Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail

by T. J. Forrester

  I opened the top drawer—his socks on one side, hers on the other—fingered the soft cotton that once warmed my mother’s feet. There were five drawers and I went through them one at a time. The clothes my mother had left behind were on the right and Pop’s were on the left, right down to the undershirts in the bottom drawer. I wondered if it had always been this way, this separation of clothes, or if this happened recently. I straightened up and on top of the dresser, tucked inside an NRA magazine, something white caught my eye. It was a sealed envelope addressed to Pop in my mother’s handwriting. I crammed the envelope in my pocket and closed all the drawers, made sure the pill bottles looked like they hadn’t been moved.

  Later that night, after Pop came home from the bar, he changed into shorts and a red T-shirt, came to the kitchen table when I called him for supper. He nodded off between picking at his Mac ’n’ Cheese and sipping diet root beer. I tried to engage him in conversation but it was like trying to talk to someone who stood at the other end of a long tunnel, like my words traveled a million miles before they reached his ears. I asked how he did at pool and twenty minutes later he said, “All right.” I told him I saw a stray dog behind Quincey’s Super Market, and sixteen minutes later he said he’d look into it tomorrow. I know these times because I stared at the oven clock, watched that minute hand sweep in slow circles.

  “I found a note Mom wrote,” I said. “She said she was headed for greener pastures and not to look for her because she was never coming back to God-forsaken Wyoming.”

  The response came quickly, as though the turn in the discussion shocked Pop out of his stupor. He raised his left hand, a streak of blue chalk on his index finger, pointed straight at me. He squinted and shook his head, side-to-side, so violent it was a wonder he didn’t break his neck. I’d seen him do this in the past, this desperate attempt to clear his mind during a conversation.

  “You were an accident,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s your fault she left,” he said. “She never wanted a kid and you came along and now she’s gone.”

  The hand lowered and Pop’s chin nodded toward his chest. A silver strand of drool formed at the corner of his mouth, stretched downward, and pooled on his shirt. I put his plate and glass in the sink, nudged my head under his arm, and tugged until he stood on his own. Guided him to bed and shoved him forward. He landed face down and stayed that way while I set his alarm. His words, blaming me on his failed marriage, would have crushed most boys. Not me. I knew better. Mom left because Pop was a pill popper.

  * * *

  Richard and I sit on a log in a clearing next to the trail. A fire ring, charred tinfoil among the ashes, forms a scraggy circle. Poplar trees tower overhead, bare branches seemingly scraping against the sky. A squirrel jumps from tree to tree, tail stretched out during the flight, lands surefooted and quick each time. The squirrel sits on a limb and peers down at us, chatters annoyance that we inhabit its universe. For a moment I feel like an outsider, like I’m trespassing on hallowed ground, but hiking the AT is my dream and I’m not about to leave it anytime soon. I stuff my fleece into my pack, buckle the top lid in place. I started six days ago, and I’m still seeing hikers I met on the first night on Springer Mountain. I’ve seen Stacy four or five times, talked to her while we ate lunch at a couple of shelters, but I’ve seen Richard the most.

  A gray-haired hiker walks past, nods hello, and stumbles forward. He rights himself, curses, and stumbles again. I know the feeling. The trail is full of rocks and roots, and a lack of concentration can result in a spill and broken bones. I have fallen twice, have scraped knees to prove it, once narrowly missing a boulder that would have cracked open my skull. Another hiker walks past, younger and faster on his feet, and Richard and I return his wave.

  I’ve been reading the shelter logbooks, trying to get a sense of who is on the trail. My guess is over a thousand hikers started in front of me. We’re like this undulating human wave rolling north. There’s this hiker named Simone who started calling herself Never Lost on top of Blood Mountain. I’d like to meet her and this other hiker nicknamed Buttercup. My trail name is Tazmanian Devil, and Richard’s is Red Bear because of the tattoo on his neck. He’s been nursing his Crown Royal and has two swallows left. He drinks them both and tucks the empty bottle in his pack.

