Annie laughed. “Yeah, there’s weird stuff down there. Tourists, I mean. Lots and lots of tourists. Really weird tourists. The place is full of them. All running around and bumping into people. And yapping. Always yapping.”
“Oh,” Mike said, disappointed.
“But it is interesting, Mike,” Annie continued. “There are bats at the entrance, but they don’t fly during the day. They come out at sunset. Probably too hot for them during the day.”
“Is it really hot in Carlsbad?” Mike asked.
“Hell, yes, it’s hot,” said Annie emphatically. “One time it was one hundred fourteen degrees in the shade. My boyfriend and I went to the caves that day to get out of the heat. Afterwards, we rode the elevator up to ground level, but we weren’t allowed to go outside the visitor’s center until we had adjusted to the change in the temperature. It was sixty degrees in the caves, and it was eighty degrees in the visitor’s center.”
“Wow,” Mike exclaimed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been anyplace that was over one hundred degrees. San Francisco usually doesn’t get to ninety degrees.”
That perked up Annie’s interest. “Are you from San Francisco, Mike?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mike replied. “My family lived on a small road just off Geary Boulevard. It’s not far from Golden Gate Park. My Dad was a teller at a bank on Market Street. Every work morning, he would take the bus to Powell Street, and then he would ride the cable car down to Market Street. That is, if it had room. In the mornings, it usually did, but in the afternoon he usually had to walk back up to Geary Street and catch the bus home, because there were too many tourists on the cable car by then. There’s a turnaround close to the bank, but in the afternoon there’s a line of tourists waiting to ride the cable car.”
Mike was silent. Memories came flooding into his mind. He remembered walking up to steep Coit Tower, and eating shrimp cocktails at Fisherman’s Wharf, and the times he had stood in line to share a chocolate sundae with his brother at Ghirardelli Square. Tears gathered in his eyes.
Annie was watching him. She knew that he was remembering. For a moment, her own thoughts drifted back to her lost home. She remembered sitting on the bluffs over the caves. From there, she would imagine that she could see down into Texas. She remembered passing through oil stinky Artesia, the day her boyfriend stole his father’s car and drove them to Roswell to visit the silly alien museum and the more interesting Goddard Museum.
There were, Annie realized, things that she and this boy had in common. Enough melancholy. She searched for a subject guaranteed to take Mike’s mind off the past.
“Since you’re from San Francisco, does that mean you’re gay?” she asked nonchalantly.
Mike broke away from his thoughts. “What?” he asked.
“Are you gay?” Annie repeated. “Do you like boys?”
Mike laughed. “Believe it or not, almost all guys from San Francisco like girls.” He gazed at her, and then suddenly she saw the gleam in his eyes.
“Oh, yes, Annie,” he said softly. “I like girls.”
For some reason, Annie blushed. Ignoring the gleam in his eyes, she muttered, “That’s Sergeant Jenkins to you, kid.”
Shortly after that, they crawled into their sleeping bags. In a little while, Annie heard Mike’s slow breathing. Annie was restless. She tried to think about how she would write her report. She tried to focus on the day ahead. But her mind kept coming back to that gleam in Mike’s eyes. She had no doubt that Mike liked girls. And for some reason, her body had chosen that night to remind her that she liked boys.
It was time to make their way back to the post. They traveled farther to the west going back. It was wetter. There were several days when it snowed. They were about a week from the post, one frosty morning. They were traveling down a deer trail, and there was a light sprinkle of snow on the ground. As usual, Mike was following Annie. Mike heard Annie gasp and at the same moment, he heard a loud spine chilling roar.
“Back, Mike, get back!” she yelled.
She was slinging her rifle from her shoulder. Mike stumbled back on the wet ground and fell to one knee. He heard another enormous growl. Annie was trying to back away, when she stumbled over Mike. She fell over him to the ground, and her rifle slammed into the snow covered mud.
“Get back, Mike!” she yelled again, as she tried frantically to lever a cartridge into the chamber.
But the rifle was jammed. Cursing, she looked up, and then she froze. It was if she was watching a living image from the distant past. The California brown bear stood on all fours, growling, his snout was thrust forward. The young man was standing motionless facing the bear, holding his spear cocked behind his ear. Annie sucked in a breath and held it. She could only watch; there was no time to clear her rifle. Whatever happened would happen.
“Mike,” she whispered, fear for his life and wonder at his brave audacity, surging through her.
“Be quiet, Annie,” he murmured firmly.
The bear’s growls subsided to huffs. The huge animal stood there silently watching Mike. Mike did not move. Annie held her breath. For a long moment, the boy and the bear faced each other. Finally the bear growled one last time, and then it swung around and ambled down the trail, before it turned and disappeared into the trees.
Annie needed to pee, and she needed to hit something. Her fear began to morph into anger. Growling, not unlike the bear, she sprang to her feet. When the boy turned, she grabbed the front of his jacket and lifted him to his toes.
“You better get this straight, Chief,” she snarled. “When we run into danger like that, you get to the rear.”
“No.” He said this firmly without any expression in his eyes.
“What did you say?” she asked incredulously.
“No.”
She flung him backwards, and he landed on his butt in the mud. Reacting now to the danger, she began panting. Momentarily, she stared at him, and then she strode past him. Her extreme anger was unreasonable; she knew this, but at this moment, she was unable to control it. She hurried up the trail, putting some distance between them. Mike followed silently.
They caught a break. Before nightfall, they found an old miner’s shack. Inside, they found two ancient beds with plain old fashioned springs and filthy mattresses. They were too tired to care. They threw their bags on the mattresses, and they sacked out.
Annie awoke just after midnight. She lay there in the darkness, thinking about the incident with the bear. She remembered vividly the sight of Mike fearlessly facing the bear. No, not fearlessly. He was afraid. He was very afraid. Somehow, she knew that. So, why did he do it? Why didn’t he run like I told him? You know why he didn’t run. He wouldn’t have run in any case, because there was someone he had to protect. But even more, he would not have run, because she was the one he was protecting.
In the past five weeks, she had sensed the growing attraction he felt for her. Why? She hadn’t been exactly friendly towards him, and she had ignored his feelings. She had ignored the way she was beginning to feel about him. But she was attracted to him, too, and now in the quiet of the night, she faced that feeling.
Dammit, dammit, dammit, it was those damn horses. It was that day in the green valley, when they had sat there, together, watching the beauty of those animals. As she had watched the mares running and the yearlings prancing against the backdrop of those majestic snow covered granite peaks, for the first time since the coming of the Fog, she felt real joy, and she was glad that it was Mike who was there with her.
But he’s just a kid! Well, all right, he’s more than a kid. But he’s what? Sixteen years old?