Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  The heat rose from the concrete, rippling the air. Normally Gavin relished moments like this, the smell of hot tar, wet concrete, and newly welded girders filling him with exhilaration at being the conqueror, the emperor of steel. Today he was just panicked.

  A hot breeze blew a dried palm leaf across the bare ground. The movement caught his eye and suddenly he saw a footprint set distinctly into the concrete. He recognized the three clawed toes immediately. Above that print another one, then another, a whole string of them winding their way toward the back of the lot.

  It is a definitive moment in a man’s life when his conscious will is jettisoned for something more primal, more instinctive, when the prehistoric brain hijacks civilized thought. Such a moment can change a man’s life, although at the time it may feel as arbitrary as a missed phone call or an accidentally deleted e-mail. Caught in one of these moments Gavin slipped off a shoe and sock and pressed his bare foot down hard beside one of the footprints. The imprint he left was identical. At last something real; evidence.

  Carefully he took a photo, squinting into the viewfinder, one shoe off, one shoe on. Image captured forever, he slipped his shoe back on and followed the track of footprints. It arced in a semicircle, as if the creature had paused midflight then decided to change direction, as if being chased. The trail ended at the pile of rubbish at the back of the lot. Gavin stared at the mountain of trash in front of him, his protective layers shearing away one by one until it felt like the back of his head had been peeled off and he could sense every trembling leaf, the shiver of every blade of grass, the humming vibration of communication wires buried in pipes six feet under his feet. The tramp was very close. Gavin could swear he heard breathing, heard him whispering Flitter, flitter so softly it was barely a tickle against his eardrums.

  He examined the pile—broken beer bottles, plastic concrete bags, wattle branches with dying blossoms, the rusty wheel of an ancient bicycle, and something else…something staring up at him through the spokes. What was it? A lump of moss? A decayed tree stump? As he stared harder the object’s features swam free-form to compose themselves into an image too shocking for his mind immediately to assimilate. But as he blinked again, Gavin could see exactly what it was: the head of the tramp coated in a strange lichen, the eyes two blackened lumps of jelly hooded by wings of green moss, the mouth open in screaming accusation, vegetation fringing the withered meat of the lips.

  It was a face Gavin had seen before—on the stone statue in Saturday’s garden, the Green Man from Bamberg Cathedral. The two heads were identical, except this rendition of the demented knave of Nature had once been alive.

  Gavin pulled the bicycle away to reveal the rest of the tramp’s body, still huddled within its ancient parka. The cloth fell open with the movement, exposing blackened skin that had begun to split, showing the desiccated muscle beneath. There were two distinct marks on the old man’s chest, one above his heart. Gavin knew it immediately: the same imprint of a leaf that had appeared on his palm. Gavin lifted his camera. A moment later his knees gave way to a terrible trembling.

  “Saturday! Saturday!”

  Saturday Honeywell was crouched in a deep ditch, carefully brushing down a layer of fossils. Part of Boral Mining Corporation, the limestone quarry was massive and located some ten miles out of Brisbane. Saturday had been called in when one of the stonecutters unearthed a vast cross section of stratification: layer upon layer of fossils.

  Oblivious to everything around her Saturday was immersed in the world she was bringing back to life with the fine hairs of her brush, each stroke pushing the dust aside to reveal another feathery leaf etched into the lime, tendrils still arching out toward a sun that had shone over 200,000 years before. She prized the stone from the wall of the ditch, squatted back on her haunches, and flipped the magnifying glass that was strapped to her forehead over her eye. She peered down at the lapidification.

  Gavin leaped off the back of the jeep that had given him a lift out to the ditch. He stood silhouetted for a moment against the wheel of one of the tractors, his head barely reaching its hub.

  “Saturday!” he bellowed again.

  “The hippie chick?” one of the workmen asked. Gavin nodded. The workman grinned a gold-toothed gappy smirk and pointed in the direction of an open cut marked with flags.

  Ignoring his leer Gavin began to stride, then broke into a full pelt toward the ditch. He reached the edge and peered down.

  The sun divided the space into a checkerboard of dazzling white and blue shadow. At first he didn’t see her; she was kneeling in the shade of the cut side that plummeted down about sixty feet.

