by C D Cain
“Do you stay here? I mean. The futon. Do you sleep here?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No. But I’ll come here sometimes to escape the noise.”
“Noise?”
“Close your eyes and listen.”
I shut the vision of the room out and stood in the darkness of it.
“Do you hear anything?”
“Nothing.”
“With that door shut…in here just me and my bike…it’s just me. It’s not Mo. It’s me. Sometimes I need to find her to not forget her.”
I opened my eyes quickly to see her watching me. I blinked to the understanding of what she had shared and to the fact she had shared. She seemed to notice too because she stood up, brushed the wrinkles from her jeans, and tucked her t-shirt into the front of her waistband. She pulled her long hair into a ponytail before walking toward me to reopen the door.
She turned her head to look at me as we were nearly face to face. “There. You have a piece of me. A piece no one else has.” She gently shook her head. “Not sure why you have it but there it is anyway.”
The blue streak in her hair was highlighted as she stepped out into the sunlight. “Why don’t you stand out here while I wheel her out?” She disappeared into the shadows of the garage and returned a few moments later behind the brightness of the sun shining off of the chrome bars. Her smile was ear to ear as she steered the large front wheel out into the ally between the buildings.
“When we get on, just follow my movements. If I lean, you lean. The city will be miserable with the stink of exhaust from the cars but when we get this baby out onto the Red Mountain Expressway, you’ll swear we’re flying. Wait until I get her cranked and ready before you get on.” She bent down and turned the key, turned a valve, and then pulled a knob. She straightened again, straddled the bike, and freed the kickstand. She gripped the bar with her left hand as she pushed a button on the right handlebar. The engine roared and rumbled below her. Her body vibrated with the hum of the engine. A few times she reached down to slowly push the knob back in. The engine grew louder and louder as it warmed. I felt the excitement in my chest as she twisted the throttle. The roar was exhilarating and brought about a grin of anticipation. With my fear washing away, I was eager to climb on the seat behind her.
She handed me a helmet after she pushed the knob fully in. “We’re ready.” She extended her hand to me as her smile filled her face. “Let’s do this,” she said loudly over the roar of the engine.
I grabbed her hand without an ounce of hesitation. The bike’s balance shifted but quickly returned when she steadied the weight of us. I realized I really didn’t know what to do from here. I sat against the back rest and placed my feet on the bars off to the side of the bike. I looked around to see a grip or anything to hold onto but couldn’t figure out where my hands went.
“You’re going to have to sit a little closer if you want to stay on,” Mo yelled.
I scooted on the seat to get closer to her. I tried to move easily so as not to shift the balance of the bike again. Gently I let my hands rest against the material at her sides. I dared not place pressure there for fear of feeling the warmth of her skin burn through the clothing.
Idiot coward. Better summation.
Chapter
We left the city behind us as we cruised along the Red Mountain Expressway. The Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian Mountains had always been beautiful to me. Many days, I purposely drove down Twentieth Street past the Vulcan Statue just to admire the beauty of its rust-stained rock seamed with hematite iron ore. But those views couldn’t hold a candle to this. Nothing like the ones unobstructed by a door frame or window. Out in the open with nothing between us and the rock, I could fully appreciate the red sparkle of the ore. I’m not sure what sparkled more, the ore or the green of the eyes I caught in the reflection of the rearview mirrors. She seemed to be looking for my reflection as many times as I sought hers. At times she looked at me which such intensity that I would pretend to notice some distraction and break our stare.
She pulled off the highway onto a small dirt road before turning the bike off and motioning for me to dismount.
“There’s something I want to show you. We walk from here.”
The sun filtered through the narrowed trunks of the forest to give the road a striped appearance. Some of the smaller trees leaned into the hill cut for the dirt path. Their tops joined those of the opposite side as they stretched across the dirt to create a canopy above us. As we walked, the shade cooled the gentle wind and chilled the moistened skin at my neck. We had left most of the traffic behind us when we turned off of the main road so there was little noise to pollute the nature around us.
“What are you smiling about?”
I blinked at her. She had stopped walking and was gazing back at me.
“I guess this.” I held my arms out by my side and turned in a circle. “All of this. The sounds. The smell. All of it.” I brought my foot up and down to crunch the gravel under my feet. “This. I love the sound of this. It reminds me of a place back home.” I took in a deep breath. “And that. Do you smell that? It’s nature. It’s the dirt, the grass, and the trees. If there was some water around, I’d be one happy girl.”
“If only.” She smiled. “So, you’re a big hiker?”
“No, not really. I wouldn’t say it was hiking that I am enjoying so much. It’s being out here. Being outdoors away from the city and its congestion. I feel like sometimes I’m being suffocated. But here, out in the open, my I feel alive,” I said as I bent down to pick up a handful of dirt. I let it slowly slip from my hand to fall back onto the ground. The finer granules floated in the breeze and came to fall further down the path. I loved the way the leftover dirt stuck to the palm of my hand until I brushed it off on my jeans. “Out here I can breathe again. It’s my oxygen.”
