by Mary Alice
Over and over the tent toppled over, and each time it fell over, Luz and Margaret laughed harder. Finally they collapsed on top of the tent, laughing until their sides hurt and tears flowed from their eyes.
“You girls are either filming for America’s Funniest Home Videos or you could use some help.”
Luz followed the southern drawl to see a curvaceous girl in her twenties walking on the path in tight black jeans, red cowboy boots, and a jean jacket ablaze in rhinestones. She was a flash of sparkles in the dim light. Her platinum-colored hair was damp and pulled up in a high ponytail showing dark roots. Her heavily lined, dark blue eyes scanned the scene with mild amusement.
Luz thought she looked like an angel of mercy. “Do you know how to put up a tent?”
“Better than you two, I reckon.” She lowered her enormous purple leather bag to the ground. A few hair products fell out and Luz figured out that she was the soprano from the shower. “What’s your name, honey?”
“I’m Luz.”
The girl cut a cursory glance toward Margaret, who stayed back, frowning. “I’m Stacie.” She released a loud, staged sigh and surveyed her nails. They were big hands with long, ruby-tipped fingers. “Lord, I just pray I don’t break a nail. I just had them done.”
It turned out Stacie knew what she was doing. In short order she laid out the gear. “First off, you girls were putting your tent up in the wrong spot. See, that’s real important. Take it from me.” As she spoke she tightened the links of the poles so they formed single, long poles. Then she easily slipped them through the seams and like magic, the tent stood.
Seeing that the process required little more than simple common sense, Luz felt her cheeks burn. She cast a sideways glance at Margaret, whose lips were pursed with chagrin. Stacie had them move the tent to the flattest section of their lot, kicking bits of rock with her boot and scouring each section of it with the flashlight.
“The trick is not to set your tent on any rocks, sticks, or hills. One time a buddy of mine at Bonnaroo set his tent up on this hill of red ants. Them’s aggressive little bastards. Sting like hell. Once that nest was disturbed, they attacked. See, when that first one bites, it sends out some kinda smell that acts like an alarm going off for all the others.”
“Pheromone,” corrected Margaret. When Stacie looked over her shoulder with a puzzled expression, Margaret explained in a teacherlike voice, “The ant released a pheromone. That’s the scent that causes the other ants to swarm. They sting en masse.”
“In what?” Stacie asked, scrunching up her face.
Margaret rolled her eyes. “It means all at once.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what happened,” Stacie said, nodding. “My friend’s leg blew up like a balloon and he was howling like a banshee. Didn’t kill him, though. Just wished it did, it hurt so bad. So, you don’t want to be putting your tent on no ant hills. Or gravelly spots, neither, on accounta you’ll never get the stakes to go in.”
Luz and Margaret shared a look.
With Stacie’s help the girls secured the tent with the stakes in short order. Luz thought Stacie looked especially pleased with herself.
“I don’t know about you girls,” Luz said, “but I’d love to start a fire and have a glass of wine.”
“Great idea,” Margaret said, making a beeline for the car. As she opened the door, Serena came bounding out straight into Stacie’s arms. Stacie cooed over “the precious li’l thing” till Margaret came back from the car with a bottle of red in one hand, a bottle of white in the other, some plastic cups under her arm, and a worried expression. She turned to Stacie. “You wouldn’t happen to have a corkscrew, would you?”
A slow smile eased across the girl’s face, carving deep lines at the corners of her eyes. “Of course. I never travel without the necessities of life.”
“If you’ve got a corkscrew, we’d be happy to share,” Luz said.
“Tell you what, girls. I hitched a ride with a group of guys up the road a piece. They’re good ol’ boys from Georgia and been nothin’ but gentlemen. But they’re freewheeling, if you know what I mean. They’re following the Widespread Panic tour.”
“Oh my God,” Margaret exclaimed, grabbing Luz’s arm. “I’ll bet those are the guys who mooned us.”
