Page 62 of The Leaving Kind
“Isn’t all this gravel a pain in the winter? For plowing?” Cam asked.
“It is, but the driveway is so long. It would cost a fortune to have it paved.” Victor’s art allowed him to live comfortably by any standard, but every winter, he compared the twenty grand estimate for paving with the five-hundred-dollar snow removal service and chose the cheaper way out. He didn’t have to drive the plow, after all. He just had to rake gravel out of the beds and off the lawn come spring.
“I can see that. So, where do you want this path?”
Gesturing, Victor broke into the wooded acre between the front of the house and the road. “Anywhere in here. I thought it might be nice to have it wander a little. Back and forth with wide, shallow steps.”
“Like a switchback down a mountain.”
“Yes, but maybe not as tight as that? I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll plant around it or encourage the ferns back in.”
They’d reached the top of the slope, before the land tipped sharply down toward Raymondskill Road. Cam paused there, hands on hips, and surveyed the forest. He looked up, through the tops of the trees and Victor followed his gaze. Even in the middle of the day, it would be darker here, quieter when the road lay quiet. With rain clouds building castles over their heads, evening had come early.
The wind kicked up, pushing from the northwest, and Victor watched as the trees rustled and undulated in a wave across his property, swayed by the freshening breeze but almost seeming to follow it at the same time. That was what he’d wanted to capture in paint. The way air could ripple through a scene as though it were a living entity.
“I love the way the wind does that, or the trees,” Cam said. Victor glanced over at him, surprised. Cam smiled. “I watch it from the patio behind my house. The wind. It flows along the creek like it’s following the water.”
“Nature is ...” Victor wanted to mark the occasion with profound words, but the moment—both of them standing at the top of a short hill, surrounded by tall trees and whispering leaves—felt deep enough. Special, in a way. And if he didn’t shake it off, he might do something stupid. Clearing his throat, he wrestled his thoughts back to ... where? The path. “Do you think a short terrace would work here?” He looked toward the house, barely visible through the trees. “We could clear a little to this point. That dead tree has to go anyway, and maybe the one next to it. A spot of light, a small garden. Lilies along the path, a rhododendron where that tree was ...”
Victor continued to point out the markers of his imagination, and Cam nodded along, adding a comment here and there as they tackled the slope, both of them sidestepping down the steepest part. Together, they mapped a tentative path to the road, one that curved back toward the mailbox after the last bend.
“A couple of steps down to the road?” Cam suggested. He had his phone out. He’d snapped a couple of pictures, mostly where they’d decided the path should turn. He showed Victor the screen. “How’s this?”
Victor’s lips parted. There, on the phone, was a map. A jagged red line crisscrossed the top half and Raymondskill Road scored a line across the bottom. “How did you do that?”
“GPS. I tracked our walk. We wandered a bit near a couple of turns, but this should do for a start. Help us figure out how much gravel we’ll need. Wood for the frame. I was thinking old railway sleepers. We could get them for next to nothing, and they’re solid enough to last generations. What?”
Victor had not managed to close his mouth. In fact, his lips only moved farther apart as Cam talked. “You’re a natural at this.”
The pink returned to Cam’s cheeks. He ducked his head and shrugged. “It’s just logic.”
“No, it’s not. I’d never have thought to map it out like that. You’re a genius.”
Cam laughed. “Sure.”
“I love the idea of using railway sleepers, by the way. Railways are such a storied part of local history.”
“They are that.”
Victor gazed back up the slope, intending to muse over how the path would look when it was done, but he could barely see between the trees. He checked the sky again, the corridor of cloud over the road, and did not like what he saw.
“We should start heading back up.”
Cam followed his gaze. “Yeah.”
Thunder boomed in the distance, and Victor indicated with a hand-wave they should hop down to the trench that served as a gutter on this side of the road. “And we should take the driveway this time.”
“Definitely.”
The wind gusted sharply, icy fingers pushing at their backs, and thunder rolled closer. Then the rain happened, as though a trapdoor had swung open to release all the water in the sky at once. Lightning arced overhead, disappearing somewhere behind the next curve of the driveway. Likely miles behind the house, but out here, with the wind threatening to drive them through the rain, it seemed closer.
Victor shook off a shiver and ran. Cam’s rapid footfalls crunched beside him, the sound nearly obscured by the sudden storm. Victor led the chase into the next turn and veered too close to the side of the drive. When his foot slid into a rut, he tilted sideways, and a firm hand caught his elbow, yanking him upright.
“Thanks,” he panted.
He could have shaken Cam off at that point. Cam could have let go. But they ran on that way, with Cam holding his arm, until they rounded the final curve and spilled out into the circle at the top of the driveway. Honey stood in the doorway, yipping softly. Cam let go of Victor’s arm and broke across the gravel with an extra burst of speed. He stopped long enough to scoop up his dog and then pushed through the front door.
Victor followed, and the wind sucked the door out of his hand, slamming it closed.