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Hear the Earth Breathe - Chapter 6

Brian made his way back to his tent in the boulder field, walking slowly. He hadn't brought his flashlight from his camp, but the starlight was bright enough to let him pick his way through the rocks. Even if he had a flashlight he wouldn't have turned it on; somehow the night seemed more appropriate to his mood; electric light would be an unwelcome intrusion.

Brian could feel something in his chest as he moved through the darkness; it was as if there was a line between him and Karen, wrapped around something deep inside him, stretching uncomfortably tighter the farther he went. As he approached his tent, he could still hear the murmur of voices from the other camp. He couldn't tell whose voice was whose beyond the differences in tone between men and women.

Brian stopped at the door of his tent. He was far from sleepy. Reaching into the tent he plucked his flashlight out of one of the mesh pockets that hung near the door, then went to his pack and pulled his down parka out of its stuff sack. The jacket had once been his father's. With his eyes closed, Brian pressed the cold nylon fabric against his face and inhaled deeply. He wanted to believe the smells that clung to the smooth lining belonged to his father, but he knew better. Shaking the garment out to fluff the down fill, he pulled it on as he walked toward the lake.

He reached the edge of the lake and flicked the flashlight on to determine where the shore stopped and the water started. In the dark it was impossible to tell. Even with the flashlight the still, clear water was nearly undetectable. He found a rock that protruded out into the lake and sat down before turning out the light.

He sat quietly, his hands tucked in the pockets of the parka, waiting for his eyes to readjust to the night. Now he could hear no noise from the other camp, only the movement of his own breath as it flowed in and out of his nostrils. He focused on breathing slowly and was able to eliminate the sound. Now the silence was deep and absolute. Brian closed his eyes. No, there was still a noise, a slight rhythmic whisper. After a few moments he realized it came from a pulse in his neck rubbing the whisker stubble on his throat ever so slightly against the nylon wind collar of his parka. With his eyes still closed, he tilted his head just a hair to one side and the sound stopped. Now he was ready.

On Brian's first backpacking trip into the Sierras, his father had walked him down to the shore of a lake after dark. They sat side by side on a rock and his father told him to sit still and listen.

"What are we listening for," Brian had asked.

"Ssshh," his father whispered, "just listen."

Brian sat as still as a nine year old boy could sit, his ears straining. "I don't hear anything," he said finally.

"That's right," his father answered. "You'll never hear that at home. It's a special, special gift the mountains give us."

Brian was interested in anything that had to do with gifts. "What else can they give us?"

"Well, there is one other gift, but I don't know if you're ready for that one. They only give it to certain people, and then, only once in a while, because it is so very precious."

"What is it? Can I have it?" Brian's eyes were wide in the starlight.

His father's face was very serious as he shook his head. "I don't know. You might still be a little young . . . "

"Dad!"

"Well, let's see what happens. You have to close your eyes and listen again, very hard."

"Okay!" Brian eagerly folded his hands in his lap and squeezed his eyes shut. He waited for what seemed an eternity. Still, as before, he heard nothing.

He opened one eye to peer up at the face of his father. His father sat beside him, his back straight and his face turned slightly upward to the stars. "You're not peeking, are you, Brian?"

Brian squeezed his eye closed. "No, sir."

"Okay. Keep listening."

And then, from somewhere above them on the slope of the mountain came the sound of small rocks trickling from one ledge to another.

"Did you hear it?" Brian's father asked.

Brian's eyes opened. "Yeah, but what was it?"

"That was the sound of the earth breathing."

"Breathing? The earth doesn't breathe."

"Not the way you and I do, but it does breathe, very slowly. Sometimes it's a tiny breath, like the one we just heard. Sometimes it's big, like an earthquake."

"I just heard some rocks or something."

"That was it! The earth was breathing and it made the rocks move."

"So how is that a gift?"

"Those rocks might have been there for a hundreds of years," his father said. "Maybe thousands. But they fell tonight, out of all the times they could've fallen, while we were here listening. The mountains have so many things to show us, Brian, if we can just sit still and listen."

Even after all the years since that night, Brian could still feel his father's strong arm reach around his shoulders and pull him close. It became a tradition on every backpacking trip they took together, on at least one night, to listen to the earth breathe. So Brian sat cross-legged on his rock on the shore of Guitar Lake, listening, and remembering.

From the other camp he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, first the crunch of boots on coarse ground, then the scuffing of hard rubber soles on rock. Irritated, he opened his eyes. The steps were coming straight toward him.

"Is that you, Brian?" It was Karen's voice. The irritation vanished.

