Falling for June: A Novel Read online

  I’m not sure where this burst of energy came from, but he kept up talking about what it must have been like to know your legacy was naming a steak to help people eat fewer carbs, only to have them serve it with mashed potatoes and gravy, as he set the table with a knife and fork, even pouring a glass of milk for me. When the meal had finished heating, he set it down in front of me. “There you go,” he said.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I never eat this late. My medication makes me nauseated. Besides, I’m still stuffed up on MoonPies. No, you eat and I’ll talk. Otherwise I’ll have to make you up a bed for the night and finish tomorrow.”

  He retrieved his cane from the corner and lowered himself into the seat across from me. I tasted the Salisbury steak. He was right: it was damn good.

  “I remember right where I left off this time,” he said, “because I had just been kissing my sweet June. But for the sake of your young ears and decency I’ll leave out the two times we made love that night, once to the sound of rain pelting the old tin roof and once to the sound of crickets long after the rain had stopped. I’ll start instead the next morning, when I woke to an entirely different kind of kiss . . .”

  David was still dreaming about June when he felt her lips on his. Or was it her tongue? He reached up to touch her cheek and his fingers felt coarse hair instead. Drowsy and confused, he opened his eyes and tried to make sense of her elongated face. Then he screamed. June was lying next to him, and she opened her eyes and began laughing, as if being woken by donkey kisses was just the funniest thing in the world. David scrambled to his feet and stepped away from the beast, cursing and spitting onto the ground.

  “He was just being friendly,” June said, sitting up and scratching behind the curious animal’s ears.

  “Friendly? That thing had its tongue in my mouth.”

  “They like the salt,” she said, reaching for her pack and fishing out a bag of pretzels.

  “How do you know it’s a he anyway?” David asked as he watched the donkey eat the offered pretzels from June’s palm.

  “Uh, those,” she said, pointing to its dangling testicles. “Plus he kind of sounds like you when he eats.”

  “That’s not funny,” David said.

  June laughed. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

  After taking turns freshening up and doing their business behind the barn, they ate a cold breakfast of jerky and trail mix before loading up their packs and hitting the road.

  “That crazy mule’s following us,” David said.

  “El burro catalán,” June replied.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not a mule, it’s just big like one. It’s a Catalan donkey. They may be extinct someday.”

  “Well, why’s he following us?”

  “Maybe he wants another kiss,” June teased.

  “More likely he wants the pretzels in your pack,” David replied. Then he had an idea. “Hey, instead of cutting back to the road, can’t we keep going south across this field, as a kind of shortcut?”

  June stopped, quickly consulting her map.

  “It’s definitely a more direct route, but it will be slower going through this wheat than it will be on the road.”

  David grinned. “Not if we’ve got help with our packs.”

  Five minutes later they were walking together hand in hand like two carefree lovers out for a morning stroll as the donkey followed along behind them, carrying their gear. Between both packs, the combined straps had just reached around its girth. David was quite proud. But despite the pleasant walk and the levity of their morning wake-up surprise, David’s proposal in the barn the evening before weighed heavily on his mind. He was acutely aware that June had not answered him yet. Plus, the way she had glanced at her wedding ring when he had mentioned marriage had not been lost on him.

  The wheat field they were crossing eventually terminated at a wooden fence on the other side of which was a red poppy field that stretched away as far as the eye could see. The vivid Spanish sun was fully up now, warming the damp poppies, and a haze of evaporation was rising from the field, giving the vermilion vista an otherworldly appearance.

  “Looks like this is the end of the line for you,” June said, removing their packs from the donkey.

  She offered him a handful of pretzels as payment for his services, and then she and David climbed over the fence and started off across the poppies. The field was very flat, and when David looked back a full half an hour later he could just make out the donkey still standing at the fence, watching them go.

  “Animals sure do love you,” David said. “Although I think you may have spoiled him with those pretzels.”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “But I like spoiling the men in my life.”

  “Men? Should I be worried?”

  “Not unless you’re the type that gets jealous easily. Are you?”

  David smiled. “No. And maybe it’s you who should be worried anyway, since it was me the donkey was kissing.”

  June laughed. “Touché, darling. Touché.”

  “You’ve said that before to me. It’s kind of cute.”

  “Touché or darling?” she asked.

  “Both,” he answered.

  “Well, you might not know this but I’m a first-rate fencer. And darling is something I picked up from a marvelous actress on a New Zealand movie set. That’s the glorious thing about Hollywood. It lets you reinvent yourself.”

  “Do you ever miss it, being in Washington?”

  “No. Echo Glen is home.”

  They walked then without talking, just the sound of their feet sweeping through the poppies, driving out clicking grasshoppers from their path. David considered telling her that he had paid off Echo Glen with the proceeds of his home sale, giving her at least one less thing to worry about, but decided against it even though he knew she had a lot on her mind.

  “June, I’m here to listen if you want to talk about it.”

