Sextillions of Infidels(Barry) Hazel and Jorani broke down twenty miles shy of Bangor with the late November sun fading away to bone-chilling darkness. Half an hour passed before the black, rust bucket of a pickup truck pulled up behind them. A lumpy woman in her mid-forties climbed down from the truck. "Left rear tire's all shot to hell."

Between the bitter cold and sense of helplessness, Hazel felt her brain growing numb. "I tried to change it but the wrench kept slipping."

"Tire iron," the thickset woman corrected. "It's called a tire iron." One of her teeth in the front was chipped which, along with her raggedy clothes, contributed to a blatantly derelict appearance. A tangle of scruffy, blond hair was three-quarters washed away by silvery gray. "Your friend sick?" She gestured at the dark-skinned Asian girl curled up in a fetal position on the passenger side and whimpering softly.

"No, Jorani forgot to bring a warm jacket. She's just cold and upset. We drove up here from Boston. My folks have a summer cottage near Bangor."

"It's the middle of the freakin' winter." There was nothing maternal or even modestly sympathetic in the woman's demeanor.

"Yes, I know, but -"

Before Hazel could finish explaining how they traveled north on a lark, a senior year, escape weekend, the woman retreated to the rear of the car and began rummaging in the trunk.

"That old fleabag," the dark-skinned girl blubbered, "is probably an escaped lunatic from the hospital for the criminally insane. She'll change the tire, steal the car and leave us for dead."

"Shut up, Jorani!"

A minute later the woman returned. "This ain't the right tire iron. Don't hardly fit the lug nuts… probably metric."

"What do you suggest?"

The woman bit her lips and, scrunching up her face in an impatient frown, stared out into the blackened countryside. "Too late to call for a tow, and no service stations stay open this late at night." She pointed a second time at Jorani who was sobbing quite stridently now, her chest heaving with each intake of breath. "You sure she don't need medical help?"

They were stranded two hundred miles from home in the middle of nowhere on a blustery November night, and Jorani, an insufferable crybaby, was in hysterical meltdown mode. "What do you suggest?" Hazel forced the woman's attention back to the central issue.

"Name's Marla... I live just up the road a piece. If you don't mind roughing it, I could put you up for the night; we'll get your car situated first thing in the morning."

Somewhere in the thickly wooded, New England countryside an animal let loose with a mournful howl, while another beast a good half mile away picked up the plaintive note, relaying it further up the mountainside. "What was that?" Jorani whimpered.

"Hyenas," Marla replied. "Those feral buggers don't like the cold any better than humans."

"Hyenas live in Africa," Hazel corrected.

"Geography was never my strong suit." The woman grinned and pointed at Jorani curled up like a tight fist with her soggy face buried in her hands. "Probably just a pack of ravenous, meat-crazed timber wolves."

In the short time since the sun had set, the temperature plummeted another ten degrees, hovering a few degrees below freezing. Worse yet, a stiff wind curled through the hilly ravine, pushing the wind chill to single digits. Hazel removed the key from the ignition and reached for the door handle. "Yes, if it's not too much inconvenience…"

*****

Piling in the truck, Marla fired up the engine and drove five miles down the highway, turning off on a dirt road. "That's my place up ahead." Hazel squinted out the dirty-streaked window where a smallish clapboard cabin nestled between a stand of birch trees.

Unlocking the side door, Marla brought them into the kitchen. The room was a toasty seventy degrees. "I was just getting ready for supper and realized there was no coffee or eggs for the morning so I scooted out for groceries. Otherwise, you might have been stranded through the night."

Cocking her head to one side, Jorani, who had finally regained her composure, sniffed the air. "What's that heavenly smell?"

"Curried chicken in white wine sauce. It's my specialty." Shuffling over to a Crock-Pot resting on the counter, Marla lifted the lid. "If you girls haven't already eaten, you're more than welcome to join me."

"We haven't had a bite to eat since leaving Boston," Jorani blurted.