  “Saturday!”

  She looked up, hand shading her eyes, then pointed to a ladder leading down the side of the quarry. In his polyester suit now creased with grime, Gavin climbed down as fast as he could. It was instantly cooler in the shade.

  “Fuck, you look terrible!” Saturday shoved a flask of cold water at him, unable not to feel sorry for the man. Gavin drank thirstily, then looked at her, eyes glittering dangerously.

  “I found something I want you to look at. Real evidence!”

  “Listen, Gav, I read about your wife. Looks like she stands to get the lot, that can’t be easy—”

  “Saturday, I found him! I found the tramp!”

  Saturday assessed the man in front of her. A nasty rash crept up from the neck of his shirt and extended as far as his earlobes. He didn’t appear to have any eyebrows and at the ends of his trousers his naked feet, covered in mud and greenish mold, were bruised and bleeding.

  “You’ve been missing for over a week. Your mate from the City Council rang me looking for you; reckon he was frightened I’d chopped you up and fed you to my worm farm. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve found something and I need your help. Now.”

  He stared at her, the desire to touch her battling with his fear. If she’d lost faith in him he knew he was doomed.

  “Hey, you’ve caught me between the Mesozoic and the Paleozoic, my most favorite place in the world….”

  “Please.”

  He grabbed her dust-covered glove. Sighing, she bent down and picked up her tool bag.

  “Evidence? What kind of evidence?” Saturday muttered as she pushed open her front door.

  She was still dressed in dusty dungarees and desert boots. Gavin couldn’t help noticing the sweat stains etched in two great patches under her thin cotton T-shirt. Saturday unhitched the dungarees, letting them drop to her waist as she pulled off the headscarf dusted white with limestone. Braless, her prominent nipples were completely visible under the fabric. The rolls of flesh rippling down to her waist ballooned out under the denim. She crossed to the stove and put the kettle on with a slam. She was irritated. Access to the quarry was limited and it was important to catalogue the fossil find as soon as possible to ensure the site got a protected listing. But Gavin had looked so forlorn, so desperate, she hadn’t been able to help herself.

  Vulnerable men were her weakness. She was forever picking up the recently divorced, the bereaved, or simply the lost, all of whom were drawn to her warmth and reassuring bulk. Sometimes she wondered whether she wouldn’t be better off abandoning the search for a man who actually wanted her for herself and just opening up an orphanage. Where had her plans for discrediting the property developer gone? The irony was, now that he seemed bent on a path of self-destruction all she wanted to do was save him. Was it a genetic flaw or some kind of evolutionary paradigm she would never be able to escape?

  Saturday gave Gavin a suspicious penetrating stare, then walked up to him. Gavin could feel the warmth radiating from the vast expanse of glistening olive skin—a mixture of sweat, coconut oil, and something far fruitier. He traced a droplet of sweat as it ran from the edge of her armpit down the underside of her arm. Suddenly he knew what he had to do, recognized the act that would ground him, would give him back his strength to battle whatever it was that was trying to destroy him. He lifted her arm and ra
n his tongue down her skin. Saturday froze in shock. Gavin, amazed at himself, tasted the salt at the tip of his tongue and his hormones launched a full-frontal assault on any remaining rationality.

  He yanked up her T-shirt. Her brown nipples seemed to stain the whole of her humongous breasts, orbs veined and covered in a multitude of thin white stretch marks. They hung down to her waist. Overwhelmed by the desire to topple this mountainous body and penetrate it there and then, Gavin buried his head in the soft pendulous flesh.

  “Gavin, please, this will ruin my credibility as a serious environmentalist. Frankly, it would be more acceptable to sleep with the head of the National Party,” Saturday whispered hoarsely, fighting the waves of desire that swept up from her groin. In lieu of an answer he lifted his head and pulled her into a deep penetrating kiss. She tasted faintly of chamomile tea and garlic. Much to Gavin’s amazement he didn’t mind—in fact, the very humanness of her excited him even more.

