“You don’t need to come,” she said, smiling. “I’ve got this.”
“If you, ah, have more than, you know, then I have the trowel and some paper.”
“I’m fine.” She had been psychologically bracing herself for peeing without her Charmin. “I’ll be right back.” She marched up the slight rise into the trees, telling herself about her countless ancestors who had thrived without toilet paper.
She found a secluded spot—although it felt like the financial district at lunchtime when she lowered her pants. As her bare bottom hovered over the leaves and dry soil, she prayed to the gods of sanitary waste disposal that she didn’t soak her underwear. Imagining the odor tomorrow if she did, Jane reached down and opened herself up a little to give the stream unhindered access to the bare earth.
Oh God, what a relief. She wondered if you could have an orgasm from peeing. She’d been holding it for a while, knowing Grant would give her exactly the worried, dreading look he had just given her.
And then she was done. Victorious, she shook herself off, wiped her hand on a bunch of leaves, and yanked up her pants as she rose.
She looked down at the puddle she’d made and was forced to revise the perfect score she’d given herself moments ago.
She’d tinkled on her boots. Not a lot, but there were definitely splash marks on the dusty toe of her left foot.
Well, it wasn’t as if she was about to have an important job interview. Grimacing, she raked her boot through some dry leaves, covering up her business and giving herself a shoeshine at the same time.
She adjusted her underwear and stopped herself from finger-combing her hair. Her hand needed to visit the stream first. In the meantime, she’d rub them again with pine needles and more of the leaves.
Refreshed—ha ha—she strode down the slope through the trees to where she’d left Grant, who was staring at his own feet, frowning as he gnawed on a strip of teriyaki turkey jerky.
She stopped and watched him from behind a few thin branches several yards away. Why did he look so miserable?
“Did you pee on your boots too?” she asked.
His head jerked up, and a big, unconvincing smile appeared on his face. “Hey there.” He stood up, watching her closely. “Are you OK?”
“Other than the bears, sure.”
“You saw a bear?”
She’d been kidding. “There really are bears around here?”
“They’re usually shy here, so don’t worry. It’s not Yosemite.”
Of course people talked about bears all the time, and she had friends who’d talked about seeing them on camping trips, but somehow she hadn’t believed there were real bears just walking around loose.
“I’m an idiot,” she said, shaking her head. If she’d thought about it consciously, she would’ve known she was being foolish. “What should I do if we see one?”
“Scream and flap your arms.”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he said. “We don’t want them eating our food.”
She still didn’t believe him. “You think I’ll freak out, and you just don’t want me to feel bad about freaking out.”
“No, I’m hungry,” he said, “and I don’t want some bear chowing down our packets of freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini.” His face continued to hold the big smile, but his tone was sharp.
“Fine,” she said, trying not to catch his bad mood. He said he was hungry, so they’d eat. “How do we cook it?”
“First we have to find a place to make camp. We’ll want to find a place where other people have already put a tent down to leave less impact. I’ll walk around and see if I find a good level spot for the tent.”
“I’ll help. How big a spot do we need?”
“You should stay here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to have to worry about you,” he said.
“Then don’t.” She offered a smile that was as fake as his had been, then turned and marched up into the area of her sanitary repose.
She’d seen a secluded spot behind a rocky slope when she’d been doing her business. It wasn’t a Marriott, but it had a remarkable mountain view to the east. If he kept being unpleasant, she’d come back here to have a handful of trail mix and wait for him to snap out of it.
She was just about to go find him when he found her.
“Over there,” he said, pointing at her find.
“I was just thinking that,” she said, pleased.
He gave her a patronizing smile that suggested he didn’t believe her. “Great. Let’s get our packs and set up the tent.”
“Seriously, I was. I was just coming to get you and see what you thought.”
“I think it’s perfect,” he said, patting her shoulder before he left her again.
Was she irrational to want to shove him down the hill? She jogged after him. “I noticed that it has a flat area that would be perfect for our tent,” she said, “as well as being shielded from wind by those rocks.”
He reached their packs and lifted hers first. “Why don’t you rest while I set up camp?”
“Why are you carrying my bag?”
He strode past her with her pack on his back, his muscular calves flexing, and didn’t answer her question.
“Grant,” she said.
Without stopping, he raised a hand in a wave and kept going, soon disappearing behind the rocks.
All right, he was underestimating her. She’d told him she was a city person, and he was trying to be helpful.
But it was damn annoying.
She picked up his bag—Lord, it weighed twice what hers did, maybe more—and, weaving from side to side under the load, swearing under her breath, she staggered after him.
He appeared at the top of the slope, saw her carrying his bag, and lost his shit.
“What are you doing? That’s too heavy for you.” He ran down the hill, tripping over a gnarled branch, then a cluster of rocks, and came to a breathless stop in front of her. Tearing the bag off her shoulders, nearly knocking her down with it, he said, “I’m used to this kind of load. It’s not a macho thing, it’s just physics. If you twist an ankle or pull a muscle out here—”
She stopped him by putting her hand—yes, it was the pee one, because she was upset and hadn’t thought to use the other in time—over his lips.
