His leg swelled, and puss formed around the tiny holes. It hurt him like the devil.

"When is this Goddamn snow ever going to stop?" she said.

"Well, when it does the fun will begin." He watched her prance around the cabin darting in and out of the rooms. She had found some clothes that fit her, clothes she kept there for the pleasure of the Pittsburgh clients, clothes that accentuated her ample bosom and hips.

What the hell can she be doing?

"You're making me nervous sit down, will ya?"

She lifted a huge pot of beans around and put it up next to the fire to cook. "It's an old family recipe," she said. One of the few good memories she had of her childhood was before the old man took to molesting her sister her mother was a good cook and used to make all sorts of Mexican meals.

"That's where she came from," she told Harry. She didn't talk much after that but started banging things around.

Sitting around drove him crazy, he hated inactivity and always had to be doing something. There weren't any books in the house. The owners came to hunt not read. And if they were not hunting, they were enjoying some of Skinny's girls.

"Sit down, will you? You're driving me crazy," he said to her.

"Do you want to eat or not?" she said and came over, grabbed a glass and the bottle, and poured herself a drink.

"You drink too much, you know that?"

"You're no amateur yourself," she said. She fussed with the pot in the fireplace stirring the beans, taking the lid off and putting it back on. Then she picked up the bottle to pour a drink, forgetting that she had already done that, and then put the bottle down.

Her hair was disheveled and could have used a brushing. She reminded Harry of Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," and he liked it.

"I like what you've done to your hair," he told her. "Why don't you come over here and let me brush it for you."

She smiled at that. Her mood changed instantly, and she sauntered over, swinging her hips wide and slow, one side to the other. "Boom-chic-a-Boom," she said with each swing. She looked at him with alluring eyes, and a smile, sucking on her finger and then running it down her chest into her cleavage. She opened her blouse and let her breasts fall out.

Harry, still in his robe, could not hide his reaction to her performance.

She ran over and jumped on his lap, accidentally brushing his wounded leg with her foot.

He pulled back and winced in agony.

"Oh Harry," she said. "Did I hurt ya?"

"Ya, a little," he said pushing her off his lap, and rubbing his ankle. But she was undaunted in her desire, and she mounted his lap once again and moved in a slow circular pattern. "Let me make it feel better," she said in her best to please voice.

Harry held her by both shoulders and stopped her from moving, "Don't you understand? I've lost the moment."

She pulled back his robe still smiling and unsure if the playing was really over and checked for herself.

"I can fix that," she said and started rubbing him.

Harry stood up abruptly and let her fall onto the floor. "Cut it out, will you." He walked over to the fire, picked up the poker and started playing with the logs and hot embers, and pushed the arm that held the pot of beans to the other side.

CJ ran over and took the poker out of his hand. Then she pulled the pot back to where it was. "It'll burn over there." She looked hurt, and walked into the back room and slammed the bathroom door.

When she came back out, Harry stood by the front porch window. He looked over his shoulder at her and she tried to avoid his stare. "I'm bored Harry. Tell me a story."

"Fresh out of stories," he said. "Look at that snow, will ya?"

She came over to him with a new drink in her hand and held it out. He took it and sipped at it. "Were you ever married?" she asked.

"I told you before I was, two times. One for the wrong reasons."

"Did ya get a girl pregnant?"

"You'd like that wouldn't you?" He looked down at her standing next to him. He felt something just then, a disconnection, not necessarily from her, but from the moment. "No, the first time was in the Amazon. I was fifteen and with my father. We were visiting this tribe called the Yeshret. We helped them out a bit and they took a liking to us. They looked up to my father as if he was a god or something. They gave me a bride—the chief's daughter."

"Was she cute?"

Harry put his arm around her neck and pulled her to him and kissed her passionately. "She looked like you, but only brown, and her tits were smaller. She wanted babies. It was expected of me to provide her with them. That night she nearly raped me. She couldn't take her eyes off me."

"Ya can't rape the willing Harry."

"She tried. It worked."

"What were you doing in the jungles?"

"My father owned an aircraft company, and he was always looking for new and better materials. He wanted their secret for making a rubber substitute. It killed him."

She looked surprised, and frowned, "Ooo, how'd he die?"

"He had made a flying body suit: a wing suit. He thought it would work given the right amount of upward draft.

"Later, he put on his suit, which was white and black, and when he spread his arms, the chief laughed and said he looked like a flying squirrel. He gathered everyone around him on the precipitous ledge of this waterfall, spread his arms, and made a little speech, which I recorded on 8mm. His last words were, 'If I do this Harry, I'll be famous, which should suffice as I am already rich beyond belief. Now watch this.'

"He turned and leaped into the misty air and disappeared instantly into the loud waters below. The Indians cheered him on, inspired by his magnificent flying suit. I think they expected him to come soaring back up and into the trees. It was pathetic and I cried, knowing he was dead.

"Later, back home, the National Geographic Society honored him for discovering a new natural waterfall by naming it Alfred's Fall."

"Gee, I'm sorry, Harry. That kind 'a sucks. Did ya stay with them?"

"Only for a little while until the chief's three sons took me back to the big city two-hundred miles away San Carlos de Rio Negro, I think it was called."

"Do you miss her?"

"Never really thought about her much, you know. I thought about going back to visit once long ago, but I got busy with college and Italy." He drifted off and walked over to the door and tried to open it, but it was stuck from the cold and snow piling up on the porch. Then he walked over to the bar and sat on a stool, and she sat next to him.

"Bet you got a little Harry running around with his own kids now and all that. A whole tribe of Harrys."

"Then there was Sammy." He thought about that experience in '69 during the Woodstock concert. He would rather leave that one alone too, but CJ persisted.

