They sat cross-legged, across from each other, incubating within the canvas walls of their small tent. The quarters were tight, and their knees touched. Sunlight filtered through the canvas, casting a fiery orange glow over their faces. The heat was immense, sticky, palpable.
“They don’t look like much,” Eustacia said. A pile of twisted stems and twigs and caps lay in the square formed by their touching legs—a seemingly worthless pile, earthen and unremarkable, like the skimming of the top layer of the average forest floor. And yet, the couple gazed upon the pile like they would an egg on the verge of hatching, protected within the nest of their knees and legs.
“Big things come in small packages,” Adam said, his eyes riveted to the pile. “Or something like that.” Eustacia knew what he meant. She swallowed loudly.
“Shall we?” she asked, her heart hiccupping in her chest. Adam nodded, meeting her eyes. A small smile toyed on his lips.
“May as well,” he said. His freckles were pronounced in the orange light.
“So…we just, you know, eat them? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Eustacia shrugged, dug her fingers into the pile. Adam followed suit, suppressing a nervous chuckle.
Eyes locked, they stuffed the dried stems and caps into their mouths.
Some time elapsed, and Adam and Eustacia sat by the campfire, quite unnecessarily, considering the sweltering heat.
“I guess today’s not the best day for a long nature walk,” Eustacia said, before slugging from a gallon jug of water. Some of it dribbled down her chin. The rim of the jug smelled funny, like sour milk.
“I guess not,” Adam agreed, reaching for the water.
“Too hot, much too hot,” Eustacia said.
They had set off with noble intensions, walking hand in hand across the grassy field toward the woods, awaiting the mind expansion that Mother Nature produced and enhanced. They had intended to romp freely, to spin and careen wildly through the woods, through the field. They had expected to leave rainbows and flowers trailing in their wake. Instead, they had fallen silent as they traipsed across the seemingly endless field, the oppressive Alabama humidity settling over them like a shroud.
“We should have brought some water,” Eustacia had said, garbled and slow. Her slowness of speech had surprised her. Was it the heat? Or could it be the sweet stickiness of the southern dialect, settling on her tongue like molasses, softening her usual clipped, northeastern manner of speaking? Or perhaps it was that pile of strange twigs and caps, bits of which she kept unearthing from between her teeth, which had rendered her so sluggish.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right. Too hot,” Adam had replied. They had turned around and headed back toward camp. The festival grounds had hovered before them, wavering in the haze and the heat. The grounds had looked depraved and ramshackle from the distance, a haphazard gathering of sad-looking tents, RVs, and cars, all encrustulated with a fine dusting of light brown dirt. Adam and Eustacia had trudged forward with stooped backs and heavy, dragging arms; they had resembled a pair of torpid, bedraggled baboons.
“Now what?” Adam said, staring into the dying fire. The festival site was quiet and sleepy, except for the persistent thumping of techno music from a nearby car stereo.
“Hiking is out of the question. And there’s no good music to dance to. Just this fricking techno. Who the hell plays techno in the middle of the day, anyway?”
Adam shrugged.
“Maybe we should have gone with Jim and them,” Eustacia remarked, remembering the wagonload of drug-addled young adults which had passed by earlier in the afternoon. They had been headed for a nearby waterfall
“Yeah, but we saw the waterfall yesterday. And all those people looked so…vacant or something. It just didn’t feel right.”
“Yeah, but we’re not doing anything better.”
“Maybe not, but it would have sucked being dependent on all of them for a ride back to camp. We’d be trapped. It’s better if we just do our own thing.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole point, right?”
“Yeah, I suppose that is the point.”
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Eustacia said, her head tilted. She was suddenly conscious of a strange stirring within her, a strange gathering of lightness and heaviness, a ball of potential energy burgeoning in her gut.
“You think we’re isolating ourselves?” she inquired, her voice trailing and windy. The sweaty, swollen clouds above seemed to pulse and undulate before her eyes.
“Nah,” Adam replied, distantly. “Well, probably,” he conceded, tucking a stray strand of greasy hair back into his bandana.
“Do you think we should have gone with Jim and them?”
“Nah.”
They sat silently, momentarily unaware of each other. Adam’s brain whirred and clicked and lapsed, words and concepts peeled to their roots, unfurling and refurling. His stomach churned.
“Who the hell plays techno in the middle of the day? No one is even dancing. This is the weirdest, least musical music festival we have ever gone to,” Eustacia mused, her lip curling at the cacophony of blips and bleeps emanating from the car stereo. She felt oddly lucid, despite her strange shift in perception, despite that feeling of simultaneous connectivity to and detachment from her surroundings.
