PART TWO: WANTING

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Psalm 23:1

Moondance

Coyote was so puffed up with pride that he wanted Everything-that-is to know about Dog’s new trick. So he ranged here and there through the hills until he found a high precipice from which he could see all the way around the Earth to his own backside.
      Satisfied, Coyote settled down on his rear haunches and gazed up at the night sky. He saw the brand new Moon, which was full of darkness and of no use to anyone.
      Then Coyote got a clever idea and began to howl straight at the dark Moon. He howled and howled until it started to glow with the fire of his thrilling song. Coyote howled a long time more, and when at last the Moon shone full and round and ripe, just like Dog before she dropped the pups, Coyote howled one last time. Then he sauntered off the precipice very pleased with himself. He could hardly wait to tell Dog what he had done.
      Meanwhile, the mysterious light from the pregnant Moon fell upon the People, waking them from a dead sleep. They rubbed their eyes and scratched their naked bodies, then stared in wonder at the night now lit with this silvery light.
      Everything looked odd, which made them laugh out loud and clap their hands with glee at this strange show. They kept laughing and clapping their hands, louder and louder. Before they quite knew what they were doing, the People began to move in a circle to the rhythm of their loud clapping.
      It was the first Dance, and it got wilder and wilder in the lusty light of the ripe Moon.
      When the People could dance no more, they fell giggling on the ground, exhausted but very pleased with themselves, just like Coyote.
      From where they lay they looked up at the pregnant Moon. Then the People knew they wanted to have pups, too, just like Dog.
      Only they didn’t know how to do it.
      First the People put their back ends in the air and pushed and grunted like Dog had done. But nothing came out of them except some very bad air.
      Then the People tried playing tricks like Coyote. But nothing came out of them except some very bad jokes.
      Finally they gave up, all of them.
      Except for one persistent woman named Evening Star. She convinced the others to press Coyote for the secret.
      “Tell us, Clever Coyote, how Dog got those pups to grow inside her.”
      Coyote, never one to pass up the chance for a good trick, pretended he was pleased that the People wanted to know the Secret of Life.
      “You must swallow the stones of the fruit in the Great Garden,” he told them, then sniggered into his mangy fur collar, for he knew that the old Gardener was very jealous and never let anyone touch his luscious fruit.
      At once the People started to walk away in every direction as if they knew exactly where to go. They kept walking in search of the Great Garden until they had spread across the face of the Earth.
      Only Evening Star stayed to ask Coyote, “But where is the Great Garden?”
      Coyote the Trickster studied Evening Star and saw at once how persistent she was. Humph! he thought to himself, this one is trouble.
      So he told her, “Take three steps backwards and two forwards at the same time and you’ll get where you deserve to be.”
      Evening Star tried to follow Coyote’s new Dance, but of course it couldn’t be done and she merely fell on her face in the dust.
      Coyote laughed at her foolishness, then shouted behind him as he loped back towards the hills, “I forgot to mention that if you want to find the Secret of Life you must have a hard man come with you.” He winked one eye at his own cleverness, but of course Evening Star didn’t know what a wink meant.
      “Why a man?” called Evening Star, who was known to like women better.
      “Why not?” she thought she heard Coyote reply, though she wasn’t too sure because by then he was far away. He could have said, “His cock.”
      Evening Star looked around her. No one was left except for a man everyone called A Damn Fool. He was standing there in the moonlight with a silly grin on his face and his cock in his hand.
      Hmmm, Evening Star thought, this is a man who thinks with his cock. Maybe he’s what Coyote meant.
      She walked right up to A Damn Fool and took his free hand. “Come along with me,” she said. “I want you to take three steps backwards and two forwards at the same time.”
      A Damn Fool agreed. After all, Evening Star was persistent and her hand in his felt better than his own cock. Or at least as good.
      So he tried to do the new Dance with her, but of course he couldn’t.
      When they both fell down in a dusty heap, Evening Star began to cry. “He’s tricked us! Coyote’s tricked us again!”
      A Damn Fool saw how sad Evening Star was, and he began to cry with her.
      Together they cried for a long time until their tears watered the parched Earth and a perfect garden sprang up all around them.
      Evening Star threw her arms around A Damn Fool and cried out, “We’re there!”
      A Damn Fool didn’t know where “there” was, but he liked the way Evening Star’s soft arms felt around his neck. So he put his around hers.
      “Eve,” he sighed.
      As he pulled her closer, she felt something hard pressed between her legs. It felt good, very good, and she felt herself grow warm and moist, very moist.
      “A Damn,” she murmured back, moving her hips in a new way.
      And that was the best Dance they learned that night in the Moonlight.

