In one month, shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I would join the Navy and I could not wait to go, to pack a few personal things and blast away from this place. Until then I was still living with my parents in Idaho Falls. My father, a carpenter, a forest fire fighter and too often a drunk slapping my mother around before passing out lived for dry fly angling. Wading in one of the forks of the Snake River, he whipped the rod of his Diamondback reel with such an economy of motion, a purity of effort, it never failed to dazzle onlookers. I hated fly-fishing as much as he loved it. Fuck fly-fishing.
My mother, raising three children, worked part time in a dry cleaning store downtown, always looked distracted, as though she could not concentrate until she found what she was looking for. My father's abuse, verbal rather then physical, still had the effect of making her act like a whipped pup, a figure waiting for the other shoe to drop.
When I was ten years old, my maternal grandfather willed three vacation rental properties on the banks of the Snake River to my mother. Not one penny of the income from these properties went to my father in accordance with my grandfather's wishes. Sitting in Bank of Idaho, I think my mother viewed this money as her lifeboat if things got too bad. If she found it necessary to flee, the money was her refuge from a sinking ship.
I completed minor repair work on these properties. I mowed the grass, painted, and cleaned, all the things necessary to keep the places in a good state of repair. Mom paid me for my efforts, I got to work outside quite a bit and I would go to boot camp tanned and fit.
One summer evening as the sun dissolved behind the mountains to the west, I was sitting on the metal glider on our front porch. I was looking at Life magazine. Raquel Welch in a silver bikini smiled from the magazine cover. The photograph a work of art in my opinion. Raquel, the bikini bra barely containing her tits, showed lots of cleavage. Bending slightly, looking at the camera, her olive skin and silver lame beckoned me to amble off to the bathroom for a little stroke action.
My mother came to the screen door, her nose almost touching the wire mesh.
"Honey, the new tenant is having problems with her bathroom. Can you check it out and see if you can fix the problem so I don't have to call a plumber. They are so expensive. She says water is backing up and she wants to take a bath."
"Sure Mom. I think I know what the problem is anyway. It shouldn't take but a minute to fix."
I dropped the magazine on the table next to glider, jumped off the porch and headed to my Chevy Nova.
All I knew about the new tenant was that she was married and that she was the advance party readying the place for her husband's arrival.
Ten minutes later, I arrived at the place, a rustic looking cabin near the river, and turned off the ignition. The 308 under the hood, already hot from the short drive, immediately started making crackling noises as it cooled. I walked to the front door, carrying a small satchel of tools, knocked. The yellow porch light burned even though it was not yet dark.
I heard movement in the house then saw her. Standing at door, drinking a tall glass of lemonade, she appeared to about 35 to 40, a sexy, gorgeous woman who nearly knocked my socks off. Auburn hair flowed down to her bare shoulders, covering a smattering of freckles. The beige colored blouse she wore, a peasant blouse, I think they call it exposed her shoulders. Under the fabric, thicker then one of my t-shirts, thinner then a burlap bag, I could tell she was quite busty, exceptionally busty and at my tender age I was a dyed in the wool bust man. The pile of "Big Busts", "Tit" and "Busty" magazines hidden in my room attested to that fact.
"I understand you are having a slight flooding problem." I said.
"Yes and I want to take a bath," she said.
"I think I know what the problem is."
"That would so wonderful if you could fix it."
She pushed open the screen door wide enough for me to slide through. Wearing a pale blue skirt cut above her knees, her bare legs scissored across the wood planking of the living room and I followed in her wake toward the house's single bathroom. Her bare feet with red painted toenails made the most pleasant sound as she padded across the wood-planked floor. Her hips rolled about under the skirt as she swayed across the room smelling of pine oil and Pledge furniture polish.
In the bathroom, two inches of water covered the white tile floor. I pried open the floor drain with a flat head screw driver, removed a wench from the bag, and used it to twist out the plug my father had failed to remove. The water immediately started gurgling down the drain.
"Do you have a swab?"
"A what?" She looked at me quizzically.
"I am sorry. I mean a mop. Next month I am joining the Navy and that is what they call a mop."
"Oh sure." She left me standing in the doorway. The knees of my jeans damp from bending over to remove the drain plug, I waited a few minutes, she returned with a brand new mop, a yellow stamp sized price label still sticking to the handle and a green plastic bucket.
She left while I took care of business and within ten minutes, I had swabbed the deck. As I dumped the half bucket of water in the toilet, she returned. During my labors, she had pinned her hair up with bobby pins, I could smell her fragrant skin lotion, I caught the scent of perfume and she had dabbed bright red lipstick on her lips, the same rich red color as the paint on her toes and her long fingernails.
"How about a glass of lemonade? It's out of a carton but its cold and it tastes like lemonade."
"Sure," I said. I followed her into a kitchen filled with open cardboard boxes, watched her pour me a glass of lemonade from the carton. Standing at the counter she placed the sole of her left foot on the instep of her right foot. We then walked into the living room, filled with more cardboard boxes. She motioned for me to sit in a chair, a black leather wing backed chair. She shuffled a mound of clothes on the sofa across from me to free a spot for her to sit down. She dropped her legs on the surface of the coffee table, pushed some stuff out of her way with her feet and then crossed one leg over the other.
