Our "Girl Autobiographies"

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:17 am

Here's the next part. Rattlesnake Blues is an original and I've got the changes and melody in my head but haven't written them all out-yet.

I've always thought that the whole Vickie as not seeming like a woods woman was something I'd like to have explored more, but just never got around to it. Also never got to discuss why Dennis doesn't really fit in to their lives as much as he thinks he wants to.

RL Dennis had a way of talking that made sense to some and none at all to others.

The fact that as Dennis says Vickie, Andy and Mountain Girl don't really make sense without all three of them present is hearkening back to the original idea that this is all really just one person, which is an outgrowth of some of the stuff I've read here about our male/female dichotomy. See, I told you this was a crossdressing story..... It's just about wearing the person, not the clothes.

She liked Andy. He was thoughtful and pleasant, and he seemed to really like her, but there was something a bit strange about him. Strange in a different way than Dennis. Dennis seemed to somehow belong in a slightly different world. Andy on the other hand seemed to fit in just fine but he would make leaps in conversation that left her confused and had a way of talking to her as if she was a lifelong friend long before she felt that sort of closeness in return.

His relationship with Vickie was a puzzle. If she had been asked to describe it she would still have had to say that they seemed like brother and sister, but Dennis had told her that the two of them been lovers sporadically over the years. She had come to figure out that her meeting Andy had been a ploy on the part of Dennis and Vickie and that Dennis in particular had been playing matchmaker for the two of them.

It was obvious that any interest he had seemed to show in Linda herself had been a subterfuge on his part. She wondered why he hadn't just come out and told her about his plan but since she liked Andy she didn’t really mind; she didn’t think that there would have been any kind of a future with Dennis anyway. He had admitted this all to her when she confronted him with it but whenever she asked him more about Andy and the Andy-Vickie relationship he lapsed into long vague commentaries that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He had introduced her to Andy in an effort to have more of Vickie for himself, but that had been a complete failure, not that Linda really cared. She was happy with the way things were going with Andy although she did not have a clear idea as to what she would want in the future or where the relationship might go.

Andy himself had told her a fair amount about his relationship with Vickie but somehow didn't seem to be able to make any more sense to her about the subject than Dennis had. He also seemed to be talking about another woman who’s name didn’t seem to be forthcoming. The woman who’s odd clothing enigmatically occupied a small corner of Andy’s closet. The clothing never seemed to move from it’s spot in the closet and the woman never appeared even if her presence was always felt. He seemed to enjoy talking about both these women and Dennis as well a great deal. However when she came right out and asked him this other woman’s name he had replied that she lived in the mountains a few hours away. He didn’t really seem to be avoiding her question or misunderstanding her. It was just another one of the many times that he seemed to think he had explained himself perfectly while managing to make no sense at all. Vickie and occasionally Dennis would refer to this mysterious person from time to time as well but Linda still had no clear idea of who this woman was.

She had a moment one day of wondering if the woman was still alive or even more bizarrely if she didn't exist at all, but that seemed far fetched even for these strange people. She decided the truth was probably far less dramatic and merely yet another aspect of the three of them, Dennis, Andy, and Vickie, that wasn't going to make any sense to her but didn't really matter. What she found most surprising was the friendship between Dennis and Andy. They seemed so different from each other, such an unlikely pair of friends.

If Dennis and Andy were confusing to her, Vickie bewildered her completely when she tried to think about her. She had an animation and strength about her that was just plain fun to be around. She seemed to be a gentle and kind woman and there was an unspoken air about her that suggested that she had made peace with some unknown but truly fearsome inner demon. But at the same time there was also something truly frightening in her somewhere. Linda didn't think this was surprising, not after some of the things Andy had told Linda about her. Something that revealed itself fleetingly in her eyes, her body language, her music. Something that Linda had come to accept, knowing that whatever it was she was safe from it. But there was were other things, other puzzles. Not scary. Just bewildering. How could someone so apparently simple be so complex?

She thought of one of the songs she had Vickie perform soon after they first met. She'd been with Andy and Dennis and they'd seemed to enjoy it greatly. She'd only heard it that once and although at the time she'd thought it was just another tongue in cheek blues something about it had dug a burrow into her mind.

Vickie had started off with her introduction, one of those little talks she liked to give to introduce a song that seemed to be part of her performance. "You know folks, yesterday was my birthday. At least I think it was my birthday. I've always been a bit confused about that, you know? But anyway a couple of friends of mine said come over to dinner. We made you something special for your day. So I started to worry a bit, because my idea of something special is sometimes a bit too special for anyone. So when I got there they had made me this food, you know they'd been working on it all day, and it made me think of a song I wrote a while ago. See they made me rattlesnake stew and this song is called Rattlesnake Blues. Now this is a song that I don't do all that often. I have to be in the mood for it, you know? But we're going to do it tonight, and this is how it starts."

She'd started out with a long playful solo on the trumpet, followed by a couple of other equally enjoyable statements by other members of the band. Then the vocal with alternate offerings between the choruses by various members of the band:

I woke up one morning
there was a rattlesnake on my welcome mat.
I woke up one sunny morning
To see a rattlesnake sleeping on my welcome mat,
He woke up and said please let me in
I’ll eat up all your mice and rats

I said the rats have drove me crazy
And the mice have kept me up all night
Yes the rats have made me crazy
And the mice won’t let me sleep at night
So come on in, Mr. Snake
I’m too tired to put up any fight.

Soon the mice and rats were gone
And the snake had gotten big and fat
Yes the mice and rats were gone
And the snake had gotten greedy and fat
He said you’ve got nothing left for me
But I believe I‘ll have your cat.

I said no Mr. Snake
My kitty cat is not for you
I said oh no Mr. Snake
This kitty cat is not for you.
He smiled and shook his tail at me
Now what’s a girl to do?

There were more solos and Linda thought that it was a cute song but nothing much more. Then came the last chorus. The same melody and the mostly the same chords but there was something spooky and ethereal about it. It was night time now in the song now she thought, probably about 2 a.m. in spite of the reference to the sun. She wondered just how the band had managed to accomplish this.

Well love is like a rattlesnake
Sleeping in the warm sunlight
Yes love is like a rattlesnake
Sleeping in the warm sunlight
You’d better kill it while it sleeps,
Or when it wakes up it might bite.

The out chorus was an odd duet between Vickie and the trombone player. And then she had to talk about the song a bit more. "But you know, I just love rattlesnake stew. I always have, ever since I was a kid. It's probably the most delicious thing there is you know. And I love men too. Sisterhood is beautiful and you can see how many really talented women are right here in this band of ours. But there's something about the fun you can have with a man. Not just the sex, but the fun." Then she had given Dennis and Andy a smile that probably made every other man in the place think their life would always be incomplete.

"And you two can make me dinner any time your hearts desire. And that cute lady friend of yours too." She blew a kiss to both of them and then another to Linda. Linda thought about how she ought to feel some sort of jealousy. She hadn't been seeing Andy that long but still, for Vickie to make those sort of comments from the bandstand seemed a bit much. But the hurt wouldn't come. She realized confusedly that the song had been meant for her; some sort of an offering from Vickie to Linda. And then at the end of the night she had taken Dennis by the arm with a cheery possessiveness, told him he was hers to do what she wanted with for the night, and kissed Andy and Linda goodnight.

Andy had sadly told her on the way home that he wished Dennis would find himself a real old lady and stop letting Vickie break his heart with playful affection. But Dennis was a big boy now he said, and he knew what he had allowed himself to do.

She hadn't really wanted to talk about any of this that night. But the longer she knew the three of them the more questions she had. Andy was the sort of guy a woman could ask about all this, and eventually Linda did. Andy had explained without any sign of discomfort that Vickie had been lucky. Very lucky. In spite of her early life somehow she'd managed to escape being molested as a child and as a young teenager. He and Vickie had both been lucky. Their first real lessons in sex had been at the hands of each other and this other enigmatic female friend of his, and had been filled with respect and love. They had been able to discover what their real feelings about these things were and live according to them for the most part. It was that simple, he said, and to Linda it seemed that for Andy that was exactly the case.

But for Vickie there was something more. Thinking about it she realized that she couldn't imagine Vickie actually making love to anyone. Joyful, even spiritual sex, yes, with all the wild abandon that Vickie seemed to revel in with regard to so many aspects of life. She could imagine that easily. But making love, no. Not with anyone except Andy. But there was no possessiveness about her with Andy. She seemed genuinely happy and content that the man she loved most in life was with Linda. It didn't make any sense but there was no arguing with whatever it was that seemed to have happened.

Whatever else there was about Andy and his friends, she managed to have a lot of fun both with Andy and his two buddies. Then after a few months he had started trying to interest her in hiking. It had started with gentle walks in the woods and progressed to fairly strenuous treks through the foothills of the nearby mountains. One day he brought up the idea of a little trip to a cabin in the mountains a few hours away.

Vickie had been with them when he did and had been enthusiastic, telling Linda how much fun it would be. Linda was surprised. Andy had told her that Vickie enjoyed these things and both she and Dennis sometimes accompanied them on their excursions into the woods but she still found something about the idea of Vickie in the wilderness hard to swallow. The animation, physical gracefulness and strength that often made Linda think of Vickie as a sexy tomboy notwithstanding, with her jazz life Vickie just didn’t seem like a woods woman. She decided that if Vickie was going it wouldn’t be too rugged and they both seemed so excited about it that she wasn’t sure she could refuse without seriously hurting their feelings.

She would also get to meet this other friend that they seemed to enjoy talking about so mysteriously. Thinking that this seemed awfully important to Andy she tentatively said yes to the invitation wondering if there was some way to quiet the unformed questions in her mind about the whole idea.

A few days later she asked Dennis if she could talk to him after school. He agreed and they met for drinks after school that afternoon, Dennis having a couple of beers and Linda having coffee. When she broached the subject Dennis looked like he might need a couple of more beers.
He was silent for quite a while, and when she looked uncomfortable with the silence he replied that he wanted to formulate his thoughts carefully.

"There's nothing to be strange about" he began, and then stopped speaking again. After a moment she replied. "I wasn't worried. Andy's a good person and he seems pretty responsible. It's something else. I've just got this feeling that I can't explain."

"That feeling's true" Dennis responded and was silent again. Linda started to worry more. "They've got an old lady up in the mountains" he began, as if he was finally ready to speak. "Both of them. No, that's not quite right. She's not really their old lady. It's different."

More silence. "Ever think how you don't really understand Andy and Dee together?" She'd discovered that Dee was the childhood nickname Dennis had for Vickie. Dee or sometimes Spooky D. No one else ever used it and Andy had told Linda that she didn't like the name. She put up with it from Dennis because he was Dennis. No one else was to use it, not even Andy.

"Dee’s never had a real old man in all the time I've known her. It's not like she's into women. She's into men, you know that. And as fine as she is she can pick and choose, but she doesn't. She'll tell you that music comes first and it does. But there's something else. It's not Andy. I used to think it was but that's not it either. I don't know what it is. Andy's the same way. And the sister on the mountain is the same way too. Sometimes I think they're just running a riff on life."

"What do you mean? Linda asked. "Andy's only got one sister, Emmy. Is this Vickie's sister?" "That's not it." Dennis replied. "It's just how I think of her. It's like Andy and Spook and the Mountain Sister are joined somehow. I've known Dee longer than anyone and Andy almost as long. And I've known the other lady a long time too and I still don't understand them at all. But I can tell you they've all gone through changes behind it."

The conversation was going nowhere. "What's this lady like? What's her name?" asked Linda, hoping to redirect Dennis to somewhere. "Oh she's cool. She's got to be the wildest chick I've ever known. Way too much, you know what I'm saying? But she's a righteous lady. I think she's probably saved Dee’s life to tell you about her. Not that she ever actually did anything. Just who she was is what kept Dee away from, well, out of the life."

