Goode Vibrations

by Jasinda Wilder

  I was in no hurry to get anywhere, so if I saw a likely looking detour, I took it. If I saw a side road or turnoff that burbled my curiosity, I followed it. Sometimes it took me to a dead end or a big circle out of my way through rural nowhere dirt roads, but I always got some good shots out of the detour, so it was never wasted time.

  I already knew what my favorite shot was so far. I’d taken exactly one such detour—a two-track dirt road off the already remote county highway I was on, which took me through cornfields and then through a stand of trees, on the other side of which was a fenced-in pasture containing a few dozen head of cattle.

  It was a quaint, pleasantly pastoral scene, so I parked the caravan, tossed my trusty Nikon over my shoulder, and my backup Canon over the other, and hopped the fence. The pasture was several hectares of open grassland, rolling hills here and there with a few tall old spreading oaks. The cows were clumped hither and yon lowing softly, shaking great shaggy heads. These were no Holsteins or the familiar breeds I knew, but rather great furry, longhaired ones with curving horns and broad flat foreheads. A few of them ambled over to me, sniffing warily, accepting forehead scratches, which told me they were used to human interaction. I snapped a few photos of them as they clustered around me, curious and gentle.

  Then a massive old bull with huge horns and small beady eyes trotted over, reddish-gold hair, curly and shaggy. He, the bull I mean, did not appreciate my presence in the least. A point he made very clear by angling toward me, shaking his colossal head with those wicked curving horns, making angry noises at me. I backed away from him toward the fence, but that wasn’t good enough for the touchy old fucker. Oh no, he wanted me gone, so the closer toward the fence I got, the more earnestly he chased me, bellowing what I was certain were the cow versions of curses. I didn’t dare turn my back on him, so I did my best to run backward and, of course, I snapped shots of him from the hip as I went.

  And then my heel caught on a huge pile of shit, and down I went, ass over teakettle, cradling my cameras out of instinct. By the time I hit the ground, Mr. Bull was on top of me, staring down at me, head shaking and nodding. I lifted my camera, clicking the shutter as fast as I could as he bore down. I was, clearly, a photographer first and a human with a normal sense of self-preservation second.

  A normal person would leave the cameras and run, but not me, oh no. Huge angry bull weighing thousands of pounds coming at you all hooves and horns and flaring nostrils? Take a dozen snaps first, then run—shooting as you run, hoping a few of the backward shots were usable.

  I hopped the fence, and the moment I had the fence between him and me, I spun around and got face to face with him, and got the money shot—his head lowered, nostrils wide and dark, beady dark eyes angry under a curtain of reddish-gold hair, horns curving toward the center of the shot like spears.

  I pulled up the last shot, and what a beauty. Captured the great old bloke in all his angry glory, mere inches away, and even on the screen he just exuded protective threat.

  He bellowed at me all the way to my van—that’s right, bitch, you better run! That’s how I heard it, at least.

  I continued on that way, making slow progress to Kentucky. I took a six-hour detour to get a single shot of a rock face, risking life and limb as I hiked off the highway and through scrub forest and dense brush until I was at the base of a mammoth rock face some fifty feet high, a sheer outcropping of gray weathered granite. Not content with a shot looking up, though. Hell no, not me. I climbed the damn thing, despite the multiple signs warning of danger and advertising legal action if caught. I just had to not die and not get caught, that’s all. I mean, I’d once donned a “borrowed” HAZMAT suit and hiked into Chernobyl and filled an entire memory card with highly illegal and medically hazardous photographs. So hiking a tiny little outcropping of rock? Child’s play. I was an experienced mountaineer, rock climber, and rappeler, so this was very literally a walk in the park. But still, worth it for the straight-down view from the top of the rock face, which Google image searches told me was a pretty well-known tourist attraction in the area.

  Forty-eight hours after leaving Utica, New York, I finally reached Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and arranged a private tour before the caves were open to the public—a perk of being a Nat Geo photographer.