“Relax,” she said. Nothing else, just that. And then held his gaze.
Her calm, firm interruption, or maybe it was the aroma of her fingertips, broke through to him. She saw his shoulders sag, his expression soften.
When she was convinced his fit was over, she dropped her hand.
They stared at each other.
“Sorry,” he said.
“I’m starting to understand why you usually hike alone,” she said.
He flinched. Nodded. “Sorry,” he said again.
“Are you like this with other people? I can’t be the first person you’ve taken backpacking.”
“Let’s get the tent set up,” he said. “I’ll feel better when you’ve—when we’ve got shelter for the night.”
She frowned at the clear sky, their sweaty T-shirts. “This is hardly Donner Pass.”
“Nights are cold. You’ll see.” He stepped away, his pack on his shoulder, and walked up the hill in big strides.
He thought she was a wimp. Or maybe he was like this with all women. An unhappy thought.
Picking up one of their water bottles still perched on a fallen log, she gave herself a moment to admire a clump of wildflowers in the growing shade from the mountains to the west. A cool breeze, much sharper than only a half hour ago, had picked up as the evening approached.
Maybe Grant was right and they should be cautious. He was the expert. If she were doing his taxes, he’d probably think she was excessively tense and controlling, because as the specialist, she knew just how much could go wrong.
Refreshed with those warm, charitable thoughts, Jane went to find him at the campsite. He’d already ro
lled out a blue tarp on the ground and was tugging rolls of nylon out of a small sack.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“I was thinking you could filter us some more water,” he said. “The creek is down that way, just follow the trail back to the trail and—”
“I can find it, thanks.” Jane gathered the filter and empty bottles and left him to his homebuilding. Had he really thought she couldn’t find the creek on her own? They’d been walking along it for two hours. At times they’d had to talk loudly to hear each other over the gurgling of the running water.
She climbed down to the rocky shore and took her time pumping water through the filter into the bottles. When they were all full, she balanced them between stones and leaned back against a boulder to watch a water bug dancing across the surface of a still pool behind a log. It was impossible to get upset here. Nature was a drug. Maybe that’s why they called it “stoned.”
Speaking of stones, she saw something moving behind the ones on the opposite side of the creek. An animal. Too big to be a squirrel. Too big to be a beaver. What other animals were there? Eagles. She’d heard about eagles, but obviously eagles didn’t scramble around the shore, nor did they have brown, shaggy fur.
When its head appeared with its little round ears, Jane jumped to her feet, heart pounding in her chest, and did as she’d been told.
28
“Yah yah yah!” she screamed. And flapped her arms like an eagle, the kind that didn’t walk around rocks because it was a bird and not a bear.
It was a bear, right there, a real bear. Oh my God.
“Yah yah yah!” she shouted again, but her breath was too shallow to allow much sound to come out. She was like her toddler cousin with the plastic saxophone. Weak whistling air was all she could manage. Just last month she’d watched that movie with Anthony Hopkins where everyone got mauled and eaten. They’d blasted the bear with shotguns at close range, and it just kind of looked at them and got pissed off before it tore their heads off with a clawed swat. Bam.
Grant came running down the trail. “What’s the matter? Jesus, Jane, what happened?”
“B-b-bear.”
“Where?”
She pointed. The beast was galloping along the shore toward them. If she hadn’t just relieved herself, she would’ve wet her pants.
She sucked in a breath and screamed. There, that one had some power behind it.
“Jane!”
She screamed again. Then again. And waved her hands in the air.
Grant grabbed her shoulders. “Stop! For God’s sake, calm down!”
He was yelling too, but at her.
How dare he? They were about to get mauled by a bear, and he was yelling at her. “I am perfectly calm! You told me to scream!”
“If the bear was near our stuff. But it’s way over there, on the opposite side of the creek. Or it was.” He squinted across the water. “I’ve never seen a bear run so fast. You scared the complete shit out of it.” He rubbed his eyes. “And me. Jesus.”
“You told me to do that.” Her fear quickly and easily turned into anger. “If you didn’t want me to scream, you shouldn’t have told me to scream.” She spun away from him and tromped over the rocks to the trail above. Her pulse was still racing with fright. And her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Grant was at her heels, carrying the water bottles. “Sorry, Jane. You startled me. I thought you were really in danger.”
“How would I know bears don’t cross over water if they’re really motivated? I’ve seen videos of them charging into rivers to eat salmon, why not—” She clenched her jaw shut. She would not show him how upset she was. It would only confirm his low opinion of her.
Head high, she climbed over rocks and branches to get to the trail and then kept going to find the campsite.
But the pile of rocks she thought was the one she’d seen earlier was actually a new pile of rocks, and the row of pine trees, or whatever trees they were, was a different row of pine trees. Or whatever they were.
She stood in a clearing with a view of Mt. Shasta gleaming in the rays of the setting sun and pinched her eyes shut to stop any tears from falling.
She would not cry. She’d been startled—and then insulted. They weren’t wimpy tears, they were strong, fierce eye droplets.
Inhaling deeply, she brought her bandana down her forehead, surreptitiously wiping the fierce eye droplets in the same swipe.
