South of Elfrida

by Holley Rubinsky

  Jean had broken up with her long-time live-in boyfriend because she was tired of supporting him. He’d moved out, a little faster than she thought he would; she’d expected more of a battle. Then she’d drifted around the house, collected the rest of his things, and dutifully, decently, she’d thought, taken them to his new address, where, to her surprise, a woman answered the door. Jean was acquainted with her, a widow who worked in the library. He was living in another woman’s house. Already. Behind the other woman’s back, he blew her a kiss.

  People would be talking, but she wouldn’t be home to hear them. She signed up for winter birding workshops thousands of miles away from the reminder of what an idiot she was. Her first birding destination was the wildlife refuge at the Salton Sea, where there was a birding festival, with lectures on inland gulls and an owling field trip and group dinners. Jean signed up for everything, then spent half an hour on the phone with Ellie, who worked at the Blue Haven RV Park in Calipatria, California, not far from the Salton Sea. Ellie told Jean that Blue Haven was small and quiet, had some residents, nice people—Jean’s kind of place. Jean had booked for three days, sight unseen, partly because Ellie confided that her father had just died and they’d then talked about fathers. Jean hadn’t mentioned that hers was a colonel in the US Army; you never knew how people would react, though Ellie sounded like, as her father used to say, a friendly. Jean looked forward to having tea with Ellie and talking about things that mattered.

  She crossed the border and drove south for nearly a thousand miles, through ice storms, snow, and sleet, until warmth broke out an hour north of Las Vegas, where there seemed to be a weather demarcation, as she’d posted on Facebook from the campground computer. She kicked off her boots, dug out her sandals. But two days later, entering California, torrents of rain pounded the windshield as she drove the last three hundred miles, Buster Furman hiding under the back seat, to the Blue Haven RV Park, where everything continued to go wrong.

  She ran through the downpour to the office, a modular bungalow, and, opening the door, was assaulted by the aroma of air-freshening lilacs and a loud blast of talk TV. A black Lab, grey around the muzzle, settled in the walk-through space between public and private, gave her a sad-eyed look, sighed, and placed his snout back on his paws. Jean sniffed. What was that stink?

  The TV went mute. Maybe the big woman sighing and flipping the register around for her to sign wasn’t a good housekeeper. Maybe the old dog had intestinal issues. “You must be the one who called from Canada.”

  “I am! Are you Ellie?”

  “Ellie’s off today. We take only cash here. The ATM is outside. Three days’ advance.”

  The back of Jean’s neck stiffened. “Well, what if I don’t stay three days?”

  “Three-day advance. We don’t take road trash.”

  “Oh.” Jean had been singing “My Blue Heaven” and replacing the word heaven with haven for hours. She couldn’t give up now. She put her credit card away. Twenty-dollar bills vanished from her hand.

  After she parked on the slab of concrete under a little roof, she carried Buster Furman over her shoulder and into the camper. “Let me scope everything out first,” she told him. He looked at her, eyes narrowed, so that the white streak above his eyebrow called attention to itself. His whiskers twitched. “Don’t be that way,” she said. “Don’t you remember the coyotes in Nevada? Would you want to go through that again?” Buster Furman seemed to remember and jumped up on the bed.

  She imagined she was living the life of an Alice Munro character, but her life in the camper—it was not a camper, it was a travel trailer, but the term travel trailer made it seem as though it could move on its own—was not like being on a ship with one’s aunt sailing to Europe, or like being held captive to love and the subtle evilness of a man. Jean had simply chosen badly.

  Where was the awful odour coming from? She lifted the lid of the Thetford toilet and sniffed. It was fine. She swung back outside.

  An old man sitting in a lounge chair that had seen better days waved a cane at her from the porch next door.

  She called, “Do you smell that?”

  “No. I’ve been here too long to notice. It’s a friendly place.”

  “What do you mean, too long to notice?”

