me to go,” she said.
“Come on, I got you to go so far.”
“You didn’t say we were going here.”
“Where else would we go to get food?”
“I thought we were going to someone’s house.”
Never one to sustain an argument, however ridiculous, Greg left her in the car. He had a hard time deciding what to buy. She had come along after all, so he felt he owed her something. He tried holding up items in the window for her approval but she never looked up. Eventually he chose a bunch of stuff he never bought before and figured they could try them together.
Arnie was staring straight through the windshield of Greg’s truck when he approached the counter, with an expression that made Greg twist around to see if anything was wrong. He tried to give Arnie the sly guys guy smile but Arnie’s expression stilled him, so instead of the half hour conversation they usually engaged in, he kept it to business.
“You, uh, giving a neighbor a ride?” Arnie broached.
“Yeah,” Greg couldn’t help but smile.
“See you soon,” Arnie said when he passed over his bags.
“He say something mean about me?” she asked when he returned.
“No,” Greg said and was willing to let it go when it occurred to him that he would have a hard time getting Wendy into Sunny Springs if she felt uncomfortable by the people there so he inquired what Arnie did that was so mean.
“He’s just not nice. He has all the stuff in the entire town and he doesn’t share any of it with anyone and he’ll follow you around and pull guns on you. He told me that he would shoot me if he ever saw me in there. You think someone with everything would be nicer to people who don’t have anything.”
Greg’s heart went out to her. The little poor girl probably went begging there and Arnie, well, Arnie’s a businessman. He can’t be just giving stuff away, but he couldn’t explain that to Wendy, whose family lived off trade.
His food strategy backfired. Wendy only ate the junk food he had purchased as her payment for going with and after it was all gone she disappeared when he was out chopping wood the next day. As usual, two days later when he resolved to go off and find her he heard her whistling through the woods, in sneakers and a light jacket, her breath condensing in the cold. Greg fetched a blanket and wrapped her in it. She took it for a welcome come-on, and he never refused.
Later, while she showed him the new baby things she had gathered in her travels Greg whispered in her hear, “When are you going to marry me?”
She giggled, “You are serious, huh, you want to do a wedding and everything huh?”
“Yes. I will buy you a big dress and your whole family can be there, and we can get our own house and be a family. I miss you when you’re gone.”
“No, you’re just getting jealous,” she said, not laughing anymore. “Besides, in a little bit I need to move in with Alice to wait for the baby to come.”
“But I want to be there when its born,” Greg said.
“Silly again, boys are never there when babies come.”
“But I want to be. You don’t understand, Wendy, I’m different. I want to be your husband. I will stand by you for the rest of your life.”
“Now you’re getting jealous again,” she said.
She often used words wrong so he didn’t question her use of the word jealous, instead he rationalized, “The baby should have their father there from the beginning.”
“You know my dad warned me about you being a townie from the beginning.”
“Townie?”
“City guy who wants to keep everything for himself.”
“Wendy, I just want to take responsibility and take care of you. There’s a lot of guys that would do the opposite when they find out their girlfriend is having their baby.”
“Well, that’s true,” she conceded. “But once we get married you’re going to want me to cook and clean and stay home all the time. I can’t go out with my friends…”
“Wendy,” he smiled at her, “Believe me, I don’t want you to cook and clean, you’re terrible at it.”
They laughed together and from that point forward, Greg felt he made progress. He told her he would get her gold nugget made into a proper wedding ring and she squealed.
“Well, maybe I’ll get married…but if you think it changes anything you got another thing coming.” she said.
Greg pounced on the first statement, ignored the second, and sought out the Postmaster/town attorney the following day. He exited the post office with two discouraging pieces of news. One on a postcard from Ray informing him of a delay of plans due to some fraud on his bank account which wiped out his checking but luckily spared his savings, the information on which he kept in his desk at home. He asked Greg to fetch an old statement from his binder and call his sister with the account number etc. Though he sympathized for his friend, the news that no marital officiator lived in Sunny Springs disappointed him more. He planned on duping his bride with a surprise drive to town. She would never consent to go to Sage Springs, and now he had to hang out at Arnie’s payphone and call all around to see if any officiator there could maybe make the trip west.