Dennis stared into space for a moment as if lost in memory. Then he seemed to come back to Earth for the first time that afternoon. "I guess, I mean I hope, it was inevitable that this was going to happen. Listen, they're all good folk. No matter how strange they get remember that. Andy's lost every lady he ever dug behind those two ladies. But you’re different. I've known that from the get. Have a blast up there and don't let any of it mess with you. Stay with your heart and there'll be something up there you don't know about, but it'll be cool. I promise. You are one lucky lady, I can tell you that."

Dennis had been no help at all and she shouldn't have been surprised. He seemed to think he had explained something to her but his choice of words said it all; he had lapsed into a vocal style he used when he was trying to explain something close to his heart but was at a loss for words. This time she was pretty sure that he didn't even know what he was trying to say. Still she felt reassured. She'd come to trust Dennis, and he seemed genuinely happy for her. She decided to leave it at that and changed the subject.

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Sun Feb 28, 2010 9:56 am

Well Linda will now have to pass inspection. THe title of this, Who are you really, is something I've asked myself many times over the years. It's also something other people have asked me, which is what Linda is doing here.

Part of this got written early on, and then later got a big addition. It shows in places where I should have been more ruthless in the pruning.

Yes my wife thinks I talk oddly at times.

Mountain Girl gets to be the crossdresser. After all that IS what the story is about, isn't it?

It's also finally seen why Zecheriah's family wanted nothing to do with his daughter.

Who Are You Really?

Wondering if she was making as important a decision as she feared she was, Linda agreed to accompany Andy and Vickie on what she kept trying to convince herself was just a little weekend jaunt to a pleasant cabin in the woods. She and Andy drove to the trailhead on a hot summer day with a faint breeze blowing river smells up from the bottom of the valley the route followed, alternating at times with the reassuring scent of warm pine wafting down from the hills above. The cicadas were a comforting background symphony and Andy turned the car radio off so that they could listen to them. To her surprise Vickie was nowhere in sight: she'd expected Vickie to accompany them on their drive. Andy explained that Vickie would be going on ahead of them which surprised Linda. She commented on this and Andy pointed out once again that if she considered the subject matter of some of the songs Vickie had written it should be easy to imagine herself running up a mountainside alone, abandoned to a wild joy. Linda said that Vickie was full of surprises, thinking that Andy as well still seemed to have quite a few himself. But it seemed like an idea better left undiscussed and she changed the subject, something she suspected she might be doing a lot this weekend.

They parked the car in a vaguely hidden place off of a dirt road near Vickie’s car and walked through the trees till they came to an odd trail that Linda thought seemed ominous in a sort of indefinable way. She tried to explain her feeling to Andy and he replied that his friend and her now deceased father had over the years rather artfully placed a number of deadfalls and relocated various rocks to give that impression. He had no idea how they had achieved this effect and given that he was an architect and supposed to have an understanding of the dynamics of space he found the whole effect intriguing. Linda thought this was a bit weird but said nothing.

There was something different about Andy. She knew he loved hiking and the outdoors and it had always impressed her that a change seemed to come over him in surroundings like these. He was usually a bit shy and seemed to feel that he had a certain physical awkwardness to him. And then in the woods he would suddenly seem gracefully at ease. It was as if he became more like Vickie, she suddenly thought, wondering if this was some sort of flash of insight into him. But the change in him was more pronounced today.

It was not her idea of a relaxing walk in the woods, however, and it was nothing like the various hikes they had taken before. The way was steep and unclear with footing that was not always certain. But Andy seemed to flow effortlessly uphill and around the obstacles, and in spite of the effort she could tell he was making not to rush ahead she was having trouble keeping up with him. Soon she was drenched in sweat. She asked Andy to stop for a rest so she could cool off a bit and he gladly complied. As they sat he told her that he realized it was pretty hot today and apologized for rushing ahead. Then he went on to tell her that to him the heat and sweat were pleasant things. He elaborated, comparing it to the breath of an impassioned lover in it’s sensuality and she wondered, again, both at how he sometimes described things and at his idea of fun. She hoped this wasn’t going to be a weekend were he continually expressed himself in offbeat ways that did nothing but confuse her. But it was going to be a nice weekend, she promised herself, and decided yet again to do her best to keep a positive attitude about it all.

They continued on with a couple of more stops. One of them was at a sparklingly ominous looking pool in the stream that paralleled the trail. Without saying anything to her Andy stripped off all his clothes and jumped in. The water seemed too cold for her to join him but at his suggestion she took off her boots and put her feet into the water for a few minutes. He climbed out of the water and sat next to her as she soaked her feet. She wondered aloud to Andy just how far they were going to be walking. And for an overnight trip shouldn’t they be bringing sleeping bags and things? She’d meant to ask him about this before but somehow she had forgotten. Andy replied that there were blankets and stuff where they would be staying and that Vickie had gone ahead to carry some food. It would only be a while or so till they got to a saddle and then not too far from there along a much narrower trail till they came to a final descent to the cabin. Linda thought this sounded quite indefinite as to how far they actually had left to go but she stopped thinking about that when Andy decided that he could put off warning her about some of his friends eccentricities no longer.

As they resumed walking he started by saying that she would be doing her best to make Linda welcome and that she was one of the most loving people he had ever known. But Linda listened with gradually increasing concern as he explained that although she was basically a clean person, living out here alone in the wilderness she saw no reason to object to the smell that God gave her. In the same vein she was known to wander around the outdoors near her home completely naked. But this was not a sexual thing he said, failing to reassure Linda. His friend just didn’t always see the point of clothing herself. He added after a moment that she understood that others didn’t always feel that way. With a happy laugh that annoyed her, he told Linda that this woman also liked to wander around in nothing but some of Vickie’s lingerie and a pair of moccasins she had made for Andy and often greeted them in this attire, and that although she said that this was just what she had felt like wearing it also meant that she had been missing him and Vickie. He found it pretty funny which he knew was the another reason she did it.

She had a strange sense of humor in general he said, finding humor in the position of a tree or the natural placement of rocks in a riverbed. She sometimes talked to herself a great deal in her solitude and forgot to stop when others were present. Other times she would be silent for weeks and when she greeted them her voice would sound rusty and unused. Vickie in actuality had gone on ahead of them to allow her to move into her being with other people mode before Linda got there, and Linda began to hope that Vickie had had enough time to accomplish this, whatever that was.

Probably the most important eccentricity of Andy's friend involved pictures. She had some very strange ideas about them, he told her, and it would be best to avoid using a camera around her. By now Linda was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of this whole adventure. She thought for a moment of telling Andy she'd changed her mind about the whole trip. She couldn't. Not here halfways up this mountain that had begun to seem to her like something Mousgoursky might have written about. And then Andy seemed to run out of things to tell her about his friend and the conversation abruptly took a new course as it did so often with him.

The trees thinned out as they climbed further upwards and were replaced by short scrubby grass with just a few stunted trees strewn about here and there with some occasional bushes. The air had changed and had a refreshing and sweet scent to it. Linda paused to enjoy the smell and Andy pointed to the top of the ridge saying that the saddle was only a very short way beyond. But they had continued on towards the ridge for only a half an hour while when two figures appeared before them. The closer figure was Vickie. She was wearing khaki shorts and an old hat, her usual sleeveless tee shirt, and boots. Linda had a thought that often came to her when she looked at Vickie. Although for the most part she was content to wear the same jeans, tees, and flannel shirts that Andy liked to wear, she usually made whatever she was wearing, even old clothes like these, look like some sort of lingerie. But today she didn’t look sexy, just comfortable. Looking at her in this setting she mused that it wasn’t that she looked feminine so much as she looked like she just enjoyed being female. Linda thought it was an interesting distinction. Her confusing sexuality seemed to have vanished, the way it did when she was alone with Linda, but now it had been replaced by an undefined wholeness. Her hair was tied back in two braids which fell over her shoulders and Linda noticed a long scar running in and out of her hairline in addition to the other scars she had that were usually visible. She hadn’t noticed it before and realized that Vickie usually had her hair down in a way that concealed the scar. It was a nasty one, bigger than the others she carried, and Linda wondered where it had come from. But she stopped thinking about this as she looked at the second person.

It seemed to be a woman, with a tangle of dark brown hair tied back and then sliding out from under an ancient looking mans hat. She was wearing a very faded long blue skirt, moccasins, and some sort of a sleeveless tunic that looked homemade. She was so absolutely still that she seemed like part of the landscape. She reminded Linda of an owl, sitting in a tree motionlessly, listening and watching endlessly and missing nothing. There was something un nerving about her. Linda thought of how she had always thought owls were beautiful birds but that to a small animal they must appear to be truly fearsome creatures. Then the woman smiled and there was suddenly a sense of life about her that was almost palpable, and now Linda thought she was stunningly beautiful in spite of a wholesale violation of almost all of what she considered to be society’s rules for what made a woman look attractive. The woman practically flew across the ground to hug Linda and Linda noticed a strangely pleasant collection of odors on her which seemed to be mostly a combination of wood smoke, sweat, and something very much like the river they had driven along on their way to the trailhead. She planted a kiss on Linda’s cheek as Linda hoped that this was Andy’s friend and then gave Andy a bear hug that looked to break his ribs and a kiss also.

Vickie laughed and said “Hi Linda” and then looked at the other woman and said “This is Linda but you knew that. Linda, this is our friend. She doesn’t really carry a name but you can call her Mountain Girl if you need to call her something.” Mountain Girl looked at Linda and took Linda’s hair in her hand for a moment. “You look just like Andy described you” she said. “Big curly hair and you’ve got a happy smile even when you aren’t smiling.” Andy looked at Mountain Girl and commented that she had gotten dressed up for the occasion. Mountain Girl's smile got even bigger as she excitedly told Andy that she had picked the first peach of the summer this morning, and that it had been on Zechariah’s tree. She guessed that this meant something so she decided to wear the symbolically blue skirt. Andy looked very interested in this news while Linda wondered what these people were talking about.

They climbed up over the saddle and then continued on until they came to a large open area with a cabin at the other end. Andy seemed to want to explain every last blade of grass as they walked across the meadow towards the cabin. It had a vague resemblance to an old farm house with a large covered front porch under the gable. Nearby was what she thought must be an outhouse and a somewhat newer looking small barn. Andy told her that she kept whatever animals she was raising in or near the barn. This year she had several families of porcupines. He explained that in the spring she would find dens of young animals and then raise them herself. Each year she seemed to choose a different kind and this year she had been very excited because porcupines tasted so good and were easy to care for. Linda was taken aback at this idea of livestock but said nothing. There were some ducks and a couple of goats wandering around as well and although Andy said the goats were kept for their milk she supposed that the ducks would also end up as dinner. Scattered about the area were a great many fruit and nut trees and there was a huge vegetable garden as well which looked to be quite prolific.

Andy suggested that they put their packs in the cabin and she followed him up onto the porch. Two pictures were staring out at her through a window. One was of an elderly White man that looked like a ferocious version of Gandalf and the other was a middle aged light skinned Black woman with almond eyes that had a faraway look in them as if she wasn’t thinking about the person taking her picture at all. Andy explained that these were Mountain Girl’s parents. She referred to them as her ghosts because they were both dead now and for that reason she had arranged their pictures to look outside so that they could view the rest of the world. Inside there were pictures of Andy and Vickie, another of Andy’s entire family along with Vickie, and one of them both with Mountain Girl.
She looked around the inside of the cabin. It was surprisingly light inside and had more windows than she had first noticed. There was a cooking area with a large wood burning stove and she wondered how the stove had made it's way to the cabin. Water seemed to be supplied by a small pump complete with a lever handle in a large sink. Next to that was a large stone fireplace and lot of shelves overflowing with books, jars, cooking paraphernalia and a multitude of other useful objects. The room was furnished with a large rough table, four chairs, and something that looked sort of like a bed. Behind them was a door that seemed to lead to another room. Two rifles hung securely on another wall, out of the way but very convenient to the door. Linda had no doubt that they were well used and found the thought of them so openly displayed upsetting at first before she realized that they were not on display at all, merely stored in their proper place. She noticed to her relief that the open windows had what looked like handmade bug screens and realized that the furniture also looked like it had been built right here in the cabin. Near the front door a very steep stair led to a loft and Andy said that they would probably sleep up there tonight unless they decided to sleep outside, which Linda thought she definitely did not want to do. He commented that the loft had been an addition to the cabin; when Mountain Girl’s friends had began to come visit her here her father had built it for them under the existing rafters.