There weren’t grizzlies in California anymore. She was able to remember that now. Later, she might laugh about how panic had made her forgetful.
Maybe.
She heard Grant calling her name behind the slope to her left. If he thought she was going to shout and scream to draw attention to herself, he was mistaken. Let’s see how good his tracking skills were. She wasn’t in any hurry to rejoin his company.
Why was she getting so upset about his patronizing attitude? She should be used to it by now as a woman in corporate finance. And he was just some guy renting a room in her house. They had sexual chemistry, a casual friendship, mutual ties through Whitman. He was writing a book, soon to be moving on, and she was reevaluating her career. Both were adults. If she’d thought she could really care about Grant, she never would’ve let him move in, let alone slept with him.
The thought struck her like a bear’s claw tearing Anthony Hopkins’s face off.
Why wouldn’t she have let him move in if she’d realized she could like him so much?
“Jane! There you are.” Grant waved from the top of a large boulder, up the hill to her left. He’d taken off his hat, and the strengthening wind ruffled his hair. His sunglasses rested under his chin, hung from a colorful wool cord.
He knitted his own eyeglass holders.
“Here I am,” she said, lost in thought. What would be wrong with liking him, or a man like him? What would be wrong with truly caring about someone?
Nothing should be wrong with it. She was out of her twenties and had always wanted a family. But did she? The thought of loving Grant or anyone made her want to run screaming down the mountain and ask the bear to go ahead and gobble her up like a chicken nugget dipped in honey mustard sauce.
She’d like to blame Andrew for her emotional disorder (infidelity had left deep wounds for anyone), but hadn’t she dated Andrew precisely because he wasn’t very lovable? Billie had joked about nobody liking Andrew, not even Jane.
Grant came up beside her, short of breath. “Were you lost?”
She looked at him. He was ridiculously good-looking, a rugged man’s man who wore dirt and sweat the way an international fashion model wore Prada.
“Just admiring the view,” she said.
“I’ve always liked looking at Mt. Shasta more than I liked hiking it.” He stared off into the distance, a faint smile teasing his lips. “There’s a McDonald’s in Weed that has an awesome view. I always stop there when I’m passing through, especially if there’s a good bit of snow at the top. Looks like a kid’s drawing of a mountain, just a sharp triangle pointing at the sky. Much better than Mt. Tam, which disappears when you get too close. It blends into the Marin headlands. There’s nothing in the Central Valley to compete with Shasta.”
Jane was reminded of the internet meme about finding a man who looked at you the way he looked at something he really loved. Grant had that kind of expression on his face—open adoration that asked nothing in return.
Who could compete with that?
She shivered, a surge of exhaustion suddenly washing over her. “Did you finish setting up the tent?”
“Yeah, it’s up. Are you as hungry as I am? It’s a good idea to start cooking before the light fades. Easier to clean up and bear-proof the food.”
“I’m hungry.” In fact, she was shaking. Her nervous system hadn’t fully recovered from the bear scare. It had rattled her more than she’d like to admit.
Grant paused, then kissed her on the lips. She responded without much enthusiasm, and he backed away, his brow furrowed, and led
her through the rocks and trees. Eventually they reached the clearing with their tent and packs leaning against each other. The red nylon dome looked like a giant cherry gumdrop that had fallen from the sky. It certainly hadn’t evolved from nature amid the granite and pine.
“I’ll get the camp stove going,” he said. “I usually avoid making campfires in the wilderness because it leaves more of a permanent mark, but somebody has already beaten us to it. Would you like a real fire?”
“It’s more work, right?”
He nodded.
“Let’s just use the stove then.” Over the past two days, she’d daydreamed about necking in front of the campfire with her hiker boyfriend, but now that she was here, all she wanted to do was take off her boots. She was afraid a hot spot on her right pinkie toe was going to be a blister tomorrow.
And whenever she thought about having a hiker boyfriend, she felt another surge of fight or flight, as if the bear really were a grizzly and she were dipped in honey mustard.
“Anything I can do to help?” she asked. When he said no, she sat on the tarp in front of the tent, took off her boots, and unzipped their red gumdrop.
She climbed inside and wondered what the hell she was going to do about how she was feeling.
How she was going to stop feeling it.
While Grant busied himself with his camping gadgets, she zipped up the flap between them. It glowed almost as brightly as a stained glass door.
29
Grant stared at the ceiling of the tent, wallowing in regret.
He never should’ve brought her into the wilderness. Yosemite would’ve been plenty. They could’ve driven through, discovered there were no camping spots, and then gotten a hotel outside the park.
When she’d screamed at the bear, he’d dropped his pack and started running, in such a panic that he tripped and smacked his elbow into a slab of granite. For a moment he’d been in such agony, he’d worried he’d dislocated his shoulder. Even now it throbbed, and he had trouble clenching his fist. At least it wasn’t his dominant hand.
Jane wasn’t hurt, and that’s all he cared about. My God, the way she’d screamed… It had been a B-grade horror movie scream. No bear deserved that kind of reaction.
Going Wild Page 20
