Title: "Marigold Wine" part 6/?
Author: lj user="Aura218"
Pairing: Hawkeye/Trapper, Hawkeye/others
Genre: Drama, romance, longfic, postseries, 60s
Summary: In the 60s, Trapper visits his old army buddy at a hippie commune, where Hawkeye has retreated to find peace.
Rating: R/M
Part 6
Trapper awoke to an airraid. No, a sniper. . . . Construction? A jaunty bell chime cut through the clear morning.
Oh, God: Typewriter.
Sky-cracking clacking. Manual typewriter.
Hawkeye cursed.
Manual without a correction ribbon.
Trapper slapped around for his watch, but there was no end table and no water-resistant Swiss watch with flex-o-twist band. Because he was in Hawkeye's bedroom, and Hawkeye's bed, and his watch was still on his wrist, which meant he'd slept on it and the newfangled band took out quite a few arm hairs when he turned it around to read it. Nine twenty-nine A.M. Later than he usually got up, but he didn't often stay up until dawn with his new lover.
Huh, he thought. I have a new lover. Even when he had a new affair, he didn't think of any of those girls as his lover. Outside of the plotting stage, he rarely thought about them at all.
Trapper pulled back the curtain and stepped into the living room, or whatever Hawkeye was calling it. Hawk was scowling at a typewriter as he delicately rolled a typewriter eraser over the sheet still rolled into it.
"Hey," Trapper grunted in his pre-coffee voice.
Hawkeye turned and took him in - naked, sleepy, and grouchy. A grin broke across Hawkeye's face like the dawn.
"Morning," he said.
"Where's the head?"
Hawkeye pointed out the kitchen window. "Take a right out the back door, go about a twenty-five yards into the woods, it's the shack with the hole under it. Or there's the bushes near the stream."
Trapper grunted.
"Showers are the other direction," Hawkeye continued cheerfully, "but we're going to the lake later, so I'm taking a mountain man shower."
"What's that?"
Hawkeye bushed the eraser bits out of his typewriter. "You're clean if you swam today. I have water on the fire for a shave and a tooth brush. You missed breakfast, but I saved you some toast and coffee."
"Oo."
Trapper scrambled for pants, grabbing Hawkeye's because they were easier to get back into, and chucked his toiletries bag on the sofa. Out back of the cabin ran a sliding rocky path that led to the stream. Trapper picked the bushes and high-stepped it barefoot back to the cabin. He felt ten years old again, if he'd ever gone to camp; he felt like the ten-year-old Hawkeye must have been in that little town in Maine.
"Doesn't this place get restrictive?" Trapper said when he came in. "Group meals, no indoor plumbing, that sort of thing."
Hawkeye shrugged over his monstrous black typewriter. "You get used to it. We're supposed to be enjoying the simplicity of using only what we need."
"How's that going?" Trapper pulled on clean clothes in the living room while Hawkeye pretended not to watch. Trapper pretended not to flex.
"Every society has rules," Hawkeye said. "Here, you can swim naked or show up to lunch in a feather boa and call it art. There's always trade-offs. We can't tap into the city's power grid too much or they'll tax us."
Trapper chuckled.
He took the toast and coffee from Hawkeye's all-purpose table and settled in front of the fire. He stirred the coals to life and set the dishes on the hearth to warm. Hawkeye said he built up a fire every morning for hot water and breakfast, even in the summer, because it was cool in the mountains in the cabins. It would be warmer later, and then comfortable to sleep.
"What're you writing?" Trapper re-toasted his toast with a long fork.
"This and that," Hawkeye said, leaning over his papers with a pencil. Trapper noticed that he wore rectangular rimless wire reading glasses now. Looked cute. "I felt inspired."
Trapper eyed him over his coffee mug. "By me?"
Hawkeye smirked. "One might say."
Trapper crunched down on the toast. Mmm - homemade brown bread. Like the stuff they gave you in school during the Depression.
"Just don't name any names," Trapper said.
Hawkeye smiled like an angel fairly skipping softly downward.
By "we" are going to the lake, Hawkeye had meant they were meeting the whole clan - Lena, the kids, Siva. Trapper looked for a pair of swim trunks least likely to be blazoned with a scarlet A. He wondered what the etiquette was for lunching with the woman who'd given her husband permission to take him to bed the night before. Maybe Hallmark did a special type of engraving for that.
Trapper and Hawkeye found Lena on the porch of the women's cabin, a huge, converted barn. The whole front of the barn was hung with a jungle of blooming vines and bushes; every window was dressed with shades, and a wreath hung on the door. Girls lived here. Above the lintel, someone had painted a terrifying nude crone figure who crouched over the door and stared down at them in a way that made Trapper's danglies recede.
"Is she wearing baggy bloomers?" Trapper subtly indicated the crone.