Arnie was busy with a customer when Greg came in, but after the third fruitless phone call he had saddled up to the booth in the far corner. So far, one officiator refused since neither he or Wendy belonged to his church, the second had a tight schedule which wouldn’t allow him to travel all the way out to Sunny Springs or so he said and the third asked to interview the couple prior to performing the service so she could feel “confident in the match.”
He tried to concentrate on the other names on the list to discourage Arnie’s conversation but the little shopkeeper waited patiently.
“Don’t mean to interrupt you,” he said finally, “But you really don’t need to feed that thing.”
“What thing?” Greg asked with irritation, already expecting a slight on his soon-to-be wife.
“The payphone. Just dial 9 first. It’s connected to the shop phone.”
With this information the calls went quicker, though most gave him the same rigmarole. Only one proved somewhat fruitful…if Wendy consented to travel to what sounded like a clothing optional resort outside of Sage Springs.
Discouraged, Greg felt inspired to buy some beer, and at the check-out thanked Arnie for the hospitality.
“Yeah, I always thought a town like this should have a community phone, weather being the way it is someone’s line is always down,” Arnie said, “but then the freeloaders would line up to use it day in and out, and their kids would steal stuff from that corner of the store, so then I put the magazines and books over there, because,” he smirked, “they don’t read you know. But eventually I had to make it a payphone after it turned out they were…well they were doing two things. One they would call people and occupy them on the phone while one of their kids snuck in the house or garage or whatever and ripped them off, and the other thing they would do is they used to claim to be the police or the hospital telling people their loved one was hurt and they needed to get their butt to Sage Springs ASAP and then they would break into the house when they knew he was gone. The Sherriff tried to strong arm me to remove the phone but I like my solution better.”
This conversation brought Ray’s letter to mind, and Greg excused himself to make one more call. Though the letter was clearly written in Ray’s hand, he wanted to make sure to avoid further fraud.
He expected to encounter the same luck he suffered with all preceding calls but to his surprise, Ray’s sister put her brother right on the line, and the two gabbed like girls for half an hour. Ray talked mostly about his travels, which Greg encouraged with his questions. When finally asked about the events of his winter Greg found himself suddenly thick tongued, and talked only about the snow. Even though every call prior were placed in arrangements to commit himself to Wendy for the rest of his life he couldn’t bear to tell his friend the least detail of the affair. He blamed it on Arnie’s presence but by the time the call ended the shopkeeper had a line in front of him. Greg called out to Arnie in passing to keep the money he had given him for the beer to pay for the long distance call and left. He realized that Wendy would probably disapprove of beer in the house, so he decided to visit Phil instead.
Ray had become a regular at Phil’s, stopping in whenever he passed through town to gather the gossip. Greg, who preferred the company of Wendy, had capitalized on his friend’s absence and since the beginning of their affair, stopped attending these trips. Nor did Ray share the gossip anymore since Greg found no interest in the trials of the town dwellers. It all centered around the town’s disproportionate amount of crime for the population, as Arnie had just echoed, so Greg used this reason to condone Wendy’s preference to avoid the place, though personally he dismissed these reports as the whining of people with nothing else to complain about.
That day a strange mood consumed him, much like the day he walked away from the farm he walked out of the general store and turned towards the bar, leaving his car parked in front of Arnie’s. Usually whenever he left Wendy at home for a trip to town he felt like a yo-yo at the end of its string, compelled to bounce back to her side, afraid she would flee whenever out of sight. That morning he had left home with so much initiative he felt like he couldn’t return without a plan, even if she disappeared for the next week, always a possibility, at least he gained something from the journey.
The old walkways, covered by antique awnings created a clear path from the snowpack between the storefronts and the snow that had built up on the curb, and rather than climb that hurdle to drive his truck to the next block he decided to hoof it. He never saw more than one other person on these streets, and always going from car to shop or shop to car, yet still the same strange company seemed omnipresent, that invisible city, almost more so cushioned in snow, but he put that off to the drips ringing out from the trees and awnings above him.
