The Passion of Jazz and Other Short Stories
Page 6
done to be disliked by her, but he figured he could follow her unfriendly behavior too, and not wait for her in the airport. Karen ended up arriving to the hostel later than almost everyone else, having waited at the airport expecting Doug to show up.
Moments later, Doug received a call on his cell phone from his American friend Wendy. She was studying at the University of Norwich but they knew each other from the University of California orientation in London. Doug had invited her to meet with his other friends to see Ireland. On the phone, she sounded shaken and told him she was at the bus terminal.
Doug walked down the street to the terminal and found her inside, crying. She tearfully looked up at him and gave him a big hug, desperate and relieved at once. She said her train in England had broken down and she had been stuck for two hours. She missed her flight and had to take a later one. Then in Ireland she was not sure which bus to take to the hostel, and by luck she had ended up here. She was shaking and teary-eyed, just glad to be at her destination.
When Wendy and Doug came back to the hostel, the group of students was finally together, so they decided to go out for dinner. However, three of them were vegetarian. They walked around and found a pub with a menu on the window. Almost every dish contained meat, with only one or two vegetarian options. The vegetarians felt bad about holding everyone else up, but there was nothing for them to eat at the restaurants.
The group spent thirty minutes walking and searching, until they saw a Burger King—which Doug said had a Veggie Whopper. It seemed odd to choose American fast food when surrounded by new Irish options, but the group was tired and two of the vegetarians said that would be okay, since they could not find anything else. Most of the others began to agree, but Hazel, the English vegetarian student, said she did not want to be responsible for making everyone go there. The others assured her it was okay with them, but she just kept saying, “No, no, I don’t want it to be my fault. Go somewhere you like.”
Finally they calmed her down and settled on Burger King, seating themselves in an upstairs area. Robert finished his burger and fries quickly. Normally cheery and jovial, he became upset that not everyone felt happy with their choice of Burger King and not everyone was getting along. Robert stood up looking glum and said, “If anybody wants me, I’ll be outside.”
When Robert had left, Rex, another American, asked the remaining students, “Has everyone gone mental?”
The next day, they all went to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It provided little consolation for the students’ rocky relationships, with the light drizzle of rain from grey skies, the slow procession of green floats and marching bands dressed in green. The students stood in their coats under umbrellas, some not talking to each other. They waited for the parade to be over so they could go back to their hostel.
That night, they returned to their hostel room, which had three bunk beds for the eight of them. Rex and his girlfriend Rose shared a bed, and Doug and his friend Wendy had decided to share a bed. Before bedtime, Wendy started complaining that she did not know what her boyfriend would think of her sharing the bed. “This is weird,” she said.
They all eventually got to sleep, but Doug had not told Wendy that he occasionally sleep-talked and did things in his sleep. In the middle of the night, he started moving his body back and forth and suddenly elbowed Wendy out of bed onto the floor. She said, “What the hell, Doug?”
But Doug was fast asleep and did not respond. Rex and Rose heard, and Rose asked, “Is she talking in her dreams?”
Rex said, “She’s not asleep, that’s real.”
In the morning, Robert gave Doug a cuff on the arm, not entirely playfully. Doug wondered what it was for. Only later did he learn from Wendy what he had done. Wendy decided to spend the rest of the day alone on a double-decker tour bus, leaving Doug with the rest of the group.
At the end of the day the two-day trip was finally over. Everyone went to the airport and Doug and Karen went to their gate for the flight back to London. But although their uncomfortable vacation had ended, their adventure home had just begun.
Doug and Karen’s plane to London was delayed by almost two hours. By the time they reached the London train station at around 11 p.m., the last train back to Canterbury had already departed. They decided to take their only option, to board a train for Whitstable, located on the coast less than a half hour’s drive from Canterbury.
They arrived at Whitstable after midnight. They walked outside the train station, but could not find a taxi or car in sight on the empty, dark road. They had hoped taxis might be waiting at the station, but Whitstable was too small a town for that. They stood on the sidewalk, Karen with her large traveling backpack and Doug with his two small satchels, wondering how to get home.
