by Layla Wolfe
Slappy entered anyway, his long arms swinging at his sides. He even saluted, his taut hand trembling against his caterpillar of hair. I, too, stood at attention next to the captain. What else could I do? I’d been caught in a compromising position! But Slappy didn’t seem to notice. “Cap’n! I’d like to inspect the premises!”
Town waved. “Go ahead. There’s nothing really, yet.”
Slappy’s eyes were like solid eight balls, black and glimmering. “I’ve been microdosing for days. I’m using it to improve my focus and attention.”
“Taking what?” Town folded his arms.
“Purple Haze. Can you believe that shit’s still around? I only took one gram of your Dickwater’s shrooms.”
Town chuckled and loosened up. “Yeah. We took two grams.”
And bam, just as Town said that, I started feeling the effects.
Against the grimy greenhouse windows, I saw what can best be described as stars. The giant pane of glass became a universe full of glittering points. As the men talked, I wandered to the far end, a receding tunnel of oblivion I wanted to bravely explore. I didn’t feel threatened or scared by the darkness—it was like the darkness that came with chloral hydrate, a welcome relief. As I accepted it this way, the stars dissolved into a powerful display of bursting colors. I’d never seen such flaming beauty, not even in the sandstone canyons where I often hid out. They were like spectrums of color I’d never noticed before, and therefore can’t describe.
The blazing hues streamed into one another, creating even newer shades, knitting a mosaic. To paint such a scene would take forever, if it was even possible!
“Heaven.”
Someone touched my arm, and I opened my eyes. “Oh!” I cried. I hadn’t known I had my eyes closed. Now I knew the greenhouse was just a greenhouse, even though the glass walls continued to breathe and ripple. “I want to paint!” I proclaimed, like a little kid.
Slappy looked blank. “Paint . . . a greenhouse?”
The sun was setting, perhaps causing some of the contrasting light and dark tinctures I’d seen through my eyelids.
Town filled in for me. “No, paint landscapes. Right?”
“Exactly!” Impulsively, I rushed from the grow room, bypassing a relaxed Linus. He lay, paws crossed, next to an adorable fluffy white dog. In the brief split second I saw them, it was like I knew their entire story. They had been playing together all day, someone had fed them, and now was their kicking back time. They were utterly glutted and mellow, watching us humans enact strange plays.
A tree stump was the perfect spot to jump up and orate. Luckily, Town followed me. Stoneman Lake had receded in recent years, Pippa had told me. Because of its shallowness, it dried up easily in drought times such as this. Elk grazed without a care on the muddy shallows, nestled in reflective ponds that looked like giant water lilies, sheets of brilliant yellow flowers and rocks crusted with dried moss.
I spread my arms wide and proclaimed, “This will be a hibernation period for me! I will finally get religion because it will finally make sense. No hypocrites saying one thing and doing the other. My new friends are related to the mysterious universe, their duties and destinies twined with mine. They are my religion. I will have time to repair machinery, hook rugs, and mend harnesses.”
“Well,” said Town warmly, standing at my side. “I don’t think we’ll have any harnesses.”
But I was on a roll, as they say. “I’ll walk swiftly to the outhouse in the morning—”
“We have bathrooms.”
“—and we can eat venison twelve months of the year—”
“Maybe elk.”
“—and we’ll be part of the population of Native Americans and farmers, so we won’t have to follow laws.”
“Wow,” said Slappy, who I had not known was behind me. “Sounds like heaven to me. Ah, ha ha! Heaven! Did you see what I just did?”
I continued, “We will have mushrooms the size of a baby’s fist!” The sun eased down behind the tree line now. A half-moon was stamped to the bowl of sky, watercolor clouds drifting before it. I felt like I was in a lunar module exploring space. “I’m in my cockpit watching the whole panorama of the heavens.” I felt overwhelmed by something much bigger than myself.
Town jumped on the stump next to me. He put a comforting hand on the back of my neck. “You’re getting it, Heaven. You’re really getting it. I can’t wait to start the mushrooms with you.”
