3,091 wds
The next day i called and had to invite myself up to her room in the dormitory.
“I’m studying,” she said, making her voice sound weak. I had to see her anyway. When i arrived she was reading about witchcraft. Trying to scare me off? The leather cover had come off the thick old book and the pages were crackling and dusty. She was excited about it although it looked like it was published in about 1880.
“Is the study of witchcraft part of your degree plan?”
“No, but it’s really interesting what these witches do, or did, back then.”
“Witches are mean, Susan, you couldn’t be a witch.”
“I’m not going to be a witch, i just find it interesting. Did you come up here to criticize me?”
“No.”
I came to see her because i wanted to get to know her better, because she's my kind of woman. As usual, i couldn’t stop looking at her. Susan has a strong, square face, light eyes, a quick wit and she’s durable, busty and broad-shouldered. She has eleven brothers and sisters. Her place in that choir is smack in the middle. I could not stop myself looking at her and once she said, “Thank you for looking at me so much,” but i kept looking at her. If she wanted me to leave she would have to tell me to go. For half a minute she read silently.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m on my period.”
That is another thing i like; she's direct and honest.
“Don't worry, i can take it.”
She forced a laugh. I forced a laugh. That she would make an effort to comfort me embarrassed me and relieved my tension. I was raised in a devout family and none of the women i knew were open like Susan, not even with someone familiar. I have tried to break away from my family influences and am determined to succeed. Susan didn’t appear to notice i was feeling sensitive and embarrassed.
She turned a crackling page, sliding her entire hand under it before gently easing it over.
“Susan, i need to study too.” I put just my fingertips on her shoulder and she looked up from the book at me. “Why don’t we get together in a couple of hours and see a movie at the union or play ping pong?” She told me once she liked ping pong, but we had never played. She glanced at a clock.
“I’m way behind. Let’s do it some other time.”
I thought, 'you’re way behind and you’re reading a book on witchcraft?' I stood up quickly and said, “Okay, happy reading, i’ll see you around.”
That was the end of it, i knew it. So be it. If she wants it that way, so be it.
As i left the dormitory pulling on my hat and gloves a skinny guy with a long nose and a strangely shaped skull came in carrying a bunch of flowers. His step was eager, his eyes intent and he wore only a light jacket, like he was too busy or full of joy to notice the freezing weather. He could have been going to see any of the four hundred women in that building, each in her own bee hive slot in the dormitory honeycomb, but somehow i knew he was on his way to see Queen Bee Susan. Oh yes, she would buzz about and make a fuss because he was too stupid to wear a warm coat and hat. She would load him up with scarves and a thick wool cap that smells like her and they would laugh about it all the way to the back seat of his car. So be it!
I walked to the library through the snow covered, empty streets, thinking of her. At my favorite table in the library i spread out my books, but found myself too distracted to study. So, like i usually do, i wandered through the tall shelves looking for some odd book on animals or animal diseases or farming and ranching. This library is in the Agricultural School and i never met anyone i knew, or didn't know, there. It's quiet and none of the books interested me very long. There are heads of various cattle types mounted on open spaces between the windows and, in odd corners, old farm tools mounted on wooden pedestals. This is the plow that broke the plains and here i can lay my hand on it and touch history. I can almost feel the curved blade cutting the soil
and smell the big old horse's haunches in front of me. This library is as much a museum as a library, with glass cases containing prairie and woodland grasses or other plant life important to agriculture. Cubicles for more private study have sprouted where they could be fitted in and the new, multi-colored burlap covered partitions around computer terminals on formica desk tops make the old furniture look older. I like sitting at the heavy oak tables with thick legs, the table so heavy i can’t lift it and i am no small boy.. Sometimes i follow the grain way down through the ages, like a map, a river into the past.
All this unique terrain is packed together with just enough room for one person to pass through. Located in a long section on the south side of the second story of a three story building, the tall windows look out on the quadrangle called Prexie’s Pasture, so there is plenty of sun. On bright, cloudless days after a snow the light is so intense it hurts my eyes, but i like it anyway. I imagine most farmers and ranchers don’t have much use for a library or a museum so the facility has evolved into a storage space, a shed. Maybe funding was cut and they had to improvise and make do. Farmers are used to that.
Yet it is clean. Someone studies here, though i rarely see anyone sitting with books and paper. The floors are regularly mopped, the windows and glass of the displays regularly cleaned the undersides of the tables de-gummed.
