by Lynn Red
Orion closed his eyes tight, massaged his forehead with his palm, and then opened them again, expecting that he’d been hallucinating. Unfortunately? No, the thing was still there, although then he noticed there were a couple leaves in the corner of her mouth. Had this thing just been wandering around, eating whatever she came across?
A slow turn to the left, then the giant pried some fungus-covered bark off a fir, and stuck that in her mouth, too. Orion just kept shaking his head, watching her shuffle around and graze. He’d never been one for watching train wrecks, or rubbernecking at accidents on the road, but for some reason, he could not stop himself from just staring at this impossibly strange creature going on about her day.
She bent to get the other half of the stick – apparently her favorite of the completely inedible treats she’d eaten – but something caught her attention. She turned her head very quickly in Orion’s direction. He noticed that her eyes, just like her massive arms, they were slightly uneven, but all things considered, that wasn’t the strangest thing about this lady.
“Hell...er?” she asked. “Boo...ba...ba?”
It was almost like she was learning to speak and trying out sounds. He’d never had kids of his own, but Orion had been around babies a time or two, and had watched them do the same thing.
For a moment, Orion considered responding, but something kept him from taking that particular leap just yet. He didn’t want to threaten or frighten this thing, and certainly didn’t want her attacking him, because even with Orion’s size, she was about as big.
She took another halting, shuffled step toward the tree where he was, and her dress caught his attention. It looked like it was made out of an old Hawaiian shirt, or a few of them, because of the mismatched patterns.
Mismatched eyes and constantly-parted lips aside, she wasn’t ugly exactly, but was definitely... well, unique is a good word.
“Tree...man? Ba-ba-ba-da-haha.”
Orion took a long, slow, deep breath and considered his options. On the one hand, she knew he was there already, but on the other one, she was eating wood. That seemed like a pretty big red flag.
“Tree...man! Ba-ra-ah-ah!”
With speed and agility he had absolutely not expected out of his new friend, Orion watched her dash toward the tree trunk and slam into it with a lowered shoulder. To his surprise, the huge trunk not only shuddered, but the branch he was perched upon trembled.
She flattened her hands on the bark and dug in her feet. The dress rode up her enormous thighs as she flexed and pushed, making the entire thing creak. Options, Orion thought, were running out quick.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay!” He called down. “No need to knock this thing over.”
He hopped to the ground and backed quickly away. “Who are you?” he asked, being as cautious as possible. “Do you have a name?”
The creature flipped her pigtails and made a kissing gesture toward him. “Sa...ra? Boo-bar!”
Orion put his hands up, defensively, as the very excited creature walked toward him. He retreated, one step at a time, until his back hit a tree. The small of his back rested against the smooth spot where his new friend had ripped off the bark and taken a taste.
“Now hold on,” Orion said. “Sara? Is that what you said?”
“Sa...ra! Sa...ra...ra-ra-ra!” She started giggling, which coming out of that mouth was more disconcerting than giggles normally are. But she was getting close, too, and that was maybe more frightening than her laugh.
“Okay, all right,” Orion said, laughing nervously and trying to duck out of the way.
An iron grip caught one of his shoulders, and another grasped his wrist. That was just about the last thing in the universe he expected. He struggled, wrenching his hand one way and then the other, but nothing he did made Sara so much as budge. It was like she was made out of steel, just unmoving, unbending, and drooling all over the ground.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking past her shoulder, trying for a trick. The giant head turned slowly, looking toward where he pointed, but her hands held fast.
“Not... fun...ny! Sa-ra-ba-ba-ba-la!”
Things were getting desperate. Orion tried to shove her backwards, but there was no give. Not even the slightest bend in her arms or her knees. “Okay, Sara,” Orion said, straining as hard as he could. “What... what do you want?”
“Boy...friend!” she said. “You...pretty? Tree-man. Boyfriend-bo-yo-yo-yo!”
I doubt I can explain to her that I already found the one and only for me, somehow I don’t think I’d get very far.
