A short story in lieu of my regular weekly newsletter. Interested in subscribing? Link is below. :)
We need an official title,” someone said in the back of the room. Gary was already ready to leave. The meeting, billed as an informal get together for local rockhounds, had gone off course thanks to several rounds of beer and a triad of activists concerned about a proposed gravel mine. Gary had wanted to talk about quartz.
“I propose calling us ‘Geologists Advocating for Humble Holistic Healing,” said a woman with a bad cold, wiping her nose and nodding in appreciation as the man next to her gave a whoop.
“G.A.H.H.?” thought Gary. He pulled out his phone and looked at it with wide eyes, miming the arrival of an important text, although no one appeared to notice.
“No, that won’t work,” said another woman. Gary was relieved, although his investment in the proceedings had waned to almost complete disinterest.
“Not all of us are geologists,” she continued. “But we’re all humans. I suggest ‘Advanced Humans Here and Advocating Honestly Against Hubristic Agendas.’”
“A.H.H.A.H.A.H.A?” thought Gary as the room burst into applause. “Sounds about right.”
He slipped unnoticed out the door of the bar and onto the street. Now that he was upright he could tell the beer had had its effect on him, too. His steps were uncertain, his brain foggy. The busses took a long time to arrive this time of night. His apartment was a forty minute walk away, but it was a walk that would do him good, clear his head and refocus him on his priorities.
The meeting had been a bigger disappointment than he dared admit to himself. Before moving to his new city he had looked online to find new friends. The rockhound group seemed to be full of smart people, enthusiastic about searching for gems and samples and comparing finds. There were even a couple of women he thought might be romantic prospects on there. One, he thought wanly, might have been the sniffling specimen with the original name suggestion. No, things weren’t working out as planned at all. Two months into his time as a tenured geology professor in an exciting new city and he felt as lonely as he had back in Omaha. Worse, as he had to leave much of his rock collection behind due to shipping costs.
Gary stopped suddenly, realizing that he had been concentrating so hard on his internal monologue that he had somewhat lost his bearings. Sure, Bozeman was set in a grid system, but he wasn’t sure if he was traveling on the correct line of the grid at all. Was his apartment north by northeast, or north by northwest? He had found himself in a shuttered industrial district, with large pools of darkness between the sparse street lamps. Gary pulled out his phone, waiting for his presence to appear as a tiny blue dot on the system’s map. He turned on its flashlight feature to illuminate the nearest streetsign, and it’s when he did this that the flash picked up a pair of small, piggy eyes. Gary jumped. It was a bear cub, eating something that it had evidently pulled from a nearby dumpster. Unfamiliar with bears (his graduate work was in the Mojave Desert), Gary wasn’t sure if he should be worried or not, but he had read that bears were usually afraid of humans. He pulled a piece of basalt from his pocket and threw it at the cub, shouting. The cub bawled and ran off into the darkness. Gary took a long breath. He looked again at his phone. He would have to retrace his steps, go back in the opposite direction. He turned in time to see the mother bear finish her advance.
“Gahhh,” Gary said, his last words.