No Service
Authors: Susan Luciano
No Service
by Susan Luciano
Copyright 2016
Jess couldn’t have wiped the smile off her face for anything as she moved her concentration to not hitting her fingers with the hammer. Camping was one of her favorite things to do and they had been planning this for a while. It was a chance to escape the chaotic everyday life of being city residents. Most people wouldn’t agree, but Jess knew that her heart was with nature and these little excursions refreshed her batteries more than trips to the museum or the movies could.
“Need help, honey?”
Jess looked up and realized she’d taken a mental detour into Lala Land. “I’m fine!” she replied.
Chris returned to his task as he ran a hand over his dark blonde buzz cut.
The long summer evening stretched across the sky in red and violet. The sunlight streamed through verdant leaves as it vanished below the horizon. As the stars came out, the campfire was built a little higher and a little hotter. The flames licked into the air leaving a shimmering trail of heat.
It had taken most of the afternoon to get the tent up, but Jess had insisted on doing it herself. Her mother had always told her that if she wanted something done right to just do it herself. It often meant more work for her, but the tent ended up positioned exactly the way she wanted. The campfire was positioned between the tent and the gravel driveway. The foliage butted up to the back of the tent just right in a way that felt Zen. The picnic table had been moved just so. It fit her standard and it made her happy.
The night air was fairly cool. It was surprising how cool it could feel after such scorching hot summer days. In the city, everyone was flitting in and out of buildings, but no one really lingered outside experiencing the chill of a summer eve. Urban life was always periods of blasting air conditioning or dry heat separated by small trips to a car then back into the artificial indoor weather.
Jess debated getting a sweatshirt as she stared into the flickering embers. Before she could make a choice, Chris slid next to her on the rustic old picnic bench and wrapped a warm arm around her.
Crickets chirped from the bushes as they made s’mores. Chris always made his marshmallows burnt and gross, in Jess’s opinion. She painstakingly rotated hers over the flames close enough to turn golden, but far enough not to accidentally catch fire. It could take her more than five minutes to get a marshmallow just right while Chris devoured two or three. It took even longer if she made a mistake. If one caught on fire, she whip her stick hard enough to send the failure into the flames where it would pop and sizzle on a burning log.
Headlights pierced through the trees illuminating the roadway past their site. A car passed by slowly and pulled in the next driveway. The tires crunched over the gravel as it came to a halt.
“Neighbors,” Chris mused as a door slammed.
Jess giggled devilishly. “Guess we’ll have to try and keep it down tonight.”
Chris laughed along with her and snuck his hand over her shoulder. His fingers intertwined with her dark hair that fell in tangled messy curls. She’d given up on taming it halfway through the day. Chris leaned in and kissed her ear lobe.
“Not quite yet,” she teased. “I want to brush my teeth first. And take a shower. I am so gross after putting that tent up. I was so sweaty most of the day.”
“I’ll make you sweat more,” he called to her with a wink as she grabbed her toiletries and clothes bag and headed toward the bathrooms.
The stream of steaming water came out of the showerhead with almost deadly force. It was the one thing that she definitely didn’t get at home. The water pressure was so high that it seemed like it was either cleaning her pores with force or just removing layers of skin. The shower warmed her to the core, despite the fact that there were spiders in wait and moths in webs hanging around just barely outside the stream of water. It was still the cleanest camp bathroom she’d ever seen, but each time she’d sign them up for a campsite, she’d hold out hope that the staff might sweep out the wildlife regularly. A love of nature wasn’t quite enough to overcome a moderate case of arachnophobia.
The water was refreshing even though she’d hurried her shower. She hadn’t liked the look of one particular spider making its way slowly over the dividing wall separating the next shower. Spiders weren’t friends of hers and she definitely didn’t want one touching her.
Her sandals squished with a sloppy sound as she walked back to the camp. Her lantern swung back and forth with her stride making the shadows dance to an unheard beat. Off to the north in the trees, a bird repeated a whiny high-pitched call over and over again. An owl joined in the chorus for a few moments. Jess loved the sounds of the forest at night. It was an exquisite musical performance, but it was being muddled by dogs barking across the campsite’s looped drive. On top of that, someone was blaring a local rock station from a camper. The music wasn’t in rhythm with any of the forest sounds and it was worse when the advertisements for the shock jock DJ reminded everyone he’d be on bright and early in the morning. Yet despite it all, by listening closely and tuning it all out, she could hear the cacophony of the darkness that she didn’t hear at home.
“You’re such a goddamn dick!”
Jess moved across the road as a blonde woman came stomping out of the dark. She didn’t even acknowledge Jess as she brusquely marched away. Her enormous Texas-style curls bounced furiously as she raged off.
“Aw, baby,” shouted the man. “Come on!”
Jess hurried her pace hoping to avoid a meeting with him and sat back down by the fire at their own camp. The very next site. Chris came back from the bathrooms moments later. Jess asked in a whisper if he’d heard the couple next door fighting. He’d missed the whole ordeal so she told him not to worry about it. They put out the fire and climbed into their tent.
The futon mattress from Chris’ bachelor days made the perfect sleeping mat for their trips. It had been washed numerous times and had lumped up, but it was better than the hard ground. They settled in next to each other under the thick blankets they’d brought. They were flannel blankets that were supposed to be for guests, but no one ever asked to stay on their couch. By default, they’d simply become camping blankets.
Gently, Jess kissed him. Her wet hair fell forward tickling his face. Her lips grazed his slightly as she nuzzled his cheek. Chris slid a hand down her waist and under the edge of her shirt. His thumb tracing the curves of her bare side.
“Shut the hell up!” shouted a women. “Just shut right the hell up!”
Jess squeezed her eyes shut. She felt embarrassed for whoever was going to be that irritating this late at night and in such a public way. Chris had stopped to listen, too.
