I looked at the dried up stalks with hairy leaves and small brown flowers.
“Doesn’t look like much.”
“They’re rare. Very rare.”
Aaron said this with reservation.
I’m sure Aaron was waiting for me to ask him, why in the hell did you pick them then? When I didn’t, he continued.
“They grow from rhizomes. They’re pretty, with white and blue flowers. Some people use them as herbs. So,” Aaron said, “you never answered my question.”
“What question?”
I put the coffee cup and weeds back in the glove compartment.
“What you do for money if you don’t work?”
I sensed Aaron manipulating the conversation again.
“I haven’t really needed a lot of money, but my father had a life insurance policy. I get a few bucks off it every month.”
“I heard the rumor. Your dad died? In a whiteout?”
“Not a rumor. It’s true. He died on Mount Hood, along with my Uncle Mickey.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring it up.”
“It’s okay. It’s been three years.”
“Must still hurt.”
“More so for my mom than me.”
“You don’t miss him?”
I paused, thinking.
“Yes, at times I guess. He was never around much when I was young. He drove truck, an eighteen wheeler. Always out on the road. When he had time off, he’d somehow wind up here in California for his layover. Him and Uncle Mickey would go mountain climbing.”
“Shasta?”
“All over. Climbed Shasta many times. Rainer, Hood, Baker, and Whitney. Once, they went down to Mexico and climbed a mountain, Pico something or other. They wanted to climb Denali, but it never worked out.”
“The white mountain.”
“White?”
“Pico de Orizaba. That’s what the natives call Pico de Orizaba, Istakteptl, the White Mountain. In Mexico. Your dad ever take you climbing?”
“No. Too young, I guess. But I use to like it when he’d come home from the mountains. He’d always have a story to tell. And, for some reason, I loved the smell of his gear. Woodsy, smokey smell. Stinky, but I still loved to help him unpack. He always brought me a present. Kept it buried down at the bottom of his pack, so I’d have to help him unpack.”
“What kind of present?”
“Dolls. Made of wood.”
“Really? Didn’t think they made them out of wood anymore.”
“They don’t. He liked to carve, so he’d take a piece of wood on the road and up on the mountain with him. By the time he came back, he’d have a doll carved. They were pretty much just stick dolls with faces. I’d take the clothes off of my Barbies and dress them up. Put some makeup on them and they’d look store bought.”
“You still have them?”
“Yes. Somewhere. Packed away in boxes.”
“Sounds like you miss your dad more than you remember.”
“Maybe. What about you? Where do your parents live?”
“I don’t have any. Bernard is my god-father.”
I remembered Cherrie saying she thought Bernard was Aaron’s brother. God-father made more sense, and it removed one of the weird things off my checklist for the Delmons.
I asked about his parents.
“They’re dead?”
“Nope. They gave me away when I was young.”
“That sounds awful.”
Aaron pulled the truck onto the Castle Crags’ turnoff and onto a gravel road filled with water filled pot holes.
“It’s not. Not really. Not when everyone has a hand in your upraising.”
“But it must be hard...”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence.
As the front truck tire hit a pothole, water came gushing up through the floor board. It flipped the floor mat up.
I felt cold spray hit my legs. I raised them to avoid the second deluge.
Aaron cranked the wheel in an attempt to miss the potholes.
“Sorry about that.”
He pointed to the hole in the floor.
“That’s in case we run out of gas.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Stick your feet out. Run?”
I didn’t know whether to take Aaron serious or not. With his super powers, anything was possible. He saw the serious look on my face.
He busted out laughing.
“I’m kidding!”
Two could play the game. I kept a straight face and mimicked a British accent.
“Well, I find that fairly odd.”
Aaron went straight-faced.
“What’s fairly odd?”
“That your side doesn’t have a hole as well.”
He caught on.
We both broke into giggles.
He nodded. “You’re good. I like that.”
He tapped his lips.
“The British accent. You speak good English.”
“Just something I picked up from the boob tube.”
“You watch much?”
“Not anymore. We don’t have TV. Uncle Mickey never bothered with it.”
“Probably best. Not much good on.”
Aaron pulled the truck into the Castle Crags’ parking lot. A few vehicles sat in the parking lot. He stated the obvious.
“We’re here.”
I was glad to get out of the truck, to stretch, and to breathe deep of the mountain air. I did all three before excusing myself for the bathroom. I didn’t want to be caught on the trail hunting down a bush to hide behind. And I was feeling the effects of the coffee in more ways than one. As I recalled, there weren’t any bushes along the trail, just large trees with plenty of divide between them.
When I came out of the lavatory, I found Aaron sitting at the trail head, patiently waiting. He shouldered a small backpack with a water bottle hooked to the strap. I hadn’t thought of water.
Looks like I’m going to be a beggar today.
“Ready?” Aaron asked, as I approached.
I nodded.
Aaron wore a t-shirt, a blue jacket, and a pair of blue cargo pants, the zip off kind. I couldn’t help but notice; even his hiking boots were embedded with blue panels. With his flowing mane of blond hair, his piercing blue eyes, and his chiseled facial features, he reminded me of one of those ruggedly-good-looking models you see in the sport’s clothes catalogs. I imagined part of his compensation for working at the Fifth Season included a discount on clothing, shoes, and sporting goods.
