Hairwolf

Later, Stef reverses out of the driveway with Lillian sitting beside her, waving to Moby.

“Tell him to watch the sky,” Stef says to Lillian.

“Watch the sky, Mobes. Why does he have to watch the sky?”

“Hawks, eagles.”

“Oh, right. Watch the skies, Moby. Skies. Up there.”

Lillian reaches across for the radio and turns it on. Ironically, from the speakers, comes the first memorable notes of Steppenwolf, “Born To Be Wild.”

Stef screams out in excitement, blasting the volume, singing, “Get your motor runnin. Head out on the highway. Looking for adventure and whatever comes our way...”

Lillian launches in and the two are released into their imaginations.

Later, the girls binge on cooked skewers. Stef presses the scan button on her radio but gets mostly talk stations. She turns it off. “Where in no-woman’s land.”

“How long a drive is it?” Lillian asks, resting comfortably in the passenger seat, feet pressed against the dash-board.

“About five more hours. You gonna make it?”

“With you as my co-pilot, hell yeah. I love road trips. I can drive all night long. Why’d we wait so long to do this?”

Neither have an answer but this will certainly become a ritual.

It’s late in the day and Lillian is sound asleep in the passenger seat with her head holding up a pillow against the window. Stef chews on a carob covered rice cake, sipping coffee from her

thermos cup. She’s wired with a firm grip on the steering wheel. She turns down a bumpy dirt road past a sign that reads, MAINE STATE PARK.

Lillian’s pillow slips down between the door and seat, causing her head to slap against the closed window. She awakens just enough to adjust her head and dozes back off. But as the bumps get bigger, the head-slaps get harder. Finally, she protests - “Can you please not trying to hit every single bump in the friggin road.”

“Oh, were you sleeping,” Stef, asks? “I didn’t notice. I was busy driving – alone!”

“You said I could take a nap.”

“You’ve been out for two hours. Drive all night, my ass.”

“Is there any coffee,” Lillian, asks?

“In the thermos. I left you a donut.”

“Where are we?”

“Almost there. We started pretty late, so I’m going to be a little rushed for moonrise.”

“What time is that?”

“Seven Thirtyish. We still have another forty minutes of dirt road to go.”

“Plenty of time,” Lillian says.

Stef’s not so confident about that. Lillian looks out at the tall pines and forested grounds, sipping her coffee. She offers - “It’s really beautiful here.”

“Wait till you see the lake. If you see the lake,” Stef says casually, looking for something in the woods.

Lillian enquires, “What are you looking for?”

“My sticks. The vine wrapped ones. I gave my best one to Mr. Winster. I remember seeing a small grove of them out here, somewhere.”

Stef slows to a stop. “There it is.” She’s referring to a thick clump of trees and saplings with Bittersweet vines climbing up their bases to the tops of the canopies. Not all vines choke the saplings, but there are a few. She’ll have to search for the right one. Stef exits with her new belt and knife set from Mr. Winster and straps it on, proudly. She models for Lillian. It looks good over her jeans.

“That’s a hot look,” Lillian admits. “Where’d you get them?”

“Mr. Winster. You like it?”

Lillian exits with a bandana and hangs it around Stef’s neck. She then unbuttons the top of her shirt and fluffs the bandana.

“Now that’s – hot,” Lillian says.

Stef takes a peek at herself in the drivers’ door mirror. It’s a nice look, but she wouldn’t go as far as to say she looked hot. She walks off into the woods not far from the truck. She finds a vine wrapped sapling, corkscrew shaped. She removes the larger blade and hacks the branches off easily. She then takes aim at the base of the vine, just above the ground and with one slice, severs it. Stef inspects the vine embedded in the wood, spiraling from the bottom up. She’s happy with it.

She stands the stick upright and hacks away at the tiny off-shoots, impressed with the sharpness of her new knife. She hacks away at other vines choking other trees. She cuts the vines just above the ground. In total, she’s cut about twenty vines. This took less than a couple of minutes to do. Satisfied, she touches each tree on her way out, thanking them for the air that she breathes. She holds her new stick up to Lillian.