  God, the shots I got. The guide assigned to me was, fortunately, a young woman newly hired just weeks before, and if I knew anything besides photography, it was how to flex my admittedly ridiculous good looks to my advantage. Flirt, banter, tell tame but thrilling stories of embedding with a unit of SAS on assignment in Afghanistan, making stepping a bit beyond the designated safe areas seem just plain silly. The best shots were ones my guide protested the most, where I had to climb off the path and clamber across slick rock surfaces and cling like a spider in precarious positions with the camera clutched to my face clicking off shots so fast it was almost machine-gunning. Worth it, though. Even when my foot slipped and I almost slid into a crevasse, only catching myself on a stalagmite at the last moment, to the mortified, horrified, frozen-helpless terror of my so-called guide.

  Once back on the path, I pretended my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest, offering her a winsome, breezy grin. “Piece of piss, yeah?”

  “Ohmygod I’m going to get into so much trouble,” she gasped.

  “Nah, love, not if you don’t tell. As far as anyone needs to know, we stayed on the path the whole time. It’s all good.”

  “But you just almost died.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t, did I?” I pulled up the shot I’d gotten for my trouble. “Plus, look at this. Worth it, I’d say.”

  She leaned against me to look, and bless her for the down-blouse glimpse I got. “Wow, that’s amazing.”

  “Oh, just wait till I get it into Lightroom and touch it up a bit. That’s gold, that is. My editor’s gonna love that one.”

  We walked back, and she stuck a bit closer to me than was strictly necessary. “So, now what?” she asked.

  “Well, now I find somewhere to have brekky.”

  “Have what?” she asked, laughing.

  “Breakfast.”

  “Oh. There’s a nice cafe in town. I’d show you, but my shift just started.”

  Damn, damn, damn. She was a cute little thing, too. Smiling up at me. A few more of my better stories and I’d have her eating out of the palm of my hand. But, sadly, I felt the highway calling me, louder than my need to linger till her shift was over and see what trouble we could get into.

  “And I’d hang about town till your shift was over, but I gotta get a move on.” I shrugged, offering a sad smile. “Thanks for the tour, though.”

  She seemed bummed, but smiled back at me. “No problem. Glad you didn’t, you know, die in the cave. I’d have gotten fired for sure if you had.”

  “I always know the risks I’m taking. No worries.” We were at the gift shop by then, so I said goodbye to her, picked up a little shot glass as a souvenir, and hit the highway.

  No direction, no itinerary, no one to rendezvous with, just…freedom.

  St. Louis. The arch, some urban exploration. Old warehouses, litter-ridden streets, and glitzy high-rises. I found an abandoned manufacturing plant in a district outside the city where I was fairly certain I was not entirely safe, pulled my van into a tiny alley behind the plant where it was less likely to be stolen or ransacked. I spent several hours shooting the plant, climbing dizzy heights up into the rafters to get bird’s eye and tilt-shift shots, slid under machinery and climbed over it and squeezed behind things, ducked through broken glass windows and yanked open rusting doors.

  By the time the sun had set, I had thousands of great shots. Once the sun started setting, though, some primeval instinct had me hightailing it for my van and I made tracks out of the city before dark found me in what felt to my well-honed instincts as being sus as hell.

  I found a single track that dead-ended at a signal tower off in the wops miles from the highway, parked my van and caught some sleep. Daw
n found me wide-awake, so I heated water for some pour-over coffee, lit my camp stove outside and rustled up some eggs. On a motorcycle trip across the wild interior of Russia, I discovered that if I stopped at a little farm somewhere, I could usually buy a dozen or two fresh eggs, which would keep unrefrigerated for months, and I’d continued that habit anywhere I went, and the rural expanses of America were no exception, and speaking the language made it easier than it’d been in Russia. I used the Westfalia’s tiny fridge to keep meat and veg in, and left the beer warm because I’d rather have warm beer and fresh beef.

  An hour past breakfast, I was zinging along a picturesque two-lane through cattle pastures, singing along to a Harry Styles song, and yes, I realize some may call my masculinity into question over it, but question it to my face if you dare—you’ll be choking on your teeth if you do.