He pointed to my feet.
“That all you got? Tennis shoes?”
“Yes. Thought about bringing my high heels, but figured they wouldn’t work very well,” I clutched my fingers, “pushing the truck in case we ran out of gas.”
I didn’t see it, but I sensed a grin on Aaron as he turned to the trail head.
“We’ll have to get you outfitted proper when we get back.”
I looked my clothes over. He was right. Next to him, I looked like a hobo fresh off the streets. Nothing matched. Nothing I wore could be considered all weather, except, maybe, the sports bra.
As we followed the trail through the forest, I caught glimpses of the crags, mainly the dome. Here and there, a chipmunk darted out and then scampered into hiding. Bird song filled the forest. Sun rays shot through the canopy.
Removed from the hubris of the city I felt relaxed and at ease.
Although I had a million questions for Aaron, I slipped into thought instead.
He did the same, not talking, just moving ahead in quiet solitude, and perhaps moving ahead too fast for my stride.
I could hear my own labored breathing. The air in the Craigs, as we gained elevation, grew thinner.
Aaron’s pace out stripped mine. He seemed to walk effortlessly, sliding through the forest—and the air—as though resistance and gravity had no hold on him.
I’d pick up the smell of scorched air, but when I tried to concentrate on the odor, it disap
peared. Forgetting it wasn’t a storm, I looked to the sky. I saw no clouds, no thunderstorm rumbling in the distance. I quickened my pace, caught up with Aaron, and reached out to draw in his fragrance. This time, the smell remained; scorched air mingled with manly sweat, a sweet-sour odor.
The smell sounds disgusting, like maybe the stench in a boy’s locker room after a football game, but it isn’t. Not to me anyway. It’s a pungent fragrance, like the kind you would pick up on from a lavender flower, where your nose, at first, because of the powerful smell, bolts, but your mind and the emotion generated by the aroma, invites more. I wanted to sniff a steady stream of Aaron’s scent, to fill my lungs with it, to make it mine, but like all good things, the smell came and went, which, of course, made me hunger for more.
I was deep in thought and focused on keeping up with Aaron, as well as concentrating on ingesting his smell, I didn’t see him come to a halt.
I rammed into him.
He turned sideways to get a look at me. “You okay.”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t see you stopped.”
We stood as close as we had ever been. Inches apart. I would have loved to have closed the gap, to have leaned into him, to have taken his sweat and mixed it with mine, to have savored his smell and his warmth, but even at this distance I felt a push against my body. It was as though he were emitting an invisible force, an impenetrable one where snowballs and a girl’s face cannot penetrate.
“You thirsty?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He handed me the water bottle.
As I reached into his space I expected to feel the force, but didn’t.
Did he have control over his aura? To weaken it at will?
Again I had a million questions to ask him, but bit my tongue.
I drank of his water knowing a second before he had his lips on the rim of the bottle. All I could taste was water, but the thought of us touching, lip to lip, even if it was through an inanimate object such as a bottle, gave rise to butterflies in my stomach and, in quick succession, a set of curled toes.
We stood at the edge of the forest, at the end of the trail. Before us we saw the gray stone of the granite arena surrounded by the Crown Dome and the spires. The sun, a watershed of light beyond the forest line, shone brilliant and piercing.
After my fiasco with Cherrie’s goggles up on the slopes of Mount Shasta and having to spend the day looking like a clown, I made sure to bring along my Flyliscious Star sun glasses.
I pulled these out of my pocket and put them on. There, I’m stylish as well as having my eyes protected from the intense sun. I expected Aaron to do the same.
He didn’t.
Before I knew it, Aaron moved six paces ahead of me.
I had to scurry to catch up.
“Isn’t it bright out here?” I asked. “You don’t need shades?”
“No,” I heard Aaron say between breaths without turning around, “I don’t wear them.”
“Maybe that’s why you didn’t see Louk on the mountain.”
You know those words where you want to bite your tongue off because you can’t take them back? Well these words, I would have liked to swallow whole. I couldn’t believe I had uttered them. I mentally punched myself in the teeth.
El Stupedo. Isn’t that where you nearly lost him last night? By accusing him of intentionally ramming Louk on the mountain? And now you’re saying he was careless?
Aaron stopped. He turned to face me.
I expected the worse. I shrunk, bracing for the onslaught I felt I richly deserved.
“I don’t need sun glasses,” he said, “because my eyes adjust to the light.”
I looked into his blue eyes. I saw two balls without a core. It was as though his pupils had completely vanished. It set me back on my heels, at first. I had seen cat eyes in the bright light react this way, their pupils closed to a slit. It’s un-nerving. Aaron’s eyes didn’t even have a slit. Just a tiny—very tiny—dot in the middle, one, if I hadn’t moved in closer, I would not have seen.
“How does that happen?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
“And you can still see?”
He reached out a hand. He placed it within touch of my face. With his thumb, he stroked a bit of something off my cheek.
“You had an eyelash there.”