“It’s nice to see something besides sadness in those beautiful green eyes of yours.”
The warmth previously at my neck jumped to my cheeks. I didn’t know how to take her flirting. Generally, I found it to be playful banter and considered it part of her personality. Out here, alone in the woods, I questioned if her flirtations were real. If in fact, Mo of the lesbian deejay world…all women want to be with Mo…was seriously flirting with me. No, it was most likely a good friend who was trying to make me feel better by being complimentary. That was more like it.
“But, yes, I know exactly what you mean.” She studied the rocks beneath her feet for a moment and then bent over to pick up a light brown stone.
“You do?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. I wouldn’t have figured you would’ve felt like that. You seem like a city kinda’ girl to me.”
She laughed and left the smile stay upon her lips. “I get you would think that way. It’s the only venue you’ve seen me in.” She rolled the pebble in her hands and started walking back down the path.
“It’s not just seeing you there, in that setting, it’s watching you in the setting.” I quickened my pace to try to catch up to her. “It’s watching how you effect the women around you. You take them to another world. It’s a world you create for them. The music and the lights. It’s sort of amazing really.”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. I didn’t understand the expression on her face. She wasn’t really smiling. I felt my mouth go dry the longer she held her words.
“What?” I asked.
She gave her head a single side nod. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I said painfully aware I had great difficulty reading her thoughts.
She stretched her hand out for me to take it as she stepped up onto the first step of a set of stairs made from flat rocks dug into the dirt hill. “No truly, thank you for saying that.”
She wrapped her fingers around my hand the moment our skin touched. The callouses of her palm scratched against my hand. Surely, they had been freshly roughened from the grips of the motorcycle ride
.
“Here. I want to take you to a place over this hill.”
She carefully led me up the crooked staircase. I followed along the path of her footsteps to avoid stumbling on the rounded-rock border. She kept my hand firmly within hers as we walked single file. Even in her strong grasp I slipped on one of the rocks covered in a mossy mold. The shade above the staircase provided a perfect environment for the slippery green coating.
She stopped to look back at me as I regained my footing.
“Sorry. I’m not one for grace.”
“I see that. Are you okay?”
I nodded.
She laughed. “It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that before you climbed on the back of my bike.”
She smiled playfully and leaned against a birch tree. The trunk was split low to the ground so her body was hugged between the divisions of the tree. The paper-like bark rolled out over her shoulder. This type of tree would always be a mocking reminder of the night Grant proposed. The night I watched the tears of my doing fall from Sam’s eyes. The pain of it threatened to squeeze at my heart until I shook it forcefully from my head. I studied the tree for what it would be for me today and not of what it was of old. Today it would be shedding its old skin for the hopeful promise of new…just like me.
“Anything else you wish to share before we keep walking?”
“What?”
“Anything else. Like for instance, what’s with the look you have right at this moment.” She lifted her arm away from her side and pointed it at my face.
“What look?”
“Um, the look that would be the result of whatever you just felt. It washed over you like a cloak. What were you thinking? Care to share the thoughts you just had?”
“Do we have to talk about it?” I couldn’t. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to escape into Mo’s world she was creating for me. The past pain didn’t belong here today. At least not right now it didn’t.
“Nope. We don’t.” She started to head back up the hill but turned before taking a full step. She wound her finger in the belt loop of my jeans and gave them a pull. “But if you keep losing weight these things are going to fall off of you and then we probably will have something to talk about.” Her smile showed me her gloriously white teeth. “Or, well, in the very least something to do.”
What was it with women causing a rush of blood to my cheeks?
I noticed the changing of the leaves as we climbed further up the hill. Crimson and honey-colored leaves sprinkled the hillside of our hike. Our footsteps were announced to the woods as we crunched on the already fallen leaves. Over the sounds of leaves beneath our feet and the rustle of foliage blown in the light breeze, I heard the stirrings of flowing water.
“If only.” Mo pushed through the thickened brush and pulled at the vines to loosen them as she made a clearing for us. “We’re here.”
She set her back pack on the ground and took in a deep breath. She turned quickly to look back at me and her foot slipped off the edge of the embankment. She grabbed onto an oak sapling to steady herself.
The water’s edge was filled with tiny trees of all kinds. They hovered close to the ground while the larger ones took up the sky. Their brilliant green leafage formed an arbor for the running brook. I was thankful she had encouraged me to grab a couple of bottles of water when we stopped for gas. I took a long swig.
She dug in her backpack and pulled out a wad of material. “I warn you. I’ve never had company in this thing before. It may be tricky.” She looked up at me. “Especially since we have admitted to your lack of grace.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who slipped on the rocks a second ago.”
“Caught that, did ya?”
I smiled. “Yep.”
She wrapped a rope around two trees standing close to each other and stretched out a purple hammock. The brook flowed below it. Some of the moss which had grown over the rock bed was lifted free into the water of the gentle current.
She stretched the material out and shook her head. “Sure hope this thing will fit two. We may have to snuggle in.” She cocked her head to the side to look at me. “Wouldn’t that be terrible?”