She started pushing back. Slowly, with his feet dug into the ground, Orion found himself moving backwards. He shot a glance at the ground. “Sara!” he said. “Look! A snack!”
“Huhn?” she grunted, looking in the direction he indicated, but still pushing. “Oooh...”
“Yeah? Looks pretty good, huh?” He paused to strain again, this time forcing her backward just a little. That juicy, delicious stick had done the trick. Sort of. “I can get it for you so you don’t have to bend down, I can...”
The tendril of drool running from Sara’s mouth to the ground grew a little heavier in flow. “But... want you!” she announced, stiffening again.
“You can have me! But let’s share this stick, huh?” Orion said. “How about it? Looks good, huh?”
Her hand began to release, but only just. As soon as he was able to twist his arm though, Orion used the tiny amount of leverage he could muster to wrench one of his arms free, although the twisting hurt like absolute hell.
He stooped over, grabbed the stick and hurled it into the forest. Instantly, his new girlfriend spun on her heel and dashed right after it, blasting through a small tree, knocking another to the ground, and then she vanished into the darkness.
Orion stared after her in a mixture of relief, disbelief and undeniable morbid curiosity.
“Did you see a... well did you see something come this way through here, son?” A rickety, raspy-voiced old man followed by a very large bodyguard, appeared from out of nowhere.
Apparently, Orion had been so dumbfounded he lost his normal wherewithal. He turned toward the voice and found it attached to a very long beard, which was in turn attached to a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, the pattern of which matched Sara’s makeshift dress.
“I... uh...” Orion stared, dead-on, straight at the giant behind the bearded man. “Another one? What is...?”
“Oh jeez’um, son. It ain’t as exciting as all that, just zombies, out for a moonlight stroll. I think I crossed their wires though, she’s supposed to be for him, and... well, I’m sorry but was she tryin’ to get in your pants?”
A shock went through Orion. “My pants?” he asked. “No, I mean, she was just,” he trailed off, eyes still trained on Atlas, who smiled very wide, and drooled a great deal. “Actually maybe so.”
“That’s it!” the old man said triumphantly. “Finally, I know for good’n sure what I did. All’s it’ll take to fix is a little electricity and a piece of metal in the right part of the brain. Little bit of juice in the noggin’ and both of them will... you’re staring, son.”
“I’m just,” Orion said. “I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time, but this is...”
“Aw, hell,” the old man said, slapping Orion on the back, obviously taking what he said as some kind of compliment. “Ain’t nothing special. But I better get after her, make sure as best I can she don’t find any other boyfriends like you. She sure is a looker though, huh?”
“I... yeah,” Orion said, wrinkling his forehead and nodding to try and somehow fathom what was going on. “You... good luck with that.”
“Jenga Cranston, by the way,” the old man said, grabbing Orion’s limply-dangling hand and surprising him with a shake. “Thanks for the help.”
“Yeah,” Orion said, in a hollow, empty voice as the jingly beard and the other drooling zombie tromped off into the forest, disappearing the same way Sara had. “Jamesburg,” he said, shaking his head.
“Teleporting Bigfoots don’t have shit on Jamesburg.”
-11-
“That thing about how you never know how strong love can be until it leaves? Yeah, I’m calling bullshit.”
-Clea
“Son of a bitch,” I swore, jumping out of bed and realizing that my phone had been buzzing the alarm for so long that it was almost drained.
At least I had actually slept last night instead of just sitting awake until dawn. Small victories can sometimes be pretty satisfying.
I rolled over, grabbed my phone and did the three math problems it asked of me to turn the alarm off. That one feature – the wake-up puzzle – is, I’m pretty sure, one of the highest forms of evolution. It’s funny how awake you really do have to be in order to multiply fifteen by twenty-six. I’ve always been the kinda lynx that will roll out of bed, grab the phone out of the back of the closet where I hid it so that I wouldn’t get up and turn it off, and then promptly do exactly that.
