Chapter 10 #2
She squeezed his hand once more. “Don’t worry. I like hiking and being out in nature, but I have no intention of ever wandering around on my own. I’ll stick to established paths or with you.”
“But I could get hurt. And you might have to go back to The Refuge to get help.”
Reese shook her head. “Nope. Not happening. And we need to stop talking about you being hurt.”
“Okay. But you’ll humor me and try to learn about navigating, right?”
Reese sighed. “Of course. But don’t get your hopes up. I’m really not good at directions. Just ask Woody. He’ll tell you.”
Gus squeezed her hand and they continued on their way.
“So…I haven’t asked…and if you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. But how did you get your nickname?” Reese asked.
Gus smiled. “You know most of us get our nicknames from basic training, right?”
“Yup. Except for Woody. He’s been Woody his entire life. His friends in elementary school started calling him that because of his last name, and it stuck. Everyone calls him that, even our parents.”
“Right. Well, when I was in basic, one of the DI’s—drill instructors—decided to do something different for PT one morning.
He brought us to the sand pits and set up a net.
We played volleyball for two hours straight.
And trust me, that shit is just as hard as doing pushups and sit-ups.
Anyway, they put me in front and time after time, I spiked the ball, earning our team points.
And points were very important because whoever lost each game had to run laps, do jumping jacks, and other physical shit.
” He shrugged. “After a while, everyone started calling me Spike because of how good I was at spiking the volleyball.”
Reese stopped walking again and stared at him in disbelief.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“That’s the story behind your nickname?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It’s not what I expected,” Reese said with a small chuckle.
It was Gus’s turn to laugh now. “What did you expect? Killer? Bubbles? Flat?”
“Flat?” she asked.
“Flatulence.”
“Oh, Lord, no. Please tell me that isn’t a real name someone was given.”
“Of course it is. So is Bubbles. You can see why I was all right with Spike.”
“Yeah. But I like calling you Gus.”
“I like it too,” he said with a small smile.
He was looking at her with such intensity and tenderness, it was all Reese could do not to yank him against her and force him to his back on the ground right then and there.
“I just…it felt weird to call you Spike when I wasn’t a part of your team.
When Woody first told me about his teammates, I decided there was no way I could call anyone by their nickname. ”
“You can call me whatever you want,” Gus told her. “Now, come on, if we stand out here in the forest all day, we’ll never get there.”
They walked in a comfortable silence for another ten minutes. Then Gus said quietly, “We’re getting close. I’m going to need you to stay here while I go ahead and check things out to make sure everything’s safe.”
“Safe?” Reese asked.
“Trust me.”
She nodded.
“Do. Not. Move. Understand? Especially now that I know how easily you get turned around. Please stay right here and don’t move an inch. Okay?”
“Of course. I’m not going to go wandering around on my own,” she told him a little defensively.
“I know you aren’t. But if something spooks you and you start running, you could end up a lot farther away than you think. And there are some steep spots not too far from here. I don’t want you tumbling down a ravine or anything and getting hurt.”
“Will something spook me?” she asked curiously.
“I’m guessing you aren’t terribly familiar with the woods, so it’s possible a critter could run by and scare you.”
“As long as it’s not a bear, I’ll be good,” Reese said. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…except for bears…bears will kill you.”
Gus smirked and shook his head a little, but said, “Right. I’m not going to be gone long.” Once again, he kissed her briefly before turning and heading away.
Reese leaned against a tree and smiled. She could really get used to being Gus’s girlfriend. He made her feel special. And those kisses…
“Ready?”
His voice made her jump. It didn’t feel as if he’d been gone more than a minute, but obviously she’d been daydreaming for longer than she’d thought. “Jeez,” she said, putting a hand on her chest, hoping to calm her frantically beating heart. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“Everything’s okay?”
“Yup.” Instead of taking her hand, he wrapped an arm around her waist. “Close your eyes,” he requested. “I want to lead you there and don’t want you to see it until I’m ready.”
“You won’t let me fall?” she asked.
“Never.”
His response was so fervent, Reese didn’t think twice about shutting her eyes and leaning into him.