I relaxed back into his chest. His breath was warm on my ear. He was like an adoring dog breathing on me. It felt like love, although I knew that was part of the trip.
The next day, I brought my meager possessions up to my new bedroom in the pine log cabin.
Chapter Twelve
Town
Heaven wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted to farm.
As a one-woman production line, she put all of us to shame. Slappy, Wolf and I—Wolf was staying on to help with soil until he got his marching papers to Bogotá—came across as vortex-addled hippies. Our habits of actually taking breaks, drinking coffee, peeing, and suchlike, made us feel guilty. Not that Heaven said anything to us, or even shot us dirty looks. She just made me think of a Grant Wood painting, how stoic and stolid she marched, doing much more than just mushrooms. She had taken on the duties a large house like that required, and we felt bad because she was the only woman. We were just acting like normal humans, not normal men. She was the superhuman one.
I mean, Heaven made her own yeast. She ground up potatoes, and I even busted her one day stuffing a plastic-wrapped bomb of starter down the front of her shirt. She sputtered and turned red when I pointed at her. “It’s the only way I can keep anything warm!”
She even wanted to take our jeans, only dirty from mountain air and maybe the leather saddles of our rides. She actually used the washing machine but strung up a line to dry them so they would have that “nice outdoor smell.” It had never occurred to us grunts to give a shit about outdoor smells before, so this compounded our guilt. She even sang “Touch the Hem of his Garment” as she pinned our pants to the rope.
“This is too fucking much,” said Slappy one day, when the three of us were staring at boneless pork ribs cooking on the grill. To men, this was “grilling”—staring at meat. Slappy and Wolf invariably drank the bland American beer that bikers preferred, and I’d be there with my bottled organic carbonated water, like a real oxygen thief. It no longer made me nervous or agitated to think about alcohol. I was confident that I was free of an addiction that had control of me instead of the other way around.
Although Slappy protested how much Heaven worked, he didn’t move an inch to help. Right now, she was out in the forest looking for wild mushrooms to cook. We’d just had a summer rain shower and she said the time was ripe. “You’re right,” I said. “But she’s never going to stop working hard. It’s just in her nature. She was probably like this before the compound. All we can do is step up our game.”
Slappy made a lip fart. “Hey. I did three tours of duty in-country. My ass is glued to this chair.”
I stood, a bit wobbly since my newfound exercise regime had been taxing my lumbar disks. Once again, I had to grab my cane. I was highly self-conscious of my disability in front of Heaven, as hearty as she was. “Where’s Linus?” I did the high-pitched whistle through my fingers. Beetle lolled on his back next to Wolf, whose arm was draped listlessly over his plastic chair, his fingertips barely brushing Beetle’s chest.
Wolf jerked his chin. “I saw him follow Heaven into the trees.”
“Which barbecue sauce do you want to use?” asked Slappy.
“You go get it,” Wolf said, not answering the question.
Slappy was trying to voice text his wife. “Working hard on Town’s ranch. Today we’ve already chopped six trees into firewood.” He became frustrated. “Man, this text thing is FUBAR! It says ‘Torquay ashram torqued tweet into faraway.’”
“Cell coverage is spotty here. We have no line of sight.” Wolf held
out his free hand. “I’ll fix it.” The geardo was something of a computer nerd, like his nemesis Tobiah Weingarten.
I went into the trees too. Even Beetle became a laggard, not following to find his new best friend Linus.
Since messing up and nearly kissing Heaven in the greenhouse, I’d been avoiding her like a river careening around a rock. When we bumped into each other in the greenhouse, my heart speeded up. Since we’d both basically moved into the cabin at the same time, I wasn’t more knowledgeable than her about where things were located. We often found ourselves reaching for the same dish of butter at the same time. I did know something about cooking, but when I tried to be master of the kitchen, Heaven would infiltrate, having run out of table legs to wash and mattresses to peek under. Just her presence in the taut Led Zeppelin jersey someone had given her was enough to send my anxiety spiking to my Bacardi days zone. As though her tits were incoming mortars.
Heaven was the most fragile flower, and I had to treat her as such, going slowly and with the utmost respect.