They had some lunch and Linda got a tour of the whole area, the cabin, the barn, a surprisingly decrepit little guest lean to, the gardens and another little tiny orchard by some large rocks that looked like they would be a nice place to sit. She had been presented with The Peach and the strange woman had asked her if she wanted to eat it now or wait till it was more ripe. The question sounded like some sort of a test so she asked what they suggested. Vickie had said why didn’t they wait till there were three more peaches and Linda said this would be fine. The whole interaction just felt sort of pseudo profound and a moment later Andy had laughed. “Sounds like a scene from a bad movie, doesn’t it?” he had commented. “It’s a little ritual we have here. Don’t worry, any answer you give is the right one. The peach is from a kind of a special tree.”
That night Mountain Girl said that she and Vickie would be staying out in the field in front of the cabin that night to watch the stars. Linda had thought of protesting, but it didn’t seem quite the right thing to do. They both gave her and Andy a kiss goodnight and Linda thought that as hard as they tried to avoid it there was still something sexual about the way they kissed Andy on his cheek. She and Andy had climbed up into the loft and crawled into bed. Andy had pulled something over them that was like a black fur blanket but it had large white streaks in places. She asked him about it and Andy laughed and said that Mountain Girl had worked on this for years, mostly trying to get the smell out. It was a blanket of skunk fur. Things just had gotten even stranger than they already were and did not get back to normal when he added that skunk was yet another one of her favorite things to eat.

Andy was affectionate, but she just felt funny about it. She asked him about his friends and he said that for all he knew they had crept onto the roof to listen. She had trouble believing this but he threw his shoe up at the rafters and then said that perhaps they should just sleep tonight. She wasn’t quite sure how to take this. Was he being respectful of her feelings or was he really concerned that his friends were listening? Coming here was making things more confusing, not less, she thought, as she cuddled against him. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that it was all okay, she would either figure it all out or she wouldn’t; it didn’t really matter as long as she could learn to be comfortable with them for the next few days.

It was fascinating to watch Andy with the two women. He acted like he had been reunited with a long lost best friend and both he and Vickie had a completely different way about them in this setting. The two women were clearly thrilled to have her here. The next morning the three of them busied themselves with tasks for the better part of the morning. They were quite comfortable about informing Linda as to what she could do to help and this made her feel welcome in an unusual way. They weren't treating her like any kind of guest she realized, even as she hoped that this wouldn't be the way they spent the whole weekend. After lunch decided to go for a little walk to a place they called Rattlesnake Lake to go swimming. Linda wondered in passing if this had anything to do with Vickie's birthday song and thought that she'd have to remember to ask about this. Vickie produced a bathing suit for Linda and then the other two women changed into the dirtiest clothes they could find, saying that this was a good way to wash them. Andy had merely changed to a pair of cut offs and then they had started on their little stroll to the lake. Linda thought it was more like a hike but the scenery was pretty and it was a relaxing pace. She had enjoyed listening to them talk on the way and then when they got to the lake she had watched the three of them take turns throwing each other into the lake and thought that it wasn’t that much different than the junior high school boys that she taught. She hoped that they wouldn’t want her to join in, she was not the rough housing type.

Half an hour later she realized that there was a difference: no one had actually gotten hurt and no one was mad. With the boys she taught someone always crossed a boundary and things got out of hand, someone got hurt or something. Well these people were older and presumably more mature although this wasn’t the Andy she was used to. She watched them for a minute and unbidden the sounds of Vickie playing with her band entered her mind. One more way of understanding Andy's friend, she thought. Vickie wrestling in the water with her friends, as if the water was some sort of sea of life. Vickie rough housing with her band, saying that her music told a truth that could not be spoken with words, when all along her very being shouted to the world that her life was meant to be a mad and passionate love affair with all that was good. But what of this other woman? It was as if she completed Vickie in some way. Completed Andy too in some sort of less definable way. Who was she?

She closed her eyes and began to fade off into a half sleep sort of state. It was so peaceful here that she could nap all day. They came back to the shore and sat near her talking. She listened to the rhythm of their voices without actually listening to what they were saying. There were none of the strange leaps that characterized so many of her conversations with Andy. The conversation seemed to flow in odd directions whenever she actually listened to it but the voices carried on seamlessly. She listened and thought that they talked the way John Coltrane used to play the sax, as if the conversation was old and comfortable enough for them to turn it inside out and then keep at it for an indefinably long period of time. Play the spaces between the notes someone had said. Listen to the spaces between the words and voices. Suddenly it all made sense, as if the three voices were a reflection of one person on a long conversational tear.

She dozed off and got confused. Andy had turned into a woman and there were three women but the other two had turned into men and then they were the three weird sisters/brothers from MacBeth but they were good witches and then they had all turned into mice and were scampering about in the leaves chattering away with little mouse noises and then she was more aware that it was just Andy and the two women and now she was listening to what they were saying which was some sort of weird conversation with Andy talking about God and church and Jesus and Mountain Girl saying that she had seen her ghost while pulling a bunch of good firewood out of the stream by the cabin and it was dry tonight, maybe they would cook on it which Andy said proved his point exactly of course and she said but what about the rock in the stream and Vickie said well just remember one thing and what was that and they all laughed and said it ain’t us. Linda had no idea what they were talking about, maybe she was still asleep and dreaming because it all made so much sense even though she couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. Maybe it was all just conversational shorthand she thought, a product of the length of their friendship.

She dozed off a bit more and awoke to hear a woman singing. It sounded sort of like Vickie she thought. She sat up and the singing stopped.. She looked around and the three of them were by the lake fishing with a short stick and a line. Several fish that they had already caught lay in a pile next to them on the shore and she wondered how long she had been asleep. As she got up and began to walk towards them Andy held his finger to his lips warning her not to frighten any nearby fish. She thought to herself that she knew that but said nothing. Besides, someone had been singing. How silly. Within another hour they had half a dozen decent sized fish and decided that this was plenty for dinner. Mountain Girl asked Linda to come with her to pick some greens and mushrooms to serve with them and Linda thought that if Andy had told her that they would be catching or picking the entire meal that she might have been concerned, but this seemed just fine. Mountain Girl had shown her which ones were best and given her quite a commentary about wild plants as they did, and then they had headed back to the cabin. As they neared the cabin Linda noticed two other fruit trees in the distance.

Unlike the other trees growing around the cabin they looked markedly untended. They were bearing fruit nonetheless and Linda had the thought that perhaps she would find something on them to complete the ritual they had all been so excited about earlier. She turned towards them, proud of herself for having noticed them as far away as they were. Mountain Girl took her arm, kindly but in a viselike grip even so. There was a very strange look on her face. “We never ever eat the fruit from those two trees” she said. Linda started to ask why but there was a finality about Mountain Girls comment that made her stop before the question was out of her mouth. They walked the rest of the short distance back to the cabin in silence. Linda told herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong and wondered what was up with this weird woman who was once more reminding her of a sinister owl. Just before they reached the cabin Mountain Girl turned to her again. “They sort of repay a debt” she said. Her voice was trying it’s hardest to be pleasant and failing utterly. “The fruit’s not ours to eat, we’ve taken enough already.” It must be some sort of a giving back to nature thing Linda supposed, although she wondered why Mountain Girl had reacted so strongly. Her solemnity seemed to affect Andy and Vickie as well. They were talking happily as they reached the cabin but within a minute of Mountain Girl and Linda’s return even the normally conversationally energetic Vickie became silent and introspective.

They ate silently, almost uncomfortably, sitting on the ground by a well used fire ring near a huge pine. She had snuggled up to Andy, trying to show that this was comfortable but not to be exclusive as she wondered what had happened. The silence became steadily more uncomfortable and when they had finished eating she picked up the plates and utensils to go back to the cabin, but Andy put his arm around her and asked her to stay. Vickie gave a strange sort of laugh and said “all the time, you know?” Andy and Mountain Girl answered back. “With a cosmic sense of humor” and then all three of them seemed to thaw out as if they’d just worked out some monumental difficulty between them with that single laugh. Linda recognized the reference, it was a sort of joke that Andy and Vickie had between them. Andy told her he it had to do with something they said in the AA meetings he and Vickie both went to and that the expression began with the phrase “God is good.” They seemed to think the whole idea was funny in that odd way that Andy had of expressing himself. Linda guessed that she shouldn’t be surprised that the owl woman was in on the joke too.

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:39 pm

RL Susie lives in her own little world somewhere. She was Hannahs sister.

Mongolia is a nod to RL Mountain Girl. It's one of her favorite places and she's been there a number of times.

RL Mountain Girl and I used to sit in her home in the late afternoon and talk. it would get pitch black night out and she still wouldn't bother to turn on any lights. It was very intimate. At the time I thought it was a sign of some sort of mystical communion with nature. Now I know she was just lazy and waiting for me to get up and turn on the lights. It was a little game with her. She thought I was challenging her, trying to outwait her as to who would get up. I thought it was a parameter of the conversation.

RL Dennis had the experience one night of his grandmother soon before she died getting drunk and deciding he needed to know who his real grandfather was: the (Chinese) cook on the ship she came to America on. We always wondered how someone supposedly a full Italian could look part native American I guess that explained it.

My mom told me about bringing the outhouse seat indoors to keep it warm in the winter and stringing the rope to the barn.

Andy launched into the beginnings of a long conversation with the other two women, filled with reminiscences. The warmth that she had felt earlier returned as if on a gust of wind and she could tell that the three of them were being careful not to talk about parts of their experience together as a form of exclusion, instead talking about her while sharing themselves with her and explaining their shared recollections rather than excluding her with them. The unspoken message was loud and clear: they were very happy she was here and wanted her to feel the same. But still there was something, an unspoken sadness or fear or something that Linda couldn’t fathom.

Finally Mountain Girl was straight forward to say the least. “They’ve been talking about you an awful lot the last few months” she said nodding at Andy and Vickie. “Andy is falling in love with you and I’m so glad that I like you.” Hard to get blunter than that Linda thought. Vickie continued. “This is a lot to get used to. It’s wonderful here but I freaked the first time I came here. They gave me a rattlesnake for lunch” she laughed. “It was pretty good but don’t worry, it’s still a bit early in the summer for them. They’re better in another month. Andy probably didn’t tell you about that did he?” Linda replied that he hadn’t and then invited them to tell the whole story of Vickie’s first visit here.

The stars had been up in the sky for a long time before they were done with the evenings recollections. Whatever it was that had happened before seemed forgotten, and Linda knew deep down in her heart that there were few if any others who had ever been privileged spend such an evening with this trio. Maybe Dennis, but she thought not, no matter how often he had been here. And still everything she heard made her realize how little she knew about any of the people here. She had fallen asleep nestled against Andy and someone had put a blanket over them and a coat under her head for a pillow while she slept. She awoke in the gray light before dawn and lay for a while just taking in the smells and feel of the air on her. Soon she heard Mountain Girl rise and depart, returning a few minutes later with a pot of water which she set to the side while reigniting the fire. She smiled at Linda watching her and said that there would be coffee in a few minutes. It seemed like the height of absurd luxury to Linda-sleeping on the ground with only a blanket yet being served coffee in bed, with goat’s milk yet!

The day had gone much the same but that night it rained. They had retreated indoors and had lit a kerosene lamp. It was barely enough to see with and Linda wondered if they were so familiar with each other that they were just comfortable sitting in near darkness as they talked. She guessed it wasn’t that different than sitting around a small fire outdoors and then it made a little more sense to her. The darkness did have a comforting intimacy and after awhile she felt like it would be safe to ask a question. How had Mountain Girl’s father come to live here in the first place?

