ARRIVING HOME
The garage door slid up on my electronic command. I blinked in surprise. I had nowhere to park in my own garage. My wife's silver BMW was in her spot on the left, but a shiny, red F-150 pickup truck was parked in my spot on the right.
Well, well, well; I had wondered before if my wife Bev was faithful. Guess I have my answer now.
I recognized the truck as belonging to Ted. He and his wife, Charlie, moved into a new house about a mile away a year-and-a-half or so ago. Ted is a junior partner at Bev's parents' law firm and has been with them about eight years. Last week he was showing off his new truck to several of us at a party at Bev's parents' house.
It is deer season, and almost every male in town packs up and goes off to deer camp for the whole two-week season. It's been a tradition in this part of the South as long as anybody can remember. Some wives and daughters go too, but it is mostly a guy event, a buddies-fathers-sons sort of thing. My wife is a girlie-girl and has not the slightest interest in roughing it in the woods overnight, much less for two weeks.
I belong to a hunting club east of town with buddies from work, and Ted belongs to a club west of town with a pack of lawyers; a conniving, blood sucking crowd I am happy to avoid. The season starts tomorrow morning, and I left for hunting camp at noon today to get ready. Bev expects me to be gone for the whole two weeks like every other male in town. Charlie, no doubt, expects Ted to be at his camp for two weeks too.
So Bev just opens the garage door, Ted drives in before dawn or after sunset, Bev closes the door, and voila, one has a perfect setting for an extended clandestine tryst. The wronged spouses have no clue of the torrid affair going on behind closed doors.
The fly in the adulterers' ointment is that I got to feeling poorly about six o'clock today. I decided to make the two hour drive back home in case I was coming down with something. I'd much rather recover from the flu or such in the comfort of home under the ministrations of my "devoted" wife rather than tough it out in the woods alone. That is the only reason that I happened to be rolling up here at eight o'clock tonight to discover this clever little love nest. I grabbed some medicine at the drugstore when I got back to civilization and was actually feeling quite a bit better now, or at least I was until my discovery.
I guess I am not surprised by Bev's unfaithfulness. She is self absorbed, almost narcissistic, just like her mother. She is gorgeous and flirtatious, men desire her, and she has opportunity to stray given my frequent travel. It is enough to give a husband pause.
No sense getting outraged or excited. Cheating spouses are an age-old story. They didn't put the warning against adultery in the ten commandments 2,500 years ago because it was a new concept. Nor is adultery exclusive to either sex - after all it takes one of each to make the affair work properly.
It might be fun to go in, raise Cain and make a scene, but that accomplishes nothing useful in the end. I now have hard intelligence about my wife's adultery. Question is how to best use it to my advantage?
I douse my truck lights, close the garage door, and slip away. The house is on a 3 acre lot at the end of a cul-de-sac. A large neighborhood lake is behind the house with a swampy creek exiting from the lake's dam and running in a ravine along the far side of my house and then swinging on the other side of the street in front of the house. This leaves my house fairly isolated. The garage is on the far end of the house by the ravine. It is unlikely the adulterous lovers or any nosy neighbors noted my arrival or departure.
While I belong to the hunting camp, I also enjoy my solitude. I bought a 5 acre parcel of land adjacent to the camp. My parcel includes a pond and a small, two-bedroom farmhouse which is where I stay. I hunt on the club's leased land and might go up to the main club area to shoot the shit with the guys and maybe have a beer. But generally, I enjoy my private time down at the farmhouse for my two-week escape from the world.
In the summer, Bev and some of her girl friends come out to swim in the pond and sunbathe. I get dragooned into fixing cocktails for the bathing beauties and frying catfish for lunch. It is pleasant duty as there is quite a bit of exposed feminine charm basking in the sun. Given the pond's remoteness, the girls sometimes get pretty daring in what they expose to Helios' tanning rays, to which, of course, I do not object.
Well tonight, I have a two hour ride back to hunting camp and my farmhouse to ponder my predicament and plan a course of action.
MY PREDICAMENT
In high school, I had been a straight-A student and a good baseball player. My family has a long military tradition, and I wanted to attend one of the U.S. military academies, VMI, or the Citadel. But Dad was quite ill, so I accepted a baseball scholarship at the state university that was only about 50 miles from home. While I had been a standout player in high school and American Legion baseball, college was a big step up. I played but was just a solid, dependable utility player and no longer a star. It probably didn't help that I was an engineering major with a heavy academic load. I had gone as far as I was going with baseball but did excel in my studies.
This was the Vietnam era so I planned to do my part and joined Army ROTC. After college graduation, I went into the Army as an infantry second lieutenant. Nine months later I was in the Mekong Delta with the 9th Infantry Division. For two months, I was assistant battalion S-3 and then was assigned as a rifle platoon leader. Turns out I had the touch for leading men in combat, accomplishing the mission, killing the enemy, and keeping my men as safe as possible. I was wounded once in the left arm and back by grenade fragments. The wounds were minor; nothing compared to what some poor devils suffered. I was back in the field within 10 days and embarrassed to get a purple heart for those minor wounds given what some of the other guys suffered.