  I unwrap a piece of hard candy, suck on the raspberry flavor. Turns out Richard is from Montana and his family has an Indian gene that surfaces every half century. He’s the spitting image of his grandmother; the rest of his family has blond hair and blue eyes.

  “My parents are nudists,” he says. “Can you believe it?”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I swig from my water bottle. Peer down into it and spot a leaf on the surface. I unscrew the lid, fish out the leaf, flick it at my feet.

  “A month before I started this hike,” he says, “Mom and Dad got up from the supper table and took off their clothes. They took off everything. I’d seen Dad’s swinging dick, but shit, dude, what man wants to look at his mom’s you know what. I mean, I’ve already had one tour of that hole. They wanted me to join. Said they played volleyball, ate grilled hamburgers for lunch, and watched movies at night.”

  “No shit?”

  “I’m not joining a nudist colony where my mom’s a member. Know what I’m saying?”

  I open a baggie of trail mix, eat a handful. The texture—soft raisins, hard peanuts, M&M’s that melt if I hold them on my tongue—delights me and I’m already three-quarters of the way through the bag.

  “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he says. “I could hike naked and it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

  He takes off his shirt and pants, a pair of polka dot boxers. His skin has the tint of undercooked ham.

  “You’ll freeze your nuts off,” I say.

  “You should give it a try. It’s very liberating.”

  He heads up the trail, a slim, naked Indian with a pack on his back. He’s a fast uphill walker and ten minutes later he’s out of sight. I don’t try to catch him. It’s hard enough walking these mountains without keeping up with some guy who has pistons in his legs, plus who wants ass in his face? Not me, that’s for sure.

  The climb, like the ones that came before, starts out hard and stays that way. The pitch is so steep the angle stretches my calves and in less than a hundred yards I prop myself against a tree, my chin digging into the scaly bark. I tell my body if it gets me to the top of this mountain, I’ll treat it to a candy bar. It’s a lie. I’m fresh out. I start again and walk through a rhododendron patch, steps so slow I’m almost in reverse. A hiker comes up behind me, and I step to the side so he can pass. Then another hiker comes, and another. A couple—a man and a woman wearing bright Dana Design packs—come up and I move over. I shake my head in disgust. I’m so out of shape I have not yet passed another hiker while going uphill. My chest heaves and my legs tingle, a sign of oxygen depletion, and I slow even more to avoid passing out.

  To take my mind off the climb, I think about Roxie and what she likes and how I liked to give it to her. She has this thing about cars. One time she took me to a parking garage and got up on this black Ford while I hooked my toes under the grille and pounded away. Back then, when I was shooting coke, I could pump for hours and not get off. I swear she kept a list of exotic cars. On the list were a Mercedes, a Porsche, a silver Jaguar, and two stretch limos. That night we finished up on a Mary Kay Cadillac. Left three dents. Two from my knees and one from her ass. I don’t know if the pink car made the list. Didn’t care. It was her list.

  Our sex was raw, the kind where a man doesn’t apologize for watching a dildo go in and out of his girlfriend’s pussy. That was the coke. Before I started using, sex was secretive, hurried, and I felt guilty afterward. One thing coke did for me—it got me over my guilt.

  The climb is relentless, each step a strain, and I breathe so hard my chest hurts. My mind tells me to give up and go hang out on the beach until money runs out. Drin
k rum and coke, lie under a cabana, stop putting my body through this pain. I tell my mind to shut up and it does, and I concentrate on each gained foot of trail. An hour later I get to the peak, take off my pack, and sag against a boulder. Richard, still naked, sleeps under a tree. To the east, a hazy cloud blocks the sun. Far out, everything is so blue I can’t distinguish between land and sky. I study the mountain tops, try to imagine what they looked like when first formed. The books I’d read said they rose 50,000 feet into the air, and I wonder how far a shadow something that tall could throw.

