Les straightened up, looking around for something to wipe his blackened hands on besides his clothes—unsuccessfully—and then wiped them in a slightly furtive way, as if he hoped no one would notice. “I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. “The spare is no good either. I should have checked it a long time ago.”
“Hmmm?” said Mariel, lifting her chin from her hand and looking at him. She was sitting on the hood of the car with one leg crossed over the other, and had been staring into the distance without speaking for the last few minutes. “Oh. Well, I guess we’ll have to walk, then. It’s only a mile or two, isn’t it?”
“Not much more…are you sure you don’t mind? I mean, I guess you don’t want to wait here by yourself—”
“No, I’ll go with you. I don’t mind at all.” Mariel slid from the car and inspected her shoes, then looked up with a smile, tossing her short golden-brown hair back from her face. “My shoes weren’t exactly made for walking, but then I’ve never found a pretty pair that were.”
Les was too mortified over the faultiness of the spare tire to think of a reply for this, so he only smiled half-heartedly and they started off down the road together.
The pavement of the road looked oddly bare and clean, only a few weeks out from the last melting of snow, and the strips of grass on either side were a rich, fierce new green, the blades just brought to the surface by the spring sun. A faint spicy smell came from the crisp pale tangle of last year’s dried weeds, a half-flattened border beyond the few yards of grass; and a tall silver maple leaning over the road was starred with fuzzy red buds like tiny curled caterpillars. Mariel walked with her head turned slightly aside, gazing into the sun-warmed brown woods, with deep green pines lurking behind the bare trees like the velvet curtains of a theatre in the middle of having its scenery changed. The tiny squeaks of a goldfinch and the singing of a dozen other small birds sounded from overhead.
When they had walked a little ways, Les ventured again, “I’m really sorry about this. Are you sure you don’t mind—”
“For about the tenth time, no—no—and no!” said Mariel with a laugh. “To be honest with you, I don’t know if I’ve ever driven somewhere without wishing in the back of my head that something like this would happen.”
“Wished for it?”
“Yes. I feel like I’ve spent my whole life being rushed past places that I wanted to just stop and linger and look at. Right from the time I was little, and we’d go shopping downtown. There were so many fascinating things in store windows that I’d want to look at—not things to buy, just things to enjoy staring at for a little while. But of course a grown-up would have me by the hand and I’d be pulled along past everything because we were on our way to somewhere else. And it’s a thousand times worse with cars!” she exclaimed, with an earnestness that Les privately thought was adorable. “You’re whisked past a thousand things that you’d like a closer look at, but never get more than a glimpse as you go by, because of course you’re on your way to somewhere else.” She stopped for a moment. “If we weren’t walking, would we be seeing that?”
She nodded toward a gap in the trees. Through it they could see a range of hills, the bare budding trees misting them in shades of mauve and lavender patched with green pine; and a startlingly blue sky above, reflected in a small shining mirror of a pond at the base of the hills.
Les shook his head. “Only for about two seconds, if you happened to be looking straight that way,” he said. “Even if it weren’t for the trees here, the angle would change every minute as you drove along.”
“That’s true,” said Mariel with additional wonder. “Hills are always different depending on where you look at them from.”
She glanced up at Les as they started to walk on, with that pretty questioning lift of the eyebrows. “You don’t mind walking, do you?” she said.
“No,” said Les, smiling back at her, “I can’t say that I do.”
Janie says
This was just wonderful. The opening sentence was great, and the rest of the snippet lived up to it.
Rachel Heffington says
I feel just this way about roads. I love Mariel and Les. <3
wisdomcreates says
LOVE THIS!!!!
Jessica says
I really enjoyed this! Definitely want to hear more about those two. 🙂
It's so nice to read about appreciating nature and the scenery around us too – something we seem to be missing in our fast paced age…