Karen Chaffee
Fellow Traveler
“I had a dream about the mountain.”
The young woman who’d announced this wore a raincoat covered with wet splatters. I’d noticed this as she climbed aboard the bus, and I’d wondered about it, because the sun shone brightly now. Perhaps she’d had a long walk or waited a long time. She stood in the aisle now, a bulky, much-used paper bag, slightly damp, clutched in both arms.
Opposite my seat, a woman of ironed smooth clothes gave our newcomer a disapproving look. Life hadn’t given me the option to be that kind of woman. I don’t know whether that is good or bad. I shifted to take the window seat and patted the place where I’d been. “Here’s room.”
She shrugged out of her wet coat and made a neat little bundle of it. Bag and raincoat in lap, she perched on the seat, head forward, nervous. The bus pulled onto the highway and picked up speed, rocking us in our seats. I finally asked it. “What mountain?”
She spoke quickly. “You’ll see. It’s about halfway to Clarksburg. It’s a big landmark around here. You’re not from around here?”
I’d been traveling seven hours already. “I’m going to Wyoming. I’ve never been here. Or there.”
She turned full and looked at me then. Heart-shaped face, brown hair, thin features. A decade or more younger than me. She said nothing, but I suffered her gaze only seconds before I added, “My friend has a job for me in a hotel. In a resort town.”
“A resort. Ranches. Horses, like. And tourists.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” What it was: I was starting over. At almost forty.
She said, “Well, then. That’s a connection, there. Between you and me. Horses. I knew we had a connection before I even sat down. There were all kinds of horses, running and jumping. And others. Maybe a zebra.”
I remembered. “The dream on the mountain.”
“Yes. Squirrels. And a mountain lion. There was a puppy. A real precious sweet little thing. Her name was Kat. Little Kat. Katherine.”
An unusual name for a puppy. I didn’t ask.
Outside, sloping hills curved up to meet sunbeams, the after-rain, foggy beautiful up high. Lower down, sharp-edged shadows across the hills suggested the presence of an immense rise in the distance, still hidden in the window view. The bus shifted to a lower gear.
We rode in silence for a while, she clutching her hands together, me just thinking.
Finally: “I just said that.”
I looked at her.
“I said it but it wasn’t true.” She stared down at those hands, nervousness furrowing into her brow. “She was real. Young, real young. Not a dream. I wasn’t going to tell you.”
If I’d lived a different life, I would have asked, “Who?” But I’d lived my life. So I asked, “When?”
Not too recently, I thought. She’d lived with it a while.
She shook her head, her answer to my question. “She was real enough. Animals are, too. Real, I mean. Around here. Out in the country, you know. Maybe not zebras. I wasn’t going to tell you anything. But I guess I just did.”
Now the mountain appeared, immense, unreal, overshadowing everything. I imagine that she eventually told everyone, or at least anyone who would listen long enough to let her work her way to it. Kat. Katherine. It didn’t matter. As for me, someone moving across three states to a place she’d never been wasn’t leaving behind happiness. Was leaving behind nothing. And here was this young woman next to me. I’d heard the ‘was.’ I knew that place, that place that had her now. I turned and gave my seatmate the smile of welcome I save for my kind.
Karen Chaffee lives in New Jersey. She has published stories in Orca and Bending Genres. Her story will appear in the upcoming June edition of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.