  And that’s when I saw her.

  We can meet again somewhere/somewhere far away from here…

  She was on her knees on the side of the highway. Bent forward, crouched, hunched. All I saw was the finest backside the world has ever known, spread out in a floral skirt, leather boots peeking underneath, a lush man of raven-black hair.

  Yes, I saw the skirt, the boots, the hair, the rounded arch of her back in the ribbed white “wife beater” tank top, and god we need a better term for that shirt, don’t we? I saw her, but I was going seventy and all I saw was that ass.

  Round, juicy enough to make my jaw drop even as I hurtled past at seventy. Thick, firm. Fuck, that ass. It was…god, there are no words. Just a damned perfect bottom, so perfect my foot was mashing the brake and my hands were steering the Westfalia off onto the shoulder, because I didn’t care what the situation was, I had to—had to—meet the owner of that ass.

  Out of habit, as I exited the driver’s side I yanked my camera off the passenger seat and slung it over my shoulder, because I wouldn’t feel naked if you stripped me to my Jandals and not a stitch else as long as I had my camera, but without it I’d feel naked as a jaybird even if fully clothed.

  She was taking a photo. In the dirt of the highway shoulder, elbows braced on the ground, bent over to get the angle, shooting a wildflower growing improbably tall out of a crack in the blacktop.

  “You’re in my light,” she said, in the distracted tone of someone utterly focused and annoyed at disruption.

  Indeed, I was casting a shadow across her shot, so I moved so I was out of the way, and watched her work. She shifted to the side, and I heard the real click of a shutter, noticed her camera was a gorgeous antique Minolta. She shuffled around on her hands and knees a bit, to get the blacktop in view I assumed, checked her settings, adjusted her ISO a tweak, snapped. Click click click…click…clickclickclick.

  I could almost see the shot she had—the tall lavender petals with the brownish center reaching for the heavens, probably a nice strong bokeh keeping the blacktop blurred. A great, great shot, if she was worth shit as a photographer.

  And, judging purely by the way she shot and shifted and shot and shifted with precise and measured movements, she was. You can tell an amateur just by the way they move, the way they hold the camera. She was shooting manual too, because a camera that old was only manual. In the age of DSLR cameras worth several thousand dollars that could all but press the shutter button for you, working with an antique manual film camera meant you were either very, very serious about true classical photography, or you were a dipshit hipster who thought using a manual made you cool as you referred to yourself as a “photog.”

  This lovely thing was, if not an actual pro, certainly not an amateur, and was not using the vintage for imaginary cool points. An amateur would take, maybe, half a dozen shots of that flower and figure they had some good ones and move on. A pro would take a whole roll, at least.

  And, indeed, as I leaned against the wobbly metal post holding up a dented, .22-pocked Deer Crossing sign, I watched her shoot and move and shoot and move, tirelessly, switch rolls with easy familiarity and speed, and shoot a whole second roll.

  I had no problems watching her shoot, even though she spent a good twenty, maybe even closer to thirty minutes on that one flower, from all possible angles. Partly because I could see in my mind’s eye each shot as she took it, cataloging them as good or nah. The other factor that made it rather easy to just stand and watch her was because she was bent over most of the time, leaning forward, wearing a tank top, and not wearing a bra. And behold, it was evident that she had been blessed by God and nature with the most massive and natural and beautiful breasts to ever grace womankind.

  I exaggerate very little, if at all.

  They were fucking glorious.

  Granted, I’d spent the past six months and some weeks on the lam, far from civilization, and women in particular, so perhaps I was feeling the effects of six months of near-total celibacy—near-total because there had been a brief and aborted rendezvous with a willing farm girl outside Bergen, but her father had discovered us and chased me off before we got anywhere fun, and thereafter I’d been focused on the job. The tour guide in Kentucky had been willing enough, but number one I hadn’t been sure she was even eighteen, and I know America has laws about that and I have my own moral standards, and plus, there was just something else telling me to keep going. I have no real explanation for the feeling, because you’d think me being a horny twenty-four-year-old heterosexual male on a six-month dry spell, I would jump at the first opportunity to get laid. Maybe it was fate nudging me, because fate knew I was about to meet this girl.