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5. Diane

What does it mean to want another person? I’d been wanting Diane for so long it had become a visceral part of me, like hunger when I don’t eat or exhaustion when I don’t sleep. I wanted her, had wanted her since the first time I saw her. That’s what I knew though I didn’t understand what it meant in the larger picture of my life.
      The first time I saw Diane she was half naked.
      She had just returned from an early morning run and was changing into her court clothes. I hadn’t known she was starting work that day, didn’t even know her name. That year the office had been going through attorneys like popsicles on a steamy summer day. They’d come for a week or a month and suffer extreme meltdown. They’d get overwhelmed by the workload, or decide they hated our clients, or their spouse would get into medical school in Wisconsin. It was a revolving door of young lawyers, and often we’d go brief stretches with no attorney on staff.
      So I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in the attorney’s office when I had cut through it to get to my own. It was a shortcut I often took, especially first thing in the morning when no one else was around. I had opened the closed door, a cup of Green Mountain coffee in one hand, a copy of the Vermont criminal statutes in the other. The shades had been pulled and the room was in semi-darkness. My head was down, so the first thing I saw was a pair of bare feet standing next to running shoes stuffed with socks.
      My head jerked up to find a blonde woman around thirty standing in front of the desk. We were less than an arm-stretch away. She was dressed only in black Lycra shorts, having just pulled off her jogging bra, which she held inside out in both hands. She didn’t say a word, didn’t cross her arms in front of her, didn’t flinch or scream, but simply stood there looking at me looking at her, just as if she were fully clothed.
      The room was cold and her nipples were erect. Her breasts were small and firm, encircled by wide purple-brown aureoles. Despite the cold, a single clear bead of sweat slid down her chest. High on her left breast was a tiny mole with two black hairs growing out of it. I saw all this in a glance, then averted my eyes.
      “Sorry,” I blurted. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
      “It’s okay,” she answered calmly. It’s what people say and never really mean. But she did mean it. Diane was comfortable in her semi-nakedness in the semi-dark in a way I’d never experienced before. I guess I should have been embarrassed even if she wasn’t, but her calm acceptance of this awkward encounter kept me from it.
      I backed out of the room and quietly closed the door behind me, then sat on the couch in the reception area, sipping my coffee and trying to read the annotations to Disorderly Conduct.
      A few minutes later she came out of her office dressed in a gray wool business suit, a black satiny blouse with a floral tie, and low black heels. Her blonde hair was brushed back high on her head, and she exuded a vitality that made me smile with pleasure.
      “Hi, I’m Diane Ashley-Warner,” she said, her arm outstretched to shake hands. I rose from the couch and took her hand. Her green eyes were looking directly into mine, and she was smiling at me in that incredibly open way she has.
      And that was it.
      We never once talked about meeting that way, no embarrassed laughter, no veiled allusions, nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened, or rather that it wasn’t weird enough to warrant comment.
      Only I couldn’t get the feel of her unashamed nakedness out of my mind. It was like a page in a sexy novel that kept spreading itself open to me, day after day, night after night, enticing me to revisit the scene one more time.
      So I wanted her, wanted to run my tongue over those erect nipples, to play with the twin black hairs, to know what it felt like to slip inside her.
      Did I care that she was married? That she was a beautiful, vibrant woman almost twenty years younger? That I was an ugly man who had no reason to hope she would return my passion?
      No, I didn’t care about any of that, or if I did, it didn’t stop me from wanting her. It only kept me from letting her in on the secret.

