It could’ve been a day later he was interrupted, a harsh voice piercing his silent despondence as it hit him in the face. Not unlike a shovel. He looked up sharply from where his vision was blurred and distorted from where he’d stared at one spot for so long. The woman who’d spoken was on the older side, perhaps in her fifties, and she wore a colorful woven shawl and yoga pants. He blinked at her, certain he’d seen her before.
“What’re you doing?” She snapped, making her way briskly up the path to where he sat. “This isn’t a park, move on.”
“Eleanor?” He didn’t remember the name until he said it. The woman stopped curiously, but she only stopped for a moment, continuing her pace toward him not quite as briskly. There were gears in Albert’s mind that hadn’t turned in years, and they dusted off their cobwebs now. As she approached, her features became clearer to him. She and her husband, Jim, had introduced him and his family to the rest of the commune when they’d first arrived. He hadn’t spoken to her much then, but he remembered her husband speaking to him firmly about a fight he didn’t remember losing. She looked older now, but it was still her.
Proof it had happened.
“Who are you?” She asked as she finally reached the circle of log seating around the remains of the bonfire.
“I…” I’m Albert Oliver Felix.
“I…” I’ll leave.
“I…” I’m sorry.
“Whoa hey, hold on.” She placated him as he stammered, her eyes suddenly filled with concern. Albert hadn’t seen his own appearance in a long time, but he imagined it must’ve been bad. He was ragged and exhausted and stiff from sitting so long. He didn’t know what face he was making while he was filled with so much longing and emptied of so much hope at the same time. He also realized, however distantly, that he was shaking as he looked down at his arms resting on his knees. Maybe he was cold and he hadn’t noticed.
“I know you.” That was all he said. He wanted to get up and find somewhere else to rest. That's what he usually did when people caught him trespassing, but he couldn’t. Where would he go? For as long as he could remember moving he’d been moving in this direction, what now?
“You do?” She asked, clearly not recognizing him in return. Albert nodded, squeezing his eyes shut as the movement made his vision spin. Another shiver wracked him and he braced himself against it, trying not to let it show.
“Your…you and your husband introduced me to the commune,” Albert explained.
“What?” She squawked. “That commune was a disaster. It fell apart after a year.” She informed him. Albert laughed at the ground, hating how it hurt his chest, hating how he couldn’t stop.
“Of course it did.” He said bitterly. “I was eleven.”
“Roberta’s boy!” She exclaimed almost in the middle of Albert’s sentence as if it had suddenly come to her. “You were here over the summer, always sneaking off with that girl.” She said, crouching down to look at him, it didn’t look comfortable. He snapped his eyes open to look at her, unsure when he’d closed them.
“You knew about that?”
“Oh goodness, everyone knew about that.” She chuckled. Albert felt his face heat up, he was blushing, or so he’d learned from his Locust so long ago.
“Guess we weren’t as sneaky as we thought,” He croaked. There was a pause where just the wind moving the trees above could be heard. Eleanor spoke up again.
“What brings you back here?” She asked, “Technically you’re banned.”
“My mom’s banned.” He growled, more harshly than was necessary. A sentiment that held the residue of anger he’d never fully gotten over. “I came back looking for this place…for…” He trailed off. He didn’t want to talk about his Locust, not anymore. Eleanor waited for him to continue, but eventually realized he wasn’t going to. She didn’t push him. She took a knee where she was crouching, sitting down cross-legged in front of him. She sat for a while before it occurred to Albert how odd it was. Wasn’t that odd? “Why are you talking to me?” He asked her and she shrugged.
“You’re sitting in my side yard.” She said as if that made sense. Albert tried his question again.
“Why..? You came over to kick me out. Why are you just talking to me?” He asked. Eleanor took a deep breath, gazing up into the trees and thinking about how she was going to answer.
“I’ll be honest with you, kiddo…you don’t look like you can get up.” She said at length. Albert pinched his eyebrows in confusion, although he wasn’t surprised by this. He felt rough, he usually felt rough, but he must’ve looked rougher than he felt. He shivered again, closing his eyes unconsciously at how his headache spiked.
“That’s fair.” He whispered finally, unsure what else to say. They sat in silence again, waiting for something. Albert didn’t know what they were waiting for, but Eleanor seemed to. He got the answer when he saw an old red truck pull up the dirt road toward him.
Jim looked remarkably similar to how Albert remembered him. He approached them curiously after parking his truck and Albert distantly registered how they spoke about him where they stood a few feet away. They spoke in hushed voices as if he couldn’t hear. Albert could hear, but he didn’t listen. It didn’t matter what they decided to do with him, really.
They brought him inside and let him sit on a proper chair for a few hours as the sun sank into dim blues and indigos through the windows. He drank something warm and rested his head where the rain wasn’t going to fall on him. Where the strangers around him weren’t going to call the police. He learned from them that they’d been having a problem with the local kids sneaking onto their property to deface the structures and torment the animals, though it usually happened at night. He learned about the conception of the commune and its eventual dispersal due to interpersonal disputes and financial issues. He even got a lead on where to go next.