  He shifted his cane from one hand to the other. A green parrot squawked from a cage on the porch. “That’s Petey. He’s been with me since the wife died.”

  “Good,” said Jean. “You’ve been here too long to notice what?”

  “The feedlot.” He pointed his cane.

  “You mean those cows down the road?” Jean stepped closer.

  “Cows,” he said and shook his head, chuckling. “You hear that, Petey? Cattle are cattle.”

  “Yuh, well.” Jean had learned to add a soupçon of doubt in her yuh well. She felt sorry for an old man talking to a bird.

  “You get used to it. It’s a friendly place.”

  It took her a minute to connect the dots. She had never thought of thousands of animals lock-stepped together, a mud hole of packed, doomed beef—cattle, whatever they were. How could they not get sick, living as they did, up to their bony knees in mud and shit? No wonder they were fed antibiotics.

  In stories where you could flip from one scene to another, skipping the awkward parts where the character doesn’t know where the hell or what the hell, the reader could move a blank space or two and be in another scene, where the action starts again. The chesty woman at the desk of Blue Haven would not give Jean her money back. She spent a weepy hour driving away from that horrible place, through intermittent rain showers, to find somewhere safe to overnight and reconnoitre. At a sprawling RV park, a man at the security gate with CHUCK written on his shirt said he could give her a space for one night, but it wouldn’t have a view. The sun was setting, spreading orange disintegration into the grey of the flattened rain clouds.

  In the lead car, Jean is feeling tired, still in the picture but muted. She’s not called attention to herself but she’s been attentive. The hawk man drives and looks, drives and looks. “There,” he says, spotting a speck on a telephone line in the distance, “is a juvenile red morph—” and then he’s off, chasing it with his intelligence, his knowledge. He’s visibly excited at sightings of the more splendid aerial predators. She understands that his mind fastens to their bodies and their predatory nature, she knows that he soars and dives along with them. Jean sees that he hunts with his eyes, hears his excitement every time he cries, “Do you see it? Do you see it?” She gets that he genuinely wants to share with them, and this touches her.

  At the next stop—Harris’s hawks—a couple from Tucson announces they’re leaving; they have prior commitments for the evening. They hand over the walkie-talkie set. Birders in the second car take the opportunity to excuse themselves. Jean, standing slightly apart from the group, doesn’t quite make up her mind in time—she half imagines herself leaving, but it would be awkward to ask them to wait while she grabs her stuff. The two vehicles flee. Jean thinks about Buster Furman in the camper and feels a tug of longing for him. She sips the last of her water, warm in her mouth.

  The hawk man walks over, leans in, his big hand touching her waist. He smells dusty and leathery. “Can you imagine having anything better to do than looking at these magnificent creatures?” She shakes her head in agreement. He tells her to come look again through the scope to note the detail on the breast of a juvenile Harris’s, perched on a post.

  The women exchange brief smiles as they fold back into the Camry. Virtue is in the air; they’re hanging in, they’re not shallow, they’re not like the others. Then Diane gets scalded: “Merlin!” she cries, and the man booms, “No, it is not!”

  Something shifts for Jean then. They’re like Mormon wives, these women, Jean thinks, these constant birders flying to distant places to repeat a workshop, signing on for more classes just to be badly treated.

  “I have a cat.” The admission sounds defiant. She hears her tone and hurries on.
“My cat—Buster Furman—can’t be kept indoors. His first owner tried, but—”

  “You should still keep the animal inside. They get used to it.” The hawk man’s tone is decisive.

  “But cats kept inside are weird. They get creepy. They prowl on the backs of sofas.”

  The flicker of movement in the corner of the man’s mouth does not bode well. Through the rear-view mirror his eyes latch on to hers. “If you have a cat, you have a responsibility to keep it inside.”

  “My cat was born to hunt. He catches mice and other rodents,” Jean says stubbornly, deliberately oblivious to the building energy and the covert looks the other women send him.

  His foot hits the accelerator.

