"The horses and burros," he explained. "They don"t like to have to go down to the lake to drink."
"You have horses here?"
"Yes. I put feed out for them in the evening."
"Could I see them?"
"Maybe. They"re shy around strangers. Maybe after a few days they"ll let you see them. They make friends more readily if you have carrots."
"I must come with carrots!" she exclaimed.
"You like animals?"
"I always liked horses. Now, with you, I like all animals."
"Maybe they"ll like you," he said. "The three burros can be anywhere. I call them Burrito, Frito, and Dorito-that"s the female. Burrito is very friendly, once he knows you. Mostly they graze among the slash pines here." Then he set off again, loping up along an alley between the planted pine trees.
She pumped the bike along after him, brushing through the tall dog fennel and clumps of bahia gra.s.s. Then she spied another kind of plant. "Oh! Blueberries!"
He paused. "Huckleberries-they"re black. Blueberries are blue. Here." He indicated another bush, where the berries were indeed blue. "We have blackberries too. I come out here and eat them, sometimes."
"I want to be with you next time!"
"The season"s pa.s.sing; not many berries left."
"I"d like to come here and just walk through the pines."
"The chiggers will get you."
"Chiggers?"
"Little red bugs. They dig into the skin, and a day later you feel the itch, and the spot takes a week to fade."
"I must be getting them now!" she exclaimed, horrified.
He looked abashed. "I didn"t think of that."
"But do you get them? You"re out here every day!"
"I run. I get sweaty. They don"t seem to like the way I taste."
"There must be more to it than that!" she protested. "A bug isn"t going to turn up its nose at you if you"re its only chance for a meal. You must wash off after you run."
"Yes."
"So I"ll wash off too. If that works, I"ll never have to use repellent."
He nodded, then turned and resumed his run. He seemed indefatigable; he had obviously been doing this for a long time. He had the distance runner"s body: lean and lanky. She had heard of "runner"s high," with runners deriving a sense of well-being from the hormones the strenuous exercise produced. It was supposed to be akin to the highs produced by chocolate, and by s.e.xual activity. She liked the latter two; he liked the first. They were not that far apart.
The pines trees were in endless rows, and ranged in size from knee height to about twenty-five feet tall, depending, it seemed, on the nature of the soil. They must have been planted together, and those that fell on good ground prospered. There were patches of white sand where none grew, and at the edges of such patches were small ones, and larger ones beyond, until they got into one of the excellent patches. Pa.s.sion flower vines grew among and on them, their big, lovely, purple flowers like opening umbrellas. The dark green tops of the trees were framed against a beautiful blue sky, fading to gray near the horizon. A flight of half a dozen birds was pa.s.sing, in a somewhat ragged V formation. It was at once completely ordinary, and extraordinary. She had seldom been out beyond the range of houses, she realized; it was a different world.
Geode slowed and pointed. She looked, and saw a big gopher tortoise. It hissed and pulled in its head as she pa.s.sed. But she looked back a moment later and saw it moving along rapidly enough, snapping at blades of gra.s.s. She felt good for having seen it.
But now she was developing a pain in her stomach. "Geode!" she gasped. "I have to slow-I can"t keep up with you!"
He stopped running. "Side st.i.tch?" he asked.
"I"m afraid so. You"ve given me every advantage, but I"m just not in the condition you are. If I can rest a moment, I"ll try to do better." She stood where she was, aware how her heart was beating; she had been working harder than she realized, pedaling along the path.
"I used to get them when I started," he said. "Takes years to toughen up, and when I push it, it still happens, sometimes."
"That tortoise-are there many of them here?"
"Yes. They have their burrows on the high ground. Other animals use them too; they call the gopher tortoise the "Landlord." "
"Other animals?"
"Mice, rattlesnakes, maybe rabbits and burrowing owls-I"m not sure about them."
"Rattlesnakes!"
"They don"t mean any harm. If you see one, let it be. Just don"t step on it. Coral snake too; that"s the pretty one."
"Coral snake!" she exclaimed. "Doesn"t that have the deadliest poison of them all?"