  Standing at full height he had to lift his chin slightly to reach her mouth. He had never felt this equal with a woman in his life. She stood with her eyes closed, tongue on tongue, tasting him with short flickers, working her way up to a full sucking—a kind of miniorchestration, as if just letting him know what she was capable of. At the receiving end of her tongue Gavin felt all that defined him evaporate away. He wanted this. He wanted her. He wanted to drown in that avalanche of flesh, to lose his particularity, his need for control, his fear.

  He pulled up his shirt and pressed against her, nipple to nipple. The size of her was overwhelming. He had never been with a woman who was both wider and taller than himself. He lifted her hands and placed them on his rock-hard cock.

  “Well, thank God you’re to scale,” she said and laughed, a full-throated sexy gurgle.

  Inspired, Gavin wrapped his hands around the cheeks of her massive arse and tried to hoist her up onto his hips. Instead, overcome by her weight, he stumbled backward and fell flat on the ground, pulling her down with him. Saturday landed across him, winding him considerably and miraculously missing his erect penis and testicles.

  They lay on the kitchen floor like a bizarre starfish. Watching critically, one of Saturday’s six cats turned up its nose and walked off in disgust, tail twitching as if to indicate what ridiculous creatures humans were.

  Gavin was in bliss; a breast was pushed against his cheek, another against his ear. Courageously and utterly undeterred he lifted it and searched for the nipple, almost blinding himself with half an inch of erect tissue in the process. God, this feels good, he thought, sucking down hard. Somewhere in the distance he heard Saturday groan.

  He rolled her over onto her back and, with a powerful tug, managed to pull off her dungarees. The ginger pubic curls extended as far as her navel and a great pale roll of belly hung over her pubic area. He pushed it up. The swollen lips of her sex were a vivid slash against the tightly swirling hair. It was like the mouth of Mother Earth herself, a great moist cavern. He pressed his mouth against her and filled his lungs with her pungent scent.

  “Keep going like that and I’ll come way before you,” Saturday murmured and yanked him by the ears back up to her face. “Besides, I want you inside of me,” she finished, then bit into his lip deliciously. She reached down and freed his cock. Her grasp was firm, knowing. None of the tentativeness of Amanda’s touch. Saturday caressed him as if his flesh was her own, making him grow harder, bigger, than he’d ever felt before. She reached farther down and cupped his burning balls. Her hands were deliciously cool. Gavin let out a long sigh; it was as if he’d come home.

  “Jesus, Gavin, you’re like one long plucked chicken. What happened?” Saturday gazed at the ugly rash that extended from his groin to his chest.

  “I cleansed myself, made myself pure.” His voice thickened as her strokes telegraphed quivers of ecstasy down each thigh. She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he was mad, literary or merely poetic. She decided to gamble on the latter.

  “You’re one crazy bastard.”

  Without answering he slipped his fingers into her and searched for her clit. He found the hard button and started caressing it, pulling until it grew between his fingers. Watching her face as he pleasured her he catalogued its features: the heavy-lidded eyes, a blue the azure of dusk, he thought; the blemished pores showing that she must have had a troubled adolescence; the sunspots that peppered the round cheeks; the crinkling at the corners of the eyes as she smiled back at him, humor threatening to burst from her. Every living flaw excited him. She was the embodiment of Nature. She was his catharsis. The seduction of her would be his liberation.

  Saturday’s breathing grew faster; a slow flush flooded her skin until it seemed almost as red as her hair, which spread around her like an angry cloud. Removing his hand she pulled him far up above her so that he straddled her chest. Then lifting her breasts, she placed his cock between them and pushed them together so the flesh tightened around his penis. Close to losing control he began rubbing backward and forward, then, worried about the political correctness of such a gesture he peered down at her face.

  She smiled back at him, a slow wicked grin as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Faster,” she commanded, cupping his balls.

  He obeyed, resting his weight on his knees, but although the dominant nature of such a position would usually excite him, at this moment he found it did not. He wanted to please her, to see the wave of orgasm sweep across those broad features, to hear her cry out. He turned his body and took her sex into his mouth. He closed his eyes and drank in the scent and taste of her until she permeated every pore. Meanwhile Saturday ran her tongue down his shaft, glorying in his girth, his hardness. Both of them quickened, close to climax.

