Mountain Woman
Elie Antopol
Brooklyn Polytechnic University in New York City
E-mail: marvget@earthlink.net
From habit, she looked around to see if she was alone in bed. When she renovated the barn as her year-round residence and studio, she had placed the bed high on what was once the hayloft. "Alone," she reported to herself, "Alone for quite a while now." Weary from the previous day's physical work, she did not leap out of bed in her usual way. "Take it easy, mountain woman," she told herself, stretching her lean body under the quilt and extending her arms up toward the glowing skylight above the bed. "You're up here now, alone, the way you wanted it. The way you said you wanted it."
Pulling on a bathrobe and stepping into slippers, Eudora descended regally to the bathroom, once a pig pen. As she sat on the polished wooden toilet seat, she leaned to one side and reached under herself to detach and discard the red-stained napkin. As ever, she marveled at the profusion of blood that issued from her body. As a girl and even a young woman she had been disgusted by the menses, but now she half-wished she could use these discharges to enrich or even impregnate the soil of the mountain side. She thought: "If they were only biodegradable, they'd make one hell of a compost heap. Probably attract varmints though."
Remembering the lightness of menstrual flow on the fifth day, she did not replace the discarded menstrual pad. She would wear paint-stained work clothes that day; they could easily accommodate a few more streaks down the leg. A shower would come later, reward for what she would accomplish, what she planned to accomplish, that day. Her head shaking jauntily, still in her robe, she ambled into the kitchen's brilliant morning sunlight.
While performing her duties--putting wood on the fire in her stove, brewing a pot of thick Hispanic coffee, measuring flour, water, yeast into a bowl for bread--Eudora considered the day's possibilities: sketching, painting, but in what order? Before her hands became dough-covered, she dialed the one Albany number she did not have to look up. Perhaps it wasn't too late to catch Patricia before she left for work.
"Oh, baby, I'm so glad you're still there. Sometimes up here in the mountains I feel like Margaret Mead among the Samoans."
"Oh dear," Patricia said, "what part of the rural value system did you bump up against this time? Is it that lawsuit?"
"No, that still drags from one postponement to another. It's the car. You know that old van I once bought for Leonard? I have it for sale up here. It's parked out front of the barn, keys on the dash. Well, these two guys, boys really, they come up the mountain, evidently see the sign, and, without knocking on the door, or coming inside, or asking my permission, or anything, they just get into the car, start it up and crawl under the hood. Meanwhile, I hear them and go to the door to see what's up, tell them they should have had the decency to ask..."
"Eudora, dear, can I interrupt with just one question? What were you wearing when you went out to berate them?"
"'Wearing? It was still warm. I suppose I was wearing my usual summer working outfit. T shirt and... But what are you driving at?"
"Now, listen," Patricia explained. "I'm a country girl myself, and I have an idea how they perceive you up in the mountains. I checked that out on my last visit when I wasn't swatting flies. Darling, I know you think the U.S. of A. is a culturally homogenized society, but I tell you, there is a whole other value system up there. They've put you into some pre-existing category."
"And what might that be?"
"Why it's got to be something like wild,
loose, sexual denizen of the wicked city." "Oh, if it only were...
So, you think I may be too provocative with the locals."
"Well, it's just that certain
things tend to reinforce stereotypes. Another one of your...
Well, you deny it, but you've retained
your looks better than most of us. But, anyway, what happened after you
yelled at the two louts?"
"One of them, the smirky wise
guy, asked me if I lived alone up here. I guess that was his way of asking
if I..."
Patricia explained, "I know what
he was asking. But I've got to get over to the clinic. Let me say two
quick things. First, these men in rural communities can't really conceptualize
women like you; you are exotic beyond their wettest dreams. And another
thing, if a car has a For Sale sign, and keys visible, what do you expect?
Cars are a way of life there. So, if you got huffy with them, I can imagine
only too well how they misunderstood you... But, my goodness, I've got
to run!"
"OK, I won't keep you. But when
are you coming up for a visit? It's been months."
"Soon, soon as you get screens.
I got eaten last time. So, goodbye dear. Now, remember, no needless tantalizing
of the chain-saw crowd. But if, on the other hand, you meet an eligible
mountain man... Some of these country folk can be really sweet, generous,
sensitive. Also, although they may have a hard time with you, many of
them are used to independent women: wives, daughters, widows who run farms
and stores."