"Close to it. But it"s mostly harmless."
She shook her head, bemused. "How can it be harmless when one drop will kill you?"
"It"s a small snake, with a small head; its teeth are pretty weak. If it bit you on the leg, it couldn"t get through the denim. You"d have to pick it up in your hands-and then it wouldn"t bite you, if you didn"t squeeze it. It"s no threat to man; it uses its poison for prey its own size. I wouldn"t hurt a coral snake for anything."
"I didn"t know," she said, chagrined. "I"ve got all these civilized ways, which really aren"t so civilized. I a.s.sumed that poisonous snakes had to be killed."
He shook his head in emphatic negation. "No, never! Never! They have to make their living in their own way, same as we do. I don"t care about it that way, but they are beneficial to man; they eat rodents."
"I will not forget," she promised, with a rush of emotion. "You are teaching me."
"And the big indigo snake is really beautiful," he continued. "Maybe six feet long, thick like a python, all black except for a bit of red in the chin. When I see one of those I just stop and watch."
"I hope I see one." She wanted to share everything of his in this alternate world of the Middle Kingdom.
"They"re around, but rare." He glanced at her. "Can you move now?"
"I"ll try. I"m really sorry about slowing you down like this; I didn"t mean to be a drag."
"It"s the first time anybody cared to come with me. I don"t care how slow it gets."
"Thank you, Geode. It"s wonderful being with you in your world."
He started running again, and she resumed pedaling. This time he went slower, and she kept up more readily.
They came to a metal fence and gate. Beyond was a paved road. It looked familiar. "I-I think I"ve seen that before," she said, perplexed.
Geode turned his head and smiled. "It"s the corner of the drive. The house is south." He pointed.
She reoriented. "Oh-this lane through the pines must be on the diagonal! So it forms a triangle with the drive."
"Yes. The rest of the ranch is north." He turned north, away from the corner, and resumed his jog.
The trend seemed upward here. She shifted to a lower gear, making the pedaling easier, and was able to keep up; she was getting the hang of it, though she feared her legs would be sore tomorrow. It didn"t matter; she had asked to come along, and she was going to keep the pace somehow.
She brushed by a patch of gra.s.s. Something stung her on the calf. She reached down to brush it away, and it stabbed her hand. "Oh!"
Geode stopped. He nodded. "Sandspur."
Oh, of course; she had encountered them many times before. She just hadn"t been thinking of them now.
Geode used his fairly husky fingernails to pull the spurs from her jeans, then took her hand and worked out the one she had slapped. His touch was gentle and competent. "Thank you," she said.
"I should have warned you."
They resumed, and now she was careful to avoid the reaching spikes of sandspur.
The vegetation changed. Here, instead of small pines, there were mixed oaks, some of considerable size. The path wound up, skirting palmetto thickets and patches of sand. But then they came to another planting of pines. These were smaller, and seemed to be of a different kind.
"Longleaf pine," he explained, seeing her perplexity. "They grow in a "gra.s.s" stage until they have enough ma.s.s to move, then they shoot up their trunks and become regular trees. Protects them from gra.s.s fires, so you"ll see stands of natural longleaf where other trees have been burned off."
"But then why isn"t the other part planted with this kind?" she asked.
"The slash pine? It"s a good tree too. They thought it was the best, and the longleaf won"t start well from seed. Have to use tublings, mostly. So they planted mostly slash, only the soil was wrong in a lot of places, and it couldn"t make it. That"s what happened here; they had to cut it off and start over with longleaf." He grimaced. "Fool authorities for a long time wouldn"t cla.s.sify it as a tree farm unless the pines were planted in rows, so natural-seeded longleaf didn"t count, and good trees were taken out in favor of ones that couldn"t make it in the dry soil. Now they"re catching on, and the trees don"t have to be in rows, but it"ll be a long time before you see a lot of tree farms with mature longleaf."
"That"s the longest speech I"ve heard you make!" she said, smiling.
"No one wanted to listen before," he said, taken aback.
"Fool authorities," she said. "They don"t listen."
Surprised, he almost laughed. "You really care about trees?"
