Thunder In Her Body (43 page)

On the flight back to Anchorage they watched whales glide into Cook Inlet.  They flew low enough to see stellar sea lions jockeying for positions on rocky outcroppings, and those silly little black, white and orange puffin birds balancing on the edge of cliffs.

For most of their trip, the weather gods had been kind to them.  If it rained in the morning, the sun broke through the clouds by noon or slightly thereafter.  And, when it did rain, even though it was the height of the summer season, it was a bearable, chilly rain.  Unlike Austin or the desert parts of New Mexico during July and August, with 100 degree plus temperatures, the late summer temperatures in Alaska ranged from the mid-50s to the mid-70s.  There was no day hotter than 78 degrees.  What a blessing to be able to vacation in this weather.  Lynette just
didn’t do
hot summers.  The mild climate in Crystal Bend was one of the several reasons Lynette had chosen the area around Sierra Asombroso to buy a vacation home.  Now, because God was good, and showed favor on her and Blaze, her permanent home would be in the cool of the mountains with songs of the swaying Ponderosa Pine trees whispering a benediction in her ears.

Twenty nine days had passed since they left New Mexico.  It went so fast, but they had hundreds of pictures to take back and a lifetime of memories.  Wherever she could, Lynette had the most current photos developed and put on CD discs so the sights would not get lost if anything happened to their digital cameras.  Blaze had taken pictures of her with every mountain range he could find, as her backdrop.  They often asked strangers to take their picture together with something specific in the background, and strangers were delighted to accommodate.  They acted like newlyweds!  And it was their intention never to loose that enthusiasm.  Back they flew to Anchorage, watched a bore tide come in at Turnagain Arm, stayed overnight, then with
all
of their luggage collected, it was time to go home.  What a trip this had been.

The Universe blessed them with one more gift as the Alaska Airlines flight lifted into the sky from Anchorage, heading south.  Within minutes out of Anchorage, the clouds parted and below them laid, out as far as the eye could see, dozens of glaciers inching their way to some terminal destination.  They could see the Portage Glacier, now receding back to the mountain; the Malaspina Glacier, forty miles wide and God knows how long.  Flowing in all directions were dozens of rivers of ice, many laid down hundreds of years before the Lower-48 was established as a country, but not before the first Native-Americans walked across that land bridge.  Wherever Blaze was, there were his people.  The people who were here first.

C
HAPTER 29

             
¤

Giving Up The Past

T
he guest room on Blaze’s side of the house was filled with the dozens of packages he and his bride had shipped home from Alaska.  It looked like a Goodwill Store.  There were things for the house and gifts for friends and relatives.  He’d even shipped some of his Homer catch, via FedEx, packed in dry ice.  Aaron stored the flounder in the freezer until they could all be home together and enjoy it.

Lynette was anxious to see her puppies after a full month’s absence.  She asked Blaze what he thought about naming them
Yukon
and
Alaska. 
Yukon would be the name for the shepherd, and Alaska for the brown and white one.  He thought it was a great idea; a reminder every day of the world’s best honeymoon.

Blaze was anxious to get a good look at the progress on the house.  Two weeks before Thanksgiving was the hoped-for occupancy date.  There was time though; this was only the latter part of August.

Aaron and Clare threw a small barbecue get-together for them, the Friday night after their return, which provided a captive audience and prime opportunity to show photos and talk on and on about Alaska.  Aaron didn’t know Lynette could get so many words out in one breath!  They talked about going back again soon, and encouraged Clare and Aaron to consider that as a destination for their honeymoon.  Blaze was as impressed with
Alaska as Lynette had been, and kept thanking her for taking him.  His visits there while in the Navy were under much different, and classified circumstances.  Back then there was no time for sightseeing or fun.

Over the next month, Lynette flew back and forth to Austin, clearing out twelve years of accumulated “stuff” as she prepared to put her neat little house on the market.  She decided not to lease it out.  Tenants can sometimes be a problem, and she wanted to keep her life as uncomplicated as it had become.  She talked to Janette about keeping it, but she too, agreed it would be more of a problem than it was worth.