Does a healthy, busty farm girl in college for the first year and lonely for morning chores come in to clean as the roosters in the poultry section crow? All the livestock is kept in buildings and a corral north of the library. I never heard roosters but there are plenty of cows and horses. The stink is everywhere; good, strong farm odors.
To me the books here are very unusual. For instance, a durable volume is full of photographs and drawings of bovine semen extraction tools. The windsock-like cowhide sleeves in several photos are held up for the camera by feminine hands. Were women recruited for the task of preparation, fitting and extraction out of deference to the sensitivities of the bull or is this a career path that does not appeal to men?
Another volume is a treatise on cattle parasites. Many of these burrow just under the hide and in the black and white photos the veterinarian’s thumbs, which look too rough to be feminine, squeeze out one of these hide grubs so its thick, ribbed body lays moist and convulsive on the sparse hair of the hide. In the next photo a toothpick between thumb and forefinger has turned and pins the oily beast to display its underbelly. Did the animal feel those rooting thumbs and toothpick? Was it a painful dig or more the loving scratch of an itch? Nothing indicates if the host or hostess of the guest bellowed and kicked in pain or mooed with pleasure, or if the animal was alive for the extraction. The caption indicates the name of the parasite in Latin. I failed to make note of it.
These books were so different from my own on history, philosophy and literature i usually found it easy to concentrate on my studies. That evening after visiting with Susan i sat at a table and opened a volume of mine called ANCIENT CURRENTS.
But those currents didn't flow for me. All i could think of was Susan. They walk now, (she told me she loves to walk) their shoes squeaking on the snow, to the theater or the student union or anywhere. To the nearest bed. She would go anywhere and do anything for him because he, like most men, doesn’t care. She strives to please him. He is polite, indifferent, and uses her for his pleasure, again and again.
Now he murmurs and she turns to him where he lays naked on the bed, with his long nose and lumpy skull. His murmur becomes a savage lust grunt and she smiles lazily, closes her book on witchcraft and rises, shirt falling from her shoulders, her breasts wide and firm above him. Or he takes the witchcraft book and throws it out the window and laughs so she laughs, loving his boldness as she falls on his skinny chest decorated by three or four widely spaced hairs and encloses him with her strong arms and heaving bosom.
I’ve got to stop! Why does she dislike me, why does she find me so hateful to be with? Why does she turn me down? I take a bath every day, i say nice things about her hair and clothes, why does she push me away?
That night at a table in the Library of the School of Agriculture i pushed aside everything except one clean sheet of paper and one pencil and after some determined thinking reached the following conclusions. First, i don’t pretend to be better than i am, i don’t act like a know-it-all, like i’m rich or the captain of the football team and i’m not stuck up or bossy. I will talk to anyone. Women dislike this. They want a man of power who is exclusive, snobby, who create mysteries they must unravel. Women seek power to serve it. Some of them might say they want a “fun guy” who likes to party but what they really want is a fortress guy who is no fun at all but who is definitely certain and secure. That's not me. I've made mistakes and will freely admit them. But i will do better next time.
Second, i don’t follow fashions, in clothing or thought. I don’t follow movements or intellectual cliques just as my clothes are not the latest style. In fact, i buy clothes second hand for fit and durability first, looks second. I can’t help it if i’m color-blind, i didn’t make myself color-blind!
Third and probably most important to Susan, i smoke. One of the great things about the School of Agriculture library is they let you smoke there. Big, heavy ashtrays decorate the middle of each table. But Susan dislikes smoking. On our last date she said she was curious to know why anyone would turn his mouth into a butt can. That’s what i like about her, she uses terms like ‘butt can.’ I told her with a grim laugh that smoking makes me feel like James Dean.
She said, “James Dean is dead.”
“So is Bobby Kennedy.”
I don’t know what i meant by saying this, it just came out. Earlier i had read something new about him – there’s always something new even after decades – and i remember how his death affected my father who was in the Pacific war.
Susan and i were drinking beer, the band had quit so we couldn’t dance, no one put on any music and our conversation had been fading for a long time. All night, from the moment we met at her dormitory, i thought of kissing her. I was holding her hand, afraid to go farther, i didn’t want to spoil it all. Now nothing was fresh between us.
“Can we go now?”
