Note to readers: this is my entry in the 2021 Summer Lovin' contest. Votes and comments are welcome. Hope you like it.
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Aaaahhh, summertime in the south. Heat and humidity, mosquitoes, ticks, biting gnats, kamikaze "dog-pecker" gnats that commit suicide in your eyeballs, crawl into your ears and up your nose, acres and acres of lush poison ivy. Did I mention heat and humidity? Air that feels like a hot, wet blanket; a suffocating presence that saps energy and brainpower and the will to live. Summertime -- the season that in the age of global climate change increasingly lends itself to being lived entirely indoors -- in air conditioning powered by the very same fossil fuels blamed for getting us here in the first place.
David Robinson had been cooped up in the AC for a couple of weeks and was going stir crazy. Brief forays into the tropical mugginess for groceries, a late morning ride on the lawn mower before the grass got completely out of hand, an occasional socially-distanced meeting with clients or co-workers. Otherwise, for most of the summer it had been Zoom meetings and spreadsheets and halfhearted spins on the stationary bike with the fan blowing full blast.
He needed a dose of the outdoors, hot and sticky as it may be. He got to the state park about 8 AM, just as the sun was climbing above the trees and the fog. The forecast was the same as always: high of 95 degrees, humidity 80%, good chance of afternoon thunderstorms. He chose a familiar route; a loop trail that would take him about 10 miles through hardwood forests and old fields, down along a slow-moving river and back to the trailhead. The air was already oppressive, but at least the temperature hadn't hit 75 yet. As he double checked his water bottles and hoisted his daypack, there were only two other cars at the trailhead, and one of them appeared to be a dog-walker. He noticed that the other car had a tag from four counties to the west, with a Sierra Club decal on the back window and a Resist! bumper sticker. Probably someone from the state university. Anyway, it looked like solitude was on the menu for the day.
The first mile was an easy stroll through flat terrain; following an old field road that doubled as a fire break for the controlled burns the park personnel did periodically. After about a mile or so the trail went into the tree canopy and began climbing a pretty steep hill. Another mile of up and down hills and he was completely soaked with sweat and squinting from the gnats swirling around his face. The cicadas were playing an urgent symphony of sexual desperation in the trees overhead; buzzing vibrations that swelled in intensity to a crescendo and then trailed off. He wondered if their sex lives were any more successful than his own. Lately, his was nonexistent.
He rounded a curve in the trail and faced a long uphill slog. He heard the loud, high-pitched shriek of fear at the same time his brain registered the image of a human figure jumping backward, reacting to some perceived danger. The voice sounded feminine, and yes, that was a female form some 100 yards up the slope. She was backing up cautiously; recoiling from something or someone threatening. As he got closer the form took shape and developed details: a chubby woman in her mid-thirties with light brown hair, pale bare legs, tan shorts hugging an ample but shapely derriere. She was looking down at something in the trail a few feet in front of her.
Not wanting to get too close and startle her before letting her know he was there, he stopped about a hundred feet away and called out: "Is everything okay?"
She turned abruptly with a surprised look on her face, a look that quickly seemed to morph into relief to see another human.
"There's a snake in the trail! It scared the hell out of me. I almost stepped on it."
So, there was a snake in the trail.
That fact registered in the logical part of his brain, but what really hit him instantly was the pretty face, and the huge breasts. This woman was stacked! Definitely very chubby but well-proportioned, and very pretty. He couldn't quite process it, but there was something familiar about her as well. Had he seen her before?
As he closed the distance, he had the presence of mind to look down and scan the trail ahead of his feet -- he knew from experience that where there was one snake, there might be two, especially if it was the poisonous variety. When he got to her side, he could see the rattlesnake ten feet ahead; coiled up in the middle of the trail, coolly watching them.
"I wasn't really paying attention to the trail, but for some reason I just happened to look down as my foot was about to land next to the snake," she said. "I nearly jumped out of my skin."
"What should we do?" she added.
A bit of a dilemma. Normally he would just leave a snake alone and go around it, but a poisonous snake in the middle of a hiking trail was a hazard for any other hikers that passed through. Leave it alone and hope it moved off before anyone else came along, or risk getting it really pissed off by forcibly moving it?
"I think we should get it off the trail so someone else doesn't step on it," he finally said.
"And how do we do that? I'm not getting near it."
He looked around and found a decent stick, broke it off at about five feet, and gingerly nudged the snake. At first the snake just looked slightly annoyed, but after a few more nudges, it turned on the rattles -- the tail vibrating 2 inches of what he guessed to be about a dozen rattles, sounding almost like the buzzing of the cicadas only much more menacing.
"God that's scary!" she said, grabbing him by the arm and moving behind him, as if to hide from the snake.
He prodded the rattler a few times and finally physically picked it up with the stick, until it got disgusted with the whole situation and started crawling off down the hill, buzzing the whole time. He followed it at a discrete distance until it was 20 feet off the trail and on the other side of a log.
"Well, hopefully it will stay off the trail for good," he said, as he walked back toward her.
Those eyes!
Pretty, light blue, soft eyes that seemed to be smiling. Again, the feeling that he had seen her before. She was looking at him as if she was trying to figure out some lost connection too -- some missing puzzle piece from the past. Suddenly, she seemed to find it; a smile and a spark of recognition in her face.
"David?"
She knew his name. WTF?!
"It's Melanie, remember me?"
And suddenly, he did. He remembered looking into those pretty blue eyes across the table of an Applebee's restaurant, three, maybe four years ago. Melanie Walker. They'd had one date -- a meal at a place halfway between them. A rush of thoughts ran through his mind, and he was acutely aware of choices made, possibilities unexplored, options left on the table. He remembered lovely cleavage in a low-cut blouse (not sleazy, just flirty), intelligent conversation, laughter. In the feast or famine world of online dating, he had had several first dates all in quick succession, and Melanie had been in the middle. A few days later, he had met someone who he really clicked with, and they had dated for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it ended, by her choice, and he had been out of the dating scene ever since.
He had been a gentleman and not left Melanie hanging -- he had emailed her an explanation that he really enjoyed their date, but had met someone and started a serious relationship. It wasn't because she was overweight, he told himself. Or the fact that she had young children and was pretty well tied down, he further told himself. Just a matter of timing. But he was astonished at how happy he was to see her now, with no makeup, soaked with sweat, her wavy brown hair plastered against the side of her face.
"Hi Melanie, yes I remember. Good to see you."
What now?
