Fletcher had been to Eureka Springs exactly once, in 2019, for approximately four hours, on a road trip where he slept through most of Missouri. This did not stop him from announcing, as we turned off 62 and started climbing into the hills, that he basically knew the layout.
"It's a loop," he said. "Very intuitive."
Reader, it is not a loop. It is a series of steep, vertiginous switchbacks built into the side of a mountain by people who apparently considered right angles a personal failing. I know this because I had read about it. Fletcher knew it because he had, in the last forty-five minutes, developed a strong intuition.
We were there for Springtime in the Ozarks, which I had researched. I had a printed schedule. I knew which parking situation to avoid on Spring Street during festival hours, I had pre-noted the Farmers Market opened Thursday, and I had flagged the Historical Cemetery Tour for Saturday in case we wanted something quieter. Fletcher's preparation consisted of telling me he "had a vibe for this kind of town" and packing without checking the weather.
It was 46 degrees and sunny, which, in the shade of any of Eureka Springs' aggressively tall Victorian buildings, felt like being lightly punished. Fletcher was in a short-sleeved henley and the kind of confidence that has never once been corrected by consequences.
"I run hot," he explained.
He does not run hot. He ran hot for about eleven minutes in direct sunlight and then spent the rest of the morning standing in whatever beam of light fell between the buildings, pivoting slowly like a houseplant.
The thing is, he's not wrong that he has a vibe for the town. That's almost more annoying. He wandered into a conversation with a guy selling honey at the Farmers Market and came away knowing about a drumming thing in the park and the UFO conference and the steampunk festival coming up the following weekend. He charmed a woman at the brewery into explaining the cemetery tour to us in detail, hand gestures included. He found us coffee through what I can only describe as social echolocation.
I had the printed schedule. He had the social life of a golden retriever.
The part that really got me was the porch. We were walking — I was walking, he was orbiting — through one of the residential streets, the ones with the painted Victorians stacked up the hillside like they're trying to see over each other's shoulders, when Fletcher stopped in front of one and said, "This is a good porch," with great authority.
Then he sat on it.
It was not our porch. No one's porch in particular, as far as we could determine — no one came out, no one yelled at us — but it was definitely not our porch. He sat on the top step in his henley in the 46-degree morning and tipped his face up to catch the one angle of sun that cleared the roof and said, "See? I told you. Intuitive layout. You can see the whole street from here."
And genuinely, you kind of could.
There was a band doing sound check somewhere below us. The smell of the Farmers Market — bread, something herbal, coffee — drifted up the hill. A woman walked past with a dog wearing a little jacket, which felt pointed, given my companion's choices.
Fletcher noticed the jacket too. "Good call," he told the dog.
We did the cemetery tour Saturday. He asked more questions than anyone else on the tour and retained approximately none of the names but all of the stories. He is going to tell someone about a Eureka Springs ghost at a party someday and get every detail wrong and everyone will love it.
I am already writing a correction in my head.
We're going back for the steampunk festival in a week because Fletcher told the honey guy we would. I have already checked the forecast. Fletcher has already decided he'll be fine.
He will be fine. He is always fine. That's not really the point. The point is that I will be the one who packed the jacket, and he will be the one who borrows it and then wears it better than I do, standing on a stranger's porch in the Arkansas hills, absolutely certain he knows what he's looking at.
I'm bringing a second jacket.
For me. Obviously for me.