souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 126: a forest (part two)

Once they were back outside, he turned to her as he took a nibble of a ginger snap.
"Milk and cookies," she remarked.
"Milk and cookies!" he replied with his mouth full. He closed his eyes and relished in the warmed fused taste of ginger and nutmeg. Sam watched him sigh through his nose and relax his whole body. He pointed his feet inward and bowed his head.
"You're enjoying that cookie a little too much," she noted, and then he swallowed. She showed him a playful little grin.
"By the way, you didn't answer my question earlier," he told her. "What do they say about—going through the stomach or something like that?"
"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," she said.
"That's a bit high, don't you think?" he asked with a chuckle. "Especially on me 'cause I'm so tall."
She shook her head and shrugged.
"I have no idea, to be honest," she confessed, "but it is a good thing to run with, though, especially with milk and cookies involved."
"They say 'jump', you say 'how high,'" he quipped as he took another bite of ginger snap.
A cool breeze blew through the blonde roots of her hair, such that it sent a shiver down her spine. He finished that cookie in a few more bites and then he tucked that little brown paper bag into his jacket.
"Ah, here he comes," Alex pointed at the little black car headed their way.
"That was quick," she noted.
"He doesn't mess around," he pointed out, "—especially if it's stuff that belongs to him."
Eric pulled up to the curb and rolled down the window so as to speak to them.
"So what do you guys wanna do?" he called out to her.
"Let's go up to Long Valley," she suggested to him. "It's real cool up there. We've got the trailer, too."
"Take a load off," Alex joined in.
"Sounds good," said Eric as he shivered in another cool gust of wind, "—I'll go park this bad boy and then we'll mosey on up there."
Given it wasn't snowing, nor was it all that cold outside, she had her fears that the ride up the Sherwin grade would prove to be a bit much for that car, especially with the trailer on the back. But Sam put her hands on the rim of the steering wheel and she put on a brave face. All the while, Alex kept his gaze on the vast steep road before them. Eric stayed in the back seat right behind him.
Every so often, she noticed Alex looking over at the gauges behind the steering wheel. She took a glimpse down herself at them, at the temperature in particular. The needle rose up a little bit at around the halfway point and she swore that with every glimpse down from that point onward, it lifted a bit more. Or maybe it was her own nerves getting to her as she looked down again and saw that the needle hadn't budged even a little bit.
But Alex shifted his weight in his seat and he eventually leaned to the side a bit to see for himself.
"We're doing okay," she assured him as she drummed her fingers on the rim a bit. "It's a little warm, but nothing for concern, though."
"Are we getting too hot?" Eric called from the back seat.
"Nah, it's a little warm, but nothing for concern, though," she assured him.
"Relax, Eric," Alex said in a flat monotone, and all Sam could think about was how he behaved on the way over to the forest. And lucky for them, they reached the top of the hill and they rounded the bend, complete with a full view of Mount Tom and the thick snows up above. They passed a long low complex of almost pure cliffs on the right side of the road, which Sam had missed on her road trip up to Carson City with Alex the year before.
"Read that's all volcanic ash right there," Eric pointed out.
"Those white cliffs?" she asked him with a glimpse into the rear view mirror.
"Yeah."
"Well, this is Long Valley, after all. It's all Bishop tuff and rhyolite up here. Hard not to get into the geology of it all."
"So where exactly do you wanna take us?" Alex asked her as they ducked into another stretch of forest. "'Cause I remember the first time you and I went through here, there was just stretches upon stretches of grass and trees and a little hill."
"There's an airport here, too, isn't there?" Eric joined in.
"Yeah, a little airport," Alex continued, "all that plus some roads up to the mountains and future trips for us."
"There's some hot springs over here," Sam told them as they reached the rim of the valley, "and there's a road to it."
"You're Captain Shelley after all," he pointed out.
"Captain Shelley's Gallery!" she exclaimed with a chuckle. "God, I miss them."
"I do, too! It feels like it's been forever since we hung out with them."
"Them and Metallica," Eric added.
"Metallica have been touring like crazy since Justice came out," Alex said, "and that's as far as I know, too. I last spoke to Kirk on the phone on New Year's and they were about to go out and play within a few minutes time, so it wasn't that long of a call. Also—I didn't find out about this until like just the other day, either. Greg showed it to me and him—" He gestured to the back seat. "—all because he tried out to be bassist for them."
