The Outlaw Album: Stories

            Campers with children preferred the picnic tables that had been shot, because kids liked rubbing the holes, sticking their fingers inside while imagining exciting events that had led to gunfire erupting on this very spot. Not every table had been shot, and adults wanted to have rights to that exotic detail in any recounting of their vacations, also, and would wait for one to become unoccupied, then rush the family over to claim it, which sometimes caused tensions between the quicker and slower families, a little squabbling, which Morrow usually went out to settle. Come winter he’d fix this problem by blasting every table in the campground, and the various signs nailed to trees, too, but for this season he’d walk among the tents of many sizes and listen, bob his head as he absorbed more or less the same old story, then offer the children of the losing family cold drinks and bags of chips to distract them from whining about bullet holes. Sometimes he watched the children frolic—with skin browning and bug bites lumped on their necks, so many years spread unopened before them—and have a strong sense that he knew the true reason he’d returned here without allowing himself to investigate his memories and make it plain. That changed one day when Sky had traffic court at the county seat, and Morrow was left to drive the bus and canoe racks to retrieve floaters downstream at Spawt Mill. It was a festive spot in a deep gorge, hillsides heavy with forest, the green broken in spots by bare rocks that lunged into view. A pale dam backed the river into a giant pool, a huge and perfect swimming hole, the dam low enough to sit on with feet swishing in the water. A narrow opening in the dam at the near bank let water push into the old mill trace, but the wheel didn’t turn anymore. Morrow watched kids swing on a rope and flop into the river. Girls roamed on top of the dam, and young men followed at a slight distance, drinking beer, shoving one another around. Hawks dragged their shadows across the pool, fish jumped, and he was on this very spot at age fifteen, uncertain in all directions, gawking at a girl whose beauty stunned and terrorized him. She posed on the dam and didn’t wear a swimsuit, but an ankle-length hippie shift of some sort, thin cloth rich with Eastern patterns, mystic cubes and squiggles, and nothing underneath. Light passed through the V of her legs so clearly he didn’t have to guess. Maybe she hadn’t intended to get wet, but walked the dam barefoot with the other girls until carried away by the view, the smell of river, the roiling of fresh water down the sluice to the mill, the roaring and the laughter. Morrow was as though paralyzed by her from first sight, and she noticed, smiled his way, and stopped in the overflow on the dam, doing dance steps that splashed, then dropped her shoulder and looked rearward again, a gesture he never got over. Her skin immediately sang to him of summer fun, perhaps endless summer fun, and her eyes were brown places to romp, revel, rejoice—hair to her waist and deep dimples that opened when she smiled. She waved to him and he turned away, anguished by his attraction to her and her nearness, all words flown from his head. When he turned back, she was in the river, swimming toward him in that hippie shift, hair spread on the water, trailing behind, her girlfriends watching with interest. She stepped out of the river, standing tall, boldly revealed by the soaked cloth, walking straight to him. He spun on the gravel and took off before she spoke, but heard her say, “Are you kidding?” as he hustled with his head down to the store in the old mill and found his parents. He spotted her when they left, lost his nerve again as she watched him from the pooled water, but that day released her into his emotions to stay—he’d carried her with him as a feeling more than a picture, a sunken feeling linked to all things lost or untried, but now he had her face again, blooming young and clear, that smile, the wonderful skin of July. He knew she would have been the beginner’s romance teens should have, need to have, deserve, a magical summer of smitten days with moments of exploratory bliss that he could’ve savored all these years since, instead of feeling wrecked by the pitiless regret that he’d been such a no-balls virgin coward when confronted with what he most desired.

            He drank whisky that night, the first time since leaving Nebraska. So many of the campers had long tanned legs and bare bellies, cute flaking noses, carefree laughter, husbands fishing somewhere until dark. At the supper hour he’d wandered between tents holding a paper cup of scotch on the rocks, sipping, eyes reddening, speech beginning to limp, enjoying the casual company of women who glowed and dressed for the heat. The sun was snaking brightly along the ridgeline; kids were diving from the bridge.