Ten Percent Marriage

By Robert Henry Wright Jr.

Robert Henry Wright, Jr., a resident of the Idaho Panhandle since 1988, has published Ten Percent Marriage, a second novel set in the Sandpoint, Idaho, area. Wright categorizes Ten Percent Marriage as a love story, an action story, and as personal relations in an outdoor setting.

To escape the horror of a sadistic sexual assault that had left her with an illegitimate child and a shattered life before that life could begin, Emily has been living in a cabin at Arrowhead Point beside Lake Pend dOreille in northern Idaho. She had exiled herself there thirty years ago at age seventeen.

Harvey considers himself to be one of Gods chosen losers, as he had lost at everything he had truly wanted to win: the state high school football championship; his son; and his wife. The final blow was having been presented with an early retirement package and shown to the door. Aimless and defeated, he goes to see a piece of land he had won in a bour game years before; the land is located at Arrowhead Point beside Lake Pend dOreille in northern Idaho.

Emily and Harvey meet; they clash; they become attracted to each other; but there are obstacles to overcome. Harvey discovers that there are two Emilys: Ewn and Et. Ewn is the dominant personality, a passionate artist who has a well developed phobia of males. Et is fun loving, flirtatious, reckless, and has a mania for males. To Harveys dismay, Emily is Ewn for ninety percent of the time and Et for the remaining ten percent. Oth

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465334077

Robert Henry Wright Jr.

Robert Henry Wright Jr. was born in Puerto Cabezas, Republic of Nicaragua, Central America. He immigrated to Texas, USA, at the age of ten. After high school, he served in the USAF; had a brief stint at the University of Texas; and then settled into the petroleum industry, working in sales and service in the drilling and production segments—from Comodoro Rivadavia to the North Slope of Alaska—until taking early retirement in 1988. His occupational travels included a one year residency at Buenos Aires during 1962. After retirement at age fifty-six, Robert and his wife, Carol, began anew when they moved from bustling Houston to a remote ten acres on the north fork of Grouse Creek in the Idaho Panhandle to pursue his desire to write. At Grouse Creek they adapted to living without municipal amenities—without electricity, water, telephone, etc. The Wrights came in from the woods in 2001, moving into nearby Sandpoint where they reside today. Robert Henry Wright, Jr. is the author of The Sandpoint Trilogy which comprises the three novels Apology to Grouse Creek, Ten Percent Marriage, and All Things Flow. He is also the author of the novella Papelón.

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Copyright © 2006 by Robert Henry Wright, Jr..

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Contents

1     

THE COMING

2     

THE SUNSET

3     

GOD’S CHOSEN LOSER

4     

THE MISUNDERSTANDING

5     

THE COUNTER-PROPOSAL

6     

THE OIL PATCH THAT WAS

7     

THE MENTOR

8     

EMILY HARD LUCK

9     

THE MAGIC CARPET

10     

THE ART PATRON

11     

STAMPEDE OF THE WHEELER-DEALERS

12     

THRICE FORSAKEN

13     

THE WORLD TOMORROW

14     

THE COMING BACK

Illustrations and book cover by Marilyn McIntyre of Grouse Creek, Bonner County, Idaho, USA

For my sons—Pride Scott Wright and Randall Mark Wright—

for bestowing undeserved merit upon their father.

missing image file

1     

THE COMING

An aging osprey glides over Sand Creek. Engrossed with

scanning for movement in the olive-green water, he passes low over the stream and does not heed the edifice that spans the broad creek. Becoming cognizant that it is before him, the osprey abruptly rises and veers sharply aside of the Cedar Street Bridge Mall. He veers again to avoid the antenna tower at the railroad depot. The old osprey has unwittingly ventured into the community of Sandpoint. He normally avoids commercial centers because he fears humans and the accouterments of their presence, particularly the inconspicuous power lines and the large panes that treacherously mirror the outdoors.

