The Gutbucket Quest Read online

  “Welcome to my home,” he said. “Sit.”

  They sat together on a buffalo skin, across the fire pit from Heap of Bears. The man studied them closely as they sat. Nadine put her arm through the crook of Slim’s elbow and held tightly to him. He tried very hard to be strong, and to make Nadine feel his love for her.

  “It has been many years, Little Wing,” Heap of Bears said, and Slim felt her body tighten at the sound of the name he called her. This man had not lost all of his power over her. “Are you well?”

  “I’m okay,” Nadine replied curtly, sarcastically.

  “Who is this man you bring to my tipi?”

  Nadine’s hand tightened on his arm. Her short nails dug into his skin. “This is Slim,” she said. “My lover.”

  Slim almost jumped. Then he remembered what Progress had said. No matter what, hang on tight.

  “Is he a good man?” Heap of Bears asked.

  “He’s trying to be.”

  “You are angry with me?”

  Slim could feel Nadine tremble. “Shouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I loved you. You left me.”

  “No—you do not remember right. And there are things you do not know.”

  “What don’t I know?” Nadine’s voice was venomous.

  “Little Wing, you were so young. I know that you thought you loved me. But I could not love you. You were not the woman for me. No woman is the woman for me.”

  Nadine pulled Slim’s arm around her and pressed his hand against her small breast. He could feel her heart beating wildly and, at the moment, he would gratefully and gladly have died for her.

  “Then why?” she asked.

  “When I came to renew my kinship with your mother, my cousin, she asked me to initiate you into womanhood. It is our way, you see, for a relative, especially a Shaman, to initiate kin. I enjoyed you, and I cherished you, but I was not, and am not, allowed to love, not in that manner.”

  “My mother asked you to fuck me?”

  Heap of Bears grimaced. “Do not be crude, Little Wing. There was no intention to harm you. And, truly, would you still want me, now, with the Shaman’s marks covering my body?”

  “I don’t know,” Nadine said, pressing Slim’s hand more closely to her breast. “I was never given a chance to find out what I wanted. How could my mother do that to me?”

  “It is the way our people live.” Heap of Bears shrugged. “I could not refuse your mother’s request to teach you love and the pains of womanhood. She was Cheyenne. I am Cheyenne, and Shaman. She wanted you to know.”

  Slim felt Nadine relax suddenly. “Yeah, well, fuck it,” she said. “Who needs it. Let’s go, Slim.”

  To his surprise and confusion, with his arm around Nadine, with her nipple burning into his palm, he said, “No. We came here for a reason. Maybe you hate him. I can understand that. But we gotta do what Progress wants us to.”

  “Shit,” Nadine said. “You’re right.”

  The Shaman’s gaze played across Slim with disturbing awareness. It was apparent that this man could jerk Nadine around emotionally in much the way she jerked Slim around, but he was no jerk. He made her look like a petulant child. “Your man has strength and courage, Little Wing.”

  “I guess he does,” she said, looking at Slim with a new softness in her eyes. There seemed to be a force beyond their control, one that everyone but them conspired with, drawing them together.

  Nadine told Heap of Bears the story that they were both getting tired of telling, a story that grew with each recitation.

  Heap of Bears didn’t react to it. Instead, he said, “Will you make peace with me, Little Wing? Will you and your man smoke the pipe?”

  “Oh, I guess,” Nadine said. “The hate hasn’t done me any good.”

  Heap of Bears stood and took a long stone pipe from a feather-and-corn-bedecked rack against the wall. It was intricately carved with the interlocked heads of eagles, painted, and already filled with a rough, musky-smelling tobacco. He plucked a small glowing coal from the fire and laid it in the bowl of the pipe. He then held the pipe up to the North, the South, the East and the West, letting the smoke drift in all four directions, toward the differently colored stones that were set in the floor at each compass point. Then Heap of Bears drew in a deep lungful of the sweet smoke and handed the pipe to Nadine.

