No Bear, No Forest by Barry Rachin (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📖

his mouth, Lester regretted his words. The remark sounded stupid. Utterly childish and inane. Shtooyoat!
“Ever kissed a girl?”
His mind went blank. “What?”
The Israeli sat up now and stared at him. “Have you ever smooched, sucked face, French kissed, got it on?”
“Well, yes.”
“How many times.” she pressed.
A dragon fly flitted across the bow of the small boat and settles on the golden centerpiece of a lily. Its transparent wings were tattooed with a delicate fabric of veins. Lester was feeling dizzy, lightheaded from all the rowing and the rising humidity. “I don’t know. A half dozen times.”
Tovah let a hand slip over the side and scooped up a handful of water. Her expression was neutral, utterly impassive. “We went to a restaurant Sunday night.” She directed her remarks at the dragon fly. “My mother ordered boiled lobster, a delicacy we seldom see in the Middle East. When you answered a moment ago, your cheeks turned the same color as the lobster’s shell.” Only now did she look him full him the face. “Why did you lie? Why couldn’t you just say, ‘No, I never kissed a girl.’?”
The boy could feel his cheeks burning even hotter than a moment earlier. This was too much! Lester threw the oars aside and began reeling in the line as fast as he could. He had to get rid of this deranged Semite.
There was no middle ground. You couldn’t fish. You couldn’t just laze about in a rowboat. You couldn’t -
“Ask me.”
He stowed his gear in the bottom of the boat and was pulling for shore with choppy, visceral strokes. “Ask you what?”
“If I ever kissed a boy.”
No, he wasn’t going to play this foolish game. They were less than fifty feet from shore. Lester would haul the boat up a good ten feet from the waterline, tie the mooring rope to a bush - a double half hitch to show the arrogant Israeli that he knew something about knot tying, if nothing else, and storm off. No goodbyes, no small talk, no nothing.
“As a matter of fact,” she answered her own question, “I never kissed a boy. Not yet, anyway. And needless-to-say, I’m still a virgin.” She made a disagreeable face. “Now was that so hard?”
Lester gave one last pull on the oars and let the boat glide the last few feet into the sandy shallows. “Congratulations on both counts.”
Tovah watched him secured the nylon rope. She tore a sprig of purple lupine from the side of the trail and twirled the wildflower under her nose. “My father can’t control his hands. They shake quite badly.” She spoke in a casual, off-hand manner. “Sometimes I have to cut his food, help him with his socks or button a sweater. But I don’t do these things in public.”
Lester had already turned away and was headed in the direction of the visitor cabins. He pulled up abruptly. “He has some rare, incurable disease. Your mother mentioned it.”
“A medical condition… is that what she said?” The Israeli girl sighed and threw the flower away. “Sugar-coated lies are so much easier to swallow than bitter truths.”
Lester turned and came back to where the girl was now sitting in the beached rowboat. “Yes, I did hook a 36-inch pickerel over there in the cove, but the stupid fish got away. No, I never had sex or kissed a girl either.” He climbed in and sat opposite. “Now will you tell me why your father’s hands shake so badly?”
Fifteen minutes later, after Tovah Moshel had answered Lester’s impertinent question, the boy leaned forward and kissed her on the lips—a drawn out, sweet, annihilating gesture. “We’re both still virgins, but at least that’s out of the way.”

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At three o’clock in the afternoon the Wasserman family arrived. They drove up to the resort office in a brand new Lincoln Continental. Lester, who had accompanied his sister to the shuffleboard court, watched the family pile out of the fancy car. The mother, a pear shaped woman with calves as thick as bowling pins, had difficulty prying her rump out of the passenger seat. The father was also huge, well over six feet with a pendulous gut. A Cuban cigar wedged in the corner of his fleshy mouth, he was decked out in Bermuda shorts and a garish Hawaiian shirt. The son, who looked to be a year or two older than Lester, was quite handsome with a mop of black hair and bushy eyebrows that offset his pallid complexion.
“Hey, I like your beanies!” Sylvia shouted.
Both father and son were wearing Jewish skullcaps. The father scowled at her before lumbering into the motel office to announce their arrival.
“Cripes, Sylvia!”