"I do now."
"I mean, when you"re not playing your game."
"It stopped being a game this morning."
He looked at her. She was now riding beside him as he slowly ran.
She nodded her head affirmatively. It was obvious that he was not accustomed to having anyone take him seriously. To him, this relationship was as much a fantasy as this ranch was to her.
"If you want to stop for a moment, I will kiss you," she said.
He considered that for a moment, then slowed, then stopped. She stopped the bicycle beside him, put her feet on the ground beside the pedals so that her legs held it up, turned, caught his shoulders, and drew him in to her for the kiss. The position was awkward, but the novelty was a thrill. He was glowing with sweat, and so was she; it didn"t matter.
"You said you liked to listen to me," she said. "Well, I like to listen to you too. Out here you are in your element."
He shook his head, in wonder rather than denial, and did not speak. In a moment they resumed their travel.
He glanced at a large pine tree. She looked too, but saw nothing. "What is it, Geode?"
"That"s where I found the hunter."
She felt a chill despite her sweat. "The monster was here?"
"Yes. In the night, maybe. I found his truck further over."
"The monster"s truck?" She made a stifled giggle. The grotesque mergence of concepts had to be alleviated somehow.
"The hunter"s truck. Mid had me drive it to another place so there wouldn"t be notoriety here."
none had been genuinely enjoying this strenuous excursion. Now there was a pall. "Please, let"s not stay here!"
Wordlessly he went on. She followed, managing to keep the pace as they pa.s.sed islands of full-grown laurel oak and extensive regions of tiny pines. Then, abruptly, there was a section of tall pines of the prior variety-and a horrendous pit. The thing seemed to be several hundred feet across and anything up to a hundred feet deep. Trees grew down its steep slopes and in the bottom.
"The mine," he explained. "Limerock. They took it out and left the hole."
"But aren"t they supposed to reclaim the land after they"ve done mining?" she asked.
"Yes." He ran on.
She looked down into the awesome hole in this otherwise almost level land. Probably this excavation predated the laws; even so, she understood that enforcement was a mockery. But this great hole was probably far more impressive than the original land had been. Florida didn"t have ragged mountains, it had the opposite: ragged depressions. She kept pedaling, and gradually her interest in the aspects of the ranch diminished; she just wanted to get through without collapsing. She focused on Geode"s back, and followed. It was as though she were in a tunnel, the vegetation forming its walls.
Her mind turned inward, as it so often did. She had seen a great pit; what might be down in there? A whole community of folk who never saw the outside world? People with different customs and cares, perhaps not evident at first. Elven folk, even; elves could be the same size and appearance as ordinary folk when they chose, and sometimes as a matter of indifference or mischief they did so choose. Perhaps one day a man from the outer world went down there and walked into the village, not realizing how different it was. There was an auction proceeding, and as he arrived he saw a pretty girl holding up an object that appealed to him, an elegant vase that would do for flowers. It was blue, or purple, reminiscent of lapis lazuli; perhaps the seller did not realize its worth.
He bid on it. All he had on him was a ten-dollar bill, so he bid that. To his surprise, he took it; no other person bid. So he went up to the table and laid down his bill, and the girl came with the vase. She gave it to another pretty girl, then turned to the man and smiled.
"But that"s my vase!" he protested. "I just bought it!" For it seemed that they were about to auction it off again.
"Not so," the old man at the table said. "You bought the girl, not the prop."
The girl stepped forward and took the man"s arm. "But-" he started, bewildered.
"Sorry, all sales are final," the old man said. "You bought her, you take her home. If you don"t like her, sell her or kill her."
"But I couldn"t do that!" the man protested.
"Didn"t think you could," the old man said. "Now clear out; you"re holding up the next sale."
And so the man departed the pit, with the girl. She was a truly lovely creature whose every breath was suggestive. In fact, she looked much the way none did, in her prime. She had spoken no word, but it was obvious that she knew what was what, and soon- The bike b.u.mped over a root and none almost skewed out of control. She recovered, but the thread of the story was lost. d.a.m.n!