“I don’t feel good,” Adam said, and a tiny crinkle appeared between his eyebrows.
“Is it your belly?” Eustacia replied, enamored with the skin of her palms. Her voice was hers and not hers, just part of the wind.
“I don’t know. I don’t feel good. I just…will you come back to the tent with me?” he pleaded. He looked like a child separated from his mother at the supermarket.
“The tent?”
“Yeah, we can lie down. I…I think I need to lie down.”
“Yeah, let’s lie down” she breathed, delicate and fluttering and distant, but very present. “Only not in the tent. It’s too hot in there. Let’s lie in the grass.”
“No, the tent, please.”
“The tent? Okay, the tent.” They shuffled to their feet. Adam’s cheeks were pink. Eustacia took his hand.
“What’s it all about in the end?” he whimpered, his voice sugared and small. The crinkle in his brow deepened. “I mean, what’s it really all about? In the end?” Eustacia unzipped the tent, and the opening yawned before them. They tumbled inside, into the stifling, trapped heat.
“It’s all about love, remember?” Eustacia frowned. The answer tasted wrong, artificial, contrived.
“You really think so?”
“I think I think so,” she replied, gathering Adam in her arms. “And I think you think so, too. Remember, like the Beatles?” Adam was silent for a moment, thinking.
“Yeah, but what’s it all about in the end? What do you think?”
Eustacia sighed.
“I guess I really just don’t know.” Sweat beaded on the back of her neck. A fly buzzed, hovered, landed on her slick shoulder.
“Oh, God,” she mumbled, swiping at the fly. She noticed another, creeping among the cookie crumbs and melted chocolate smeared along the tent floor. “Oh, God, it’s like hell in here. There are flies, Adam. There are flies, and it feels like fire. There are flies…and…we’ve got to get out of this tent,” she cried, and scurried frantically back into the daylight. She reached for Adam, pulling him with her. He followed her, wraithlike, eyes curious and confused.
“But what’s it all about in the end? What’s it really all about?”
“Adam, I wish I knew, I really do.” She spun on the spot, pondering what to do next.
“I think I need you right now,” Adam said, and his lower lip trembled. “I mean, what’s it all about? What’s it really all about in the end?”
“You keep asking me that. And I keep not knowing,” Eustacia replied, reaching for his hand again. The tent remained open behind them, and the field in front of them, open and hot and wide. Two dead ends.
“This is the weirdest music festival we’ve ever been to. Where is the music, for Chrissake? Where is the love? Where is the enlightenment? Why aren’t we prancing in fields of flowers in flowing clothes?” Eustacia looked around, puzzled.
“Where can we go? Where can we go?” she whispered, desperation evident in her voice. A hard lump settled in her throat. Trapped. She tugged at her hair, spinning in place, frantic. Trapped.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, reaching for Adam. “We’ve got to get away from this place. This tent. This heat. This stupid techno music.”
They walked quickly, hand in hand, their gait unintentionally matching the rhythm of the incessant techno beats.
“But where can we go?” she said. “Where the hell can we go?”
“Drive. Drive, Eustacia,” Adam resolved. “Drive us away from here.”
“Yes! Yes, you’re right! It’s the only way!” They quickened their step and reached the car, nearly unrecognizable under its shroud of dirt. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of it earlier!” she whooped, piling into the driver’s seat. “I know it sounds crazy and all, driving in this state, but I feel so clear and focused, observant. Maybe even more so than usual.”
“Please, Eustacia, just drive. Get us out of here. I need you to drive.” She started the car, eased it into drive. She drove.
“Yes, yes, this is easy, this is not a problem,” she exclaimed, giddy. Past the field, far away from the tent. They were going somewhere! The car erupted onto a road of white stones, a winding, thin road which sliced through the forest.
"Wow, would you look at that, Adam! Would you look at this road!” White rocks stirred up under the tires, crunching and cracking beneath them. “I’ve never seen a more perfect road, have you?” she asked, awed.
“No, no, I haven’t,” Adam said softly.
“I wonder where it leads?”
“I wonder where it ends?”
“I don’t think it does end, Adam. It’s got to go somewhere. I think it just keeps going.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yeah, I really do.” She paused and sighed, relieved. “I feel so much more awake now. Away from that sleepy place. It felt like a nightmare there, didn’t it?”
“A bad dream.”
“But this. This feels like a good dream, doesn’t it?”
“A good dream.”
“On this perfect road, leading God-knows-where. My, I’ve never seen a more perfect road.”
“Just don’t stop driving. I need you to keep driving,” Adam implored. He sniffed thickly, the dregs of an unkickable cold still lingering in his nose and throat.
