by Ralph Bowden
*****
Sometime in the night, I snapped awake. Suddenly, fully, for no reason I could identify. Out of the van’s tinted rear window, I could see the half moon up through the pine trees, but the light was not hitting me in the eyes. There was not the slightest breeze, now. The pine branches framing the moon were motionless. It was cold in the van. I could see my breath in the moonlight. I had turned my electric heater too low to come on, but was still comfortably warm in the sleeping bag. I listened and heard even less than I remembered when I first turned in. What had waked me? Not a dream. Not any sound that I remembered. Not a lightning flash. None of the traditionally recognized senses told me anything. But something in me knew: my boundaries had been breached. I was no longer alone.
What and where was the intruder? I waited, eyes and ears open and tuned up. After probably ten minutes of nothing but background white noise, no changes in the ambient light, and only a slight slippage of the moon through the pines, I concluded my awakeness must be a random firing in my brain, a synapse spasm, a nerve cramp, or something equivalent. I shifted around in my sleeping bag and tried to let go again.
My eyes had just closed when a stripe of light, not bright or quick, swept across my lids. This was no brain twitch. I sat up and looked out and around. My swivel stopped at the portapotty. There was a faint glow from the vents at the top. So, someone else was here after all. I had heard or seen no vehicle, but they could have hiked in, I suppose, or come in a boat. St. Cecelia’s beach was on a narrow barrier island with a navigable bay between it and the mainland. I hadn’t been to that side in several visits, but remembered a dock over there.
Somebody who might attack me probably wouldn’t stop to use a portapotty first, but just to be on the safe side, I wriggled out of my sleeping bag and reached up front to the glove box. The courtesy light in it blinded me momentarily, but I had grabbed my Service .38 and shut the door in no more than 3 seconds. Looking back toward the portapotty, the vent glow was still there. Chances are the person would not have noticed my brief light.
A minute later, the door opened and whoever it was emerged, following a weak flashlight beam. The light receded out to the campsite loop road and disappeared. Looking very closely, I thought I detected a faint glow through the trees and brush from one of the campsites, as if there was a tent set up there with a lamp in it.
A disappointment, I suppose, to have my absolute solitude compromised. But my supposed need was, after all, pathological. “Get over it,” I told myself. Humans are designed to co-exist. Even me.
