Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

Immediately the vendors in white clothes and straw hats surrounded us. They were selling white clothes and straw hats, and somewhere jostled in the crowd I saw the girl with the iguana on her shoulder. Eileen and I no-graciased our way into the clear and we looked around. The men weren’t in our immediate view and we both seemed to become distracted by the water at the same moment. Without a word to each other, we trudged through the sucking sands and down to the water’s edge.

Down here beside it, the bay seemed enormous. I wondered if the music I’d heard last night would have been more powerful here, too; I wondered what if Vinh and I had been in this spot when the boat passed. Would he have done more than ask what it was? Would he have taken me in his arms and waltzed me over the sand? But that’s a vision of romance the easy way, I thought; I should remember the soaps, where everything is hard. There’s another contradiction, on the television that I watch. Can we believe both these things? The Love Boat docks and everyone finds what they’re looking for; and the next day’s installment of “As the World Turns” always brings more disaster.

“I see them,” Eileen said.

She was right. The two men were walking along the shore far down to our left. They were walking side by side, heading away from us, and my husband had his hands clasped behind his back, a thing he does when he paces around during business meetings. He was wearing his tan Bermuda shorts and his one purchase for our trip, a rough-weave red cotton shirt from Pakistan. Frank Davies was dressed all in black — I didn’t realize until I saw him that they made Bermuda shorts in black — and he was moving his arms, gesturing. We couldn’t hear a word, but we saw his hands rise up above his shoulders and flare open and fall.

“I know that story,” Eileen said with a sigh. “An ammunition dump has just exploded in Qui Nhon.”

“I hope no one was hurt.”

“My husband was quite a hero in the aftermath, is the way I understand it.” Eileen turned to me. “Listen, Gabrielle, I’m sorry if I seemed upset a little earlier.”

“Upset?”

“When you asked about how our husbands were getting on.”

I wish I’d been blunt right then and pressed for the two of us to figure out the men in our lives a little better. But I can’t imagine that we would have made any sense at that point. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to anticipate what happened later on. But for whatever reason, I didn’t push it. I just said, “That’s okay, Eileen. No problem.” And we made off down the beach in pursuit of our husbands.

We caught up with them when they turned around and continued their walking discussion back in our direction. Eileen called out Frank’s name and both men looked up at us with a start. At just that moment some young Mexican men shouted at us and motioned us a little farther along the beach. We all followed the Mexicans’ gaze high into the air and saw a parasail swinging off the bay and over the beach, and one of the young men blew a whistle and the man hanging beneath the sail reached up and grabbed the rope above and to the right of his head and he pulled. The sail began to veer to the right, angling toward the beach before us, and it was coming down fast. I heard Frank’s voice say, “You were airborne, that right?” Vinh grunted in affirmation but I did not look at the two men. I kept my eyes on the parachute, the great red and yellow scoop, tight with air, carrying a man down from the sky. I could do that, I thought.

The whistle blew again and the man let go of the rope and he was coming down fast, and the young men on the ground rushed forward, reached upward, and the parasailor landed with a little run and his chute crumpled behind him.

“Hey, guys,” Eileen was saying. “Guys.”

I thought for a moment that she was talking to the Mexicans, that she wanted to go up into the air. But I looked and she had pulled the attention of our husbands to her and she said, “Gabrielle and I want to do something. All of us together.”

“That’s good,” Frank said.

Vinh just looked at me with a faint rebuke in his eyes. He hated to be taken off guard like this. I should have talked to him privately first. I understand his feelings, I suppose. An airborne ranger is always prepared. A successful businessman, too. But I just blew his little grimace a kiss and he forced a chuckle to show his good nature. I didn’t much care, to tell the truth. I couldn’t keep my eyes from slipping back to the Mexicans and their parachute. I knew I would feel disappointed to see anyone get onto that chute right now. It was meant for me. I was just a few moments away from soaring high over the bay, over the whole city, far above all of this.

“Don’t you agree, Gabrielle?” Eileen’s voice dragged me back to her. She was looking at me meaningfully, like it was time for me to nail this thing down.

“Of course,” I declared, not knowing exactly what she had said but sure from the way she was looking at me that this was the right response. She waited, wanting more, and I said to the men, “Let’s go. I really want to.”

Vinh said, “Is this the place you were telling me about? The iguana thing?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

Now I could see Vinh turn up the heat in his eyes. Who were Liz and Dick to him, after all? Only a product of what he had big trouble tolerating in America. I knew I was supposed to persuade him now. He was persuadable about these little interests of mine, but he always made me work for his approval. Well, I didn’t feel like it at the moment. That was for certain. All I knew was that the great red and yellow parachute was lying slack on the beach and I wanted to excite it, wanted it to fill up full of this warm morning air and carry me into the sky.

So without a word I stepped past Frank and Eileen and Vinh, and I asked the young Mexican man holding the harness how much and he told me and I paid it and I turned around and the man put me in the harness, and all of this was so unexpected and it was done so quickly that nobody could react. Frank and Eileen and Vinh just stood there in a row and gawked at me and finally, just before I took off, Vinh choked out a “Gabrielle what are you doing?” and Eileen suddenly smiled and cried something that wasn’t quite a word, like “hurrah” or something. And the Mexican was telling me about the whistle and about the rope up there over my right ear and the boat was moving and the tether went taut and there were hands on me briefly, helping me rise, and then there were no hands and I was soaring into the air.

I did not look back. The boat headed straight out into the bay for a time and I looked down at the water and it was calm, it looked as stiff as vinyl, like I’d bounce off it if I fell. But it was very fine being up here. I was very aware of being alone. Off to my right about a hundred meters was a little pack of pelicans heading back toward the beach. They were returning but I was still on the way out. The wind whistled faintly in my ears and it struck me that this was not the ravishing physical experience I’d expected it to be. My feet dangled down, but there was no heaviness in them, like the ride at the carnivals where you sit in a chair and they swing you around. My feet just dangled like I was a child in a tall chair. I was not frightened. The harness held me tight and I gripped the ropes and I looked down at the sea, the green wake of the boat ripping apart the great brown stain from the mountains.

And the boat turned now and headed along the coast and my parachute brought me around and I was as high as the highest hotel, but I pondered the long stretch of Puerto Vallarta along the beach as calmly as if it was a mural on a wall. I was flying but I was very quiet inside. This was more like a certain kind of dream, where you can fly and everything is peaceful. Or it was like I’d left my body, the way some people on the Donahue show had done when everyone thought they were dead. I was separated from my body.