Camp Matigua: The Lost And Forgotten

by Allison Greer

  “And, something else my high school gal pals didn’t know about Carey . . . his mustache was dark brown, but, unlike so many dark mustaches, the bristles were just that. They each, being of a thick diameter, didn’t prick or scratch or stick. Tickle in a very nice way is what they did. When he put his lips to mine, it felt like a blunt paint brush moving slowly over my mouth. And, Meggie, he could do that real well. Slow kissing, moving his mustache all around my mouth, nibbling on my jaw bone, my cheeks. Sometimes, he tried to plunder my ears, but I couldn’t stand that. It drove me to distraction and not in a good way. Since it was no fun for me—and not accomplishing its purpose—he learned not to do it. Maybe he wanted me to do it to him, but I just couldn’t. Couldn’t see the point of it.

  “He took me in his arms and, then, moved his left hand up my back to my neck, holding me by only my neck—and quite tight. If his kiss hadn’t been so tantalizing, so excruciatingly exquisite, his hold would have hurt. I think one will endure a little pain if the total experience is pleasant, don’t you?”

  Maggie had nothing to add.

  {Mr. Bill was thoughtful.}

  So, Carlie continued.

  “He was holding me in the bend of his elbow, tight, kissing me slowly, my face upturned, greatly pleasuring in his attention. He slowly, moved the fingers of his right hand down my neck onto my chest and oh, so slowly, lightly over the top of my engorged breast. The protuberance began to cry out for his concentration. Soon, against my will, both breasts were yearning, striving, pulsing for his touch . . . tingling and drawing.

  “I feel certain they had a fever and thought to myself, I must call that to my doctor’s attention. And, then, he continued—over the apex causing my body to buck and shutter, down to the underside and traced the pendulous crease where breast meets midriff. His fingers moved under my heavy, aching breast lifting up ever so slightly as he introduced me to, yet, another unknown phenomenon: breasts get mightily tired, too . . . tired and heavy and stretched and painful. And, simply, crave the slightest caress and appreciate the smallest touch of relief.

  “I felt pathetic, like a stupido, standing there, responding as I’d never responded to him before, completely powerless to this new whim that had overtaken him. I thought to myself,

  “‘What a revolting development this is . . . an unexpected and, in some ways, alarming turn of events—a strange way to introduce a baby into the world, to a relationship that has up till now been so very tumultuously unhappy and uncertain.’

  “It was discomfiting and threw me completely off

  balance. Was this the way Carey wanted our lives together to be from that day forward? Is this why he came up with the idea of renewing our vows or, would the other shoe drop and the old Carey materialize to ride, again, perhaps even more furiously than ever before? I had gotten used to the old Carey. I had pretty well figured out how baby and I would coexist with this man. Now, I’d have to re-think everything I thought I knew.”

  37

  Cercis Canadensis

  Purple-pink flowering Red Bud:

  Also, known as the Judas tree because it dates back to Biblical times is a small, deciduous tree

  that displays an abundance of pink blossoms.

  It has large, heart-shaped leaves in summer and long seedpods in fall

  with yellow, green fall foliage.

  It is, especially, appreciated in woodlands and naturalized situations and

  has a high tolerance to salt and alkali soils with

  a minimum—moist, water requirement.

  Thousands of small, rosy-pink flowers appear in the spring before leaves emerge.

  It does well in full sun to part shade and in many, different soil types except wet.

  Seed pods attract wildlife.

  Its mature height reaches 30 feet with a spread of 15-30 feet. Mature form is round and growth

  is rapid.

  Summer foliage is green.

  Reviewer: Courtney

  A beautiful showy tree. I get many interesting comments and compliments on how beautiful it is.

  Reviewer: Reggie

  I know from the brilliance of the deep, hot-pink buds on my Red Bud tree that it is spring.

  Reviewer: Delia

  The shape of the trunk and branches are beautiful and the flowers that bloom in the spring are almost luminescent when the sun shines through.

  Reviewer: Gwen

  The trunk is straight. Its dark-red, heart-

  shaped leaves have a deep green color on back. Spring blooms are breath-taking!

  38

  Another cause for pause—driving Tower, Grandmother Pearl and the child Margaret onward and outward down the east Texas highways besides automobile accidents and Dogwood trees—was their other love, the Red Bud tree which could be seen in bloom, concurrently, with the former, afore-mentioned arbor species, abiding in the same woodlands. Margaret loved Dogwoods but found the Red Bud just too gorgeous to give it anything less than top billing on her list of beauties.

  As was his custom, Tower drove until he came to an off-road that beckoned to him through some mysterious song he alone could hear and turned off the main highway—off into the woods whereupon they three would see an overhanging canopy of Dogwoods and Red Bud trees filling their view far off into the distance with beauty and grace, delicate white and pink. The lovely blossoms strewed the road as if the applauding guests of a passing bride had just showered her with living confetti, not rice nor seed.

  Then he stopped, pulled off the road. Pearl and grandchild accompanied him when he stepped through the pines bordering the road’s shoulder and slipped into a thick underbrush of yaupon. It came as little surprise to

  the girl when Tower told her that particular plant was cousin to the holly. She had always associated both with Christmas—dark-green leaves and bright red berries when everything else lay dormant and bare.