With this thing? No way.
Screwing it up twice before I finally remembered what three times six was, finally getting my tweeting birds and thunderstorm sounds alarm to shut up was the second major moral victory for me in one morning. Not a bad record.
“You coming?” Dean’s text made my phone buzz in my hand.
It took a second for me to remember what the hell he was talking about. When I did, it hit me like a truck in the stomach. The past couple days had gone by fast, like my days usually did in pre-Orion times. I woke up early, ran some, went to work, came home. They were only notable because of how un-notable they were. It seemed like maybe I was getting over my Orion addiction, except every time I thought about that, I started thinking about him again, ruining the whole process.
I pulled on some old shorts, a t-shirt and plodded into the kitchen. I briefly considered re-using a Keurig cup, but then remembered how horrible that was the last time I tried to be cheap and decided just to come to terms with my fifty-cent a cup addiction.
“Helloooo? Earth to Lynx-lady Clea, are you coming to the lake or not? Malia and I can come get you on the way if you want.”
On the one hand, I really wanted to go. A dip in the cool lake, a few beers and a couple hours on a boat tooling around the James Eggerton Memorial Lake was pretty much exactly what I wanted. On the other, if I went then I’d be with people which meant that I couldn’t just sit around and spend an entire Saturday pining for my lost love.
“Yeah,” I texted back. “Can you come get me in like a half hour? Or is that too long?”
I took a long sip that turned into a gulp. Immediately, the caffeine hit my blood stream and I was awake, kind of. More awake than I’d been before I drank it, anyway.
“Knock-knock,” he texted, and then came the noise.
“So, I guess that half hour was too long?” I asked. “Also, that outfit is a conscious choice you made?”
“Hell yes it was!” My best friend in the world was standing in front of me with a hula-girl pattern Hawaiian shirt that was unbuttoned almost to his navel. He had these massive cargo shorts, the kind with the pockets big enough to hold and entire book in. And of course, to round out his look? Dude was wearing water socks. “I’m pumped! Come on, Malia’s waiting downstairs. You sure you’re okay?”
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, uh, I’m not really sure why, but I’m all groggy and fuzzy-eyed.
“Love can do that, you know,” Dean said. “When I first met Malia, I did the same thing for like a month.”
“A month?” I asked. “Well, good. At least I’m a quarter through it.”
*
“I love this place,” Malia said, as we pulled up to the least public of the public docks, got their little four-person boat in the water and dragged out a bunch of lawn chairs and umbrellas. “And I think we’re actually early enough that the college kids won’t be hurling empty Coors Light cans at each other just yet.”
“We used to act like that, and we were way past college,” I reminded her, smiling a little. “Although neither of us ever drank much of the cheap stuff. You always made Dean buy good beer.”
“Yeah,” he piped up. “For you two. For me, I’d always go with whatever was on sale since I couldn’t afford to buy decent beer for three people.”
He pulled a cooler out of the trunk of his old-ish CRV and handed it over. The thing was so heavy that when I took it from him, the weight tugged the plastic loop handle into an upside down ‘V’ shape.
Staring at it reminded me of the way Orion looked.
Ugh, of course it did. Everything did. I couldn’t make myself stop thinking about him for a second. Not even the stunning beauty, not even the company or the laughs, none of it took him very far from my thoughts.
The sun, warm and radiant and wonderful, beat down already, even though it was barely nine o’clock. I turned my face toward it, and closed my eyes, letting the rays wash away my panicky, confused upset.
Unconsciously, I reached for my little earring and felt bare ear before I remembered.
“It’ll turn up,” Dean said, squeezing my shoulder. “The things we care about the most? They always show up.”
“This one I doubt. I lost it when that tree fell. There’s pretty much no way that’s making its way back. Probably drifted partway down the river and settled into some rocks and that’s where it’s going to stay until that river dries up.”
He shook his head. “This is going to sound weird coming from me, because I’m not going to tell a shitty joke, or deflect my own personal discomfort with emotional honesty by pranking you.”
