You don’t hear the waves crashing, after a while
Keri and Evan on a beach, sweating.
“Fuck walking on sand. Can we take a real backpacking trip? To, like, the redwoods?”
“Evan. Try to look up once in a while. Appreciate the view. Next moment the sand gets you down, try focusing on a part of your body that feels good. Rest your attention on your left knee.”
“My left knee doesn’t feel like anything. It doesn’t exist. You know how your stomach is happiest when it doesn’t exist?”
They plod on. Some chatter about stopping for the day.
A wave bends until it breaks, a foamy mess.
They soon grind to a halt and heave off their packs dramatically. There’s grunting.
“You know we can’t camp here, my dude. It’s signed. Sacred land. They’ll have our hides.”
“Conveniently, this is a burial ground.”
“There goes the neighborhood.”
“That’s on Rodney — ”
“Dangerfield’s tombstone, yes, I know.” Finishing his sentence, she wanders off into a thicket to pop a squat. While she’s gone, Evan locates and neatly stashes several heavy stones in her pack.
The patter of horseshoes over sand. He looks up from his chicanery and there’s a substantial woman with a rough-hewn catcher’s mitt of a face, twisted in curiosity.
“Taking those to go?”
The things people do when they think they’re alone.
A widening smile as his forefinger travels up to his lips. The lady on horseback smiles back, in no hurry to depart.
A beflanneled cowboy comes into view. Keri returns and the foursome spend seven minutes in polite conversation.
The cowboy speaks enthusiastically about Vegas, and really, about everything. He hunts wild boar, salts the meat and packs it out to smoke back at the ranch. They bought the land to retire here a decade ago.
His wife, they learn, cannot spell pommel. But she has broken an equivalent number of wild horses and tame men.
Their mixed-age laughter sounds round and pleasant.
A glassy wave flashes turquoise, then bone. None of them really hear the waves pummeling the shoreline anymore.
The horses are gassy and finally the older couple continues on their way.
With sunset fast approaching, Keri claps twice and the pair pops up to scout a campsite.
They trudge along silently, two switchbacks snaking up the mountainside, until he, panting, asks, “Can you imagine what beautiful art the world would see if the most talented artists were less terrified to share their best work?”
She always tires of this game first, but offers, “Do you suppose the dirt we can see is any dirtier than the dirt we can’t?”
They spend nineteen minutes talking about ants, pheromones, the merits and pitfalls of a college education.
Suddenly, a cat. A very, very large cat.
Jet black coat, triangular ears piqued with curiosity, dark eyes that dare. Her tail rises in a small wave. She considers the two young humans. Holds their gaze for a long moment.
“A panther. Or. A puma?”
“Am I a fucking felinologist? Just. Keri. Don’t run.” He was so proud of his vocabulary right then.
The three of them stare at one another a while longer.
Slowly, deliberately, heavy paws graceful, yellow eyes intent, she disappears into the thick green canopy hanging over the mountainside.
The couple climb briskly without a word for a small eternity.
When they find camp and Keri discovers the unsolicited burden in her pack, she doesn’t give him too much shit about the stones. She’s almost pleased. It alleviates some guilt about the fast-approaching breakup conversation.
Yeah. If she’s going to be mauled in jungle Asia, her mangled corpse had damn well better be found next to a doctor’s. Preferably Ivy League, 6'2" or taller.