"But you know, Patricia, after
Leonard, I came up here to get away from university teaching and from
men, and I've yet to see the type you describe, city or country. You know
how threatened, how spiteful he was... No, no, I'm not still obsessing
about Leonard. Goodbye, dear. I love you and miss you. Let's talk again
in a few days. I'm doing some interesting work up here."
Warmed by the pleasure of talking
with her oldest, dearest friend, Eudora also felt the familiar ache, the
pain of missing Patricia and of the continuing fear over having left her
teaching job in Boston to come to the mountains to live alone and work.
The first winter she cried at the desolation before the snows came. Now
rubbing the site of this pain, she was able to savor the clean break she
had made from Leonard from the city and from the anguish of her decade
with him. Eudora put two more logs into her glowing stove, and began kneading
the bread, performing the sculptural task skillfully, laying the dough
carefully back in the bowl and covering it with a moist dish towel. "Chain-saw,"
she said to herself. "Wait until Pat sees what I've done with mine.
Two years of wood, cut, split, stacked, covered. I only wish I could find
a way to heat this place without burning that stuff."
A second mug of coffee in her hand,
Eudora returned to planning her day's activities. "Yesterday,
the land, so, today the studio. But first the task I've too long postponed,
the one that will bring my Patricia up here."
Eudora formally decided that, loneliness
and fear aside, she was now happy. The seemingly carefree whims that shaped
her daily life in the Adirondacks were now among her main joys, along
with the ever-present bedrock, her work, her art. Now that the kitchen
had sufficiently warmed up, she shook off the bathrobe, whirled about
unclothed, coffee cup in hand. On an impulse, she pranced out the door
and onto the field behind her barn, where she squatted, shivering, and
urinated triumphantly on the otherwise deserted hillside. If any human
was around, she would have heard the sound of a car long before it reached
her.
A red-tailed hawk on a nearby aspen
did eye Eudora until, with apparent utter disdain, it took off and slowly
descended into the valley below. Watching this bird soar downward annoyed
her; soaring should be upward, she felt. Then she laughed at her presumption
to judge one of nature's most graceful creatures. No longer feeling the
cold, she watched the bird soaring through the several planes of the vast
cube before her; its near surface a curtain of air, its distant boundary
a mottled fabric draped over the hills and mountains. The peripheral presence
of her own curls framed its sides. The hawk's earnest wingspread sliced
and resliced this cube, giving off precious messages. She took them as
divine, natural instructions imparted to her, ways to solve compositional
problems in several of her unfinished paintings.
Exhilarated by these unexpected esthetic
discoveries, shivering again, Eudora returned to her house and stood near
the stove. To her canvases she said aloud, "Wait just a bit longer.
I'll be with you in an hour or two at most."
Fulfilling her promise to Patricia,
she began to make screens for the windows. Beside the etching press, near
the ground glass-covered table where she prepared pigments, stood a bench
where Eudora stretched canvases and mitered frames. Her tools hung neatly
on hooks or rested in bins. Now she changed into the stained overalls,
slipped on work boots and tied on a leather apron. She went up to the
guest bedroom and twice measured the windows. She decided, for a start,
to make only two screens. On her way back to the studio, Eudora pounded
and reshaped the bread loaves. Then, among her tools, she reached for
a router bit, selected well-seasoned hardwood from a heavily laden rack,
clamped the stock to the table, constructed a jig to guide the tool, and
began cutting spleen notches in the stock into which the screening would
fit.
Several hours later, the bread cooling,
the screens varnished and drying, Eudora now at work on translating the
hawk's messages into actual designs, she heard a vehicle chugging up the
road. By the sound she knew it had too much power and load to be a car.
She looked out the window and thought, "Who could it be? Someone
for me? If it's those two come to mess around with the car again...
" But she remembered Patricia's advice and decided to be more tolerant.
A large oil delivery truck pulled
into her driveway. Out of the cab, swinging lightly to the ground in a
graceful motion, was one of the young men whose objectionable behavior
she had described to Patricia. Watching him through a curtained window,
she tracked his motions. The first bold steps changed to smaller, hesitant
ones as he neared her door. With a shrug of his shoulders, he rattled
the cowbell hanging there.
Eudora went to the door with an eagerness
that surprised her. The door opened. She surveyed the young man gravely.
