"That's another thing. Who the fuck can be expected to shave with cold water? It's barbaric!"
"What are you talking about? Shaving's barbaric anyway! Hell, if you weren't supposed to have hair on your face it wouldn't start growing. That's what I say."
He ran his fingers through a thick beard tinted generously with deep flashes of red.
Johnny looked at him sourly.
"Yeah, well, something like that could get caught in a branch or something. You want me to start calling you Absolom?"
"Aw, shut up! Here, have some coffee."
The bacon turned a darker and darker shade of brownish red, and when it seemed to be just about done, Rod dipped into his backpack and pulled out a small carton wrapped in two towels. Inside were six eggs, each wrapped in paper towels to cushion them.
"See there, you sorry hound? You laughed at me, but I told you it would be worth it. Save the freeze dried shit for later. On that first morning, there won't be anything at all to compare to a real breakfast of real eggs and bacon."
Johnny's face still wore a scowl that seemed to be permanently etched into his skin, but his eyes perked up with renewed interest.
"Here, pour me some coffee, will you?" he asked Rod.
"Pour it yourself, asshole. Can't you see there's serious business taking place here?"
He very carefully cracked each egg till it was circled with a jagged ring of fractures, then delicately pried each half apart, splitting the small sac beneath the shell and let the egg fall with a plop into the bacon grease.
"I hate broken yolks. Nothing fucks up breakfast worse than a broken yolk."
Johnny looked at him like he was mad.
"What's it matter? An egg's an egg. What if you scrambled the fuckers?"
Rod stared at him like he was the most uncouth asshole that ever lived.
"Well Godfuckindamnit, I ain't scrambling the damn things, and if you're so indifferent about the whole thing, you get the broken yolk if I fuck up."
"The hell you say. I don't want a broken yolk."
"Asshole," muttered Rod continuing the painstaking process of starting the day out right.
And it was important too. This was the first day of their annual backpacking excursion into the wilderness. They'd begun the tradition eleven years ago, each year choosing a different area to explore. Usually they would spend two weeks in the wilds, leaving jobs, friends and all the burdens of civilization far behind.
Both were divorced now, but when they had been married, these trips had been a problem, so much so that they even brought their wives along one year.
Never again. Rod, in fact, traced the break-up of his marriage directly to that ill fated trip. He thought of it now and began to laugh.
"What's so damn funny," Johnny asked, still feeling like the world had something against him.
"Oh, it's real hard for me to get up in the morning and fix breakfast like this without thinking about dear old Louise."
Johnny thought about it for a second and started to laugh too.
"Yeah, that was too bad. Ah, women don't belong up here. It's too damn rugged for 'em."
"No, Louise had a liking for the wilderness. She just didn't like bears."
"That bastard sure took a liking to her though, didn't he?"
"Yeah, but it was the flood that really did her in."
"That's for sure. Mabel didn't get along too good after that either."
Rod thought back on the ill-fated venture. "Probably not having any clothes left when the rescue crews finally caught up with us didn't help either," he mused.
"Yeah. She did kind of shy away from the TV cameras."
They both started to laugh hard at the recollection. Johnny stood up and cracked his vertebrae, stretched and exhaled deeply. His breath puffed into a small cloud and dispersed into the morning. Then he winced.
"Goddamn! I swear to God, I'll never get used to sleeping on the fucking ground."
He rubbed the small of his back in obvious agony.
Rod regarded him with a mixture of sympathy and contempt.
"I just might leave your sorry ass home next time after all. Listen you sorry clown, we've got fifteen miles to cover today if we're gonna sleep on top of Kingman's Dome, and I'm going to be sorely pissed if you can't make it."
"Hey, I'll make it. I'll make it. I'm just getting too old for this garbage, that's all."
"You're thirty years old! How the hell can that be too old? I'm thirty two! What's that make me? Crippled?!"
Johnny threw a pine cone at him to shut him up and wandered down to the creek to splash water in his eyes, maybe wake himself up.
And to think, he muttered to himself, I could have been putting a couple of six-packs on ice right now giving Cheryl, or maybe Charlene, or what the fuck maybe both of them a call on the phone to come over and watch the game with me and then…
But he didn't mean it. The day was young and just as soon as he could figure out a way to wake up and make his joints stop hurting, he'd be ready enough to get out in it. If only they had a couple of women with them. That's all. Didn't seem like too much to ask. Just a couple of nice sweet women who'd do nothing but fuck their eyes out. Yeah! He warmed to the idea as he splashed the cold water over his face.
Oh well. Like Rod said. What didn't get packed they'd damn sure do without. He looked around, took in a deep breath and for no reason at all other than the fact that he felt utterly alone in the world, he let out a mighty roar. The sound bounced off the surrounding mountains, returning again and again in diminishing echoes till at last, there was again stark, naked silence. No question about it. They weren't going to find any women up here waiting for them.
Carrie stood at the clearing leaning over the wooden fence. Out in the field she saw him.
In the brilliance of the early morning sun he stood motionless, a statue sculpted from black onyx, polished by the wind and rain, separated out of our own time, defining a space all his own.
She put two fingers to her mouth and let out a shrill whistle.
Suddenly, he was fluid with motion.
The mighty head turned towards her and with an imperial shake, he broke at once into a rapid trot spilling over to a slow gallop as he made straight for her.
He came up to where she leaned against the fence, nuzzled his face against her hand and neighed softly.
She had no name for him feeling somehow that would preserve the magic she felt in his presence.
That was the word for it. Magic. She knew nothing of his true owners, only that their landowning were extensive. Her father never spoke of them. They were forbidden to ask, and the idea of any exploratory contact was such a taboo that not even Carrie in her rebellious independence would seriously challenge her father on such a serious issue. Yet.
But the magnificent stallion before her represented the first chinks in the wall he'd constructed around her life, the first steps outward, away, seeking a world of her own.
She'd discovered him five months ago. She'd begun to wander further and further and further from their sanctuary, seeking to uncover more and more of the world that had been denied her, moving, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps by design in the direction of the taboo lands, where the possibility of human contact might actually present itself.
Instead, this meadow, this steed had appeared.
The first day she felt an attraction she could scarcely focus her mind upon, much less verbalize.
She'd hopped the fence immediately, in awe of such a beast. The very first time she'd seen a horse. It somehow came to symbolize the vast quantity of other experiences that had also been kept from her.
Through some instinctive communication system that functioned beneath the filter of language and mind, she understood how to ride him, how to control him, and he accepted her from the first.
A graceful spring and she was up, arms wrapped around his neck, knees digging into his powerful ribs, and they were off across the meadow. It never occurred to her that he belonged to someone else and that they might object. She simply did what she felt like doing.