Stacie giggled. “Sounds like them. Like I said, they’re fixed on having a good time. They’ve started in on drinking and smoking and Lord help me, they’re getting high as kites.” She crossed her arms and twisted on one heel. Though she appeared relaxed, Luz recognized a flash of desperation lurking in the girl’s eyes. “If it’s all right with you,” Stacie said, “I’d be real grateful if I could get my gear and stay with you tonight. I’ve got peanut butter to share.” Her ruby lips turned up in a teasing smile. “And a corkscrew. What do you say?”
“Yes,” Luz answered without hesitation.
Margaret’s silence was too resolute for Stacie not to notice; she quickly surmised it was Luz who made the decisions, and she flashed her a megawatt smile. “Well, okay, then! I’ll just go get the corkscrew and be right back.” She handed Serena to Luz and walked off, following her beam of light and disappearing into the darkness.
“Are you crazy? We don’t know her,” Margaret said, rising to grab the firewood. “She could rob us blind.”
“First of all, I doubt she’d do that,” Luz replied, tying Serena to one of the tent stakes. “Second, I didn’t know you that well either before you hitched a ride.”
“True,” Margaret admitted. She’d crouched before the fire pit and begun neatly stacking the firewood. She rose, wiping her hands on her pants. “But I didn’t dress like a Vegas showgirl.”
“You also didn’t know how to put up a tent, Miss Girl Scout. You should be kicked out of the corps. And third, Margaret, what do we really have to steal?”
Margaret laughed and her cheeks flushed. “But I can make a hell of a fire. Watch this.”
She struck a match and bent to light the pyramid of logs in the circle of rocks. The flame sparked. Margaret bent on all fours and blew soft plumes of air onto the flame. Soon the underbelly of the wood glowed an infernal red. Margaret came back to sit on the wood bench beside Luz. She slapped the dirt from her knees and hands with a satisfied air. “There. Not bad for a geek, huh?”
“You were a geek?”
“Yeah,” she said, bending to lean her forearms against her knees. “What did you expect? I collected insects.” She laughed in a self-deprecating manner. “I had glasses as thick as Coke bottles. I got my eyes zapped when I was thirty and now I’ve got twenty-twenty vision. I wish I’d done it sooner. But I didn’t do it because I wanted to be prettier,” she added. “I had laser surgery because I wanted to see better on field trips and not have to fool with glasses.”
Luz smirked with wonder. “You never fail to amaze me.”
“I live to amaze you,” she replied with a laugh.
Luz paused and looked anxiously at Margaret, who was staring at the fire. “Do me a favor? Lighten up on Stacie.”
Margaret turned her head to face her. “I just don’t trust her.”
“That’s just because she doesn’t dress like you.”
“To put it mildly.”
“I think you’d look good with a few rhinestones and some color.”
Margaret snorted and glanced meaningfully at Luz’s rumpled clothes. She crossed her arms, then fixed her gaze on the path that Stacie had walked down. “You know,” she said in a sincere tone. “I have to admit, sometimes I imagine what it would be like to dress like that. Flashy and sexy. A vixen. It takes a certain physical confidence, don’t you think?” Then she turned her head and her wistful expression vanished. “I mean,” she said self-consciously, “I could never wear clothes that tight. It’s not me.”
Luz thought of Margaret’s plain beige uniform, her colorless, magazine-decorated apartment, and realized that Margaret might have pushed that flamboyant side of herself down too deep. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I think th
ere’s a little sparkle in all of us, just waiting to shine out.”
“You think?” Margaret laughed and shook her head.
They sat for several minutes watching the fire gain strength. The snaps and cracks of the burning wood spiraled to a sky as black as a woolen blanket. Soon, too, the ubiquitous high hum of the mosquitoes hovered near their heads, prompting them to dig out the bug spray from their bags. Seeing Margaret’s phone, Luz remembered that she hadn’t yet called Sully. She borrowed Margaret’s phone and punched Sully’s number. Gazing at the starless sky above, she listened to the phone ring and ring until his message clicked on.
“Hi, this is Sully. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
“Hi, Sully, it’s me. Luz. Hey, where are you?” she said as a gentle tease. “I’m in Oklahoma now. Should make Texas tomorrow. I’m camping, can you believe it? And I’m not traveling alone anymore. I’m with two girls I met on the way. They’re really nice. Listen, I know I haven’t called but I left my charger behind and my phone is dead. So I borrowed this phone and just wanted to check in and tell you I’m okay and not to worry. Love you. Bye.”
