“I want to go camping with you in the White Mountains."
The remarked was greeted with a whooping belly laugh. “That’s ridiculous! You’re engaged to Clarice.”
“Not so,” he protested. “And, anyway, I just need to get away.”
“A vision quest,” Phyllis snickered tongue in cheek.
“What’s that?”
“A young Indian wanders off into the wilderness alone and fast. After three or four days of mortification of the flesh, the Great Spirit sends a message. Or maybe nothing at all.”
“Sounds a bit too intense. Can I accompany you to the White Mountain?”
“No,” she hissed. “Absolutely not.”
“For my mental well being, I got to get away.”
Alex watched the second hand on the wall clock tick ten, fifteen, twenty-five seconds. Out in the street, an ambulance sped by red light and siren. “Separate tents. No funny stuff. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, of course. So what do I need to bring?”
“I’ll do up a list. What about Clarice?”
“I’ll just say I’m away on business.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You can tell her that you’re camping in the White Mountains with friends.”
“What if she demands particulars?”
“That’s none of my business, because I’m driving up alone,” she replied and hung up the phone.
*****
Alex allowed himself one colossal, ignominious blunder per year.
Every three hundred and sixty-five days, give or take a month, he could transgress, do something so utterly regrettable that he cringed with mortal embarrassment. One stupendously stupid blunder per year.
Clarice was physical perfection – the straw-colored hair and velvety skin that blushed pink when she stepped out of a steamy shower. The other night, she wore a strapless, black evening gown with pearl drop earrings to a family gathering, and the odd thought flitted across Alex’s mind that the woman was quite possibly even more beautiful with clothes than in the buff. But outside of maintaining her gorgeous looks, the woman, who pulled up short every time she passed a mirror, cultivated no hobbies or creative pursuits. She was a trophy wife, not a woman to grow old with, and agreeing to cohabitate registered a perfect ten on the Richter scale of dopey deeds.
Alex had no intention of ever setting up house with the blonde much less marrying her. He would tell his girlfriend the truth straight out. Clarice would throw a hissy fit, but inside a week, she would dry the crocodile tears and put her luscious, thirty-something flesh back in circulation. More guys would be queuing up for a date with Clarice than diehard Yankee fans vying for tickets to a World Series game.
So why tell Phyllis they were moving in together? And, worse yet, why did he describe Clarice as his future wife? One lie heaped on another. A fetid pile of deceit! If Alex wasn’t going to marry Clarice, what did he really want? Alex yearned for someone like Phyllis Moon. The near-sighted, rummage-sale fashionista was pleasant, reliable, dependable, durable, forthright, solid, stolid and on and on and on and ….
She was also spoken for.
Phyllis had a steady boyfriend, Donald. On the few occasions he stopped by the office to take Phyllis out to lunch, the pudgy man with the swarthy, pock-marked face was always polite, with a gently, self-effacing smile, Though she never discussed her personal life, Alex assumed Donald and his office manager were engaged.
*****
The rest of the week flew by. Jessica Stern from the Department of Health mailed a list of infractions which required written plans of correction within ten days. Thursday evening Clarice called. “I’m three blocks from your apartment.”
Alex immediately hung up and began rehearsing his we-need-to-talk spiel, but when Clarice arrived the issue never came up. “My father had emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his leg.”
Alex felt a sense of relief. “When was this?”
“Earlier this morning.” I’m flying out tonight to be with my mother… won’t be back from Miami until sometime the middle of next week.”
“Need a lift to Logan?”
“You’re so sweet.” She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned forward. “Want to grab a quickie before I go?”
By the scattered tone and the way her eyes flitted distractedly about the room, Alex understood the offer as more formality than sexual need. “Not necessary.”
She kissed his cheek, wiping the wetness away with the heel of her hand. “Poor boy, you’ll be all alone this weekend.”
Alex felt a queer rush of joy tinged with anticipation. “Howie Tittlebaum stopped by the office Monday.”
“The accountant?”