"Yeah."

She stopped five yards from him. "I saw your light flick on and off. I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, I'm just sitting here. I wasn't sleepy."

"Me either." She moved to the edge of the lake and found a rock to sit on. "Oh, it's beautiful! The reflection of the stars, I mean."

Brian dropped his eyes to the lake's surface. He had been concentrating so hard on listening, he hadn't really noticed what she saw immediately.

The stars; billions of stars, dusted like powdered sugar on black velvet across the mountain sky and mirrored perfectly in the still water.

"It's almost like we're standing on a big asteroid floating through space," Karen said, "and there's this huge hole ripped through the middle of it that let's us see the stars underneath." Once the image fixed itself in Brian's mind he couldn't see it any other way, and staring down through the opening into the vastness of the universe suddenly made him dizzy, like he was standing on the edge of a great precipice with nothing to keep him from toppling over.

"No wonder you came down here," Karen said. "This is fantastic."

A meteor streaked through the sky below--above them--and it seemed so close Brian would have sworn he heard a hiss as it burned through the atmosphere.

"Wow!" each exclaimed, then they laughed.

After a few moments of companionable silence Karen asked, "So what does Brian think about while he's sitting here by himself?"

"Nothing. Everything. Right now I'm kind of wondering what Russ would say about you being out here."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I just get the impression that he's sort of the jealous type. By the way, I won't put you on the spot by asking you if you made him come down to the lake and apologize to me earlier."

She chuckled. "Thanks."

Another pleasant silence stretched between them before Brian asked, "So, is he?"

"Is who what?"

"Russ--is he the jealous type?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Well, he's kind of like . . . big. I'd hate to have him come over in the middle of the night and squash me with a big rock."

"I think he's just out of his comfort zone," Karen said. "I've been bugging him to go backpacking for a long time, but he always had some excuse. Now that he's here, he's Mr. Testosterone. It's like . . . he's not quite sure what he's supposed to get out of the experience, y'know? So he's acting out what he thinks it's all about. Maybe it was a mistake bringing him up here."

"They say you never really know a person 'til you go camping with them."

They sat quietly, soaking in the feel of the night. Brian wished the moon were up so he could see her better. The soft light of the stars washed the scene in tones of gray and black. The night had tinted Karen's hair into a dark frame around the pale oval of her face.

"So what would you be thinking about if you were out here alone?" he asked her. "Big wedding plans?"

"Yeah, kinda. "The wedding isn't until December. In some ways I'm not looking forward to it."

"Really? Why not, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Well, it's the father-giving-the-bride away part. It's not gonna happen; my dad died last fall in a traffic accident." Brian's reaction made his body jerk, but Karen didn't seem to notice. "I was in the car too. That's where the scar is from. I'd been seeing Russ for a year or so already, and about a month after my dad's funeral, he asked me to marry him. I've wondered off and on since then if I only said 'yes' as a kind of knee-jerk reaction to Dad's death. The closer the wedding gets the more uneasy I feel, y'know?"

Brian's heart was trying to punch its way out of his chest. He found it too hard to believe that meeting Karen was some kind of coincidence. There must be some cosmic reason for it.

"I missed almost a month of school and wanted to drop out," she went on, "but I know Dad would've wanted me to stick with it. It's been almost a year now and I still have trouble believing he's gone sometimes. I keep catching myself wanting to call him to tell him some little thing that happened to me, y'know, or to ask for his advice."

"Yeah," said Brian. He kicked himself mentally. What kind of response was "yeah"?

"I'm way better than I used to be," said Karen. "It's funny, one of the worst times was a couple of months after he died. I'd wake up sometimes in the morning and be lying there in bed, and I'd forget he was gone. Then all of a sudden it would come flooding back and I'd be devastated. How could I forget? My dad was dead! Instead of crying myself to sleep, I used to cry myself awake."

Brian knew exactly what she meant. "How did you get to be 'way better'?" he asked her.

"I think it was mostly for my mom. I was bad, but she came totally unglued. I couldn't afford to go to pieces, at least not the way she did. I had to help her get through it, and that helped me get through it."

Ashamed, Brian thought of his own mother. He had been no help to her at all, in fact, if anything, he had made things worse. "Didn't it seem kind of unfair that he had to die?"

"It's not like there's some big lottery or something," said Karen. "People die. Fairness has nothing to do with it. Suppose I wanted my dad to live, suppose I wanted it bad enough that he actually did. Should I be the only one that could make that happen?" she asked.

"Um . . . I guess not. No."