  After a while, I stretch out my legs and listen to wind sigh through the trees. The rhythm reminds me of water breaking on an ocean shoreline, feels timeless in a calming sort of way. I fall asleep for a few minutes, wake up and toss a pebble that hits Richard’s forehead, tell him to wake his ass up. He opens his eyes, yawns, starts a conversation about these tiny white flowers that grow in bunches close to the ground. Richard knows everything there is to know about wildflowers, says trilliums are one of his favorites and we should start seeing them in the lower elevations. He also knows about trees and animals, can identify a bird by its call. Yesterday a bird flew out of the side of the mountain close to our feet, and he parted the vegetation and pointed out a nest built into a crevice.

  Now, he says, “Have you fucked her?”

  “Who?”

  “What do you mean ‘who?’”

  He’s talking about Stacy, of course. I get up and put on my pack.

  “Keep an eye out for the cavalry,” I say. “I hear they shoot redskins these days.”

  “White man’s got pussy climbing all over him and he doesn’t know what to do with it.” Richard closes his eyes and crosses his arms, lolls his head to the side. I walk to where the trail descends the mountain, stretch out my stride, and pick up the pace. I’m fast as anyone on the downs. If Richard wants to keep up, he’ll have to get it in gear.

  * * *

  When I was nine my mother drove me south, through the desert to Rawlins, where she enrolled me in swimming lessons at the YMCA. There wasn’t a pond, lake, or river within twenty-five miles of where we lived, so I thought if she was trying to save me from accidental drowning, we were wasting our time. Once a week we made the journey south in the pickup, past land so brown and dry it only held antelope and rattlesnakes. She dropped me in front of the huge glass doors and drove into the city. I spent the hour squinting from the chlorine, sliding through that cool water, my arms and legs contorted in various positions. I learned the backstroke, the sidestroke, the Australian crawl, and the butterfly. I learned how to rescue a drowning victim, learned CPR and how to wet a towel and snap it so hard it left bruises on skinny thighs and buttocks.

  After class Mom picked me up and we drove around the city before heading home. She pointed out the different things to do in Rawlins, like going to the movies and eating in fine restaurants. She got a faraway look when she talked, like she would rather live anywhere but Hawkinsville, Wyoming.

  Turns out I had a body built for speed in the water and my coach asked me to join the swim team. Mom said no, that she had only wanted me to learn how to swim and becoming a racer wasn’t part of the deal. We stopped traveling to Rawlins, and Taz Chavis, one hell of a swimmer according to everyone who had seen him in the water, went back to his life in the desert. Which was fine with me. I didn’t see much sense in trying to beat some guy to the other end of a pool.

  As I grew older, I discovered I had attributes besides being good at swimming. Like drinking beer, huffing shoe polish, and fighting. Me and Jeffrey Lucas locked up every time we saw each other, which was at least once a day, sometimes more. I don’t remember why I hated him, doesn’t matter now. I’d come home with bloody knuckles, a black eye, ripped shirt or jeans, and my mother would stare at me from across the room, like I was a huge failure, this child of her loins.

  The day she left she waited for Pop to leave for work, then asked me to stay home from school, said she had something important she wanted to tell me. She kept to herself in the bedroom while I watched television and ate a toasted blueberry Pop Tart, drank a soda pop to wash down the crumbs. Once I thought I heard her crying, something that had happened so often the last few months I didn’t turn my head.

  At 1:00—I remember the time because this was when the soap operas started, which meant nothing good was on television—she came out and sat next to me. Folded her hands on her lap. She was wearing a dress I’d never seen, a short green affair that stopped a long way from her knees. A jasmine scent filled the room.

  “You have your father’s blood in you,” she said. “You have his blood and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

  A car pulled up in the driveway, and the driver honked the horn. The car was big and shiny and had a set of bull horns on the hood. My mother stood, sadness in her eyes, and looked down at me. Then she walked out the door and got in the car, and the car backed out and drove down the street. She had not told me she was leaving, had not even packed a suitcase, but she was gone for good and I knew it. A numbness I’d never felt came over me, a fog that permeated every molecule of my young body, and I stood at the window for a long time afterward. Then the fog lifted and I realized, somewhat shocked, that someone had to take care of Pop and that someone was me. That afternoon I realized my childhood was over.

