Postcard 122

       After no little work out in the field, I returned to the Front Desk. Coral, surprisingly, received me with a smile. A smile so warm I almost forgot the suffering I'd planned to use to my advantage.   
       Nor did I forget the students within eyeshot. Perhaps they thought it was Coral's receiving smile that had me leaning on the desk. I knew for a fact it was exhaustion. No, a clear sign of exhaustion is when the working man finds his face clear on the other side of a desk.
       Coral quit the smile, rolled back in her chair. "So," she said, banging the arm of her chair, "what have you been working on . . . out there . . . today?"
       I reached for my neck. "Nothing, really. Just had a few stepping stones to move. Well, pick axe out of the hard earth, if you want the truth. Thick ones, too." 
       "So it was something."
       I worked the knot in my neck. "Nothing for the working man, really. Of course, the pick-axing was just the half of it. Imagine having to wheelbarrow stepping stones clean across a campus. Thick ones, too."
       "Thick? Maybe they weren't stepping stones."
       "Maybe not, seeing how thick they were--thick as truck tires " 
       Coral didn't say anything.
       "Yep, building a shed--a shed out back of Metals. Of course, the damned shed kit comes with no damned pier blocks. So, I says to myself, 'Say, I know where there's some stepping stones that might serve in that capacity.' Well, had I known how gol-damned thick they were I might a thought twice."
       "Looks to me you worked too hard."
       "Ya, well, we working men don't really come into our own till we got some big knot to work out." And, oh, how I gave that knot what for.
       "No, I mean your hair, your shirt; you're all sweaty."
       I snapped upright, felt my face flush, my armpits receive another squeeze from the grease gun. But what I really felt was my hair. It felt flat. 
       "So," I said, fluffing up my hair, "what have you been working on . . . in here . . . today?"
       Coral's smile returned. "Reading." She rolled forward, lifted her open-faced book from off the desk. "Books--my first love, really." And away went Coral, pitching her first love. 
       A good way for a boy to get over the lack of fluff in his hair is to go whole hog over his girl's first love. Take that open face she was pressing to her breast. Perhaps a guy ought to add that to his post-bucket list. 
       I quick-drew my pad and pen, wrote, "Note: Come back in next life as Coral's favorite book. Imagine, Coral, snug under the covers, lifting you from her nightstand, her slow fingers dog-earing your every corner, her bedroom eyes pouring over every line on your every face."
       I broke from my life as a book to hear Coral say, "And that's why I like this work-study; I get paid for doing what I love--reading fiction."
       I tossed my writing skills aside, put a double exclamation behind this line: "Ya, well, I love writing fiction." And to give a show of my love, I raised my pad, stabbed it with my pen.
       "Cool," Coral said, frowning at the page I'd ripped out of love. "I hope to write some day. But I'm not ready yet."
       "You're wise to wait," I said, pocketing my pad and pen. "See, Coral, I tried writing when I was your age--thought it was great. But then the years passed and looking back, it really did suck. In fact, I didn't really find my voice until I was in my mid--until I was a wee bit older."
       Concerned Coral might take to questioning that wee bit, I rattled off a series of dumb Fiber Art questions. She answered them with guarded enthusiasm. No, I was a big fan of guarded. Though I needed a girl who had a genuine love of life--to offset the genuine indifference I had for life, what I didn't need was a woman who got all gushy over every little heartbeat.
       "Say," I said, having run out of Fiber, "you asked the other day if I ever lived in Alaska. Is that where you're from, Alaska?"
       "Yes," she said, "I grew up in Anchorage."
       "I've always wanted to visit Alaska," I lied. No, I had no desire to travel abroad. "It's, like, mostly wilderness, right?"
       "A lot of it's mountains and tundra. It's very beautiful. But the weather can be severe. Last winter was really bad--couples holed up for months. Then, in the spring, the divorce rate soared."
       I wanted to make a cunning remark to the effect that she and her boyfriend had fared fine, bad winter, or no. Then again, I didn't want to show-case my jealousy. Which begged the question: How might a guy showcase her jealousy? A postcard came to mind.

       
       "Speaking of boyfriends," I said, "I had a girlfriend once who spent a summer in Alaska--sent me postcards. Sent me this one with this big . . ." I stopped, thought better of touching on that big mosquito. No, given that first conversation in the orchard, bugs were the last thing I wanted to touch on.
       "Train," I said. "Ya, sent me a postcard with this big train on it."

       "Train?" Coral said.

       "Ya, see my girlfriend worked as a waitress on a train. And when she wasn't working on the train, she'd go exploring places the train didn't go. Places full of bears and shit." Damn, I hadn't said shit, had I? "Anyway, there was this one place, Denali. No, that Denali, some wild place, that."

       Coral's eyes lit up. "Do you know Trent?"

       "No," I answered.

       "Well, he's my boyfriend. He worked at a summer camp in Denali, took photos of grizzlies--a mom and her cub babies, catching salmon in the river right next to him."
       I had a vision then; Trent, the Alaskan boy, drawing me into the sights of his big game rifle.

       "Ya," I said, "my girlfriend had some close encounters with bears herself. That girl, she was too brave for her own good. See, I know how healthy it is to be scared." Wait, that hadn't come out right. "I mean, scared of bears."

       Coral gave me a look. A look of respect, surprisingly. Yes, what kind of rare man was this? What outdoorsy, tough groundskeeper stands before a girl--all sweaty--and confesses he's scared of bears?

       A brave man is right. 
       Having demonstrated my bravery, I thought I'd showcase my intelligence next. "I don't know, Coral, perhaps a girl who grows up in Alaska isn't ascared of bears."

       "If she's smart she is." 
       Coral went on touting Alaska. The last remaining wilderness she kept calling it. She touted dad next, which gave me even a scarier vision; Alaskan dad drawing me into the sights of his big game rifle.
       "That's what my dad did," Coral was saying, "talked my mom out of the big falsie that is California; talked her into moving into the wilds where one has to get real, or die."       
       "I get it," I said, just to say something, "hick from the sticks abducts glam gal off Rodeo Drive."
       "No, more like this: Northern California boy returns from Vietnam to find the girl next door at death's door due to post-'60's disillusionment. They stick it out for a year, but when a boy's experienced Vietnam, and a girl's experienced Hendrix, well, all the drugs of the 70's aren't going to make a marriage last into the '80's. So, they quit their dead end jobs, moved back to the land."
       Oh, how I wanted to touch on the back-to-the-land movement of the '70's. How I had tried to talk my glam-gal wife, back then, into moving back to the land. Then again, an ex-wife wasn't the thing to touch on when the ex was the same age as Coral's mom. 
       "Anyway," Coral was saying, "that's what my parents did way back in the 70's: They packed up their new born baby and headed up to the last remaining wilderness."

       "Oh," I said, "so you weren't born in Alaska."

       "I was. But my sister wasn't." Coral went on about her sister, how she was four years her senior, an artist like herself.

       

****