“Everything is yours!” The man shouted back. In an offensive female impersonation he mimicked, “Those are my cigarettes. Those are my blankets. Those are my marshmallows.” He growled in frustration then yelled, “Is there anything that isn’t goddamn yours that I’m allowed to use? Can I sleep in the tent? Is that okay, Your Royal Highness?”
“You’re such an asshole,” she hissed back, just barely audible over the music somewhere nearby.
Jess realized it was definitely coming from the site adjacent to their own. The voices were unmistakable. They were fighting about twenty feet away through the line of trees. Chris had stopped moving and was listening, too.
“Don’t say another word unless you want to fight,” said the man again.
“Seriously?”
“You just said something, so you want to fight?”
“No, I don’t want to fight,” she retorted. “I just want you to shut up.”
“You’re still talking, so you must want to fucking fight!”
Jess rubbed her forehead wishing they would just go to bed. It was late enough that the park police might be notified and then maybe remove them. Trashy neighbors in the city were far too common. It was a severe disappointment to deal with equally uncivilized rednecks.
The couple continued to scream back and forth as Chris and Jess laid in silence. Neither of them said a word to each other as the insults flew fast and hard back and forth over every little thing.
Chris let out a sigh and mused, “Could you imagine living like that? Constantly arguing and bitching and moaning? It’s too much work!”
They touched foreheads and gave one more kiss before settling down to try and sleep. Soon the yelling finally stopped and was replaced by a loud movie. The awful couple had brought a portable DVD player with them and had the volume cranked as high as it would go. Jess wondered how she would ever get to sleep through the sounds of gunshots and roaring car chases. She wondered who could possibly think it was a camping experience to lay in a tent watching movies.
In the morning, Chris woke up with a jolt when he heard a car start. His brain had forgotten where they’d fallen asleep. It took a moment to get his bearings as he stared at the dark chocolate tangle of his wife’s hair. The sun was beating down on the tent and he kicked off all the blankets trying to breathe. It was like a sauna and he was definitely ready to get out of bed.
It was hard to imagine that the day could be so hot already after how cold the night had been. It was like living on the sun during the day and the dark side of the moon at night.
Quietly unzipping the front flap, he crept out into the bright morning air. A check of his watch told him it was a little after nine. That was later than he normally ever slept, but he felt like he’d hardly had a single wink. Jess was such an avid camper, and while he didn’t hate it, he’d take a hotel stay over this any day, but he wanted to keep her happy and he took enough business trips that it felt right to let her pick where they vacationed.
After getting dressed at the bathroom, he started a small fire. It was definitely a sausage-and-orange juice kind of day. Jess finally emerged from the tent a bit later, her hair was plastered onto her face and her back glistened with beads of perspiration.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked her.
“Shockingly so,” she said with a wry smile and cast a glance at the other campsite.
“I’ll make breakfast. It should be ready by the time you come back.”
Jess gathered her things and went for another shower. It was strange that camping was supposed to bring you closer to nature and make you live more wild, but she took more showers each day than she would ever consider at home. It was one of her vices on trips like this and she didn’t want to give it up. Everything was sweaty, tiring work when camping, but it was so nice to get out into what amounted to semi-tamed wilderness and breathe fresh air.
The grass sparkled with morning dew that hadn’t dried yet. It was a magical moment that the normal rush of a workday always made her miss. She spent every day at the office wishing she was home and every day at home wishing she was camping.
When she had been a carefree kid, she would get up early much to the chagrin of her parents and would race outside in flip-flops to carve darker green paths through the dewy grass as she knocked the beads of moisture from the blades.
Jess loved camping in the state park that was barely a half-hour drive from the city. The campgrounds here had always been her favorite and were sandwiched between a desolate highway and a lake.
There were camping loops for tents and campers with an overpriced little general store. Circular drives denoted each section for each type of camping. Loop A was for people with pets. Loop B was RVs. They were in D, one of the loops for tent camping with a small electric hookup and fire pits.
The rest of the land was devoted to protected park lands with walking trails cutting through the trees for miles in every direction. The lake came up close to the campsites where the water jutted inland for just about a half mile. The walk from the sites to the water was across the main road that connected all the camping loops. After that, was a parking lot for beachgoers, then the two-hundred feet until the edge of the water was all beautiful sandy beach.
The park closed camping yearly for about six months. It was bitterly cold at the very least when there wasn’t about two feet of snow being blown around into 15-foot drifts. The gates were chained and there simply wasn’t any admittance. Spring brought a flurry of people who were perfectly willing to camp in cooler temperatures with a constant layer of mud on everything. Fall was similarly cold, but thankfully not as wet.
Jess’ favorite time to camp was in the summer. It was hot and sticky most of the time, and the lake water was constantly too cold, but the scorching sand and the chill of the waves made her feel so alive. Camping was her favorite vacation, but swimming was her favorite activity. Period. She wasn’t even a great swimmer. Her strokes were fairly awful, she couldn’t hold her breath for long, but when she jumped into the greenish water and shrieked as the cold seeped into her bones, she was happy.
The shower wasn’t as hot as it had been the night before. Other campers had drained the hot water tanks. The early risers were already well into their day, but Jess loved the feel of the lukewarm water to steal away the heat of the tent. She’d lost her early bird tendencies since her childhood. It was nice to sleep in and the sacrifices of waking up later weren’t even inconveniences. It was another reason she loved the days she didn’t have to go to work, whether she was camping or not.
Her stomach grumbled a little as she toweled off and slipped on bright pink shorts and a grey t-shirt. Her wet flip-flops made their sloppy slapping noises as she wandered back. She hoped Chris was right about the food being ready. She was so hungry she could eat a bear.
