Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [68]
Because of the rotating blades and the roar of the engine, conversation was impossible. But whenever I happened to glance back at Micah, I noticed that he never stopped smiling.
Once we returned from the helicopter ride, we had some free time until lunch, and we decided to go for a jog around the property.
With thousands of miles logged on our legs over the course of our lifetimes, jogging felt natural to both of us. Falling into a moderate clip, our strides quickly became synchronized.
“This is like old times,” I said. “When we were back in high school.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“How often do you jog these days?”
“Not too much,” Micah answered. His breaths were even and steady. “I run when I play soccer, but if I try to do it every day, my back gets sore.”
“I know what you mean. I used to run a fast twenty miles on Sundays, but these days I can’t even imagine it. If I go four miles, I feel like I’ve really accomplished something.”
“That’s because we’re getting older,” he said. “Do you realize my twenty-year high school reunion is coming up in a few months?”
“Are you going?”
“I think so. It’ll be fun to see everyone. But when I think of high school, I think about Mike, Harold, you, and Tracy. Now those were great times.” For a while I listened to the sound of our feet on the compact dirt. “Do you remember when you and Harold went out on a double date that one time? When Tracy and I found you and had you roll down the car window so we could launch a bottle rocket into your car?”
I laughed. “How could I forget?” The thing had exploded at our feet, scaring the daylights out of us.
“Yeah, those are the memories that stay with me,” he said. “Those guys were great, and they’re the only ones I still really talk to anymore. It’s hard to believe that it all happened twenty years ago.”
After lunch and a shower, we headed back to Ayers Rock with the rest of our group. By then, the glare was relentless. It was over a hundred degrees, and with the sun high overhead, Ayers Rock was sandstone, its color unremarkable. Flies swarmed everywhere; you had to move continuously or they’d land on your lips or eyelashes, your arms and your back. There were trillions of flies. The tourists looked as if they’d taken wiggle pills.
Over the next few hours, the bus stopped in various places around Ayers Rock, which is regarded as sacred among the aborigines. We’d head out, walk around, listen to a story, then head back to the bus. We were led to some painted caves and a watering hole, where we were exposed to endless lectures about aboriginal history.
At the third or fourth stop, I turned to say something to Micah. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. At that point, we’d been listening to a story concerning one of the upper crevices on the rock. It had to do with a spirit warrior who got lost in the desert, only to fight a battle with another spirit, and somehow the images of the battle had been imprinted on the rock. This, in turn, led people to know where the watering hole was; they would search the rock for said image, thereby knowing they were close. Or something like that. The blistering heat was making me dizzy and it was difficult to keep all the characters in the legend straight.
“Have you ever noticed that the less interesting something is, the longer people want to talk about it?” Micah sighed, slapping at the buzzing flies.
“C’mon, it’s interesting. It’s a culture we know nothing about.”
“The reason we don’t know anything about it is because it’s boring.”
“It’s not boring.”
“It’s a big rock in the middle of the desert.”
“What about the colors?”
“We saw the colors this morning. In the daytime, it’s a big rock. And I wasn’t being eaten by flies or cooked