No Sanctuary

“Get off it,” he told himself. “You didn’t have to come. And she’s been great.”

Rick wished he’d had a couple of shots before turning in. He’d been reluctant, however, to let Bert find out that he’d brought the bourbon along. She might not complain, but she would certainly disapprove. She did complain about her parents’ drinking, whose cocktail hour had stretched into two hours on the several occasions when she and Rick had dined at their house. She didn’t complain to them. She complained to Rick later on. By implication, her comments seemed directed at Rick since he had matched her parents drink for drink. “Can’t people have a good time,” she would say, “without trying one on?”

Rick had seen opportunities to sneak a couple of slugs after dinner tonight when Bert left camp to gather firewood. But he’d resisted the urge, knowing that she would smell it on his breath later when they made love.

I should’ve brought vodka instead of bourbon, Rick thought. Hell, she would’ve smelled that, too. Its odor is faint compared to bourbon, but distinctive.

He thought about the bottle. It was near the bottom of his pack.

They had left their packs outside the tent, resting atop slabs of rock on the other side of the campsite and covered with ponchos.

Not only was his bourbon out there, but so was his revolver. A lot of good the gun would do them some forty feet from the tent, but Rick didn’t want Bert to know about that, either. The gun was a double-whammy; she hated firearms in general, and Rick bringing one on the camping trip would probably be seen as an act of cowardice.

If I’d had a gun the last time ...

Maybe I should’ve told Bert the whole truth this morning. Giving her that sanitized version probably just made me look yellow—like I was a kid back when it happened, scared of my own shadow.

Rick had never told the whole truth about that camping trip to anyone.

When they first came upon the lake, Rick had wanted to keep moving. It was a deep shade of blue, itself beautiful, but trapped in a landscape of such desolation that Rick felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck in spite of the heavy sun.

Steep canyon walls loomed over the lake on three sides. High up were gray stretches of glacier shaded by overhangs so that they probably never melted completely, year after year. There were a few scraggly patches of foliage on the rock walls, trees stunted and twisted into grotesque shapes. Otherwise, the slopes were bleached tumbles of broken granite.

The trail down from Windover Pass led to a small oasis that looked alien in the midst of the otherwise bleak surroundings. The oasis, a shady clearing near the lake shore, had a campsite.

A nice campsite, probably added onto over the years by many people who had stopped there after the exhausting trek down from the pass. There was a stone fireplace with a heavy steel grill that must’ve been brought in by mule. Surrounding the fireplace were several flat-topped rocks that could be used as either seats or tables. Here and there were walls of stone, no doubt constructed to hold back the winds that must rip through the canyon at night. The site even had a few flat areas, mostly near walls, that looked as if they had been carefully cleared of rocks and leveled.

Dad swung his backpack to the ground and stretched. The armpits of his tan shirt were dark with sweat. “Fantastic, huh?” he asked.

“I don’t like it,” Rick said.

“What’s not to like?” Dad asked.

“This place gives me the creeps.”

“It is a little ... barren,” Mom admitted. “They built those walls. The wind must be awful.”

“Well, folks, it might be a long trek to the next decent spot. Even if we move on, there’s no guarantee we’ll find any place better than this. Might even be worse.”

“It’s still pretty early in the day,” Mom said.

Dad showed her the topographies map, pointing out what lay ahead. Mom grimaced. “I guess we stay,” she said.

They set up camp, pitching the larger tent in the flat area between two of the stone walls, setting up Rick’s tent in a naturally sheltered area beside a high clump of rock. After arranging their gear, they rested for a while. Dad sat on a rock near the shore and smoked a corncob pipe. Mom sat cross-legged under a tree and read, and Rick lay down inside his tent. The tent was hot in spite of the shade, but he liked being enclosed, hidden away from the bleak landscape.

Later, Dad suggested that they take a hike to “explore the environs.”

Rick wanted no part of the environs. “Let’s not and say we did,” he suggested.

“Stay if you want,” Dad told him. “We probably won’t be gone more than an hour.”

“Mom, are you going, too?”

She crawled out of the bigger tent, stood up and nodded. She had changed into a tube top that wrapped her breasts and left her midriff bare, and cut-off jeans so short that the ends of the front pockets hung out below the frayed leg holes. She had abandoned her hiking boots for a pair of ragged tennis shoes. “You want to come,” she asked, “don’t you?”

Rick certainly did not want to stay by himself. “Sure,” he said.

They started out, Dad leading the way. It soon became clear that his plan was to hike entirely around the lake. Though the lake was not large, maybe a couple of hundred yards from one end to the other, the shoreline trail petered out on the other side of a rushing stream just beyond camp. After that, the lake was bordered by rocks: tilted pale slabs, chunks the size of cars, piles of smaller blocks, some that wobbled or slid underfoot.

In spite of the rough terrain, the going wasn’t difficult. Rick felt amazingly light and springy in his sneakers and without the burden of his pack. He leaped from rock to rock, strode easily across slanted sheets of granite, hopped over crevices.

Mom, just ahead of him, sometimes looked back to see how he was doing.

He watched her feet, and stepped where she stepped. Now and then, his gaze wandered higher. Her slender legs looked dusky through his sunglasses. Her shorts were cut so high in the rear that he could see the creases where her buttocks joined the backs of her thighs. Isn’t she wearing panties? he wondered. He felt himself getting hard, and guilt swarmed through him.

She’s my mother, he warned himself.

Not really. His real mother had left Dad when Rick was six. Two years later, Dad married Julie.

That doesn’t mean you can get the hots for her, Rick thought.

But sometimes he did. He just couldn’t help it.

He looked away from her. He watched the rocks in front of his feet.

Soon, however, his eyes found their way back to her. He stared at the faded seat of her shorts, at the way the curves under her rear pockets took turns rising and falling with the movements of her firm rump as she walked. He stared at the exposed crescents of her buttocks. There was little more than a narrow strip of denim passing between her legs. If she got high enough above him, maybe he would be able to see up inside the shorts and—

Rick yelped with surprise as his foot came down. Rock was supposed to be there, but wasn’t. He glanced down. Saw his shoe and jeaned shin drop into a crevice. Tried too late to push out with his other foot. Fell forward. Shrieked out his pain as the bones snapped.

Mum threw her arms around him, catching him in time to prevent the bones from ripping through muscle and skin. Then Dad was there. They eased his leg out of the fissure and lowered him onto the rock.

They both knelt over him. Dad, who never seemed to lose his calm, had a frantic look in his eyes. Mom’s face was twisted with fear. “Are you okay?” she asked. “It’s not broken, is it?”

Rick, teeth clenched in pain, nodded.

“Let’s get those jeans off,” Dad said.

As Mom unfastened his jeans, Rick noticed that her tube top was askew. It must’ve been pulled when she stopped his fall. On one side, a smooth half-moon of dark skin showed above the fabric hugging her breast.

He was in too much pain for the sight to arouse him.

But he remembered where he had been looking when he stepped into the crack.

He shouldn’t have been looking there. It was dirty of him, even though she wasn’t his real mother. The fall had been a punishment.