From: masterordover@aol.com (Lord of All I Survey Before Me)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 19:43:13 GMT
Subject: NEW: The Bridges of Ordover County (1/1)

Title: The Bridges of Ordover County
Author:The Master
Classification: CRH
Archiving:  Why would you want to?  Besides, it's just gonna bounce. 
Rating: R
Disclaimer:  I should know better than to do this, since I am The Exalted One.

Ladies and gentlemen of the non-renumerative, non-professional,
copyright-infringing fanfic world, let me show you how The Professional, The
Master does it.  Read and weep at my sheer brilliance.

This is for the brilliant and inspirational Robert James Waller.


There are posts that come free from the New England woods, from the
procrastination of a man who does not want to rake the leaves.  This is one of
them.

THE BRIDGES OF ORDOVER COUNTY

Dana stood back and admired the repast she had set out for her fated rendezvous
with Walter Skinner:  the crackers and Velveeta, the miniature cocktail
wienies, the boxed wine.  Her gaze lingered especially on the miniature
cocktail wienies, since they reminded her of Skinner, naked.

A commotion, a cloud of dust, and the sound of her dog barking outside her
Texas farmhouse told her that Skinner had arrived in his truck.  She ran to the
front door, and threw it open.  Then she stood posed in the doorway, feeling
feminine.  Light and fresh and feminine, like a woman in a douche commercial.

As Skinner walked up the porch steps toward her, he was struck by how stunning
she looked.  He noticed all of her, as he always noticed everything.  His U.S.
Marine's brain shrieked at him, "Let it go, Walter, get back on the road.  Go
to Tasmania.  Stop in Amsterdam on the way and look up the transsexual
pharmacist who's done everything with everyone.  Swim naked with her, or him or
whatever, in the canals, and listen to yourself scream as the drugs kick in
during a prostate massage.  Let go of this" -- his teeth were clenched now --
"it's too strong for you."

But the Apache dance had begun.  He could hear it, an old accordion, as sure as
if he were wearing a striped shirt and stretch pants, and about to fling his
woman around and drag her across the porch in a series of Hermes
Pan-choreographed moves.

"Nice perfume," he said, when he got close enough to smell her.

She smiled shyly at him.  "Thank you, but it's not perfume.  I keep one of
those little pine tree auto air fresheners in my underwear drawer."

"It smells...piney."

During the time they had spent together, he had referred to himself as one of
the last lumberjacks.  "There's a certain breed of man that's obsolete," he had
said.  "Or very nearly so.  The world is getting too civilized.  Bureaucracy,
Public Broadcasting, riding lawnmowers.  A world of silk ties and Starbucks
coffee.  Not all men are the same.  Some will do fine in the world that's
coming.  Some, maybe just a few of us, will not.  You see it in the computers
and the robots and the ten-inch vibrators and what they portend.  I can run
fast, and throw a grenade, and fight in hand to hand combat.  But I'm no match
for a robot."

She wasn't quite sure what he'd meant, so she'd just nodded at him.  He didn't
make much sense, but then, she rather liked the sound of robots with ten inch
vibrators.

"I'm a dying breed," he told her now, staring into her eyes.

Gravely, she took his hand and led him inside, toward the staircase, up the
stairs, and into her room, turning on the bedside lamp.

The physical images would remain inscribed in her mind forever afterward.  She
remembered the slow-motion tease of their removing their clothes, and how the
two of them slid naked between the sheets.  How he held himself above her and
moved his chest slowly over her belly and her breasts.  How he did this again
and again, like some jungle cat in a courtship rite.  How she wished he would
quit fucking around and remember that he wasn't a jungle cat, and that his
chest rubbing slowly over her belly was not a good way to get either of them
off.

He was an animal.  A graceful, hard, male animal.  A panther or a jaguar,
prowling back and forth in his cage.  A panther or a jaguar who also happened
to be one of the last lumberjacks.  

Back and forth he rubbed himself over her, back and forth, like a civet cat
rubbing its musk on a trembling aspen, or a lion marking its territory with
copious urination.  Well, maybe not so much the urination thing.  But he was
definitely catlike.  Back and forth he moved.

"Would you stop being an animal, and do it already?" she said at last, pushing
at his shoulders in frustration.

He stopped, and looked up at her, his bald head shining like the moon
glimmering on the Singapore coastline.  "Um...I'm not really sure how."

She stared at him.  "What?"

"I, uh...I've never actually done it before.  Not with a real live woman, I
mean.  I paid a prostitute once, but she ended up with her head facing
backwards before we actually did it."

"Sheesh, no wonder you're a dying breed," she sighed.  

Then she showed him how.

He was a quick learner.  A quick something else, too, but that was a problem
they could work on later.  In the meantime, she reveled in his power.  "Oh,
Skinner, you're so powerful it's frightening," she whispered, because she was
in the middle of a Mary Sue story and not worried about how ridiculous she
sounded.

With her face in his neck and her skin against his, she heard him whisper, "I
am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea."

Oh, yes! she thought.  He was just like the highway and a peregrine, and all
the sails that ever went to sea!  Well, perhaps not as long as the highway, or
as hard.  But he was otherwise very highwaylike!  His voice was gravelly, for
instance.

And so they made love in the crack where illusion meets reality, which is a
poetical way of saying that they had The Booty!Sex.  

Lying awake afterward in the rumpled bed, she thought about their lovemaking,
and listened to him snoring softly beside her.

In the morning, they talked together about how they had both lost themselves
and created something else, an interlacing of their souls.  "But you must go,
Skinner," Dana said.

"I must go?"

She lit a cigarette.  "Yes.  Don't you see, I love you so much that I can not
restrain the wild jaguar-lumberjack that is you.  To do so would be to kill the
wildness that I love best, the magnificent, surly beast that must remain
unkilled.  You are too powerful for just one woman."

He started to speak, but Dana stopped him.

"Please, don't say another word.  Just go, now, before I lose my resolve."

And so Skinner left.  For the last time, she watched him as he got into his
truck.  He pulled the door shut, and started the engine.  "Good-bye, you
magnificent surly pectoral god!" Dana called.  "Good-bye, you powerful bald
man!"

Then they stared at one another silently, the Texas farm wife, and the man who
was a dying breed, one of the last of the lumberjacks.  

Finally he put the truck in gear, and rumbled over the dusty country road out
of her life.

Then she went in the house, poured herself a gigantic glass of boxed wine, and
went looking on the Internet for one of those robots with ten-inch vibrators
that Skinner had complained about.  She was so sexually frustrated she wanted
to scream.

THE END
J. Ordover
Master of His Domain
Executive Director of Media Tie-Ins
www.condescending.com