  I mean, I’d not even seen her face yet, not fully, but I’d seen enough of her curves to know I wanted to know more just from a visual standpoint, but there was something else. Something less…tangible. Call it a woo-woo feeling, I don’t know. I was just drawn to her. Drawn to the fact that she was alone on the side of a remote rural two-lane road in the wops of Missouri, spending half an hour on her knees and elbows taking several rolls of film worth of shots of a single wildflower. Something about that just…spoke to me, on an artistic, emotional, personal level.

  So, you know, it wasn’t just the wondrous glory of her tits and ass. Just so we’re clear.

  But holy shit, the tits and ass on the girl.

  Finally, she pushed up to sit on her knees, capped her lens—which, I noticed, was a 50mm prime lens, ratcheting my respect up a notch—checked the count on her roll, and then stood up, letting the Minolta swing around to bump softly against the swell of her hip.

  She eyed me, assessing and scrutinizing. “Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t staring, I was watching. Call it professional curiosity.” I lifted my own camera in gesture.

  She rolled her eyes. “Professional curiosity had you standing where you could see down my shirt, too, I suppose.”

  I grinned. “Nah, that was just a bonus.”

  “So you were looking down my shirt.”

  “I mean, if the look is there to be had, I ain’t gonna pretend to not enjoy it. No point in taking the piss about it.”

  She blinked. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “It means don’t be fuckin’ unreasonable.”

  “Maybe things are different in Australia, but around here, if you get busted looking down a woman’s shirt, you apologize.”

  “First, I’m from New Zealand. Second, I don’t see why I should apologize. I wasn’t staring. You were bent over and you knew I was there, and you know how you’re dressed, and I’m guessing you’re right capable of figuring out what I’d be seeing just by being stood where I am. You’re looking right skux, as we say back home, and I admit I checked you out. But I don’t agree I was being rude or creepy. Also, you need a ride somewhere?”

  She laughed. “Skux. Should I be offended by that?”

  “Nah. It just means you’re looking hot. It’s a good thing, and not offensive. If my mate is dressed nice and looking cool, I’d tell him he was looking skux. A girl I like is dressed hot, I’d tell her she lo
oks skux. Not dirty at all.”

  “Oh.” She looked past me, at my van. “Nice ride. Where are you headed?”

  “Thanks. I just bought it a few days past. I’m not really heading anywhere in particular. Generally west, I guess, but I’m really just exploring the country, and doing it mainly through this,” I said, tugging the strap of my Nikon.

  “Is that a D6?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I quite fancy your Minolta. What year is it from?”

  She laughed. “Actually, I’m not certain. It was a gift from my advisor when I left Columbia. She bought it used herself back in the early nineties, so I’d guess it’s probably from the eighties, maybe even the seventies.”

  “When you say Columbia, do you mean the country or the university?”

  “Um, the university in New York.”

  “I don’t mean to offend, but you seem a bit young to be graduated from uni already.”

  “I am, and no offense taken. I left. Dropped out, really. It wasn’t right for me.”

  “I know you’re not supposed to ask a lady her age, but…”

  She rolled her eyes. “Eighteen. Nineteen at the end of September.”

  Phew. Not a kid, this one. All woman, and no bullshit, I could tell already.

  “And how old are you?”

  “Funny to exchange ages before we know each other’s names. I’m twenty-four, just turned last month.” I extended my hand. “I’m Errol.”

  “Like Errol Flynn?” she asked, shaking my hand.

  I sighed. “I dislike the comparison, given his reputation, but yes, I’m named after him. My dad and my granddad used to watch The Adventures of Robin Hood every weekend together when my dad was young, and Errol was my granddad’s favorite actor, so I got named after him.”