He smiled hesitantly. His blond, tousled hair tumbled out from under his
cap. He wore a flannel shirt. His slim hips were encased in faded, patched
but freshly washed jeans.
"Hello, Miss Horton. Remember
me? I'm Bill Reesly."
"Hi, Bill. Sure, you were up
here the other day for the van. But," motioning toward his truck,
"what is this, an oil delivery? Sorry, I heat this place with wood."
"No," he said, "I work
for Acme, but I didn't come about oil or anything like that."
After a painful quarter-minute of
silence, Bill said: "Sure smells good in there, like my grandma's
place. And, that car. It's my friend Tommy wanted it. I was makin' some
deliveries up this way." Furrows appeared in Bill's smooth forehead.
"Had to, well, wanted to, apologize for last time we came up, for
Tommy. He's, well, y'know, he doesn't always have good manners. But Miss
Horton, I'm not defending everything he said, but up this way, if there's
a For Sale sign out, we consider it OK to look over a car. That's how
we do it. Maybe it's different where you come from."
"Oh, yes," she said, remembering
Patricia's similar observation, "back in the city, if you notice
anyone looking over your car like that, you call the police."
She observed him closely again. "What
a pretty young man. A veritable kouros," she thought, remembering
the lithe body of a male model she had sketched several years ago in a
series of charcoal drawings that her gallery had sold to the Clark Museum.
"That's bread baking. It may
be cool enough to cut. Want to come in, have some with coffee?"
"Well, yes, thanks, I would,
but I can't right now," he said. "Got to make deliveries down
the hollow. Just wanted to apologize and clear this up." Eudora let
him out.
"Well, perhaps another time then,"
she said, watching from her doorway as he strode off to his truck. Bill
took one short sliding hop on the way so that his last step would be a
precisely spaced leap up onto the running board. "How did he manage
that?" she wondered. "He must have sent out radar signals
so that he could time that last leap." Once on the truck, Bill
twisted his upper body and opened the cab door in another smooth, unified,
athletic movement. "Does he know how graceful he is?"
Eudora wondered. As his truck pulled away, Bill Reesly leaned out of the
open cab window and touched his hand to his cap brim. She saluted back
and, before she returned to her work, asked herself, "Why
am I so excited by this boy?" For a moment she sought the answer
in the creeper-clad dead maple tree on the hillside, as if the entwining
vine symbolized her wish to be embraced by him.
A week later, in town, as Eudora came
out of the hardware store carrying packages, Bill was standing out front,
his arms folded.
"Guess you don't need help haulin'
any of that." he said.
"Nope," she answered, "can
handle it easily. But thanks anyway. Oh, by the way, tell your friend,
Teddy..."
"Tommy."
"... that I sold the van."
"We heard," he said. Then,
after looking around as if to check if anyone else could hear, Bill added:
"Guess there ain't no reason now to come up to your place."
Eudora looked at him, quizzically.
He was dressed now in a T-shirt, jeans, scuffed work boots, still the
Caterpillar hat. To her astonishment she began to frame an answer that
could supply such reasons.
But Bill spoke first. "You know,
Miss Horton, you probably don't know it, of course you don't, but you're
someone in my life. There's the van. And before, you were a substitute
teacher in my baby sister's art class a while back."
"Ah yes, at the Central School.
I remember. They called me up, desperate. I don't even have a teacher's
license." She noticed his muscular arms, his waist without the slightest
hint of a paunch. "Bill, my friends, people I know, call me 'Eudora.'
It's hard to pronounce."
"Well, er, Eudoria," (he
never would get her name right) "Sally breezed in after school all
excited, told us all that you were the best teacher she ever had... and..."
"Sally, Sally, which one was
she?"
"She's... well, here, I got her
picture." As he took out his wallet and pulled out a wad of photographs,
some fell to the sidewalk. She watched him gather what had fallen. Several
were of older girls, not baby sisters.
"Girl friends?" Eudora asked
provocatively.
"Well, the girls from school,
from the town, you know. Yeah, girlfriends." As he sorted the photos,
he added: "None of them ain't special."
They both stood up. Bill picked out
a picture she hadn't seen. "This is her, our Sally."
Eudora couldn't remember the blond,
mischievous-looking girl of about nine or ten, yet she lied: "Oh,
yes, a sweetie." But really she was intent on Bill, noting his relaxed,
self-confident stance, and thinking: "Wonder if I can ever get
him to pose? Suppose I'd have to seduce him first. What does a lad like
this do with girlfriends? The usual cramped, hasty sex in cars at the
end of deserted roads, I suppose. I could show him how a mature
woman of passion does sex." Given her long celibacy, these thoughts
were intensely stimulating. But she shook them off and began putting her
purchases into her pick-up.
