Fair 6
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Marron heard Trunks roar like a lion as he surged past her through the water and went toward the bank with an additional excessively threatening snarl that promised mayhem and a rendering of limbs. She had a brief feeling of alarm for the victim.
She heard a scrabble in the grass and an exclamation of astonishment, then a sharp protest voiced by a stranger. There was a thrashing sound that receded away from her, through the trees and back toward the fair, and it was accompanied be more strident objections.
Very much aware of her unclothed state, Marron scrunched down to scuttle out of the water. Shivering, she went over to their bed, where she snatched her gown and pulled it over her head. She fumbled around before she found her moccasins and thrust her wet muddy feet into them. All the while she darted her frantic eyes around her, but she saw no one. She fled, with her wet hair running cold streams down her chilled body, her dress dampened, as her movements caused it to rub against her and her breath rasping in shock and with her struggle to run on such uneven ground.
She didn't go back the way they had come, but, thinking only of her escape she went around the lake the other way which took her past the two greased poles and on toward Emma. The parking area was not quite empty. If she had considered, she might have wondered why a surprising number of cars remained. But there was Emma, patiently waiting, looking quite secure and protected next to Trunks' Muscle Machine. Marron touched Emma's fender as one would a loyal servant, and reached under the bumper for the spare key.
Emma was a little cranky at being disturbed, but she sighed and coughed into activity. Still in active flight, Marron backed from the space with an uncharacteristic recklessness, then zoomed from the field, bumped across the roadside ditch covered temporarily by a rough board bridge, to the dirt road. She sped down the road to the highway to turn right and vanish into the darkness.
Marron didn't have coherent thoughts for some time because, with some incomprehensible trepidation, she looked into the rearview mirror, anticipating pursuit. None appeared. She roared through the night at fifty-seven miles per hour and her only object was to get away.
She did. She didn't speculate on what exactly she was fleeing so drastically, or why, but she knew it was time for her to leave, and she had... quite finally.
Marron was smart enough to still expect pursuit, so she didn't stop at any of the little towns but continued on down the highway through the village and for the next hour or so, until she came to Avocado at the border of Mango.
Any of the little towns might well have motels, and did but too many women sign in at that time of night with ratty, lake-wet hair, wearing a long, ill-used gown clinging to their bare bodies with moccasins on dirty feet. She had needed a larger town so that she wouldn't be especially noticed.
In her imagination she could hear her pursuers as they leaned casually against the desk and questioned the clerk. "A woman, blond hair, long dress and moccasins?"
"Why do you want her?"
"She was with a homicidal maniac who tried to make a man eat a camera with a zoom lens."
She found a motel and was so casual that the clerk watched her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. He memorized her and put a secret mark by her name. Later he went out and verified the number on her license plate.
In her room Marron stripped and then stood under the shower for along time. After that she went right to bed and fell into a very interesting sleep. Trunks starred in all of her dreams, which were quite vivid and like nothing she had ever dreamed in all her nights.
The next day she bought a guidebook and as she wandered unseeingly around Avocado, she accepted the complete responsibility for all the events of the previous day with maturity and good reason.
None of what had happened had been Trunks' fault. Her conduct had become quite strange before she had ever Peach and with uncharacteristic impulsiveness gone to a strange county fair. She had no excuse for what she had perpetrated. Trunks bore no blame whatsoever. He didn't lure her into that stolen day. It had been an unusual set of circumstances all coming together with unpredictable results. Her life, her strange restlessness, the urgings for her to marry Sharpener, and the responsibilities that burdened her had ballooned out of all proportion. It was remarkable set of varying problems that had exactly coincided. It hadn't been "fate" but her leaving on the holiday, her turning off to see the fair, and her allowing Trunks to share her stolen day. It had all been her free choice.
And she regretted none of it.
She had known Trunks was special from the moment she'd seen him so effortlessly crawl out of that Muscle Machine and straighten so easily with lazy challenge in his vivid blue eyes. The next thing that tempted her had been the humor that lurked in those eyes, around that masculine mouth and in his husky, deep voice. That and the feeling she had of adventure in him.
Look how quickly she had though of him as a pirate, as a man who knew women well; a man who had seen so much and who had so incidentally come into her life. How could she have allowed the chance to experience being with him pass her by? Just remember how he'd looked at her in those first few moments sent a sharp thrill spiraling down to places deep inside her. Silently she groaned for the loss of him.
Eventually she found herself back in her motel room and decided that if she was actually being followed, to stay in one place was pushing her luck. Feeling very clever, she paid the overcharge and moved to another motel. She bought the Sunday paper and had dinner, then went back to her room and to bed. Her brain went on discussing her conduct, her life and times.
As much as she'd treasure that day with him, Trunks was out of her league. She was a small-town woman. He was of the world. If she saw him again, they would both try uselessly to prolong their association. They would make delicious life more times... She laid a hand on her stomach as grief twisted in her body.