Raven, Locust’s mother, still lived in town.
He listened and he was grateful for the couple. He was beyond grateful for their help and hospitality at a time he felt he’d reached the end of the world. Yet, no matter how grateful he was, or how often they asked, he didn’t tell them about what brought him there in the first place. He was done telling that story.
The only thing they couldn’t offer him was somewhere to stay. Their home was small and handbuilt, with two rooms for one couple and no children. They didn’t have the space for a guest, and however they tried to find an excuse he wouldn’t accept. He didn’t need pity, and he’d gotten along just fine so far.
“Are you sure you’re ok?” Jim pressed as Albert replaced his backpack which seemed to be molded to his back.
“I’ll be fine.” He reassured the man. Eleanor was not so easy to dissuade.
“Surely there’s something we can do, you used to live on this property as a kid.” She thought out loud. “You could stay in one of the lean-to’s?”
Albert paused where he was putting his shoes back on, blinking in thought.
One of the lean-tos? On their property?
Albert accepted, unable to justify turning the offer down. It was a safe place to sleep. It was strange, the things he’d do for a safe place to sleep.
He thanked them for a hundredth time as he left their home. It was night, and the last heat of the day had seeped from the leaves and the grass into the crisp air. It had been a long time since Albert had been in the forest at night. He didn’t remember which one of the old camping lean-to’s was hers so long ago, but he tried not to think about it. He wouldn’t want to pick the same one anyway. He picked one near the outer trail towards the town, both to be closer to everything else and also to get some distance from where the commune once stood. He used the yellow chain stretched across the open wall of the wooden building to pull himself onto its platform. It was just a three-walled wooden box, but it was dry, covered, and nice.
This was very nice of them.
He laid his backpack down, resting his head on its shallower side like a pillow. He stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep. He wasn’t very good at falling asleep anymore, but usually, he could waste as much energy as possible until his body had to pass out for a few hours. That was pretty much his method. He didn’t dream when he did this, he hadn’t had a dream in years. Today he’d definitely done enough to constitute a few hours of involuntary unconsciousness, but it just wouldn’t come. He stared at the ceiling fruitlessly and no matter how exhausted he was he just didn’t feel the fatigue. There was something else building in his chest the longer he thought over the day's events. Something that expanded and filled him like a pufferfish.
He had somewhere to go. For the first time in so long, he had a place to stay, a place to look to find her, and the confirmation that it was all still here. Desolate and different, but still here after all this time. He felt the feeling as it puppeteered him to stand. It dragged him forward by his lungs and forced his feet to move to keep up. It dragged him off the lean-to’s platform and down the trail. He could see the stars through the trees, not as bright as they were in the desert, but beautiful through the dappled canopy. He passed the firepit and he could almost feel the blaze as it roared before the adults of the commune.
Persistently the flame invites.
He passed the shower building and made sure to look for rats as he rounded the trail up the path to where he’d meet her. Every night he’d meet her there. Every night he’d lie awake, longing and hoping and begging for one day to meet her there again. If only one more time. He saw her, clearer than she’d been in a lifetime, as she stood on the trail facing the woods. She stared at the deer trail only she knew the location of. She had that dark stare that made the night feel like it should be afraid she was out in it. He stopped beside her ghost, the image of her turning slowly around to face him. Distant but so close, clear but so desperately faceless, she reached a hand out to him. He felt the sting of the night air, cold on his hands and neck where they were exposed by his clothes, and with no hesitation, he reached for her.
He slipped through her fingers, his momentum plunging him forward, through her image, through the trees, onto the trail. He was walking, too briskly to be comfortable, but he’d learned how to walk for long periods. He pushed forward through the trees and the thorns and the night through a world that wasn’t real. A place that didn’t exist except in his fondest and most existential memories. He didn’t know how long he walked, but he knew it was less than it was back then. The trail was shorter, and he was faster. He only slowed when he hit that final push of thorny brush that he always needed her encouragement to make it through. He saw her, at the end of the path, the end of the journey, she beckoned him with that evil grin. Not the smile of a pretty girl.
He stumbled recklessly forward. As if she could pull him from the lake where he was drowning without a lifejacket. As if she could rescue him from the grief and the doubt and the suffering of walking this forsaken path. He reached for her and with a gasp he stumbled into the waterfall.
It was the waterfall.
Still there, glistening in pooling lights from the moon and the stars above. Roaring with the endless cacophony of thousands of gallons of water dropping down into the abyss of black below. It was all still there, it had been there long before Locust had shown it to him and changed the world forever, and it would stand long after they were both gone. It was still there and it was still just as magic. He had to take a physical step back as he took it in. He’d expected… He’d learned to expect disappointment. He’d learned that no matter how he searched or how far he traveled, he’d never find this again. This place, this feeling, his Locust…
He could find his Locust.
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