By Michael Ledwith

June 30, 2023

He had learned how to walk quietly in the Army.

And to always maintain situational awareness. The deep snow muffled everything anyway, but he still stepped carefully and ducked under branches making sure he didn’t break anything or snap a twig. The woods were still, no birds, some animal tracks, beautiful in the new snow.

The cabin would be just over the rise and he could walk in the trees almost to the back door. She said she would unlock the door and would leave long before he got there.

The heavy 1911 in Ted’s shoulder holster tugged and dug into the skin underneath his Levi jacket.

It had been summer when they met. She was hiking down Niwot Ridge as he and his brother hiked up. Strong tan brown legs, thick socks accenting her muscular calves, well-worn boots, Kinks t-shirt covered by a patched snap button faded blue denim shirt. Calico scarf around her neck, aviators, and blond hair tucked under a Grateful Dead baseball cap. She didn’t even glance at them as they passed.

Two weeks later, they sat naked, across from each other, sweaty, spent, after making love on the front seat of her pickup truck. He said: I’d say fuck’s sake, but you might take it wrong. It works on many levels she replied, and smiled a smile that even more than the lovemaking made him fall utterly and completely in love with her.

She, and her sometime boyfriend, lived in a cabin up in the woods near Boulder. With two cats and a dog, like in the song.

Off and on, all summer, when he was in Boulder he would see her around, sometimes with her boyfriend. An older guy, big through the shoulders, long haired, with a gold tooth and always with his hands on her. He asked about that once, and she said he used to be just possessive, but since he hit fifty he was getting to be too much. Where did he get the gold tooth? The story changes. Why are you with him? See anybody else around? And, I needed protection.

Protection…protection from what? The last possessive boyfriend.

Three times they had wound up making love. The truck again, but then once in the woods when they hiked way up into the Flatirons. Lying on a blanket she had brought afterwards, drinking beer they had cooled in a freezing stream that came down from much higher up. Eating cheese, little sausages, and slices of blueberry pie she had baked that morning.

You bake? I bake and cook. I was a chef once in Sausalito. You lived in San Francisco? No, Tiburon, but spent lots of time there. Loved going to old movies and hanging out at the Vesuvius.

Fuck’s sake, I said again. Why not she answered…and took off her t-shirt.

She was 26, I was 25. I had just missed Vietnam, and law school, and making any serious decision about my life once I realized I was going to have a life and not be killed in some rice paddy or taking some idiotic hill or by my own troops because I was both hard core and idealistic. Come on men, let’s not just bomb the shit of that village but send in a squad to see if there are any VC there. A click and boom as a hand grenade is rolled into my tent.

She didn’t seem curious about my life, I was intensely curious about hers. We shared coffee a couple of times, and beers and burgers at Ted’s, the legendary bar on the Hill.

Ted was a former Marine who had been wounded at Guadalcanal, and then again at Okinawa.

He’d come back, bounced around, and wound up opening Ted’s so he could play guitar and sing to a captive audience. He and the restaurant became locally famous and every now and then famous musicians came down out of their mountain ranches and sat in with Ted on weekend nights.

I had a nodding relationship with him. He knew her well.

How’s the dick he asked the first time I was there with her.

Which dick, she answered?

The latest one.

Gold tooth?

Yeah, Ted answered. Watch out darlin’ he might not like the boy wonder here.

He doesn’t own me, she cried angrily.

He don’t? Har-de-har-har!

Ted walked back behind the bar.

I felt a cold anger and, for the first time, realized, beyond combat training and combat fantasies from the Army, I might indeed be capable of killing.

What’s that all about?

Oh, Ted’s a dramatist.

What’s your boyfriend’s name?

Here it’s Wyatt, but he was born Gerald.

I laughed. Hey, she said, what’s my name? Eva, I answered, you said Eva was your name.

And, you believed me?

A week later I had to go back to Florida. To take the LSAT, and do two job interviews friends had set up. One of the jobs would let me surf almost every day.

Just after Thanksgiving Ted called me at my Mom’s.

Hold on boy, he said, hold on now.

Why, what?

Well, that scumbag Wyatt nearly beat her to death. She’s in the Denver Trauma Center, and she didn’t want you to know. I found your number in her bag and she kept asking for you when she was all doped up and crazy.

Were the police called, did they arrest him?

Son, they don’t arrest people like Wyatt. Why not? Hell, boy, he supplies most of the Front Range with cocaine. He’s not somebody to screw with unless you’re a serious man.

I’ll be there tomorrow.

Nope, you won’t. We got a big storm moving in and it’ll be the weekend before flights will start.

Plus, she asked me to tell you not to come.

Why?

One, no woman wants the man she loves to see her the way she looks right now. And two, she don’t want you to get killed.

She said she loved me? My voice shook.

In her way, Fred answered…she’s had a tough life with men. I’ve known her since she was a girl, and I’ve never known her to be with a man she said anything personal about. They’re usually just a means to an end. You’re the first she ever showed affection for.

To what end?

A place to stay, a warm body, protection.

Fred, do you still have your 1911 from the war?

Yep.

Don’t sell it. I’ll be there Monday.

-30-

Frequent contributor Michael Ledwith is a former bag boy at Winn-Dixie, who worked on the Apollo Program one summer in college. A former U.S. Army officer, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and saw Baryshnikov dance ’Giselle’ at the Auditorium Theater.  Surfer. Rock and roll radio in Chicago. Shareholder, Christopher’s American Grill, London. Father. Movie lover—favorite dialogue: “I say he never loved the emperor.”