Hazel flashed her friend a dirty look. "You've already done so much for us, and it's not like you were expecting company."

"Actually, I was expecting company," Marla corrected, "but that's none of your concern." Ten minutes later the doorbell rang. A hefty man with a curly beard and red plaid jacket was standing out on the front stoop. Rather than invite him in, Marla stepped outside, closing the door behind her. They could hear the bearded man mounting a furious protest, but after five minutes the woman returned and bolted the door behind her. "Let's eat!"

* * * * *

In the living room, a table had been set with a linen tablecloth, salad bowls, a fresh loaf of sourdough bread and bottle of apple cider. "Spread a bed of basmati on your plates," Marla suggested, indicating a pot of aromatic rice, "and ladle the curried chicken over it." She lit a pair of scented candles. "The fruit, " she gestured at a bowl of pineapple chucks, "goes on top of the curry sauce."

"What are the greens?" Jorani asked.

"Minced scallions. I throw everything in - bulbs and all."

"You invited your boyfriend for dinner," Hazel said guiltily, "and we traded places, so to speak… put him out in the cold."

Marla made a dismissive gesture. "There's an all-night diner just up the road… caters to truckers, prostitutes, local riffraff and insomniacs. Duane will grab a bite there."

He might fill his gut, but he certainly wasn't going to enjoy a fancy sit-down meal like this! If the scented candles were any indication, Hazel mused, the girls had put the kibosh on a romantic soiree. Not that Marla seemed to care. Twenty minutes later, after the curry was finished, she threw another log in the wood-burning stove and served a crumb cake with mocha-flavored coffee.

"You see how things turn out." On a full stomach, Jorani's self-possession had miraculously returned. "One minute we're stranded, half-frozen in the middle of nowhere, and now this!"

"Jorani," Marla broke off a section of the cake and waved it in the air. "What sort of name is that?"

"Cambodian… it means radiant jewel."

"You weren't looking so radiant," Hazel quipped, "when the car broke down." She turned her attention back to the older woman. "She's an instigator… got us into this mess."

"How's that?" Marla sipped at her coffee.

"Jorani was born here, but her parents immigrated from a farming hamlet with a very large, extended family. When they came to America, they bought a double-decker tenement in Attleboro and the whole clan - aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews - moved in together."

"When my brother wanted to take a girlfriend to the movies last summer," Jorani interjected. "They sent my aunt and two nephews as chaperones."

Marla freshened their coffee. "The trip north was Jorani's idea," Hazel explained. "I wasn't so keen about traveling north this late in the season, but she wanted to get away, even if just for a night, to see what it would be like to be out from under her parents' thumb."

*****

Ten minutes later, a muted, rhythmic sound was emanating from the far corner of the room where Jorani had curled up on the couch sound asleep. "Looks like your friend's had a little too much excitement for one day."

"We loused up your evening," Hazel repeated.

"I like it better," Marla replied cryptically, "when things don't necessarily go according to plan.” With the comforting warmth from the stove, her cheeks had taken on a ruddy glow; a sedentary easiness settled over the woman, who didn't look nearly as hardscrabble or washed-out. "The past month or so, I've sort of been in a holding pattern," she confided. "I was tending bar at a lounge in Old Orchard Beach, but I got to drinking as much as I was serving some nights so I quit work." She held a hand straight out in front of her and smiled self-consciously as the stubby fingers fluttered ever so gently before the tremors melted away. "Stopped drinking six weeks ago. Cold turkey."

"You're okay?"

"I've had my moments, but managed to avoid the booze." Marla gestured at the figure curled up on the couch. "Your friend's got one hell of an appetite."

Jorani devoured three helpings of the chicken curry and polished off what little was left of the fluffy rice. "Her parents are over-protective," Hazel explained, "And she's suffers from anxieties." "Jorani says her relatives suck all the oxygen out of the air with their pettiness and old-fashioned beliefs."