“Shit,” I said with a little laugh. “I must be super obvious in being a huge sad sack if you are going to be serious with me.” Suddenly, I was the one trying to deflect.
“You can’t let maybes run your life. You’re an awesome woman, you’re someone I look up to pretty much constantly, and for the last week, you’ve let this thing with this guy eat you up inside. I can tell how badly you want him. Hell, I could tell when he was still hanging out for those few minutes at the camp.”
He paused, grabbing both my shoulders in his hands and making me set the cooler on the ground. The Styrofoam squeaked a bit when the weight of beer cans pushed it down onto the parking lot’s gravel. “You have to believe in him. He said he’d come back, right? Said he’d come for you?”
I nodded. “It makes me feel stupid to have this affect me so much,” I said.
“No,” he made me look back up in his eyes. “No, no, no. Love is never stupid, Clea. And you, more than anyone I know, deserve it. You just have to give it time. Do you have any reason to not believe him?”
I shook my head, not even able to speak for fear of turning into a blubbering moron.
“Then believe him. Malia took a chance on me, remember? When I was a giant mess and screwing everything up?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the ground. “I remember.”
“Good. Then give him a chance.”
Sniffing, I looked up at him and blinked in the sun. He was right. I knew he was right, but it still stung to try and make myself believe. Faith isn’t something I’m real good at. Okay, I’m about the worst there is at taking things on faith.
But yeah, this time? I knew Dean was right.
What I felt in that river, with Orion’s hands on me, and then later with his eyes warming my soul?
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess it was worth it.
It had to be.
*
Lazy days on the lake alternate between making me feel superbly peaceful and making me wish there was any damn thing to do except watch people fish and stare at the water. Without any reception, my phone was pretty much just a big weight in my pocket, digging into my side.
Without any electricity outlets I wasn’t going to be charging anything anyway but... serenity, right? That’s the whole point of this exercise. Serenity.
Yeah.
“Lookit here!” Dean shouted. He had caught some hapless animal through the lip, altho
ugh the animal in question wasn’t giving up easily. Right, then left, then back hard right the fish went, Dean following it with the end of his pole. “This thing’s a fighter!”
“Shouldn’t you just pull it up to the surface and catch it in the net?” I asked. “Seems like that’s what you’ve been doing all morning.” I stuck my toe in the live well in the boat and jabbed at a somnolent perch.
Dean shook his head, intent on the water. “No way, this is a duel between man and nature. Or coyote and nature, whatever. This is a duel, Clea, not just a mechanical action. This is a war.”
Malia gave me a sidelong glance and pursed her lips, rolling her eyes a little. “Watch the general in action,” she said, laughing slightly. “God willing, he’ll pull up something too small to catch.”
Snap!
His line went taught and then broke.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean swore. “Give me that other one, this thing’s still around, and it’s no damn joke.”
He wiggled his fingers in Malia’s direction, and she handed him hers. Into the water went the hook with the worm on it, and not a half second after it broke the surface, the line went taught again.
“Damn! This thing is huge!”
“Where have I heard that before?” Malia said, with mischief twinkling in her eyes. “Seems like... oh right.”
She reached over and, to my amazement, grabbed his package.
Dean squealed like a terrified armadillo cub and yanked up on the pole so hard that that line snapped too, just like the other.
“Thanks, babe,” he said. “Anyways, there’s something seriously big down there. Do we have anything stronger?” He was already rooting around in the tackle box, but found nothing he wanted. Dean moved on to hunting through the boat care trunk – things like hammers and ropes used for tying the boat to the dock.
“Yes!” he shouted triumphantly, hoisting a rope that was probably three inches around high up in the air. “This will do it.”
“I’m... well, I would say speechless but I think that’s probably wrong. Dumbfounded?” Malia said. “Yeah, dumbfounded works. How the hell are you going to catch a fish with a mooring rope?”