Following my Vietnam tour, I was assigned to Ft. Benning to train soldiers headed to the War. After fulfilling my service obligation, I used my GI bill to get an engineering masters degree from the University of Texas. This along with my veteran's preference landed me a job with a NASA laboratory in Bev's hometown.
Bev was a Vietnam War widow. Her husband had been an Air Force Academy graduate who was shot down and killed over North Vietnam on his twelfth mission. No body was recovered. He and Bev had been married eighteen months.
Mary, a woman scientist in my group, had gone to college with Bev and introduced me to her at a party. Mary is a born matchmaker, and she hectored me to ask Bev out.
I was smitten from the beginning. Bev was a stunning beauty, bright, and flirty. But she was far out of my league. I had never been a Romeo and had only dated sporadically and without great success. I never had a serious girlfriend - too busy with baseball, academics, or soldiering to indulge in such niceties of civilized life. Nevertheless, Bev responded warmly to my wooing - though I am sure she found my awkward tries amusing. Five months later, we were married. That was four years ago now.
I always wondered why a beauty like Bev would pay attention to, much less marry, me. Louisa, an older secretary at work, gave me the inside female scoop as she explained, "John, we have a shortage of good marriageable men in these parts. There are plenty of rednecks, hayseed farmers, slobs, drunks, dope-heads, used-car salesmen, self-absorbed jackasses, dweebs, morons, and no-counts around. But you are a smart guy, have a good job with a lot of future potential. You are a war hero which doesn't hurt with the girls around here. Wouldn't cut any mustard up north or out on the west coast, but it is pure gold with the girls down here. Your Momma taught you manners to boot. You are a good looking ex-athlete and ex-soldier which will put any healthy girl to salivating. Shoot, if Bev hadn't scooped you up so quick, I have a pretty niece off at college I was going to introduce you to when she comes home this summer."
Southern women in that era did analyze the world differently from their men.
Like most men, I fell in lust with the exterior packaging and forgot to check under the hood to see what made this model tick. There was nothing wrong, but there was nothing really right either. Bev and I get along, do things together, sex is great, take trips ... but we are very different people. She is a socialite. She spends her days at the country club playing tennis and golf with friends, loves parties, and immerses herself in the general swirl of the social fabric of a small Southern city. I am more of a loner, like to read, enjoy my technical work which is of no interest to the general public, and travel often for work. Nothing is wrong, but things just are not quite clicking either.
Bev is the spoiled, only daughter of the best lawyers in town, a woman who values the comforts and privileges money can buy, and a lady with fierce pride. Any divorce from her would be contentious and very expensive. But if I can clearly prove adultery, I can dictate the terms of the divorce and have a quiet, quick settlement. I'll just write this marriage off to experience.
PREPARATION
First thing the next morning, I returned to town. The bank was open Saturday morning so I transferred all of our money to new accounts. I canceled credit cards that were in Bev's name and transferred all mutual funds to new accounts. That took care of what I could do on the financial end of the approaching storm. I figured Bev would be busy with her lover and not out and about to discover what I had done.
Next, I stopped by to see a lawyer I met playing softball in a church league. He was a Vietnam vet too and glad to help out. He gave me a quick briefing over a couple cups of coffee at his house. Without making the adultery stick, I would pay dearly for my freedom in this state. He also warned me that Bev's parents would be tough opponents in a divorce fight. He explained her parents were both tough, fierce, legal geniuses. I made an appointment for 8:00 o'clock Monday at my friend's office to get the official battle under way.
My next stop was the library where I did some reading on state divorce laws and proof of adultery requirements. Based on this research and what my lawyer friend told me, essentially I have to prove Bev's inclination and opportunity to commit adultery. I don't have to have a picture of them in flagrante delicto, though that certainly would be the icing on the cake. However, now that I have knowledge of the adultery, I also have to be careful to do nothing that Bev could claim condoned the adultery. Hence, returning home and pretending like everything was hunky-dory was not a wise option. I realized that it was better to act now rather than later.
I went by "Bo's Army-Navy Store." Bo was a Korean War vet and collected all kinds of military things. His store was a veritable museum of military artifacts. In a back room, he kept a variety of neat military toys that the authorities frowned on civilians owning. But to Bo, they were treasures. I bought a few items and spent the obligatory hour drinking coffee with Bo and swapping war stories.
Finally, I stopped by to see Jan, the wife of my best friend in town. Her husband, George, and I had played college baseball together and both ended up working at the lab. I ran George out of the room so I could talk with Jan privately.
With some arm-bending, I persuaded her to make two short recordings on my tape player for me. She's a smart gal and quickly deduced the circumstances of my request and asked very probing questions. I pled the fifth, put a guilt trip on her over our longtime friendship, swore her to secrecy, and promised to explain everything in a few days.
I had missed lunch and was starving so I grabbed a bite at Applebee's and thought through my plan for the evening. I would have liked a drink but stuck with coffee to keep a clear head.
GETTING IN POSITION
I headed out and arrived at the edge of the woods on the opposite bank of the lake from my house a bit after 4:30. As the sun set, I eased through the gathering gloom down into the ravine, crossed the stream, and slipped into the woods along the lake shore. I emptied my bladder down in the ravine woods as nothing is worse than laying in an ambush or an observation post and needing to pee.
