Page 37 of Road Refugees

Chapter Twelve

Town

Heaven wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted to farm.

As a one-woman production line, she put all of us to shame. Slappy, Wolf and I—Wolf was staying on to help with soil until he got his marching papers to Bogotá—came across as vortex-addled hippies. Our habits of actually taking breaks, drinking coffee, peeing, and suchlike, made us feel guilty. Not that Heaven said anything to us, or even shot us dirty looks. She just made me think of a Grant Wood painting, how stoic and stolid she marched, doing much more than just mushrooms. She had taken on the duties a large house like that required, and we felt bad because she was the only woman. We were just acting like normal humans, not normal men. She was the superhuman one.

I mean, Heaven made her own yeast. She ground up potatoes, and I even busted her one day stuffing a plastic-wrapped bomb of starter down the front of her shirt. She sputtered and turned red when I pointed at her. “It’s the only way I can keep anything warm!”

She even wanted to take our jeans, only dirty from mountain air and maybe the leather saddles of our rides. She actually used the washing machine but strung up a line to dry them so they would have that “nice outdoor smell.” It had never occurred to us grunts to give a shit about outdoor smells before, so this compounded our guilt. She even sang “Touch the Hem of his Garment” as she pinned our pants to the rope.

“This is too fucking much,” said Slappy one day, when the three of us were staring at boneless pork ribs cooking on the grill. To men, this was “grilling”—staring at meat. Slappy and Wolf invariably drank the bland American beer that bikers preferred, and I’d be there with my bottled organic carbonated water, like a real oxygen thief. It no longer made me nervous or agitated to think about alcohol. I was confident that I was free of an addiction that had control of me instead of the other way around.

Although Slappy protested how much Heaven worked, he didn’t move an inch to help. Right now, she was out in the forest looking for wild mushrooms to cook. We’d just had a summer rain shower and she said the time was ripe. “You’re right,” I said. “But she’s never going to stop working hard. It’s just in her nature. She was probably like this before the compound. All we can do is step up our game.”

Slappy made a lip fart. “Hey. I did three tours of duty in-country. My ass is glued to this chair.”

I stood, a bit wobbly since my newfound exercise regime had been taxing my lumbar disks. Once again, I had to grab my cane. I was highly self-conscious of my disability in front of Heaven, as hearty as she was. “Where’s Linus?” I did the high-pitched whistle through my fingers. Beetle lolled on his back next to Wolf, whose arm was draped listlessly over his plastic chair, his fingertips barely brushing Beetle’s chest.

Wolf jerked his chin. “I saw him follow Heaven into the trees.”

“Which barbecue sauce do you want to use?” asked Slappy.

“You go get it,” Wolf said, not answering the question.

Slappy was trying to voice text his wife. “Working hard on Town’s ranch. Today we’ve already chopped six trees into firewood.” He became frustrated. “Man, this text thing is FUBAR! It says ‘Torquay ashram torqued tweet into faraway.’”

“Cell coverage is spotty here. We have no line of sight.” Wolf held out his free hand. “I’ll fix it.” The geardo was something of a computer nerd, like his nemesis Tobiah Weingarten.

I went into the trees too. Even Beetle became a laggard, not following to find his new best friend Linus.

Since messing up and nearly kissing Heaven in the greenhouse, I’d been avoiding her like a river careening around a rock. When we bumped into each other in the greenhouse, my heart speeded up. Since we’d both basically moved into the cabin at the same time, I wasn’t more knowledgeable than her about where things were located. We often found ourselves reaching for the same dish of butter at the same time. I did know something about cooking, but when I tried to be master of the kitchen, Heaven would infiltrate, having run out of table legs to wash and mattresses to peek under. Just her presence in the taut Led Zeppelin jersey someone had given her was enough to send my anxiety spiking to my Bacardi days zone. As though her tits were incoming mortars.

Heaven was the most fragile flower, and I had to treat her as such, going slowly and with the utmost respect.

Yeah right. When I wanted to press her up against a tree and finger-bang her to orgasm while sucking on her luscious lower lip.

And to be honest, I was afraid of intimacy, as the PTSD counselor had said. Jessica’s death had ripped my heart from its moorings and flung it out onto an ocean of despair. Sure, I’d fucked the occasional hooker, or maybe a drunken bout with some drunk woman brought to my condo? But that was a far cry from really, soberly looking a woman in the face and realizing with a pang I was falling for her. In a very real way for very real reasons.

Pretty soon I started yelling for her. “Heaven! Heaven!” My captain’s voice, I knew, was accompanied by a murderous frown, and I cupped my hand to use as a megaphone. As I marched into the woods, my feet crushed pine needles, releasing their clean scent. But as official as I felt, there was no way to hide that I needed a cane and would never climb rock walls again. I had a VA appointment the following week and was hoping for better imaging tests.

“Heaven!” After about fifteen grueling minutes of this, I caught a glimpse of a red patch among the crawling bushes. That crimson was in no way a part of nature, so I cripped on over.

It was her. Heaven had passed out with a handful of mushrooms!

I tossed my cane, falling to my knees beside her. After that I was on autopilot mode. How many times had I revived men, knocked out by shockwaves? So many that it was second nature for me to sweep a finger through her mouth, feeling for any mushrooms she may have chomped on. Nothing. Tilting her head back, I put my ear to her mouth to listen for breathing.

Yes. She was breathing, so had just passed out for some reason. I shook her wrist until the mushrooms came loose. Passwater had taught us that when psyilocibe are cut they instantly turn blue, something to do with oxidation. Yet some blue mushrooms with gills and rings like that were poisonous. Then I saw, halfway slid from her pants pocket, the booze flask she seemed to carry everywhere. So it really could’ve been anything.

She gulped, gasped, and breathed raggedly. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes must’ve been my ugly mug.

“Town,” she whispered.

My reaction was way more vigorous. “Heaven!” I cried and kissed her with passion.

I know it sounds corny, but that’s all I can say. It was with the utmost lust that I ran my palm beneath her neck and lifted her head. I just wanted to feel her lips between mine, alive, responsive. Careful not to crush her chest in any way, I slurped up her lips and mashed them with my teeth, nibbling like a hungry dog. I had to hope I wasn’t acting like any previous rapist, but I was so swept away, so grateful she was alive, that I couldn’t stop myself. And I was headstrong, determined. I did what I wanted. I slightly pinned her thigh with mine. My cock burgeoned, swelled with that sort of mindless lust that had gripped me when jacking off thinking of her.

Only here she was, in the flesh.