Yeah right. When I wanted to press her up against a tree and finger-bang her to orgasm while sucking on her luscious lower lip.
And to be honest, I was afraid of intimacy, as the PTSD counselor had said. Jessica’s death had ripped my heart from its moorings and flung it out onto an ocean of despair. Sure, I’d fucked the occasional hooker, or maybe a drunken bout with some drunk woman brought to my condo? But that was a far cry from really, soberly looking a woman in the face and realizing with a pang I was falling for her. In a very real way for very real reasons.
Pretty soon I started yelling for her. “Heaven! Heaven!” My captain’s voice, I knew, was accompanied by a murderous frown, and I cupped my hand to use as a megaphone. As I marched into the woods, my feet crushed pine needles, releasing their clean scent. But as official as I felt, there was no way to hide that I needed a cane and would never climb rock walls again. I had a VA appointment the following week and was hoping for better imaging tests.
“Heaven!” After about fifteen grueling minutes of this, I caught a glimpse of a red patch among the crawling bushes. That crimson was in no way a part of nature, so I cripped on over.
It was her. Heaven had passed out with a handful of mushrooms!
I tossed my cane, falling to my knees beside her. After that I was on autopilot mode. How many times had I revived men, knocked out by shockwaves? So many that it was second nature for me to sweep a finger through her mouth, feeling for any mushrooms she may have chomped on. Nothing. Tilting her head back, I put my ear to her mouth to listen for breathing.
Yes. She was breathing, so had just passed out for some reason. I shook her wrist until the mushrooms came loose. Passwater had taught us that when psyilocibe are cut they instantly turn blue, something to do with oxidation. Yet some blue mushrooms with gills and rings like that were poisonous. Then I saw, halfway slid from her pants pocket, the booze flask she seemed to carry everywhere. So it really could’ve been anything.
She gulped, gasped, and breathed raggedly. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes must’ve been my ugly mug.
“Town,” she whispered.
My reaction was way more vigorous. “Heaven!” I cried and kissed her with passion.
I know it sounds corny, but that’s all I can say. It was with the utmost lust that I ran my palm beneath her neck and lifted her head. I just wanted to feel her lips between mine, alive, responsive. Careful not to crush her chest in any way, I slurped up her lips and mashed them with my teeth, nibbling like a hungry dog. I had to hope I wasn’t acting like any previous rapist, but I was so swept away, so grateful she was alive, that I couldn’t stop myself. And I was headstrong, determined. I did what I wanted. I slightly pinned her thigh with mine. My cock burgeoned, swelled with that sort of mindless lust that had gripped me when jacking off thinking of her.
Only here she was, in the flesh.
She jawed on my mouth too, sliding her tongue against my upper palate. Lifting one of her hands, she rubbed the back of my head. I was cocooned in a strange combination of joy and grief at discovering her still alive. She could’ve been dead from poison mushrooms, and it was I who had pushed the idea of mushrooms on her . . .
When we detached, panting in each other’s faces, I couldn’t bear the inquisitive, questing look in her eyes. My ego bloomed to know that she panted for me, but I couldn’t face her, so I buried my face between her breasts.
Heaven! She was fucking named aptly! Taking giant handfuls of each boob, I mashed them against my cheeks, in seventh heaven. She began crying, “Oh—oh—oh—” and clinched my leg in a vise grip between her powerful thighs. She humped me with intensity, her arms now splayed in the pine needles over her head in a symbolic gesture of surrender, even shimmying her shoulders to drown me in a torrent of tits.
But when I moved to clamp my teeth over her taut nipple poking through the sports bra, she sobbed so loudly I was certain I’d hurt her. Reluctantly, I raised my head, my prick pulsating against her thigh. Propping herself on her elbows, she looked at me as though I were an out-of-focus font. Panting. Breasts heaving. And I was the moronic culprit, my crooked jaw hanging askew.
“Oh! Town! What happened to me?”
I helped her to sit upright. “Did you take mushrooms?”
“Oh God no, I wouldn’t do that until I had them analyzed them properly at the house. You never know which one could kill you.”