  Nadine held the pipe in her hands for a few moments as the smoke curled up into her face and hair, limning her with a blue haze. She looked at the pipe, and at Heap of Bears. The she lifted it to her lips and drew in the smoke. She exhaled slowly, softly, and passed the pipe to Slim.

  He held the pipe gently in his hands. He could felt the power in the stone. It almost seemed to vibrate, and he knew the pipe was a serious matter. He had held it, thinking, for a while when he felt Nadine elbow him in the ribs. He lifted it and sucked in the smoke. It tasted like no tobacco he had ever smoked, and felt as if he’d drawn much more than simple smoke into his lungs. He coughed and handed the pipe back to Heap of Bears, who lifted it once again to the four directions, then placed it, still burning, back into its rack.

  “Does you father know what he asks of me?” Heap of Bears said. “I am a healer, a man of medicine.”

  Slim felt full of power and decided to reply to Heap of Bears instead of waiting for Nadine to answer.

  “This is a healing,” he said. “Not a person, maybe, but the music. It’s just that to do the healing, we’re going to have to fight.”

  “I see,” the Shaman said. “That is a good thing. I will come, then.” He looked closely at Nadine. “Can there now be peace between us, Little Wing? Can we now let the past remain in the past?”

  Nadine stood up and brushed her pants off. “I suppose,” she said. “But don’t expect to be friends. I don’t need friends like you.”

  “The peace alone is sufficient,” Heap of Bears said. “As long as the hate does not live between us, I am happy.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  “But for it to be complete, so that your power can grow to repel the evil behind the severed hand, you must in turn love another.” His eyes seemed to intensify as they touched her. “In deed as well as in word.”

  Slim realized then that her words had not fooled the Shaman, and that Heap of Bears had taken it in stride with amusement rather than annoyance.

  Nadine nodded and grabbed Slim’s hand. He stood up, unsure of what to say or do. He wished Nadine had been able to accept the man’s peace with better grace. It was apparent that she had done what she had to do, grudgingly, and thereby gained only a fraction of what was available.

  “Let’s go,” Nadine said. “I don’t want to be here any more.”

  Slim walked with her, out the door, back to the van. “Where to now?” he asked. “Back home?”

  “No, I don’t want to go home right now. Just drive back to town and we’ll figure it out then. I have to think.”

  “Oh, Nadine,” Slim said. “If you didn’t drive me to tears, we’d never go anywhere at all.”

  She laughed, her mood yielding to his humor. “Damn it, Slim, drive.” She pointed down the road. “Just go that way.”

  “That’s what I like,” he replied. “A woman with a good sense of direction.”

  “Slim,” she said. “You’re cute. About cute enough to keep in a trunk and bring out only on Sundays.” She sighed. “I wish loving you was as easy as you are.”

  “Me?” he said. “I’m not easy. I just—I just love you.” He’d said it, finally, and the lump in his throat went all the way down to his balls. Maybe seeing her human weakness in the presence of the man who had taught her love and loss had emboldened him. And he was afraid of what she might say in reply. But Nadine remained quiet. She just smiled and sat back as they drove once more in silence.

  Slim knew that what she’d said to Heap of Bears, about his being her lover, had been said to try to hurt the man. But he wondered if she knew that, in a way, it had hurt Slim, too, a little. It wasn’t that he minded being use
d in that way, but that he wanted so badly for it to be true. He’d never wanted any woman as much as he wanted Nadine, far beyond the merely physical. Every time she touched him it was like a fire on his skin and a storm in his heart, like a hard wind blowing him away.

  He’d looked for love all of his life. He’d looked in all the wrong women at all the wrong times. Now that he’d found it in himself, he didn’t know just what to do with it. The way Nadine acted, he was sure she felt something for him. But she was so sharp, sometimes, as if she could zero in on his worst weaknesses and strike directly at them. He understood now, though, why she might be so hard on men. But everyone had said she was treating him differently. He wasn’t sure he understood that at all.