“He claims I’ve been spending too much time growing revenue when I should be focusing on profit.”
Clarice picked at a cuticle. “What’s the difference?” He explained the comparison Howie had made between home care and the garment industry. “You earn over a million dollars,” she spoke slowly measuring her words, “but are still a pauper?”
“The agency rakes in tons of money,” Alex said, “but after-tax profit is pitifully low.”
She flashed him a sick look. “I’m sure you’ll figure something. I got to get to Logan Airport in less than two hours.”
*****
Friday afternoon Alex told Phyllis about Clarice’s abrupt departure. “Is Donald joining us?”
“Joining me,” Phyllis corrected. “No. Donald has a drinking problem and we’re not dating anymore.”
“For the life of me, I don’t see why we can’t drive up together.”
“Because,” Phyllis’ stony expression never wavered, “to do so would be crass and smarmy.”
“I’m not two-timing Clarice.”
“No,” Phyllis replied evenly, “but you’re not being terribly honest either.”
“Travelling in one car is more economical.”
Phyllis turned away. “Clearly you didn’t hear a solitary thing I said.”
*****
Saturday morning, Alex drove north through Boston, where he caught the Route 93 Interstate to the New Hampshire state line. He continued on through Plymouth and Compton, cruising to the western shore of Lake Winnipesauke. The campground was well over two hours away and the unsavory thought had occurred to Alex even before he left Brandenburg that Phyllis might pull a practical joke and not show up.
Then what would he do? Check into a motel for the night? That made perfect sense! He had bought a tent, sleeping bag and lengthy list of necessities that Phyllis Moon (or was it Half Moon?) recommended, but would end up spending the night in some dumpy, flea-bitten motel before driving home like a total fool.
At Holderness he entered the southern tip of the White Mountains National Forest and continued on for another thirty miles veering off the interstate onto route 112 heading east to Loon Mountain. At the third set of traffic lights he pulled over at a small coffee shop; Phyllis was waiting near a picnic table sipping a cup of coffee. She was dressed sensibly – a pair of heavy-soled hiking boots, khaki shorts and plaid blouse.
“Is there anything you need?” He shook his head. “The campground is two miles up on the right. You can follow me.” She climbed into a tan Subaru sedan and edged out into traffic.
*****
“You’ll want to get the gear set up and campsite arranged to your liking.” Phyllis had called ahead earlier in the week to reserved a space near the lake.
Once they lugged their supplies down to the water, the lanky woman started unpacking. Alex wandered down to the lake then doubled back to the registration office where he picked up a few brochures describing local attractions. “Is that a tent or a Mediterranean villa?”
Phyllis, who was pounding a metal stake into the spongy earth, nudged her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and grinned. The elongated tent featured two doors with a massive vestibule plus a six-pocket gear loft. The poles were anodized aluminum with a mesh canopy and overhead vents to
eliminate condensation.
“It’s the Big Agnes Emerald Mountain model.” “The design is particularly good,” she added as she pounded away at the last stake, “for weathering high wind situations.” Having finished she ran a hand over the bed of pine needles carpeting the earth. “Where’s your hatchet?”
“I forgot to buy one.”
“Here, use this.” She handed him the one at her feet. “I’m going back to the car to get the rest of my stuff.” It took Phyllis three leisurely trips back and forth to retrieve the rest of her camping gear. She brought a sleeping bag, flashlight with extra batteries, a kerosene lantern, transistor radio and folding chair. The bug spray and plastic cooler she squirreled away under a shaggy hemlock tree. Other items such as the mess kit, plastic cups, pot holders, a slightly scorched aluminum pan and spatula she arranged alongside the Big Agnes.
“What’s the bucket for?” Alex asked.
“Hauling water.” Phyllis wound a plastic alarm clock and set it just inside the front tent flap. “We can cook simple meals over the fire,” she pointed to a blackened cooking pit ringed by large stones, “but there’s a pizza joint and breakfast nook three miles down on the right so, if the weather turns bad, we don’t have to starve.”