  Jean falls into herself, brooding. Her boyfriend was soft and malleable; he had no aims or goals in life, sometimes needed help getting through the day. The hawk man would always get through his day and survive anything—sand fleas in south Texas, deer ticks in Nebraska, biting beetles in Australia. He would survive swamps or smells in whatever terrain he chose to stride through, scouting the species he has the most affinity for, the species he admires. He names, sorts, counts, bags them, she thinks, the buteos, the accipiters, the hawks—he bags the birds, each one a bride. She recognizes the intensity in him, the coldness. She craves his focused energy; she wants in.

  When they rise over the next small hill and begin the slow, searching descent, she glances up and sees him looking at her. A penetrating look. It’s hard to tell what his intention is, but something might be going on. He’s handsome and commanding. She gives a half smile.

  Thinking of the cat that belonged to Norma’s neighbour, Jean says, hedging, “The cat that Norma killed probably deserved it.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she’s mortified. Diane quickly looks away. Jean’s motivation is so patently obvious. She’s let herself be drawn into an act of treachery, as her father would say, and now she’s losing ground.

  In the rear-view mirror the hawk man’s eyes fill with satisfaction.

  She’s caught in a tight spot in the back seat of that car. She flashes back to Buster Furman on his pillow beside her for those thousands of miles as she skittered on edges—through blizzards in Washington, the diesel truck that narrowly missed them in Idaho, roadside camping in Nevada, cloudbursts in California—and from beginning to end, Buster Furman displayed faithfulness and patience, as well as good listening skills. How could she have betrayed him? She imagines him, her own dear cat, scooped from her lap, tossed out the window, him and his purrs catapulted out of reach in the wind of the moving car, his tender paw pats on her cheek at dawn receding, him just hurtling along, trusting her in his loyal way, until all his beloved little seams—his armpits, his extra toes, his ears—are swept into the talons of a raptor and are gone.

  Stronghold

  Just back from a recent trip to Indonesia, I went in for gallbladder surgery, picked up a hospital superbug, spent time in isolation, and nearly died. That’s the long and short of it. The series of events happened so fast, and were so unexpected, that it seemed impossible they were happening to a woman who was known by her associates as organizationally anal-retentive. The experience was like driving down a summer road and being caught up in a tornado, the sort of thing you read about. Afterwards, roaming through the rooms of my glorious house on its hill in Boulder, I paused at this particular lovely ceramic or that remarkable painting; the house was crammed with exquisite rugs, wall hangings, trinkets, and crafts. Su-Zee Imports sold items to retailers in the western states, and there was a little warehouse on the property as well that employed four people in packing and shipping. “Not because I’ve lost my mind along with my gallbladder,” I told my long-time friend Myrna on the phone, “but because my whole fucking life is here, in things. What was I doing all those years?”

  “Making money,” Myrna said.

  I laughed and hung up, lay down, got up again—it hurt—and continued to cruise through and admire the house. Everything about it was mine—I’d designed it, chosen the architect, the woodworkers, and the painters. I scoped out the kitchen with its immaculate counters and shiny stovetop; between that and the untouchable look of zero-landscaped grounds, the house felt unlived in. Most of my life, I saw, had been lost in a business coma—driven, successful, and lonely as hell.

  I called again. “What is it with gallbladders?”

  “Hold on.” Myrna was tapping on her keyboard. “Gallstones mean bitterness, hard thoughts, pride.”

  “Thanks for bucking me up.” Then I told her that since the damn surgery I had the urge to sell everything, get rid of it all.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” Myrna counselled. “Get a dog.”

  A dog? What in the world would I do with a dog? I tried to picture one, came up with a Rottweiler with bared teeth. “What’s bugging me is the pain in my missing gallbladder. The doctor says it’s a phantom pain, impossible. He’s prescribing anti-spasm pills and telling me to eat soup.”