  “These poppies seem to go on forever, don’t they,” she said, stopping to consult her map.

  It was obvious to David that she was not yet ready.

  “We’re running low on water too,” he said, draining his water bottle, then opening his backup and offering it to June.

  As David slathered himself with sunscreen, June produced a compass and checked their direction. Then she held up her hand and sighted the sun, comparing her findings to her map. She looked to David like some kind of medieval pilgrim making her way to an important port—perhaps she was Agustina de Aragón herself, the Spanish Joan of Arc, off to chase away Napoléon with just her courage and a basket of apples.

  “I might be going about this ass-backwards,” David said, “since I let my silly proposal slip last night, but have I told you yet how much I love you?”

  June looked up from her map. Initially there was shock on her expressive face, but then her eyes seemed to crease almost involuntarily into their signature smile. She looked back down at the map, and David swore he saw her blush.

  “I love you too,” she said quietly.

  But her quiet declaration was more than enough for David, and he smiled like a boy who’d stumbled onto gold, he felt so good; in fact, he skipped a step, nearly dancing a little jig right there among the poppies.

  It took them two more hours’ walking to find the road. The poppies ran right up to the edge of it, and as June consulted her map, David stood watching a strange ritual play out on the asphalt.

  There were power poles running along the far side of the road, and on the cables strung between them were perched numerous black birds of a variety unfamiliar to David—large enough to be crows, but with red beaks and red toes gripping the thick lines. The fields were seething with grasshoppers, hidden beneath the poppies, and these birds had found the perfect way to hunt them. As unlucky grasshoppers made at
tempts to cross the road, the birds would wing down and snatch them up in their red beaks before flying back to the wire and swallowing them. One after another, these cunning hunters from above picked off the grasshoppers.

  “It’s hard to know who to root for, isn’t it,” June said, looking up from her map and noticing the feeding frenzy.

  “What do you mean?” David asked.

  “Well, it all depends on your perspective, I guess.”

  “My perspective?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Standing here it’s easy enough to observe impartially. But if we were up on the wire, I’d bet my head we’d be rooting for the birds to eat their fill.”

  “But aren’t the grasshoppers pests?” David asked.

  “To the wheat farmer, maybe. But the birds are also pests, unless there are grasshoppers to keep them away from the berry fields. It’s easy, of course, to hate any group when you lump them all together instead of looking at each as an individual.”

  “An individual grasshopper, you say, huh?”

  She nodded. “It’s impossible to hate anything when you identify with its struggle.”

  “You really are a modern philosopher in hiking boots and a parachute, you know that? Because whatever you just said sailed right over this accountant’s thick head.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, “you’re just not looking. Let me show you.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him to the ground beside the road, making him lie down on his belly. “Now look from this perspective and tell me what you see.”

  “I see the same thing I saw while standing: grasshoppers jumping into the road and birds picking them off.”

  “Okay, good. Now select just one individual grasshopper and follow its progress.”

  “Pick one?”

  “Any one. And try to see it as an individual.”

  “Okay, there.” David pointed to one that had just hopped a good two feet into the road. “I like that one.”

  It hopped again, unseen. Then another leap, followed by a flicker of passing shadow, a click of beak, and it was gone.

  “Shoot!” David exclaimed.

  “See,” June said, “you were rooting for the grasshopper because you’re down on its level.”

  “Now I’ve got to see one safely across,” he said. “I feel responsible. Like a grasshopper crossing guard or something.”

  “You might be going a bit far now,” she said, laughing.

  “Let’s follow that one there,” David said, pointing. “I have a good feeling about it. I’ll bet a peseta he makes it.”

  “I hate to bet against him,” June said, “but deal.”

  They watched as David’s grasshopper hopped across the hot pavement. One jump, two. Then a third. It was in luck, it appeared, as was David, because the birds were distracted by something and chattering loudly on the wire. The grasshopper jumped again. And again.

  “It’s almost across,” David said, getting excited. “Go, little fella, go! You can make it. I’ll share my winnings with you if you do.”

  It made a final leap to the far edge of the roadway, safe at last from the beady eyes above. David had just declared victory and was attempting to collect when a bicycle tire appeared as if from nowhere and flattened the grasshopper into a black smudge.

  “Hey!” David shouted, standing up and pumping his fist in the air. “You killed my grasshopper, you little scalawags.”

  The bicycles stopped and two boys looked back from their seats with wide-eyed and curious expressions on their tanned faces, as if wondering from what hidden hole beside the roadway this yelling lunatic had emerged, barking at them in a strange language neither understood. June stood up and hailed them reassuringly in Spanish, saying what sounded an awful lot to David like an apology and her reassurance that they should ignore her partner. While he fished out his pocket dictionary, she walked to them and showed them the map and spoke in broken bits of local dialect, much too quickly for David to look up. The boys shook their heads and pointed back the way they had come, with wide, way-long gestures.

  “What are they saying?” David asked, flipping through his book unsuccessfully.