“All set?” Margaret asked, taking back her phone and tucking it into her bag.
“Yes, thanks. I feel better. I guess I did all I could.”
Margaret hesitated, setting her purse back on the ground. She crossed her legs at the ankles. “You know, you could’ve bought a charger at any one of the gas stations we passed along the way.”
Luz bent her head, forced to acknowledge what she’d pushed to the far corners of her mind. She stretched out her legs beside Margaret’s and stared at the flames licking the logs.
“I told myself I just didn’t want to spend the money. It’s a valid enough reason. I don’t know what’s coming up on the trip and it makes sense to me to be frugal and not spend on anything I don’t absolutely need.”
“A phone isn’t something you don’t need. At least not on a trip like this.”
“I thought I’d wait till I got to San Antonio.” Luz paused, heard the lie in her own words. “No. There’s another reason, but”—she sighed heavily—“I didn’t want to think about it. I’ve got enough to deal with right now.”
“What reason was that?”
Luz collected herself and forced the idea from the nether regions of her thoughts. “I didn’t want to talk with him.”
There was a short pause and Margaret said, “Oh. Well.”
“I told myself that I was trying to stand on my own. To make my own decisions and not always depend on Sully.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Not if I hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. He’s a great guy. I’m just . . . not sure of my feelings and I know if I talk to him he’ll just hammer at me to come home and right now I don’t want anyone telling me what to do. This is the first time I’ve taken a trip like this and I’m thinking just about me and what I want. I don’t want to worry about anything but the journey. I don’t need the pressure.” She flicked a glance sideways at Margaret, searching for affirmation. “Is that selfish?”
“No, it’s not selfish. You’re just trying to find out who you are. That doesn’t mean that Sully is a bad guy and doesn’t want what’s right for you, either. It’s just sometimes you need to figure that out on your own.”
A scuttling noise drew their attention to the gravel walkway that led to their campsite. Stacie was walking up, lugging her enormous purple bag over her shoulder. When she reached their campsite she dropped it with a heavy sigh of relief. She put her hand on her hip and surveyed the two women huddled by the fire in close conversation.
“What’s the matter, you two? Did someone die? You look like a coven of witches by the fire there.”
Margaret patted Luz’s arm, rose, and stretched her arms. “No one died,” she replied. “But we could use a glass of wine. You brought the corkscrew, I hope?”
Stacie dug into her purse and handed the simple, dollar-store-variety corkscrew to Margaret. “I couldn’t find mine so I borrowed this one from the boys. And this!” Stacie moved her hand from behind her back, proudly waving a bottle of rum. “They’ve got so many they’ll never miss it.”
Margaret grabbed the bottle of white and peeled off the foil. Then with finesse, she quickly uncorked the bottle, poured liberal amounts of wine into the plastic Solo cups, and handed one to each of the girls.
“To sum up,” Margaret began, “Luz’s boyfriend is worried about her and wants her to come home. She needed to check in with him but isn’t sure how she feels about that.” She glanced at Luz. “Did I get it right?”
Luz nodded with a smirk.
“Girl,” Stacie said, holding out her cup like a pointed finger. “You’re too young to be worried about checkin’ in with some guy. Unless he’s your husband. And even then it don’t really matter if you’re with your girlfriends. You got to keep your priorities straight. Right now you don’t need to be worrying about nothing but number one. So here, let’s drink our wine and eat some of this gourmet peanut butter and liven it up around here. I brought some music and I feel like howlin’ at the moon.”
The scent of cold ashes permeated the frosty air. Luz could smell them in her hair and taste them in her mouth. Their tent billowed in the wind, making flapping noises like a wet sheet. She shivered and burrowed deeper in the sleeping bag. It had rained during the night. She didn’t hear it but felt the moisture in the air, and the dampness stained the edges of their tent.
