Mile 0
They enter the trailhead through these Stonehenge-style monoliths which Dillon says were assembled by the paleolithic giants that inhabited this valley after the glaciers ground through. The fifteen-foot hominids redistributed moraines, stacking boulders into walls and houses. On days off they bathed in the newly formed great lakes. This was fourteen thousand years ago, Dillon tells his friends, before the colonizers rode in and killed the gentle giants off. Dillon is generally full of shit but he speaks with a conviction like he can fool even himself into different worlds. The girl who doesn’t really like him but invited him along out of pity, tries to see those worlds but can’t. Dillon tells them there may be some giants left, in hiding, haha.
Mile .7
Trails shoot off in all directions with few markers. Sometimes they see green diamonds stamped with stick figure hikers, bikers, cross country skiers looking like they are tipping over a cliff. Sometimes they’ll see a sign pointing to jagged rocks or an unstable edge and Dillon will say, You could say the same about me, unstable, edgy, haha. And the others all look at him like whatever and keep marching forward into the muck.
Mile 1.3
There is a lot of muck and in some places they have to make their way around it. There are also monstrous stone benches made of chest-high cuts of limestone. Dillon calls them the couches of the giants to an audience of eyerolls. The woods are unsettlingly quiet. The hike will take them miles deeper.
Mile 2.1
There is a shallow river that they cross on a tall swaying bridge. Dillon says, What if I jump off? Life’s all meaningless anyways, haha. And the girl who kind of likes him, but not enough to risk the prefatory moves toward a relationship laughs along softly because she knows he is joking, but she also knows him well enough to worry that he might not be. The other two friends, boys sharing sweat between clasped hands, tell Dillon that shit isn’t funny, so Dillon plods along behind them for a while, adding to the leaf-crunching silence.
Mile 3
They all grow quiet as they pass several more large benches. They grow into the types of people who are somber in nature, don’t even take pictures because in that time and place pictures seem impossibly small.
Mile 3.5
At another megalithic bench, Dillon hops up into the seat and says it’s still warm. Like it must have been recently used, haha. He hops down again after the others move past him to the turn-around at the end of the path where they will look down the valley from the top of the cliff and Dillon will lean out over the edge and go Whoa! Haha! like he is at some brink, about to tip to his death. And the girl who likes Dillon will pull him aside to ask if everything is okay, to which Dillon will say, Of course not! The world is going to shit, haha! And she’ll mention that at least nature doesn’t seem so much like shit and he could maybe, like, enjoy it and he says, Run away with me. We could join the giants and hide from civilization in caves, haha. And she says that’s not at all what she is talking about.
Mile 3
So they are heading back, out of the woods, past benches and signs. Most of them are talking of abstractions, love and hate and fear, when Dillon says, Guys, check it out and they turn to see him sitting on a giant-sized slab, but it doesn’t seem all that big with Dillon’s body in it. Dillon says, Guess I’m part giant, haha.
Mile 2.3
The other kids don’t believe in giants, though. They believe in happiness and joy and the power of that new single to make the world, for the briefest moment, hopeful. Then a little while on, Dillon says, Guys? and they see that Dillon has definitely grown bigger, more lumbering. His ’fro mingles with the canopy. Dillon says, I mean, maybe this world isn’t meant for me, haha. But his laugh is diminished.
Mile 1.4
Their feet are muddy and the other boys are tired of the hike, of Dillon trying to make them all feel bad for him, so they hurry toward the parking lot. The girl who is pretty into Dillon, but also not sure if she can handle him right now is contemplating mingling their individual sadnesses together. She thinks she might try to hold his hand on the van ride back to their separate off campus houses. She turns towards him because this last thought comes with a special sharp smile which she thinks might be the edge she needs to strip Dillon’s facade of jokes away.
Mile .3
Behind them Dillon is saying Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, haha, and is stomping his feet on the ground, each footstep quaking the earth which makes the girl who really cares about him scream and makes the other two boys grip each other close. Dillon is thinking of the girl who likes him, whose life he doesn’t want to ruin just as she doesn’t want to ruin his. He is thinking of the forest and the empty benches which he now fits comfortably. And the girl who is living in the love or only the terror she now feels for Dillon is trying to say something to him. She’s trying to tell him to come here, that there is plenty of room in the van, in her room, in her life, but her pleas are shut out by his gigantic laughter.
Nick Gardner is in recovery from opioids and is an MFA fiction candidate at Bowling Green State University where he is an assistant editor at Mid-American Review. His poetry and fiction has appeared in Ocean State Review, Fictive Dream, Flash Fiction Magazine, Main Street Rag, etc. His book of poetry, So Marvelously Far was published in 2019 through Crisis Chronicles Press. Find Nick at @ANickRees and nickgardnerauthor.com.
