“Coffee’s on the stove.”
Bernice and Harry huddled over a small fire in their camp chairs, looking rumpled, cold, and contented.
“Late night?” Harry probed with what Buddy took to be a knowing look, almost a wink.
“Went out for a midnight paddle, got lost. Had a helluva time navigating back.”
He climbed up into the camper before they could ask any more questions. Splashed some water on his face at the galley sink, then poured himself a cuppa out of the French press that was sitting on the counter. Do they know? Had they overheard him calling out to Arthur and Gypsy in his sleep?
Absently, Buddy stirred some milk and sugar into his cup, recalling his dream. It had seemed so utterly real the night before, but now it floated in memory—the dispersing mist of an hallucination.
“You’re lucky you didn’t end up in Honeymoon Bay,” Harry chortled after Buddy had taken his seat on the opposite side of the fire.
“Oh, stop being so smug,” Bernice scolded. “It’s not as if you haven’t got lost more than once or twice in your time.”
“Nothing wrong with getting lost, dear,” he responded. “Getting lost is how you find yourself. You don’t really know where you’re at until you’ve got lost.”
“Since when did you become a philosopher-king?”
Harry smiled benignly. For a minute they sat round the fire in silence, its warmth and flickering light become the focal point of consciousness. None of them felt anything needed saying. The smoke curdled up into the sky. No offering there for the local gods, Buddy thought, depressed by the world’s lack of meaning. Flecks of ash and dying sparks swirled in the updraft, melding into the dark underbelly of scudding cloud.
“When we get back, I want you to join me at Mural #6,” Harry said at last. “Its official title is Arrival of the Reindeer in Horseshoe Bay, but I have a different name for it.”
Buddy waited, but Harry didn’t say anything more.
“Well?” Bernice prodded at last.
“Well what?”
“What’s this different name of yours, you silly git?”
Harry glanced her way, forgivingly; Bernice sighed, rolling her eyes; Buddy suppressed an urge to laugh.
“Well,” Harry pontificated, “I kinda think everyone should make up their own name for each and every mural they look at. Sure, they need an official name for the mural book and the brochures and all that, but once you’ve had a good hard look at it, you should give your mural a nickname as well.”
“Okay! So what’s your nickname for Mural #6?”
“I’m not going to say it out loud!”
“Why not?”
“Because, if I say it out loud, Buddy will hear it, and it will become his nickname for the mural too. He’s got to come up with his own name. That’s why I want him to join me at the mural when we get back.”
“He’s already read about Mural #6 in your binder, I’m sure!”
“He won’t have read my special name for it, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you never write a special name down,” Harry pronounced.
“Gawd, you’re getting weird Harry Sanderson,” Bernice shook her head.
He struck a noble pose. “Perhaps you meant to say ‘mysterious’ honey,” he teased. “All the great mystics through the ages have been misunderstood, isn’t that right, Buddy?”
“No,” she insisted. “I meant weird.”
“Not being of a mystic bent myself Harry, I don’t feel qualified to answer your loaded question,” Buddy dodged.
He laughed, tickling the air between them, so that Bernice and Harry had to join in, the three of them hooting like lunatics in the still-slumbering campground.
Next: Genetic Codes