Summer of '69 // Chapter 1

This is another novella that will be pulled shortly after full publication here on the Patreon, like Trial Separation.

I began writing this one in 2016!

***

A two-year-long conservational plant study deep in the jungles of British Honduras sounded just like the romantic adventure Rebecca was looking for after she married the man of her dreams. She and her husband Ari were two idealistic young NYU biology students looking to make a difference; newlyweds who were offered a getaway to live in an ecological paradise. Of course they would take it.

They came here to make a difference. Ari Blumenfeld, the young, handsome biologist with the perfect white teeth that only the son of Manhattan’s best dentist could have. And Rebecca Blumenfeld, nee Goldblum, a Masters student who was certain that the answer for every disease known to man was waiting to be unlocked from the seed of a yet undiscovered plant.

The unglamorous reality: right now she was digging a two-foot hole in a blue plastic butcher’s barrel, clawing the earth out with her bare hands. Her nails had gone ragged and she could never get the black line out from under them. Never. She was hot and sweaty; her underarms, her legs, completely unshaved. Her back was always sore, her arms and shoulders ached. Her own odor was sometimes offensive, never mind Ari’s. They’d just come to ignore it, compartmentalize it, pack it away.

British Honduras was on the verge of independence. Still a colony of the British Empire, but a self-governing one. With the looming possible upheaval it was paramount that they get in here, document, record, and preserve the flora and fauna. When independence came you couldn’t tell which way it was going to go. There were multinationals chomping at the bit for a green flag letting them rush in and cut for timber or to streamline the farming process. Already the indigenous farmers were feeling the push, getting squeezed off their land by the banana plantations. With an independent government, brand new and fresh out of the box, who could know where their sentiments may lie? And Guatemala threatening war, and trying to lay claim to territory? Conservation right now at this exact time was essential.

She took the Zamia prasina plant she’d harvested this morning and brought back here to their camp, and eased it in the hole she’d just dug. Let it sit about an inch higher than the level’s surface, then she filled it in, packing it around in rings as she added more and more dirt, bringing the soil up in a pyramid around the plant’s slender green trunk.

Today she’d collected fifteen healthy samples of the endemic cycad, brought them out to the bright blue Mazda pickup they used. Ari would drive them down some treacherous logging road early in the morning and then they’d each hike in to the jungle with a list of botanical gems to be on the lookout for. They would load up the bed with their samples, then rush back to camp and hope the plants would still thrive. Driving back in their ‘61 Mazda pickup, flower stickers all over the rusty bits, they’d have their fingers crossed that it wouldn’t get stuck or that it wouldn’t finally give it all up and die out in the jungle. The panthers came out at night time.

Right now, during the heat of the very late afternoon, the air was so still she’d kill for even a light breeze. Over by their home base, she watched as Ari fired up the genny, and she wandered over in his direction. Ari didn’t see her and lurched off around the other side of the cabin and into the edge of the jungle. She stood at the generator and lifted her light cotton dress and held the skirt out so the genny’s exhaust sent some air stirring up between her legs and under her dress, the diesel gusts puffing against her pubic hair—no underwear here in the heat of the jungle. This rough living got her in great shape; she’d never looked better—if she said so herself—but, gosh, all that dirt.

They were eighteen months into the program, closing in on the end of the grant. The last time they’d been home was eight months ago. Back to Long Island for a week off at Hanukkah. She’d bragged to all her friends, told them about the great work they did, the progress they were making, what a wonderful spot they were living in, the magical waterfall they’d swim under that was just a fifteen minute hike away—the waterfall is called Millionaro, she told them, pronouncing it in excellent Spanish. All her friends were jealous. They envied her ideals, her handsome husband, her exciting life. One whiff of her right now and those princesses would be flying First Class back to their suburbs and their cocktail lunches, sitting around with their gin and tonics, bitching about all the hours their husbands had to work.

This was fun, this was romantic, but it took the right kind of maniac to leave it all behind and live in the heat and the bugs. And she knew that she and Ari were indeed maniacs.

* * *

When Ari was finally done, all the hoses put away and his tools locked up, he walked back to their hut. Up the three wooden steps into the elevated living area lifted on stilts about two feet off the jungle floor, opened the wooden screen door and let it slam behind him on its squeaky hinges.

When they’d first come here he’d laid a concrete foundation and built on top of it the first 15 x 20 shack that they’d lived in. That building was their bedroom now. But two weeks after it was done, and it served as their entire home/research station, they’d come back from the jungle and found that their place was a carpet of marching ants. Just a gently swaying black floor that moved through the place they lived in and ate up all the other insects and vegetation in their way. They had to sleep outdoors in a hammock that night. It wasn’t too bad really once the ants were gone. The house was cleaned out of living matter and the ants had left everything else untouched. So he’d built the addition on stilts and coated those with bitumen. He’d sealed off one of the doors to the original shack—it now opened into a short hall with three steps up to the living room—and the other door was kept current with a fresh coating of vinegar every other day, should those little black bugs want to try and come through again.

Rebecca was sitting in a single-seat hammock he’d rigged that hung from the ceiling by rock-climbing carabiners. She was slumped in it; her hands were working on rolling a joint, while her little feet dangled under her, toes touching the floor enough she could keep herself swinging.

