Celia's Moment
By Ralph G. Lam
(c)1998

Having worked my way down to the back of the property, I found that someone, or something, had managed to decimate an amount of weeds along the fence row.   Working my way farther, I found the machete that Celia had been using lying among the old radio parts, cylinder blocks, and old tires that had accumulated in this odd piece of property in the middle of the woods.   Also lying among this haggard variety was any number of chopped and hacked plant lives, which presumably used to grow along the fence line.   Following the path of destruction, I found Celia grunting, and heaving a pile of branches over the fence.   She appeared to me, like a red ant manipulating 10 times her own body weight.   It was obvious to me that she was disturbed about something.  The day before, she had been merely an industrious young woman, wearing her oldest play clothes and red bandana loosely around her neck, today she was maniacal in her intent, and demeanor.   Sweat had streaked the dirt on her face into a kind of war paint.   I could see that she had been crying. It seemed as though she was in a state of perpetual distress.

Just as I realized that I was staring, she noticed me.  Without any sign of surprise, she jabbed out her arm and fingered toward where the machete lay.

"Will you hand that to me please?" she said

While her lips said please, her eyes said "now"! Keeping her forehead at a forward angle so that her eyes glowered past her dark eyebrows, she waited for me to comply.  What more could I do but respond. At that moment I would have done what ever was in my power to make things all right.  But whatever it was that was bothering her, I surely wasn't going to solve it by fetching a simple tool for her.  While having the machete handle snatched from my hand, it seemed that I should say something.

"Hi there", I said as I handed her the machete. "It looks like you really put a hurt on this stuff"!

She just nodded her head in agreement, and stormed off to a spot about twenty feet away. Within moments she was whaling away with her implement of destruction.   I stood for awhile watching her nimble body in action. Her 5 foot 6 inch frame was held together by a tight combination of muscle, and supple flesh.   Her Mediterranean features, and dark hair seemed to compliment the "out of doors" surroundings nicely as she worked. I went off in the other direction to find where I had left off the day before.

I busied my self looking through all the various piles of illegally dumped hardware and discarded debris that had been accumulating over the years.   Finally I started in again piling up old tires for old man Stovros so he could eventually recycle them. From time to time I caught myself thinking about Celia.

I thought maybe I could go and see how she was doing, but I could hear the hacking coming through the woods, from over on the other side of the property.   She was really getting "it" out whatever it was that was bothering her.   After a few hours, and about thirty piles of tires, I realized that I couldn't hear ongoing carnage of her fury.   I hiked over to where I thought I had heard her last, and found her machete, thermos, bandana, and penknife all lined up side by side on the ground. From the looks of things, it seemed as though her early morning mayhem had turned into a mid-morning burnout.   Her progress had slowed to less than the rate she had established the day before.

Things suddenly seemed a little too quiet for a forest in West Virginia in perfect weather.   Even though we were on a clean gravel road, just off a paved secondary road, this part of the world was quite remote, and given to the noisy activity of numerous species of wildlife.

Just then I heard the sound of a slamming car door.   The sound came from over at the entrance of the property; a space in the fence where "dumpers" had worn a patch of rutted, and bare earth.   I worked my way over to that side of the hill. As I hiked along, I habitually eyed any old T.V. and radio chassis to see if they still contained a good transformer.   Not much though, everything was turning to rust all around me, with no salvageable parts to speak of. A gray cloud darkened the sky as I closed in on the side of the property where the entrance was.

As I came to the clearing at the entrance, I saw two large mean, and one shorter man in cheap business suits huddled around something at the front of a huge black 1987 Lincoln.  Just as I caught the odor of stale garlic, I saw a fourth man lumbering his way toward the others from the side of the car.   I didn't like the way he moved. He seemed all too certain of himself for being a trespasser…and his friends seemed all too keen on whatever it was they had cornered at the front of the vehicle.  Being suspicious by nature, and especially of anybody not driving a pickup, and wearing business suits in this part of the county, in the hottest summer since '93, I ducked down to watch for a moment.

As the fourth man joined the other three at the front of the car, they parted momentarily, and I caught a glimpse of Celia sitting on the hood of the car.   Her feet were up on the car so that her knees were under her chin with her arms clasped around her shins.   The pale under-side of her thighs showed out from beneath her cut-offs, and her feet were now bare.   Earlier she had on the biggest pair of army boots I had ever seen on a woman, but now she was sitting on a hot car hood with the red toenail polish of her small feet being scorched in the noon day sun.

Something was NOT right! I hadn't known Celia long up this point, but I had grown very fond of her.   As far as any real relationship with her was concerned, I was in the mode of letting her have her space while she got to know me.   There were times that she seemed to "clam up" during certain topics of conversation.   She did it often enough to make me wonder if she wasn't hiding something from her past. Maybe it was something was ongoing; something she didn't want to share just now.   That was O.K. though. I had never met a woman like her before, and I was willing to wait, and find out what my chances were.   I considered my self lucky to have landed this summer job helping to clear off this piece of property that Mr. Stovros "had been sitting on".

Mr. Stovros wasn't from around here. He was from up north, New York or New Jersey I think, and he was slumming it here in West Virginia for the the summer until his "interests" here were finalized.   He was the only person I had ever met who always smelled like garlic, even in the morning, and he must have been smoking those cigars since he was 4.   He acted like he had money (if no taste to go with it) because he was speculating big plans for this property once we got the crap off of it.  It seemed like he brought other people with him to the area too, but I guess none of them were the type to get their hands dirty....

