Trouble at the Cave

After lunch I went up to the caves across the valley to check in on Camilla.

It was a nice hike. The sun was starting to break through a little bit and I found a nice patch of plantain that I marked for some later harvest.

It took me about an hour and a half to get to the general area, and once I got there it didn't take me long to find her cave. Her sweater was sitting on a backpack just outside the entrance. It was really quiet, though, so I thought she must have been out hiking or collecting food or something.

I sat down on a rock nearby to wait ... threw some rocks ... watched the birds ... tried to compose a haiku. I even had a smoke. But after waiting quite some time (it must have been around two hours) I thought I would just leave a note and head back to the cottage – maybe invite her for lunch the next day or something. I didn't bring any pencil or paper, so thoughI was a bit uncomfortable with doing this, I walked into her cave to see if perhaps she had left anything lying around with which I could leave the note. And to my surprise, there she was, curled up on a pile of pine boughs, fast asleep in the late the afternoon, her feet sticking out from beneath a green flannel blanket. Her hair was uncombed and full of needles and her feet were pretty cut up. As I quickly backed out (bumping my head on the entrance) I saw a bottle of sleeping pills and an empty box of granola bars.

Once outside, I decided I should wait, needed to wait.

I went back to my rock and smoked another pipe in silence.

About an hour before sunset I heard some stirrings from inside the cave and several minutes later she came out yawning and stretched.

"Hi," I said before she had a chance to see me first and wonder what I was doing sitting quietly outside her cave.

She looked up, somewhat startled but not yet fully awake. She paused for a couple of seconds then recognized me with a nervous smile. "Oh! It's you!"

Her ankles and wrists were thinner than I remembered them – quite a bit thinner. And her face was drawn.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

No reply.

"Would you like some dinner, I mean? Down at the cottage?"

There was no sign of the initial confidence she had displayed at our first meeting - just a confusion that half-suggested several things at once.

"Hmmm ..." she finally managed.

Perhaps I had been wrong then - my judgment clouded. Or perhaps even then it had taken every ounce of her soul to appear so confident. And catching her unawares I had made such exertion impossible.

"I have a rabbit stew ready to go over the fire."

"Rabbit? Did you ... shoot it?"

"Well ... yes."

"I'm ... a vegetarian."

"You could just eat the potatoes."

Another pause.

"Hmmm ..."

"I also saw some plantain on the way up here. We could collect some and make a salad. There are radishes ready in the garden. I had one this morning."

There it was. Something in the corner of her mouth. Her confidence had returned. Either that or she was again summoning something strongly resembling confidence, exerting herself through her force of will.

"Sure. Just a second. I'll be right back."

When she came out the needles were combed out of her hair. She grabbed the sweater from the backpack and pulled it on over her T-shirt.

"All right! Let's go!" she said, and bounced down the trail ahead of me.

"Don't you want your shoes?" I called after her.

"Nah. Come on. Let's go. Maybe I'll even eat the rabbit."

We collected just enough plantain for a salad. When we got back I lit the fire and she helped with the stew. She said the salad was pretty good. And she did eat the rabbit.

She was talkative and lively for most of the night, betraying little if anything of the sadness I had seen in her look the last time and nothing of what I feared I had seen in the cave. She likes to read. We talked about Cannery Row for a while, and also Travels with Charlie and Of Mice and Men. I didn't ask anything about where she had come from, though, or why she had left. Those aren't questions you ask out here. People tell their own stories. Or make up better ones. But one way or the other, only when they're ready.

As she was leaving, I asked if she would come back tomorrow and help me shovel some of the dirt back on to the root cellar. Then I saw the look in her eyes again, the look that gazed into the smoke and knew everything.

"Sure," she said, and walked out into the dark.