There was a silence and she knew she had gone too far. She wondered if she’d blown it again in some way, thinking that she could get tired of unspoken rules real fast. After a very long moment Andy started to speak, rescuing her, but Mountain Girl interrupted him. There was none of the uneasiness Linda had felt in her yesterday as she spoke, just a hint of long accepted sadness.

She explained that when her mother died she had come to live with her father. Her mother’s name had been Susan and she had been a stranger to everyone who had known her in the little town at the foot of the mountain. She had appeared one day and settled in, taking a job in the town but saying little to anyone. No one seemed to know where she came from or who her family had been. Susan had told Zechariah that her father was actually from Mongolia but that she knew next to nothing about him. Susan’s mother had known him briefly while they were both working on a ship while she was in her late teens. She herself was from the South and had lost her family when she was about eleven, going to live with relatives who she couldn’t stand. She had set out on her own a few years later with the thought that if she minded her own business that perhaps the world would leave her alone and had then gone to sea for good measure. Not that long afterwards she’d had one daughter, Susan, who was similarly disinclined to have very much to do with the world.

Mountain Girl didn't really know all that much more about her mother. A stranger to the town and surrounding area; she had been unimpressed by the stories about Zechariah and something about her, probably her silent nature, had attracted Zechariah on one of his visits into the town and they had begun a very sporadic relationship which was still, as far as they were both concerned, probably far too much of an investment in another person. When she became pregnant with Mountain Girl she had thought it best to move away without telling Zechariah that he was about to become a father but upon her death the authorities had found Zechariah and her daughter had gone to live with him.

Zechariah himself had been born at the very end of the nineteenth century and actually did have some family somewhere. He had always told his daughter that it would be better not to know who they were however, and she sometimes wondered what they had done to turn him against them so strongly. Knowing her father, it could have been anything from the truly unforgivable to nothing at all. In any event he had died without giving her any more information about them whatsoever.

He had gone off to fight in the current war at the end of his youth and had returned with some medals and a terribly deep alienation from virtually all of humanity, coming here to live not long after the rest of the world thought that peace had been declared. She explained that he hadn’t actually built this cabin. It had been a ruin of an abandoned farmhouse that he had spent year after year rebuilding until it met his satisfaction. The trail they had taken here had at one time been a road and he had used a horse and cart to carry supplies up to his home, less of them every year as he turned his back further and further on the rest of the world. It appeared impassable now to anyone not on foot but there were still some very roundabout ways to get things here with a mule or a sled in the winter which they occasionally resorted to.

She had known little of any of this as a child. It had been after she met Andy that she had found out most of the story of her parents lives. Mountain Girl became happily, even excitedly, reminiscent as she described to Linda the circumstances of her search of the cabin in pursuit of some clue as to what her name was. In the box holding her birth certificate she had found other things including some medals and a picture of a woman. She had asked her father if this was her mother and he had said yes and had told her what little he had known of Susan. He then explained to her that the medals were his ghosts and then had become silent. A year later he would explain to her that they were his only link to the men he had killed during his war and that he kept them out of respect for their memory. He had said barely a word to her for a week after that and she had thought she had done something wrong by allowing him to speak of it until he explained to her that it was instead a matter of there being some things which if you allowed yourself to think about them it was very difficult to stop thinking of them later.

She described her life here and her curiosity and fear about the world for a long time. Then as she finished Vickie said that to her knowledge only she and Andy had ever been told any of this before. Mountain Girl had smiled at her and said nothing and then with the door and windows open Linda fell asleep, the sound of the rain only a few feet from her ear.

The next morning they had all walked down the mountain in the rain with Linda pondering all that had happened over the last few days. The other three all seemed to think that they were all done with any serious conversation and talked happily of casual things. She was surprised at the complete matter of factness they had about the rain, as if they ran around outside all day in the rain often. Mountain Girl of course probably did but she was still having trouble with how different Vickie was from the woman she thought she had gotten to know prior to this weekend. Vickie commented on the rhythm the rain drops made and told her that it had been the inspiration for a song she had written and promised to play it for her next time she came to hear the band.

Andy didn’t really seem so different any more. It was rather as if he suddenly made sense to Linda. On the way back they had pointed out an old wine bottle nestled in some rocks near the saddle and that had been good for a somewhat humorous discussion about Andy’s adventure that night and Linda thought about how at one time she had thought that his alcoholism was something personal about him. He had told her that it wasn’t any more personal than gravity and she had thought that this was a strange way to express such a thought, but thinking about it as they talked now she recognized the way he and his friends spoke with each other and it was just how they talked. All three of them made her promise to come visit again soon.

It was a couple of weeks later that she got around to asking Andy the question that had been forming in her mind since the trip. No, he said, Mountain Girl didn’t have all that many visitors. His brother and sister now and then, a couple of people who had been romantically involved with him or Vickie who hadn’t come back. A guy named George that they had been friends with a long time ago and Dennis now and then. Dennis had seemed to have trouble with something about the three of them and just always seemed somehow uncomfortable there. Not at all like Linda. She had seemed so at home there. Linda wondered what he was talking about. Was he totally unaware how strange the three of them had seemed to her? True, Andy made sense to her now. But only in the sense that she now understood why he was as strange as he was.

The visit had been a test in a way. If they were to have a future together she would need to be able to accept his friends and his relationship with them. She had passed with flying colors. Vickie of course already thought the world of Linda. Andy and she liked to laugh about how Dennis’s carefully laid plot had had the outcome that it did. Mountain Girl was actually pretty accepting of people and could read them surprisingly quickly for someone who spent so much time alone. The real question, according to Andy at least, had been how Linda would react to Mountain Girl. Linda thought to herself that this probably really was how Andy had seen the visit. She knew better. She'd been on trial and although in Vickie she had a firm ally, Mountain Girl could have been a ruthlessly subtle judge. Linda wasn't quite sure why things had turned out as well as they had.

Linda got to the next question. The three of them clearly had been completely in love with each other since childhood. They were lovers from time to time and seemed to have an almost unfathomable intimacy. Why was he going out with Linda? What was this future he had spoken of? Andy replied that someday he wanted to get married. He wasn’t going to spend his whole life in the wilderness no matter how much he loved it. It just wasn’t him. He felt the same way about Vickie. Her passion for her music, her seemingly overwhelming sense of life itself as a feast to be gorged upon, was not him. To be blunt he needed someone a bit more normal. His friends were reflections of his extremes just as he was an embodiment of the opposite in them, but for marriage he needed someone a bit more like him. He told her about all their experiments years ago with what they called role reversal, his living on the mountain both with Mountain Girl and then alone while Mountain Girl lived with Vickie, the time he and Vickie had sort of lived together while discovering that they actually saw less of each other this way, and finally said that he guessed that if either one or even something weird like both of them could have been happily married to him and vice-versa it would have happened long ago.

The oddness of the weekend not withstanding she now felt still closer to Vickie. It felt funny at first as if she wasn’t quite sure what the bond was. She found that she and Vickie were often having long talks about themselves. Vickie of course had to talk about the band, the music, the next gig and the newest song she had come up with. But there was a lot more. With her gift of endlessly lyrical chatter Vickie often seemed like she couldn’t really get to whatever it was she was really trying to say, but there was one subject that she finally seemed now able to talk about with Linda with utter clarity and that was Andy.

It wasn’t really surprising to hear how Andy had cared for and nurtured her through the years of confused youth, he was like that. It was a bit surprising just how much she had in turn cared for him, helped him through things that she didn’t understand herself. And there were more visits to the cabin where she found herself on long walks on snowshoes that winter with Mountain Girl, listening to her accounts of Andy. He was right, once you listened to the rhythm of the two women's speech they made sense. And when they made sense, Andy made sense.

And then it was winter. She found herself regretting that her trips to the mountain were about to come to an end in the ice and snow, she'd become very fond of her visits there. She didn't know what surprised her more, the fact that Andy and Vickie didn't seem to think she would visit any less in the winter, or what the winter would actually turn out to be. She had watched with alarm as a rope was strung from the cabin to the outbuildings as a precaution against getting lost in a snow storm and had been initially amused when they began bringing the seat from the outhouse into the cabin to keep it warm. She had imagined it as a frightening time to be alone in the mountains but all three of them had been unanimous in describing it as a time of rejuvenation. And it was. In spite of the evening hours they spent talking in the quiet dark cabin, their routine of sleeping from a few hours after can’t see to just before can meant that they slept a lot and sometimes the cabin seemed as cozy as a bears cave as it hibernated through the winter.

Simultaneous with the sense of peace she felt was a feeling of awe at some of the things she witnessed. The sunset fleeing from them as they returned across the frozen alpine meadows at dusk, the songs of the coyotes as they approached the cabin at night, or the sight of an entire herd of elk passing by one morning at dawn. She and Mountain Girl had watched a mountain lion stalk and kill an injured deer in the distance with Linda feeling sorry for the deer and Mountain Girl rejoicing in the big cats good fortune even as she told Linda that painter cubs had been her father’s idea of the height of fine dining. And there had been a couple of nights alone with Andy when the weather turned briefly warmer and the two women announced that they just had to attend to something that would require an overnight trip on their part. Andy had explained that one time it was actually a trip into a town some miles away where Mountain Girl attended AA meetings every couple of weeks. Winter often meant that she didn’t get to go and when she had a chance she eagerly took it.

The other time had been to stay by Rattlesnake Lake for purposes that Linda never did really understand. Whatever the reasons were she deeply enjoyed the time alone with Andy even as she reflected that they were making love in the same bed that the three of them had spent so many similar nights together in. She even asked Andy to tell her more about it and had been impressed that he instinctively seemed to know how to describe what they had shared here without violating any sense of privacy. To be sure she looked at both women through slightly different eyes when they returned but there was something in their eyes also and the rest of the visit had felt especially warm and pleasant.

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:25 pm

Here it is, the end of the shout chorus. And they do.......Linda has obviously gotten very comfortable with these two women. I tried to be ambiguous about time, it might have been the next spring, a year and a half after they meet. Decide for yourself.

Lights Out is an instrumental by Little Walter as noted. Depending on my mood it sounds either intensly erotic or intensly lonely. What do we say about it being both?

Blues On Your Porch is something I made up just for the book. I never got around to melody or changes. Think generic blues for both.

I had a lot of fun writing this part. Vickie and Mountain Girl's parting offer to Andy is a remnant from an earlier version, meant to show something about how they view their relationship, especially Vickie. Not sure it still belongs however.

The proposal is a lot like how I proposed to my wife. She told me if I asked she'd say yes and then when I did she said well that was a couple of days ago, I don't know how I feel. After she did this a second time I told here that she could damn well propose to me the next time. Which she did.......

"There's something I could never give up for some man" A couple of the women who read this commented on Vickies pronouncement, saying it spoke for them in an admirably direct way.

Their secret makes our secrets seem pretty lightweight.

Enjoy.

Finally as spring approached the women had taken the unprecedented step of inviting her to visit without Andy. Just women they said, with Mountain Girl adding that she would be visiting during the deep water moon which came in April and which was the most feminine moon of all which was surely a sign that this was meant to be. As she walked up the mountain with Vickie she found that she could talk of little but Andy and felt sad that he would not be there. They were spending most nights together now and in fact he would be staying at her place while she was away, the better to keep her cat company.

She and Vickie hiked up the mountain with Linda feeling like she was taking an almost leisurely stroll. Uphill most of the way of course and with a few obstacles from the winter storms, but a pleasant walk none the less with none of the foreboding or tiredness she had once felt climbing the mountainside. They glided over the saddle that Linda had come to think of as some sort of a gateway and continued past the open valley below and up into the trees. It wasn't long before a small stream joined the path and then sitting on a rock in midstream they saw Mountain Girl basking in the sun as she gnawed on a lunch of delicious looking ribs.