  Gavin paused for a moment, resting his cheek on the soft expanse of her belly. Suddenly he felt something rubbing against his foot. Arching down he peered across the length of their bodies. One of Saturday’s dogs—a diminutive mutt that looked like a cross between a Jack Russell and a Chihuahua—evidently inspired by the human activity had mounted Gavin’s leg and was busy humping his foot. Horrified, Gavin rolled off Saturday and kicked the enthusiastic beast away.

  Saturday cracked up laughing. Gavin, sobered, looked at her, then began to smile, eventually breaking into a deep chuckle himself.

  The paleobotanist rolled herself to sitting, her body wobbling as she threw back her head with laughter. Watching her breasts shake made him want her again. He slid over and began kissing her wildly, from her belly to the tip of her nose, then, pushing her back down onto the ground, he entered her finally.

  He hoisted her legs over his shoulders and thrust into her hard. There was so much of her he was engulfed, her tightness and wetness catching at him as if her very cunt was sucking him into the core of her. This was it. His floating critical eye was closed, his body was jerked into now, the present tense, for the first time in his life. With an almighty rush, the emotional fused with the sexual. His quickening triggered her own and as he began to orgasm she followed a few seconds behind, and they both came yelling, sending hissing cats flying to all four corners of the house.

  “Jesus, Saturday, that was fucking marvelous.”

  Lying nestled in the crook of her arm he had never felt more relaxed in his life, as if after holding his breath for forty-three years he’d finally exhaled. One huge erect nipple dominated his horizon; snuggling down into the soft flesh he felt like a child. Saturday, for once, was silent, staring up at a damp patch on the ceiling—a leak she’d failed to fix a summer ago. Secretly she was frightened, attuned as she was to the tremors that still ran like an underground earthquake through the very stratification of her body. She didn’t want to fall in love. Not with him—a man whose politics were as abhorrent to her as Hitler’s. Besides, she was convinced she was merely a curio, an interesting diversion for Gavin. Why would a man like him want a woman like her, she couldn’t help thinking as she looked at the toned abdomen, the chiseled profile curled into the crook of her shoul
der.

  Her vagina involuntarily contracted, the shape of him still echoing deep within her. She could have him again now, and if there was one thing Saturday hated, it was needing a man. There had been a time in her life where she deliberately did not come, having realized that when she orgasmed she let men in emotionally, and immediately there was a kind of fatality to the way the relationship—comradeship was how she liked to think of it, being an active socialist—played itself out from then on, invariably ending with the man leaving her. She’d be buggered if she was gonna let some man hurt her again now, especially someone she had always regarded as the bane of the Queensland environmental movement. This wasn’t just sleeping with the enemy, it was sleeping with the devil.

  I think I must love her, Gavin thought, his eyes half-shut, dozing against the soft warm breast, her armpit hair tickling his nose. I’ll dump Amanda and move in Saturday, he concluded, wondering how her naked bulk would fit with the pristine trimmings of the apartment. She’d look great in a gray silk dress, low-cut, with those enormous breasts jutting out, he imagined. His mind rambled on until he had the paleobotanist squeezed into black vinyl as a familiar fetish reemerged.

  Distressed by this new train of thought, Gavin opened his eyes. A large daddy longlegs was tentatively making its way across the wooden floorboards. He stared at the tiny body swaying precariously on its spindly legs, as if amazed at its own gravity-defying design.

  Gavin hated spiders, their hairy legs, the way their silk spilled so effortlessly out of their rears like slippery excrement. But as he watched the insect daintily tiptoeing across the floor he realized that at this moment he loved this particular arachnid. In a sudden epiphany he saw the spider as it viewed itself: a fearless hunter perched high over its terrain; the lion-king of a microscopic world that existed as a constant invisible below human eyes. It was then Gavin realized that he knew exactly how to solve the riddle.

  His meditation was rudely interrupted by a large tabby who pounced on the defenseless creature and carried it off in its mouth, eight threadlike legs whirling madly, fringing the cat’s jaw like a demented beard.