Chapter 2 — Carlos
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
Off we went.
Carlos on the road.
Malpe ahead.
Me behind the wheel.
Axe beside me.
The council settles comfortably.
And for once
the transport system was under my control.
No bus.
No Sharky to blindly follow.
No bullock cart.
No mysterious Hybrid.
No general compartment containing the combined mass of humanity.
Just Carlos.
My glorious little chariot of metal.
Me driving.
Axe beside me.
Road ahead.
Children.
Peace.
My hand rested on the gear.
And every now and then
Axe’s hand rested on mine.
The council smiles.
Nothing dramatic.
No dialogue required.
Just fingers.
Touch.
Then back to the road.
Sometimes I smoked.
Sometimes Axe rolled.
Then she’d pass it over.
I drove.
She handled whatever needed handling.
Music.
Conversation.
Silence.
Smoke disappearing out the window.
Children.
Perfect sync.
Not the dramatic synchronization of newly discovered attraction.
Karkala had been that.
This was one year later.
The comfortable version.
The kind where two people have spent enough time around each other that little systems develop without discussion.
I drive.
You roll.
You need something?
I’ll grab it.
Hand on gear?
Hand on hand.
The council nods.
Simple.
And according to any reasonable calculation,
the drive should have taken about
an hour and a half.
The council checks the route.
Excellent.
So naturally,
we took three.
The council pauses.
Traffic?
No.
Wrong turns?
Not significantly.
Carlos malfunction?
Do not insult Carlos.
Then why?
Children.
Dog.
The council goes silent.
Dog?
Dog.
The council looks toward me.
Now,
you know me.
I love dogs.
A lot.
Perhaps slightly beyond the range medical professionals would describe as reasonable.
Dog appears?
Main objective temporarily suspended.
Pat head.
Scratch ears.
Who’s a good boy?
Then resume.
The council nods.
Established protocol.
But Axe?
Children.
Axe was worse.
Much worse.
I looked at dogs with affection.
Axe looked at dogs as though a relative presumed dead in battle had just returned home after seventeen years.
The council laughs.
Every.
Single.
Dog.
There was no:
“Hey, there’s a dog.”
No:
“Can we stop?”
Children.
Those sentences belonged to an earlier stage of the relationship.
By one year
we had a system.
Axe sees dog.
Axe says:
“Dog.”
That was it.
One word.
The council pauses.
Command phrase?
Exactly.
“Dog.”
My foot moved toward the brake.
Carlos slowed.
Pull over.
Engine perhaps still running.
Doors open.
Both idiots exit.
The council watches the sacred ceremony.
Approach.
Pat head.
Scratch ears.
“Who’s a good boy?”
Dog receives sudden unexplained affection from two travelling university students.
Dog accepts tribute.
Eventually
return to Carlos.
Doors close.
Resume journey.
The council nods.
Efficient.
Then five minutes later
“Dog.”
The council collapses.
Again.
Brake.
Exit.
Pat.
Scratch.
Praise.
Return.
Children.
This was not interruption.
This was the journey.
The route from Manipal to Malpe had become a canine pilgrimage.
The council begins documenting stops.
Dog One.
Good boy.
Dog Two.
Also good boy.
Dog Three.
Excellent boy.
Dog Four
children.
All dogs are good boys.
Do not demand rankings.
And every time Axe saw one,
there was the same little burst of excitement.
“Dog!”
Like she had never seen the species before.
The council smiles.
And I?
Immediately stopped.
Because this was the easiest equation in the world.
Woman I love wants dog.
I also want dog.
Dog exists.
Why are we still driving?
The council cannot dispute this.
So our hour and a half journey stretched.
Two hours.
More dogs.
Two and a half.
More dogs.
Eventually
three.
Children.
People often describe romantic road trips with certain images.
A beautiful road.
Music.
Hands intertwined.
Sunset through the windshield.
Perhaps a kiss at a scenic viewpoint.
We had those kinds of things too.
But the true romance?
Braking every few kilometres because Axe had spotted another stray.
The council laughs.
Gods.
The perfect woman for the Unbegun.
Because imagine travelling with someone who did not understand.
“Why are you stopping?”
“It’s just a dog.”
Children.
Just?
There is no “just” before dog.
The council applauds.
Axe understood.
More than understood.
She was the one initiating the emergency stops.
And I think that says something about the version of us travelling to Malpe.