"No," Hawkeye said.
Trapper made the sign of the cross. He hitched himself onto the porch railing while Hawkeye rescued Sunny from the basket he was making a valiant escape from, thoroughly ignoring his mother's attempt to contain him. Trapper smiled as he watched Hawkeye bounce the kid on his knee.
Lena was responsible for the macramé plant holders above his head, Trapper discovered, as well as the afghan he'd slept under yesterday afternoon. As he and Hawkeye sat on the porch waiting for Siva, he watched her hand twirl a tiny hook and tease an endless stream of mustard yarn into a tiny circle.
"Miss Lily in the dairy is turning eleven," Lena said. "I'm making about fifty of these to crochet together into a vest. The girls have decided they're a trend."
"Is she one of your students?" Trapper played with Sunny while Hawkeye held him, letting Sunny hold his hand and pretending it was a grip of death. Babies liked to think they could hurt you.
"One of my best," Lena said from her ramrod perch on the porch swing. "I'm also her spiritual guidepost."
"Uh huh," Trapper said. Why couldn't they just say 'godmother'? Was that really so establishment? Who had a thing against Cinderella?
Inside, some women and girls were giggling and doing some women-and-girls thing. Maybe a spell celebrating their menstrual cycles. Trapper didn't dare ask. If there was any spirituality in this house at all, it was female to the core, and it was suspicious of him. He edged a little closer to Hawkeye.
"And what did you boys do this morning?" Lena asked.
Trapper almost fell into the bushes. Well, ma'am, I snuck up on this fella doing the dishes and gave him my first reach-around handjob. Then I almost lost it when he got down on his knees in front of me and hung onto my belt like an acrobat. Shortly thereafter, we boiled some more wash water. If it hadn't been for you, we'd have done it all over again twice.
"Dunno about Harpo here, but I penned a masterpiece," Hawkeye said.
"Don't get carried away, dearest," Lena said.
Hawkeye put on a wounded air. "I feel defamed."
Lena looked up from her stitchery as if Hawkeye were tearing her from a task far more important than his existence, his town, his country, his planet.
"Dear heart," she said, "after each first draft you lift yourself to the heights of expectation, only to fall to the depths of despair when you must rework the piece in editing. It isn't good for you, or your work. As I tell my students, writing is editing."
"She does say that," Hawkeye said. "She makes them write it at the top of all their compositions."
"I should do the same to you," Lena said, eyeing them over her work. "You're making a bad schoolteacher of me."
"Never." Hawkeye shoved off the railing and kissed the part of her hair.
Trapper looked away. Up the road, from the other direction than the courtyard, Siva was coming. Jeremiah trailed behind, thumping along the homemade fishing poles. His dad took them before he broke the handles.
"Boys are here!" Hawkeye crowed and met them in the front yard. Jeremiah ran ahead. And grabbed his . . . uncle? around the waist.
"Hi, Hawkeye!"
Trapper watched Hawkeye's face and his opinion was sealed. Hawkeye loved this kid like his own.
Siva greeted Lena on the porch with a kiss.
"Hello again," Siva said to Trapper.
Trapper reached out to shake hands, but was given a basket instead. He stumbled, surprised by the weight.
"Careful, there's glass in there," Siva said helpfully.
"Right."
Lena shot him a hard look, but gave Trapper a bright smile. "Are we ready?"
Hawkeye had the baby on one hip and Jeremiah's hand on his other side. "Ready when you are."
As with all family vacations, the calm lasted about five minutes. Siva chased after Jeremiah, who pulled away from Hawkeye to show them all a particular spot by the lake. The baby howled for something. Lena took him from Hawkeye, saying she'd hurry ahead with Jeremiah so she could nurse the baby sooner. Hawkeye and Trapper, not quite as bushytailed, fell behind.
"They sure picked a gorgeous spot here," Trapper said.
Hawkeye nodded. "It'll die down in winter, you'll be able to see clear through to the highway in some places. Loses a bit of its magic. But it's sure something to behold in summertime."
Trapper hmm'd. "I can't believe you're starting at the beginning at your age. With a younger woman, no less."
Hawkeye smiled. "'You're only as young as you feel'? Lena's not that much younger than me, she's just perfectly preserved. Not like me, I'm falling apart."
Trapper smiled. Quietly, "Look put together to me."
Hawkeye glanced around them. He took Trapper by the hand and pulled him closer, slipping his arm around his waist. As they bopped down the bumpy path, Trapper's hand landed on the back of Hawkeye's neck, tangling in the longish hair.
Kicked up dust rose in the sunshine. Birds chirped high in the trees, swooped down to peck at an insect, flew off into the low branches.
"I just realized," Hawkeye said. "You haven't held the baby yet. People like to do that, you know. It's like a ride. Come up here, buy a ticket, hold the baby."
