The Walk

 

Amity Jones slipped off her flip-flops and tied her sneakers on. She tied her long, blond hair into a serviceable pony-tail. She shut the car door and walked to the driver’s side to wave good-bye to the young woman behind the wheel. The young woman powered her window down and glared in the sunlight.

“Eight o’clock,” Amity said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be here,” the young woman said. “Are you sure you don’t want my cellphone?”

“Positive.”

“What if you get mugged, or lost, or if it starts to rain -.” Amity held up a hand.

“I’m just going for a walk.”

The young woman powered up the window and pulled the car out of the gravel drive-way. Amity watched as the machine left her sight and smiled. Free. Soon, she couldn’t even hear the engine any more and she was happy for it. Amity turned and started walking.

The drive-way that her room-mate Stacy had dropped her off at had a gate that had to opened by hand by someone who knew the combination. Beyond the gate the driveway terminated and there was a small walking path. That was where Amity was going. She punched in the combination, memorized years ago, and locked when she walked through it.

Instantly, on this side of the gate, it seemed that the world outside couldn’t penetrate. The irritation she had endured in the drive here, listening to the voice of modern reason, could not go passed the gate. Amity was home.

Silence. Amity started walking down the uneven, overgrown path, through the trees and listened to nothing. In the city parks, even deep inside them where one can, if they have a good imagination, pretend to be in the forest, one can still hear the cars and the people. The sounds of humanity pressing against them. But, in the real forests, in this forest, all of that is silenced. The only sound was the whispers of the wind in the trees, the scuffling of small animals in the underbrush, and the sound of Amity’s breathing and her footsteps on the carpet of dead vegetation.

The sky was overcast that day, a slight rain fell at random intervals, and the trees shook the rain off their leaves like wet dogs when the wind blew. The world was gray and green. Wet and slick. Soft and rough.

This was a world of life and death. New plants with delicate white-green shoots grew from the dead black stumps of fallen trees. Moss carpeted rocks. Older trees, marked as survivors, had new plants at their bases, reaching up like adoring fans, and both were testaments to a recent fire. Away from the artificial odors of perfume and cologne, of gas and tar, Amity could now smell the faint perfumes of the budding flowers and the earthy-sweet smell of the decaying leaves.

The air was cool with the rain. In the rare patches of sunlight the sun heated everything instantly. Then, she was plunged into the verdant cool again and chilled.

She felt disconnected. She could not feel. She took her shoes and her socks off and stashed them in a hollowed tree. She wriggles her toes in the leaves and pleasured in the feeling cool, slick, softness. She could now feel the ground, every bump, every sharp rock hidden under the leaves, every sandy spot of dirt. How could she ever think of walking with shoes on?

There were living things in this forest, too. In the cities, creatures are bold and raucous, learning from their human counterparts. But, in the forest, they rarely make themselves known. Amity knew all the creatures here, and knew they were watching her.

She was getting warm and constricted. The warmth of the exertion was causing her to sweat between her shoulder-blades. She didn’t know why she agreed to wear jeans anyway, they were restrictive and hot and uncomfortable. She stashed all of her clothes in a knot in a tree. She let down her pony-tail and let her hair catch the breeze like a dream-catcher. She felt, then, that she belonged here again.

Ahead, the forest grew less dense and the soil became more sandy. A light bubbling noise announced that she had reached her real destination. In the center of a small clearing the moss-heavy trees hung over a clear spring, and cypress knees emerged from the water like small islands. A moss-green alligator blinked at her and slipped beneath the water merging with the water lilies until he disappeared.

Around the spring, were stones, ancient, pitted and covered in lichen, arranged in the shape of a house. Ruins. Amity knew their story, though no one else did. She sat on one of the stones near the water and dipped her toes into the cold. Bracing herself, she slipped her entire body in and swam a few strokes. The spring was not large, perhaps fifteen feet, but it was deep. At the bottom, still clear through the water, were more of the ancient stones and it was to this that Amity swam.

Though she wasn’t quite the same now. She was silver, darting, and faster than any swimmer should be. She sank all the way to the bottom and disappeared into the ruins.

Any person, any innocent bystander, would have rushed in to rescue her. While she was submerged, the sun started setting, casting a white-blue hue over everything. Dragonflies sparkled in the slanting light. It was nearly dark, the whole forest was hazy with twilight and heavy with the sound of cicadas, when Amity’s head popped back to the surface.

She wrung her hair to dry on the grass and walked back through the forest, collecting her human garments as she went. Stacy was waiting for her by the drive-way, the windows rolled up, her fingers tapping out some tune on the radio. Amity locked the drive-way gate again, the gate that only she knew the combination to, and opened the car door.

“Are you ready?” Stacy asked, already pulling out of the gravel drive-way. “I don’t know why I agree to this fucked-up tradition every year. If you want to take a walk, why the hell do you have to come out to this freaky place to do it? What you need, girl, is to get your damned head out of the clouds and get yourself a guy.”

Amity smiled and watched as the forest disappeared behind her.

Reviews

[Iris Jayne]

reading it was like delving into the little perfect piece of the world that uou created here. it was paradise. it is very descriptive, and the story is refreshing. amity's character is as interesting and mysterious as the forest itself, and as her name, i must say. great story.

[Patient Poet (Yos)]

wow, wow .wow

I read it and my heart bit faster and faster, you created a tension with each world,
what will happen there/ what she will find, will someone see her? , then the relaxion, to discover all is so calm, I enjoyed to walk with her , with you and just feel the nature, to feel the joy to get back to familiar home, we all want to walk one day back to the sweet memories ... kids memories are always sweet ... you did great job Kimberly with that lovely short story ... always , Yossi