Gwen, in Green

“Oh, shi—” The spreading pattern of shot blasted the last letter of the word down his throat before tearing off the lower side of his face. The second blast eliminated his eyes. He splashed heavily into the hole.

Gwen padded over to look down on him. She sidestepped the bloody leaves. He jerked a few times and then was still. She leaned the shotgun up against the fallen tree and calmly began to push the bloodied leaves into the hole with a stick. Finished, she examined her work critically. There were a couple of blood spots on the tree itself. She cupped her hand, dug dirt after pushing the mulch aside, and rubbed the tree until the spots were obliterated. She looked at her dirtied hand, wiped it on leaves, and dressed slowly. Then, using shells taken from a small bag hidden in the dead branches of the tree, she reloaded the gun and placed it in its original spot.

Jock, Billy’s best friend, stopped his Cat. The clouds were on top of him and it was time to knock off. He heard only silence and knew that Billy had decided the same thing. He sighed, stretched, and lit a cigarette. He sat on the Cat waiting, and after five minutes got off and took a long, satisfying leak. Pushing a Cat worked on the kidneys. Then he started walking around the remaining mass of trees toward the other end to meet Billy. He walked all the way to Billy’s machine and saw Billy’s tracks leading off toward the woods. He was headed toward them when the girl came out from under the trees.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” She was some looker. “You seen the guy running that dozer?”

“Ummm,” she said. There was a teasing little smile on her face. Jock couldn’t believe what he was seeing and what he was thinking. Billy was a real cocksman, but this wasn’t Billy’s kind of chick. This one was high-­class stuff.

“I saw him,” she said, with what amounted to a knowing smirk. “He said I should see you, too. He said you would be nice.”

Once in Dallas Jock had taken seconds on one of Billy’s girls, a kid who just couldn’t get enough. He was a true believer. Still, there was something about this girl. “You pulling my leg?”

“He’s down there waiting,” she said. “He asked me to come and get you.”

That damned Billy. Only man Jock knew who could find a piece in the middle of the woods on the job. He followed, his interest growing. The girl didn’t talk any more, but she spoke with the swing of her hips. Jock followed her down a little trail into thick brush and then into a small clearing beside a fallen tree. “Where’s Billy?” he asked.

“I told him I didn’t want an audience.” She was opening her blouse. Jock’s throat constricted. He moved toward her.

“No,” she said sharply. “I want you to take off your clothes first.”

“This some kind of gag?” Jock asked.

“Is it?” She dropped her hotpants, and he licked his lips and began to move toward her again.

“No,” she said. “I want to watch you undress.”

“You do it for me, honey,” he said, moving.

“Humor me,” she said. “I have a thing about it.”

He halted. She was just a few steps away, the hotpants down around her ankles. As he watched, she kicked them aside. She was nude, lovely, soft, all woman. “Stand over there where I can see.”

He did. He hung his shirt on the tree and bent to take off his boots, and he didn’t even look up.

By pushing the accumulated dirt from the overhanging roots, she was able to cover them. She put their loose clothing under the top one and then pushed the dirt in and then pushed away leaves and got down to sand and used a stick to dig and push until there was a layer of dirt a foot deep atop them and all the nooks formed by tangled legs and arms were filled in. Then she covered the whole thing with leaves and, dressed, gathered pine straw to cover the entire clearing so as to hide the foot marks.

Then she examined it carefully for blood and other signs and, satisfied, skirted the bay, gained the road, and walked slowly and tiredly to the house. There she got out the gun cleaning kit and scoured the barrels of the gun. She oiled it, put it away, and showered. It had begun to rain, a hard downpour which, she knew, would settle the freshly raked leaves in the clearing and eliminate all traces of her having been there. It was Friday. The machines would sit all weekend in the raw, ugly cut. On Monday, there would be no one to run them. That, she knew, was only a temporary condition. There would be others. There would be many others. Too many. But for a time, at least, the pain was lessened.

She spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the big room, watching the rain fall on the small shoots which were once again sprouting up in George’s cleared areas. Now and then, as if she’d heard something pleasing, she’d nod and smile.

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