by Rose Beecham
“Now back away,” she was ordered. “One step at a time and keep looking at the cat, dead in the eye.”
Debbie hadn’t taken two steps when the soldier opened fire. Several shots in rapid succession echoed across the red wilderness, and the mountain lion slumped over the woman.
Telling Debbie to stay back, the soldier quickly descended. It was only then that Debbie realized the rescuer was a woman. She was not as tall as she’d seemed, standing high above with the rifle braced against her shoulder, but she was strongly built and radiated the kind of controlled power and confidence Debbie couldn’t imagine ever possessing.
She probed the lion with her foot as she kept her rifle trained towards its head. “It’s dead.”
Debbie didn’t know what to say. She felt frozen with shock. She bent down and touched the lion’s flank, horrified, yet sad for the creature. Humans had intruded so far on its habitat that it had lost most of its usual prey. Now it had been killed for doing what its nature dictated.
“Stay calm.” A firm hand landed on Debbie’s shoulder. “I need your help.”
Debbie’s teeth were chattering but she managed a timid smile. “What do you want me to do?”
A pair of glittering Windex-blue eyes locked with hers. “Take off your T-shirt. We need to see to her leg so she doesn’t lose any more blood. ”
Debbie didn’t think twice. She pulled her top over her head and handed it to the woman, who tore it effortlessly into strips. The lion’s victim was unconscious, which was a blessing, Debbie thought, as they extracted her mangled leg.
“Oh, my God,” she said, gazing down at the hamburger mess of blood and bone. “How are we going to get her out of here?”
But the soldier was already on her cell phone, calling for a search-and-rescue chopper. She even gave coordinates. Squatting down, she removed her camouflage shirt, folded it, and placed it beneath the injured woman’s head. Underneath, she was wearing a close-fitting khaki tank that revealed powerful, deeply tanned arms and muscular breasts that barely gave contour to the cotton fabric. Several chains loosely encircled her neck with various medallions suspended from them. Debbie recognized a St. Christopher, a gold wedding ring, and what looked like dog tags.
“It’s the shock that’ll kill her,” she told Debbie. “I think they can save the foot.”
Debbie promptly burst into tears and blabbed out her thanks. She was shaking all over, and her teeth chattered so badly she couldn’t even finish a sentence. The soldier took her firmly by the shoulders and shook her once. “Listen to me.” The voice was laced with authority. “We have a job to do until the medics get here. This woman is counting on us. Do you understand?”
Debbie wasn’t sure if she was just too terrified to do anything but obey, or if she had some steely inner core she’d never known about. Squeaking, “Yes,” she pulled herself together and asked, “What do you want me to do?”
Ten minutes later, the woman was still alive and Debbie had learned that the soldier was not National Guard as she’d assumed, but a veteran who’d recently been honorably discharged after her second tour of duty in Iraq. By sheer good luck she happened to be in the vicinity keeping herself combat-ready when the attack happened. Her name was Sandy Lane.
She said, “You can call me Lone. All my buddies do.”
“Lone?”
“Short for Lonewolf.” The terse line of her mouth relaxed a little. This was, Debbie guessed, her version of a smile. “I got the nick because I’m the one always living on the edge.”
“Do you miss it?” Debbie asked. “The army?”
“I miss my buddies.”
“When did you leave?”
“A year ago.”
Debbie wanted to ask why, but she sensed a contained emotion in this woman that she couldn’t interpret and guessed the subject was sensitive. She asked, instead, “What’s it really like over there in Iraq?”
“Well, let’s see. You don’t know who’s a friend and who’s an enemy. You see your best friend blown to pieces in front of you when he’s trying to carry a child to safety. Nothing makes any sense. Not to them and not to us.” Her face registered a flicker of surprise, as if her emphatic response had taken her aback. She fell silent.
“I think you’re very brave,” Debbie whispered. “I could never do what you did.”
Lone gave her a long hard look. “Yes you could. You proved it when you were whacking that lion over the head with your bike. You were defenseless, yet you took on an enemy twice your size. You risked your life for a complete stranger. If that isn’t courage, what is?”
Heat rushed to Debbie’s cheeks. “I guess no one knows what they’re really capable of until something like that happens.”
The intensity left Lone’s gaze and she seemed to be looking straight through Debbie. In a tone that was flat and detached, she said, “People are capable of almost anything. Good, and bad.”
It struck Debbie then that Lone was damaged. Over the six months they’d been friends since then, she’d glimpsed the same injured spirit a few times in sharper focus and realized that she didn’t know Lone at all; she only knew the part of her she chose to show the world.
Theirs was a strange friendship. Debbie thought it probably filled a gap for both of them. When she’d moved to the Four Corners region from Denver two years earlier, she’d assumed some of her city friendships wouldn’t survive the distance. But as it turned out, the breakup of her relationship was the factor that changed everything. Her friends were really Meg’s, she’d learned, and when they’d had to choose, they chose Meg.
In a way, it made sense. Meg had a new partner to share in the couples outings they’d always enjoyed. Whereas Debbie was single and lived in the middle of nowhere. Paradox Valley. Who could even find it? No one from her former life had bothered to try.
