“Okay.”
We got onto a park trail and walked at a brisk pace through the woods alongside a large creek. Every thirty seconds, I would turn my head to make sure the girl was still behind me, and that no one had grabbed her and forced her into slave labor. But she never fell too far behind. She kept chugging along, taking strides that were half the length of mine but somehow walking fast enough to not lose any ground. I began to warm to the idea of having her there. I thought, This is the beginning. We’ll do this every day and one day she’ll become an Olympic race walker even though she was gifted with no athletic genes of any sort. Power moseying will become the girl’s passion. She’ll never want to watch TV or play a video game again. She’s just gonna be all about the moseying. And we’ll forge an unbreakable bond and never fight again. We might join forces and become a pair of power walking spies, chasing down rogue agents with our relentless four-mile-per-hour pacing.
As we walked, a sweaty old guy merged with us from one of the path’s many tributaries and walked at the exact same pace as us, which aggravated me to no end. The girl and I were enjoying a special power walking moment. Did this man know nothing of basic power walking etiquette? I deliberately sped up the pace to leave the geezer behind, and the girl kept up. I assumed that we had lost him for good.
We passed by campgrounds and playgrounds and kids throwing rocks into the creek and she didn’t get distracted like a little puppy. She was focused and alert and kicking much ass. I saw her tiring down but that only made me want to walk faster, just to test her stamina level. Near the creek, the girl spotted an empty coffee mug sitting on a concrete ledge. She ran up to me and tugged at my shirt. I took out one earphone.
“There was a coffee cup there!” she said.
“Yeah, that was weird.”
“Who do you think it belongs to?”
“I dunno,” I said.
“Well, it sure is weird.”
“Yeah, it is. I like walking with you.”
“I like walking with you too. Umm, Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you could stop listening to your music?”
“Sure.”
I took out my headphones and put them in my pocket and we continued on, across big roads and past houses and churches and strange new intersections that the girl had never seen before, that I had never seen before. It was farther from home than I ever went on my own. I reveled in the joy of happening upon all these new lands as we walked. It was like we were progressing to the next level of a video game with every mile. There’s a broadsword behind that tree! Somehow we ended up walking much farther than I ever thought we would together. I thought we’d go five hundred feet and then the girl would ask to go home and have brownies. But on and on we went, and I was so happy to explore new terrain with the girl that I never made the sensible move of turning us around before she was too tired to make it back.
“We gotta turn around,” I finally told her. “Can you make it home? Because I don’t have a phone and we can’t get Mom to pick us up.”
“I can make it.”
We turned around and started back home. By the time we were halfway back, my daughter was working up a sweat and visibly laboring with each step. And while I was proud of myself for pushing her to walk farther than she ever had, I now felt like an insane sports parent that deprives his kid of water and ends up watching her die of heatstroke. I stopped her.
“Let’s rest for a second,” I said.
“Okay.”
We were still on the path, with a wide swath of grass to one side and the creek to the other. We stopped by the concrete ledge we had seen earlier, and the coffee cup was still resting on top of it.
“That coffee cup is still there,” I said.
“Why’s it still there?” the girl asked. “It’s weird. That cup is a stupid cup.”
I walked up to the cup and grabbed it. It was empty and had old ring stains on the bottom. Whoever left it there wasn’t coming back for it. Beyond the ledge was an outcropping of rocks that gradually submerged down into the creek. I took the cup back to my daughter as she rested on the open park lawn.
“What should we do with it?” I asked.
“I dunno.”
And for reasons still unknown to me, I was gripped with the sudden urge to smash the thing on the rocks below. I had all kinds of rationalizations for doing it pop up in my brain. The girl’s come so far and I don’t have any treat to give her or water to drink. She deserves to do something cool. It would bring us even closer together. And the mug is made of clay. Clay is natural! If we smash it on the rocks, it will become the rocks! We’ll be sending it back into nature. SMASHING SHIT IS FUN.
“Come with me,” I said to her.
“What are we doing?”
“It’s a surprise. You see anyone else around?”
She looked up and down the path. “No one’s coming.”
“Good. Here, take this coffee cup and smash it on the rocks.”