"And your folks, what are they like?"

"The situation’s just the opposite." Hazel ran a poised finger around the rim of her coffee cup. A taut sourness nestled in the corners of her mouth as she collected her thoughts. "My parents are getting divorced"

"When did you learn this?"

"Middle of the week." A grandfather clock near the bay window struck eleven o'clock. "My father was having an affair with a coworker and rather than repair the marriage, my mother returned the favor in kind."

An orange tabby sleeping near the stove awoke. The cat stretched, splaying its front paws. Marla fed the cat and they watched it eat in silence. When the cat was done, it hovered by the door, the plumed tail arched over its back. Marla cracked the door open and the cat scooted out into the cold.

Marla blew her cheeks out in an attitude of disbelief. “You and your Cambodian compadre are polar opposites. She’s overwhelmed by a meddlesome extended family, and your folks do all their critical thinking with the organs situated between their legs.”

“Excuse me?”

“Their gonads… genitals.” Marla was picking distractedly at a cuticle. “But it doesn’t matter. You’ll both find your way out of the mess.”

Hazel felt a momentary flurry of resentment, an urge to disavow the gruff, outspoken woman but couldn’t manage to consolidate the indignation into a firm conviction. Marla’s observations about the human condition were too spur-of-the-moment, random and guileless. They cut through all the dysfunction and emotional dysphoria. “So what do we do?”

The woman let loose a commiserating chuckle. “A thousand questions in search of a thousand-and-one answers,” she replied obtusely. “You don’t do crap.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“Maybe there ain’t no hard-and-fast answers, no unassailable truths in the real world. You make a life as best you can and nothing more.” “Let your parents muck up their lives. It’s none of your affair. In a sense they’ve done you a major service.”

Hazel eyed the tough-talking woman uncertainly. No one had ever jibber-jabbered at her with such crass insistence. “So it’s a blessing my parents are splitting up?”

“They’re role models for how not to live your life. Look at the faulty decisions they’ve made then decide what you want for your own future going forward. Not this, not this, not this…THAT!

The room fell silent. Heat from the wood-burning stove caused the gossamer curtains over the sink to rustle gently. “When I left this morning, my father was in the bedroom packing a suitcase with underwear and toiletries.”

“Going off to live with the new goilfriend.” Marla intentionally mispronounced the word in derisive fashion.

“The girlfriend’s got a husband and three children in elementary school. He’s moving into a rooming house. A sardine can of an apartment with shared bathroom privileges.”

“Seems like a smart move,” Marla noted with a poker face.

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Hazel pressed.

“Excess baggage,” Marla tossed the phrase out reflexively, almost as an afterthought. “Everyone’s got some. Trick as to keep your extraneous crap to a bare minimum.”

“Okay,” Hazel muttered.

Excess baggage – the girl had experienced more than she could handle of late. This modest cabin in the middle of nowheresville felt like a refuge, a no-frills sanctuary for the spiritually damaged. “And what about Jorani?”

“Jorani comes from a good family – a tad bit overprotective but well intentioned. It’s you I worry about.”

“Jorani’s got the mindset of a twelve year-old. She still doesn’t really understand how things work," Hazel spoke tentatively.

"Truth be told," Marla replied, her voice tinged with a sliver of sardonic humor, "nobody ever grows up. That's just malarkey - a common misconception. You bumble along and, if you don't step on too much dogshit, eventually, things eventually fall into place.” Marla disappeared into the back of the cottage. After rummaging about, she returned with a sleeping bag, blanket and pillows. Lifting Jorani's head she slipped the pillow under her cheek and draped the blanket over her shoulders. The plump girl never stirred. "Maybe when Jorani gets home, she'll realize that having a truckload of incestuous kin running about is more blessing than inconvenience."

"They had that horrible war over there with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge."

"Where did you learn about that?"

"Being poor don't make me stupid." Marla spoke with just enough self-deprecating humor to blunt the sarcasm.

