It's Death, She Said

******************************** History of the Nile , Paul Klee , 1937 **************************

The couple have been on a decades long journey, and it’s been ok for the most part. Right now they’re on a pleasant dirt road with a grass strip in the middle, that slopes out of forested hills onto the coast plain, skirts the sea cliffs for a time, then drops to a beach or landing place, where they pass an old boat, then a fish house, but then up they go again, sometimes precariously, and arc back into the woods where the sun dimples and flecks the warm floor of rusty needles. The road does this several times. In and out, up and down. 

She squinted over her shoulder. And a minute later again. 
What, he said.
Someone’s following us. 
They’re just on the road, like us. 
No, I can feel it, they’re following us. 
They? 
There are two.
They both looked up into the huge fir trees straddling the road. Up ahead was light, and they emerged from the forest engulfed in the salt air of the sea. 

They held hands and talked about where they might spend the night. 
Not too close to the edge, he said. Remember, sleepwalking. 
Ha ha, wouldn't that be something. Wake up and find yourself in mid air. 

After a few minutes she looked back again. 
This time he picked up on something. He was used to her body as alarm system for aberrations. 
What is it ?
It’s death, she said. Two of them, and they’re following us.
Why would they do that? 
Why do you think? 
Is it that obvious? 
She said nothing. She balked at acknowledging stupid questions. 
He remembered she even said once, I’m not going to waste my breath. 
Ha ha, he’d replied, by way of pointing out the irony she just had. 

What do we do? 
I suggest we go up to that little knoll there, where we’ll be out of sight, and make love until they go past, and then resume on the road. 
I like that idea. 

That’s what they did and they took their time doing it. Might as well give death a good lead, they even talked it over. They peeked through the grass and saw the two deaths pass by. Turns out they were on horseback after all. 

We can’t outrun them. 
Of course not.
What do we do?
Go back to the road and continue on. What else is there to do?
I don’t like it. Look at them. Bad company. 
Get used to it. 

She got dressed. 
He sat on a smooth slab of warm granite and watched, reminded of earlier times when they used to do this on the islands before the boy was born. Forty years ago they were in different bodies, that was for sure, watching the disintegration of her upper arms. Not dissimilar from the two on horseback. The boy coming changed everything, and then everything changed again. 

What, she said.
Just thinking. Here we are. 
She threw him one of her looks. An acknowledgement he didn’t mind in the least. In fact, these days he’d take what he could get. 
I’m ready, she said. What about you? 
I might go on from here with no clothes. 
Yeah right. 
Wait up, will you? But she was off down the hill to rejoin the road. 

He caught up with her after walking alone for some time. It made him nervous, something might have happened, or something might now. But there she was sitting on a rock looking out at the sea, which was about as flat as it gets, the air barely moving. Isn’t air something?. Still like this one minute, then next a maelstrom frothing the sea into a monster’s fury.  

They’re up ahead, she said, pointing across the cove. Waiting. 
Shit. Well, we can wait too. 
We’ve been waiting most of our lives, and how has that gone?  
That’s different, he said.
I’m not sure. How many times I have felt already dead. 
We’ve been over it, and over it, and over it. 
But not over it. 

Company, she said, tilting her head back the way they’d come. 
A young woman led a small boy who carried a stick and whacked it around on the road, spitting up little tufts of dust. They could tell she was speaking to him, perhaps asking him to stop, but his behavior didn’t change until they got up where they were sitting. 

They looked at the boy with curiosity, while exchanging words with the woman. 
Watch out ahead, they told her. They’re waiting for us, just there. Both pointed toward a group of boulders where the deaths sat their horses. 
I don’t see anything, said the woman. 
There, just right there, said the man and woman together. 
The boy restarted his whacking. He’d picked a great stick for whacking because it curved near the end in a way that its long length really smarted the dust when he struck.
And still they watched him with more curiosity than he was due.
You’re joking, right?, said the young woman. 
What’s so funny, said the boy. 
Because my vision is 20/20. There’s nothing over there. 

The lovers’ eyebrows went up. Like, what is with her?
Come, said the young woman, motioning to the boy. 

But he’d spied a garter snake at the edge of the road and whacked it straightaway with his stick.The snake writhed chaotically, and the boy whacked again, and again, until the pieces stopped moving, and he stood there with blank eyes, looking what he’d done.