Tales of the 10th West Irregulars

Sunday, July 19, 2015

in the land of BC

It acts like a mooring. An attachment point that offers reference for the places we came out of. There is a lot of history between BC and me, even before that point but none of it was as real as all that came after.

It must have been 12 yrs ago. I was pregnant with Beach. I was incredible difficult to reason with, defiant, and barely tame.

BC spent a good deal of time trying to undo the chaos I created for myself. I was under weight and struggling with the constrains of my new situation.

He packed me sugarless peanut butter sandwiches and organic apples which I crammed into my 35 pound school backpack; the one I liked to fling over my shoulder while I ran up 3 flights of stairs to the Chem labs.

At night he made cups of tea and took me on slow gentle walks. In the beginning I could talk him into going hiking but he refused to go again after I jumped 5 feet off a boulder to land on the dirt trail below.

BC took me to my midwife appointments. Outed me at 6 months along for hiding my pregnancy so I could still play soccer on a men's team. The midwife just sighed and sent us back to the U to be cared for the high risk pregnancy team.

I was put on bed rest twice. He tried to cut my stir crazy by reading to me and checking out every movie in the Sugar House Library's collection.

When I was 8 months pregnant we drove out into the desert. It was late September. The heat was like waves on the ocean. It would fall in sets broken by soft cool winds.

We pulled BC's truck over to eat lunch and consult the map. While he ran his finger down the lines of dirt roads snaking the Simpsons I slipped off to find somewhere semi private to pee. I got 3 feet from the truck before I realized I had walked barefoot straight into a patch of goat-head thorns.

There are a lot of things I remember from that moment. I remember the way the sunlight was resting on the horizon pushing hard against the hazy collar of junipers and sage folding to the wind at the top of the break. I remember the smell of the dirt still in the air, stirred up by the truck when we pulled off the washboard road. And I remember standing there waiting for BC to come find me....

I also recall the look on his face when he rounded the truck some 10 minutes later. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen something scare him- but the look was unmistakable; he was scared. He couldn't figure out why I not called out for his help.

In my mind I had.

And in fact, I had called his name twice. Perhaps the first time too softly but the second one I did try to be heard. I stood there, every move the wrong direction, watching him through the cab of the truck and decided he was choosing not to answer me- so I waited.

When he found me BC picked me up, carried me to the truck, and very carefully removed the thorns from my feet. He dug my shoes out from under the seat. Slipped them on my feet and walked me out to find a shady spot to pee. When I was done he led me back to the truck.

From that moment I wanted to believe that not only was I seeing a man who I could stop pushing away, he was a man I would be willing to follow. BC figured something out too. He stopped listening to what I was saying and started watching me instead.

What we saw there in each other has become the dotted lines we both attempt to troll. How they got there between us, almost a ghost now but BC still knows where it is. He ignored me telling him "I'm fine, I don't need you to come home" and instead he abandoned his broken down truck in Moab, caught a 4 & a half hour ride in a van without a/c, to come home and see me for himself.