He kept her against his side as he walked her forward. It was a little disconcerting, but she trusted Gus to keep her safe and not let her walk into a tree or trip over her feet.
She felt a slight temperature change as he walked them forward, and the smell in the air changed as well. She no longer felt the slight breeze against her skin, yet she was cooler somehow, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes shut until he told her she could open them.
“Okay, you can look now.”
Reese opened her eyes eagerly—and had to blink a few times to adjust to what she was seeing. She’d expected to be standing at some kind of vista, like Sitting Rock or Table Rock. But instead she was…in a cave.
But it wasn’t just any cave. There were drawings all over the walls.
“Holy crap, Gus!”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said reverently.
“They’re petroglyphs, right?” she asked.
“Yeah. Anywhere from three hundred to twenty-five hundred years old. I mean, I’m not an expert, so I have no clue, but I’ve seen the ones down near Albuquerque at the Petroglyph National Park and these seem to be similar.
There are also some called the La Cieneguilla Petroglyphs west of Santa Fe that look like this too. ”
“How’d you find this place?” she asked, still whispering.
“I got lucky,” Gus said. “I was out hiking one day, while we were still building The Refuge. All the pounding from the cabins being built was getting to me, and I headed off into the woods. It started raining, hard, and I stumbled upon this cave and was glad for a place to get out of the rain. To my amazement, when I looked around, I saw all this indigenous rock art. I spent hours in here, examining as many of them as I could, imagining who might’ve put them here and why. ”
Reese took a step away from Gus and walked up to one of the walls.
She didn’t touch the precious drawing, but put her hand above one of them on the wall.
“It’s amazing to think that humans were here, right where we’re standing, creating these works of art.
I wonder what their lives were like. What their dreams were… ”
She turned to look at more drawings. There were human figures, hunters, suns, some sort of animal playing what looked like a recorder, intricate triangles, a badger-like creature with five large claws on its foot, and even smiley faces.
Everywhere she looked, there were different drawings. “Do they tell a story?” she asked.
She couldn’t look away from the wall of the cave even as Gus stepped close and wrapped his arms around her from behind. He rested his chin on her shoulder as he looked at the wall with her.
“I’m sure they do,” he said. “I don’t know what they are, but I’ve made up many in my head, over the years that I’ve been here.
That one, for instance,” he said, pointing toward a stick figure holding something long and pointy.
“That’s the male of the house, out hunting.
” He continued to point out different pictures near the first. “And that’s the sheep he’s hunting.
He brings it home to his woman, who’s in front of a fire.
They have a feast, and when the sun goes down, they make love, which produces that baby… there.”
Reese smiled. Her Gus was a romantic. He wasn’t exactly “hers,” per se, but in this moment, in this cave, she felt like he was.
The paintings on the walls could literally mean anything.
She wasn’t even sure what many of the drawings were.
But if Gus wanted to think the squiggles near the hunter was a fire, she wasn’t going to contradict him.
She turned in his embrace and locked her hands behind the small of his back. “Thank you for showing this to me.”
“You’re welcome. You want to eat?”
“Sure.”
He twined his fingers with hers and stepped farther into the cave.
It was darker back here, but she should’ve known Gus would be prepared.
He leaned over and picked up a flashlight he must’ve used earlier to make sure the cave was empty of critters and walked them to the wall on one side, where thousands of pine needles were neatly piled on the ground.
As if he could feel her question, he said, “I told you, I come here a lot. And the ground is hard.” He shrugged. “Figured I might as well be comfortable while I’m here.”
Gus helped her sit before settling down next to her.
To Reese’s surprise, the pine needles were surprisingly comfortable.
He pulled his backpack over and dug inside for the baggies of food he’d packed.
As they nibbled on almonds and trail mix, Reese couldn’t tear her gaze from the walls around them. It was like being in a different world.
The troubles of the twenty-first century seemed so far away as she sat there thinking about the people who’d carved the drawings into this cave. Who probably used it for shelter once upon a time.
“Wait,” she said after a moment. “Have you told anyone about this place? Historians? Archaeologists? Anyone?”