  It was, in all respects, a long, thoughtful drive back into town. Nadine told him to pull off the freeway and get on River Road. After they’d gone a few miles, she directed him onto a side road and then told him to drive into a field. They ended up in a tree-hidden copse, overlooking a slow, quiet creek. She turned in the seat and stood up.

  “Let’s go in the back,” she said, turning the stereo up.

  Slim followed her into the back of the van. He didn’t dare even conjecture what was on her mind. She lay down on the padded, carpeted floor and pulled him down beside her.

  “Nadine—” he started.

  But she put her finger to his mouth. “It’s time.”

  She pulled him close, kissed him, her tongue playing in his mouth. He felt her hand unbuttoning his jeans. He reached under her blouse for her breast, felt it hot in his hand. When he felt her hand holding and caressing his dick, he thought he would die on the spot and couldn’t stop his hips from pressing into her.

  They quickly, instinctively undressed each other, and their love-making was hard and passionate. The smell and taste of her made Slim wild, and they smelled and tasted each other everywhere, explored every inch of each other’s skin from head to toe.

  When it was over, he licked the sweat from her breasts and belly, marveled at the smooth texture of her caramel skin, gazed into her eyes and held her tightly against him, not wanting to lose the moment, in fear it would never come again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry? What in the world for?”

  “I should have waited for you to start this,” she said. “I promised myself I would.”

  “You shit and fall back in it,” Slim said. “This was perfect. You think I give a damn who starts anything? If we’d waited for me, we might never have gotten here. I’ve been wanting this since the first time I saw you. Since I saw your picture. Sorry? No, Nadine. Thank you. Thank you for this.”

  “Thank you, too,” she said, smiling and caressing his cheek. “If it’s worth anything, and I guess it is, I think Daddy’s right about you.”

  “Right?” Slim asked. “Right about what?”

  “He told me from the start that you were the right man for me. You’re still kind of a fool, sorry. But I do think he was right. I don’t know why. I guess I don’t care. Something inside me keeps going right to you. Can I tell you something?”

  “You can tell me anything, Nadine.”

  “Um, you know about Heap of Bears, now. Does it make a difference?”

  “No,” Slim said quickly. “Not in loving you. In trying to understand you, yes, but not in loving you.”

  “Well,” she said shyly. “I want you to know that, until now, there haven’t been any other men. I mean, I haven’t made love with anyone since I was sixteen. Not until you.”

  Slim pulled her closer. How could he answer that except with his body and his heart? While they’d been talking, they’d also been playing, and Slim had risen to the occasion. Nadine turned around, and they loved each other with their hands and mouths until the inevitable climax rolled them away again.

  They lay quietly in each other’s arms, hands playing idly with exhausted body parts, feeling the slipperiness of sweat on delightful skin.

  “We’d better get going,” Nadine said abruptly, sitting up and grabbing her clothes.

  “Where to?” Slim asked, also dressing himself. “I don’t feel like going home just yet. I want you to myself for a little while longer.”

  “Okay. You want to go to Mitchell’s and then go out dancing or something?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to dance with you.”

  12

  It’s the urgency, intensity and focus of the blues that appeals to people. You know that old line about Muddy Waters saying more in one note than another guitarist does in 100. Rock players may be more sophisticated, but the blues has got the feeling.

  —Bruce Iglauer, Alligator Records

  They both had “Specialburgers” at Mitchell’s, and Slim began to wonder if Nadine was picking up his eating habits. Then thought that that was wholly ridiculous idea. But her hand in his, walking out of the restaurant, was far from ridiculous. His body was still burning sublimely from their lovemaking, his mind and heart in delicious turmoil. He was almost afraid that his whole body glowed with it, making it obvious to everyone they encountered. Then he realized that it wasn’t fear he felt, but pride. Let the whole world know!