She was right, the dance hall/bar was almost empty, but i didn’t want to go home or anywhere else because i knew it would be without her.
“I want to jump out of an airplane,” i said. I had recently joined the campus parachuting club.
“You often want to jump out of an airplane. But we’re not at an airport now and it’s late and i want to go.”
“Where?”
“Home. Home to sleep it off.”
“Sleep it off alone.”
“I’ve about had it. I’m not a marine. I want to go to bed.”
I wish i had never mentioned the marines and my desire to join up and really see the world, but it seems i can’t help but say the first thing that comes into my head. I just wish i could leave the whole thing alone and forget about it until i get my degree.
“Okay, let’s go.”
During the drive home through the snow clogged streets i said, “I had fun dancing.”
“So did i, they have good dances there.”
When we arrived at her dormitory i was not sure how i might get it all back so i could see her again.
She opened the door at the curb and before i could say anything she said, “That’s okay, don’t get out for me. No need to get cold just to walk me in.” She reached over and touched me on the arm and smiled, strain all over her face, and was gone. If there had been a few more rapes or complaints of molestation in the area (it must have been too cold for molesters and rapists to operate) she might have let me walk her to the door and i might have got a kiss.
I drove home to my room in the rooming house and it was like a cell, a deep freeze and me hung on a hook. I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t read and there was nothing in the refrigerator to drink. I decided to think about the snow falling and see each flake drifting down on the pile outside my window. My room overlooks the post office parking lot. The last time i looked out there before fading to sleep it was crowded with trucks and pure white, clean and unmarked. When i woke it was still snowing and the parking lot was crossed up and down with tire tracks and all but one vehicle was gone.
And now another night without her, trying to study in the School of Agriculture library. I knew it was no use, i couldn’t concentrate on anything or anyone but Susan.
As i walked through campus from the library i passed by my one true friend in all the world. If you study there or visit the campus you are sure to see the life-sized statue of a Tyrannosaurus Rex standing in the trees by the door to the Geology Department. In his cozy nook you find him suddenly, like he might lurch out from behind a pine, but he’s beautiful and loyal, always there for me. This night snow piled up along the outside edge of his heavy jaw and teeth and the snow on his head looked like a chef’s cap. Ready for dinner? Suddenly i see Rex come alive, eager to be of service to me and only me.
My pet, always loyal because i squeeze nasty parasites out of his hide with my pliers. In return there is one slimy parasite he kills for me, the guy with Susan right now. My buddy Rex with all those extra teeth reaches in the dormitory window and pulls him off her and shreds him. Holding the screaming for mercy lying arrogant braggart by the feet with those beautiful teeth, raking his pale, shivering body with three clawed hands, splitting the swollen pleasure gear (volcanic no more!) slicing the gut sack open and consuming in two gulps the steaming, spaghetti-like heap. The head, screaming until the lungs are ripped from the chest cavity, is cracked and sucked clean of jelly filling.
Belly bulging, my pet belches. This sounds so good echoing among the quiet blocks of dormitories. I watch from a distance and to see clearly i have to wipe off the inside of my windshield now and then because the defroster doesn’t work very well.
Then Rex pulls out the gasping, weeping, naked Susan, trying to hold her carefully, as requested, but she fights too hard, Rex loses his grip and drops her. She lands on her head and goes limp, blood is everywhere and the smell of it drives Rex mad and he devours her in a few gulps. Ah well, she was killed by the fall anyway, might as well make some use of her.
Hey, what about witchcraft? Certainly Susan has worked some dark, evil powers and she might have already put a spell on Rex and me. Poor Rex! He’s the one they really want, for dissection. There are plenty of people like me around and i don’t care what happens to me anyway, only that Rex live and roam free.
If Susan has done witchcraft we must flee to the hills and seek the aid of friendly Ogallala spirits. We could live on berries, animals and fish beside a stream in the forest and Rex would love and serve me as long as i had my pliers to squeeze out the parasites from his hide. This is an example of how technology will allow us to live in a wild, un-technological state. Occasionally Rex might eat a hunter or a backpacker and we would have to move on, but we would find a new place and abide in peace there without walls, with the sky for our ceiling. Ultimately he will turn on me and devour me, i know it will happen, when the land is raw with drought or if i lose my pliers, but it will be a quick finish and besides, that is what he must do, it is his nature to survive. We must learn to accept this savage reality.
End of “Forest Dwellers”