Now over City Beach, his wary eyes are hard upon a herd of humans lolling on gaudy towels on the dun colored sand. A flock of beggarly, loquacious gulls floats above the recumbent humans, screeching and wheeling in the sun seasoned air. The osprey scowls. As a proud raptor, he regards panhandlers and scavengers with contempt. The osprey turns his gaze from the obnoxious scene below to practical matters, to peer into the hazy distance toward the massive Monarch Mountains jutting from the lethargic water of Lake Pend d’Oreille. After many years of navigating the area by dead reckoning, the osprey knows his destination lies on a line from City Beach toward the green Monarchs. He climbs to sixty feet and levels off on a southeasterly course. When he was younger, the osprey would fly much higher—at a hundred feet or more—but some years earlier he had been critically injured by striking the water wrongly and now restricts himself to the lower altitudes.

Winging across the fluid expanse, the osprey considers the day splendid for flying but knows to keep a watchful eye for the bald eagle. The osprey has four times been ambushed by the malevolent eagle. Each time he had been compelled to release his catch whereupon the eagle showed the osprey his tail feathers as he swooped to snatch the fish with his talons before it fell into the water. The osprey is confident of his capability to survive; he has a valiant and stout heart; but he is not vain. He understands that he is no match for the bald eagle.

Having flown a mile and a half over water to a beak of land projecting into the lake, the osprey descends to circle a familiar one-room log cabin on the sandy and rocky soil. The cabin is exhausted from too many years of leaning against the weather. The tired manner in which it sits—cowering, with its stove pipe precariously askew—projects the impression that it, like the osprey, is weary from the maladies of age. The cabin squats about a hundred paces from a fine and vacant beach running circularly along the shore of what is called Arrowhead Point. It faces away from the water, toward a dense old growth forest where pine, fir, hemlock, and cedar reside. For the many years that the osprey has been fishing these waters, the log cabin and its solitary occupant have been a part of the landscape. He can dimly remember when there had been two occupants in the cabin, but there has been only one for on to fifteen seasons. The osprey nimbly perches on his favorite snag from where it has an unobstructed view of his fishery and of the decrepit log cabin.

At the picnic table on the deck of the cabin, a woman is eating with a spoon from a bowl. The old osprey knows her well. She’s the one who had found him unconscious on the beach after his injury. When he regained consciousness and realized he was the captive of a human, he was filled with the excruciating dread of captivity, and he did not know if he could bear it. The osprey found it impossible to find a redeeming aspect in his desperate circumstances, except for his captor being female. If his captor had been male, his chance of avoiding a savage death would have been appreciably diminished. He does not exonerate the human female, although he considers her guilt to be for the lesser charge of acquiescent complicity. The male of the human species, however, is today as he has always been: resolutely barbaric.

To the osprey’s surprise, the woman who imprisoned him behaved kindly and ministered to his needs. He had wondered if her intent was not to save his life only to bludgeon him later, to make him well so he would put up a spirited resistance at his execution. Human beings, he knows, are adept at being cruel for no explicable reason, other than for the sadistic thrill derived from such actions. However, when his wing had mended she opened the door for the cage and he tentatively stepped out onto the beautiful and hostile world. The raptor had momentarily fixed his eyes on those of the woman, in acknowledgment for her role as ministering angel, and had gratefully taken wing. During his protracted convalescence, the woman had given him the name Hector, after the Trojan prince, and had named his nemesis the eagle after Achilles.

Hector is not aware that the human who found him on the beach had initially turned her back on him. He does not know that when she realized that he was male she had deliberately left him to a sure death on the beach at the mercy of the raucous ravens. Only after considerable agonizing had she returned to the beach and gently moved him into the safety of her cabin, and then departed for Sandpoint to confer with a veterinarian and to purchase medical supplies and the materials for building the cage. None of this is known to him. The osprey only knows that this particular human is different from the others, and that he is the beneficiary of her uniqueness.

Although she seldom goes into Sandpoint, as she seldom departs from her habitat on the point, the woman is well known by the locals. They find it difficult to talk about her and the terrible misfortunes that have befallen her. The sobriquet Hard Luck is often attached to her given name to connote the torturous circumstances of her life.

At the deck of the cabin, the woman, seeing Hector is at his snag, pushes the food bowl away and reaches for the field glasses on top of the picnic table. While peering through the field glasses, she blindly searches the table for a sketch pad with her other hand. Having settled herself for the task at hand, the woman alternately studies the ancient osprey and draws his likeness with a large pencil on the pad. For this sitting, she concentrates on the shape and color of the leggings and the four-toed feet—two toes forward and two backward—and the powerful, round, and curved claws.