"Oh—Oh, god," Eric groaned; Sam peered into the mirror at the sight of him putting a hand to his mouth and sinking down in the seat.
"What is it?" she asked them.
"There's an interview Cliff did," Alex started again, "like five years ago or something like that—it was literally right before he was killed. The guy asked him some rather interesting questions. The one Greg showed us was 'who do you think will die first?' and he said 'me.'"
Sam gaped at him as she merged lanes: the exit to the hot springs was a ways up but she did it anyways.
"You're kidding," she declared, and she felt her throat close up with the feeling of tears.
"Not at all," he replied, "I'll have to show it to you when we get back to the Bay Area. It sends chills down my spine just thinking about it."
Sam brought a hand to her mouth and Alex shifted his weight in his seat as a result. That explained why her relationship with Cliff felt so ephemeral and so long at the same time: he saw his end before anyone else did, and as a result, he gave his soul to her. She shook her head a bit to keep the tears at bay, especially since she was driving and she needed to keep her eyes on the road before them.
She licked her lips and then she took the exit just prior to the airport, the one that led them over to the hot springs on the other side of the resurgent dome, that long low rise right in the middle of the valley. Mammoth Mountain and Mount Morrison both loomed off along the rim of the valley all the way through the vast grassland and past the low pine trees.
"You think maybe we'll see an eruption up here at some point?" Eric asked them.
"Nah," Sam shook her head.
"I'd be more worried about Yellowstone," Alex confessed.
"Far more worried about Yellowstone than of Mammoth or even a huge volcano like Mount Rainier or Mount St. Helens," Sam added.
They reached the rise and the scraggly trees which had sprouted around it, and once they passed the campground, she knew they were coming close to the hot springs. The dome loomed off to the left of the car: Alex peered out the windshield at the monolith there, right smack in the middle of the caldera. Sam took a glimpse herself over at it: to think that a small pool of magma resided underneath the surface there. But at the same time, she had no worries about it as the signs for the hot springs entered their view.
They receded below the rim of the road, away from the veins of civilization, and yet even as they reached the dirt trail which led over to them, Sam could make sight of the small feathery plumes of steam up ahead. They made her think of the plume of gray on Alex's head: indeed, she peered over at him and her own reflection in the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.
He held onto the "oh, shit" handle as they reached the patch of soil before the springs. The trailer hitched to the back of the car only added to the skittery feeling underneath the tires, but Sam was sure that they would reach there with it still right behind them. The steam collected against the cold all around them: the snow beckoned them even as they climbed out of the car together and made their way to the separating rail. The smell of hot water and faint traces of sulfur greeted them as they came closer: the waters down below were bright blue, like the color of peacock's eggs and the surrounding soil was all shades of yellow and red. Columns of glassy pearly white Bishop tuff emerged up from all around the springs, in all of their eroded monolithic glory.
It was right then Sam missed Marla and her Polaroid camera as Alex gaped at the waters down below.
"Oh—" he breathed out. "Oh my god."
"Beautiful, isn't it? More blue than your eyes."
He chuckled at that.
"Completely safe to swim in," she told him. "It'd be pretty warm, but it's totally safe, though."
"It smells, too," he said with a wrinkling of his nose. A quiet rumble emerged from behind them. He scowled at that.
"Please tell me that was your stomach, Alex," she said.
"You sure it was mine and not yours?" he joked.
"This is Long Valley after all," she pointed out with a peer about the stretch of grassland on the other side of the hot springs: Glass Mountain loomed off to the north while the White Mountains deviated away from the caldera into the vast Nevada desert. "A dormant volcanic crater surrounded by a couple more volcanoes, especially Mammoth."
"After that earthquake over in the Bay Area a couple of months ago, I'm a little wary of that sort of thing," he confessed in a single breath.
"Don't blame you," she told him with a pat on his shoulder. "That was one of the things that bothered me about living down in Elsinore was the proximity to the San Andreas."
"Hey, at least on the East Coast you can prepare for things like hurricanes and blizzards."
"True. But see—the thing with a hurricane is it lasts several days. An earthquake is here and gone in a couple of minutes—if that."