Linda chuckled; Mountain Girl was clearly in a humorous mood. She was wearing a pair of Andy's moccasins and a black slip. It was clearly Vickie's; Mountain Girl's skinny breasts seemed lost in it although the rest of the garment seemed to fit her muscular body fairly well. Her hair was concealed in a scarf that Linda recognized as hers; something she had left behind the last time she had been to visit. "I see you've added something to your collection" Linda commented by way of greeting. Mountain Girl put her food down onto a piece of cloth and cleaned her hands in the river, wiping them on the rock and then the ends of the scarf the fell past her hair and flowed over her shoulders.

''Yeah. I love this thing. It feels so nice on my hair, just like the other clothes do. You don't mind, do you? I couldn’t wait for you guys to get here." Linda felt a tug of affection towards the woman who had just appropriated one of her favorite scarves as a doo rag and wash towel. "No, it looks nice on your hair. Even though Vickie's stuff makes you look like a porn star from another planet." "Really? Which one?" giggled Mountain Girl. "Are you hungry? I brought some extra food."

"I'm hungry" offered Vickie. Mountain Girl leapt off the rock and gave them both bone crushing hugs and handed the remaining ribs to Vickie who immediately sat and began to eat and talk simultaneously. Linda smiled, thinking of the reaction to the junior high boys she taught if they could witness this scene. The ribs were big; she figured they had come from a bear and asked about this as she took one from the pile next to Vickie. Vickie was chattering so excitedly that neither of the other women could do anything but listen and then after they had finished their lunch and throw the bones into the river they started towards Mountain Girl's cabin.

They talked of marriage over the next few days on the mountain. Whatever she wanted was okay with both of them although they both felt she and Andy were made for each other. They had both reiterated Andy’s thought, that the three of them were best meant to be lifelong friends, soul mates, but not married, and added that Andy needed a wife.. Vickie told her the rest of the story about Dennis, who to Linda’s perpetual surprise seemed to still be around.

They had been friends when they were little, well before Vickie had become friends with Andy, which surprised Linda. She’d somehow had the idea that the two of them had always been friends. While Vickie was becoming consumed by her music Dennis and her other friends had predictably joined the local gang and gotten everyone’s attention a few times. They had remained friends until their late teens when heroin had replaced rumbling as the gang’s favorite activity. Dennis had eagerly helped to lead the charge, realizing too late that death had disguised itself as life the better to hit them with the sucker punch of all time. He had disappeared while she was in music school and had returned a not long ago with the drugs mostly gone although he still liked a beer and a joint-his addiction had been less complete than theirs and he was able to enjoy the moderation that they would never again be able to have.

He had been excited to discover that someone from his youth seemed to be succeeding in life and had found Vickie to be irresistibly attractive. At least that was what he told her and she figured it was probably true. Linda agreed. But there was something about Vickie that just seemed wrong to Dennis. Perhaps it was the fact that she already had her passions; music and her two companions. Vickie didn’t know. He told her often enough that he wanted her but there was something that just wasn’t supposed to go any further than it had although she certainly enjoyed the sex and friendship. They enjoyed his company, all three of them, but there was something that neither he or Vickie felt. And so Dennis just was, a friend to all but nothing else in spite of what Dennis thought were his wishes to the contrary. She thought about what Andy had told her about Dennis and wondered who had been wrong in their assessment of his feelings for Vickie.

It was towards the end of the visit that the two women thought they had to speak Andy’s praises one last time. They had eaten dinner and were sitting on the porch watching the sky get dark. Vickie had brought a guitar with her and had suggested Linda bring hers as well and the two of them sang and played their guitars together while Mountain Girl listened. Vickie's voice was quiet, with none of the forcefulness of the music she wrote, the way she played the trumpet, or even the way she often spoke. But she had what Linda thought was a wonderful voice just the same, and as they sang together Linda began to wonder why this had never happened before, why she so rarely heard Vickie sing at all. She figured it must have something to do with yet another level of intimacy and wondered if this was going to go on forever. Probably. These three people seemed to have no end of unplumbed depths.

Linda put her guitar down, wanting to just listen, and Mountain Girl leaned contentedly against Linda. She was wearing Linda's scarf over her hair again and Linda thought she must really like the scarf. After a little while she removed it and took Mountain Girl's hair out of it’s braids, trying to make sense out of the resulting confused mass of hair. “It’s gotten pretty warm out. Maybe you should just cut this whole mess off and start over. It’ll be long enough by winter” Linda told her. Mountain Girl squirmed comfortably against her. “Not this year. Maybe next spring” she replied. Linda fixed a few of the bigger tangles and gave up, rebraiding the entire mess as best she could. She draped the scarf around Mountain Girls shoulders, a sort of a shawl which left her hair revealed. “That looks a little better” Vickie commented. “I can’t do much with her hair either. Andy’s the only one with enough patience.”

She began to sing again, this time a blues that Linda didn’t know. She alternated phrases with Mountain Girl, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Mountain Girl didn’t seem to have much of an idea about the nature of either pitch or melody. Linda listened to them having fun and being silly and thought it was kind of nice to see someone of such talent not caring about even basic musical concepts for a moment. It was a simple song Linda thought, but still powerful. She asked if they would sing it again and they obliged, a bit more seriously this time and there was an austere starkness to it even with the benign interpretation that was being offered.

There’s a moon up in the sky,
But the clouds are bringing rain.
There’s a full moon in the sky,
But those clouds are bringing rain.
Well the hour's getting late,
Too late for that house of pain.

I knocked up on your window,
But you were fast asleep.
Yes, I almost broke your window,
You were so very sound asleep.
I got this feeling down inside me,
And it made me want to weep.

I crept up on your porch,
Feeling like the world was dead.
I crept up on your porch,
Feeling like the whole world was dead.
When morning came you found me,
And this is what you said.

Linda recognized Vickie's style and hooks. The last line was one of her favorite lead ins to an instrumental, as if what came next could not really be put into words. She’d thought of this as an artistic stratagem for quite a while; Vickie had seemed pretty articulate until Linda really began to get to know her.

But it was just two people singing tonight and so Vickie contented herself with a short and uneventful out chorus on her guitar. Just as she was about to finish Mountain Girl interrupted her. "Do Lights Out." Vickie looked at her. "You really want me to?" "Yeah, tell her about it" Mountain Girl responded. Instead of a final chord Vickie segued into another song far starker than the first one. Linda wondered if this was the real ending to the song she had just heard. There were no words but the chords and melody took on a quality that left Linda at a loss. She heard the sun setting in a lonely unlit room. She heard someone crying themselves to sleep, again, remembering things that would never again happen, things that never had happened. Despair at the thought of a dawn that would force another day of desolation on them. She heard a knowledge that her death might go un noticed by anyone, anywhere, as if she had long ago ceased to exist. She felt the arms of a lover around her, felt an implacable desire for that lover ravage her. Felt the lover leave. Felt the momentary respite of oblivion. She felt Mountain Girl move in a strange way, forcing herself closer to Linda, and she knew. It was Mountain Girl that Vickie was speaking for now. She put her arm around Mountain Girls shoulder and Mountain Girl leaned into her even more, burrowing into her. She felt a wetness on her hand and looked, seeing silent tears on her hand and on Mountain Girl's face.

"I guess that's enough" Vickie commented and the song changed somehow, a resolution of grief into something else. Then it was over. The three women sat, motionless, silent. Then Mountain Girl took Linda in both her arms, hugged her, kissed her on the cheek. ''That's a Little Walter thing" Vickie offered. "I don't ever do that one around her without permission. I guess you can see why." She changed the subject, as if nothing more should be said. “The first song's called Blues On The Porch. When I was a kid we used to do it in our band and it would embarrass Andy to death. Once in a while we still do it but it needs the right singer or it comes out too juvenile. And he still gets mortified. It was about the third song I ever wrote and it was about him.”

She paused another moment as if deciding something and Linda wondered if she should say something. She decided against it and waited for Vickie to speak again. She looked at Linda a bit more and went on. “You and Andy understand each other pretty well now don‘t you?” It was the sort of perpetual personal question that she had gotten used to the three of them taking for granted. She replied in kind. “Sometimes I wondered if I would ever understand any of you, but yeah, we do. You know how I got tired of all your tests. I'd wonder what weird thing you were going to do this time and I don't think you two will ever be done." She laughed, about to put something into words that she had only understood, not expressed even to herself until now. "But I don't really care anymore and I know none of us care if I pass whatever test you come up with next, so, yes, we do.” Vickie continued, just getting warmed up to one of her little talks. “It’s about time this happened. Andy’s been falling in love his whole life and never understood women at all" she said, as if she was telling Linda something new. "The only ones he’s ever understood is the two of us which is pretty funny since we are two very strange chicks. The two most bizarre women he knows and we’re the only ones he could figure out till you came along. Maybe we just confused him too much. Who knows? Dennis calls us saboteurs. Who knows, maybe he's finally right about something. Anyway I’m glad it finally happened.”

She looked thoughtful and continued, more serious now. “I’m a pretty tough chick. You know that. There isn’t much of anything in life that I haven’t had to scuffle for in some way." She touched the scar on her cheek, moving into a subject that neither she or Andy had actually told Linda very much about. “I won this fight.” Then she lifted her shirt to show Linda yet another one, a long one running down the side of her ribs. “I won this one too. Saved Dennis’s backside while I was doing it too.” Finally she pulled her hair back to show the long scar running in and out of her hairline. “And this one. My brother did this to me. I won that fight too, even though for a couple of years I didn’t know it.” She paused for a moment as if searching for the right words. “This child was a violent child for an awful lot of years. And to tell the truth I still like a good fight but you know people get hurt that way.” She changed direction slightly. “You’re a music teacher. You know what it’s like to make a living out of music. And I know you know what it’s like to be an attractive woman and try to get the world to take you seriously.” She gestured at Mountain Girl. “But I’ve got it pretty easy compared to what she deals with as a matter of everyday life. Anyone else would think that this is a hard life she’s got here but she thinks it’s comfortable. The day I met her I knew I’d finally met someone who made me look like a lightweight.”

“I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t know where I’d be,” she looked at Mountain Girl, “or where she would be either without Andy. He’s given us so much of our strength.” She changed course slightly again. “Since I’ve gotten sober I’ve pretty much been able to be true to myself. And even when I drank most of the time I could usually do that. Sort of. But Andy does what’s right. Always has. Andy who always looks a bit scared and doesn’t like to speak up for himself. Andy who used to wish that he could be someone else. Except for you,” she looked at Mountain Girl, “I don’t know anyone who quite as much just is who they really are. He’s always been that way, always will, and I’ve always known I could count on him no matter what. And you can too."

"The two of us,” and again she looked at Mountain Girl as if to assure Linda that it was okay to speak for both of them, “are never going to get married. I can’t really explain it but there’s something neither of us can give up for some man. But Andy’s wanted someone like you his whole life and it’s about time he found you. I’m not going to try to tell you what to do ‘cause you have your own path and how can I tell you what it is. But you’ll never find a better man.” She was finished and while Linda tried to think of something to say Mountain Girl spoke. Briefly, like she always did when she had something important to say. “She’s right. Who knows?” She laughed. “Now she’ll probably decide to write another song about tonight.” And then, “You’re welcome here. With or without him. Always. What's mine is yours.”

Linda wondered how to respond. She wasn’t sure there was a whole lot to say about what they had just said. Finally she smiled at them and said that yes she knew all this about Andy. There was just something else she didn’t know yet, something about herself and Andy together. The two women smiled back at her and Mountain Girl gave her a quiet answer. “We know.” And then it was time to talk about something else.

Mountain Girl walked with them down the mountain as they left. As they hugged and kissed each other good bye Mountain Girl looked at her with a funny look. The look Linda used to dread, wondering what strange thing was about to be said or what she had unknowingly just done wrong. The look that said Mountain Girl was afraid something was about to be taken from her. She’d figured that out awhile ago also, and it didn’t bother her anymore. It was just a look Mountain Girl had. “Andy’s got something to tell you. When he does you’ll know it. Tell him we said we already know.” Mountain Girl looked at Vickie and Linda saw another look in Vickie’s eyes. Another look that used to unnerve her. It too had lost it’s power to frighten her. Vickie nodded and smiled far too seriously at Linda. She wondered what the two women were suddenly being mysterious about. She had thought they were done with this sort of thing. It was probably just another way of saying Andy was getting ready to propose.

