“Yeah,” she said in a softer voice. “Let ’em go. We have those waterworks for a reason.”
Green looked away.
She clapped a big hand on his shoulder and squeezed once. Then, to his surprise, she pulled him into a tight hug. There was no resisting.
She released him and slapped him on the back.
“There we go. Morning is here. Your favorite camp owner is here too.”
There was a brown smear on the shoulder of Dancer’s Carhartt coat from his wounded face.
“I got blood on your coat.”
“It’ll wipe off. Or add character. Whichever. Now, drink your tea. You’re safe. You’re on your feet and, heck, have you even been to your site yet?”
Green picked up the metal mug. It was almost too hot to hold, which made it just perfect.
Dancer motioned for him to follow and moved down the narrow path from his parking spot.
It wasn’t a tunnel through endless brush. It was an archway leading to an open hall with living tree pillars.
The rear of Green’s campsite sloped down and away into a river valley. The view was like something out of a fantasy, a painting of idyllic mountain solitude. Not the stone and snow of the Rockies. These were the Appalachian Mountains. The Catskills. Far older than the Rockies. Blunt and thick with trees.
Whereas images of the Rockies made Green think of the barren austerity of lunar landscapes, these were living mountains, a place where the rolling lands were less an obstacle to life and more a showplace for it. Raked seats in an auditorium. A colossal curio cabinet lovingly displaying treasures of flora and fauna.
He realized what he couldn’t have known the night before. His campsite was stunning. Dancer had given him a gift wrapped in night.
It was the worst morning of his life and, somehow, it made him feel present and alive within himself in an entirely new way. He felt drunk on contradiction. He was living a nightmare and a dream come true.
Green clutched his steaming mug and looked into the distance. Dancer let him. She sipped her own tea and didn’t say a word.
“What kind of tea is this?”
“It’s sassafras. Good for a spiteful tummy. Probably won’t fix a broken face.”
He smiled. It hurt.
“There he is. There’s my new acquaintance starting to feel likehimself again, based on the fifteen minutes I’ve known you and wild speculation about your character.”
“Last night—” Green began, but Dancer interrupted.
“Hang on, bud. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs prompts me to ask where’s your GD coat?”
Green looked down at his coat. It was from Macy’s. Windproof. Rain resistant. Stylized pine tree logo. He hooked a thumb at the garment.
“Yeah, no. That’s a jacket at best. I mean a coat. A real coat. Coat. Noun. An ugly, knobby thing, like a couch you can wear. A windowless dungeon for body heat. The ancient technology that allowed any of us hairless apes to follow our foolish whims and wander away from the caring bosom of our sweet mother Africa. A REAL COAT.”
“This is what I have.”
Dancer frowned and walked back to the car. He followed. She looked in the windows, then she started opening doors and pawing through Green’s gear.
She commented on each item as she took inventory.
“No. Wrong. Weird. Wrong again. Weird some more. Good for a different season. Good for a different part of the world. Cute, but wrong. Weird again. Don’t know what this is. Survivalist BS. Expensive and wrong.”
She emerged long enough to throw Green the hat she had given him the night before. He had abandoned it on the passenger seat.
“Cover your head.”