“You think it’s secret but it isn’t,” Diane said as she drove by St. Johnsbury Academy and down the hill on Western Avenue past the Middle School.
      “What do you mean?”
      “The way you look at me. What else could I be talking about?”
      I didn’t know what to say. This was not a conversation I had ever imagined. My silence grew louder the longer it lasted, louder even than the pinging of a classical guitar from the CD player or the intermittent swish of the windshield wipers.
      It had started raining as we had gotten into the car at the courthouse, and now as we passed by the ramps to I-91 and headed towards Danville on Route 2, the rain was changing into wet snow, heavy splotches that splattered against the windshield. It was mid-October and the first real snow of the season, not unusual in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom where winter arrived early and stayed late.
      I stared out the side window. It was dark now and I couldn’t see very far into the leafless woods, but I kept trying anyway.
      Diane let my silence go on, though I could feel her starting to get impatient. She looked at me, turned her eyes back to the road, glanced at me again, turned up the volume on the CD player, then back down. Her impatience suddenly crystallized into anger. “Are you going to pretend that I’m making this up?”
      “What do you want me to say, Diane? That I want you, that I’ve wanted you from the first moment we met?”
      I thought I saw a small satisfied smile cross her face, then she reached over to place her hand on mine as she said softly, “Yes, if that’s what’s true.”
      Which could have meant many things, including that it was okay for me to want her, that she felt the same way; but this was so far beyond my reckoning that I interpreted her hand and her “yes” to mean one thing and one thing only — that it was understandable for a man like me to want a woman like her.
      She squeezed my hand with hers, then brought it back to the steering wheel as we approached a long incline.
      We drove the rest of the way to Danville in silence, then she turned left at the village and headed south on the Peacham Road where she and Bob had remodeled an old farmhouse. It perched on the side of a hill surrounded in front with a hundred acres of pasture and behind with a hardwood forest. The driveway was a dirt road that wound up through the fields for a quarter of a mile. The house, a classic Cape, stood next to a huge red barn that they’d restored.
      She parked in front of the house, leaving the keys in the ignition.
      Nodding at the keys I said, “I see you’re starting to acquire Vermont habits.”
      “Yeah, you’d think I would know better given what we do for a living.”
      There were two horses, a black and a gray, in a paddock next to the barn, and as she opened the door to the Audi she said, “I have to take care of the horses as soon as I change. Would you like to help or would you prefer to get the stove going?”
      “Now there’s a Hobson’s Choice if I ever heard one.”
      “You sound like a lawyer, Jimmy. I’ve heard that term before, but don’t know what it means. And who the hell is Hobson?”
      “Hobson ran a livery stable in England and promised his customers any horse in the house. Only it turned out they had to take the horse closest to the door, which meant it wasn’t a true choice.”
      Diane laughed and said, “Actually, you don’t have to do anything but relax. Come on inside. I know there’s a beer in there with your name on it.”
      I got out of the Audi and stepped into a couple of inches of wet snow, wondering where this was leading. From somewhere above us spotlights came on automatically, apparently triggered by our motion. I could see the house better now. It had new clapboards that were stained a rich brown. Every window had been replaced, the panes gleaming, and the roof had been re-shingled with cedar shakes. The house had that gentrified look common along the Peacham Road. Not many years ago it had been lined with dairy farms, but now instead of cows there were riding horses in the fields.
      I followed Diane into a mudroom that led into the kitchen. Once indoors, she started turning on lights in every room, calling out behind her, “Check the fridge, I’m sure there’s some Catamount Ale on the door.” I heard her pull open the cast iron door of a wood stove and quickly toss in wood, then run upstairs, yelling “Make yourself at home.”
      The old Cape had been gutted and completely redone, the kitchen being some North Country designer’s dream of modernity-meets-the-farm. The floor was laid in blue slate, the walls done in oak wainscot beneath swirled plaster painted a desert sand color. Overhead the original beams had been exposed, dark and massive. There was a butcher-block table in front of the back wall, which was all windows, floor-to-ceiling, looking out on a grape arbor that was lit by colored floodlights.
      In one corner of the kitchen was an ancient Warm Morning wood cookstove in mint condition. Opposite it was a wall of natural oak cabinets where there were dual sinks, a dishwasher, a refrigerator and freezer — all of them stainless steel. There also was a long counter with a microwave, toaster oven, espresso machine, and an automatic coffee maker — all of them the color of ripe Georgia peaches. In the center of the room was an island that included a gas range beneath a hand-forged, black iron ring from which hung copper-bottomed pots and pans and long garlands of onions and garlic. Next to the stove was a butcher-block work counter covered with Mason jars filled with dried herbs, beans, and grains. The room was lit with recessed fixtures and small spotlights in the corners, creating a dappled scene of soft light and shadows.
      Diane must have turned on a sound system, for suddenly I could hear meteorologist Mark Breen on Vermont Public Radio. “From the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, this is the evening report of ‘Eye On The Sky.’” He described the fledgling winter storm outdoors, promising strong winds and accumulations of up to a foot in the higher elevations. His voice filled the room from speakers cleverly hidden by leafy green plants, which were the only sign of life. There was no clutter, no dirty dishes in the sink, no newspapers or junk mail or human detritus anywhere.
      It had all the warmth of a museum.
      I walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. The shelves were packed with fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables, and small plastic containers of designer health foods. There also were six types of mustard. I counted. And three bottles of white wine: two kinds of Chardonnay and a White Zinfandel. On the door were samples from every micro-brewery in Vermont, from Magic Hat to Long Trail to Catamount. I pulled out a bottle of Amber Ale and started searching the drawers for an opener.
      At that moment Diane walked through the room dressed in jeans and a red flannel shirt. “It’s in the middle drawer. I’ll be back shortly. If you’d like, feel free to soak in the hot tub. It’s a great way to unwind.”
      When she reached the door to the mudroom, she turned back. “Oh yeah, can you shut down the wood stove in the livingroom in a few minutes?”
      I nodded my head.
      “Thanks!” she said, and was gone.
      I took my brew and explored the rest of the house, which was pretty much as expected — both upscale and laid back, yet not really lived in. On the walls and shelves of every room, even in both first-floor bathrooms, were framed photographs of Bob and Diane. Mountain biking in France. Body-surfing on Maui. Snowboarding in Stowe. They exuded health and wealth, the handsome American couple on safari in the world’s playgrounds.
      What the hell am I doing here? And where’s Bob?
      I was standing in his office, a darkly paneled room lined with law books and Bob’s diplomas. Robert Ashley-Warner at thirty years old was everything I wasn’t — educated at Harvard, then Stanford Law, now firmly ensconced in one of Vermont’s largest and most prestigious firms, Downs, Rachlin & Martin. There even was talk of an upcoming foray into state politics. Bob certainly had the look. Tall and fit, clean-shaven and square-jawed, he carried himself with the kind of assurance that successfully seduces voters. Besides that, Bob was smooth, smart, and Diane’s husband of five years.
      I left the office and went back into the livingroom where I shut down the wood stove. In one corner there was a sound system that baffled me for several minutes until I figured out how to eject the CD cartridge. On shelves above the unit were hundreds of CDs, which ranged from classical to pop. I picked out what appealed to me: The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and Van Morrison’s The Healing Game. In the cover photo Morrison looked like an aging Mafioso Don. “We’re getting old, hey Van?” I switched the tuner from radio to CD, then cranked up the volume.
      I walked down a narrow hallway that headed towards the back of the house and discovered an add-on to the original Cape. It was a pentagonal room with floor-to-ceiling windows on each wall. The room was heavily carpeted and filled with plants and exercise equipment, including a treadmill, some kind of Nautilus, and free weights. At the far end was a glass door that opened to the outside. Beckoning to me from the middle of a raised platform was a hot tub, steam rising off it as heavy flakes of wet snow swirled in the golden light shining from the windows.
      I set my ale on a windowsill and my clothes on a stool by the door. Stepping into the deepening snow cover, I left a set of barefoot tracks behind me and climbed into the tub. The Beatles filled the night air from outdoor speakers, and I was lost in a steamy womb of hot jets and sizzling snow.
      I don’t know how long I soaked, but it must have been awhile because Van Morrison was singing the second cut, “Fire In The Belly”:

       Spring in my heart, fire in my belly too
       I come apart, I don’t know just what to do
       Got a heart and a mind and a fire inside
       And I’m crazy about you