Phil’s sure was lively. He never saw it so packed. A couple sat at the end of the bar, three guys at the middle, and two more playing pool. Though Greg only came to think things over for a bit, he knew protocol would consider him rude not to sit between the couple and the group of three since three spare chairs stood open welcoming him. Phil nodded approval and commented on the time that had elapsed since last they met. The two made small talk about Ray’s adventures for a bit, Greg all the while pretending to know as much about his friends recent forays as the barkeeper seemed to. He had recognized the same snapshots of places on the postcards he had received taped up on the mirror behind the bar, but the scenes Phil alluded to failed to spark Greg’s memory. He always read Ray’s correspondence when it came, but forgot the details of the locations. In fact his first course of action was always to check the date on the postmark, then he scanned the comments to pin down his friend’s next move like the way deer hunters track the habits of herds to predict where they might forage next, but Greg recalled nothing about the New Year’s beach party or the ‘good luck at the races’ Phil alluded to. Instead he smiled and laughed along, relieved when another couple entered the bar and took a table.
Of course at that point Greg had finished his beer, all without even considering his next course of action. The dribble at the end of the bottle surprised him, he felt like he just arrived, he must have sipped the whole time he listed to Phil go on and on about Ray, and not just Phil, the three guys beside him picked up where Phil had left off, all familiar with Ray and his travels. Only one introduced himself, the brother of Bill, who somehow remembered Greg from a year ago when he came there more often. The other guy smiled at Greg with familiarity as well, even though Greg couldn’t recollect his face. In fact everyone there seemed to know him, the male half of the couple in the back had given him a wave of acknowledgement and asked him how he was “holding up out there over the winter” as he passed by on his way to the restroom, but the only people who Greg recognized, though he couldn’t remember how, were the two guys silently playing pool, reflected in the mirror behind him.
He watched their game as just a place to put his eyes while his thoughts went elsewhere, but not where he wanted them to. He found it difficult to concentrate on the question at hand. The imperative of marriage loomed so urgent to him when at home with Wendy, and even more so when she disappeared for days, he had trouble thinking about anything else, yet here he experienced a mental block on the subject. He chalked it up to his discouragement at the news that nobody within a two hour drive had the authority to marry them. He heard that just about anyone could apply for the privilege, but he doubted it would happen overnight, and anyway, he had no one to ask.
The desire for another beer now displaced these thoughts. Phil seemed content to hobnob with the couple seated by the door. The pool players behind him finished their game and left, and then Phil sauntered over and slapped a food ticket on the bar before Bill, who Greg now recalled worked the kitchen for Phil on weekends.
“They pay?” asked the third guy, not the brother, gesturing to the empty pool table behind him as Bill scooted off his stool.
Phil nodded and turned his back to fetch drinks for his chatty friends.
Meanwhile the two had suddenly decided to join the couple at the far end. “Why do you think I sat by the door?” said the man as he passed.
“They’ve been paying…but its still a good idea to make sure they don’t get a glass.”
“Or a cue.”
“How often do they come by?” the man at the end asked.
“Lately, about twice a week. We’ve had as much as five of them. Of course I make them pay up front. One night they spent near $70 bucks.”
“Makes you take a good look around the house.”
“They’re spending it like it’s coming in.”
“You’re up that way, have you had any issues?”
“Ray set up some deterrents I remember him saying.” Phil answered for him. Only then did Greg realize the question had been directed his way and the others waited for an answer.
“What kind of deterrents?” They asked him.
Suspecting they referred to the traps he kept his answer vague, wondering why Ray told these strangers when he was so secretive. “Oh that was Ray’s thing.”
“So you don’t set it when he’s gone? What you got nothing to lose?”
“Not really,” Greg said, tossing his money on the bar and preparing to leave.
“Didn’t mean to make you nervous,” said Phil. “You should come by more often, if only we could keep to more positive conversation,” he shot an eye at the man in the corner.
“I apologize, but I just wouldn’t think to leave my house unsecured if I lived up there.”
“When you were single you lived in a trailer and cooked with a broken toaster,” his wife commented.
“That’s true, I guess you have more to lose with a family,” he conceded, “But still, I think it’s a travesty that they’re selling that land without telling people about the threat up there. They talk like they just disappeared once they drove out the loggers and why would they? They moved into those abandoned homes and have been breeding like bunny rabbits and not one of them is working a real living.”