Karen suggested they walk downtown on the cycle path that wound past the station and try to find a taxi there. Doug happened to be a seasoned bicyclist and had ridden the cycle path many times on his mountain bike. He would ride on sunny mornings through the farmlands and fields on the outskirts of Canterbury, through the turns in the woods, down the hill to Whitstable, and into the downtown by the docks. He loved biking, and he had ridden the path dozens of times, so he thought he knew it well. But he did not remember that in the daytime, clearly visible marker signs pointed the way through the woods.
Doug said, ”I’ve biked this path a lot. It would take at least half an hour to walk downtown, and even then we’re not assured we will find a taxi. Why don’t we hike the cycle path back to Canterbury? It would only take about 45 minutes.”
Karen hesitated, not sure she wanted to walk so far that late at night. “Are you sure you don’t want to just walk downtown, it’s closer?” she asked.
“No, the cycle path will take us there easily, I think we should take it.”
“Okay, I guess we could give it a try,” Karen said reluctantly.
Doug and Karen started out on their hike, walking along the reddish-brown pavement of the cycle path. The path curved through neighborhoods of grey brick houses, past a darkened church, and through a field next to a farm on the edge of town. Soon they approached an overpass, going over a highway. From the overpass, they saw the cycle path lead forward into a dark wood that covered a hill.
Doug said, “All we have to do is climb that mountain and we’ll be back in Canterbury.”
“Great, so we’re going hiking at 2 a.m.”
Doug laughed mildly and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll make it.”
They started climbing the hill into the woods, but to Doug it looked different than he remembered it. For one thing, there were fallen tree logs all across the trail. Doug stepped over them, but one was so big he had to crawl under it. Karen followed him, and he said, “You can make it, just go under. I made it okay.”
Karen said, “Yeah, but I’m twice your size.”
Karen handed Doug her backpack and crawled under on the moist soil. She could not see her legs in the dark, but she was sure the dirt was getting on her new pants she had bought in Dublin.
They continued walking up the hill, and Doug looked up at the trees to the left, saying, “Look, those trees look odd, it’s like they’ve all been shaved off. I wonder what happened here, it doesn’t look like usual.” Indeed, the trees were chopped off and flattened into a line.
Karen felt disturbed and said, “Don’t tell me that.”
“It’s probably nothing important.”
Finally they reached the top of the hill, where they saw a sign sitting in the middle of the path.
“What does it say?” Doug asked, reading it. “‘Tree Felling Zone.’”
“Oh great, that figures,” Karen said.
She gave a nervous laugh and pulled out her camera, snapping a picture of the sign at her feet.
They continued walking on the path through the woods, which had flattened out past the tree felling zone. The woods were a dark black on either side of the path. Karen was silent, just trying to make i
t through, so Doug tried to lighten the mood by chattering away.
“That was a good parade, I’m glad we went even if it was a little rainy.”
Karen gave a soft, “Yeah.”
“I bet the other students should be home by now. We’re pretty close to Canterbury ourselves. This is a good cycle path, a very direct route from Whitstable to Canterbury.”
As they walked, they started to hear a couple wild animals calling out from the darkness that surrounded them, crying, “Graa, graa.”
Karen felt afraid and put her mittened hand in Doug’s. Neither of them knew what kind of animals they were. But they sounded scary if they decided to jump out of the trees.
Presently, Doug started to feel they had been walking the flat path for too long. Soon after, the path came to an unexpected dead end, with trees right, left, and in front. Doug tried pursuing small side trails that led downhill, but he found them all unfamiliar, and clearly none of them was the main path. The path had ended in unknown blackness, and it was not supposed to end.
Suddenly, Doug remembered there was a sign post pointing where to take a turn-off further back on the path. They must have passed it. He remembered looking down some turn-offs leading into the woods while he had been talking to Karen. He had been so busy talking; and it had been so dark, making the sign unapparent; and the wild animals were