"Well, now, at home," Bill
said, following her, still talking of his sister, "we kind of think
Sally's a brat. But she does like school."
"And you?"
"Me, what?"
"Do you, did you like school?
I assume you're out now."
"Yeah, I graduated three years
ago. It was OK. I wasn't any great student. Science was interesting, but
mostly, I liked soccer. Hallcottesville Central, we was runner up in the
state championships back then. But I don't suppose any of that interests
you."
"Ah, but there's where you're
wrong. I did a series of lithographs some years back of Pelé."
"Pelé?"
"Yes, you know, the..."
"Pelé, sure, I know. Every
soccer player knows him. You mean you actually met him?"
"Yes, I did, and watched him
play too. Come on up the mountain again some time, I've got a set of proofs
up here. The best ones are in a collection in Brazil." She smiled
at how she had managed the invitation.
Bill smiled too. "I'll do that,
Miss Horton, er, Eudora. I'll do that very thing." Bill backed off
while she started the motor, and then came close to Eudora's truck. Furrows
again appeared on his forehead, as if he were refashioning his face to
look more adult. "There's something else. I wonder if I can talk
to you about too, not now but later."
"What's that?"
"Well, it's about the lawsuit,
the one where you folk are suing the town."
"Oh, not that." She had
a sinking feeling in her gut. "Yes, well, what about it?"
"My dad's the town clerk."
"So we're legal enemies. Is that
what you're saying, Bill?"
"No, not enemies. I hope not.
I didn't have to tell you. Just want to talk to you about it some, if
I can. It's on my mind."
Eudora made a non-committal gesture
with her shoulders, said "OK," and slipped the truck into gear.
Bill backed off, watching her pull out of town and head up the mountain.
As she drove away, she glanced at
him in the side-view mirror and thought: "That damned lawsuit!
Maybe I shouldn't have become a plaintiff. But it was so unfair. I guess
I'll guess never be accepted in this town. So Bill's an antagonist, though
he denies it. He didn't have to tell me. I guess the lad wanted to be
truthful. But, why?" She thought again of Leonard, the man she
had lived with too long. "What a shit he was! That snake didn't know
how to be truthful," she proclaimed out loud. Could Bill be different?
"But, 'Miss Horton, Eudoria,'" she asked herself,
"what can you be thinking? What would Patricia say?" She
smiled as she down-shifted so that her pick-up truck could climb the steep
road up the mountain, imagining Patricia in an incautious, adventurous
mood, exclaiming: "Go for it, woman go for it!" But then she
heard another Patricia saying: "Come on, at least pick someone who's
reached the age of discretion. You know how these youngsters brag to their
friends in the convenience store parking lots..."
Bill did come up later that same day,
about sundown, after his deliveries were done. Eudora remembered long
afterward: "That boy knew how to take hints." As he entered
the barn-studio, his attention was divided between Eudora and the surroundings.
Silently, he looked around at the paintings. When he saw newly cut screens
he asked, "You make these also?"
"Sure did."
"If you used a smaller bit, you
wouldn't have to fold the mesh over quite so much. But it's a nice job.
Neat"
"Thanks. Sounds like you do this
sort of work too."
"Yeah, well, my dad did some
contracting, after he quit farming, before his accident. I worked for
him."
"Accident?"
"Machinery tipped over on him
at a construction site. Messed up his back. He's on disability now, drivin'
all of us crazy at home. But you don't want to hear family stuff."
Bill drew closer, as did all visitors, to the glowing woodstove in the
center of the studio. His glance wandered back to the walls, to the easels
and canvases. "These paintings are yours too, ain't they?"
"That's what I do. You must know
I'm a painter, an artist. Your sister must have told you. I do a lot of
drawings too, like the Pelþ ones I mentioned.
"Miss Horton, er, Eudoria, er.
I don't know a thing about art. You know, I never went to college. Nobody
in my family did. We've got calendars from the creamery, a few family
photos, on our walls. I'm in a different world from you, you know."
She paused at hearing this, and said,
"Yet you're here... Maybe it's not such a different world. After
all, I live up here in the mountains just like you do. By the way, would
you like anything to drink? Juice? milk? I don't have coffee after mid-day."