  On this particular day, however, all three in the car were sorely disappointed for they saw no Red Buds, no Dogwoods that would give a hint of grander scenes down deep. The land had experienced a previous summer of hugely dry weather which killed off many less stable plants—wild and cultivated. Folks were told to ration their water and use it at optimal times, only. Winter had been little better—very unusual for the area. Weathermen reported that such droughts had happened before—no need for alarm, that Mother Nature always brought her lovelies through even the tough times. However, that did not lift the spirits of the three sojourners as they peered deep into the woods for any sign of their beloved Red Bud. So, they walked, followed an empty rivulet venturing to gain its source or reservoir.

  Tower being a tall man had difficulty trekking through the low-hanging tree limbs while Margaret being short had trouble seeing where she was going, so thickly grew the low-growing thickets. And, all three kept getting hung-up on Devil’s Claw and dewberry brambles. Grandmother Pearl was, for all practical purposes, assigned point man and, neither Tower nor Maggie was too confident in that appointment. The animals were restless searching for water—snakes, wild pigs, deer—the group startled them all, and whatever that was that fell out of a tree. Maggie had seen its blur out of the corner of her eye but, when she turned her head for a better look, it was gone. Grandmother, however, was dauntless

  in her determination and hiked on, down the grass-covered ditch dredged out of the earth by previous showers but now, dry. Pearl found the fragile grasses encouragement toward better things to come.

  It took them to a back creek, Coon Creek Gully, the surveyor’s map named it—the meeting place for all waters that fell higher up the hill. The water was so very low and brackish, even had a little bit of an unpleasant smell, but wildlife can’t be picky. Signs everywhere indicated deer, pigs, other animals came there, slid down into the gully for a drink. But, they had all vamoosed by the time the trio arrived—either gone o
r laying low. They stood there, the three, just looking around, down into the gully as though wondering . . .

  “What do we do, now?”

  . . . when Margaret felt something so very light flutter past her right shoulder on its way to the ground . . . then, another. Looking down to the dried leaves and pine needles, she saw where a sparse bed of lovely, pink blossoms lay scattered about. Just a very few, but they encouraged the little girl to look up . . . and up . . . and up. There, pressing its apical dominant terminal bud upward as best it could to gather some sun along side its taller counterparts was a lone Red Bud tree. So intense was the competition among the bigger trees, that there was barely enough light filtering down to keep more timid organisms alive, much less thriving. But, that Red Bud had endured long enough to grow tall enough to gather light enough to allow for growth, some foliage and a bit of bloom . . . enough to permit a few to fall down around the child.

  It wasn’t much, but they were all gleeful in their find and the promise that Mother Nature would follow through when conditions were right.

  39

  Mrs. Widon was a meticulous nurse, kept up with more than a head hospital nurse was required to. She was, simply, a genius at her craft. Had she begun her career some years later, she quite possibly would have gone into medical school, come out the other end with honors. But, she was very content to follow doctors’ instructions and render whatever other applications her patients needed.

  Maggie’s monitors, again, began their customary disturbances, what Mrs. Widon had come to consider normal for Mrs. O’Casey. This time, when the nurse walked briskly down the hall, entered Margaret’s room, she turned around just as quickly, closed the door securely against intruders and left the woman to her thoughts and visitations for, indeed, a night-shade had emerged, the same shade that had come before.

  *

  It was very cold in the room. Before retiring, Margaret slipped into her nightgown and turned the thermostat low as was her habit in winter to save on the

  electric bill, to supply just enough heat to take the edge off but not truly heat the air. Had she connected ideas, she would have purchased herself a new electric blanket to replace the frayed one she discarded last winter. Here it was winter, again, and she’d not yet put out the money to replace it, but it was on her grocery list for next trip.

  It came into the room. The woman felt the covers lifted, cool air dash against her back and the mattress sag. The shade moved smoothly over the bed to her body and lifted the tail of her gown. She felt his warm thighs against hers; his knees spooning the insides of her own . . .

  *

  “I’m sorry, Meggie. I’m sorry for interrupting, but I’d like to add one thing to what I said before. One other thing my husband did very well . . . ,” Carlie interjected, rushing on, not waiting for Margaret’s permission, “. . . slow dancing. You remember slow dancing? Sometimes, when Carey and I’d drop in at mom and dad’s, they’d have the records on in the living room. They’d be dancing. It was obvious they loved to dance with each other. And, they were good.

  “You remember the song, For Your Love?

  Carlie began to sing: “‘For your love, I would do anything . . . I would do anything . . . for your love.’ I love that song. Johnny Mathis—with the soulful saxophone solo. So beautiful! Takes me back . . . and back . . . and back. Almost primordial. My, oh, my, Meggie. Makes my gut do

  flip-flops. Don’t you find it queer—so much pain and yearning evoked by a mere song . . . just the first few notes can kick-start the emotions. I can’t think of any experience in my history that should conjure such voluptuously sad reminiscences over those first few notes.