“Sell it mom,” Janette counseled, “pay off all your bills, and if you want to, put some of that money into the condo.  That way it’ll be paid off sooner, and you’ll own it free and clear.”  Now Lynette knew her daughter well.  She was a mirror of her mother when it came to business and practicality.  They had a wonderful and fun relationship.  Janette’s sense of humor was even more developed that her mother’s, and whenever the two were together, there was lots of laughter.  Once, when discussing death and what arrangements Lynette had made for when the time came, she couldn’t decide whether she wanted a normal funeral or if she wanted to be cremated.  While in a quandary, Janette told her not to worry.  She was going to take a post-hole digger, dig a six foot deep hole in the back yard, and just stand her dead body up in the hole, and she’d plant a tree on top of her.  That was actually very creative and when they stopped laughing, they both agreed that death should not be feared; it is inevitable.  No one gets out of this life alive, so why treat it so somberly.  Janette told that story many times and most people found it terribly irreverent and absolutely funny.  Knowing Janette, the thought of the condo being paid off, meant that down the road, it would be hers – free and clear!  She was thinking ahead.

Blaze went with her and spent almost a week helping her with the heavy lifting.  He mowed and trimmed the yard and hauled the decrepit old lawn mower, which she hadn’t used in five years, off to Goodwill, for refurbishing and resale.  Even he couldn’t believe the number of boxes she had stored in the garage.  One of her five closets was stacked to the ceiling with boxes of labeled and dated genealogy research materials.  She refused to destroy or trash any of those valuable documents and convinced Blaze that, if they could dedicate a large enough closet in their new home, her priceless materials could be kept out of sight in there.  She swore that one day she planned to catalog her materials on the computer, but life had been too busy so far to do it.  She was a pack-rat, she knew it.

Blaze just laughed at what she wanted to keep and what she could convince herself to let go.  There were high school year books, her graded papers from undergraduate school (most with “A’s” on them), every term paper she ever wrote, and all the research materials for her Master’s Thesis.  She’d kept her children’s report cards, girl scout sashes, craft projects and an old Selectric typing machine.  An entire corner of the garage was dedicated to her “lady tools”- jig saws, circular saw, two Black and Decker drills, assorted hammers, screw driver sets, tool boxes, cans of nails, tree trimmers, hundreds of feet of orange extension cords, weed whackers, and two Dremel tool sets.  During all of her single years, she’d had to be pretty self-sufficient, and she was well-equipped to handle most basic repairs around her home.  She even had a set of crow bars, which were an absolute necessity when she ripped up the worn and broken boards on her own deck, and replaced them with treated cedar decking.

They drove her bright red Chevy Cobalt back to New Mexico loaded with boxes of her Native pottery and art work.  These she would not trust to the movers.  She had lovingly cared for her special pieces, acquired over a twenty-five year span.  Some of her pottery she bought directly from the artist.  She remembered the face of the man at the Acoma Pueblo, who made one of her most special pieces.  His work was so intricate.  The lines were so perfect.  He had painted this piece of white pottery with the hairs of a horse.  She sat on her living room floor and stroked another piece, telling Blaze the story of the trip to the Four Corners area with Clare.  Each piece she wrapped and put into the box, had a story with it.  Blaze quickly realized that she was not just packing away pots, she was saving important memories in her life.  Lovingly she interpreted the designs and stories on some of the vases.  Listening patiently, he admired her for her love and appreciation of the handwork of indigenous people.

He never tired of the sound of her voice.  He compared it to the lonely, silent days on the ranch when all he heard was the hushed whisper of the wind.  He was used to the bellowing of the cows – the snorting of the horses.  Her voice ran the range of a musical scale.  Soft and melodic, full and clear, hot and brassy and the whisper of an ultimate passion.  No, he would never tire of her sound.