  “Love heals. You need something to love and a change of scenery. I’m having a Blue Moon Ceremony, second full moon in November. We’ll be calling in the mountain spirits. The Apache warrior Cochise himself, if I’m lucky.”

  “And I’m destined to be there? The planets are aligned in my chart?”

  “Some gals from the ranch will be over. Bring the dog.”

  “What the hell.”

  Myrna had made a dramatic move from the East Coast to Arizona, parked herself in the Dragoon Mountains that she raved about. I imagined her house, made from real adobe bricks using dirt from the land (she’d made a big deal about it), with terra-cotta-coloured concrete floors (that she’d sanded herself) and solar panels on the roof; her decor would be minimal—a Navajo rug here, a piece of Western art there—because Myrna valued austerity.

  I decided to try a change and had my hair dyed a dark purple-burgundy and tightly curled, so that with a band fastened around the top, I looked like a white woman’s take on an African Zulu, a look that suited my tanned skin and long cheekbones. Next, after investigating puppies, I bought a purebred teacup poodle, a little guy with black curls and intelligent chocolate eyes, and named him Baby. Why not call him Baby? I’d missed out on having a child.

  The breeder gave instructions that Baby needed to be with me night and day, so he would grow up calm and collected; the world was new to him, and I would be his comfort. Fine by me. Baby was responsive for something so small, adaptive, and willing, easy to train. Having him trekking behind, following me around the house, his little paws tapping on the tiles, made me smile as I went about complying with the doctor’s orders, mincing vegetables for soup.

  Of course I decided to go to Myrna’s, and it worked out that a faithful employee, a wealthy gal from Connecticut, was delighted to carry on with managing Su-Zee Imports. “You can borrow our Roadtrek for your trip. Dave would love to demonstrate how it works.”

  The Roadtrek was slightly bigger than a van and had all the amenities of a miniature home—a dining table, a TV, an armchair, and a double bed. Dave showed me how to manage the toilet and the water system—which hoses to use to dump “grey water” and “black water” (disgusting), and where they were stowed—how to light the pilots for the hot water tank, the furnace, the cook stove, and the refrigerator. It was a compact little world, and once again I thought, What the hell.

  Boulder was lightly dusting itself with snow when we set out. Baby found his place on the passenger seat and seemed contented just to be close. We drove west on the I-70 into Utah and camped two nights in Moab, near Arches National Park, in canyon country. “What have I been missing all these years?” I asked Baby. Having travelled all over eastern Asia for business, I’d missed seeing the locally beautiful places. Baby was happy in a dog-carrier backpack on walks. Other times, he liked being on his leash so he and his black velvet rhinestone collar could be admired. To avoid snow in the Utah high country, we detoured down through Navajo lands, dropping from Flagstaff to Phoenix, losing altitude al
ong the way. Sometimes, on a steep hill, Baby would run from the front of the van to the back and then tumble on the carpet like a little ball to land near my feet.

  On the last overnight before reaching Myrna’s, I steered into the sort of place you choose on your way to somewhere else, a campground with twelve rough sites out in the open and no hookups for anything except water. In the shaggy eucalyptus trees, black birds—grackles—squeaked and whistled. When choosing the spot, I wasn’t sure if the noisy birds overhead were a good sign, and later wished I’d paid attention to that inner alarm. But it was four in the afternoon, the hottest time of day in that part of Arizona, and besieged by the damn pain, I slid open the panel door, hoping for some relief from the heat. Just then, Baby threw up on the carpet runner and I shrieked. He seemed to fly out the open door, only to be hit by a fifth-wheel backing in to park beside me.

  I remember I yelled, “Oh, no!” instead of his name. A man with a straggly growth of white beard stepped down from the cab. “Upon my grave, I am so sorry,” he said and clambered back in to pull forward. By then, seeing Baby’s tiny shattered body, my blood sugar took a dive. The man’s wife, wearing sunglasses with polka dot frames, brought an aluminum chair for me. She faced it away from where Baby lay.