“I won’t stop driving. Don’t worry.” The car pressed forward, slowly, controlled.
“I wonder what it’s all about? In the end?”
"I wish I knew. I thought I knew. Remember when we knew, once?”
“We knew?”
“Yes, but only for a moment. I don’t know anything now.”
“What did we know?”
“We knew the reasons. We knew the reason why we wake up in the morning, why we fall asleep. We knew why clocks tick and birds chirp and suns set and planets spin. Remember? Don’t you remember when we knew?” Adam shook his head, sniffing meatily again. A trickle of snot slithered from his nostril, pooling on his upper lip.
“I don’t remember,” he said wetly, snorting back the snot.
The road rolled onward.
“Wow, what a wonderful road. I mean, we haven’t seen a single soul. There is no one. Absolutely no one. Nothing. Just us and this road. Nothing else.”
“Nothing.”
“Just this road.”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, nothing.”
“I wonder what it’s all about in the end?”
Eustacia sighed. “I guess I just don’t know. I really thought we knew once. I think we were kidding ourselves. I think we might’ve been dreaming.”
“Dreaming?”
“Yeah. I think we woke up.”
“Why did we wake up?”
“I think we might be growing old.”
“Old? You really think so?”
“Yeah. I think you wake up when you get old. I think we woke up. Remember being a child? It all feels like it must have been a dream. Watching caterpillars inch up my arm, petting them, their fur.”
“I liked caterpillars,” Adam said, snot pooling again.
“Me too. I liked ladybugs a lot. I thought they were really something special, with all their spots and all. But then I realized how many of them there were, you know? How many dead ones there were cluttering my windowsills, their shells faded to yellow, spots bleached away by the sun.”
“You woke up.”
“Woke up,” Eustacia agreed. “But maybe we were awake then. Maybe now we’re dreaming.”
“You think so?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so.”
“I wonder what it’s all about in the end?”
“I wonder where this road leads?”
The small sedan trundled forward, forward, kicking up dust behind it. The clouds roiled and lolled above, the white rocks of the road gleamed fantastically in the sun. Adam seemed not to notice. His eyes had gone glossy, his thoughts turned entirely inward. Eustacia giggled at his appearance. His mouth hung agape, his nose leaked twin rivulets of yellow goo. Drool hung from his lower lip.
“Talk about an antihero,” she said, putting a hand on his knee.
“Huh?” he said, not moving.
“You’re just such an antihero right now. You look like such a nobody. It’s wonderful,” she explained. Adam gave a perfunctory sniffle, but the snot dripped on.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a nothing for awhile,” Eustacia surmised. “Nothing wrong with that at all. Maybe convincing ourselves that we’re somebody is just part of the dream. Just one big reassuring dream.”
Adam grunted.
“We’re no better than ladybugs, when you think about it.”
“No better than ladybugs?”
“Nah. There are so many of us. We fade away, too, don’t you think? Trapped on the windowsill?”
“Trapped?”
“Trapped. It looks so great through the glass, too. But we’re trapped.”
“You really think so?”
“I don’t know. I think so right now. I don’t think we’re any better than ladybugs, trapped on a windowsill.”
The couple fell silent. Eustacia admired the sky, peering up at it through the windshield. It rolled on and on, on and on. And on they drove, and on.
Sometime later, Eustacia blinked, seeming to come to herself. How long had she been driving? Hours, it seemed. The clouds had taken on a rosy hue as the afternoon waned, and the sun slid silkily toward the earth.
The white rocks of the road were becoming sparser.
“Adam, Adam, wake up,” Eustacia whispered, shaking Adam’s arm. The string of drool swung like a pendulum from his lip and onto his seatbelt. He grunted, turned toward her, blinking in confusion.
“Adam, I think the road is ending,” she said, in awe. And it was. The white rocks were few and far between. Now there was mostly dirt. “Adam, I think we’ve reached the end of the road.”
The car lurched to a halt. The white road had petered out entirely, draped out behind them in the rearview mirror. In front of them was dirt, a smattering of sagging weeds, the occasional thin, scaly-barked remains of a tree, jutting crookedly from the earth.
Adam turned to Eustacia, peered at her through dewy eyes. He seemed hardly able to see, and yet he saw.
“What’s it all about in the end? What’s it really all about in the end?” he whispered. But he already knew.
Eustacia gripped the steering wheel firmly, staring ahead into the pathetic clearing, at the naked, bare-knuckled branches, and the twig-strewn forest floor, at the sordid stretch of decayed, dehydrated leaves lining the earth.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice as dry and cracked as the leaf-littered ground. “Absolutely nothing.”