Someone was coming up the path. They decoupled and put some light between them.
"I don't need to hold any babies," Trapper said when the opposite group passed.
Hawkeye glanced at him. Trapper avoided his eye.
"Who?" Hawkeye said.
Trapper shook his head. "Becky."
"Yeah?"
"She ran off with some guy. She sent us a picture postcard from Washington state saying she was fine and not to contact her, except would we please send her fifty dollars for rent money."
Hawkeye's judgmental eyes were on him. "Yeah yeah?"
Trapper shoved his hands in his pockets. "Not gonna let my oldest daughter live on the street. I didn't tell Louise."
"What about the boyfriend, or expectant father?"
"That meatball?" Trapper said.
"If that's what we're calling him."
"The word from Louise's private investigator is that he's in prison. And there's no baby."
Hawkeye glanced at him, eyes wide. He looked straight ahead. "What's that mean?"
Trapper sighed, deep in his throat. "Becky said she was pregnant, Louise said she found folic acid in Becky's purse. I don't know what to believe with that girl anymore, hence the P.I. According to his investigation, 'it is extremely unlikely there is a baby present in Miss McIntyre's life.'"
"If you didn't sort of believe this," Hawkeye said, "you wouldn't be so upset. So you think either she had the baby . . ."
Trapper shook his head. "The way I see it, either she lied, which is a pretty extreme way for a twenty-year-old to get permission to run away from home, or she was pregnant and she put it up for adoption. Or."
"Or?"
Trapper scuffed his sneakers, kicking up stones. "Well. We don't know why the meatball is in prison."
Hawkeye looked nauseous. "I refuse to entertain that idea."
"You think that doesn't happen? To nice girls from nice homes?"
"I know it happens." Hawkeye looked at the dirt path, hands in his pockets.
"Hawk . . . she's not my little girl anymore. She's all grown up and making her own stupid mistakes. There's nothing I can do for her. She doesn't want to deal with me, then okay. I don't deal with her."
Hawkeye glanced at him. "So . . . what? This one's done, on to the next kid?"
Trapper could feel Hawkeye staring at him as they headed single file up the steep woods path, precluding conversation. Hawkeye wouldn't understand, his kid was tiny and perfect and needed him. It was different when they learned to talk and drive. He hardly even knew Becky anymore, so how sorry could he feel for losing a stranger?
Up ahead, Lena hefted Sunny higher on her chest as she followed Jeremiah up the hill to the docks. Sunny was sucking on her neck. I'm the most celibate woman on the camp, she thought, and the love of my life is giving me a hickey.
Behind her, she could hear her husband and Trapper talking quietly. She sensed they wanted privacy, so she touched Siva on the arm to bid him to match her swift pace.
Siva said, "And how was your night?"
Her night. Where to begin telling your best friend how you felt about setting up your suspended husband with his best friend. . . .
"I slept very well."
He glanced down at her. She ducked her head, hiding her smile.
"C'mon now, honey. You're telling me you're really okay with those two?"
Lena sighed and took Siva's arm. He bent it courteously, lacing their fingers.
"He needs a friend," she finally said.
"He's got friends."
Lena shook her head. "He needs more than a friend. And I need a partner in Hawkeye-wrangling. And since you -"
"Don't start," Siva said, not unkindly.
"I know, I'm not asking you to take him on again."
Siva kicked a spiny walnut pod. It spun into the bushes. "Take him on a long ride into the wilds, maybe."
"Don't be ridiculous, dear heart, no one gets lost in the American woods any longer, especially not in Maine."
"We'll see."
They crunched to the apex of the hill, where the dirt and grass ended and the rocky beach sloped down to the shore. Closer to the water, the broken rocks sealed to wide, flat, boulders excellent for sunning and picnicking. Jeremiah was sitting cross-legged on one with the fishing poles clenched between his knees while he carefully unstuck the hooks and unwrapped the lines.
"Your feelings are valid," she said. "He needs too much. He needs a wife and a brother and maybe also a - a husband, if you grasp it. Hawkeye is a man with too much hurt for one person. I think this Trapper understands that."
"What about Trapper? Does he know you're yentaing up everyone's future?"
Lena looked down the hill where two heads, one tawny, the other dark, bobbed up the path apace. "I didn't ask him to bring Trapper here, in fact I think Trapper invited himself. And I didn't ask Trapper into his bed last night. I think Trapper came here for reasons of his own."
"How do you know Trapper is interested in that kind of relationship?"
Lena smiled. "I think Trapper is as Hawkeye is. What are you?"
Siva took the excuse of his son to avoid answering. He tossed a glance over his shoulder. Hawkeye and the new guy spotted Rosie and some of the girls from the printing press coming up the hill; the two guys sprang apart like shrapnel.
"You ever notice how this place draws all the shattered people?" Siva said.