       I was sitting at the far end of the tub facing the house, and when I opened my eyes I saw Diane inside the pentagonal room doing yoga stretches. Though the lights in the room had been dimmed, I could see she was naked. Her supple body eased through a series of postures, making them look like a sinuous dance to The Healing Game.
      At one point she was sitting on the rug, her legs stretched far apart, her arms crisscrossing her breasts. Her eyes, which had been closed, slowly opened and looked directly into mine, so she knew I was there and watching her.
      Slowly she lowered her head all the way to the floor in front of her, then came back up, brought the soles of her feet together as she lifted her arms straight over her head and continued backwards until her head touched the floor behind her. As she did this she arched her back and her hips rose up, exposing her fully. She brought both hands to her thighs and began massaging them, starting at just below each knee and moving down until both hands fingered apart her labia.
      With the middle finger of her right hand she began slowly rubbing herself just below her clitoris. It was a fluid, circular motion that got faster and faster.
      I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
      As she got more and more aroused, I did, too, and I thought I might come when I saw her shudder and melt back down into the soft rug. She lay there for a moment, taking deep breaths, then rose and quickly walked outdoors to slip into the tub opposite me.
      She ducked all the way under the water, came up and shook the wet hair away from her face. As she put both arms along the edge of the tub, her feet reached out and touched my leg, then she stretched further until her toes grazed my penis as if she wanted to make sure I was hard.
      Satisfied, she grinned, rather sheepishly, I thought, for someone who’d just revealed her own sexuality so completely.
      Then Diane got very serious and looked into me, not at me, but all the way down inside me until all I could see and feel was her.
      Finally she spoke. “That’s what I’ve been doing every night since the first time you looked at me in my office that day.” She sighed. “I’m tired of doing it alone.”
      She let go of the tub, floated over and straddled me, then eased herself down until I was inside her. I slipped my arms under hers and held onto her shoulders as she wrapped her hands around my neck. In the heat of the tub underneath the stormy sky, our mouths opened and met, and we danced to the sultry rhythm of the swirling snow.

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6. The Husband

This is what Bob wants, not me.” Diane waved her fork dismissively at the room around us. We were sitting at the butcher-block table in the kitchen eating whole wheat linguine smothered in olive oil, fresh basil, and garlic. It was laced with diced green peppers and bright red hot-house tomatoes Diane said had been picked the day before in East Thetford. “I’d rather live the way you do.”
      “How do you know how I live?”
      “I’ve been to your cabin.”
      “When?” I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice.
      “Several times. Is that a crime I somehow missed in Title 13?”
      “Of course not. I’m just curious, Diane.”
      She wasn’t mollified.
      “You undress me with your eyes every day for a year and then resent my curiosity about you? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
      “I’m a very private person.”
      “There’s a difference between private and secretive. Do you realize the only thing I know about you is your name and where you live? And I wouldn’t know that much if I hadn’t followed you one night after you left the bar at Grandpa’s Cigar.”
      She had stopped eating and was just playing with her pasta, pushing it around the plate with her fork. She took another sip of wine. She’d been sucking down glasses of Chardonnay since we had showered and dressed. At first it hadn’t seem to affect her, but now she was getting both looser and more aggressive. “Did I ever tell you I hate that name? It reminds me of fat stinking cigars and greasy Good Ol’ Boys. What kind of image is that for a restaurant?”
      “It’s just a family thing. A good meal at their house was followed by grandpa lighting up his cigar.”
      “I still think it’s a lousy image. And I hate the decor, if that’s what you can call it: Pine boards everywhere you look and no windows. I feel like I’m inside a fucking coffin.”
      “If you had seen it before they remodeled you might not complain.”
      “What was it like?”
      “A Howdy’s fast food joint. All garish plastic.” I wound up another forkful of linguine, chewed slowly, then said in what I thought was a normal tone, “Why didn’t you let me know you were at the cabin?”
      “Why are you so goddamned guarded about everything?” Her eyes flashed with anger, but then she backed off some. “I just wasn’t ready yet, okay?”
      “Ready for what?”
      “For tonight, what else?”
      “What is tonight?”
      “What do you mean?”
      “I mean what are we doing?”
      “It’s called ‘starting an affair.’ Are you familiar with the term, Mr. Hobson’s Choice, or shall I elucidate?”
      In the background Sheryl Crow was singing All I wanna do is have some fun / I got a feeling I’m not the only one . . . . It was Diane’s pick, not mine. Crow’s voice annoyed me. Too much sultry whine and screaming adolescent.
      Diane looked straight at me and started singing the chorus. She had a good voice, more depth than Crow’s, less whine and more woman. She knew she was good, too, and smiled at me as she found the harmony:

All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.