“Then . . . ” I picked up the flask that by now had slid free from her pocket.
She clutched at it and began, out of habit I suspected, to unscrew the cap. I put my hand gently on the bottle, saying, “You know, you don’t need that. You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Blinking, she looked taken aback. “Oh. You think I need to drink because I’m afraid?”
“Something like that. You’ve been honest about using it to numb yourself from your husband’s abuse. Well, I’m not like that, Heaven.” I sort of chuckled. “In fact, I’m kind of the opposite. I drank so much to kill the physical pain in my back, but also the emotional pain of losing a wife. Now I have to soldier on without it.”
She shrugged and unscrewed the cap anyway, taking a slug. “It’s just a habit, Town. I’m sure that once my entire ego realizes I’m safe from Orson, I can go places without it.”
“That would be good. I’m not a snobby holier-than-thou preacher, but it’s nice to be master of my own desires. Not to be compelled to follow the dictates of booze.”
Another slug. “Yes, you’re right. You are being a preacher.”
I stroked her face with the backs of my fingers. “I’m sorry, my angel. I’m just a Type A personality. I need to impart my wisdom. And I am wondering if you could be diabetic.”
That made her freeze. “Diabetic? What makes you think that?”
“I’ve heard that if diabetics drink too much, they could pass out, like you did in the middle of the highway.”
That gave her pause for thought. She looked so at home in the forest, her tawny hair falling in lush curls around her elbows. “Hm. I’ll have to ask Maddy about that.”
“You don’t believe me?” I jived her. “I’ll make sure Maddy gets you an appointment. Just a simple blood test.”
She looked me in the eyes. “Of course I do. I believe any man who kisses like that.” Swiftly she added, “And that isn’t many. Hey, where’s Linus? He came here with me. I was stuffing his backpack with shrooms.”
I stood so as not to shatter her ears and two-finger whistled. A rustle came from about half a mile off through the pines, easy to hear on that dead quiet day. We both looked in that direction, and I helped Heaven to stand. As I had a permanent, high-pitched hiss in one ear, I wasn’t surprised when Heaven found him first.
“Linus!” she cried with glee, rushing toward the unseen furball.
So I rushed too, and we soon found the dog, sort of twisting around on his hind legs like he was doing a hula hoop. Heaven grabbed h
is front paws and I hugged his neck.
“Linus!” I said. “Don’t ever go running off like that.” I was surprised that he hadn’t stayed with Heaven when she hit the ground.
Heaven let go of his paws, and he skipped ten paces off, then looked at us.
She said, “He wants us to follow.”
I should’ve known that. It was my job to control him and be the alpha, yet it was much harder than it sounds. We can talk and communicate with our family and friends using words. We can express our feelings. That’s impossible with a dog, so the gulf can be a source of enormous frustration. Dogs exist in the physical world, and we exist in the emotional one. Our world is fantasies and feelings. Theirs is urges and scents.
This was one of those conflicting times. I just wanted to get back to camp with them, yet Linus was clearly trying to show us something. And with Heaven’s insistence, I had no choice but to tramp crookedly through the forest, several yards behind them with my cane. So that’s where I was when I heard a trickling creek where Linus and Heaven seemed to be headed.
They didn’t wait for me. The creek bed wasn’t very steep, but covered in pine needles, as I saw when Heaven slid. She was down before I even neared, shrieking, “Town! Town! Town!”
Eternally frustrated with my disability, I started the slide into the darkened creek. Linus even nudged my elbow, like, “What’s wrong? What’s taking you so long?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I said.
Because I almost put my foot on the hollow body of a brownish dog, I instantly took in the carnage.
“Someone dumped them here,” said Heaven, just as those exact words formed in my head.
There must’ve been eight, nine adult dogs that’d been tossed in the creek. Whether they were alive or dead when tossed was questionable, but if they were healthy they would’ve found their way out of this burial pit. Some had that caved-in look of the face and skull that indicated they’d been here at least a week. Although originally fluffy, flies buzzed around their unholy ribcages. The creek, not deep in the deepest parts, merely went around the island of dogs.
