If you will indulge me a moment, I present “The Call,” a brief, one-act monologue :
“Is everything ok? What--”
“No, this isn’t a job. Why would I--”
“Really? Where are you going?’
“Near Punxatawney… Why?”
“I’m almost there.”
“What? Uh… yeah. Are you serious?”
“Oh...ok...great!”
~Fin~
Bow. Applause?
~~~
Sorry about my abrupt exit yesterday, but imagine my shock when I see Brent’s number flash across the screen – an old-fashioned phone call demanding my attention.
Ok, maybe it wasn’t THAT shocking. We’d been texting him throughout the day, sure, but certainly no phone calls. Honestly, I felt a stab of resentment when I first saw it. Like : yeah, I appreciated his concern, but calling me about it? It was just a bunch of nightmares. I didn’t want coddled.
But no, Brent had something wholly different on his mind. In one of my texts, I mentioned where I expected to camp at the end of the day. Matter of fact, I think he solicited it from me in a roundabout way. You see how devious he is? The man could brainwash an eel.
To revisit my earlier performance, allow me to supply the other half of our conversation. I’ll stick to prose this time :
“Yeah, everybody’s fine. Why, you have another nightmare? Sleeping on the job?
Floored. Stunned. So damn happy I couldn’t put it into words. Brent, apparently, was, what, meeting up with me for a stroll? I was equal parts confused and overjoyed, but not so distracted as to have ignored his choice of pronoun.
“We” – “we’ll see you there.”
I forced my subsequent texts to remain casual – a difficult thing to do with my heart bobsledding across my chest. It took a while, subtly poking around memes, finding the appropriate moments for a few, “So, what are you doing right now?”’s. My persistence paid off, though, and I unveiled two additional future hiking companions.
Brase was coming – not a huge surprise as he was the odds-on favorite, but a very welcome inclusion. Legends surrounded his power-hiking acumen, Brent once claiming that the big man chews up trail faster than he can sprint. Hyperbole assumed, but not yet verified.
Cal would be joining us as well. Iron stomach, iron bicep. I didn’t peg his as much of a hiker, but maybe he figured all the extra exercise would give him an excuse to eat more Elephant Cakes. Who knew? But he confirmed that both he and Brase were escorting Brent to the rendezvous.
They’d just left home, so they were going to reach the meeting point before me. Brent again offered to shave a few miles off my plate via motorized transport, but I declined, promising I’d be there as soon as possible.
I was giddy. Fatigued? Sluggish? I knew not of these burdens that plagued a previous version of myself. I was a tireless machine.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Brent is insisting he could hear me openly weeping during the call. I’m fairly confident I didn’t go quite that far.
~~~
Hurried as I was, I still had a few miles to muddle over the forthcoming reunion. I’d finagled Cal and Brase’s inclusion, yes, but “we” is quantitatively open-ended. The three of them would certainly fulfill its requirements, yes, but “we” is a bottomless vessel. It had plenty of room remaining to encapsulate other potential freebooters…
I’m a selfish glutton. I admit that. My overindulgence at the fair should make it clear enough. So what was I thinking about for the half hour or so until I reached the camp? Who ELSE might be joining our expedition?
I could have asked; could have seemed myself a lot of pointless speculating by simply posing Brent the question. Yet… I couldn’t, not really.
Considering the way things ended at the fair, the topic was precarious, possibly even forbidden. And, most importantly, I was afraid to bring it up.
But I wasn’t afraid of entertaining the possibility. It was pathetic, foolish, masochistic even, but logic couldn’t extinguish that stubborn flicker of hope. Still, for it’s part, reason tried like hell :
“Why would she come? She never said she likes hiking.”
“Dude, you CREEPED HER OUT the last time you saw her. She doesn’t want to spend a day in the woods with you!”
“She has school; she has work; boyfriend; girlfriend; small pox; it’s a leap year!”
It tried and tried and tried, but that flame remained endured. It clung to “But she might,” like a drowning man to drift wood. Even as its glow dimmed, it highlighted that shrinking addendum. To my likely future disappointment, that was all I had eyes for.
“But she might.”
~~~
They were there, as promised, seated behind an old fire pit, four of them crunched together on a blackened log. The seating arrangement seemed incredibly uncomfortable.
The moment Brent saw me, he raised his hand, tapping the back of his wrist as if I’d shown up late to an important business meeting.
“Hey!” I said, ignoring Brent’s joke, “This is amazing; how did you pull this off?”
Brent smiled, shrugging, “Oh, probably because Laurel is the best girlfriend in the world. She dropped us off; going to pick us up when we’re done. Couple days, I’d say.”
“Days?” I asked. “I get you for DAYS?”
DEAN, who sat at one end of the log, rump half-on, half-off, nudged the pack at his feet. “Didn’t bring all this just to make s’mores.”
No kidding. Two bulky packs were nestled against his. A fourth nuzzled against Brent at the opposite end of the log.
‘Awesome,” I said, genuinely meaning it.
That’s about when it struck me. The four guys on their log, looking up at me like eager boy scout’s excited for their first over-nighter.
The four guys. Logic and reason, poor sports that they are, square-danced on hope’s festering corpse.
My disappointment must have shown in my face. I saw the others react to it, flinching, or sagging sympathetically. And then there was Brase. He DEFINITELY recognized my chagrin. How do I know this? Because he started laughing.
It was a booming lumberjack chortle, that squirted maple syrup and mockery. It sounded villainous.
Hearing it got Cal going as well. His is a kind of donkey laugh. He puts EVERYTHING into each chuckle, like his diaphragm is trying muscle out a P.R. with each contraction.
I felt self-conscious and glanced down at myself. -- my sleeves, my pants. Had I… improperly disposed of the evidence from my last bathroom break? Had a mischievous, if confused, robin tacked a “Kick Me” sign on the wrong side of my torso?
What did I do?
Dean, at least, had the courtesy to cover his face when the infection reached him. His entire frame vibrated like, for him, humor was a full-body workout.
Brent, for once the only straight face in the group, glared down the log at the others and shook his head. “See?” He lamented, “they’re so bad at this. I told you they’d crack the moment they saw him.” His head tilted back as he said it as if needing a few more inches of buffer from the invisible fire.
“I’ll bet he still hasn’t figured it out, though.”
“Slow on the uptake,” Brent agree with a sentiment that definitely hadn’t come from any of the other seated men. Still, he was was correct; I remained baffled. I lifted my hands, palms-up, to indicate this.
Brent sighed and tapped Dean on the shoulder. As they leaned in opposite directions, Brent’s gaze fell back to me. He was smirking sharply enough to strain his cheek.
And then I understood.
Awkwardly crouched behind the log, no longer hidden by her human shields, was Brooke. She grimaced at her still-laughing brother, “Seriously, Brase?”
“Sorry,” he said, offering me with a big, guilty smile, “but the look on his face...”
The rest just stared up smugly, not saying anything, but letting me know that they know.
For a moment, I was struck dumb, wondering, “Is it THAT obvious? Did Brent tell them or am I really so transparent?”
And then reason, stumbling back from his hootenanny, grappled the spotlight once more. He spun it ‘round ‘til its bright eye poignantly illustrated the newly-revealed face just behind the log.
Right, I assured it, feeling the warmth spread across my face and the smile jabbing back the edges of my cheeks. Who gives a shit?