There were a succession of women in my life after that, some a product of my fantasies, perhaps all.
And years before that, Molly and I had what I think of as a shotgun wedding, the wounds from which still alive and complaining.
That’s as much as I want to remember, and I ask the woman who calls herself Mina (short for Wilhemina) if I can have a few more days to sort things out.
The next morning — I spend the night on a hammock on the screened-in back porch — Bobby wakes me by slamming a door. When I open my eyes, trying to come to terms with where I am, he says, “Good morning, Papa.”
Mina calls to Bobby from the next room, which may or may not be the kitchen. “Tell your father,” she says, “that breakfast is being served.”
How long have I been lost to myself? I knock at the door of memory and no one answers.
Is there something I’ve missed?
PART THREE
(Flight Dreams)
96th Night
I was, I fleetingly told myself, too old to run, but on the other hand not played out enough to stay. For days after I was more or less on my feet, my old (if older) self again, I was doing improvisatory rehearsals of my escape. Each morning, at the whisper of first light, I would take an extended walk from the house, varying direction in the continually thwarted hope of coming to some place I actually wanted to go, and then, not always easily, find my way back to what I thought of as a circumstantial domestic arrangement.
It was what they bargained for, wasn’t it? They knew when they took me in, or should have known, that I had made a secondary career out of running away from seemingly comfortable situations. I had nothing against Mina and Bobby, but I had trouble imagining a scenario that included spending the rest of my life with them in a secluded cabin buried in the woods. The future I saw for myself was elsewhere.
Actually, I had no future in mind for myself. That is, I was open to a variety of futures and I didn’t want to recapitulate the present routine indefinitely.
It was not in my scenario to be Bobby’s father and Minna’s prodigal husband returned.
Squeezed against her in her narrow bed, I would ask the uncommunicative Mina how and why she happened to live in an isolated cabin in the deep woods.
One time she said, “Oh this cabin has been in the family for at least a hundred years.”
Another time, she said, “My mother gave me this place as a gift when Bobby was born.”
Another time, she said, “Two guys from Denmark built it in the Danish fashion with imported logs to have a homelike home away from home. Things didn’t work out as planned — one killed the other and fled no one seems to know where, leaving the house available for the first passerby, which was mother.”
There were several other versions which contradicted in part some of the earlier versions. When she said, “Why do you think you have a right to know?” I decided to leave (setting gratitude and whatever aside) and not, not ever, come back.
The problem was, I hadn’t to this point discovered a way out of the woods. I assumed — why wouldn’t I? — that if I traveled long enough in any direction, I would eventually come to some outpost of civilization. Whatever there was.
Have I neglected to mention that there was a car on the premises, an ancient VW Beetle, which Mina would take off in periodically to bring in provisions? I never got to go with her, never found out where she went. Whenever Mina left the cabin for an extended period, it fell to me — it was my job by unspoken agreement — to babysit Bobby.
When I asked her how far it was to the nearest town, the answer I got was, “Far enough.”
“How many miles exactly is far enough?” I asked, as if I didn’t mind not knowing.
The only answer I ever got to that question was, “You don’t want to know,” said with a sassy smile.
I considered taking her ancient VW to make my escape, gave serious consideration to the idea about before rejecting it as unthinkable.
I could leave them in good conscience, but I couldn’t take their transportation away from them.
I avoided sex with Mina the night before my planned escape so as not to deplete my limited energy.
I woke myself in the dark, tired as usual with a hard-on from sleeping pressed against Mina’s ass, dressed in whatever came to hand, assuming as I started out — this my first go on the northern path — that first light was no more than an hour way.
I found myself taking small methodical steps in the dark, not wanting to lose the tricky path. Odd sounds emanated from the woods, but I had no idea, had not troubled to discover, what creatures might be out there.
I had a broomstick with me to use as a walking stick and as an emergency protection against the otherwise unforeseen.
As a precautionary measure, I swung my stick out in front of me like a blind man, driving off imaginary demons.
It seemed to be getting lighter, though it may only have been that my eyes had made private peace with the dark. It troubled me that the morning was so long in arriving. I worked myself into a frustrated rage at the night’s protracted sway.
So I increased my pace, began to run, wanting to leave the night behind in my wake, aware as the path danced away and the brush swiped at me that it was a madman’s hope.
Abruptly it was light and I reclaimed the path. It was a well-lit morning and I noticed a small black bear up ahead on its hind legs snatching berries from a bush. He was a few feet off the narrow path, too close to pass without calling attention to myself.
Impatience prodded me. Perhaps there was a way of getting by the bear, who was after all preoccupied with his breakfast, without his noting me.
I hunkered down, moved slowly ahead, tiptoed by him with apparent success, when a fallen branch snatched my ankle and I tripped noisily, grasping air. With a show of annoyance, the bear looked over in my direction — I pressed myself against a tree to avoid being seen — then after he had taken my measure (or had missed seeing me altogether), he returned to his task.
I hid behind the tree while considering what I might do to defend myself if the bear took it into his head to come after me.
And then the bear moved away, seemed to disappear briefly.
It was a while after I had passed his spot — I was still moving with extreme caution — perhaps a half-mile further along the path, when I heard footsteps behind. I quickened my pace at first but when the footsteps sounded behind me at the same or similar distance, I spun around to see who was there.
It was the same damn bear, tiptoeing on his hind legs, mimicking my pace in his deceptively quick lumbering manner. I fought back the impulse to run — surely he could have caught me if that was what he was up to — and continued warily at the pace I had set myself.
I knew very little about the habits of bears outside of folk lore and movies, though I had never heard of bears in any context trailing after people. I assumed that eventually — what could he possibly be thinking? — that he would discontinue his aberrant behavior.
But in fact what seemed like another hour passed and with it the five or six miles I had covered and the bear — I glanced back from time to time — was still the same relative distance behind me.
His idiot tenacity was getting on my nerves. He was on all fours when I turned around and I shook my fist at him and shouted at him to go away. I waved my arms at him to emphasize my point.
On his hind legs now, the bear gave the impression of waving back at me.
He seemed not to understand or at least was refusing to acknowledge that he did, shaking his head and looking abashed. Whatever was going on with him, he made no move to shorten the distance between us.