The cold felt refreshing to Greg once back on the street, yet the same reluctance to return home gripped him. He considered the probability that Wendy had skipped off again in his absence and that thought led him back to his truck. He tried to focus on the wedding during the drive, but again his mind traveled. For the first time since his departure he envied Ray. Greg was the junior of his friend, at an age where he should be attending beach parties, and here he lived like a hermit in the woods, trying to force marriage upon a reluctant woman, who, to his surprise, was home when he arrived, though she returned fairly recently, the tire tracks on the drive up looked fresh.
She showered him with kisses when he entered. “Guess what, you’re going to like it?”
“What?”
“Its OK as long as we stay here.”
“What?”
“It’s OK to get married, as long as nothing changes.”
“Well, we’re going to have to move, because this is Ray’s house.”
“But we’re here now,” she said in a sing-song voice.
“Yes, but, I just got a letter from him, he’s returning soon.” It reminded him to check for that account information, “But we can stay in the trailer until we get a house just like it. I helped him build this, I can do it again.”
“Why can’t he stay in the trailer? There’s two of us but one of him, and now that you mention it, there’s two rooms right here. He doesn’t like to share does he?”
Greg wavered on how to answer that. “We should have our own family home,” he said.
“But they’re all taken now. Dave and Vanessa moved into the last one.”
“I told you, I’ll build one,” he held on to her shoulders and stared into her eyes as he spoke. As always, they looked like the eyes of a child at play.
She had scrunched her face at him, “You make everything more complicated,” she said as he passed her on his way to Ray’s room. “I didn’t even want to get married but everyone else thinks its a good idea.”
He let the comment pass as he rifled through the drawer Ray had indicated that he left an accordion envelope of his financial papers. She continued to ramble on about how marrying people always led to problems, flinging names now familiar of people he never met and never could pin down their relation to her or each other. She talked about jealous husbands and women with so many babies they had to run away and all the while Greg grew more frantic, pulling out every drawer, checking cubbies far too small for such an item. Once he had exhausted all possible places in Ray’s room he moved throughout the house, hoping that Ray may have forgotten where he hid it at his departure. Since they came with so little the place lacked any clutter other than the crap Wendy brought with her. Tattered books of fairy tales for the ‘baby’ to read, clothes, toys, and other odds and ends she liked to play with. On a last ditch effort he endeavored to check out the shed, but the flashlight had moved from its usual spot beside the door. When he asked Wendy where she put it she shrugged. Greg had started sweating in his excitement, now focusing on finding the flashlight.
Meanwhile, Wendy had somehow evolved her marriage babble into an argument aimed in his direction, something about all he cared about was things, and here she was willing to marry him right now and all he cared about was some stupid flashlight.
“Wendy, we can’t get married now anyway,” he stopped to assuage her, “I looked into it there are no officiators in town, we would have to go to Sage Springs.”
“See there you go messing everything up again. I don’t know what is wrong with you, you do everything the hard way, you go into town and shop at that store like the stupid people and you want to go to doctors and the Sherriff.”
“The Sherriff?”
“Well, I guess you never said anything about the Sherriff.”
“I didn’t even think Sunny Springs had one…” he said, opening the door. He figured he could just go to the trailer for a flashlight when he halted in the twilight. Luckily the rising full moon reflected in the snow cast shadows of small trees in the distance, trees in between the shed and the house that had never been there before. He closed the door and turned towards Wendy. She was shoving some of her crap into that big hobo sling bag she had carried ever since the day she announced her pregnancy. At the beginning of their trysts in the trailer she never had any stuff with her, but recently, ever since the baby or before, ever since they moved into Ray’s house she had started toting this lumpy bag everywhere, yet she never had a change of clothes, or even underwear, instead she was always pulling out new used baby things that she somehow acquired daily.
Greg moved towards her and pulled her close. She smelled like she hadn’t showered in days, most likely true. He used to associate that scent with the smell of earth, of nature, but now his eyes so close to her hair, stringy with ‘natural’ body oils, he felt repulsed. She dropped her bag to wrap her arms around him, and it fell with the thud of metal. Though curious, he repressed the impulse to peek over her shoulder, but when she turned her lips up to kiss him, nausea washed over him. He had bought her a toothbrush some time ago, but soon discovered that he had to remind her to use it, and since she detested taking orders, he let it go. Every day that he performed the ritual with his flattened bristle brush, which he purchased in the same 2 for 1 packet, he told himself that he just used more pressure, though he never actually witnessed her at the act. Greg pulled her greasy hair to one side and started to kiss her neck to once again dodge the subject, and peering over her shoulder saw his spatula peeking out of her bag. It didn’t surprise him. Most of their spoons had disappeared. He found one in the creek and at the time the vision of her sipping water with it as if the mountain flowed with soup tickled his heart too much to complain. The charm still lingered, especially with her clasped so close to him.
