Hide and go seek

I got a package from Ewalt, why he was sending me a package was anyone’s guess. It felt light enough to be empty. I waited until I got back to my room to open it. Brent had been way too interested in the box. I trusted him to a point, private packages were not part of that trust.

Once I’d sliced through the massive taping job and got it open I found a small scribbled note. I set the box to the side and sat on my bed to read it:

Greetings,
I think this should find you in good health and spirits. What lays in this box may be of use to you. At some point it may be of great importance to me and a certain friend we have in common. Guard this well, it cannot be replaced, and should ever the need arise, it holds a way to get to places you don’t want to go, but you’ll have to go. You are the only other I trust with it.

If you receive a letter from J. find the secrets within and come without haste.

Regards,

E.E.

As thrifty with words in letters as in person. I was more confused now than before. I laid the letter to the side and dug past the paper into the box. I grabbed the soft item and pulled it out.

Oh, no. Why did Ewalt send me this?

Of all the things I expected today, this was not it. I felt my heart speed up as I pressed my nose into the soft belly of a bear I knew well. I inhaled deeply and found the soft scent of its owner. Vanilla. Memories rolled over me. Time enough for those later, now was not it. I shoved those aside and inspected my prize.

The bear’s name was Sweet Bear. I was told that is the name her son used for it. It stuck. He was a soft brown, and less fuzzy than he’d been when I last saw him. The jaunty red ribbon that had adorned his neck was long gone. The patch I’d sewn on his foot was still there and worn down. He’d seen a few more patch jobs in the years since we parted ways. Not a bad looking bear given his advanced age.

I flipped him over and looked to see if there was anything attached to it, I found nothing obvious on Sweet Bear that would indicate the dire importance the letter referenced. I sat him gently in my lap and rummaged in the box hoping to find whatever Ewalt had wanted me to find.

There was nothing, only the bear and letter.

Not wanting the bear to go missing a second time, I shoved him into my rucksack and laid back down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

How was I going to get this back to Cory? I’d figure it out later, for now I’ll hold onto it. It was as close to her as I could get.

I got up and pulled him back out of the bag and curled into a ball on my bed. I hugged him close and pulled a blanket over us both. I closed my eyes and let the memories have me, I could face anything right now. I had her bear smelling faintly of her and it was enough.

# (skinned knees)

A few days after the first night camping on Mars, I realized I was welcome. Cory seemed to have a routine down. In the morning before first light she always went and collected buckets and buckets of water for the day. She emptied the black water tank carefully into a bucket and disposed of it in the campground manhole. Then she took a shower in the communal public access area. Her next task was tidy up the sleeping areas and make a small fire in the grill she kept stored on the counter. I did my best to stay out of her way.

I wasn’t willing to risk being uninvited. Cory was right, it was like camping on Mars out here. I easily saw how she had gone so long undetected and oblivious to the world.

Morton, the small town where Roosevelt State Park is located is as far off the beaten path as one can go and still be somewhere. It is a city comprised of farm lands, migrant workers, dirt poor families, and chicken farms. The town always vaguely smells of chicken poop. A very ammonia heavy smell overlaid the town always. For the people who called it home, it was unnoticed, for anyone visiting, it took a bit to grow accustomed too. It is the sort of place, you fully expect someone to strike a deal with the devil at the crossroads to escape. For a woman dealing with grief and camping illegally, it was a solid choice of escape.

Cory had two modes, on or off.

If she was in on mode, she worked until she dropped, she fished every morning for food, if the catch was good, we ate well. If the catch was not good, we resorted to Cory’s peanut butter stash and acorn bread. She explained how to bark a squirrel off a tree limb with only a slingshot and then confessed she hadn’t been able to kill more than one. Squirrel, though plentiful, was clearly off her menu. Acorn bread, slightly bitter with an earthy dirt taste was not off the menu.

The process involved in that was arduous and time consuming to keep it from being poisonous. She had it down pat. It did not look easy. She roasted them by the pan full in their shell. Then she shelled them and steeped them repeatedly in boiling water, I never was clear what she was looking for in the water process, but she intuitively knew it by sight and smell. I just thought “dirt” from the scent. Then she pounded them into paste and added grease and powdered milk and water until a paste was made then fried them like tortillas in her faithful cast iron. Acorn bread was filling and tasty, and underscored how determined a person she was capable of being. Cory was adept at living off the land, she took only what she needed and never more.

If she was in off mode, she was curled with a book in the fading light of the day in her chair in front of the camper. Always with a highlighter and notepad to scribble her important thesis stuff onto. She would scrunch up her nose and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear in the most fetching of ways. I couldn’t not watch her for that nose crinkle. I’d come to realize it meant she was thinking hard. The crinkle preceded her note taking by mere seconds, and would leave as abruptly as it had appeared. She was never the main course for the ever present mosquitos, I however, was the buffet or decoy that allowed her to blissfully enjoy the April weather in Mississippi.

“Why don’t we go inside before these mosquitos eat me alive?” I asked her with a smile. Cory looked up at me with a dazed look. The sort of look you get when pulled abruptly from sleep or a particularly real feeling daydream. She smiled her half smile, the one with only her left side of her mouth quirked up and the dimple there flashing briefly. A smile I was beginning to recognize as mischief. A smile I was starting to long for to appear more often and be directed at me.

She set her book and papers down under her chair and stretched herself out plank style in the chair. Her smile never faltered as she stood up and walked over to me sitting on the pull out steps of her camper. She reached down and grabbed me by the hand and yanked me to my feet.

I stumbled a bit with the unexpected momentum, and she caught me. This brought us face to face, close enough to feel her moist breath on my lips. I leaned forward, but she backed up and rapidly put distance between us before the kiss I was going for could find its mark. Her smile fell with this distance. I saw the playful moment that had been glittering in her green eyes dim to the normal guarded gaze.

I kept a tight hold on her hand as she tried to yank it away. She gave me a look. One I couldn’t decipher. It was somewhere between the look of someone who has been hurt or that will hurt you to secure their freedom. Sometimes it’s both. I released her hand and waited. Waited to see if she would speak or grump off to be alone.

“Do you want to play hide and go seek?” The light had come back into her eyes, not as bright, but enough to give me hope.

“Are you kidding me? We are two fully grown adults, and you want to play a kid’s game?” I hoped she wasn’t serious. The last thing we should be doing is wandering around hiding in bushes. Sunset was probably only an hour or two at most off, I guessed from gauging the horizon and fading light. The mosquitos would be out in force soon. I was leery of being too far from shelter to hide in.

“Tag!” she yelled as she whirled off on her toes and sprinted off into the deeper areas of thicket.

I’ll be damned, she wasn’t kidding. I wondered how long I was supposed to wait before going to look or chase her. It had been a lifetime ago since I had played.