Boris Fishman - Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

“What now?” she said.

“You have to go to the bathroom,” he said, nodding at the toilet.

She hiked up her sundress, the one with the mother-of-pearl buttons running down the front, pulled her underwear down to her ankles, and lowered herself onto the seat. Maya’s heart was beating fast in the shower, and also on the toilet seat, so it took her some time. When a stream finally hit the toilet water, Marion leaned down and kissed her mouth as one of his hands reached underneath her. The yellow water hit his fingers; he held them there. As it slowed to a trickle, he closed his hand over her and held her this way while they kissed.

Then he lifted her by the arms, turned her around, and led her palms to the rough paint of the wall. He kissed the back of her neck and undid the front buttons from behind her back, his fingers still wet. She took one hand off the wall and fished for him, but he knocked it back. Soon the dress was unbuttoned and on the floor around her feet. She felt him sliding inside from behind. She was tight and he moved slowly, opening her, until she felt him fully inside of her — she felt his waist pressed to her ass. She scratched the wall with her nails. She asked to look at him.

He ignored her at first but then turned her to face him and lifted her slightly until she was wedged in the tiny alcove that had been hacked for the sink. It had been hacked for her — her torso fit with an inch on each side. She held the faucets for support. Kiss me, she said, and this time he listened. Her hands moved to his face. He entered and withdrew slowly as they kissed, the sharpness of the initial encounter changed into something gentler and pensive.

It was then, near the moment of crisis, that an ominous clang went through the shower pipes imprisoned behind the wall and the trickle turned arctic, eliciting a yelp from Maya and forcing her to finish sooner than she wanted. She shuddered once and stepped out. In the parcel of space the cursed architect had sectioned off for a dressing room, two women were silently toweling themselves. She inspected them for detection, or solidarity, or both. They offered neither. They rubbed their tired, bloated bodies with inanimate rhythm, exercised by a million showers, tilting their hips, arching their asses, kinking their shoulders, lost in private illusion. They could not offer Maya even the camaraderie of fellow shipwrecks. But Maya had the wealth of her secret, still sending warmth down her legs, which trembled slightly. It helped where the temperature of the shower had not.

The South Dakota climate had changed its mind once again. In the blue-colored dusk rising from beyond the motel, the temperature was falling. Maya, her hair wet and the cold of the water still on her, shivered back to their campsite. Despite being outside rather than inside in such weather, her hair incautiously wet (Raisa, if present, would be moaning in terror), and the impending sleep on hard ground, she tried to remember the elation she had occasionally felt during the day. Alex and Max were mincing uneasily by the tent.

“It’s freezing,” Maya said quickly. “Let’s get inside there.”

“Max seems to think there’s a rattlesnake in the tent,” Alex said.

“A what?” Maya said, stepping back. “Max, honey. What? You saw a rattlesnake?”

“Not exactly,” Alex said. “We left the tent flap unzipped when we all went to shower. He’s saying — he’s convinced — well, he’s right here. What took you so long, Maya?”

“A snake went in there while we showered,” Max declared. He stared at the tent with — not fright, but a kind of chagrin.

Maya exchanged glances with Alex, ignoring his question. “Have you looked inside?” she said. Alex shook his head. Maya’s heart was jumping, but she tried to conceal it. “We have to go to the office,” she said. “I’m sure they deal with this all the time.”

“I’m afraid,” Max said.

“But you’re not afraid,” Maya said, and crouched before her son in her bathrobe. She took him by the shoulders. “Right? You’re not afraid?” The boy wriggled out of her hold and encircled his father’s leg with his hands.

“Alex?” Maya said.

“You want me to look in there?” he said.

Maya slumped onto the bench of the picnic table; they were nailed to each other. “ First-time visitors to Badlands National Park frozen in the night while rattlesnake sleeps, warm, in their tent. The trip had been the mother’s idea.” She thought of what Raisa — better yet, the outdoorsman Eugene — would say about how quickly they had arrived at an emergency. She felt as if she had wished the rattlesnake into existence by thinking of it in the shower; in her mind, she heard Alex saying to their son, “Mama won’t rest until everything’s upside down.” She wrapped her robe more closely and stared, despondent, at Alex and Max.

To her the light had been clarifying, to them barbarous. The sweep of the land was menacing to them, imperial to her. The abrupt departure of the morning’s cold had felt to Maya like the thaw of a steam bath in winter, to Alex and Max like a diabolical snap from freezing to burning. Even now, as a rattlesnake slithered across the floor of their tent, the indigo night settled on her with an aching crispness. It was beautiful here — epically, rinsingly beautiful. Her humpbacked hills (in the end, she preferred their modest spread even to the glorious sightings of the afternoon), squatted somewhere in the darkness, awaiting reunion with her at daylight. Maya breathed the wood smoke of campfires, the campsite’s inhabitants like a caravan of pilgrims bedding down for the night. Could something felt so cleanly and deeply be felt incorrectly? She felt far not only from her husband, but son.

Alex went to call his parents; Maya went to the office. She reached a hand out for Max. He watched her warily. “You can come with, or you can wait for me here,” she said without energy. “I’ll be back with Mr. Wilfred. He’ll fix it.”

Max gave her his hand. Silently, they walked up to the shed. They heard the shouting inside before they walked in. Maya stood outside on the small deck with her son, wanting to give Wilfred privacy. But then she grew cold and pushed open the door; she could hear every word anyway.

He was pacing the small slot behind the reception counter. He stepped like a top-heavy animal — his shoulders shook with each step. She wanted to embrace him. He stopped striding and gazed at the mother and son from the morning. “I have to go, Carla,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “There’s customers.” A strangled squawk came through the phone. Wilfred’s eyes flashed and he shouted “Up yours!” before slamming down the telephone. He withdrew it and slammed it again. He withdrew it a second time and was about to shout into the receiver once more — then remembered the line was dead. He lowered the phone weakly.

“You have every right to give this campground a low rating,” he said, and fell into his swivel chair.

“We’re very happy here,” Maya said. “But there’s a rattlesnake in our tent.” She tried to sound steady.

Wilfred looked up, alert. The day insisted on trying him. “You sure?” he said. “Not really the time for them anymore.”

Maya looked down at Max. “We haven’t seen it,” she said. “But we think so, yes.”

“Fine,” Wilfred said. “Fine.” He dipped below the partition and popped up with a two-gauge shotgun, even this item a plaything in the logs of his fingers.

Maya moved back. “Is that necessary?” she said.

He looked at her like a surgeon second-guessed by his patient; instinctively, she rechecked his nameplate — this abrupt escalation put her in mind of police reports, and she was on probation in that department already. “I’m not gonna shoot you ,” he said. His eyebrows, long free from the tyranny of regular grooming, moved up.