She had a momentary annoyance with these two women that she had come to love. Couldn’t they even let Andy propose on his own? Then she had a thought of eviscerating horror. The two trees with their forbidden fruit. She’d understood them more or less one lonely sunset evening as she sat alone under one of them, and still she had sat under them again. But she’d thought it had been the doing of Zechariah and had nothing to do with her or Andy either. She started to speak but Mountain Girl cut her off. “I guess you figured it out by yourself. I’m sorry.”

Vickie wanted to talk about it on the way home. Wanted to and knew it should be Andy doing the telling. Linda could see that it was killing Vickie as she tried to talk about other things and finally she interrupted Vickie’s increasingly mindless chatter. “Andy will tell me when he’s ready. But I know him; I know you and Mountain Girl. We all have our reasons. I’m not afraid and nothing will change.” Vickie thought it was pretty interesting how Linda had gotten as to the point as Mountain Girl.

Linda told Andy all about the trip. Everything.

It was on a trip to the beach that Andy proposed to her. The ocean roared up around them as he asked and she wasn’t quite sure she had heard him. He ought to know better than to ask such things when it was too loud to hear him she thought. After a few minutes of silence he had asked if she heard him. "Yes", she said. “Yes what, you heard me or the answer is yes” he had asked. And she was silent again, wondering what the answer to that last question was. She asked when did he want to get married and he said whenever she wanted to. She said that she thought that she was ready to be engaged. Does that mean yes he asked. “It means I’ll be engaged to you" she had replied. It took them another two months for her to figure out when she wanted the wedding to be. Andy got really discouraged about the whole thing and went to see Mountain Girl with Vickie to vent about what was taking her so long. The two women told him that without a date it wasn’t yet official and that this was his last chance for a romantic weekend with them that he would never forget, it would be a great wedding present for him one last time because he and Linda were certain to get married eventually. They meant every word of everything they said and all without any disloyalty to Linda, but he said that he didn’t want to make love to either of them ever again and hoped he never would. They said they both knew that and all three of them laughed and they both hugged him till they fell asleep on the ground in front of the fire. Sometime during the warm night hours away Linda must have come to terms with something because when he came to see her two days later she had a date set and the minister alerted. Vickie said it was the most powerful sex that she never had but it wasn’t till after their second child was a year old that Andy told Linda about it, only to discover that she somehow had known without ever being told.

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:25 pm

I seem to have duplicated a post so I deleted this.

Leeza · Post by **Leeza** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 5:06 pm

Absaroka

When i was a teenager a lot of my identity and self worth was tied up in playing.

I know that feeling. As a child and teenager a lot of my playing was done in church. When a pastor told me that I couldn't play or sing anymore in church that was a heart breaker, but I was too stuborn to change my lfe so he would allow me back in.

After that it was dance bands and rest homes and funerals. Even though it has been years since I have played much, I still enjoy picking up my accordian or sitting at a piano or organ and doing my thing.

When I was younger I wanted to do it perfectly. Now I just do it.

Leeza

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:57 am

Here's the next chapter. The story is almost over.

My wife and I had a bunch of things happen planning our wedding, some funny, some not. A good friend wrote a song for us, all about how much he loved my wife......he sang it while she danced with her father, and wrote another one for the service which we both loved. We have a great photo of him wearing my wifes wedding dress. He was tactul enough not to do this till after the wedding of course. Lots of folks performed at our wedding and the two of us did a number together.

I'll say no is words to a song my daughter wrote. I have arranged it for our band without the vocal and we've done it a couple of times. That was one of the very valuable things that came out of writing this: lyrics to songs that I eventually wrote songs for.

One of my wifes best songs that she sings is My Funny Valentine. My younger daughter made up a song called No One Want's To, although the words were far different than what is suggested here. One of these day's it will get an arrangement also.

Spooky Princess is a reference to the piano solo in Atlanta Rhythm Section's version of Spooky, which was by the way written by one of the band members long before the band existed. I was trying to evoke that feel in Dark Pastorale, the chapter describing the beginnings of Andy and Vickie's friendship. But the song I imagined Spooky Princess to be sounds a lot more like Elizabeth Reed.

Green Dolphin Street is in New Orleans. It's a famous jazz standard. I always thought it sounded like a city at sunrise.

Till death do us part. I'm not commenting on divorce which is sometimes a good idea. But that is a very serious vow. 24 years for me and "Linda" in a few weeks

Enjoy

And Finally

Almost immediately the planning of the wedding made it obvious to them that aside from all the big reasons, there might have been an awful lot of smaller reasons as well that it had taken Linda so long to get comfortable with the idea of marrying Andy. None of them were a surprise but still they were vexing. He had wanted to hold the ceremony in the mountains, at a place near the cabin they referred to as Prayer Rocks.
She knew all the stories about this place, knew what it meant, but she was not hiking up any mountain in her wedding dress and she wasn’t going to carry the dress up the mountain and then change either. Andy had immediately seen the rightness of her position when she pointed out that Vickie’s band probably would feel the same way and that they did want some good music at the wedding.
Vickie’s excitement over the whole thing was the next stumbling block as she came running into Linda’s home one day to play the song she had written for the wedding. Two songs actually, one about how miserable Andy had been waiting for her to make up her mind and one about how much she and Mountain Girl loved her husband to be. She had immediately seen what was wrong with her efforts and apologized, promising yet another song. It was one of the few times Linda could remember seeing her act embarrassed.
Then one evening as they were sitting by Rattlesnake Pond Vickie and Mountain Girl had talked enthusiastically about their own suggestion that they could mix things up a bit and walk the groom down the aisle and give him away and Linda had been concerned that they were serious about this. They might have been for all anyone ever divulged about what they had been thinking but Andy had said that they needed to understand that Linda’s family might not be comfortable with that. He said that if they really felt the need to give him away they could do it up here privately and Mountain Girl had said that he could be so stupid sometimes, didn’t he realize that they had done just that the time Linda had come to see them without him?
The guest list had been the next problem and then something else but finally they were ready and then a week before the wedding Mountain Girl informed them that she had their wedding present.
She had shot a bear and packed it down the mountain to store in a freezer at the hunting shop in town, thrilled because it looked to be big enough to feed absolutely everyone. She had sweated for days butchering it and then packing it on a mule and she was so proud that Linda was at a complete loss as she imagined her friends from school and her family when they discovered what dinner was. Even Dennis would have trouble she thought. Andy said that there was really no reason to tell anyone, that it tasted like pork and that they could just make something else available to the various vegetarians and people of similar dietetic proclivities that might be attending. Linda thought that any kind of lie at their wedding was wrong and Andy tried to agree with her but couldn’t bring himself to reject what was also one of his favorite meals.
Mountain Girl had even brought down bushels of wild onions and mushrooms and Andy had begun to talk about sauces made of things best not described. It had been his sister Emma, who earned Linda’s lasting respect for the clarity of her suggestion, who said that they could just have bruin at the rehearsal dinner. Andy had said that his family was pretty used to this sort of thing by now but Linda had remained unconvinced until she saw the unmistakable joy in their faces when he volunteered to let them keep the leftovers. Provision would be made for her family to have something else available if need be and they would not have to worry about what any other guests might think. The furry blanket the skin made was a fine wedding present which Linda would eventually find it difficult to sleep without on winter nights.
With all the difficulties in planning the wedding it seemed too much to hope for that things would go smoothly at the actual wedding but after it was over just about everyone agreed that it had been perfect in it’s imperfection, and that the imperfections had been pretty small. The ceremony had them both saying I do which was all that was really necessary and the reception had been a blast for everyone.
Linda had plenty of musical friends what with being a music teacher and she had invited many of them. Vickie’s wedding present to them had been the services of her band for free although she of course paid the musicians herself. She had recruited a few extra people and looked up a few old acquaintances and even Denise and Gordon were coming. Mountain Girl sat with Andy’s family and had a long conversation with Gordon that made absolutely no sense to anyone else who tried to either listen or participate in it with them. She danced with Dennis and Stu and Andy’s father and had the time of her life as she wondered if she would ever know anyone else who might have a party like this sometime. Maybe Stu or Emmy, she hoped.
While Mountain Girl was pretty relaxed about the whole thing and really just having a wonderful evening, Vickie was as maniacal as she had ever been, although she too was having an awful lot of fun. She seemed to have somehow decided that this was going to be the most important gig of her life and had written several more songs for the wedding including a song especially for Linda to sing with the band called Valentines Are Funny and another absurdly easy duet called No One Wants To about all the frustrations of planning the wedding for Linda to sing with Andy accompanying her on his trombone. She wrote out all his answers to her and his solo also and made him practice it till he started to wonder who’s party this really was. Standing in front of all his friends with his trombone as Linda sang it was all worth it and he thought of trying to play again but no it wasn’t really going to happen with all the practicing he knew it would take.
After that it seemed like every song had a guest of some sort. Andy’s parents thought of all the times they had put up with her practicing for hours at their house, remembered the bad end that they had expected her to come to and decided as they had so many other times that the cacophony she had brought to their lives had clearly been very worth it. Then they thought about how happy they were that Andy had just married Linda and not Vickie. Remembered their fears of so many possible teenage mistakes. They thought some more about how much both of Andy's strange friends had come to mean to them and thought some more about how glad they were that he had married neither of them. Thought about how much they hoped both women would remain an integral part of all their lives and wondered if Andy and Linda would name their children after them.
Lives flashed before them as they talked happily and gazed around the room contentedly. A slow, pretty song emerged from the band. Green Dolphin Street, it was called. A place Vickie had made a pilgrimage to years earlier. They thought some more about the years, year after years of dreading the idea of Andy marrying either of these women that they loved. Mountain Girl grabbed Andy's father's hand, led him to the dance floor without a word, wrapped her arms around him. For a moment she missed Zechariah terribly. "Pretty relieved, aren't you?" she asked Andy's father. "Absolutely" he replied, stopping their movements and hugging her. She was Mountain Girl. Nothing else needed to be said.