  “Your ‘rock of eye.’”

  “What?”

  “Clarence always said it was our ‘rock of eye’—things you know but don’t know you know. He used to say that, had he been an evolutionist, he’d expect those visceral sensations disembogued concurrently with our grueling trek out of the muk. Had he been a linguist, he’d expect such instinctual compellings to be a baby’s substitute for the names and words and descriptors she has yet to learn. Had he been Mormon, he would have attributed it to the belief that we, prior to leaving God’s side, were part of heaven’s intelligence pool and we each made the commitment to come to earth and live as near like Jesus as possible.

  “In other words, there are memories indelibly stamped into our DNA of our previous existence with Him in His perfect abode. It is that and His Presence for which we, perpetually, grieve. And, even those who’ve turned their backs on Him, denied His Son, we all know the truth on a level so deep that we know but don’t know we know . . . until we’re smacked by . . . something . . . a song, a smell, a voice, a word . . .”

  “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart

  of every man which cannot be filled by any

  created thing, but only by God the Creator

  made known through Jesus Christ.”

  Margaret’s father derived immense joy quoting Blaise Pascal’s words to the boys in his junior Sunday School class . . . a 39 year old French philosopher who died in 1662 AD.

  “But,” Clarence continued to explain, “since I was neither Mormon nor evolutionist, I expected it had to do with understandings and experiences we encounter at birth or just after, perhaps prior to being born. One of my prime examples was the well-known happenstance concerning combat soldiers mortally wounded in battle. They will cry out for their mothers—men who haven’t seen their mothers for years, men who’ve turned their backs on their mothers. Even they, when faced with their own deaths, will cry out for her. Why?”

  {“Let it not be said the boy hesitates upon those shallow waters—the treacherous shoals of amateur psychology.”}

  “Because she was there when their lives together first began. She and he went through that life and death experience as partners—neither one having the choice to back out.”

  {“But, he always said that was as far as he cared to go with it. He’d leave it up to better minds to unravel the rest. And, Margaret, as a rule, was long gone in search

  of an aspirin by that time,” Mr. Bill, always one to keep the record straight.

  {“What was it you said, Margaret?”}

  “What?”

  {“What was it you told the doctor after he delivered your boys—when he pulled them out and placed them on your stomach?”}

  “I never said it!” Margaret spoke, a bit perturbed with Mr. Bill’s penchant for being completely open about other people’s lives. “I thought it . . . I thought it to myself.”

  {“Ok. What was it you thought to yourself but really wanted to say out loud to the doctor?”}

  “I thought I’d like to say, ‘Doctor, I just delivered that hefty weight. Isn’t it enough for one day!?’

  “My belly was so sore. Words can’t describe how sore my abdomen was and here he was putting almost nine pounds down on it. But, it occurred to me later that he may have done me a favor. I never had after-birth pains. They say they can really hurt.

  “My roommate had her baby by natural childbirth.”

  {“Yep. And, you were out like a light most of the time.”}

  “Ok. Ok. Rub it in, but I’m talking about my roommate, not me, ok? The nurse came in, plopped a thermometer in both our mouths, then went back to her, started taking her vitals. My roomie looks over at me with her face turning red, tears gathering in her eyes. Bless her heart—she never lost the thermometer. Never opened her mouth or snapped the thing in two. Clarence called that ‘cojones.’”

  {“Yep. And, you were out like a light most of the time.”}

  Margaret let him have the last word . . . for the time being.

  *

  “He took me in his arms. I believed my mother and dad brought out the best in him, inspired him. He took me in his strong arms there in their living room, held me
up close, not too tight but with authority and direction. Kept a firm hand on my back. There was no question who was leading when you danced with Carey. We were still dating at the time. I think that was one of the things that threw me off—he seemed to want to be close to me. And, we would dance to For Your Love—nice and slow. Oh, Margaret! The memory fills me with longing and loneliness beyond anything I can put into words. If I could have just been different . . . maybe it would have all worked out.”

  *

  This shade had come before. Insistent, yet never offensive—a temperament very much like the last bull dream with its sweet face and polite demeanor. She felt the apparition’s mighty, manly engine pressing warmly against her butt cheeks and moved her bottom to afford it a better nesting place. Its left arm glided up, over her ribs and slipped its hand around to hold her right breast while the inside of its forearm nestled the left. Maggie welcomed its incandescence with intense gratitude.

  “If Clarence were here, he’d be paying the light bill and there’d be no need for this visitation.” Maggie thought to herself, always the practical, reasonable and down-to-earth woman that she was.

  The shade gently kneaded her breast.

  “I don’t know why it is that breasts are always cold. I guess because they’re out there where blood doesn’t much roam . . . and the nipples are the most cold—almost no blood at all,” Maggie suspected.

  She, simply, couldn’t help responding to its touch . . . her breasts being so cold and all.

  “Certainly, not my fault.” She snuggled even deeper against the shade’s nether parts.

  {“She’s always been an easy touch for nether parts,” confirmed Mr. Bill.}

  The shade nuzzled her neck, kissed it lightly. Margaret was almost certain it was wearing BVDs and an undershirt.