The Man With The Glass Heart

Chapter 6

When I woke up, it was night. Instead of sleep having refreshed me, I was filled with new and disturbing thoughts.

There I was, a road gypsy.

I had always been a road gypsy and an adventuress. I was used to hardships and excitement. I was never afraid of a challenge. But my one-day's journey with the man with the glass heart had tipped my magnetic pole in an altogether new direction. What I was experiencing now was both greater and less than adventure. It lacked the careless abandon that I loved, but rewarded me a sense of fullness and depth I had never before encountered.

During our walk to the mountains, sounds seemed to be more resonant; colors became richer, brighter, lighter, and darker; odors were more compelling. Every flutter of a butterfly or a leaf made me more aware of my own body. For the first time in my life, I remember feeling air. Smelling sunshine and water. Listening to something as mundane as wheels grinding over the surface of a road.

I was the adventuress.

I was the one who taunted cautious souls with tales of daring deeds, exotic and quixotic events.

I was the one who brought to others that extra pinch of life. Which is what I had intended to do for the man with the glass heart. He had seemed, for all his beauty, so safe. So tame. So frightened to go up into the mountains with that immense and precious cargo of his. What fun it would be to introduce him to my exciting world, I had thought.

Yet here it was, a single day into our acquaintance, and I was the one who was exhausted. I was the one who was apprehensive. I was the one who seemed to have been given that extra pinch of life. But instead of a pinch, it was a wallop.

My life, in comparison, seemed safe and tame.

Who was this man? This beautiful man with warm and chilling blue eyes, with hair so soft and silky it invited fingers and thoughts and gentle, fragrant breezes.

Was he really afraid of the mountains? Or was he carrying them around with him in some unexplored byway of his soul?

What were we doing to each other? And was it for good, or for ill?

I was tired.

My thoughts jostled elbows to escape my mind. I didn't know if I was making sense or nonsense. I didn't know if I was awake or asleep. Then Benjamin shook me.

I opened my eyes and bolted upright.

We were in the foothills, about half a day from the turn off where we would part. Benjamin had set up camp a few hundred yards east of the road. I was leaning against the crumbling bricks of an abandoned well, and he was pushing a steaming cup of something in my direction.

"Soup," he said.

I curved my fingers around its hotness. I sighed.

There is something reassuring about a cup of soup. Something life giving and protective. One could drink a cup of coffee and have a cigarette a few minutes before being executed by a firing squad, but one could only sip soup on a night after which there will be a tomorrow.

I looked across the campfire at Benjamin. He had thrown a blanket over his glass heart to protect it from the night, and he was huddled with his cup of soup just inches away from a burning log. He looked tired.

"Hi," I said.

"Hello."

"I'm glad today's over."

Benjamin nodded.

I tried again.

"Well, at least your heart is still intact."

Another nod.

I bit my lip.

"And we didn't even leave the road, the straight, asphalted, safest and fastest distance between two points. We..."

"Don't," Benjamin Pencil said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't get defensive because you think I'm going to blame you for what happened. I'm not."

"But if I hadn't been with you, the woman with the breeding would never..."

"If you hadn't been with me, no one would have knocked over her suitcase. If you hadn't been with me, I might never have suspected her motive. If you hadn't been with me, she might have gotten-"

I clasped my hands over my ears.

"I don't want to hear it."

"All right. Give me your cup. You need more soup."

I held out the cup.

"Thank you, Benjamin Pencil."

"You're welcome. Be careful. It's hot."

I sipped. I paused. Then, I frowned.

"Still, if it hadn't been for me, she would never even have found you. I brought danger to you when you let me come along. So it was my fault."

Benjamin shook his head. The way a man shakes his head at a puppy who has just gnawed a hole in his favorite pair of shoes.

"You must think that nothing ever happened to me before I met you, or that excitement only comes to zealous brats who stand on hilltops and issue challenges to life at the top of their lungs."

I nodded. I am ashamed to say that it was absolutely true.

Benjamin looked weary. For the first time since I had known him, it occurred to me that he might not be as young or as naïve as he sometimes seemed.

"When you have a heart like mine," he said softly, sadly, "even on the road, even on the asphalt, even between two 'tediously predictable points' as you call them, I have to be very, very careful."

I suppose I should have been frightened by what he said. Frightened for him and for the safety of his glass heart. But I wasn't. Instead, I felt a surge of love for my mountains, my deserts, and my oceans. For the inaccessible, wild places that lure me toward distant horizons.

So, instead of sympathizing with Benjamin's hardships, I blurted out, "Well, since you're taking chances every day anyway, wouldn't it be a good deal more sensible to take them with me, in the mountains, where it's more fun?"

Benjamin Pencil didn't answer.

He looked at me steadily. Quietly. Thoughtfully.

And my heart - I had forgotten that I had one, too - made itself into a tight fist and began to pound against the wall of my chest.

"Shut up!" I yelled to it from inside my head.

But it didn't.

And neither did Benjamin Pencil's eyes.