As she sang she rolled her bare shoulders to the rhythm, and her dark nipples rubbed against the sheer tank top she had put on.
      I was getting aroused again, the third time that evening.
      We had gone straight from the hot tub to her bed, a massive canopied structure where we had groped and licked and cavorted till I thought the bed would break. It had been years since I’d been with a woman, and I had forgotten how fine it felt to abandon oneself to another’s sexuality.
      All I wanted to do was make love until the sun came up over Peacham Road.
      I dropped my fork on the plate and stood up. Diane met me halfway around the table and I slipped my hand past the elastic band of her mauve sweat pants. She was wet and wide open to my fingers. She trembled and came quickly, then I turned her around, unzipped my fly and entered her from behind.
      She started moaning, getting louder with each thrust of my hips, calling out to me over and over. Her passionate wailing was somewhere near ecstasy, and it made me feel powerful, almost invincible, and more beautiful than I’d ever felt in my life.
      Yes, beautiful.
      We were standing that way — her straight-arming the table top for support as I pulled out and thrust back in, cupping her breasts in both my hands — when the door from the mudroom opened and a cold blast of air hit us from behind.
      “How charming! My faithful wife and her lover at play in the kitchen.” Bob’s voice vibrated with rage. Though we’d never met, I knew it was him. Who else could it be?
      I re-zippered my pants as Diane pulled hers back up, and we turned in tandem to face him.
      Neither of us said a word as we caught sight of the small handgun he was pointing directly at us, but I thought I heard Diane take in a sharp breath. The silver barrel gleamed in the light as Bob pointed it first at me, then at Diane.
      “Jesus Christ, Bob! Put that thing away!” Diane said, trying for a commanding voice but failing miserably. I could feel her starting to shake beside me.
      “Not a chance, Diane. I’ve been watching you for over an hour, and I’m not in any mood to negotiate anything.” Then he aimed directly at my crotch and I watched in horror as he slowly squeezed the trigger.
      Time stopped but my mind didn’t: This is how it ends, after all these years of hiding, it ends here and now.
      But instead of a fiery flash I saw a long stream of water shoot from the pistol and wet my crotch as Diane and Bob doubled over with laughter. They shrieked and they howled, their faces contorted in unrestrained mirth, while I struggled to make sense of being alive.
      I waffled between relief and rage, disbelief and humiliation, then started to walk out the open door. Bob reached out a hand to stop me, but I pushed it aside.
      “Wait!” Diane yelled after me, but I kept going through the mudroom and into the night.
      When I got outdoors I climbed into the driver’s side of the Audi and turned the key. I jammed it into reverse and floored it. As I flew backwards down the drive, I could see Diane running in the snow after me.
      The Audi started sliding and I cut the wheel hard, spinning the car all the way around until it was facing downhill.
      I rammed it into low and took off, the plinking of a classical guitar playing softly in the background.

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7. The Accident

So I had gotten exactly what I’d wanted. Only I hadn’t known that the price would be so high. I wondered how long they had planned their little joke. And how I could face Diane in the morning.
      I couldn’t. It was that simple.
      I couldn’t imagine seeing her ever again.
      But what about the Audi?
      I’d park it where I’d left my truck behind Anthony’s Diner, pack up my things in the office, head to the cabin, and stay there.
      No, I wanted all the way out.
      I’d go to the cabin, grab some clothes, and disappear. Just be gone into the storm like I’d never been here in the first place.
      No trace. No trail. Just gone.
      I’d done it once, I could do it again.
      I drove back towards Danville on the Peacham Road, pushing the Audi hard, almost losing it in the dip at Harvey’s Hollow but not caring.
      Rage and humiliation coursed through me like a drug, slamming me against the spiked walls of my mind.
      How could I have been so naive, so stupid to believe that she had wanted me, too?
      It had been a joke from the start, an amusing sexual drama for the bored couple, a one-act farce replete with silly props.
      Why hadn’t I noticed that the gun was a fake? Was I that much of a fool?
      I pounded my fist against the steering wheel and screamed.
      Fuck me fuck me fuck me!
      She had, hadn’t she? All the way round.
      When I started to gag on my own gall, I forced myself to breathe deeply.
      As I did I caught her scent in my beard, and it teased me mercilessly until I knew I still wanted her, even now.
      I saw Diane’s naked body stretching in the soft light, watched her open her eyes and stare seductively into mine. The entire evening started re-playing in my mind. Steam rose from the tub, I tasted her tongue, felt her fingers beneath the water pushing me deep inside her. I closed my eyes and —
      Flashing orange lights ripped through the scene as I heard the bull-roar of an air horn. I slammed on the brakes, slid sideways and stopped just before careening into a state road truck. Its giant plow shot a wave of slush and snow onto the Audi’s windshield, violently rocking the stalled car.
      Then it was gone.
      I sat for a moment, my heart pounding at this second brush with death.
      No, that’s wrong. The first was an act, a fool’s game.
      I re-started the engine, but the wipers wouldn’t budge beneath the heavy snow, so I got out of the car and pushed the snow away until they broke free.
      I stared at the back of the orange truck as it disappeared to the east on Route 2, the clack-clacking of its tire chains echoing eerily in the night. I looked around me and couldn’t believe I was in Danville. How long had I been oblivious?
      I checked the digital clock on the dash. It was 11:24.
      It had stopped snowing and the temperature was dropping fast. I shivered as a frigid gust of north wind bit into me.
      I realized I’d left my sport coat at Diane’s.
      Fuck it!
      I wasn’t going back there, not now, not ever.
      Then I knew something I hadn’t guessed until that moment: I wouldn’t be needing that coat because I had no intention of going back to legal work.
      The decision was so clear and irrevocable that I felt momentarily better. I realized I’d been heading in this direction for a while. I just hadn’t been able to admit it until now. Until I’d been pushed over a ledge I hadn’t even known was there.
      I felt a rank distaste for the work I’d been doing, and then I knew why I hadn’t let myself feel it until this moment.
      Because I had been blinded by pride, just as I had been tricked by lust.
      I hadn’t been helping people cross back over the River, all I had been doing was standing safely on the other side, giving the appearance of help. I made the system look fair when it wasn’t, never would be. Look at Lucky. The Dog would never see the light of day again. He’d be caged for the rest of his life, and no one would care whether he’d killed that baby or not.
      Thanks to the one person who was supposed to help him.
      Diane Ashley-Warner, Esq.
      She’d fucked more than me tonight.
      And I had let her get away with it. Had even helped her! Had sat next to Lucky, keeping him calm while she deliberately sold out the one and only hope he had — the right to proceed to trial.
      I punched the roof of the car with the heel of my fist, then screamed in pain, but whether it was more psychic or physical I didn’t know. I stuck my battered hand into a clump of snow until it stopped throbbing, then climbed into the car. I backed up and straightened out, turned right onto the highway, then sharp right again. I’d take Joe’s Brook Road, cut diagonally through Danville to reach Barnet Mountain and the cabin. The back way wouldn’t be plowed yet, but the snow wasn’t so deep I couldn’t get through it in the Audi, which was a heavy car with all wheel drive.
      Just as I passed by the headquarters of the American Society of Dowsers, the thick cloud cover started breaking up. I could see the moon rising above the White Mountains in the east. It was nearly full and very bright, made even brighter by the reflective surface of the new snow.
      I saw snow-devils whirling across open fields, racing with the flickering shadows cast by the moon behind passing clouds. It felt as if I were racing with them, skating at high speed over the virgin snow.
      My mind began to slow down, to empty itself in the moonlit snowscape, and when it did I felt a great sadness take over. It was overpowering in its intensity, and I needed to cry but couldn’t. The sobs that shuddered inside me wouldn’t break to the surface, and I felt deadened by their weight.
      I started to feel physically ill as if I might be sick to my stomach, so I eased up on the accelerator, turned off the CD player, and let the car slowly drift to a stop just before Barnet Center Road. I lowered the power windows about half way and let the cold air revive me. I could hear Joe’s Brook rushing along the roadside to my left. It was a reassuring sound, calming and cleansing at the same time.
      Then I heard something more than the brook, a grunting whine like a dog makes when it’s hurt or trapped. It stopped, started again, and I wondered where it might be coming from since there were no houses or farms nearby. I looked at the clump of cedars that fronted the bank above the brook. There were two slight indentations that hadn’t completely filled with snow. They looked like a set of tire tracks.
      I opened the door to the Audi and got out. When I stood on the road, I could hear a dog’s howl fill the night around me. There was no doubt that it came from over the bank. I trudged through the new snow, which was maybe six inches deep here, and when I reached the embankment, I could see a car. It was a white Ford with a set of blue lights on top and Caledonia Sheriff stickers all over it. It must have been coming down the steep road from Barnet Center, coming too fast down the mountain in the storm and been unable to make the turn. It would have ended up in Joe’s Brook if it hadn’t crashed into a thick cedar half-way down the embankment. The front end was pushed back into the passenger compartment, and I wondered if anyone were left alive.
      I started sliding down the embankment towards the vehicle, snow pushing up my pant legs.
      When I reached the vehicle, I could see a shadowy figure in the back seat clawing at the heavy metal screen that separated the cabin.
      I pushed the snow away from the window and peered into it. Staring back at me on the other side of the glass was Lucky, his eyes wide with terror. It didn’t look as if he had been injured, and he started thrashing about, shaking his chains and whimpering at me.
      I looked up front and saw the two deputies, their lower bodies crushed by the front end, their faces a mask of blood.
      I couldn’t get a door open, either because they were locked or blocked by the snow and brush.
      Clambering up the embankment, I found a tire iron in the trunk of the Audi.
      When I got back to the wreck, I yelled to Lucky, “Get over to the other side and turn away from me!”
      I had to repeat it two or three times before he cowered by the opposite door. With both hands I smashed the tire iron into the side window. The glass splintered but held together as it’s supposed to, so I kept whacking it with the iron until finally I’d emptied most of the shattered glass from the window opening.
      “Climb through the window, Lucky!”
      It wasn’t easy, especially with him trussed in chains, but by pulling and lifting, I finally got him through the opening. As I did, I slipped in the snow and fell backwards, Lucky tumbling on top of me. We started rolling down the bank towards the brook, but stopped after a few feet.
      Lucky was trembling with cold and fright, and I had to half-carry, half-drag him back up the embankment. There was a car blanket in the back seat of the Audi, and I wrapped it around Lucky as I helped him climb into the front seat.
      The only thing I could do for the two men in the car was let it be known where they were. It was clear they wouldn’t be wanting anything more in this life.