"Jorani thinks she's ugly," Hazel murmured. "She tells me so every five minutes."

"And why is that."

"Because of her weight."

"She's not that fat… nothing she couldn't get a handle on with diet and exercise."

"And her nose… she wants a perky little button nose like Barbie. Her nostrils are too wide… fleshy."

"So are mine, if you hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, but you're Caucasian. She thinks all Orientals are ugly."

"Poor kid!" She handed Hazel the sleeping bag and other pillow. "You can sleep on the rug. It's not nearly as comfortable as the couch but plenty warm."

Yes, this would do just fine - a sublimely perfect end to what might have been a catastrophic evening. Collecting the coffee mugs, her hostess shuffled into the kitchen and began rinsing out the last few dishes, while Hazel spread the sleeping bag on the floor. Marla was humming to herself in the kitchen, a James Taylor song from the late sixties, but then the impromptu music died away and the woman began speaking in a low-keyed, meditative monologue.

"What was that?" Hazel approached and stood in the doorway.

Marla was storing cutlery in the drawer. "I was saying how up here in the boondocks the neighbors don't give a rat's ass about proper etiquette. They'll stop by any time day or night to chew the fat or just to make sure you're doing okay."

"Morris, he's a good one for that," Marla continued in rambling fashion. Only now did Hazel notice the wispy grin curling up the side of the older woman's mouth. "He just shows up in the middle of the night unannounced with no clear-cut agenda." The woman gestured with a flick of her head at the window over the sink. Thirty feet away in the back yard stood a enormous bull moose. A full moon in a cloudless sky threw down just enough light to reveal the six-foot rack of antlers and grizzled, elongated muzzle.

"Morris forages vegetation from a pond on the far side of the hill and wanders over here most nights after supper." She dried the pot that she used to steam the rice, placing it on a shelf in one of the lower cabinets.

Ten Minutes later, there was a scratching at the back door and Marla let the cat back in for the night. Killing the lights, she went into the bedroom and changed into pajamas. "Do you like poetry?" Hazel could see the woman's bulky figure in shadowy silhouette. The countryside had gone completely silent locked in winter's icy grip.

"I guess so." Hazel wasn't much of a reader. A steady diet of Shakespeare, Beowulf and Chaucer through middle school had ruined her love of literature.

"I was never big on the modern poets," Marla rambled on. "Merrill, Ashcroft, Berryman… they all left me flat. Couldn’t make much sense of their mindless prattle. That ain't poetry, it's just literary mush." The older woman fell silent and, as a guest in the home, Hazel wasn't sure whether she was obliged to add something to further the conversation. Problem was, she wasn't at all familiar with any of the contemporary poets her host had mentioned. "Now Robert Frost - there was a man with talent and a keen sense of the human predicament."

"We studied The Road Not Taken in school last year," Hazel offered.

"And Theodore Roethke – he was another first-class poet." Marla, who was resting on the arm of the sofa, bent over and adjusted the blanket up around Jorani's shoulders. The girl moaned - more like a deep sigh of contentment - shifting over on her side away from the conversation. "Did you know his family owned a greenhouse and nursery business?"

"I wasn't aware of that." Hazel had no idea who Theodore Roethke was. The girl was sleepy and could only just barely follow the meandering thread of Marla's late-night musings.

"Many themes in his poems were dredged up from his youth working in the greenhouse, gathering moss for cemetery baskets, germinating plants from seed, that sort of earthy reminiscence."

Hazel yawned. "That's so very sweet!" Her eyes were closed, the breath coming in shallow puffs. In the corner near the heater, the cat was cleaning itself, settling in for the night.

"A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels." Marla spewed the muddled verbiage in a soft hush.

"How's that?" The strange fragment momentarily jolted Hazel back to consciousness.

"It's from a Whitman poem," Marla clarified. "Probably from Leaves of Grass, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. All that talk about Roethke reminded me of it." Marla rose and drifted away in the direction of her bedroom. "Doesn't matter all that much, if we're talking mice, moose, or Cambodian girls with doting parents and eating disorders - they're all equally precious in their own right."