Meg was still living in their house in Park Hill; Debbie had walked out when she discovered Meg was cheating on her. They’d had a couple of conversations about Meg buying her out, but so far nothing had happened. Whenever Debbie mentioned it, Meg said she needed time to get in a position to pay the higher mortgage. Debbie knew her excuse was weak, but she didn’t have the money or the stomach to go to a lawyer and fight. She was depressed, and that sapped her energy and confidence. She’d promised herself that when she felt better she would do something about her financial situation. But time had passed and she had drifted along, feeling kind of lost.
How did you get to be thirty-five and suddenly find you were friendless? For a time, Debbie had determinedly kept up the phone calls and emails, but then she embarked on one of those experiments that reveal more than you want to know. She stopped writing and phoning and waited to see who would contact her. After a year, when the silence got truly deafening, she gave up making excuses for everyone and faced reality. Nobody cared. She was more alone than she’d ever realized.
Her mother would call it poetic justice. Debbie had let her former friends drift away in her midtwenties when she left her job and apartment in Greenville to move to Denver and be with Meg. Now, a decade later, she had no lover, and, apart from her parents, no one gave a damn if she was dead or alive. Only Lonewolf.
They spoke almost every day and Lone often showed up unannounced, sometimes in the middle of the night. She would always have some plausible reason for stopping by—there was a bear in the area, or the snow was going to be extra heavy, and she would stay over and help Debbie shovel the driveway the next morning. That had been her pretext tonight.
Debbie thought the real reason for most of her visits was that she liked home cooking and wasn’t gifted in the kitchen herself. Tonight she had slapped a couple of packs of meat on the counter as she came in the door, premium fillets, the kind Debbie’s budget didn’t stretch to. Debbie worried about accepting these gifts, but she appreciated the gesture and didn’t want to insult Lone by turning her down. Besides, Lone ate at her table often enough that it was only fair she contributed. Debbie would have done the same.
“Yeah. My mom sent it. She bought it from an old lady she knows who knits for extra income.”
“You should invite her out here in the spring.” Lone was an only child with divorced parents. She seemed close to both of them.
Debbie envied that. Her own mother lived for her grandchildren and regarded Debbie as a failure for her lackluster breeding performance. Maternal phone calls revolved around Debbie’s older brother, Adam, and his ever-expanding family. Not only was he heterosexual and fertile, he was also a pastor at the Harvest of Hope Evangelical Church in Greenville. It just didn’t get any better than that, and Debbie’s mom needed to remind her of this fact at every opportunity.
She had always stopped short of insulting Debbie over her sexuality, preferring to ignore the topic entirely, and to be fair, she told Debbie she loved her “no matter what your father would have thought.” Debbie sent her flowers on Mother’s Day and drove home to South Carolina once a year for Thanksgiving, otherwise known as purgatory, where she got to see proof of Adam’s procreative talents firsthand. She couldn’t even remember the names of all her nieces and nephews, and she’d lost count of how many there were. Ten, last Thanksgiving, or was it eleven counting the newest baby? None of them was named after her. Huge surprise.
“Mom’s not big on wide-open spaces,” Lone said. “She gets antsy if there’s no shoe stores nearby.”
Debbie laughed. From the descriptions she’d heard, Lone’s mom was the glamorous type. She’d dumped two husbands so far and was now dating a personal fitness trainer half her age who had his own workout video. Lone’s dad had been a drinker and a wife beater, and he was gone before Lone was even born. Husband number two was the man Lone called “Dad.” He had managed to stay married to her mom for almost twenty years. After he retired from the military, he bought a car dealership in Abilene. Lone got all her vehicles from him at cost. She said if Debbie ever wanted to trade up, she’d get her a deal.
Lone raised the TV volume when the Montezuma County sheriff started talking about the missing child. They were going to pull out all the stops tomorrow, according to the news anchor. The search would kick off at first light to take advantage of a break in the weather.
“I am making a personal plea to every able-bodied man or woman in this and surrounding counties to join us,” the sheriff said. “Little Corban Foley is out there somewhere, and I have personally promised his mom we are going to bring him home.”
“He thinks the kid is dead,” Lone said. “And he thinks the boy-friend did it.”
“How do you know?” Debbie protested. “He says he’s going to bring him home.”
“Notice how he didn’t say the word ‘alive.’”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“I’m going to join the search,” Debbie announced after thinking things through for a few seconds. “I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if they found that little boy too late…if extra people would have made all the difference.”
“Okay, we’ll both go.” Lone sounded resigned. She ran one of her sinewy hands over her hair and Debbie imagined, as she often did, how good she would look with blond highlights.
Debbie couldn’t understand why anyone would put up with boring old mouse brown if they didn’t have to. Bleached streaks would make Lone’s unusually blue eyes even more arresting than they were. The thought unsettled her and she stared at Lone more intently than usual, trying to figure out if she felt queasy because she found her sexually attractive, even though they were just friends, or because going on the search meant she would have to be outdoors. Since the mountain lion incident, Debbie wanted to throw up every time she was in an open space.