Near the end of the second set Vickie decided it was time for her big surprise for Andy. Her heart was in her mouth as she introduced the next song and she hoped desperately that she hadn’t made some sort of awful mistake. She was sure he would like it but still, this was his wedding. She started with a bit of history. “As you heard a little while ago, Andy’s a pretty good trombone player.” A forgivable exaggeration given the time and place she thought, and besides she had always loved hearing him play and that was the whole point wasn’t it? She went on. “Years ago he wrote a song. A pretty good song. But we were kids then and we could never quite get it to work.”
She remembered it all again as she spoke. It had been during the period when they had all been trying to compose songs for the band, and even Andy had given it a try. She remembered how proud he had been even as he was horribly embarrassed by the entire idea anyone hearing it. He’d called it The Spooky Princess and it had been achingly beautiful, what there was of it anyway. Gordon had worked with Andy on it for quite a while and several other members of the band including Vickie had come up with all sorts of ideas. But nothing they tried ever really seemed to work and the song had forever remained little more than a sketch. Looking back it was pretty obvious why they had had so many problems with it but that was another story that she wasn’t about to go into.
She continued. “Part of the problem was that no one, not Andy, not me, not Gordon,” she gestured towards the bandstand, “not anyone, could ever figure out an ending for it. But when Andy and Linda asked us to play at their wedding I started to think about it again and made up an arrangement that I think says what Andy wanted to say.”
She took a deep breath, more nervous than she’d been on stage for years. “I guess this is about as presumptuous as you can get. But I gave it a name too. It’s called The Warrior Princess and it’s for Linda. Because you know, the most important battle you ever fight might be something very quiet. A battle no one knows you’re fighting. You might not even know it yourself till it’s over and maybe you won or maybe you realize too late you’ve already lost. But when it comes to those quiet battles, Linda’s an Amazon.”
She’d said enough. Time to play the song before she lost her nerve, and it was a phantasm of hushed brass playing improbable chords while Gordon wove a spell of two lovers wandering through a mystical night with just a hint in the opposing chords and melodies from the rest of the band that all might not be completely well. And then Vickie, angry at first and relaxing a little bit with each chorus, each phrase capturing some of the lovely weirdness of it all till finally she and Gordon were in some sort of agreement, trading call and response till there was one final statement of the melody by the whole band and she could finally open her eyes and see what was going on with the listeners. She looked at Andy and Linda. Linda had tears in her eyes as she hugged Andy and then Vickie. Andy was hugging Gordon and looked so happy she thought he might cry too.
They played a couple of other things just to calm themselves down and then it was time for a break. Vickie went to sit with Andy’s family and as they were talking Denise triumphantly brought one of Linda’s friends from music school over to the table. It was her half brother George, the guitar player Vickie had been such friends with what seemed like a lifetime ago. He had missed the ceremony and was late to the reception but said that when he had figured out who Linda was marrying he had gone to quite a few lengths to assure that he would in fact be here no matter how late he arrived. Excitedly Vickie told him he just had to sit in with the band for a few songs and when the break was over she had yet another announcement to make about this long lost friend suddenly reappearing in such an unexpected yet special place and time.
She pulled up a song she had written a while ago called I’ll Say No. A song describing all the disappointments and fear she had felt as a child, all the times she had closed herself off to what life had to offer. She had written it thinking of the way George had played and often wished she could hear him perform it. Now was her chance. Denise’s voice was haunting as she too remembered their times together:

Every time I think about the way I thought that life should be I write another blues.
Wondering at the chances that I took and the other things I wouldn't do.
Knowing that what's in my heart so easily could get confused.
So I’ll say No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no.

And then it was time for George to finally say what he had to say, so long after she had written the song. She listened to him play and thought of all the feelings she had felt over the years about her chances in life. She had given her heart and soul three times, to Andy, Mountain Girl, and her music. She had always thought that was all she had, all she could give or allow herself to be given. She’d put every possible effort into this evening, as if it was her own wedding. She loved Linda. And Andy was married now. Intertwined with the joy and pride she felt was a hole. Not for the loss of Andy, but for the loss of all the energy it had taken to fight against her own life for so long.
She had thought she had stopped fighting that day she had frantically run up the mountain to the cabin to ask Mountain Girl to help her, but sometimes it seemed that the residue of that struggle would still appear at the most unexpected times. Like now. She remembered how much she had liked George. One of the few true friends she had ever had in her life. Not Andy or Mountain Girl but at the very least in a league with Linda or Dennis. He’d been cute and friendly and they could talk together for hours. She had stopped herself from feeling what she felt for him because she had been afraid it would endanger all that she had; her music, her band, Andy, even Mountain Girl. Well the music was fine, Mountain Girl was fine, and her friendship with Andy looked to be doing just wonderfully in the face of his falling in love with Linda.
George was having an awful lot of fun with the song and she joined him, playing an improvised duet for a long time until Andy and a few other people were actually staring at her and although the song was about saying no they both said yes. George stood up after the song was over, put down his guitar and hugged Vickie. Then he looked at her and asked why she hadn’t said so years ago.
Andy had to talk about this for a bit with anyone who would listen but after all it was his and Linda’s wedding no matter what else was going on. They tore themselves away from their friends and the honeymoon was not in the mountains but on a long lonely sandy beach that they could call their own because it had absolutely no history with anyone yet. They came back to yet another installment of falling in love but Vickie and George were almost ready it seemed.
There was just one thing that Vickie needed to figure out and one day she went to see Mountain Girl alone to ask her something. Andy hadn’t abandoned anyone with Linda and she didn’t want to either but where did this all leave Mountain Girl? And what about their secret? The incestuous secret held by the three of them for a lifetime since the night at the place they still referred to as Dead Bear Lake, now held by four. Could it be held by five? She had replied that there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her two friends and that if the most that was required of her was to let her two friends fall in love that she would get down on her knees every day of the rest her life to thank God for granting her such an easy life. The way she figured it she was going to wind up with four friends now which was four more than her father had ever had. And as for the secret, the three of them had trusted each other with it, with their lives. She would trust Vickie to trust George, and no doubt Andy would feel the same.
She repeated the vows she had heard Andy and Linda give each other. Till death do us part. What exactly did Vickie think that meant? And so not too long later Vickie and George were married the way Andy had first wanted to be, standing on the rocks that Zechariah had thought were a nice place to think, and Mountain Girl taking it upon herself to console Dennis every now and then even if he thought her wild existence was a little too weird.

Leeza · Post by **Leeza** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 10:47 am

Another beautiful installment. Thank you so much for shareing.

Leeza

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 10:44 pm

Thanks Leeza

i see there have been about 35 views since I posted that. I guess people really are reading it.........very flattering.

Zari

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:07 am

Well this is the last chapter. In many ways it's superflous, and most readers told me I could do without it. Hence the name, another musical term. The tag is the part you play as the singer leaves the stage after the song is over.

I'll post a bit about who Joey was, also who the bear might be, and why I even wrote this chapter next time. In the meantime, comments, questions, criticism, and of course praise we be gladly accepted. It is now someone elses turn to write.

Tag

Somehow everyone finally settled into the life that had puzzled them so much for their first thirty odd years. Marriage really didn’t change anything that much except that Mountain Girl had to do a little more hunting to feed her extra guests. But then the children began to arrive, almost all of them at once it seemed. First Chris to Andy and Linda and then Marisa to Vickie and George. Don came soon after to Andy and Linda and finally the children of Vickie’s sister, Joey and Sinifah, became a part of all their lives. Angry Joey and scared Sinifah. Motherhood for Vickie’s sister had been postponed until well into adulthood by various incarcerations but when it finally came she had proved to be no match for the challenges of parenthood and her surviving brother looked even less promising, so now Vickie and George had three children. A year later Vickie’s sister was dead and with no real knowledge of who the children’s fathers might be Vickie and George took the legal steps that had not been available to Andy’s parents as they cared for her.

Sometimes it seemed that all five children belonged to all of the adults which took a little getting used to for Linda. George on the other hand seemed to act as if he had known this would happen since the day he left Linda’s wedding reception. Sometimes he thought he might have known it ever since he met Vickie, but that was buried so far in the past as to be unknowable by now.

Mountain Girl thought that the presence of the children at her home was truly a gift that she had never really contemplated, doubting she would ever have any of her own. She explained her thinking to Linda and George one day saying that it had taken a miracle to pull off what her father had done with her, and although in life you needed to expect miracles, demanding them was another thing altogether. But miracles are funny things, and often unrecognizable. She would discover one day that now and then all five of the children were in fact living in her home with her for an entire summer lunar cycle with not another adult to be found anywhere and that these times had elevated themselves in her heart to a place she had thought only her first years with Andy and Vickie could ever occupy.

She also decided that she was not as much of a recluse as her father, and besides a little money might be nice. Lee had told her that her friend Ron from the waterfall had opened up a wilderness exploration company and to his astonishment she had silently appeared and then sat next to him one evening as he relaxed by a fire with some of his clients several days walk from the nearest road and had offered her assistance to him in his efforts. He had been delighted to see what he had come to think of as a phantom from his youth and then for years she guided his guests through the more traveled parts of the mountain range that she lived in and her eccentricity was a delight to both the other people in his employ and the folks they ushered around the mountains.

It was her way of giving something back to someone besides her friends she thought, remembering how her sponsor had said that even for her too much isolation was not a good thing. The money was really just a formality, the reward was in the revelation of the world she knew so well to others. She liked to describe it as a culmination of a process where she went from being poor to being rich, all without any change in her material possessions, and also part of her journey from being what she considered to be a selfish child terrified of losing what little she had to a generous woman with more than she could figure out how to give away.

Vickie remained Vickie, moving from the frantic musician to the recluse who sometimes spent weeks in the summer with Mountain Girl while she tried to write music and watch the children all at once. It never really worked, but there was still a nourishment in it for her so that when she would return to what she referred to as the other world she would be ready to battle again with the life of a jazz musician-always a struggle no matter how well things were going and no matter how stable George was. The Rock was what she called him. And so the years passed with the children growing to adulthood, even Joey who everyone always worried about with his anger and alienation. Vickie would think about how he was so much like her and reflect on how different everything might have been if Andy hadn’t offered to work on that silly project with her.

Eventually it came to seem to all of them that in fact they had been living happily ever after for quite a while in spite of all the everyday troubles that came to visit them. And even if life never has a happily forever after, at least in the end they were each blessed to die the way they had lived, which also meant that of course Vickie was first. It came at the end of a gig one night when her bass player got into an altercation with a biker who thought his old lady had been paying much too much attention to him. Vickie had intervened and when the blow from behind had knocked her to the ground she thought that she must be getting old and slow. Maybe all the years of peace had just dulled her awareness. She had grabbed a bottle on rising and was in her second swing with it and laughing like the maniac she had never completely said goodbye to when someone from behind stuck a knife in her butt, just the way she had done that other time so many years ago. Lying on the floor she was furious that she was missing what had turned into one of the most impressive brawls she had seen in quite a while. She pulled the legs out from someone and then the boot came down hard right on her nose. There was a blinding flash of pain like she had never felt before in her life.

The fight was big enough to have made the news anyway but now it was a murder and a big deal. After the memorial service and cremation they had brought her ashes up the mountain and planted a fruit tree over them next to Zechariah’s tree. Marisa was devastated but Sinifah and Joey were even more at a loss; Vickie was the only blood relative in their life that they even knew. Sinifah needed most of all to feel safe and less alone and with the combined efforts of George, Andy, Linda, Mountain Girl and even Dennis she looked to be able to regain her place in the world. Joey was another matter.

He was in his late teens by now and obsessed with revenge. With his stepmother’s killer in jail there was time to make elaborate plans and he did, again and again, leaving everyone concerned at a loss. Dennis talked to him about jail, Andy talked to him about right and wrong, and George told him how he couldn’t bear yet another loss, and none of it seemed to have any effect on him. Finally one day Mountain Girl appeared at his door. While he was recovering from the shock of seeing her in this unlikely location, she told him it was time to plan revenge. Not now and not here, she said; it was something best discussed elsewhere. Something they would talk about it in detail next week when he went hunting with her she told him, and Joey thought that he didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to go hunting, and wished his belovedly strange familial aunt would just go away even no matter how glad he was to see her and no matter how much he usually enjoyed these trips with her. But with the way she had of getting directly to the point she made it clear to him that this wasn’t really a request and a few days later he found that to his surprise he had gone to her little cabin as instructed.

Later that afternoon she said it was time to kill some food. They started with a practice she’d had for years now; a brief prayer, one of the many little rituals about these things that she had. After a successful hunt she also insisted on a moment of silent gratitude and then offered her thanks to the departed animal for providing them with life. It was what he considered a cute but silly ritual on her part. But she added something this time that was new: “For what we are about to do we ask Your forgiveness.” He wondered why she said that. She thought of hunting as fun but it was always for food and she had never seemed to have any doubts about it’s rightness.

His next surprise came when she shot an elk in one of it’s hind legs. She had lectured him countless times about providing their food with a safe, quick, and painless death. He knew that she considered this to be a matter of serious morality and she was far too good a shot to have missed a vital area by so much. They moved closer to the wounded animal which thrashed about in a frenzy, unable to flee but determined to protect itself. When they were close enough that Joey felt confident that he could dispatch the wounded animal with a single clean shot he raised his rifle but she pushed it back down. He stared at her and then she said something that completely bewildered him. The elk was not an enemy, she said, but it would have to do. He wondered what in the world she was talking about. She took his rifle from him and handed him a knife. “Finish him off” she instructed. He stood in confusion and she offered further instruction. “Wait till it’s gotten a little weaker. Then come up from behind while I distract it and jump on it’s back and slit it’s throat. Be careful to hold on as tight as you can but don’t worry, it’ll be dead real soon after you cut the jugular. Don’t let it roll over on you.”
He couldn’t remotely conceive of doing such a thing and stood there speechless.