“What do you think?”

“You just killed a tree to make a hiking stick?”

“Actually, I didn’t. These are saplings from the main tree. Think of it as an extended root system. Besides, I left enough for the base to keep growing.”

“Okay, so you killed a vine to make a hiking stick?”

“No,” she says removing the belt holster and placing it in the rear seat. “I didn’t pull the vine out of the ground, so it’ll live another day to climb another tree.”

“So why bother?”

“Tip the balance towards the trees. These guys will grow nice and strong now. Hey, it beats planting them. Cheaper too.”

Stef places the sapling in the back and climbs in the truck. She pulls away with - “Thanks, guys.”

Lillian waves as well, following Stef’s lead. “How many trees do you think you’ve saved doing

this?”

“I don’t know,” Stef ponders. “Maybe a thousand. Most vines aren’t that big. What’d that take – a couple of minutes?”

“Your math sucks,” Lillian advises. “If you’re cutting a vine a minute because it takes you time to go from one tree to the other … Let’s play this out, you know how I love math. Let’s say you cut thirty vines a day, minimum. And we’ll say you do that four days a month...”

“...I hike a lot more than four days a month, Lil.”

“I know. So thirty vines a day, times four days a month, is a hundred and twenty vines a month,

times 12 months is one thousand, four hundred and forty.”

Stef can’t believe the math. She listens with mouth agape at the numbers.

“And that’s just for one year,” Lillian says. “In ten years, at fourteen hundred and forty vines a year, you’ve saved fourteen thousand, four hundred trees. Minimum!”

“What?!” Stef stops the truck, looking at Lillian with complete surprise.

Lillian sticks her head out the window, yelling to the forest, “I’ve got her – right here. My friend, the Forest Queen. You’re welcome!”

As they drive deeper under a thickening canopy, Lillian asks, “What happened to the sun? It’s so dramatic.” She looks across acres of pine needles carpeting a forest of thick, standing trees with little to no undergrowth. It’s difficult for new life here. The competition for sunlight under the standing giants is brutal. Beds of ferns lay more and more abundant in this area. Their bright green leaves are accentuated by spears of golden sunlight coming in from the west.

“It’s beautiful,” Stef says, taking in the splendor. “I’m usually in place by this time and don’t really get to see it during sun set.”

Trees have fallen due to moist soil and winter winds. The area looks like something out of Sleepy Hollow, dark and mysterious. Lillian turns to Stef with - “It’s amazing how it all changes so rapidly. How the hell did you find this place? It’s scary as shit.”

“Topo map, satellite maps on the web ...”

Stef pushes the truck a little further. The crick and crack of the suspension echoes loudly inside the cab. Lillian grows antsy. Stef reaches over and takes her hand.

“I got you.”

“You know you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“I warned you. There’s no turning back. You’re in it now.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lillian defends.

“No you won’t.”

“Oh, please!”

“You won’t, Lillian. Right now,everything is as you know it. But when that moon comes up, that shits gonna change. Everything you know is gonna change. I just hope you can handle it.”

“Handle what? You? I’m a BBW, baby. Beautiful black woman. I’ve been through things you didn’t even know existed.”

Stef smiles. “You ain’t been through this.”

“We’ll see.”

The more Stef thinks about it the more she realizes that this may not have been such a good idea. She never should have brought her into this. “I have an idea,” Stef says, stopping the truck. “Take the truck and come back for me in the morning.”

“What? No. Hell no. That’s not the way this is going down. I knew this was going to happen.

Don’t go changing the rules now. I’m stayin. I’m stayin, I’m watchin and I’m gonna put my foot up your ass when nothin happens.”

“Why are you getting angry?”

“You really have no idea, do you? You know what? I’m not gonna get angry. I’ll wait till we’re back in New York to get angry cause right now I just want to enjoy my little vacation with you. I got the rest of my life to kick your ass for this.”

“That’s if Rin Tin Tin doesn’t bite yours first.”