She squints from the brightness of the noon-high sun. As she concentrates on sketching, the woman’s face is serene. Back in Sandpoint, however, many locals remember her face being completely covered with bandages, like a mummy. After the bandages had been removed her face had appeared a ghastly mask: swollen, discolored, held together by stitches; all of it irrefutable evidence of what a fellow human being had willfully done to her. The knowledge that one of their kind (albeit a male) had done such a heinous thing degrades and shames them all. To hide the horror of her face, she had for many years resorted to a veil but now, like a rough and jagged stone that has been buffeted and burnished by the ravages of time for millennia, her face is smooth and pleasant to behold. Not so her eyes. Her eyes, like Hector’s, are alert, honey-colored, and truculent.

With wings spread widely, the osprey lifts from his perch on the snag and departs, gliding low over the picnic table in salute to the woman. The woman puts aside her sketch pad and replaces it with the bowl of cereal she had been eating. Presently, she clears the table and disappears into the log cabin. Later, when Hector has returned to his vantage on the snag, he sees that the woman is in the water and that a white bearded human is lurking within the trees keenly watching her.

Earlier that day, the white bearded man had moved through a forest of ponderosa pines toward a high ground and, gaining it, found it overlooks the big lake. Seeing a bather, he removed his reflective lens sunglasses and raised the field glasses from his chest to find the figure in the water. His azure eyes remained inscrutable as they absorbed the scene, but his teeth ground and broke the toothpick in his mouth and it was spit to the ground.

The man has a well developed habit of conversing with his inner self, whom he has personified with the name of Rufus. He now hears Rufus exclaim: Suddenly becoming alert to his surroundings, Rufus counsels caution:

The field glasses scan the beach and shore and find two buildings and a purple van close by the water but not a man. The field glasses eagerly return toward the lake and Rufus excitedly resumes his commentary:

With every gesture, the woman seemingly invites the man’s attention, giving him the impression that her body is speaking to him. The man pushes his cowboy hat back and adjusts the field glasses for maximum gratification. Watching her frolic in the shallow water near shore, the man agrees with Rufus that the woman’s body is fully developed; that it is not young but yet at the zenith of ripeness; that it bespeaks vitality and energy, of blood strongly coursing through healthy arteries.

Rufus hoarsely whispers,

The man’s eyes are hard upon her as she emerges from the frothy water and dashes to a large white towel on the beach. He is mesmerized by her graceful movements, tantalized by the lively jiggling of her yet young breasts as she vigorously towels her bobbed hair. Draping the towel about her shoulders, she turns her back and deliberately strolls—beautifully tanned and beautifully naked—toward the log cabin. Focusing on her voluptuous body, the powerful field glasses magnify it to within reach of his hands. While his attention is hard upon the figure on the beach, the man hears Rufus murmuring about the woman’s body moving in rhythm to a primeval drumbeat.

Rufus impulsively blurts,

At his snag, Hector notes that the white-bearded male waits until after the woman has entered the log cabin before he reluctantly lowers the field glasses, replaces the sunglasses to his eyes, puts a fresh toothpick in his mouth, and slinks back into the trees.

The following day, during late afternoon when the shadows had already begun stretching eastward, the woman is called to the door by the anxious barking of her dog. Seeing that a man is approaching on foot, she quickly retreats into the log cabin to take a rifle from its rack on a wall. With movements fashioned by practice, she works the lever to move a cartridge from the magazine into the breech and sets the safety to off. The woman stands the rifle on its butt against the wall, just inside the door, where it will be readily available but hidden from view. That done, she opens the door fully but remains in the doorway, apprehensively waiting for the man to come within speaking distance. She can see that his gray cowboy hat is at a downward tilt, that he wears sunglasses with reflecting lenses, and that a full white beard completely hides the features of his pink face.

Displaying a vexed demeanor, she loudly spouts, Can I help you?

