Laura Miller - By Way of Accident

We spend our last couple weeks together the best we know how. We explore this whole creek bottom. We explore each other. We take turns askin’ each other every question under the sun, and I think we hit on all our favorites. Hers are blue, summer, six and strawberry ice cream. I tell her my favorites are green — like her eyes — fall, nine and my grandma’s coffee cake. And she teaches me how to swim — how to really swim, like all technical and stuff. I even learn how to do the butterfly. I don’t really know what use it’ll ever be, but she said every good swimmer should know the butterfly, so I learn it. And I teach her how to throw a curveball, and I tell her about all the rules in baseball. And I teach her how to fish. I tell her everyone should know how to fish. She’s a natural at it — probably already better at it than me.

I watch her now as she drives the worm onto the hook without so much as a flinch. I cringe a little inwardly because it took me damn near eight years to do that same thing without makin’ a face. She does it like it’s tyin’ a shoe or somethin’. But then she stops.

“What’s that?” She tilts her head to the side, like she’s listenin’.

I freeze and try to hear what she’s hearin’.

“That!” she says again.

“Oh,” I say. “That’s a whip-poor-will.”

She laughs. “A whipper what?”

“Whip-poor-will.” I sing with the bird. “Grandpa says they’re forgetful birds. That’s why they sing their own names over and over again.”

She smiles and listens for its call again. When it comes, she sings its name right along with it. “Whip-poor-will.”

And I know it’s just a name to a damn bird, but her voice makes it sound like a song. And I’m also pretty damn certain that from here on out when I hear a whip-poor-will, I won’t hear the bird’s song anymore; I’ll hear hers.

“Brooke, I wanna take you somewhere.”

She casts out her line. “Where?”

“It’s a surprise.”

She sets her eyes on me for a second and then smiles. “When?”

“Now,” I say.

I watch her search for her red and white bobber out on the water, find it and then settle her gaze back on me. “Okay.” She nods and then reels her line right back in. Then she props the fishin’ pole up against a tree stump and goes to dustin’ her hands off on her little jean shorts. As she does this, I reach for my cap and refit it over my head. I’m nervous. I want her to like where I’m takin’ her.

“We have to take the four-wheeler,” I say.

“Okay.” She makes her way over to it. And I just watch her walk away. Comin’ or goin’, it doesn’t matter with this girl; I’m happy watchin’ either.

The four-wheeler is my grandpa’s. My dad got it for him when it was gettin’ harder for him to get around. But I use it a lot because Grandpa is stubborn, and he still walks everywhere. He throws the keys at me most days and rattles off somethin’ about someone gettin’ some use out of it. It doesn’t bother me none. I gladly take the keys.

Brooke hops onto the back of the seat and smiles at me. I can’t get to her fast enough. Three hurried steps, and I’m kissin’ her soft, strawberry-flavored lips and hoppin’ onto the seat in front of her. Then I turn the key and start her up. And together we fly down the sandy dirt road, kickin’ up a dust trail behind us.

We ride for a couple miles before we get to a little worn-in path that juts back into my grandpa’s farm, and we take that. I notice Grandpa workin’ on some old tractor. He looks up, and I wave. Then he nods, and I keep on goin’. We ride for a little while longer until I cut off the path and into the tall grass, and then we start headin’ uphill. We go up for so long it feels as though we should be able to touch the clouds. Then eventually, the grass levels off, and I stop the four-wheeler and jump off. She doesn’t ask for my help gettin’ off because she doesn’t need it, but is it funny that I like that she takes my hand anyway?

The sun is just startin’ to head back into the earth. The sky is full of fire and soft, as Grandpa would say, even though most people would just call it red and pink.

I take Brooke’s hand and walk her to the edge of the bluff. The thing about livin’ out here is that you never have to go too far to reach the sky. The creek bottoms are low. The bluffs are high. And from here, it’s as if you can see the whole world.

“River!” Brooke exclaims, lookin’ out over the bottoms — full of growin’ fields and trees and some cows here and there — and up at the sky meltin’ into all of it. “It’s so pretty.”

Her smile is wide, and her smoky eyes haven’t stopped searchin’, making their way over every piece of life far below us. My heart damn near dances, and my chest puffs up a little. I’m happy that she likes it.

“We got here just in time,” I say. “It won’t last long.”

She keeps her eyes on the horizon out in front of us. “That’s what makes it pretty,” she says. “It’s pretty because it doesn’t last forever.”

She pauses, and I feel that confused look fightin’ its way to my face. This girl is all sorts of different in the way she thinks, but I’m beginnin’ to think it’s her different that I crave.

“If you give people a chance to look at pretty too long,” she goes on, “eventually they’ll forget it’s pretty.”

I look at her. “Where’d you hear that from?” I swear I could stare at Brooke for a lifetime, and at the end of it, I’d still call her pretty.

“My mom,” she says, still not takin’ her eyes off that settin’ sun. “She says we get used to pretty, that eventually, we get used to sunsets and falling stars and things that sparkle.”

She bites her bottom lip gently with her teeth, but not like me — not like she’s nervous, but more like she’s thinkin’ about somethin’. Then she sits down and brings her knees to her chest. And I sit down next to her.

“River.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think that’s true? Do you think we get used to things, and then we don’t like them anymore?” She looks kind of sad all of a sudden.

I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

Her eyes slowly wonder back to mine.

“Maybe when you’re grown up, that’s just how it works,” I offer. I finish, and she nods, still thinkin’, I think.

“River.”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t ever want to get used to pretty,” she says.

I laugh to myself. “Then, we won’t. We won’t grow up — not like most people do anyway. And we won’t get used to pretty.”

She points out onto the fading sun. “Even if we see this a million more times…”

“We’ll never get used to it,” I assure her. “We’ll still look at it as if we’re lookin’ at it for the very first time.” I smile and put my arm around her, and her head falls gently against my chest.

“Promise, River?”

I nod. “I promise. I promise you, Brooke, that this sunset will always be pretty…that falling stars will always be pretty, that things that sparkle will always be pretty. And most of all, I promise that you, Brooke Sommerfield, will always be pretty.”

She snuggles closer to me, and I hold her until the earth swallows up the sun and then some. I hold her until the air is black around us and those pretty stars start poppin’ out of the sky. And I hold her. I hold her like we’re always meant to be this way. After all, she’s not gone yet. Of course, that’s still to come.

Ihear her comin’ down the dirt path, so I stand up and meet her halfway. She gives me a sad look. I wrap my arms around her and plant a kiss on her lips. If she’s gonna leave me tomorrow, I’m gonna get all my kisses in today.