At that very moment I was ready to sacrifice all of my eyelashes, just to have him repeat the procedure. Before I could say anything, he stepped back, turned, and headed up the trail. I wanted to apologize, but what does one say when they have their foot stuck in their mouth? Better to leave it alone.
I scurried to catch up.
We followed the trail up to the point where Cherrie and I sat the first day I saw Aaron and his twin cousins. I didn’t know if he remembered.
When we got to the split in the trail, Aaron stopped. He angled his head up to look at Crown Dome.
It was the exact same spot I had stood when I looked up to see the god-man looking down at me. I felt a deja-vu moment, except this time the god-man stood next to me.
The sun sat in the ten-o’clock position to our right. It basked the dome in a haze of yellow. Beyond the dome, far in the distance, we could see Mount Shasta. It rose up out of the flat plains, a monument to everything and everyone for hundreds of miles around.
I imagined Cherrie, with Jason in tow, was on her second or third snowboard run of the day. It would be a short day for them, I imagined, as I could feel the heat coming off the sun. It was certain to turn the snow to mush. I hoped it would also heat up the granite and crags so we could remove our coats and sweaters.
Aaron stood on higher ground than me. He turned to the east and faced the sun. He closed his eyes. He lifted his chin. I saw his chest expand, his nostrils widening, as he drew in a deep breath. A halo of fog wrapped around his head as he let out his air. It was a supernatural sight, one where the god-like man stands tall, his stance set angular, and he melds into the background of granite and Mother Nature, becoming as one.
The Law of One—had Aaron meant this to mean his surroundings as well?
If I sat down in Joe’s art class and attempted to paint the picture I currently viewed, I don’t think I could capture its essence. One had to be there to see and experience the way it made me feel. I felt apart, but as one, far removed from the daily drudgery of traveling through life. But my taste, once again, was but a sampling of Aaron’s indulgence.
I sensed Aaron had found purification at its utmost and, had not only located it, but was able to align in its path and extract the whole of it.
More questions rose to mind, but I kept my mouth shut and watched on in stunned silence as I basked on the periphery of Aaron’s enlightenment.
In minutes, Aaron pulled away. He pointed left, away from the trail that led to the dome.
“We’re going this way.”
I needed to say something, so I said, “We’re not climbing the dome?”
“I don’t think you can make it up there with tennis shoes, not when it is still wet with snow and ice. We’ll go to the window.”
“Window?”
“That’s what everyone calls it. It’s a cut out in the granite wall. Gives you a bird’s eye view of Mount Shasta and the valley. You can see for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. You’ll love it.”
I looked around and, after catching my breath, said, “I love it out here.”
I wanted to say, I love it out here with you, or anywhere else for that matter. I felt as though I was ready to follow Aaron to the ends of the earth and, right now, it felt like I was following him to the heavens.
Up and up, we climbed, stair stepping up the granite ledges and faces of the crags. It grew warmer. Aaron and I shed our coats.
I looked to tie my coat around my waist.
“You want me to put it in my back-pack?” Aaron said, as he handed the water bottle to me.
“Sure. Thanks.”
I found Aaron as thoughtful as any boy or, for that matt
er, any man I had known. He seemed to have an acute sensitivity for my welfare and comfort. I didn’t know if he was trying to impress me or if it was just his nature. Either way, I didn’t care. I took pleasure in his attention.
The last step to the window stood two feet in height, a bit much for me to scale.
Aaron reached down.
“Give me your hand.”
Gladly!
We locked palms and fingers. His strength and my anticipation of his embrace floated me up and over the obstacle. As I scaled the last step onto the precipice, I fell into his arms. For a second or two he held me in suspension, physically and emotionally.
Our eyes met.
I stared into Aaron’s deep pools of blue, absent the pupils. His scent overwhelmed my senses. I’m sure my fragrance filled his nostrils, as well. Heat welled up between us. I expected him to reach out, to touch my face, to pause, and to move in to touch my lips.
Instead, he pulled away.
“You’ve got to see this,” he said.
I followed him across the deck of granite, which measured six feet across and half again as wide. Walls of rock closed us in on both sides. It was as if someone had come along and cut a chunk out of the side of the mountain’s wall and left a gaping hole.
Before me, spread out for miles, lay a sea of pine trees, all of them shaped in the form of Christmas trees. Beyond the forest, glistening white and bright under the intense September sun, rising out of the flatlands, sat Shasta. Her rugged features hid, silhouetted in shadows. On top of her head, layered clouds hung in suspension like a stack of pancakes. Against this back drop, a blue sky, as azure as any I had ever seen, filled the space to the horizon.
Birds floated beneath us. As I traced their paths, I suddenly realized how high we stood. Looking down, I guessed the wall, on which I stood, fell one-thousand feet or more.
“How high are we?” I asked.
“Three thousand. Maybe more.”
I backed away from the edge and sat down on a small wedge of granite. I pinned my back to a wall. The strain of fright could be heard in my voice.
“You come up here often?”
“To the Crags? Probably once a week.”
“Every week?”
“Every week that I can. Tough going in the winter months. Snows heavy up here.”
“I can see why you’d want to come.”
Solstice - Of The Heart Page 18