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8. The Witch

What do you want, Lucky?” As soon as I had gotten into the driver’s seat he had reached over and begun pulling at my sleeve, trying to convey something I couldn’t fathom. He was whining and moaning, obviously in deep distress. At first I thought it was due to the trauma of the accident and the cold, but as he continued to yank my sleeve I wondered if he had been hurt after all.
      I turned on the dome light and spread open the blanket to see if I could find any obvious injuries. It was then that I saw the burn marks on his left wrist.
      “Oh my god,” I said as I pulled up the sleeve to the ratty coat he wore.
      There were numerous small blisters, some broken and oozing, all of them inflamed. The handcuff had rubbed raw those blisters directly beneath it. To have the metal touch the raw flesh of his wrist must been have agonizing.
      “How did you get these burns?” It looked as if someone had deliberately applied a lit cigarette to his wrist, creating some kind of pattern or design.
      “Who did this to you, Lucky?”
      Tears started running down his face, and I thought he nodded his head towards the wreck in reply, but I wasn’t sure.
      I had seen a small first aid kit in the trunk, so I retrieved it and applied a salve. There was a roll of gauze in the kit, which I wrapped around his wrists beneath the handcuff. When I finished I gently pulled his sleeve back down.
      I started the car and drove the short distance to where Joe’s Brook Road meets Route 5. Five miles to the left was the State Police barracks, two miles to the right was my cabin. I had planned to drive directly to the barracks, but now I was starting to wonder. I put the Audi in park and stared at the stop sign.
      Those burn marks hadn’t been there when I’d last seen Lucky at the courthouse less than six hours ago. As far as I knew, the only people he had been with in the intervening time were law enforcement.
      “Are you telling me the cops did this to you?” I was incredulous. I knew Vermont cops, worked with them every day. Despite my angry complaints when they violated the rights of suspects, overall I found them to be decent human beings who took to heart their duty to serve and protect. Sure there were bad apples like Trooper Smalley, but it didn’t seem possible that even someone as mean-spirited as Smalley would stoop to torture.
      Lucky must have sensed my disbelief, for he started sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving, his chest shaking. I put my right arm over his shoulders and pulled him towards me, trying to comfort him as best I could.
      Then I started wondering why the sheriffs had been coming down the back side of Barnet Mountain in a snowstorm when they were supposed to have been transporting Lucky to the Vermont State Hospital fifty miles away in Waterbury.
      “It’s okay, Lucky. You’re safe now. It’s okay,” I crooned over and over until he had cried himself out. Then he rubbed his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat, took several panting breaths the way a child does after sobbing, and fell asleep in my embrace.
      As he did, I glanced down and studied his face. The moon was shining through the windshield directly on him, highlighting the split image of his skin. One half of his face was dark from the port-wine stain of the strawberry; the other half was pale white, nearly translucent in the bright moonlight.
      Who was this strange young man I held in my arms? Was he a vicious murderer of an innocent baby? A hapless victim of torture? Could he be both?
      As I pondered the questions and studied Lucky, there came a moment when I stopped seeing the split sides of his face. He took a deep breath, shuddered one last time, then relaxed into deep sleep. As he did so, his dichotomous features merged into one, a childlike innocence fusing the whole of him.
      At that moment Lucky looked more like an angel than anyone I’d ever seen. I drew him closer to me, rocking him slightly as he snuffled and snored. Then I asked myself whether I could risk turning him over to his tormentors.
      I didn’t have to ask twice.
      I put the Audi in gear and turned right to my cabin.