They slept in her big king-size bed at night and she snuggled up against him occasionally telling him what this house had meant to her.  The freedom, the independence.  She could shut the door at the end of the day and shut out all the misery on the other side.  This had been her personal sanctuary.  She’d shared it with Robert and her older daughter for awhile, but it was hers.  Blaze held her tightly in that bed, and wondered how many times she had given herself to someone else in it.  It was logical for him to have those thoughts.  He wasn’t really jealous.  In fact, he was somewhat pleased that the bed had obviously brought her pleasure.  What she’d learned as a lover of other men, she brought to their relationship and he benefited from her experience.  She was a lusty and wanton bedmate who made love with full abandon.  He’d had the other types, many times.  The women who sincerely believed that all they had to do was lay there and moan a bit; or the ones who wanted to pretend like they were porno queens, with too much lipstick, fake facial expressions and lack of sensualness.  Probably the worst were those who wanted to act as though they had no experience at all, and made him do all the work, then required that he be grateful for what they’d given him.  But not Lynette.  She wanted him, all the time.  If she teased him, it was with a promise that she fulfilled in every way.  When she was in his arms, there was nothing else in the world but him.  With her reckless, fleshy, gluttonous way of consuming him, she was the most powerful woman he’d ever bedded.

Knowing there was no room in the garage at the ranch, they rented an indoor, climate controlled storage facility in Crystal Bend to store her prized boxes of pottery and crystal.  The heavy boxes were unloaded and placed carefully in the facility, before heading to the ranch.  It was their plan to make one more road trip back to Austin to retrieve her genealogy materials, have the house cleaned, then turn it over to a realtor.

“Hey, welcome back road warriors,” Aaron shouted through the house.  “How’d it go?”

“Well, Blaze has discovered one of my major flaws.  I’m a pack-rat.  I hate getting rid of stuff, clearly that I have no further use for,” Lynette admitted.

“I’m gonna have to design a special wing on the house just for her research materials,” he chuckled jovially.

“No you won’t silly.  Just a closet, somewhere – anywhere in the house.  That’ll do,” she said pinching him lovingly.

Lucinda was there when they arrived.  She was glad to see the couple so happy and back at the ranch, but there was a palpable sadness about her.  Propped up on one of the kitchen bar stools, Lynette talked to her friend, and asked what was wrong.

“My son.  My son’s house burned down, and…” before she could finish her statement, she dissolved into tears, turning her body away from Lynette to hide her face.  Lynette walked across the kitchen and put her arms around Lucinda.  She hugged her without saying anything until Lucinda recovered enough to finish her story.

“They lost everything.  They have nothing left.  He’s a good boy.  He worked so hard to make a home for his family.  My husband taught him that it is important for a man to make a good home for his family, wherever they must live.  He had a nice, new double-wide on his land – he has five acres over near Grant, but they lost everything,” and she began crying again.

Aaron and Blaze walked past the kitchen at that moment and saw Lynette holding Lucinda.

“What’s wrong?” they asked almost in unison.

Lynette helped Lucinda up onto one of the kitchen stools, and she told how her son had made some enemies because he refused to go in on a shaky, and probably illegal, deal that some white men had cooked up.  When he testified in court to what he knew, he was threatened, and three days ago his home
mysteriously
caught fire.  No one was home at the time since his wife worked and the kids were at school, but they lost everything.  Her son packed his family up and fled to Tucson, Arizona to stay with one of his brothers, but they had nothing left.  Her boy, the second oldest, was an over-the-road trucker, and owned his own truck so he had steady employment, but they lost everything, she kept repeating.  “They lost everything,” she cried, looking helplessly up at Lynette.  “They’re looking for a rent house but they have nothing to put in it.  All the things they worked so hard to get, all the children’s things, toys, everything gone in a flash of meanness,” she wailed, “it’s just not fair.  It’s not right.”