Leaving the door open, she cautiously steps from the doorway onto the deck and waits, subconsciously akimbo. Her manner projects hostility and demands that he explain his uninvited presence. Her stance is one of alertness, of readiness to go for the rifle. She feels an expanding uneasiness as the man sauntering toward her flashes a broad smile and continues to advance. With a start, she realizes that she has allowed him to intrude upon her too closely. When he stands before her at the edge of the deck, he removes the sunglasses and hooks them on the v-neck of his burnt orange knit shirt.

Howdy! Name’s Harvey, he amicably greets her. I’m the hand who owns the eighty next to ya. Just pulled in—yesterday. Come to take a look and get a feel for the place. You know, to see if I wanna do something with it, or get shut of it.

She ruminates on what he has told her. Oh. Seemingly disgruntled, she reluctantly introduces herself. My name is Emily. Turning her attention to the still barking Irish setter, she impatiently commands it, Okay—that’s enough, Taxi. I said, that’s e-nough!

As Harvey gazes at her on the slightly elevated deck, she is glad he had removed the sunglasses. She thinks reflective lens glasses give the wearer a sinister look. Emily notes with detachment that Harvey’s eyes, initially fixed on her face, drop to rummage on her bosom; she notes that his eyes drop again, to grope her hips and thighs. While this ritual of male transgression is being played out, she displays neither surprise or resentment that her body parts are being measured and weighed for their prurient worth. She has been the subject of such body searches for most of her life—since before puberty, and even during the time when she had worn the veil. At an early age, she had accepted boorish behavior from men as the norm. Having absorbed their fill of her, Harvey’s complacent eyes retrace their path, darting from hips to bosom to linger for a trice, and thence to face.

Confident that his cursory examination of her has been on the sly, he innocently refers to her dog. Taxi, eh?

Yes. She’s always coming and going.

The dog quiets but remains wary of the man. Emily involuntarily fidgets. In a sultry voice, she stammers, Well—I—I was just to take a—a libation—a glass of wine, on the deck. Will you join me? Here, at the picnic table?

Rufus interjects, Libation? Hold on, now boss. What kind of female uses a four-bit word like libation? Now you just answer me that.>

Harvey enthusiastically responds, Sure! Don’t mind if I do. I’d say that’s mighty neighborly of you. She turns to enter the cabin, and his eyes instantly pursue the green pants and white shirt of her loose-fitting sweat suit. When she has disappeared from view, he takes a seat at the picnic table.

In a tick, Rufus had noted her short auburn hair fixed with a green beaded headband; her delicate ears and fine nose; the wide well-formed rose-petal lips hiding her teeth; the slightly incongruent sides of her small face. Rufus had also noted the smooth creases on her forehead, and questioned if these are the result from too much serious thought; had noted that she has a kissable neck; and had underscored her most salient feature: the yellow eyes brimming with defiance, and the confident manner with which they openly contemplate the outside world, cat-like, with disturbing honesty.

Abruptly, she reappears at the door with a bottle of unlabeled inky wine, two unmatched plastic glasses colored pink and blue, and a corkscrew. Her yellow eyes turn to him and quickly absorb that he has removed his cowboy hat; that his hair is thick, cropped, starkly white; that his beard is short and well-groomed; that his azure eyes are conspicuous against the whiteness of his beard; that his long, bony forearms are profusely covered with downy hairs that glint silverly in the sun; that tufts of white hair show from the v-neck of his expensive knit shirt; that his teeth are straight and unstained by tobacco; that a toothpick protrudes from his mouth; that he wears no jewelry, no wedding ring, not even a watch; that his high quality khaki pants show a sharp crease; and that his black cowboy boots have been polished to a luster. She infers that he is fastidious in appearance. While openly scrutinizing him, she absently extracts the cork from the bottle and fills the glasses generously. Emily hands the blue plastic glass across the picnic table to Harvey.

Harvey takes the water glass filled with dark wine and lifts it in appreciation. Thanks, Emily.

Again, she appears disgruntled. I had come to believe that the phantom-owner of that property did not actually exist, other than on the tax rolls. And now—here you are.

Yeah—took me a while to get here, didn’t it? Harvey deduces her well-formed mouth is not given to smiling, that she is not a woman who will show a lot of teeth. In contrast, he smiles pleasantly.