"What about the volcano?" he asked her with a serious look on his face.
"We'd probably know if it took place atop the volcano," she pointed out. "The hot springs would be steaming like absolute crazy—like we probably wouldn't be able to go here right now—and we'd see plumes of steam coming out of the dome here."
"I don't think so," he confessed, and that was followed by another grumble. He set his hand on his stomach. "Yeah, that was me."
She giggled at him.
"I'm glad I get you two ginger snaps instead of one," she proclaimed.
"Alright, you know what?" he began with a sly smirk on his face.
"What?"
"If I get fat, you have to, too," he said.
"Fair enough," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, "besides when I gain weight, it goes all over my body and it makes me shapely. I won't just have a potbelly, but a potbelly with thick womanly curves."
"Thanks for rubbing it in," he scoffed as he ran a hand down his jacket. He turned towards a sign on the railing which talked about the hot springs; she sauntered up behind him and lightly tapped the seat of his pants with her open palm.
"Hey—hey!" he cried out, and he turned to her with a slight blush across his face. "Cut it out."
"Why?"
"Not in front of the park people."
"Park people? Alex, we're in the middle of a collapsed volcano. There's nobody here but us chickens." Her fingers caressed over him and he held still from the sensation there behind him.
"We're in the middle of a collapsed volcano—I can't touch my fuck buddy's butt?"
"Kudos to you for having the balls to use the phrase 'fuck buddy,'" he said with a straight face.
"Balls? Alex, do I need to take off my shirt for you?"
He let out an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes. "Fine. Ovaries."
Eric, who had made himself at home in the trailer behind them, chuckled at that.
"You guys," he laughed from the doorway.
"What're you doin'?" Alex demanded.
"Actually seeing if it's really that small in here," Eric replied.
"Dude, you gotta check out these hot springs—they're stunning."
Eric joined them there at the railing, complete with his sweater zipped up and his hood over his head. Sam couldn't help but think of Joey at the very sight of the hot waters down below as they gently bubbled like the jets on a Jacuzzi. Much like Long Valley Caldera and Mammoth Mountain, her passion for him would have to erupt again at some point. But not for long given the first snowflakes drifted down from the gray sky overhead. Eric wanted to pick out a small piece of Bishop tuff to take home with him to the Bay Area, but she talked him out of it with the whole story of the goddess Pele.
"You don't wanna upset her," Alex proclaimed as he sank back into the passenger seat.
They returned up the road to the campground and Sam had no idea if they had to pay a fee. But the snows were coming, and the sky overhead darkened with nightfall as well, and the two boys next to her shivered from the sensation around them. They posted up on the side of the road under a tree near the dome; without a moment's hesitation, Alex and Eric both bowed into the trailer.
It wasn't much of a trailer so to speak, but it did have a pair of twin beds on either wall and a narrow aisle between the two, as well as a small nook that served as a kitchen and a little table near the front axle. Even though it was small, it was cozy, and once she shut the door behind her, the warmth immediately sank over them.
Another round of Sam and Alex getting snowed in but at least that time around, they had Eric with them that time around and they could do more with what they had on hand as well, not just with Alex's blanket. They actually had more food on hand courtesy of Sam and Esmé herself, and they could keep the warmth in better even as the snow slammed the entire caldera. She made the three of them a small pot of chicken noodle soup and some freshly sliced veggies and oyster crackers, and Alex and Eric huddled up on either side of her there at the table.
"If you fellas want more soup, there's a few more cans in the box there," she told them. "I'm gonna need some help with the can opener, though."
Both of them looked at another with knowing glances.
"I'll do it," said Alex.
"Nah, I'll do it," Eric insisted.
"You and Samantha have been driving all day," Alex pointed out, "I'll do it. I promise."
He wound up opening a new can of soup for them, and at the point of them eating it, the mood in the trailer was warm and cozy and relaxed and ready for bed, even though it wasn't that late: only a quarter to nine according to Alex's wristwatch. Even though they weren't at the campground and the trailer had no running water, one of them could still brave it up the road a little bit for the bathrooms, which Sam wound up doing right before bed. Alex offered to go along with her just so she wasn't alone, but she insisted that she could do it.