After several minutes she took the knife from him. “Stand in front of it, about ten feet away and move slowly. It’ll watch you to see what you’re going to do.” He walked slowly to a spot in front of the elk as she had told him to while she slowly and silently moved around to a position opposite him. She waited for a while, forcing Joey to witness the pain and terror in the animals face and seeing the horror in his as he watched. “Your mom died fast” she reminded him. “Not like this. She never even knew what hit her.” She stood motionless for a moment as if composing herself and then with an astonishing speed leapt onto the animals back and almost simultaneously drew her knife across it’s throat before leaping off again. She had been right. It thrashed about wildly for a moment and then lay still.

She sat for a minute and then with an efficiency that had always impressed him she gutted their prey. Things seemed to be getting back to normal he thought hopefully as he wondered what in the world had gotten into her. But when she was finished she next cut the heart out and while crouching next to the carcass slowly took three large bites from it. With blood covering her arms and face she then handed it to Joey who was almost beyond horror by now. But he’d stood helpless and scared for too long to let this final challenge go unmet and at least the elk was dead now.

Trying not to vomit from the smell he choked down a mouthful wondering what was next. She watched him gag and as she smeared more of the blood on him commented that human blood had a far more unpleasant smell. Satisfied that she finally had his attention she then described exactly how it would feel to remember forever having killed another person rather than an elk, saying that he did not need to know how she had come by this knowledge, only that she had, and then asked if he really wanted to do that to himself. He had no reply and as they carried the elk on a sapling towards her home she assured him that if killing became necessary that she was more than able to exact revenge herself, something which Joey had never had doubts about at all. She made him promise that he would allow her the honor and then reminded him that she would not tolerate the breaking of a promise of this magnitude and that the entire conversation in fact would be best kept between the two of them. Joey was left feeling a little bit outwitted by the whole discussion but he and his sister had always been clear about one thing regarding their stepmother’s strange friend: that she loved them and would do anything to protect them. She just had, and at the same time he knew that she had no intention of trying to usurp what she considered the Creator’s proper role in this matter. The words of his adopted father and the other men sat in his mind as they washed themselves and their clothes in Rattlesnake Lake. She cooked the remains of the heart with some wild onions and by time she and Joey were eating it for dinner he thought that he felt free again for the first time since his stepmother’s death.

Dennis moved away some time after Vickie’s death and Linda thought Andy sometimes acted as if his moving away amounted to a loss of the rest of an entire portion of his childhood. He would talk endlessly about Dennis and the role he had played in all their lives which still didn’t really make any sense to Linda no matter how Andy tried to explain it to her. For a few years there was occasional correspondence before he moved again and contact was lost. Many years later George would tell Andy and Linda of his passing but the details would be as mysterious as his influence in their lives had sometimes seemed to Linda.

Mountain Girl was the next to leave but not until a long time later. No one would ever know any of the exact details. Andy, who was normally so logical and non intuitive, had had a feeling one day, a feeling like he was suddenly far more alone in the world than he had ever been. He couldn’t shake it and two days later he and Linda gave Mountain Girl an unplanned visit, hoping that it would somehow improve his mood. The cabin had the looked the way it did when she had gone somewhere expecting to return a few hours later but it was at the same time obvious that she had been gone for several days. They had looked around the rest of the afternoon and found no trace of her and towards the evening Andy, by now panic stricken, went back down the mountain to call Ron and ask for his help. He and Ron returned the next day to Linda’s vigil with men and dogs.

They smelled her first. Soon after they found what the coyotes had left of her, at the bottom of a ravine not far from her home that they had named Deathslide one day when they were all fifteen as they had rolled boulders into it to watch them smash into the stream below. The scar in the side of the ravine told the story of her efforts to stop her fall and the most they could hope for was that the fall had killed her out right. Somehow they managed to get what was left of her up out of the ravine and then they carried her back to her home and buried her with another fruit tree next to Vickie’s ashes. A week later Andy and Linda returned to find that a bear had dug up the grave and eaten most of her remains, leaving only a few half eaten bones. Linda was utterly horrified but Andy just stood and stared at the tracks the bear had left. They were huge. Andy started to laugh and Linda thought he had finally lost it, finally gotten hysterical.

She put her arms around him, comforting him. His body was the most relaxed she had felt him since Mountain Girl had died. "Look at the size of him" Andy commented, a look of victory in his eyes. "That's the biggest bear I've ever seen. It could even be a grizzly. She'd want it to be a bear. Not a bunch of worms. You know it's been years since a bear's come near the house. It must have known." She tried to think of something to say but before anything came to mind he went on with a sad glee in his voice. "That bear's going to carry her all over these mountains, and there'll be bear scat everywhere with a little bit of her in them. She couldn't be happier. I hope it’s a mother bear. Maybe she'll find her way into milk for the cubs." Linda thought that her husband couldn't possibly get any weirder than this but his ideas seemed to be making him happy.

"What do you want to do with the grave?" she asked quietly. "Oh, lets get a few shovelfulls of bear scat and bury them with a new tree. We'll leave the bones out for whatever wants them. She'd think that was being unselfish and you know how she was about that. It's a shame the her first tree got ruined. We really have to make it another peach tree. Otherwise it could be disrespecting her dad. They'd probably both send the bear to our house if we did that." Linda wondered if he might really believe that. Dennis, with his odd way of piecing together cause and effect, would have, she knew that, and maybe Andy did too. After all these years she still wondered about him and his two friends and the fact that they were now dead probably wasn't going to change any of her confusion. And so they reconstructed Mountain Girls memorial. Over the next few years occasionally a woman named Lee would come in solitude and silently look at the tree and one time her sponsor from AA, an elderly woman known as Joan T, had come with a guide from the town below, but they knew nothing of this. A year after Mountain Girls death Andy and Linda found a man sitting and looking at the trees. He had been friendly and knew all about what this whole tiny grove meant but hadn’t offered a name. Later they recalled Mountain Girl telling them that she too had found someone, a man that disliked company and seemed to pass through every few months to stay for a few days which was enough, and that since she knew who he was there was no need to assign him a name either, in fact they had both known better than to even bring up such a silly thing. She had told them just about everything there was to tell about him over the years but never once had they set eyes on him till now.

Linda went quite a while later with a heart attack in her sleep on a cold winter night with her bearskin blanket pulled up tight around her for warmth and by now Andy knew what to do even though this loss was almost his undoing. He had Linda's remains cremated since he knew she wouldn't want her corpse to enjoy the same fate as Mountain Girl's. Her ashes got a tree next to his friends and then for the next few years George and Andy would go up to the cabin that was now Andy’s and talk to them all. George left as peacefully as Linda and Andy who had always been so afraid of death began to think that if he would see them all again for real then it couldn’t be so bad. Age eventually left him unable to visit them in the winter but in late spring after the second winter away he had a chat with his doctor. Next he had a long talk with the minister of his church, telling him all the particulars he could remember of the secret he had held for so long, telling everything, telling in a way that Linda and George could not be told, telling it for himself and for his friends as well. The minister asked him if there was something Andy should be doing and he had to think about that for a long time. But any actions Andy could take would drag his children into something they had nothing to do with and Andy knew deep down in his soul that none of this should ever be their burden, and so after what seemed like a very long time he asked the minister to do what was right when the time came, having no idea what that might be. There were other things to do and not enough time to do them in and he thought of how lucky his friends had been. He wondered how Zechariah had felt. And when he had done most of what he needed to do he rented a horse and went up to the cabin with his sons Chris and Don.

That night he went out to what they had come to call the other orchard by the rock and just sat. Halfway through the night he went back into the cabin and at midmorning he ate something and went out to sit again. His sons joined him and the three of them sat there till dinner talking and Chris and Don heard all the old stories again. In the middle of the night he rose and breathlessly struggled and stumbled his way in the dark to the rock down a trail that could have been a hallway in his house for all it’s familiarity. He sat staring at nothing and thought of something Mountain Girl had told him; that never in her wildest dreams could she have hoped for the life she had been offered. Never in any of their wildest dreams, he thought, and then his sons joined him a little while later. They sat silently now, watching the stars and moon until the Creator he had tried so hard and so long to trust called him to join his wife and friends. It hurt for only a few moments, hurt less than all the fear he had once had. He got his own tree in the other orchard. His children and Marisa, and occasionally even Joey and Sinifah, came for quite a while but then when it was the grand children’s turn to come and love the place where so much had happened things had changed and no one but the descendants of the animals they had eaten so long ago came to enjoy the trees that had been planted to return what had been so generously given to them for so long.

Leeza · Post by **Leeza** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:02 am

Absaroka

I have so much enjoyed this thread that I hate to see it coming to an end.

I think this last installment is as good as the rest of them and I have enjoyed reading them all.

Leeeza

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Thu Apr 08, 2010 6:51 am

Thanks Leeza

You can always start your own. It helps if it begins as a short story.

The two people who disliked this chapter the most were both quite elderly with probably not too many years left. That may have something to do with it.

Originally I was going to write a lot more, mostly about my characters children. Vickie is modeled a bit after one of my daughters friends, although thankfully she had a far easier life. But that is where the spunk and willingness to do battle came from. There were several other people that made their way into her.

I began this at a time when my eldest was distancing herself from her childhod friends and developing a new circle of friends. A transition many go through. I'd been quite close to her friends when she was little, used to take them hiking and that sort of thing. I really wanted to say something about them. But when I started to write I discovered that much of that was really part of another story, and that the rest I'd already said. So Don, Chris, Marisa, Sinifah, and Joey remain mostly unformed. Joey is the only one who really got much attention and is modeled on a boy who lived across the street from us. Like Vickie, he'd show up for breakfast in the summer and stay for dinner. He lived with his grandmother. Lets just call him Tom Sawyer in an urban setting. I haven't heard from him in years, and I hope he has figured something out. He had a bad temper and was incarcerated for a while in his mid teens, but I remember him mostly fondly.

RL Sinifah was terrified of so many things. She would come to our house, look around, mutter "there's evil here" and ask to go home. She was convinced our house was haunted at one point. She also had a great many other fears. It would upset my daughter greatly but they remained very close anyway up till middle school. I've heard that things went well for her later on.

Marisa, Chris and Don have done well with the worst that's happened to them being a few too many experiments with drugs and teenage heartbreak.

I wanted to make it clear that both Vickie and Mountain Girl could not reasonable expect to die of old age. At another level however they represent the death of fantasy and childhood dreams. Remember that the 3 characters represent 1 person.

Andy's comment about the bear not withstanding, I've always wondered if just as people sometimes report being visited by loved ones just before they die, the bear wasn't Zecheriah, come to take his daughter home.

Lastly I left it unclear why Mountain Girls home is eventually abandoned. Did their descendants just forget? Did some plague wipe out humanity? Whatever the reason, just as it was thought to be haunted before Zecheriah went to live there, now it is perhaps once more haunted, albeit by happy ghosts. My sister commented that the idea of the place remaining long after those who lived there are gone really moved her. Just as this thread will eventually get buried only to be seen occaisionally by someone who goes digging. But it will remain out there in e land for a long time.

I had at one time an altenate beginning, where one is watching a solitary figure at a fire reading a book. The book is the story I wrote, and the solitary person, left unclear as to who it is, is the one person the 3 make up.

As for Ken and Bill's trees. Remember that the Garden of Eden held 2 trees, not one, that were not to be touched. I didn't realize I'd put in yet another Biblical reference till long after I wrote that, just as I didn't recognize the signifigance of the name I gave Mountain Girls father till a few years late when I was sitting in church one morning.

Thanks again to all who read this.

Zari