I can’t place your drawl, your inflection. Is it Tennessean?

Say—you got yourself a good ear. Now, my people come from Tennessee, but I was born and raised in Texas—East Texas.

Scarcely raising her wine glass, she offers him a toast. Well—here’s to you, Harvey from East Texas. May estivating at Arrowhead Point be to your liking. Warily gazing at him, she swigs half the wine from her glass.

Estivating! Now, what in the hell—?>

Emily pensively continues, Things will be different for me now, with someone else on the point. I came here specifically to remove myself from people, and I’ve enjoyed privacy and solitude for many years, but now I’ll have to adapt to there being another person in proximity on whom my actions will impact.

Impact? On me? Nah! Harvey waves a hand, indicating that the matter is of scant importance. No way. Not a bad impact, for sure—if at all.

Oh, yes, she disagrees. We humans do impact on each other—as well as on every other thing on this planet. For instance: sound carries extensively here, when the wind is off the water, and I work while enjoying classical music from Spokane Public Radio. At about nine-thirty of a breezy morning, I’ll be expecting to hear you bellow for me to turn that thing down!

Harvey smiles. Well—maybe not. Besides, a little Mozart never hurt nobody. Say, what kind of work you do? While listening to the long hair music?

I am an artist. I paint wildness.

Wildness?

Yes. Some artist paint wildlife and some paint landscapes. I paint wildlife in landscapes, or wildlife landscapes, and I call that wildness.

Oh yeah? If that ain’t something. Making a hand at it?

Excuse me?

Sorry, he apologizes, oilfield talk. Meant to say, You make a decent living at it?

I do. Since The Gallery opened, my earnings have improved steadily. But, do I earn sufficient money? No—of course not. The money from my paintings is added to my account at the bank for a day or so, and then summarily deducted to redeem this or that obligation. Sometimes I think I must owe everyone in Bonner County. Ignoring his glass, Emily refills her own.

Admire and envy you for it—being independent, I mean. You know, fulfilling your desires and all that. I come here looking for something, something to do, now that I’m outta the oil patch. Harvey takes the wine bottle and refills his own glass. Good Pinot Noir, he informs her.

Emily inwardly smirks at his correct classification and pronunciation for the wine. I have a friend who makes wine—how did you acquire the land?

Well, now, that’s a story. Got lucky in a game of bouré at an offshore rig in The Gulf a long time back. Harvey chortles pridefully. That’s what I was—oilfield trash. Spent my life in the oil patch—mostly in West Texas, South Louisiana, and Oklahoma, but also traveled the major producing areas across the water. Made some good money . . . .

Emily notes that he has twice alluded to money and infers that he’s probably a stalwart capitalist, or could even be lower than that: a Republican!

Harvey is saying, . . . but the excitement started to fade when the rig count began to melt. Hung in there for several years, while the rigs was being stacked and the industry went down the drain from downsizing. Big names in the oil patch took a hit, a lot of ’em filed for chapter eleven, or were forced into mergers for survival, or disappeared into other companies through hostile takeovers. Proud oilfield hands with specialized trades found themselves out on the street with no place to go but to lineup for unemployment. I woke up one morning and didn’t want to deal with it no more. I wanted out, away. I wanted to do something new—but I had no place to go. Finally the answer come as a buyout package. I took the money and got myself a thirty-six-foot fifth-wheel travel trailer with all the conveniences of home. And I hit the road—become a full-time RV’er. Now that I got time on my hands, I ain’t got nothing to do with it. But I’m a-looking. Come here to see my land, to get away from the RV’ers and their caravans for a spell, and to maybe find a different road from where I been before.

Harvey’s words prompt Emily to recount the lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses that she and an eager eight-year-old child had discovered together—

How dull it is to pause, to make

an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine

in use,

As tho’ to breathe were life!

—and she fleetingly remembers her thrill at the child’s quick grasp of their meaning.

There are so many stars beckoning from the universe—you shouldn’t have difficulty deciding on just one of interest to you.

Well, I don’t know so much about that. I been retired for a spell. Right off I done the golf thing, and the fishing thing, and the hanging-out at Vegas thing; and I ain’t hit on nothing that’s grabbed me yet. Painting all you do?