She grabbed a short handled spade. “I’m going to dig a shallow hole over behind that stand of birch trees. Do your business in the hole.” Rummaging about in one of her waterproof storage sacks she removed a roll of fluffy toilet paper. “Don’t throw the paper on the ground. Put it here.” She held up a Ziploc storage bag with a plastic clip. “I’ll hang it beside the hole.” She pointed at a scattering of wildflowers sprouting on a rocky granite outcrops. “Be careful not to step on any of those.”
Alex studied a delicate, rather homely looking plant with tiny pastel pink buds. “And why’s that?”
“Silverlings have been disappearing here in the Northeast and some blame recreational hikers.”
When Alex’s tent was erected and sleeping bag unrolled, Phyllis announced that she was going for a walk. “Did you bring extra socks?” Alex shook his head up and down. “How many pair?”
“Three.”
“That’s good, but I’ve got a clothesline and detergent just in case.”
“Was there anything you didn’t bring?” She cracked a tepid smile and headed away from the lake toward the main trail.
*****
The campground was shot through with an endless series of ponds, bogs and rocky hillocks that weaved around the lake. As they came up over a gravelly hill, Phyllis knelt down and fingered a dull pink flower with feathery tendrils bursting from the center. “Blazing star,” she pointed to a charred tree trunk nearby. “They don’t like shade and tend to appear after the land’s been scorched by fire.”
Reaching a clearing where the dense pine trees no longer hemmed them in, the sky was clear with a scattering of cumulus clouds. A brown hawk circled on an updraft, searching for prey. “I climbed that mountain directly ahead last summer.” At the summit, there were balsam fir and black spruce only thigh-high like miniature clumps of bonsai trees.”
As she explained it, at the higher elevations many of the alpine plants were dwarfed to avoid the brutal winds and survive in the nutrient-poor substrate that couldn’t possibly maintain regular forest plants. Even the heartiest shrubs were ground-hugging with thick, leathery leaves that sometimes curled at the margins to help reduce the physical abuse and dehydrating effects of the mountain winds.
“So when exactly,” Alex pressed, “were you planning to tell me about your Indian heritage?”
Phyllis shrugged. Cresting the rise, she started down the far side. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m not sure.”
They passed a clump of fleshy white baneberry. “According to Blackfoot oral tradition, once there were only two people in the world, Old Man and Old Woman.”
As Phyllis Half Moon explained it, the Old Man insisted that they should decide how everything worked properly in the new world they were creating, and that he should have first say in everything. Old Woman agreed as long as she could have the second say. Then the Old Man said, “Let the people have eyes and mouths in their faces, but they shall be straight up and down.”
“No,’ said the Old Woman. We will not have them that way. We will have the eyes and the mouth in the faces, as you say, but they shall be set crosswise.”
They passed through a gash in the hillside where granite boulders rose thirty feet high on either side of the cleft. Small wildflowers, mosses and seedlings that Alex hadn’t noticed previously clung to the steep sides of the bald-faced rock—a vegetative world in microcosm. “Is that the only story about the Old Man and Old Woman?”
“Oh, no,” Phyllis laughed. “Here’s another.” “The Old Man said people shall have ten fingers on each hand, but the Old Woman said, ‘Oh, no. That will be too many and they will be in the way. There shall be four fingers and one thumb on each hand.’”
“’Well’ said the old man, ‘we shall beget children. The genitals shall be at our navels.’”
“’No’, said the Old Woman, ‘that will make childbearing too easy; the people will not care for their children. The genitals shall be further down.’”
Alex began to chuckle. They had arrived back at the campsite. “That’s enough Indian folklore for the time being.”
*****
“Why did you change your name?” They were down by the pond in the early afternoon. Phyllis was fly-casting, whipping a strand of translucent monofilament line out over the placid water. As she retrieved the feathery lure, she flicked her wrist to simulate a bug flitting about the watery surface.