Later that evening, the Wassermans sat opposite the McSweeneys and Moshels at the supper table. “Hey, boychik,” Mr. Wasserman was staring straight at Lester. “Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?” Lester’s lips were moving furiously but no audible sound escaped his lips. “What about you, Morris?” He turned to his son. “Rain gonna damage the North American rhubarb crop this year?”
Like the straight man in a comedy routine, the boy delivered his punch line without missing a beat. “Not if it’s in cans.”
“Enough with the corny jokes, Herbert.” Mrs. Wasserman chided.
The food, pasta with meatballs and a tossed salad, arrived and the guests began passing dishes around the table. Herb Wasserman turned to Lester’s father. “What’s your line of work?”
“Hardware,” he replied. “And yourself?”
Mr. Wasserman took a piece of Italian bread and slathered it with butter. “Footwear.”
“Which chain?”
Mrs. Wasserman laughed in a high pitched, squeaky voice. “My husband doesn’t sell shoes.”
“Actually,” Mr. Wasserman added by way of explanation, “I buy in bulk from overseas distributors then resell in the domestic, wholesale market. Think of me as a middleman, sort of like a sports lawyer who negotiates deals.” Lester glanced about the table. Tovah clearly had no interest in anything the portly man was saying, but the adults were listening attentively.
“Our town boasted several shoe manufacturers,” Lester’s father noted, “but they all went bust in the late fifties, early sixties. Stetson Shoe Company just up the road a piece in Randolph—they closed down. Couldn’t compete with the overseas markets.”
“The mainland Chinese,” Mr. Wasserman noted, “can produce sneakers for pennies on the dollar. Labor and operational costs are minimal. I buy a container load—five, ten thousand at a time then locate my own markets here in the good old US of A.” Lester sensed that the imposing man was getting a bit theatrical. “Admittedly it’s a bit speculative, Machiavellian, but so what? As the saying goes, carpe diem.” He cracked an insolent grin. “Make the best of present opportunities!” His wife tittered in her high pitched squeaky laugh and everyone turned their attention back to the food.
Shortly before dessert was served, Mr. Wasserman asked, “Is that an Israeli accent?” When Mr. Moshel nodded in the affirmative, the man added, “We’re making alyiah next year.”
“Immigrating to the land of milk and honey,” his wife added for the benefit of the non-Jews at the table.
“That’s very nice,” Mr. Moshel smiled pleasantly. He folded his hands in his lap, lacing the slender fingers together and causing the tremors to extend from the wrists up the forearm before petering away at the elbows.
“Do you speak the language?” Mr. McSweeney addressed his remarks to Mr. Wasserman.
“My wife and I studied at the Hebrew Teacher’s College in Brookline.” He gestured with his eyes in the direction of his son. “Morris also took a crash course last summer, but he could use some help with grammar.”
Lester stared at Morris Wasserman who, from the moment he arrived, had been ogling the Israeli girl. The Wasserman boy had changed skullcaps opting for a more stylish one fashioned from a plaid fabric and held in place by a single bobby pin. He wore a lemon colored sports shirt with an Izod logo, tan boat shoes and an expensive looking gold wristwatch.
“Say,” the wife interjected, “maybe your lovely daughter could help Morris with his dikdook.”
Dikdook. Lester cringed inwardly. The word sounded vulgar, pornographic.
“Yes, everyone struggles with grammar,” Mr. Moshel said. “It’s the most challenging part of any new language.”
“Well I assure you,” Mr. Wasserman speared a meatball with his fork and waved it in the air, “Morris will prove a quick study. He’s a straight-A student and president of the honor society.”
Mrs. Wasserman turned to Mr. Moshel. “Are you native-born Israelis?”
He nodded in the affirmative. “We lived on a kibbutz, a communal farm, in the Upper Galilee. Harvested mostly citrus—oranges, grapefruit, lemons. There was also a small herd of cattle.”
“Any problems with the Arab population?” Mr. Wasserman inquired.
“The PLO lobbed Katyusha rockets down on us from the Golan heights and Lebanese foothills. On occasion, they infiltrated at night to plant moakshim in the fields.” He glanced at his daughter.
“Land mines,” Tovah translated without bothering to raise her eyes from the food.
Mr. McSweeney shook his head somberly. “Heck of a way to live.”
“Yes,” Mr. Moshel agreed, “but what’s a person to do?” He took a sip of water. “The fruit trees, which were our livelihood, required constant care.” The brief exchange had exhausted Tovah’s father. His eyelids drooped precariously and he hunched forward balancing on his elbows.
“What part of Israel will you be settling in?” Mrs. Moshel asked.
“The West Bank … a new settlement near Hebron.”
The Israeli woman glanced nervously at her husband and dropped her eyes. “The West Bank is Palestinian land,” Tovah entered the conversation. “It doesn’t belong to Jews.”
Mr. Wasserman who was chewing a piece of bread, choked on his food and had to take a sip of water to clear his throat. “We captured the West Bank during the Six Day War. It’s ours now.”
Tovah spun pasta onto her fork, guiding the noodles with a tablespoon. She seemed in no great hurry to respond. When the fork was properly loaded, she raised it to her lips. “If you choose to live on land that for centuries belongs to someone else, that makes you a thief - a lousy thief and a bully.”
Mrs. Wasserman’s eyes alternately grew inordinately large then squished tightly together as though Tovah Moshel had sprayed her with pepper mace. Her fleshy chin flattened out and lips puckered reflexively in a pugnacious scowl. The woman looked like her head was going to explode. Turning to Mr. Moshel she hissed, “You allow your daughter to insult guests and fellow Jews at the dinner table in such a manner?”
“My daughter was simply expressing a heartfelt conviction and nothing more.”
The waiters were bringing out desert, a cherry cobbler with whipped cream. “And what are your thoughts about Jews living in Hebron?” Mr. Wasserman twirled his wedding band with the thumb of the same hand. The man was smiling or, at least, his lips were, but the eyes belied a ruthless, brittle-minded obstinacy.
Tovah’s father gazed congenially at the large man. He poured a splash of cream into his coffee and had to steady the cup with both hands as he raised the warm beverage to his lips. “Believe me, Mr. Wasserman, you don’t want to know what I think about the matter.” There was no more conversation, and after the meal, the Wassermans rose abruptly and scattered from the dining room.

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In the morning the McSweeney’s drove to an Audubon bird sanctuary ten miles up the road. The strip of land nestled in a white pine forest crisscrossed with rocky streams and wetlands. At the visitor bureau Mrs. McSweeney announced, “Everyone pee before we hit