Celia was on the property the first day that I arrived (I was hired THAT day when after I answered an ad in the paper).   Mr. Stovros always dropped her off, and picked her up. I usually managed to find a ride in, but Mr. Stovros took me into town at night.   Celia, and Mr. Stovros seemed to go back a bit with each other because they had a way of being familiar, if not a little curt at times which, I admit, made me uneasy.   It was possible that he brought her into the area.  They had the same Yankee accent, but neither Celia nor Stovros offered any insight into their relationship.  I was disgusted by the possibility that it had been intimate.

I considered myself very lucky to have a summer job alone in the woods with this marvelous woman though.   We worked for nine or ten hours a day, sometimes far away from each other, and sometimes in close proximity.   From time to time I would catch her eye just as she looked away from her work.   Her dark hair stuck to the sweat of her brown shoulders as the toned muscles in her forearm flinched while she worked the machete.  The large boots that she usually wore created a sexy contrast to her shapely calves, and thighs.  They were the legs of a woman that could more than likely defend herself in a pinch, but could also keep a man pacified with smooth and welcome sliding of her legs between the sheets.  Her focus was strong and her smile was easily provoked; the perfect woman.  Everything I learned about her in the short time we had been together was in stark contrast to what I was seeing now.

Celia was staring at a point on the ground in the distance.  Large tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes. Her body language was passive and submissive.  I did not like it one bit.  I had never seen her like this, and these guys were no friends, I could tell.  I worked myself to a closer vantagepoint.  I wasn't hiding really, but I found myself to be in a "stealth" mode.  I could see what they were doing now.  The shortest one of the four (the boss?) received a blunt nosed revolver from the fourth "gentleman" that had been coming up from the side of the car. The "boss" was now methodically passing it from his left hand to his right as he talked in a low "mantra" to my Celia.  His head made an almost unperceptive weaving motion as if he were charming a snake.  Big fat tears started to perch on the edge of her perfect eyelids, and within moments they were falling to the ground on a steady march to the dust below.  Her face had become striated with a stressful grimace.  I found that the veins in my neck were pounding with anger at the scene that I was witnessing.

Who the hell were these thugs!?!   What was this SHIT!?!   The other three men were smug while the "boss" handed Celia the gun.  She took the gun, and let it lay in her open hand.  The tears had ceased, but the mantra of the man continued.  His banter took on a little more force, and while he continued, my Celia slowly brought the gun close to her face, then brought it around to the side of her head.  Just then I saw that look that  I knew so well.   Her face became calm with a new resolve.  I recognized it but I don't think they did.  As she began to lower the gun, one of the men took her wrist, and with the utmost care and nurturing, brought the barrel of the gun to rest peacefully on her temple.  She looked at him, that look was gone, replaced with bambee eyes.  Her dewy look became a plea, and the man with his hand on her wrist seemed all...too...helpful !!  My senses were so keen at this point that I could have heard a twig snap on the other side of the property.  All this had happened so quickly, I was not at all sure that I was really seeing it, but my logical side had taken a back seat to my instinct, and as the muscles in my legs tightened, I knew this had to stop. The "boss" brought his finger up to the trigger of the revolver, and he looked as if he too was going to "help" my Celia with her little project.

BANG! A gun went off, and the big guy with his hand on her wrist gasped, and looked in my direction.  His face contorted with a mixture of pain, disbelief, and confusion.  As his big, black clothed figure made it's way to the dusty ground, he clutched at his chest with his free hand.  His knees hit first, but before he went face down, another shot rang out in the otherwise tranquil setting. POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, I could almost hear the slugs thumping into the chests of the four strangers as each one reeled to see me spread legged in the sun, rattling off shot after shot like an old western gun fighter.  Each thug took his turn, face down in the dirt, asses in the air before they flopped over ,and took in the scenic view of the forest canopy, panting, groaning, slobbering, wheezing, choking, and finally ....  silence.

Celia was sitting on the car with the back of her gun-filled hand resting on the hood.  Her legs were dangling down, and she was calmly looking at the four "gentlemen" as a small breeze came, and went.  She seemed as if she was wondering what made them so interested in the sky; almost as if she were about to ask me why they were lying on their backs like that.

I walked over to her, removed the gun from her hand, placed it on the hood beside her, and put mine back in my pocket where I always kept it…for snakes.  I waited until she looked up at me before I spoke.  As our eyes met, I knew that I had embarrassed her by saving her.  My face said "I don't give a damn" but my lips softly said,

"You O.K.?"

Silence; for a moment we were both suspended in disbelief.  Then, just as the sun was blocked by a passing crow, we both gave a nervous laugh, and tears once again formed in the corners of her eyes, and were soon streaming down her pretty face.  The teeny white hairs on her smooth cheeks glistened in the sun as she hopped off of the hood, and stumbled onto my shoulders with her arms.  I hadn't noticed, but I was shaking, and I was soon crying along with her.  I swung my arm around her as we both remembered how to walk.  I bent to retrieve her boots as we made our way off of the property.  We hit the gravel road, and moved toward the paved road.  There was no way that we were going to wait for "old man Stovros" to show up today.

7/26/98