She let her eyes wander from Lone’s attractive profile down her body to her thighs. Even the heavy khaki of her pants could not hide their muscularity. Lone kept herself fighting fit. She told Debbie it was essential to be prepared—you never knew when you could be called upon to take action. The mountain lion was proof.
Debbie pictured Lone as she’d looked that day, stripped down to her T-shirt, a fine sheen of perspiration accentuating the play of muscles beneath her smooth, tanned skin. Debbie wished she was in such great shape herself. She had a treadmill in the spare room, but she only used it after she saw heavy women on TV talking about their weight. She wondered what Lone would think of her pale, ordinary body, naked. The idea made her draw a jittery breath.
Lately she’d been going down that path too often, imagining how it could be, making love with Lone. She fought off the idea. Sex changed everything, and their friendship meant too much to risk destroying it. She lifted her eyes and gave a small start to find Lone watching her. Embarrassed that she’d been caught staring, Debbie gave a nervous giggle.
Lone’s expression held the usual mix of wariness and concentration. “Everything okay,” she asked, and for once Debbie wished there was something in her eyes other than gentle regard.
But she didn’t know if Lone was even a lesbian; she’d made an assumption about that based on her looks and the fact that she’d been in the military. Feeling awkward, she blurted out, “I was just wondering…” The words eluded her.
This was not the right part of the country to ask someone about their lifestyle preferences. What if Lone took offense? What if she was straight and then wondered about Debbie? Her part-time hairdresser job was already precarious in the tough economic conditions; she’d have no customers if people knew she was a lesbian. It was hard living in the closet after so many years being out in Denver, but she wasn’t going to take a stand if it meant throwing her one source of income away. Political statements were for those who could afford the consequences.
Lone angled her head and gave a small encouraging nod. “What were you wondering, Debbie doll?”
Debbie couldn’t help but smile over the pet name Lone had taken to using for her. “It’s not important.” A roundabout approach occurred to her then, and she added, “I was just wondering if you were ever married.”
“Do I look like the marrying type?”
Debbie caught her hands together in her lap so her nerves wouldn’t show. “Not really. I was just curious.”
“Are you asking if I’m gay?” Lone inquired with a directness that startled Debbie.
She blushed and risked a darting glance at Lone’s face. What she saw there made her mouth even drier than it already was. The kindly regard had been replaced by a frank, sensual gaze. Debbie found herself held captive by those eyes, fascinated by the mosaic of blue and green studding each iris, and the way the pupils pulsed, pooling limitless black into the tiny oceans that encircled them.
“It’s none of my business,” she said weakly.
Lone reached for one of Debbie’s hands and lifted it to her mouth. With surprising softness she brushed her lips over the knuckles. “Does that answer you?”
“Yes.” Debbie thought her lungs were going to burst. “Me, too. I mean, I’m a lesbian, as well.”
“I know.”
“You do?” Alarmed, Debbie stared down at her dusty rose corduroy pants and floral shirt. She’d always thought she was the last person anyone would mistake for a lesbian.
“Don’t worry. No one would guess unless you had it tattooed on your head.”
“But you did.”
“I pay attention and I’ve been in your house.” At Debbie’s frown, Lone said, “Two cats. Crystals in the kitchen window. Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls in the CD rack. Desert Hearts inside the Sleepless in Seattle case on your DVD shelf. Copies of Lesbian Connection facedown under the trash basket in your bathroom—”
“You searched my house.” The accusation fell out before Debbie could think twice.
Lone released her hand. “I didn’t have to. You left it all out there.”
“I’m not used to hiding.”
“I can tel
l.” Lone seemed very serious all of a sudden. “Look, I don’t want to scare you, but these days even our basic liberties are under attack. If you don’t think a minority could ever be rounded up in this country, think again. People like us need to take some basic precautions.”
“But we haven’t done anything.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, the signs are already there. The military industrial complex doesn’t want the American public noticing what’s really going on in Iraq, so their flunkies at the White House are blowing smoke up our asses every day. They own the media, remember.”
Debbie thought that was an overstatement, but she didn’t want to argue. Besides, what did she know about politics? As far as she was concerned everyone in Washington was equally disinterested in the lives of ordinary people. She had registered Republican, like her parents, when she first voted, but these days she supported Independents or Democrats. Meg had been the one who was interested in politics.
Lone was still talking, mostly about oil, the dollar, and OPEC. Debbie only understood every third word until the conclusion, “So, you see, homosexuals are the perfect target.”
“You’re right,” Debbie agreed. “But the Marriage Amendment Bill won’t pass. It’s just a political stunt.”
“That’s not the point,” Lone said patiently. “The point is that propaganda feeds the social climate. We are at greater risk because the government is sending a message that it’s okay to discriminate against us. Hitler didn’t declare war on the Jews overnight. He softened the public up first with propaganda and changes to the law. Sound familiar?”
“I never thought about it that way.”
Debbie felt a little defensive. She and Meg had volunteered at Pride events sometimes and had gone to a few fundraisers, but most of the people they knew thought the gay marriage debate was a phony issue and the government would let go of it when they found something else to scare conservative voters with. Meg always said the best way to deal with prejudice was to set a good example and don’t look for trouble.