But she knew as surely as she lay in that motel bed that their efforts to stay together and make something of their relationship would gradually deteriorate. He wouldn't live contentedly in Peach. He couldn't. That would be just like trying to tame a lion and force him to live out hie life in one small cage. How could she do that to such a man? He needed to be free. And she needed to go back to her... she almost said duties.
Marron slept restlessly that night. Her body's wakened hungers haunted her sleep with exquisite detail. In her dreams Trunks smiled and took her into his strong arms. His hard hands moved as he chose and he touched her lips with his as her body burned. But he only teased her. He would take her into his arms and set her afire but he wouldn't get on with it! When she writhed with frustration and became angry, he laughed in triumph.. She couldn't see anything funny at all and tried to put her arms around him to coax him, but there were numberless other people around and she had trouble getting Trunks to realize that she wanted to be alone with him. He kept asking why, in an extremely dense way, and he'd ask what was the matter. But he asked the question in front of faceless people who appeared to be politely interested in her reasons. She wakened too early, still tired, and more than a little disgruntled.
Even after she'd showered and dressed, it was still too early for the coffee shop to open for breakfast, so she read yesterday's Sunday paper. Her horoscope said she should examine legal papers carefully, watch her health and be cautious of strangers. That advice came a little late, she decided.
She scanned the headlines, and the reports on the fall soccer teams, and then went to the Living section, where that week's story was on county fairs. She shook out the paper and smiled a little, thinking how appropriate it was. And there... right there... on the front page was a picture of a woman standing to her hips in the water, at night, and looking at a man who was erupting from the lake in front of her and laughing as his wicked eyes - it was Trunks! And the woman was... she. If that was Trunks, the woman was Marron Chestnut!
She leaped from her chair, thrusting the paper aside, and paced around in agitation, her hand often to her forehead. In all the history of the Chestnuts of Peach, there never had been a scandal. Not a public one. And now here was the last of Peach's Chestnuts naked on the front page of a newspaper!
Her heart thundered, her face burned with shame. All the admonitions on conduct she'd learned all her life crowded in for rapid replay at an advanced speed.
She turned and set her eyes on the abandoned newspaper. She went to it and smoothed it out to look at it sensibly. The picture was of Trunks' face as he erupted from the water; his arms outspread, the water flying off him in droplets caught in midair by the camera's flash. He was laughing and the flash caught his eyes, making them opaque. Trunks looked like a mythical god sporting in the water with an unwary human woman.
In a neutral way Marron then looked at herself- the nude woman who stood so femininely in front of Trunks. It was a lovely picture of a woman's body. She was standing there with the back of her body naked down to the only pair of dimples she possessed. All it actually showed was the bowed head, the arms up as she made sure her long wet hair had covered her breasts. There was no way to identify the picture as being one of Marron Chestnut of Peach, Mango.
It was simply a beautiful picture of her. And she looked at it, and at Trunks' move toward her - frozen by the camera- and she hated the cameraman. How dare he intrude on their idyll? How dare he spoil the last of her glorious stolen day? A tear or two welled in her eyes.
Eventually Marron folded the paper neatly, left her room and went to breakfast. She could only eat minimally. Then she encouraged herself to wander around. The town was mostly wasted on her, for her mind wasn't on the sightseeing. She decided she was glad the picture had been printed. She could have one of Trunks to remember him, to moon over in her old age, there in Peach, probably the last living resident, and she pictured herself as a bent figure making her way along the town's deserted streets.
But when she returned to her room it was neatly made up and the paper had been thrown away! In panic she went to the desk and inquired, with commendable casualness, "I wonder if you would have a copy of Sunday's paper."
"I'll look." The clerk smiled. As Marron waited, he called someone on the house phone, then said regretfully. "I'm sorry, we don't have a copy. But you can go down to the newspaper offices, on Main Street by the hospital, and buy a back issue."
"It's not that important." She dismissed the idea. "Thanks anyway."
Almost immediately she drove downtown, found Main Street, then the hospital, and only had to go around one block, to backtrack, before she located the entrance to the newspaper offices. Mumbling about an article she needed for a research paper, she bought four copies of the entire paper and walked out clutching them to her chest.
She returned to her motel, and since no one else would be in her room, she took one of the pictures and, with two safety pins, fitted it nicely into the frame on the wall over a bland river scene. Then she lay back on the bed and looked at it.
She saw his laughing face and the intentness of his eyes riveted on her. The picture froze the surge of movement as he reached his arms out and forward toward her as he came from the water. His body was almost immodest, as the picture showed his magnificent male musculature and the power of his chest and widespread arms, the purpose of his movement toward her was obvious and held there motionless. Aesthetically it was a fantastic picture, capturing balance and emotion.