  They drove to Forty-fifth and Canyon, to a little club that Nadine chose. He could hear the music from the parking lot, a twangy, swampy sound, concentrated around a singer that growled like Howlin’ Wolf. The sign on the door said the band called itself Omar and the Howlers. Slim liked it. It had a simple, clean sound, unaffected by the power. It was clearly entertainment, dance music, and for the lack of added meaning, Slim was relieved.

  Nadine changed to a black miniskirt and a thin, black blouse that flowed in the most delightful way when her breasts bounced beneath it.

  “You always carry a change of clothes?” he asked when she changed.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “I did today.”

  “Well, you look beautiful.”

  “Thanks.”

  They walked hand in hand into the club. It was a surprise on the inside, perhaps the cleanest nightclub he’d ever seen. They walked through a short hallway into the bar area. Guitars were hung in a row all around the walls, just below the ceiling. The collection represented more instrumental wealth than Slim could imagine, and though he failed to recognize the make of most of them, he was envious and coveted them all. The bar was circular, in the middle of the club. To the back of the bar was a small sunken area filled with pool tables no one was using. To the front of the bar, in another sunken area, were tables, a small dance floor and a stage on which four musicians were calling the tunes.

  They ordered a couple of beers, and then sat at a table near the stage, watching the dancers. Slim loved to dance, had always loved dancing, but he was shy and self-conscious about it till he’d gotten a fair amount of beer down. He was an energetic dancer, despite his size, but not a fancy dancer. Just the old step and slide and rock and hip shot. Sticking to the groove. There had been a few times, though, with a few ladies, when he’d known he was doing well enough that people were watching him. Though he’d never known for sure if it was admiration or amusement on the part of the watchers, and he hadn’t wondered long on it, preferring to believe it was the former.

  He looked at Nadine, trying to gauge how long he could stretch before she would want to dance. He was scared of it, with her, but she seemed to be in no hurry. Like him, she was drinking her beer and listening to Omar singing about hard times in a land of plenty.

  “Nadine,” he said/yelled.

  “What?”

  “I’m kind of shy about dancing,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  She laughed. “So am I.”

  “You?” he said incredulously. “But on stage you dance so good.”

  “Sure, but that’s on stage. Part of the act, you know what I mean. This is real life. It’s different.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Slim said to himself. It was nearly impossible to carry on a conversation, so they just listened and had two more beers. After the band had taken a br
eak, to be replaced by what evidently passed for Top 40 in this world, played loudly over a bad sound system, he thought he was about ready.

  “You wanna dance?” he said as the band returned. Nadine shook her head yes. He stood and took her hand as they walked out onto the dance floor. Sometimes it was easier to dance than others. If his fingers itched to hold a guitar and play a better lead than the one coming from the stage, it was very hard for him to dance. But Omar and the Howlers were laying it down solid, so moving came as easily as listening. For a moment, they were the only couple on the floor, the only couple dancing. But soon other people began to dance, moving to the music. Slim and Nadine out-danced them all. Even the band watched them with some admiration. They had their own steps, their own style but somehow, together, they made a perfect couple.

  The song ended and they barely had time to walk over to their table for a quick drink before the music began again. Slim danced, but he watched Nadine dance even more closely. She closed her eyes, swayed and swirled and turned, dancing circles around him. He watched her breasts bounce and bob under the thin blouse, and saw, with great satisfaction, that other men, handsomer, more nicely dressed than he, thinner, watched her dance also. He felt they must envy him, and he loved the feeling.

  The next one was a slow song and he and Nadine pressed closely together. He tightened his hips against her, though his pubic bone hurt from their earlier lovemaking, trying to convey his love and desire through his movement. The curve and softness of her nestled against him and made him feel better than he’d ever felt. She held him tighter and pushed against him, excited by the effect she was clearly having on him, his desire for her. Slim ground against her, his erection almost painful in its intensity, fired by the memory of their afternoon. Nadine, smiling, lifted up on her toes and rubbed against him feverishly, maliciously. Then she touched him softly on the back, low on his spine, and he exploded in orgasm, knees buckling and arms squeezing her tightly. All he could hear was her delighted laughter.