He threw himself onto an old couch he’d picked up for free down at the market in Spanish Lookout. He was exhausted. Rebecca had a bottle of rum out on the table between them that was just two worn wooden palettes on top of each other, and they rolled around on some wheels he’d screwed underneath. He took the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a generous serving into a plastic tumbler.

“We’re low on grass,” Rebecca said. Her pretty face squinted as she tried to light her well-rolled joint, silver Zippo in one hand, the other cupped around as a shield.

“That’s a hassle,” he said as he watched her with the lighter. Click-click, click-click. Then she had it lit, her perfect pouty lips obscured by a puff of white smoke just as she started to smile.

He knocked the rum back, clapped his hands loudly and bounced out of the couch, headed for the kitchen. “What you got cookin’?” he said, looking over the portable gas stove in their tiny kitchenette. Whatever it was, it was brown and bubbling, delicious looking chunks floating under its oily surface tension. It smelled like salt and meat, and he waved the aroma under his nose, trying to get as much of it up there as he could.

“Beef stew,” she croaked, holding a lungful of reefer smoke in her puffed out chest.

“Mm, mm, mm,” he hummed and picked up the electric kettle that she’d already boiled, and threw a bar of Ivory soap into his pocket. He grabbed a bucket off the plywood floor, already half-filled with water, and a tea-towel draped over the lip. He poured the hot kettle water into mix with the cold water in the bucket, then brought it over with him, plopped down on the palette table right in front of his lovely wife.

She passed him the joint and he put it between his lips, bent and poured the boiling water into the bucket. He sat up, took a couple good puffs, and handed it back to her. He tapped her calf and nodded his chin at her.

Rebecca leaned back in her hammock, lifted her feet for him and he guided her pretty tootsies into the hot water. She closed her eyes and sighed. Her hands went behind her head and she nestled herself into the canvas cocoon.

Rebecca had, without a doubt, I mean, not even close, the nicest set on a girl he’d ever been with. And then she was smart too? And she was funny? The second he ran into her at that mixer at Kappa Kappa Theta back in ’65 all he could think of was making her his own. His roommates got a little worried about him back then. He was lovesick for her, and they laughed because she didn’t even know his name. He changed all that though. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Ari rubbed her knees, felt their slender shape, their fine workings of tendons, bone, muscle, and flawless skin. He watched her thighs disappear up under her dirty cotton skirt. She held her legs together like a lady. Her chest rose as she breathed and he could see the shape of her soft woman chest, the round flesh straining, taking the shape of the bustier of her light summer dress. She puffed on her joint, then let the smoke rise in tendrils from her nostrils, puffing out clumsy shapes from her mouth. Rebecca had been trying to blow rings for about two years, but the poor girl still couldn’t get it.

“I’ll see if I can find my guy again when I’m in San Ignacio,” he said.

“Huh?” she said, face turned to the ceiling, her eyes still closed.

“The grass.”

“Mm.” She took a big gulp, then passed it to him between her thumb and forefinger. He took it from her with his lips, then brought one of her feet out of the bucket. He took the soap from his pocket and rubbed it along her sole and she flinched at first then settled, let it relax and stretch out while he cleaned and massaged it. He took his time, working her all over even between her tiny toes; loving the feel of any part of her body under his fingertips—then he did the same with the other foot.

They didn’t say much, just passed the joint back and forth. There wasn’t much to say these days. No news to report—they saw each other all day long. She couldn’t tell him what so-and-so in accounting had the nerve to say and he couldn’t talk about budget reports and what Frank had the gall to say to a waiter. They spent all day every day together, completely alone, and he couldn’t be happier about it. The silence felt wonderful.

His rump flexed as the sting returned. His face screwed up and he squeezed his legs together, squirmed around on the wooden table. He shook his head in pain and frustration.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said; she had both feet in his lap and she clapped the insoles together to get his attention.

“Itchy as hell. I think I’ve got bug bites on my pecker.”

Her head went back in the hammock like she was laughing, her mouth opened wide showing off a set of choppers his dad would have applauded, but no sound came out. She brought her feet down to the floor and leaned forward, handed him the end of the joint, moving in slow motion. Her face was still twisted in a silent laugh and she wasn’t breathing. He started to laugh too.

“Let me take a look,” she said finally, getting herself together. Her eyes were red and tearing.

He put out the joint carefully, laid it in their ashtray for later. He undid the button and the fly and slid the shorts and briefs down for her. He pushed them over his knees and let them fall to the floor.

Rebecca leaned forward, peering at his scrunched up privates. His penis was shriveled, pointing straight out, his balls held up tightly underneath. She put a finger on the tip and moved it around letting the light get on it.

“You do,” she said, “you have two—no, three. Is it real itchy?”

“Real itchy,” he affirmed, leaning back on his elbows watching his wife inspect his suffering penis.

She smiled, said, “You look pretty puffy. We should let you get bites all over it.”

“Make it bigger for you?”

“Yes. Keep scratching it, it’ll get worse—puffier and puffier,” she said and she scratched his bites with her fingernails. “Does that feel good?”

He could barely answer. It felt like his brain was rolling somersaults inside his skull. “Ah, oh . . . uh, mm, oh yeah. . . . It burns. Burns so good.”