Prying open a sandy eye, she saw Margaret cuddled beside her, her pale hair strewn against the pillow and her thin lips pursed open as a guttural, unladylike snoring bellowed out. Beside her, Stacie lay facedown on a rolled-up towel. Luz rose slowly, her head pounding from too much alcohol and too little food. She managed to sit cross-legged, shivering in the chilly morning air. Serena grumbled at having had the warmth of the sleeping bag removed and curled tighter in her ball. Luz put her fingertips to her throbbing temples as she struggled to recollect last night’s campfire party.
She didn’t remember ever seeing the bottom of her cup, there was always somebody pouring. There was a lot of dancing, too. A soft chuckle escaped her and she looked again at Margaret. She was still wearing Stacie’s rhinestone jacket. At one point Margaret had put on Stacie’s jacket and stood up, belting out lyrics to a Widespread Panic song that Stacie had taught her.
A muffled groan sounded as Margaret slowly opened her eyes.
“Well, if it isn’t the dancing queen,” Luz said.
“My mouth tastes like ashes.”
“That’s because it is ashes. The fire went out.”
“Now I know why I’m freezing!” Margaret pulled the sleeping bag back up over her shoulders.
“I’d kill for a cup of coffee. Do you think they’d have coffee at the front desk?” Luz asked hopefully.
“Don’t mention eating or drinking,” Margaret moaned. She put her arm over her eyes, then moved it to peer out at Luz. “Dancing queen? Was I really that bad?”
“You were better.” She laughed and said teasingly, “The butterfly has emerged!”
Margaret brought her hand up to cover her face with another, louder groan.
“No, you were great!”
Margaret chuckled softly, then moaned again. “It hurts to laugh. Don’t make me laugh.”
Luz fell back against her pillow like a dead weight.
“I had a good time last night,” Margaret said in a soft voice.
“Mmm . . .”
“No, I mean, I really had a good time. I’ve never danced like that.” She paused, then asked, “Do you have to be drunk to do that?”
“No. But it helps.”
“I’d hate to think I’d always have to get drunk to have a good time. ’Cause I don’t think I care much for hangovers.”
“Nope.” Luz smacked her dry lips. “We need water. I’ll bet they sell bottled water at the store. Maybe they’ll have coffee, too. I’ll go check it out.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, you should.”
Neither woman rose.
They heard a loud sigh of exasperation as Stacie dragged herself up to her elbows.
“What a bunch of lightweights. I’ll go. I got to pee anyway.” She rose easily, sans groaning. In fact, Luz thought she looked too darn perky as she reached up to redo her ponytail. She was wearing Margaret’s wool peacoat, an interesting fashion statement with her cowboy boots. Stacie reached down to grab her leather bag.
“You girls think you can hold down the fort till I get back?”
After a hurried breakfast of coffee and peanut butter sandwiches, Luz took off on a walk with Serena while Margaret went in search of wildflowers to add to her observation notebook.
Serena trotted jauntily at Luz’s side with her head down, sniffing exultantly. The day had begun cold and damp with a gray, overcast sky but the sun was struggling to break through the clouds. Luz relished the occasional shaft of light that sliced through the gray to shed a bit of warmth on her skin, like a gift. The night’s rain had left several puddles in the rutted dirt road. They reflected the sudden bursts of sunlight to sparkle like Stacie’s rhinestones.
Rounding a bend, she stopped abruptly with an intake of breath. Five monarchs clustered around a large puddle at the side of the road. Farther ahead, more groups congregated at several of the small black pools.
“There you are,” she breathed, coming to a halt. She’d wondered when she might see more butterflies. They’d probably roosted in these trees the night before and were just now coming out with the sun.
She knew that on sunny days after a rain, butterflies gathered around the edges of mud puddles to sip salts and minerals from the soil. It was called puddling, but Luz rarely saw it. Abuela used to leave a small dish in the garden to collect water, but more often Luz would spy a butterfly sipping a drop of water from a flower after a rain. Luz knew these butterflies would drink their fill, then pack it up, catch a warm breeze, and be on their way south.
As should she, Luz thought, and tugged at Serena’s leash. Once again, the butterflies had given her the sign she needed. She felt filled with hope for the next leg of her journey. “Let’s let them drink in peace,” she said to Serena, leading her away from the monarchs.