We weren’t trying to impress each other anymore.
No indoor rain required.
No elaborate rose operation.
No conspiracy by Stitch and Sharky.
No wondering whether she liked me.
Children.
I knew she liked me.
She knew I liked her.
We had already survived one year of each other’s nonsense.
Now romance could become stupid.
Comfortable.
Interruptible by dogs.
The council nods.
Perhaps that is better.
At some point,
we would climb back into Carlos after another successful canine encounter.
Axe smiling.
Me smiling.
Maybe dog hair attached to our clothes.
Probably.
And we’d resume.
Hand on gear.
Her hand finding mine again.
Road.
Music.
Then
“Dog.”
The council erupts.
BRAKES.
Again.
Children.
If Google Maps had recorded the journey,
it would have assumed something was deeply wrong with our vehicle.
Estimated arrival:
Soon.
Actually:
Unknown.
CAUSE OF DELAY:
EXCESSIVE GOOD BOYS.
The council approves this classification.
And somewhere during all those stops,
the destination almost became irrelevant.
Malpe was still ahead.
Yes.
We wanted to see it.
Yes.
Anniversary getaway.
Yes.
But we were already having fun.
The council grows quiet.
I like that about this memory.
We did not need to arrive before the trip became worthwhile.
There was no:
We’ll be happy once we reach the beach.
The road itself had already become part of it.
Carlos.
Axe.
Dogs.
Smoke.
Music.
Movement.
Children.
Maybe that is when travelling with someone works best.
When the destination isn’t carrying the entire burden of entertainment.
If the beach had somehow vanished from the Earth before we arrived,
I suspect Axe and I still would have returned to university saying:
Good trip.
Saw like twelve dogs.
The council laughs.
Eventually, however
after enough canine diplomacy
the road changed.
The air changed.
The surroundings began telling us what the map would have told anyone more responsible.
We were close.
The council leans forward.
Malpe.
And then
arrival.
Children.
We had made it.
Three hours after beginning a ninety minute journey.
An efficiency rating of approximately terrible.
But who cares?
Carlos had delivered.
Every dog encountered had presumably received adequate scratches.
Our anniversary journey had survived its first great obstacle
our own attention span.
The council nods.
We stepped out.
And I looked.
Malpe.
The beach.
The coast.
The open spread of it.
And children
gods.
Beautiful.
The council grows quiet.
Now,
I have seen enough places since then to know something strange about beauty.
A place does not need to be objectively more beautiful than somewhere else to hit harder.
Sometimes novelty does half the work.
You’ve heard the name.
Seen maybe a picture.
Listened to people talk about it.
Built some vague shape in your head.
And then suddenly
you are there.
The council nods.
Not Malpe as reputation.
Not Malpe as:
That beach people keep mentioning.
Actual Malpe.
Before us.
Unknown becoming known in real time.
Children.
That first look always has something.
Before the eye gets used to it.
Before you know which path leads where.
Before you know the stalls.
The shoreline.
The best place to sit.
Before memory starts attaching itself to corners.
For one moment,
the place is completely new.
And new places have a kind of beauty that belongs only to arrival.
The council listens.
So I looked.
Axe looked.
Carlos rested behind us after enduring the Great Dog Pilgrimage.
And there it was.
The destination we had chosen because it was close.
Because it was easy.
Because we’d heard too much about it not to finally see it.
Malpe.
Children.
Unknown.
But only for now.
Because that is what arrival does.
The unknown survives right up until your first step into it.
Then
Archive begins.
The council smiles.
And ours was about to.
Two days.
One anniversary.
Axe and Nuo.
No university group.
No Stitch.
No Sharky.
No assignment.
No deadline.
Just us.
For perhaps the first time in the prequel Wanderings,
the road had not accidentally placed us together.
We had chosen this.
Chosen each other.
Chosen somewhere to disappear for a little while.
The council grows quiet.
And after three hours of stopping for every available dog
we had finally arrived.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
Carlos.
The Hand On The Gear.
The Rolling Department.
The Ninety Minute Journey That Took Three Hours.
The Sacred Word:
Dog.
The Canine Pilgrimage.
And Arrival.
Children.
Axe sees dog.
Axe says dog.
Nuo stops car.
Two idiots exit.
Dog receives love.
Journey continues.
The council nods solemnly.
Perhaps there are worse definitions of romance.
And beyond the final good boy
Malpe waited.