He told Wendy he needed to check one more place in the bedroom. Ray had installed a floodlight facing the shed and wired it to a light switch beside his window. He had told Greg to turn it on at night just in case but Greg had outright rejected all of Ray’s safety measures in protection of his love for Wendy. He had never stopped to consider the rationality of that. When he flipped the switch a man, standing at the ajar shed door slipped into the darkness. Wendy’s reflection appeared in the window framed by the doorway but then slowly receded. He caught her at the front door.
“Where are you going?” he asked her, gripping her in a tight embrace, “I told you I would be right back.”
“I thought I heard something,” she said.
“And you were bringing your bag with you?” He grasped the shoulder strap but she kept a firm grip.
“I’m not marrying you if you are going to be like this,” she said, wiggling in his arms.
“Be like how?” he asked, trying to sound tender.
“Like the way married men are, not letting girls go out of their sight,” she yelled the last words inches from in face with a ferocity he never previously would have matched with her happy-go-lucky character.
“You are free to go, just leave your bag here.” He let go of the girl and heaved his weight against the door instead.
“What do you want with my bag?”
“It’s the only place I haven’t checked”
“Checked for what?” The first time she asked.
“My spatula,” he decided to answer.
“I don’t even know what a spatula is,” she said in a bragging sort of way, mispronouncing the word spatula.
“Its that thing we use to flip burgers and grilled cheese.”
“What a silly name,” she said, pulling it out of her bag.
“What were you doing with this?” he said, pretending to find it amusing.
“I thought it could be useful for the baby.”
“Like how?” he had to ask.
“You know, for spanking it when it cries.”
“Who would do such a thing!”
She rolled her eyes, “like everyone, you don’t want to hit a baby with your hand because they’re always dirty with poop, everyone knows that.”
Greg couldn’t conjure a response. He held the spatula in his hand and stood aside the door.
“That’s all you were looking for?” she asked. “That was the big deal?”
“That and the flashlight,” he said.
“Well, I need it to see where I’m going now, but I guess I can stay here if you need it for something,” she said pulling out another flashlight of his, not the one he was looking for, out of her bag.
“Wendy, why do you take my stuff without letting me know?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re like the loggers and the city people and think stuff is yours when it is not.”
“I bought that spatula from a store, how is it not mine?” he rationalized.
“Just because you buy something doesn’t make it yours,” she said, not in a mean way, like she was explaining something to a child. “Nothing belongs to anyone. I know people in the town think different but up here that is the way it is. If you don’t have a flashlight in this house you go to someone else’s house and get a flashlight, you don’t go all the way into town and give someone else money for a flashlight, only mean people make you pay for something.”
“But wait, if everything is everyone’s and everyone knows it my same question should apply, why don’t you just ask, because only mean people will say no.”
“That’s not the way it is, you don’t get it,” she said exasperated.
“And if I went to your dad’s house and just walked right in and took something from the middle of his yard that he really liked he would just watch and say that’s the way it is.”
“You really don’t get it, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I want to get it.”
“You won’t, new people don’t get it. He was here first, you can’t take anything from him.”
“I remember him saying something about how the mountain belonged to him, but Ray purchased this land from the deed owner, and according to state records it belonged to lumber companies before then.”
“Well he was stupid then because the lumber people didn’t have it either. They found that out and left. You all think that paying for something makes it yours and it doesn’t.”
“Well if money doesn’t mean anything then why did someone take all of Ray’s financial papers from his drawer in there?”
“It wasn’t me so I don’t know.”
“Who else was in here?”
She shrugged, “I didn’t see anybody take any papers.”
“But you let other people in here when I’m not home?”
“The door is always open anyone can come in.”
“But this is what I don’t get about your theory Wendy, if all is OK like you say why don’t your friends stay around when I come home, why do they come in when I’m not home, take something and leave?”