The private dirt road up my side of Barnet Mountain is steep and rocky, and it runs like an exit ramp directly off Route 5 a half-mile north of Barnet Village. Of course the road hadn’t been plowed yet, so as I approached it I picked up speed, hoping momentum and all-wheel drive would suffice. The Audi flew up Barnet Mountain in a spray of white until it hit a deep hole in the road about half-way up, then the rear end started coming around until it hit a second hole and bounced back in the right direction. After that I eased up on the accelerator and climbed the remaining quarter-mile steadily to the top.
      My cabin sits on a ten-acre parcel on the eastern side of Barnet Mountain, adjacent to Milarepa Center. Milarepa is one of two Tibetan Buddhist retreat centers on Barnet Mountain. The road I’d just driven up was actually their driveway, but they let me use it in return for helping to maintain it. As I pulled into the small turn-out where I park, I could see the two-story farmhouse that Milarepa uses as their center. There were several cars parked in front, but the house was dark except for a dim glow through the windows of the meditation room on the second floor. I knew the altar was lit day and night with a string of tiny white Christmas tree lights, so it seemed safe to assume no one was awake.
      I didn’t need or want any witnesses to Lucky’s arrival.
      “Come on, Lucky, we’ve got a short hike to make.” I gently shook his shoulder to wake him. I don’t know how he had stayed asleep through the bouncy ride up the drive, but he had.
      We got out of the car and began walking slowly down the path that led into the woods. My small cabin, which I’d built from spruce logs I’d cut off the land, perches on a knoll that faces southeast down the Connecticut River Valley. You can see it plainly from the turn-out. As I glanced towards it, I noticed the soft glow of kerosene lamplight through the two front windows. I looked down at the path and saw footprints in the new snow.
      So much for no witnesses, I thought ruefully to myself.
      “Someone’s here,” I said aloud to Lucky, who seemed to have revived after his short sleep. Without complaint he trudged through the snow, made more difficult with his ankles chained by cuffs.
      Just before the small porch, I told him to wait until I could find out who was inside. Stepping noiselessly onto the porch, I peered anxiously through a window. When I saw who it was — this potential witness to my crime of helping a murder suspect to escape — I think I actually laughed out loud with relief.
      Perched on an overstuffed cushion before the wood stove was a Buddha-shaped woman of fifty dressed in purple and playing a small hand drum called a djembe, which was tucked between her crossed legs.
      Rapping on the window to alert her, I called out “It’s me,” then turned back to Lucky and motioned him to come forward.
      As we walked inside I bellowed, “Sister O!” and blew her a kiss across the room. I went directly to the tiny propane-powered refrigerator by the sink and pulled out a Catamount Ale.
      The Buddha nodded her head in greeting and continued to tap the taut skin of the djembe. She was wearing a coarse cotton smock dyed deep purple and loose-fitting purple pants tied with a draw string. She had removed her black boots at the door and had thick wool socks on her feet. A clay figurine of a pregnant goddess dangled from a woven thong around her neck. Her graying hair was cropped short on the top and sides, but a single thin braid fell several inches down her back from the base of her neck. A gold nose ring sparkled in the lamplight.
      “Lucky, my new friend, this is Odysea, my old friend.”
      A wary look sprang to both their faces, but I didn’t care. I simply turned them over to each other and flopped into a battered armchair to one side of the wood stove. As I sank into the soft cushions, sipping the ale and soaking up the heat pouring off the stove, I suddenly realized my exhaustion. I felt drained and, perhaps because of it, detached from the weird events of the night. I couldn’t imagine what would come of it all, nor did I particularly care at that moment.
      Lucky stood just inside the closed door and stared with his golden eyes straight at Odysea, wary but drawn by her drumming. If she had noticed his harlequin’s mask or the handcuffs and chains, she never let on. She simply looked back at Lucky with the same wide-eyed innocence that he now looked at her.
      There was a marked chill in the room as this frank study went on too long, and I wondered what each was seeing in the other.
      I was about to intervene when apparently some kind of understanding was reached, for I saw smiles of acceptance appear simultaneously on their faces. I was glad I hadn’t spoken.
      Immediately the beating of the drum grew louder and more compelling.
      Lucky responded by bobbing his head, then weaving his shoulders from side to side, doing it awkwardly at first but with increasing grace as he caught the beat. Then he started to shuffle his feet in a small circle as Odysea began a chant:

      Djembe! it sings the song
      Now you know it won’t be long.
      Djembe! it weaves the tale
      Makes you move and makes you wail.
      Djembe! Djembe! Djembe!