"Naw, no, thanks. Don't want
anything right now." With that same furrowed brow that she was beginning
to recognize, he added, "About what you're saying, whether we're
in the same or different worlds, as I see it it's yes and no, Miss...
er., Eudoria. All I can think of is what we've got hanging at the house."
"All right, Bill, I suppose you're
right. I am not your usual country person. I am an interloper here, guess
I'll always be. Since when has your family been here? Here, let me clear
some of this away." Eudora took the accumulated mail of the past
week off the couch and dumped it into a wicker basket. Bill took off his
cap and sat down, letting his hair hang down nearly shoulder-length. She
too sat, at the other end.
His answer was indirect. "Now,
we ain't so bad as that. We don't... er, discriminate. Wouldn't make sense.
What, with the closing of farms here, we need new folk like you. My folks
haven't been here that long. My grandpa came up only after World War Two
to help build the reservoir. So we're kind of like newcomers too."
Eudora asked, "Now what did you
want to talk about with that wretched lawsuit? Your family versus me.
I hope you're not here as an agent for the other side."
"Now Miss... Eudoria, you shouldn't
think that. When you know me better, if you ever do, you'll see I couldn't
do anything so sneaky."
A stabbing thought went through Eudora's
mind: "Leonard could. For him, the sneakier, the better."
"Anyway, the case isn't between
two parties. My dad's just town clerk, one of the defendants. Probably
won't even run in the next election. His back hurts too much, got to travel
to Albany for treatment. But I hear people talk. It's in the papers."
He twisted his Caterpillar cap nervously.
"What do they say?"
"That's the problem. I'm caught
in the middle. I really can't tell you what the other side is saying,
since it's my folks, my friends, and it's still in the courts. As it is,
when I'm seen talking to you, my dad jumps on me for giving away the secrets
of our case. And, you know, I understand both sides. You're right, there
were irregular doin's when that bond issue was voted, but these folks
up here don't like to be hauled into court, like they was criminals. Anyway,
there's lots of old families here who agree with you, but you didn't ask
them. You folks... "
"Us, the interlopers," Eudora
said, glumly.
"... you went ahead with the
lawsuit. And I just don't know. But I had to tell you this, even if..."
He looked at her almost defiantly.
"He's telling me that he's
done a brave thing," Eudora thought. "This boy wants
to be my friend, my lover, or something. Yet he also has some kind of
standing in this community. That's obviously important to him, so this
was an honest declaration that I just heard. Now, if I can just assure
myself that he won't blab all over town...
She moved closer to him, putting her
hand over his. "'Even if' what?"
Bill stopped twisting his hat, looked
at her, seriously at first. Then he gave that smile which melted some
thing deep inside her, something which until that moment she had not even
realized had hardened. "It gets me in trouble sometimes," he
said. "I've got a reputation for sayin' what's on my mind, except
of course when it's a private matter."
He paused. "Y'know what we really
call you folk?"
"What?" Eudora smiled gratefully
for Bill had unknowingly addressed her major concern, his recognition
of the importance of discretion.
"Burdock-pullers, that's what
we call you. It means that you do something, uh, futile--what we'd never
do. Now we mow burdock, but never try something so foolish as pulling
up single plants."
Eudora, knowing full well what she
was doing, leaned closer to him, looked directly into his face and said:
"Bill, I admit that I have pulled more than one burdock plant off
this hillside. So I've confessed the truth to you, and you've spoken your
mind in a way that might get you in trouble some places, but not here.
I tell you what: let's you and I agree that we just won't talk about the
case, and if people suspect... well, then, that's their problem."
Bill jumped up from the couch. "I
hoped you would say something like that. That's just the way I'd like
it." There was a long moment of silence. Then he reached down to
her and said: "Those Pelþ drawings of yours; did you say I could
see them?" A long moment of silence passed. She looked up at him
and thought sadly: "So we're going to make love after all... I
hope he's learned something about women from his high school girlfriends.
He is pretty confident. But then... then..." Eudora saddened.
"Then, some day, I'll drop this lovely, honest, sweet lad. I'll
be... his Leonard."
Wearily she reached up to take his
hand. Bill noticed, but never dreamed of interpreting the moods that had
in the last minutes registered on her face, like clouds swiftly passing
across the sun.
Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.
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