Oh, yes . . . . before continuing, Emily half rises to cross her legs under herself. . . . I am too deliberate and life is too short for truly mastering more than one interest, for intimately knowing more than one star.

Whatta ya do out here? You know, for kicks?

Oh, I relax by riding my mountain bike, and swimming, and hiking, and in winter by snow-shoeing and reading. I also play the clarinet and, occasionally, the bongo drums. That is something else that may impact upon you. But painting is my evening star, and it demands ninety percent of my time.

Sounds like ya stay busy. Offhandedly, he adds, Got a family?

His question elicits an instantaneous response. A husband? Am I a wife? is that what you mean? She enunciates the word wife with fulsome contempt. Emily faces him squarely and Harvey flinches from her searching, challenging, yellow eyes. She answers her own query, No . . . . and pauses, as if for loading her guns, before continuing. . . . men like what they see but not what they get. Moreover, as an artist, I require solitude—so I am loath to have a husband loafing about, waiting for me to wait on him. Having loaded her guns, she fires a salvo: Generally, I find men to be quite crude and brutish, and the women who allow their bodies and minds to be plundered by them, under the guise of being devoted wives, are utterly reprehensible and dishonor the female of the species.

Harvey recoils from the whiplash of her reproach. At a loss for an appropriate response, he stares and nods diplomatically, affecting an understanding, if not agreement, with her grievous charge against his gender.

Rufus barks,

And yourself? Emily peremptorily demands. Got a family?

Well, my answer is both Yes and No. Was married, but ain’t now; had a kid, but don’t now. Following this disclosure, he lapses into silence. Harvey attempts to find a more agreeable subject for conversation. What’s that other building? With all the windows? He nods toward the small building adjacent to the log cabin.

My studio, she says flatly.

Harvey reverts to silence, and becomes embarrassed by it. When he speaks, it is with an apologetic tone. Well—guess I better get going. I’ll be doing like Taxi for the next couple of days, you know, coming and going, checking out Sandpoint. So I better get on back to the trailer and get myself lined out. She openly stares at him but does not voice an objection to him leaving.

Harvey affects ebullience. Enjoyed it! Visiting with you and all—and the wine. Thanks, Emily. He rises and replaces the sunglasses to his eyes. He squares the gray hat, setting it low. Still seated, Emily notes with grudging approval that he is not wearing an oversized belt buckle with something ridiculous about Texas sculpted on it.

Towering above her, he again compliments her generosity. Thanks for the hospitality, heah? See ya, neighbor. He lifts a hand in farewell, steps from the deck, and strides into the mauve dusk. Emily takes a swig of Pinot Noir and watches his figure diminishing. As the distance between them increases by a yard per stride, she thinks she detects a slight limp in him.

Emily reflects,

Emily continues,

As she gazes into the evolving darkness, marking the retreating figure’s slightly stiff but confident stride, Harvey melds with a curtain of tall trees and disappears from view. Abruptly, she exclaims in self rebuke,

Abed late that night, lying on her side, Emily is wide-eyed as she contemplates Harvey from East Texas:

Harvey lies on his back and stares into the opaque darkness at the image of a yellow-eyed female face looming above him. He remarks,

The next morning, Harvey rises feeling energetic and cheerful. He passes into the bathroom and stares at his bearded face in the mirror over the lavatory. Harvey asks his image,

Rufus instantly responds,

Harvey stares at his image.

Harvey uses a blue shampoo brush to groom his crisp white hair. The hand holding the brush stops in mid stroke and remains above his head as he pensively stares into the mirror.

Exiting the trailer, Harvey hears the classical music that issues from her radio. He clucks and shakes his head.

He enters a pickup the color of desert sand, starts the powerful engine, and departs. Slowing at the stop sign for the county road, he glances left and right, shifts down, and accelerates.

During a sunny morning some days later, Emily emerges from the lake and again flits toward the large beach towel. Turning her back to the balmy breeze blowing landward, she uses the towel to dry her short hair. Occasionally, her fierce yellow eyes peer into the trees, searching. Her legs fold as she drops to the towel in a cross-legged sitting position. Momentarily, she stretches her legs forward and lies back facing an empty blue sky.

A half hour