Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [52]
The next morning, I awoke and slipped out of the campsite without saying a word to Moot. I was ready to hike alone.
That morning I enjoyed my independence and my miles. The Virginia countryside is beautiful. Instead of meandering inside the forest, the trail passes through open pastures and beside rolling meadows. The fields are home to cattle and donkeys, and are visited by deer and coyotes that easily circumnavigate the surrounding fences. But by late morning, the only creature I saw gliding across the countryside was Moot.
I could see him behind me, a white fleck with a dark top slashing through the tall grass. I increased my speed, but still the fleck grew and Moot gained ground. If it wouldn’t have been completely obvious, I would have sprinted.
Within another twenty minutes, Moot was within talking distance. I didn’t understand how he was able to hike so fast. I was walking as quickly as I could, which so far had been fast enough to outpace everyone else on the trail. But not Moot.
“Hey, are you sore from yesterday?” he asked.
“No, not really. Are you?”
“Not too sore, but I smell really bad.” I didn’t want to get close enough to find out. “I think we’ll pass a large creek today and I might take a dip. Want to join me?”
“I don’t do cold water,” I said. It was the truth. I didn’t care how bad I smelled; if it was cold outside and the water was cold, I wouldn’t even splash it on my face.
“Well, then, you don’t mind if I bathe naked, do you?”
Naked? Noooooo! The mental image of Moot’s pasty white body and sinewy limbs frolicking in the icy current made me taste a little bit of bile in the back of my throat.
“Moot, if you decide to swim naked then I’ll just keep hiking. I really like to hike by myself anyway.” Hint, hint.
“Are you uncomfortable with nudity?” he asked.
Where was he coming up with this stuff? Just because I didn’t want to watch Moot skinny-dip, all of a sudden I’m embarrassed by the human body?
“No, I’m fine with nudity,” I said. “I think it’s very important to be comfortable with your body. In college, my girlfriends and I used to sneak out on rainy nights and streak the practice football field. It was harmless fun, and no one ever saw us.” Without thinking, I added, “In fact, I wouldn’t mind hiking naked.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted it. When I said, “I wouldn’t mind hiking naked,” I meant by myself, at night, under a full moon, in the summer, and for a very short stretch of time. But I immediately knew that was not how Moot envisioned it.
“Let’s do it!” he exclaimed.
“No, no, Moot. Not in the cold and not with a guy.”
“Have you ever seen a guy naked?” he asked.
“Yes.” I couldn’t pinpoint a specific time, but it seemed probable that at some point in my life I had seen a guy naked.
“When?”
“Uh, well, you know . . . I’ve seen naked babies . . . and R-rated movies . . . and stuff.”
“Wait, does that mean that you’ve never had sex?”
“No, Moot, I’ve never had sex.”
“Do you think that you’re the only virgin on the trail?”
“I don’t know, Moot. Maybe you should take a poll.”
He was silent. I thought my sarcasm had finally deterred him from his questions. Then, after about fifteen minutes of silence . . .
“So . . . do you ever pleasure yourself?”
He was a disease, a fungus, a parasite. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of him.
That night, before we went to bed, Moot asked me to call his name in the morning so that he would know I was awake, and then we could leave camp together.
But the next morning, I woke up and left without a word.
I hiked fast all morning. Still, although it had failed previously, my main tactic to escape Moot involved trying to outpace him during the day.
I had dropped hints too. Big hints. Hints like, “I’m so glad that I’m hiking this trail solo. I can’t imagine having a hiking partner.”
To which he would reply, “Yeah, me too.”
I wanted to be brutally honest with him, but I didn’t know how. My Southern upbringing had taught me to communicate