“Because boys fight with other boys that’s why, and I don’t like it so I tell them and I’m telling you if you still want to see me you stay away from my other boyfriends and you don’t drink hooch, those are the two things about me,” she said defiantly.
It suddenly occurred to Greg that Wendy’s rejection of property extended to individuals as well, her whole argument against marriage had alluded to it all along with the ‘jealousy’ comments, and in a period of relief he realized that the baby she carried may not necessarily have anything to do with him. No wonder she gave him quizzical glances when he referred to her brothers. That morning such news would have crippled him but now it seemed like a ray of sun through the clouds.
“But what about when doors are locked, like my shed?”
She shrugged, “Some people like picking locks to see what’s inside. I don’t like to work for anything so I don’t bother.” He thought of a baby crying with a dirty diaper and Wendy whapping it with a spatula to make it stop. She had sat down now and made herself comfortable as if to stay.
“Tomorrow I want you to take me to meet each of the people you know have been in this house,” he said, receiving the elicited response. She stood up. “I have to find Ray’s papers.”
“Nobody is going to give them to you if you do that.”
“Ok, well, you just show me where they live and I will go into their homes when they’re not there like they did to me.”
“Again, you don’t get it, there’s always someone home and they won’t let you.”
“Even if it was mine to begin with? Wendy, I need your help here.”
“No, it doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work, tell me how it works because I need to get my stuff back.”
“You don’t, that’s how it works. We were here first and its ours, whether you like it or not. You were the one who brought it to our home so its ours, see?”
“Whose, your family’s?”
“I told you I don’t know who took your stuff.”
“Then how are you so sure they have more of a right to it than me?” He doubted that Wendy had ever invested this much thought into this issue. The brain behind her eyes grinded away like a car trying to start. “So if we got married, would that mean that I would have a right to take everyone else’s stuff, can you marry into that entitlement?”
“Some people do. Maybe that would work,” she smiled hopefully, as if she really wanted to help solve his problem, “but you can’t be acting like this.”
“And I can’t fight with your other boyfriends or drink hooch…”
“Exactly!” her face lit up in pure joy, the way he expected it to when he first asked her to marry him. She held her arms open and moved towards him but he turned away.
“Sorry, can’t do,” he said.
She threw up her hands in exasperation, “then why did you want to all this time?”
“Because I thought you were my girlfriend, and when someone’s girlfriend gets pregnant, you have to marry her to make a family, but your girlfriend can’t have a bunch of other boyfriends or else he’s stuck raising someone else’s kid while she’s out with her other boyfriends.”
“You sound just like Adam, always complaining about Julie.”
“You like telling me the way things are, but don’t like when others say it to you. And its the same thing again, if you thought I would be OK with you having other boyfriends why did you hide it from me?”
“Because, the same thing again, boys fight.”
“And why do you think they fight?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a boy.”
“But you wouldn’t fight with a girl if your favorite boyfriend decided to stop seeing you and see her instead?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know, never happened, I know other girls don’t like me around their boyfriends but I’m not that way.”
Greg thought of the other women he saw around her dad’s compound and could comprehend why. In fact, of all the women in Sunny Springs Wendy took the prize, not that she would beat out the spa girls in Sage Springs or compete for a beauty contest, she lacked any attractive contours, and had a mouth that hung open when she wasn’t using it, in addition to her stringy hair and dirty fingernails, but she had no lines or folds anywhere, which accounted for something around here. That said he wanted nothing to do with her anymore, he looked at her like a bottle of whisky during a hangover. Still she occupied his house, pregnant on a dark spring night with a layer of snow coating her route home.
He got the knowledge he needed out of her and thus relented, fixed himself a snack, with the spatula, and went to bed early, all the while with Wendy commenting about how he must be mad at her in a way that seemed unsure, as if all the mad people she knew either yelled and hit. She made lots of silly comments as usual, about how he shouldn’t blame her for other people taking his stuff, and then babbling on about the baby as usual. He phased her out and tried to concentrate on his plan, to secure the cabin, win back the respect of his benefactor, and somehow drive the indigenous pests from the mountain before someone listened to Wendy’s babbling long enough to figure out they sat on a gold mine.