Ben reflected on the flames licking from six chunks of maple he’d split that morning and pulled from the truck bed that evening. If he looked to his right, he may have noticed how Lissa’s brown eyes reflected the flames, too, only doubled.
He just stared at the fire and sighed over his disabled truck, stuck there just off the old Adirondack logging road near Oven Lake. A less practical guy might think it looked like it was kneeling there in the brush, its headlight eyes peering into the dark like it was searching for something.
But Ben was anything but impractical. Lissa told her sister that Ben had one direction – forward — and two speeds – fast and stop. She’d almost learned to accept him missing the right and left of things, like how Lissa’s heart beat twice as hard since her accident.
“I doubt you planned getting us stuck in such a mess. Too out-of-the-blue, even for you. Too many moving parts,” he said.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But now that it has, I’m kinda glad it did. You know, we haven’t cuddled like this since…”
“Are you cold?” Ben said.
“Nope. I’ve got you and this fire to keep me warm,” Lissa said.
She kissed his cheek not facing the fire and noticed how it felt almost as cold hers was hot. She pressed her cheek against his.
“So what are we going to do?” he said. “Why can’t you make a call?” Lissa still didn’t understood Ben’s refusal to carry a cell phone. How he said he felt uncomfortable being tailed by some invisible overseer. Maybe, she mused, like an electronic conscience. But that was Ben.
“Tomorrow morning we can walk out to where I have coverage. For now, I just want to snuggle under this blanket, the fire crackling, moon smiling down, the loons looning by the lake.”
Ben broke her cheek-to-cheek link and stared into her face glowing in the firelight.
“Looning?”
“Sure, like how they’re being in the moment and dealing with things as they come.”
“Like large rocks hidden in the brush?” he said.
“Like nature revealing itself in its own time and its own way.”
“Like broken axles on an F-150 loaded with firewood and other unexpected…”
“You said you thought I’d be okay. And is it really so bad?”
“Hell, yeah, you need to be careful.”
“I thought I was. But I guess I was looning.”
“In the moment, eh?”
“Yes. You know how when things are too heavy and the momentum builds and you just can’t stop in time and…stuff happens. Right?” she said.
“Yeah. But look what your being in the moment got us. So when are you gonna…”
“Call? Tomorrow, soon as I can. Tomorrow.”
“Jesus! Wish you were more careful,” Ben said.
“Me, too.” Lissa said. “I’ll fix it all tomorrow.”
“Get some sleep, will ya?”
But Lissa’s stinging eyes already were closed tight as the wind shifted away toward the lake, carrying away the fire’s smoke with it. But not thoughts of the loons on Oven Lake and the accidents that got her there.
Here’s a double-sized version of my 250-word super-short story I drafted for Siobhan Muir’s weekly Thursday Threads feature. I had to use the phrase “you need to be careful” in it. This story started in one direction and then got Hemingway’d in an entirely different one.