The woman waded further away from shore until the water crawled up her slender thighs and was nipping at the hem of her shorts. She let out a length of line, slingshotting the fly in a wavy ribbon across the pond. “Being Native American,” she addressed his earlier question, “is a state of mind. I don’t have to wear my Indian heritage like some badge of honor.”
Sitting twenty feet away on a stump Alex, nodded. He had always felt uncomfortable at Fourth of July ceremonies, watching doddering, eighty year-old VFW members with pot bellies, pointy military caps and hip replacements limp past.
“My people lived for centuries in these very same woods before migrating to the northwestern Great Plains where they hunted buffalo and gathered wild plants. The Blackfeet were the strongest military power in the region during the buffalo days. All the neighboring tribes, the Shoshonis, Kutenais and Flatheads, feared them.”
Slogging back to shore she removed the fly, exchanging it for another with a fluffy lemon-colored feather and silver spinner. “Being Indian is a state of grace,” she repeated what she had said a moment earlier altering the last word.
*****
In late afternoon, Phyllis sent Alex to collect kindling and scrounge up thicker deadwood for the campfire. Once the fire was established, she steamed a cup of whole grain rice and sautéed onions and green peppers over the open flame.”
“You even remembered to bring salt,” Alex shook his head, “and sugar for the coffee.” The light was seeping out of the sky leaving the landscape shrouded in dull shadows. “Howie says we’re not doing so hot.” After they had finished the meal, he told Phyllis the accountant’s grim assessment earlier in the week.
She sat on a blanket sipping black coffee from a battered tin cup. “This is what I think.” A light breeze sent a rustling through the trees. Somewhere in the distance a small creek was gurgling a soothing, repetitive melody. “Hold off until September, then slash benefits. Do away with sick days. No more time-and-a-half for evening service, and make the direct-care employees pay fifty-fifty toward their medical coverage.”
Alex mulled the suggestion. “Isn’t that a bit drastic?”
“And what are your alternatives? Howie says we’re no better than the garment industry. Well, the garment industry has been around for a hundred years. We won’t survive much beyond J
anuary, from what I can see, unless you do something rash.”
“Homemakers will quit.”
“So you swallow hard and hire replacements at entry-level pay. When the state grants us a rate increase, reward the loyal troops with a decent raise.” Phyllis rose and threw the last few drops of coffee onto the fading embers, which sent up a steamy, aromatic smoke. “Now, I’m going to bed.”
Around three o’clock, Alex had to pee. He had forgotten to bring a flashlight, but the moon was bright, and he relieved himself behind a clump of evergreen bushes with bright red berries that Phyllis identified earlier as a rare mountain variety of wild cranberry that only grew in western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Back in the cozy comfort of the sleeping bag, Alex realized that, for the first time in ages, he was sublimely happy.
Earlier while Phyllis was preparing supper, he said, “Tell me another story about Old Man and Old Woman.”
She was filleting a trout she caught. “Old woman asked, ‘What should we do about life and death? Should the people always live or should they die?’”
They had some difficulty in agreeing on this; but finally Old Man said, that he would throw a buffalo chip into the water, and, if it floated, the people will die for four days and live again. But if it sank, they would die forever. So he threw it in and it floated.
But Old Woman said that they would not decide in that way. She would throw a large rock. If it floated the people would die for four days. If it sank they would die forever. Then Old woman threw the rock into the water, and it sank to the bottom. “There,” she said. “It is better that the people die forever, for, if they did not die forever, they would never feel sorry for each other, and there would be no sympathy in the world.”
Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted. An army of bullfrogs buried in the rushes was croaking an impromptu chorus. Of the four Blackfoot creation myths, Alex definitely liked the last story best. Rolling over on his side, he went soundly off to sleep.
*****
In the morning while Alex got the fire ready, Phyllis drove to a convenient store and purchased English muffins, fresh eggs and bacon. In her absence, he let the wood flare up then burn down to a smoldering redness before adding a few small branches. “I’m breaking up with Clarice as soon as she gets back from visiting her parents.”