Well, guess what? I’m not bluffing. I drop the poles, dust off my hands, and walk over to the cooler, where I pull out a Diet Coke. I pop open the can while taking a seat on the log. “Looking forward to my slumber.”
“As if you’d really sleep without a tent.”
“I would. Try me.”
I challenge her with a stare off, and after a few seconds, she grumbles, “Just come help me.”
“Pole six connects to pole seven,” I yell. “It says it in the instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“The instructions next to your foot. Just find pole six!”
“I did. It’s right here,” she yells back as she holds it up to the sky.
“Then insert it.”
Nostrils widening, anger searing, she says, “And like I said before, it doesn’t freaking fit.”
“It’s supposed to fit. It says so in the instructions.”
“This one doesn’t fit. Maybe it belongs to another set.”
“Let me see that,” I say as I snag the pole from her and take in the number. My expression falls as I look back at Scottie. “This is pole nine.”
“No, it’s six,” she says.
“It’s fucking nine,” I shout back. “See this line under the foot of the number? That indicates it’s a nine.”
“What line?” She takes the pole from me and examines it. “Huh, I didn’t see that. Well, consider me wrong.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What are the odds of that happening?”
“I don’t know, fifty-fifty?”
“You can be so smug at times, you know that?”
“Scottie, just find the fucking six pole!”
“Do you see it right there?”
“Where?” Scottie asks as I point toward a branch on a tree.
“See that big branch that looks like a camel’s back? Three branches up, that spot of red. That’s it.”
She follows my direction and says, “That’s it?”
“Yup, that’s it. A scarlet tanager. Beautiful, right?”
“Stunning.”
“It’s a male.”
“How do you know?”
“The brightly colored ones are male. Females have olive backs and brown wings.”