Finished with her physical hygiene, the tabby rested her head on her paws. "What about me?" Hazel blustered.

"Ditto," Marla added curtly, "on the infidels!"

* * * * *

In the morning, Hazel awoke to the sound of a cell phone twittering. In the bedroom, Marla was alternately talking softly and laughing at some raunchy humor. She rolled over in the sleeping bag. Jorani was still dead to the world. A rooster began crowing. A half hour passed and Marla, dressed in flannel PJ's, came into the room. "Car's fixed."

"What?"

"Duane has one of those T-shaped tire irons with multiple socket settings. He stripped the flat tire earlier this morning and replaced it with the spare. Even ran the flat down to the garage where they cemented a rubber plug in the puncture hole." Jorani was wide awake now and sitting up on the couch. "A roofing nail… that's what caused the entire hullabaloo. A stupid, half-inch roofing nail." Marla drifted toward the kitchen. "I'm fixing breakfast. Nothing fancy just buckwheat pancakes and coffee, if you girls care to join me."

"What’s buckwheat?" Jorani whispered.

"A special flower mixed with buttermilk." Hazel told her about Morris.

"A wild moose and you couldn't be bothered to wake me!"

"You were snoring… embarrassingly loud." Hazel threw a bucket of cold water on her indignation. "But more to the point, the car is fixed and everything back to normal."

Well, not exactly,” Hazel added by way of an afterthought. “My parents are getting divorced and yours will probably manacle you to the radiator in the tenement basement when they find out what we did this weekend.”

"We ought to leave money for the tire," Jorani said reaching for her wallet.

"That's already been settled," Marla clarified. She cracked an egg in a bowl of flour moistened with milk and a tablespoon of vegetable oil, mixing the ingredients with a metal whisk. "Duane says he'll take payment in free meals over the next month along with certain sexual gratuities to be named at a later date."

*****

At eleven-thirty the girls were back on the road headed south. "You realize something very special happened back there?"

"I may be a crybaby, but I'm not an idiot," the Asian girl replied softly.

"At breakfast you ate three helpings of flapjacks."

"I was hungry."

"You were hungry last night," Hazel corrected. "Today you were just a glutton."

Jorani smirked and licked her lips. "They were so good!" Marla peppered the pancake batter with wild blueberries picked throughout the summer from bushes in back of the cottage. The fruit was packed away in cellophane bags in the freezer and rationed as special treats during the frigid winter months. An hour later as they came up on the Portland exit, Jorani cleared her throat. "There's a rest area with a Dunkin' Donuts three miles down from here."

"How would you know?"

"I noticed it on the way up."

Hazel gawked at her friend. "It was pitch-dark when we passed through this section of highway last night, coming from the opposite direction."

"I saw it all the same. Maybe we could…"

"Yes, it's a long ride home," Hazel depressed her directional and shifted over to the far right-hand lane, "and there's no reason why we can't take a brief break."

*****

Once seated in the restaurant, Hazel blurted, "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

"Sex what?"

"It's from a Walt Whitman poem. With her free hand, Hazel caressed her friend's face. "Your Cambodian nose is a precious work of art."

"What's my stupid nose got to do with a mouse or whatever you're prattling about?"

"Marla says not to worry because we're all damaged goods."

"She said that?"

Hazel sipped at her cinnamon cappuccino. "Well, not exactly, but some sweetheart of a guy is gonna go bonkers over Jorani, the radiant jewel, one of these days, and it will be sort of like Duane and Marla."

"That weird Whitman poem," Jorani's eyes clouded over. "Say it again."

"A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

"Are you going to finish that apple cheese Danish?" Jorani indicated a half-eaten pastry that her friend had pushed to one side with the soiled napkins."

"Why do you ask?"

"No reason, in particular."

---