Wild

“Sure,” I said immediately. “I’ll take a cup of tea.”

I’ve never seen a house inside a truck that failed to strike me as the coolest thing in the world and Clyde’s was no different. Orderly and efficient, elegant and artful, funky and utilitarian. There was a woodstove and a tiny kitchen, a row of candles and a string of Christmas lights that cast enchanting shadows around the room. A shelf lined with books wound around three sides of the truck, with a wide bed tucked against it. I kicked off my new sandals and lay across the bed, pulling books off the shelf as Clyde put the kettle on. There were books about being a monk and others about people who lived in caves; about people who lived in the Arctic and the Amazon forest and on an island off the coast of Washington State.

“It’s chamomile that I grew myself,” Clyde said, pouring the hot water into a pot once it boiled. While it steeped, he lit a few of the candles and came over and sat next to me on the bed, where I lay belly-down and propped up on my elbows, paging through an illustrated book about Hindu gods and goddesses.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked as we looked together at the intricate drawings, reading bits about them in the paragraph of text on each page.

“I don’t,” he said. “I believe we’re here once and what we do matters. What do you believe?”

“I’m still trying to figure out what I believe,” I answered, taking the hot mug he held out to me.

“I have something else for us, if you’d like, a little something I harvested up in the woods.” He pulled a gnarly root that looked like ginger from his pocket and showed it to me in his palm. “It’s chewable opium.”

“Opium?” I asked.

“Except it’s way more mellow. It just gives you a relaxed high. You want some?”

“Sure,” I said reflexively, and watched as he sliced off a piece and handed it to me, sliced another piece off for himself and put it in his mouth.

“You chew it?” I asked, and he nodded. I put it into my mouth and chewed. It was like eating wood. It took a moment for me to realize that maybe it would be best to steer entirely clear of opium, or any root that a strange man gave me, for that matter, regardless of how nice and non-threatening he seemed. I spit it into my hand.

“You don’t like it?” he said, laughing and lifting a small trash can so I could toss it in.

I sat talking to Clyde in his truck until eleven, when he walked me to the front door of the club. “Good luck up there in the woods,” he said, and we embraced.

A moment later, Jonathan appeared and led me to his car, an old Buick Skylark he called Beatrice.

“So how was work?” I asked. Sitting beside him at last, I didn’t feel nervous the way I had when I’d been in the bar and he’d been watching me.

“Good,” he said. As we drove into the darkness beyond Ashland, he told me about living on the organic farm, which was owned by friends of his. He lived there free in exchange for some work, he explained, glancing over at me, his face softly lit by the glow of the dash. He turned down one road and another until I had absolutely no sense of where I was in relation to Ashland, which for me really meant where I was in relation to Monster. I regretted not having brought it. I hadn’t been so far from my pack since I began the PCT, and it felt strange. Jonathan turned in to a driveway, drove past an unlit house where a dog barked, and followed a rutted dirt road that took us back among rows of corn and flowers until finally the headlights swooped across a large boxy tent that was erected on a wooden platform and he parked.

“That’s my place,” he said, and we got out. The air was cooler than it had been in Ashland. I shivered and Jonathan put his arm around me so casually it felt like he’d done it a hundred times before. We walked among the corn and the flowers under the full moon, discussing the various bands and musicians one or the other or both of us loved, recounting stories from shows we’d seen.

“I’ve seen Michelle Shocked live three times,” Jonathan said.

“Three times?”

“One time I drove through a snowstorm for the show. There were only like ten people in the audience.”

“Wow,” I said, realizing there was no way I was going to keep my pants on with a man who’d seen Michelle Shocked three times, no matter how repulsive the flesh on my hips was.

“Wow,” he said back to me, his brown eyes finding mine in the dark.

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow,” he repeated.

We’d said only one word, but I felt suddenly confused. We didn’t seem to be talking about Michelle Shocked anymore.