Jewels of foggy sunlight stream into the tents. The girls are already complaining about the cold while the guys restart the fire. Amos stands at the edge of the site, listening to the warblers and softly kicking at the dirt. We wonder why he hasn’t joined us.

“Do you think he’s going back?” Penelope whispers to Indy.

“Not sure. He does need to know soon what he’s gonna do.”

Jess unearths the tents’ spikes and Amos finally turns around to help. We watch him through stolen glances, somehow guilty as if we’ve changed his mind, persuaded him one place is better than the other. Indy vacillates between poking at the logs and gazing at Amos, her poise halfway off the chair as if she’s about to stand. “Lucas, can you start packing the car?”

In the trunk goes our gear, dusted with soot and ash. The pungent smell of campfire won’t fade for days, we knew from childhood summers. But once we’re in the city, all the food vendors and gasoline fumes will launder our clothes.

Penelope dumps creek water into the pit, and as the last of forest smoke vaporizes, we exchange looks. Concrete jungle and natural timber. Amos doesn’t seem to be picking an angle, so we hug him one at a time. We all need showers.

Jess, Indy and Penelope get into the car. The exhaust sputters low. The passenger window traces a message in Indy’s handwriting, a strained scribble from being produced backwards: Come on. Over a hundred miles to either destination. The honk doesn’t startle our bones. We stand together, glimpsing past the tires, past oil-seeped pavement and jagged skylines, wondering which direction our pulses would urge us toward.

 

Emily Townsend is a graduate student in English at Stephen F. Austin State University. Her works have appeared in cream city review, Superstition Review, Thoughtful Dog, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Santa Clara Review, Memoir Mixtapes, Pacifica Literary Review and others. Nominee of a Pushcart Prize and 2019 AWP Intro Journals Award, she is currently working on a second collection of essays in Nacogdoches, Texas.