  “They say we must backtrack to the main road. They say it is five hours by car, two days on foot, one day on bicycle.”

  David opened his pack and traded his pocket dictionary for his wallet. “Ask them how much for the bikes.”

  “You want their bicycles?” June asked.

  “No, I want a soft bed in Aranda de Duero. The bicycles will help us get there.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “My aching back from a week of rock-hard cots and last night on the dirt floor of a barn.”

  “I thought you enjoyed last night.”

  “Very much so,” he said. “But I’d still like a soft bed and some good food.”

  “You ask them yourself then,” June said.

  The boys looked on from their bicycle seats as he and June bantered, following their conversation with turning heads.

  “Fine. Tell me how. My Spanish is no good.”

  “How much is Cuánto cuesta.”

  David turned to the boys and pointed at the bikes, asking, “Cuánto cuesta?”

  They looked at one another, confused. David opened his wallet and held out pesetas, pointing at the bikes again. The boys shook their heads. David added more bills, but they shook their heads to this offer as well.

  “I don’t think they want to sell,” June said.

  “But I must be offering them twice what these old things are worth. Look at the rust.”

  “Maybe they don’t care for money,” June suggested.

  David tucked the bills away in his wallet. Then he held out his wrist and showed them his watch, pointing from it to the bikes. The boys seemed confused, so he took the watch off and handed it over for inspection, again signaling that he would like to trade for the bikes. The boys turned away and looked at the watch, whispering to each other in private consultation. Then they turned back and nodded, dismounting their bikes.

  June marched over and snatched the watch away from them and handed it back to David.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked. “You can’t trade your watch for those old bikes.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I said no.”

  “It’s my watch, June. I can do with it what I want.”

  David handed the watch back to the boys, but June quickly snatched it away again, this time putting it in her pocket. The boys looked at each other and shrugged, either greatly amused or just highly confused; David couldn’t tell.

  “June, what’s going on?” he asked. “You’re acting strange. That watch isn’t even special to me. And it’s only gold plated.”

  She crossed her arms. “It’s not about the stupid watch, David.”

  “Then what is it about, June?”

  “It’s about everything.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t?”

  “No. Don’t you want to get where we’re going?”

  “You know what doesn’t make any sense?” she retorted, raising her voice to nearly a shout. “I’ll tell you. You coming all the way to Spain to hunt me down like I’m some runaway kid when you have a life of your own to be living back in Seattle. That’s what doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I came because I wanted to see you, June.”

  “No, you came because you were worried about me, David. You came because you feel sorry for me, don’t you? Go ahead, David, lie to me and tell me it isn’t true.”

  She was yelling by this time, and the boys watched with raised eyebrows as they stood beside their bikes, holding them upright with white-knuckle grips on the handlebars.

  “That’s silly, June. I don’t feel sorry for you. I love you.”

 
“No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “I have Parkinson’s, David.”

  “I know, June.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes,” he said, lowering his voice and nodding. “I know what it means.”

  “I’m not sure you do.”

  “I’m trying, June. I might not be able to get on your level exactly. I mean I can’t imagine how it feels to be you. But I checked out a book on Parkinson’s and read it on the airplane. I know what can happen, but there’s lots of hope too.”

  “I won’t be some charity case, David. I won’t, I tell you.”

  She was crying now. David wanted more than anything to reach out and hold her, to comfort her, but he didn’t dare risk making her feel any more vulnerable than she already did.

  “No one’s asking you to be anything but yourself, June. Your wonderful, beautiful, kind, giving self.”

  “What if I don’t want to be beautiful and giving and kind anymore, David? Did you ever think about that?”

  “Then don’t be. It doesn’t change a thing for me, June. I love you. You have a lot to offer, no matter what difficulties lie ahead. There’s no reason to walk through life alone when there are people begging to share the journey with you.”

  “People like who?”

  “People like me.”

  June wiped a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. “More like crawl through life now,” she said.

  “Then I’ll crawl with you.”

  There was a moment of silence between them. The boys were quietly watching from beside their bicycles. The birds had even fallen silent, watching from their wires.

  “Did you mean it?” June finally asked.

  “Mean what?”

  “What you said last night. What you asked me.”

  David nodded. “I did.”

  Another tear rolled down June’s cheek, but her eyes creased ever so slightly into a smile, and she let this one go. She looked down at her left hand. Then she reached with her right and twisted the ring from her finger and handed it to one of the boys. “Comercio esto para las bicicletas.”

  The boys turned away and looked at the ring together, inspecting the small diamond and quietly consulting each other again. Then they turned back and nodded, stepping away from the bicycles and holding them out. David looked to June. He wanted to protest her parting with the ring, but something told him not to, and he stepped up and wrapped his arms around her instead. She hugged him back, leaning her head against his chest. They stood there embracing for a full minute, the boys looking on from beside their bicycles. How strange these foreigners must have seemed to them.