She repeated the chant many times over. With each repetition Lucky became more energized. The circle of his dancing expanded until he filled the whole room, prancing wildly and rattling his chains like a tambourine, until the drumming and the dancing were as one.
      Suddenly the drumming ceased and Odysea repeated the final line of the chant in an hypnotic drone. The air vibrated with it.
      “Djembe! Djembe! Djembe!”
      I thought I heard a second, deeper voice join hers. I looked at Lucky, but he was turned away from me and I couldn’t see his face.
      The droning stopped, but the vibration lingered while Odysea and Lucky gazed at each other in open admiration. Lucky beamed at her, a giant grin pasted to his face. I realized I’d never seen him smile until meeting Odysea. It transformed his face, giving his normally vacuous gaze a look of both intelligence and awareness.
      “You dance very well,” she said.
      “You drum very well,” came the whispered reply.
      “You talk!” I shouted, startling Lucky.
      “Of course he does,” Odysea stated matter of factly. She reached out and placed a hand on Lucky’s arm, which seemed to reassure him after my outburst.
      I recalled that Sue Lecroix, the correctional officer who had told me about Lucky, had mentioned that he spoke at times. Immediately I had a million questions to ask, but Odysea cut me a look that turned me to stone.
      Satisfied, she turned back to Lucky and motioned towards a steaming kettle sitting on an iron trivet on top of the wood stove.
      “Would you like some Mu tea?”
      “Yes,” he answered once more in that soft whisper, then nodded his head eagerly, as if a cup of Mu tea was precisely what he’d been waiting for his whole life.
      Odysea rose from her cushion and got two chipped china tea cups from the shelf over the sink. Then she took a pouch from a canvas tote bag that hung with her dark wool cloak on a wooden peg near the door. Inside the pouch were numerous smaller bags from which she drew pinches of various herbs, concocting her own mix of Mu tea. She sprinkled the herbs one by one into the steaming kettle, and a pungent aroma filled the cabin. As she waited for the tea to brew, she murmured a long prayer or incantation.
      All the while Lucky’s adoring gaze never left her.
      Finally she poured the strong tea into each cup with a deliberateness that fascinated even me, though I’d seen her do it countless times. She handed Lucky his cup and invited him to share her cushion. I didn’t see how they both would fit, but he snuggled so closely to her that it wasn’t a problem.
      She turned to me and announced, “Now we must do something about his chains.” She expressed no curiosity about why Lucky was chained, but merely stated the obvious — that he needed to be freed.
      “Any ideas?” I asked. “Handcuffs are not my specialty.”
      “As a matter of fact, I do have an idea.”
      “Don’t tell me you carry handcuff keys in your bag of tricks?”
      “No, but I have a friend who collects handcuffs, and she may have a key that works on these.”
      “Should I ask why she collects steel bracelets?”
      “If you need to ask, perhaps you shouldn’t.” She sipped her tea, an unreadable look in her eyes. “But I can see by the disappointment on your face that you won’t rest until you know.” She took another slow sip, then asked, quite seriously, “Jimmy, why is sex such an issue for you?”
      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I protested, thinking about Diane earlier. I felt myself flush, and the pain I felt must have shown on my face, for her tone softened.
      “I think you do,” she said, then added as an afterthought, “And, no, my friend’s handcuffs are not used for sexual purposes. Just the opposite. They represent her liberation from sexual bondage as a child when her policeman father used his handcuffs on her if she refused him.”
      My stomach turned over and I felt obscene for what I’d been thinking. “Sorry,” I said, then asked because I had to, “Where does your friend keep her keys?”
      “At Womyn’s Land. We’ll go there tomorrow on our way south.”
      “What makes you think we’re going south?” I asked, though that’s precisely the direction I’d been thinking of heading by myself.
      “I had a vision tonight while I was meditating.” Odysea often used one of Milarepa’s tiny meditation cabins a half mile into the woods. This time she had been in retreat for nearly a month.
      “What did you see in the vision?”
      “I saw a broken man, a dog, and an old witch on a deserted highway.”
      I didn’t need to ask who the broken man was.
      “I want to go home, Jimmy. I have no money and my car is broken down. Will you take me?” A look of deep sorrow spread across her face, which suddenly was heavily lined with age.
      “What’s wrong?”
      “It’s Salina.” Tears filled Odysea’s eyes and began streaming down her cheeks. I’d never met Salina, though I knew she had been Odysea’s first woman lover. Salina lived in the Hill Country west of Austin where Odysea had gone to college after growing up in West Texas. Even after all her years in Vermont her voice still carried a bit of Texas in it.
      “What’s wrong with Salina?”
      Odysea started sobbing in response to my question, but finally managed to say, “She’s dying.”
      Lucky carefully put his cup down, then reached for her hand and held it in his. He, too, began to weep.
      I climbed out of the chair and knelt on the floor in front of them. I wrapped my arms around them both and drew us together until our heads touched.
      The fire in the stove popped. The tea kettle hissed.
      “Of course we’ll go,” I said.
      “In the morning,” Lucky added.

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