Wake up, Young Man – Chapter XVI

One year later…

I sat down on a log and looked up at the sky through the snow-covered branches of a nearby evergreen. It was so cold, you could peel the frozen sap off its trunk with your fingers if you wanted. Earlier that day I had gone ice fishing at a nearby lake and my bounty laid at my feet, waiting to be scaled and cleaned.

It wasn’t a glamorous job, and sometimes the guts and the blood still made me squeamish, but it needed doing. No amount of procrastination made the job go away. Sometimes I missed my office and the data spreadsheets, my Herman Miller chair and my Newton’s cradle. But only just sometimes.

Picking up one of the smaller guys, I started going at it with the back of my knife. Scales flew in all directions, most of them sticking to my pant legs. Cleaning the damn things off was next to impossible, and so I had stopped trying and instead relinquished a pair of my jeans specifically for fishing.

Then I split his belly open and scooped him out with my index and middle finger before rinsing him off entirely in a small water bucket. We always took care to save the guts though, as they made good bait. In the distance I could hear Jenny’s infectious laugh carry itself amongst the trees as it grew closer, and it made me smile.

In an instant she wrapped her arms around me and landed a kiss on my cheek, nearly knocking me off the log.

“You keep trying to tackle me with a knife in my hand and I’m going to start thinking you want to see me stabbed.” I chided.

“And people say you’re no fun.”

“They say what?”

“Well, they try to say you’re no fun, but I am very quick to remind them of the truth.”

“I’m sure you do.” I turned my attention away from scaling and leaned in to give her a kiss. Just as she closed her eyes, I lifted one of the fish in front of her mouth and only barely contained my laughter as I watched her make contact with the slimy, dead lips of a trout.

“Ugh…” Jenny groaned in disgust as she immediately discovered my ploy. “That’s so disgusting, Ben!” She said, half-laughing as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

“I, for one, happen to think the fish make lovely kissers.” I shrugged my shoulders and went back to scaling.

Jenny scooted closer to me on the log and wrapped herself around my arm. Then she rested her head on my shoulder. Her long, flowing locks of gold hair draped down my side.

“Ben?”

“What is it?”

“Can you tell me again?”

“Tell you what?”

“C’mon. You know.”

“I love you.”

Jenny closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. At first, and for a long time since Jenny and I became intimate, I would say those words. They didn’t mean anything and she knew it, she just wanted to hear it sometimes. And I never asked why because I didn’t need to, I knew why.

Those words took her back to a time and place that no longer existed. To a time and place that may never exist again. I didn’t know much about Jenny and she knew nothing about me, other than that I knew Kieran’s cousin, Cole, at some point. She just showed up at Kieran’s cabin one day, some months after I arrived.

Starving and cold, she only spoke in three-word sentences for the first two weeks. I knew, we all knew, all of us who congregated and formed a community on Kieran’s slice of the mountain knew, or at the very least could guess what she had to go through out there. What she might have had to do to survive.

So, when she asked me to say those words, it was a trivial matter. It was like asking to borrow a cup of sugar. But what frightened me, what made my stomach weak and my throat close in on itself, was the last few times I had meant it. How could she have known, when every time I had said it before it carried the same weight as it did then?

“I love you.” I repeated softly as I grabbed another fish and feverishly scraped away. My hope being that if I seemed busy enough it might roll out and she’d think nothing of it.

“Mhmm.. I know.” She smirked.

“I love you.”

“O-oh.. Okay?” Her head lifted off my shoulder as she stared deeply at me.

“I love you.” I said again, this time more sternly as I tossed the knife to the ground and looked into her eyes.

“What’s happening, Ben?”

“I love you.”

Jenny’s face lit up as she rushed to kiss me. Her tears ran down my cheek as I held her in my arms.

“I love you too, Ben.” She cried. “I love you too!”

I gasped anxiously for air as she dragged me to the soft, snowy earth in her embrace. And I knew then who I was and where I was. I was Ben, just Ben. I was home. And I was awake.

Thank you for reading Chapter XVI. This concludes “Wake up, Young Man”. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, consider giving it a like or sharing it with your network.

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