"Okay, so then everybody should be able to keep somebody from dying just by wanting it bad enough, is that what you're saying?"

"No, I think you said it," Brian reminded her.

"But do you agree?"

"No. I don't think everybody should have that power."

"But somebody should?"

"I . . . oh, I don't know!"

"See, that's the problem. Who should get the power? The answer is nobody. Because if there was power over death, then it follows there would be power over evil, because there is so much death caused by evil."

Brian's head was whirling. "But who decides what's evil? I believe in capital punishment, but millions of people think it's evil."

"Exactly. So let me ask you this--is there really such a thing as evil?"

"Absolutely. It's in the news every day."

"Who says?"

"Nobody has to say; it's obvious. It's in every newspaper, on every network."

"But how do you know it's evil?"

"I just know!"

"Then why shouldn't you, or some other person who knows what evil is, have the power to make it all stop?"

"Because somewhere there would be a line between what I think is evil and what somebody else thinks is evil."

"So?"

"So it wouldn't be right for me to dictate their behavior or beliefs based on what I believe."

"Yay!" Karen applauded softly in the stillness of the night. "So, let's see if we've got this figured out. The original question was, 'Don't I think it's unfair that my dad died?' right? And we decided . . . what?"

"We decided that since nobody should have power over another person's beliefs that nobody has the right to have the power over evil or death."

"And what does that have to do with the fairness of death?" Karen asked.

"It means that death is neither fair nor unfair."

"Uh-huh. That's how I feel about it anyway. We can't always equate fairness with what feels right. It felt wrong that my dad died. Sometimes it still does. But I'd go crazy if I thought it was unfair, because it would mean that somehow it could've been made fair before he died, and I would never know how, or when, or why."

Somewhere out on the black lake, a trout broke the surface of the water with a light splash and the image of the stars rippled in reply. Brian shook his head. "I'm going to have to think about this some more."

"You should. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just telling you how I handled it."

Brian nodded. The moment stretched on.

"You're wondering about the scar, aren't you?" Karen asked.

"No . . . well, yeah I did notice it."

"They shaved part of my head in the hospital. When I got out the hair was just growing back. My friends didn't know how to act around me; they couldn't take their eyes off the scar. I was scheduled for a couple of reconstructive surgeries, but when it came time for the first one, I couldn't . . . I couldn't go through with it."

Her voice started to crack. Brian rose to his feet and stepped back to the shore. It seemed only natural for him to squeeze in beside her on the rock and put an arm around her shoulders. "My dad was gone," she went on as if she hadn't noticed. "I got this scar in our last moment together, the last thing we ever shared. I couldn't just . . . just make it go away, anymore than I could make the memory of my dad go away. So I canceled the surgeries and I keep the hair buzzed, like a memorial, because I don't want to forget."

The urge to blurt out the story of his own father's death made Brian tremble, or was it Karen's body pressed to his side, and the fragrance of her hair in his nostrils? Something in him, some strange fear, wouldn't let the truth about his father come out. "And what about your friends?" he asked. He let his arm slip from her shoulders before she noticed the shivers running through him.

"I guess most of them figured I went off the deep end. Russ and Jeff and Carla are about the only ones who stuck it out," Karen said, "and sometimes I wonder about them, y'know, like are they just doing it out of pity?" Brian opened his mouth to ask a question, but she continued. "No, that's not fair. They're all good friends. I don't deserve them. But I still can't shake the feeling that Russ asked me to marry him because it seemed like the right thing to do."

"But you said, 'yes'."

A guilty tone crept into her voice. "I know. I think I was afraid. All of a sudden the world was a scary place and I needed somebody. I couldn't cry on Mom's shoulder; I had to be strong for her."

"Does Russ ever seem like he's having second thoughts?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think he does, but then I'm afraid it's just me being weird. I know he loves me, but I'm not sure what kind of love it is. I do know he would never admit it might've been a mistake."

"Do you think it was a mistake?"

"I don't know!" She stood up suddenly. "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this anymore. Thanks for listening, I gotta go. G'night." Before Brian could think of something to say, she hurried off toward her camp, leaving Brian by the shore of the mountain lake.

He rose to his feet, shrugging his neck deeper into the down-filled wind collar of his parka as he stared off into the darkness toward her camp. What happened? Had he pried too much? For a few more minutes he tried watching the reflection of the stars in the still water, but the appeal was gone and he headed back to his own tent.

He had just reached it when he saw a figure approaching from the other camp. It was too big to be anybody but Russ. For an instant Brian thought about snatching a rock from the ground, just in case.

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