Indeed, when she returned, she nestled up next to him there in the bunk on the right side where Eric took the left one. Alex had changed into his Run DMC shirt and took off his jeans before he slipped underneath the covers there next to the wall and made room for her, even with her wet hair from the heavy snows outside. Sam fell asleep right next to him by the time Eric turned off the light over his bunk. The blizzard outside howled but the three of them were safe in that little trailer, just off the hitch from the back of the car.
Sam woke up at some point, still snuggled up against Alex's little body, and to the sound of Eric yawning. She rolled over a bit, only to find that he had turned on the light again and reclined back against the separating wall on his bunk with a book plunked across his lap.
"What're you doin'?" she asked him in a broken voice.
"Couldn't sleep," he replied in a voice low enough so as to not wake up Alex. "We went to bed too early and he and I are both fresh off a tour so my sleep schedule's all out of whack."
"What time is it?"
"It's—" He checked his own watch which he set up on the narrow little window sill next to him. "—four fifteen in the morning. I woke up like twenty minutes ago and couldn't fall back to sleep."
Alex groaned in his throat but he never woke up.
"Poor guy," Eric remarked.
"He's stressed out," Sam said; careful not to wake him, she lifted herself into an upright position. She tried to lean back against the separating wall herself but the plywood was too hard on her back. She leaned forward and rested her hands in her lap.
"Yeah, he is. He didn't seem like himself all during the tour, like he was a lot more reclusive than normal. He usually likes going out and walking around the place and trying out new things. I think he did that all of four times the past five weeks."
"Aww." Sam looked over at Alex, right as he rolled over onto his back and huddled further into the blankets. He was cold.
"It's been a little hard on me, too," Eric continued as he tucked a bookmark into his book.
"Yeah, he told me about the new album," she confessed, "how the label's just yelling at you guys to get it done."
"That's an understatement. I really wanna be with Clash of the Titans, though. I know he does, too. Can't imagine what your dad must be feeling right now, too, him being a part of it and all."
She turned to him with a thoughtful look on her face.
"Are you hungry?" she asked him.
"Me? Yeah, I'm a little hungry. Again, sleep schedule's all sideways."
Careful not to wake up Alex, Sam climbed out of the bed and she slipped into the kitchen, even though the only breakfast food she had brought with her was some bread for toast and strips of bacon.
"How could you not pack breakfast?" Eric whispered back to her.
"I figured that if Alex and I are going to be camping, we'd be within range of a restaurant or some place with coffee because I utterly despise instant coffee."
"Oh, that's understandable," he laughed at that. Sam took her seat back on the edge of the bunk, that time atop the blankets. It was silent outside and all she could think about was the blizzard had passed. Eric kept the book on his lap as he looked on at her. The pale yellow light shone over the side of his round face so he actually resembled to a little crescent moon from the heart of Mexico.
"You wanna hang out?" he offered her in a low voice.
"I don't really wanna leave him, though," she confessed. Alex was sound asleep in the small narrow bed right next to them. He wasn't her boyfriend and thus she was free to do whatever she wanted with Eric, and yet he lay there right behind her, all cozy and warm in the bunk bed.
"He's still asleep, though," he pointed out.
"What if he wakes up?"
"Sam, I was right there right next to him when the earthquake happened a few months back," Eric replied with a slight raise of an eyebrow. "He gets real full like that and falls asleep, you could shout his name and it wouldn't wake him up."
Sam glanced over her shoulder at Alex, who had rolled back onto his side. He snuggled his head further down into the pillow and a piece of his jet black hair spread right across his face: she couldn't even see the plume of gray on that side of his brow. His eyelids were as smooth as porcelain: with his soft round face and the way the thick warm blankets spread over his slender body, he resembled to a little doll. Add to this, the way his curls feathered a bit over the crown of his head only accentuated the feeling for her even further. A little doll. A little boy again.
Sam swallowed and then she returned to Eric once again.
"Okay—what would you like to do?"
"I was just ask you that," he confessed.
"Well, we're about twenty minutes from Tom's Place and another twenty minutes from Mammoth Lakes. Both places have breakfast there and I think Tom's Place has a billiards table."
"Are they open?" he asked her as his face lit up.
"All year round," she replied.
Eric set his book down on the sill next to him and he gave his hair a gentle toss.
"Let's do it," he said.
"Should we wake him or—?"
"Nah."