The sheets of water that fell from him were perfectly caught by the camera's light against the blackness of the night. It was like a magical garment of a woodland prince who had a strange big ring on his finger. The beaded dots showed the force of his action - but also that her capture could never be completed. Sadness swamped through her for the interrupted end of her stolen day. She had another terrible night. She was restless and grieving. She rose early and put the pictures safely into her suitcase. Then she added the rest of the papers, because she'd told the clerk it wasn't important. The maid would probably make some mention of her having four copies of the Sunday paper in her room after throwing one away and would speculate about what she had been looking for. They'd then turn through the papers, find the Living section missing and go down to the offices, where they'd buy another copy, find the picture of Trunks, and remember she had been that size and had blond hair. They'd then realize she had been the one in that picture! They would know she was Marron Chestnut of Peach, Mango, all because she'd signed her real name to the motel register. Good grief, she chided herself. How silly.
She finished packing, had breakfast, paid her tab and left, driving west Mango. But by the time she neared Melon, she turned back northeast and searched out the byway she'd driven down all those days ago. Eventually, after much backtracking and trying to remember, she did find the turnoff. At last she came to the deserted, trampled field.
Even the greased poles and the barrels the teams had washed in were gone. The fence had been restored. In her summer suit and heels Marron climbed through the fence and walked slowly along the lake, remembering, feeling very poignant, nostalgic and she rather wallowed in it all.
She stood and looked around with sad eyes. A car slowly drove by, and she glanced quickly at it. But it was the wrong kind. She picked her way along the lake shore and, of course, she walked around to where she and Trunks had lain in each other's arms.
The straw was still there. She stood, suffering, and she nudged it with the toe of her shoe. Then she stooped and took a shaft of it to put with the picture for her memories.
Since she was honest, she realized it had been best that their separation had happened exactly as it had. This way there had been no lingering goodbyes or struggles to prolong something that could never be. The only trouble was that she would like to know what would happen to him in the years to come. If he would ever marry, and how much he would like to see - form a discrete distance - his children, and to watch how they fared. But he would probably never marry. He was of a breed of men that no one can successfully domesticate. They are adventurers, the discoverers who want to see what is over yonder hill and on beyond and who come back and are alien creatures thrust into other people's placid lives. She shed a tear.
She stood looking down at the straw and remembered what it had been like to be against his hot body, with his strong arms grasping her to him as his mouth took hers. She groaned and leaned her head down to her hands in grief.
Such men were created to briefly lure a maiden's heart to flee with him, but a smart woman didn't tag along, becoming excess baggage for a progressively indifferent adventurer. She chose instead to marry... Sharpener?
In a blue fog, she wandered back around the other bank of the lake along which she'd fled just days ago. Then, with all the tents and activity, the music and banners and Trunks it had been a peopled place. Now it was just an empty field with a lake and trees. She came to the place of the greased poles and remembered Trunks as he helped Uub, his erstwhile enemy.
She passed where the logs still lay in the lake and she remembered Trunks n the water, helpless with laughter. She smiled wanly. She again saw him coming to her, wet and dripping, to lean down and kiss her. She even went to where the tents and booths had been and tried to judge where that bell had stood within the fence, but she couldn't be exact. She thought how cleverly Trunks had defused Uub's strident combativeness and turned it into competition.
Who would she ever know that she could talk to about him? No one. How could she confide such actions, and just what could she actually say? "I went to a county fair, over in Apricot, I met a man that morning and I lay with him." She could never tell anyone about any of it. She didn't even have a peacock feather left.
While she would never see Trunks Briefs again, she had lived a stolen day with him. She had tasted a different kind of life. She would go back to her safe little town, to a known existence, and be there all the rest of her life, safe and secure, dying with the town.
Another car went by as she turned back to the fence, but a glance showed her that it wasn't a black Muscle Machine. She waited until it turned to the highway so she could modestly crawl through the fence and go back to Emma, who again waited patiently.
She drove back toward Peach, sunk in a verifying melancholy. She altered her route home to drive by each of the three farms she had inherited. They were shock-full of soybeans and corn. The wood lots were healthy, the fences neat, the weeds mowed. She rented the land out, and the people who used her land were diligent farmers.
Then she drove into town and slowly circled the square. The courthouse and more than half of the stores facing the square were empty. There was nothing to attract new people into town.
She drove on to her own street and looked at her own house with the eyes of a traveler who had been in the far land. There it stood, solid, small, tall, thin, not pretty but spare. There were five rooms downstairs and two enormous bedrooms upstairs. The sewing room had been converted into two baths many years ago, and her mother and father had split one big bedroom into two when Marron was eight.
It was rather a prim house. One that suited an old maid. Easy to keep up. But then she had the income to do it. She drove through the opening in the front hedge, which really should be trimmed back, and there, mowing her lawn bare-chested and in shorts, was Trunks Briefs.