A deep breath filled my lungs as I studied the hammock and her reaction to it. It was very narrow. There was no way we would manage without a snug fit.
She played with the hammock a little more, getting in and out of it to find the best position. She sat in it like a lounger with the material riding high against her back before changing position to sit with her legs hanging off of the side.
“I think this will work best. Come on in.” She patted the small open space beside her.
The hammock dangled uneasily as I tried to sit without tipping us over. I found myself enjoying the sound of her laughter as we nearly tumbled to the ground. Or in this case, water since the stream was below us. She wasn’t Mo of the lesbian bar scene when she laughed like this. She was just a woman being tickled. I liked it. I may even have liked it too much as it made me happy the hammock kept me close to her body. I relaxed in the comfort of my arm and side lying against hers. The babbling brook carried my stresses away on its current. I let them wash over the rock to become cleansed as they fell and dispersed in the stream. Slender streaks of sunlight danced off the rippling water. I felt the warmth of it on my ankle as my feet dangled from the hammock.
“This is so beautiful.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Mo inhaled deeply. “Sometimes I make time for this layover just to come out here.”
“I needed this.”
“I thought you might.”
I bit my lip. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“This doesn’t add up to the Mo I’ve seen. I mean this place. You coming out here. I don’t know. Out into nature. Wouldn’t seem like your place.”
“I do get you feel that way but can you elaborate why you do?”
I shrugged. “It isn’t exactly a night club filled with pounding music. And you’ve essentially told me music is what feeds your soul. I’ve seen your tattoos. There’s no music out here.”
“Are you kidding me? There’s more music out here than anywhere else. You don’t have to be in a smoke-filled strobe-lit bar to hear music.” She twisted onto her shoulder to face me. “Close your eyes.”
“You’re always telling me to close my eyes.”
She laughed again which made me realize how much I liked the sound of it.
“It’s because you keep so much in that brain of yours I have to do something to try to block it out. You see the world in front of you and build up this protective shell. So yeah, I’m going to need you to close your eyes. And besides, one day I may just surprise you when you do close them but not right now.” She placed her fingertips lightly over my eyes. “Please close your eyes and listen.”
In the beginning, I heard only the silence. Then the brook came into my ears with its lyrical cascade over the rocks. I smiled into its chorus.
I flinched at the breath of her speech on my ear. “You hear it.” Her voice was low and sultry. “Now listen closer to the scratching of the squirrels’ claws on the trees as they play.”
Yes, it was there. I heard the crinkling sound of the bark as it was loosened from the strain of their claws as they scurried up its base.
“Listen to the harmony of the birds as they sing to one another.” The warmth of her breath ran a tingle down my spine. “And the beat of that woodpecker further off in the distance.”
I heard their serenade. It sounded like a song of whistled love to the sky, to the water below them, to the earth giving them life and to the beauty of the day. They sounded happy.
“Now.” Her voice was closer. I feared the brush of her lip against the lobe of my ear. Feared or desired? “Listen to the thumping base that’s getting louder.”
Thumping base? Yes, thumping base. Its rhythm was growing faster and stronger. I began to feel it against my shoulder.
“Hear it? Feel it?” sh
e asked in a whispered breath as her lip touched my ear lobe.
I shook my head and was nearly dizzy with the wave of impulses throughout my body.
“That’s us. That’s our song.”
I felt her body shift its weight further onto me. Her lips were a feathered touch against mine. Soft. Too soft. I wanted more. I wanted to feel the pressure of them fully against mine. The sense of it all rapidly changed my equilibrium to make me feel as though I had suddenly begun floating or rather falling into the air and into her.
Son of a bitch that’s cold!
The water flowed over my back and onto my chest as we fell into its current.
Her laughter was infectious as we both hollered in the sheer utter chill of the water coating our bodies. We laid flat on our backs against a muddy bottom floor staring wide-eyed at the leaves above us. Apparently, the playful squirrels found humor in us as well because they moved their romp to the branches over our heads. Their nails loosened tiny pieces of bark which floated softly in the air before falling upon our chests. I felt as free as those chips of wood as their fall was more of a slow drift along a curvaceous pattern in the air instead of a direct, straight path to the earth. I felt free and very cold.
Mo stood from the water and extended her hand. “Come on. I also know a sunny place.”
“Thank goodness.”
She took us back over the embankment to walk along a trail covered in kudzu. Beyond the brush was a clearing made years before. Within its center was an old rusted structure nearly covered in the invading vegetation. Across from the building was a brick wall embedded in a dirt levee. It was stained with multiple colors and was probably once a very beautiful red. In the present, its clay was a mixture of white, red, and a moldy green.
“This spot should dry us out.” She sat down on the ground and leaned her back against the brick wall.
The small trek up the hill had warmed my body some but it wasn’t able to conquer the coldness of the wet clothing against my skin. I sat next to her and tried to convince myself I kept little distance between our bodies as a means of sharing heat. But I knew better. I wanted to be close to her.