Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Page B

going.”
    I spit on the trail. “You can’t say that now. We’re already on our way.”
    He loosened his shoulder straps and shook his pack off. Thumped it on the ground and let it roll onto its side.
    I said, “Come on. Let’s keep going a little bit further.”
    “No,” he said. “I think I’ll stay here.”
    I worked my thumbs under my own backpack’s straps. I said, “Put it back on. Let’s go.”
    He sat down on his pack. “I said, ‘I think I’ll stay here.’”
    My mother walked into the meadow and put her face to the last of the day’s sun, the low-angle beams on her closed eyelids. She still had her pack on.
    I said, “And then I just don’t get married?”
    “Well,” my father said, “it seems a little rushed, doesn’t it?” He wiped his forehead.
    I wedged my thumbs underneath the straps of my pack. “Maybe. But Lucy is…” I didn’t know how to explain a girl who wasn’t afraid of rattlesnakes.
    “Okay then,” my father said. “And I’ll probably stay right here if you don’t mind.”
    “But I do mind,” I said. I pointed back at the trail. “We’re late to the halfway point.”
    My father got some peanuts out of his pack and started eating. “Are you going to do what I asked?”
    I said, “The embarrassment thing?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    I stared up at the line of trees around the meadow, the crowns like an uneven ridge, up and down, circling back to us. My mother was still standing out in the middle, eyes closed.
    I said, “Will you go with me if I do it?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “And you’ll push on a little farther tonight too?”
    “Yes,” he said again.
    “Okay, if I think of something, I’ll do it,” I said. “So my answer is maybe.”
    “So you will?” he said.
    “Maybe,” I said again.
    He licked the salt off a peanut shell. Cracked it with his teeth, and shook the two peanuts into his mouth. Threw the shell halves into the grass. “That sounds better,” he said. “If you understand the history, then it matters. All of it.”
    • • •
    I’m little, and I watch him go to the car. He never leaves the trunk unlocked. He has the key around his neck on a string, and when it isn’t on his neck, when he goes swimming, he has that key hidden somewhere but I never know where.
    The 1946 Plymouth Deluxe sits next to the big tree, green and rusting underneath. Good tires the only addition.
    My father looks both ways before he opens the trunk. Leans in and moves his hands like he’s checking cards. Then he shuts the lid and locks it. Looks both ways again. I’ve never seen inside the trunk, and don’t know what’s in there.
    The next meadow a mile up the trail. I hadn’t returned since the night of the lion, four and a half weeks earlier. I let my parents hike past. I said, “I have to pee. I’ll catch up.”
    They nodded and kept hiking. Tired and breathing hard again. My father looked awkward underneath his pack. It was late day, but still hot, and the pack had shifted off to the side, one of his straps slipping.
    I waited until they rounded over the next knoll. Then I went to look. I found the carcass where I’d left it.
    Coyotes had scavenged the flesh off the legs and shoulders, cleaned to the bones. The hide was pulled back where it wasn’t missing. The top of the rib cage. I heard the buzzing before I felt the vibrations.
    Inside the cavity where the lower intestines used to coil, bees were working, building. The combs were thick already, layered and dripping with honey. It was not possible for bees to produce honey in that amount of time, and I knew that it was not possible. But this is how it was. Like my hand. I looked at the healed hole, an indent, light purple, only four and a half weeks. I flexed my fist, the knitted bones straight now past the muscles.
    I reached inside with that hand. The bees stung me next to the scar as I broke off a piece of the honeycomb. Pulled it out. The comb dripped down past the bee stings that welted, the