"Sammy," she said, "I knew a guy named Sam once. Twice't actually."

Harry smiled at her when she said that. He loved the way she talked, making up words, or her own versions of them. He knew it stemmed from a terrible lack of an education, but she was intelligent under her ignorance, and was pretty sure she knew it, too. "Well my Sammy was all girl, boy was she all girl, but sex didn't mean the same to her as it does to you. Do you understand?"

"There's not a whole lot I do understand when you talk," she said. "You mean she didn't charge."

Harry laughed a little at that. "All women charge for that, in one way or the other. No, she didn't charge, but she gave it out freely. We made love just an hour after we met, and later that day she was with someone else doing the same thing. At least, I'm pretty sure she was. But she came back to me and stayed until the end of the concert later that weekend."

"What did she look like? Was she tall? Or short like me?"

He held up his hand a few inches above CJ's head and said, "About here."

"I bet she had red hair."

"Blonde." He was looking towards the ceiling thinking about Sammy, like he was trying to remember her attributes.

"Well," CJ said, "Small titties, and huge ass?"

"Is that how you want her to be? Then that is just what she looked like, buck teeth and freckles."

"Good, that sounds just fine, go on."

"Go on? You mean there's more?"

"This is your story Harry," she giggled and shoved him, almost knocking him off his seat.

"Oh," he said rubbing his face. His beard was growing, and it began to itch. "Later we headed off to the dark trees to make love while hundreds of people sat around the bon fire casting great shadows onto the trees that surrounded the grove. Some were dancing to the music coming from the stage.

"Where did she go?" CJ asked.

"The Dead played, 'Dark Star,'" Harry said without answering her question, "and no one moved, even the bonfire seemed to quiet down and listen. After a while it flared back to life as if someone had thrown more logs onto it, but no one did. The fire fed vicariously on the music just as the people."

Harry expected CJ to be bored, but when he looked over at her, she had a gleam in her eyes. "I was wrong in one sense," he said to her green eyes, "the things we do last for more than just the moment, even throughout history, and the future, beyond the machines, and the technology that records everything we do. People will remember as long as there are people. We will remember. Let's have some more whiskey."

"There you go again Harry. I don't understand what you are sayin'. How's your leg? Maybe you shouldn't. It says in that book that alcohol is bad for infections."

"To hell with the infection."

"What ever happened to the girl, huh Harry?"

"I spent a month in hell in some commune in Vermont. "

The trees that surrounded the snowbound cottage opened out onto fields, and meadows that in the spring give birth to thousands of varieties of flowers. Snowcapped mountains with bare and jagged crests rose up in the near distance like walls of a giant keep. The world glowed under the red sunlight as it cast long gray shadows on the wet snow, and soon everything was half in light, and half in dark, and then all dark. Like a silent sentinel the darkness watched against intruders, but who could reach them there?

It promised to be warmer. The tiny rivers formed by melting snow the previous day had frozen overnight, but soon began to carry the melting snow downhill again. Harry slept on the large leather chair and opened his eyes as the light hit him. He followed the beams that were visible in the dusty air of the cabin as they shone on the wolf. In the bright light, the dust motes looked like swarming black flies, and the wolf looked alive in the dancing dust. Its eyes gleamed.

Harry had a presentiment of death awaiting him, if not from his wound, which did not hurt anymore, then from something. He knew Conner—if he were still alive—would try to find them, but that Skinny would be the first to arrive.

Suddenly, as if still dreaming he heard the howling of a lone wolf outside the cabin and looked over at the stuffed wolf. Then the howl was answered by another, and then another. They were loud.

CJ had been up for a while, and made coffee, and a small breakfast. She had found some kind of sausage in the freezer, cooked them up with powdered eggs, and fried withered potatoes. Then she tried to open the front door, but the screen was blocked. It was packed tightly with snow, and it took some doing to open. She had found a shovel in the storage room and used that to plow a path toward the steps so the sun might melt what remained. When she heard the wolves howl, she ran back into the house, and slammed the door.

"Did you goddamn hear that?"

"They're drawn by death," he said. "They can smell it."

"No, they can't," she said.

"They aren't here for the beans."

"They can smell the meat cooking." She looked frantic and ran over to the fireplace for the shotgun breaking it open to make sure it was loaded.

"Stop," he said, but she had thrown open the door, stuck the barrel out, and fired. It fell from her hands. Harry got up quickly, lunged for the rifle, and held it close to his side. He opened the barrel to check on the shots. Both barrels were empty. "They're gone now."

"What happened to the hippie girl?"

"Don't you let anything go? Sammy? I married her of course."

"Really?"

"Oh that didn't really count though. After the concert, she went back to Vermont with the people she came with and moved back into their little commune. I tagged along for the time being, not wanting it to end. That is when I married her. The clan leader performed the marriage

"They shared everything, even each other. I didn't like it much, besides I had obligations in college. Sammny soon found other distractions besides me. She could hardly keep her mind on one thing for more than a day. I walked away, and that annulled it."

"It did? Are you sure Harry?"

"As far as I was concerned, it did."

CJ looked away. She had never told Harry or anyone about her past, about her father and mother, or about her sister. Skinny knew. He had seen her story a hundred times before. He used to listen to them go on about their lives until it did not matter anymore, and now he just tuned it out.

"Did I say something wrong?"

She shook her head, "No."

"Is it something about marriage," he paused waiting for a response, but there was none. "Give me something here."

"I was twelve," she said. "It ain't nothin' so great anyhow." She walked away into the corner of the kitchen, and fussed with the coffee she was making. Then she sat down and looked him in the eyes, and after a long pause said, "You really want to know, don't ya?"