  * * *

  Day Nine, still in Georgia, but looking forward to crossing the state line tomorrow. Richard Nelson has cut one of his shirts open around the neck and sleeves, and he wears it like a dress. NELSON TIRES is stenciled in red letters over a pocket. His family is in the tire business.

  “Smell that?” he asks.

  Next to the trail a spring bubbles out of the side of the mountain, forms a rivulet, and runs downhill. I dip my bottle in the water and take a cold drink. It rained last night, and water drips off glistening branches. The trail is muddy and squishy under my feet. The wind shifts, and I smell what he smells.

  “Let’s see what it is,” he says.

  “Are you crazy?”

  He walks off the trail into the forest, winds his way around the mountain. I follow him through a boulder field and around an upthrust tree well that looms over my head. Brush tugs at my legs, and a thorn scrapes a thin red line on my knee. The slope steepens. I grab a boulder and haul myself along. Richard gives a low whistle and points upward.

  I look where he points, and although I know what I’m seeing, my mind takes a few seconds to register. Back in Atlanta, I saw my share of dead guys on the street. One time I found this black guy who’d been shot in the head. He was rolled up in a carpet in the backseat of an abandoned car in an alley behind Frosty Queen, and I checked on him every day to see if he was still there. Took twelve days before the cops found him. The last couple of days he smelled so bad I had to cover my mouth and nose.

  The guy in the tree smells the same way, like someone put meat in a cooler and left it to rot. I don’t know for sure how long he’s been dead, but it’s been awhile because his skin is puffy and birds have pecked out his eyes. The side of his face has a rusted look, like it’s made of metal and has spent time in the rain. His backpack hangs off one arm. Above him, broken branches slant toward the forest floor.

  “Probably slipped,” Richard says. “See that cliff? Bet it’s right off the trail.”

  High on the mountain, a granite ledge merges with blue sky. Richard climbs into the tree, shoves a stiffened leg, and the body tilts forward. Another shove, and it falls to the ground. He climbs down, goes through the guy’s backpack, pulls out a wallet. Thumbs through it and holds up a driver’s license. “Christopher Orringer. . . . Born in 1935.”

  “Old guy,” I say.

  “He didn’t have anyone.”

  “What?”

  “Been dead for two, maybe three weeks and there’s no one out looking for him. This guy’s a goner and nobody cares.”

  “Got any money?” I say.

  He holds up four twenties and hands me one.


  “You shorted me,” I say.

  “I got him out of the tree.”

  He’s right. Fair is fair.

  “We should build a funeral pyre,” he says. “Consider the money as exchange for labor.”

  “I’m not starting a forest fire.”

  “The woods are too wet to catch.” He grabs a branch and drops it next to the dead man. “You helping or what?”

  “You want my help, you give me my half.”

  Richard hands me another twenty, and we stack branches into a pile four feet high. He searches for a hollow log, scrapes out dry, crumbly wood from the interior, snaps twigs off a branch hanging above the ground, then builds a tepee at the bottom of the pile. He lights the wood in the center, blows on it until flame creeps upward and small branches catch fire. When the larger branches catch, we swing the man into the flames. I don’t want to smell burning flesh, so I start moving through the forest. Richard catches up and leads the way, which is a good thing because I was angled in the wrong direction. We regain the trail and walk up the mountain. When we get to where the man fell, we stop for a few minutes. What looked like a cliff is actually a boulder off the trail. He must have climbed up to get a view of the surrounding mountains. We climb up and look down at smoke boiling through the trees.

  “Hell of a way to die,” Richard says.

  I wonder what the man was thinking on the way down. Might be a bunch of bullshit but I’ve heard people who fall to their death relive a lifetime in a few seconds.

  “You really should give Stacy a spin,” Richard says. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

  “I’m meeting my girlfriend in Franklin.”

  “Does she walk around naked?”

  “You’re a weird cocksucker,” I say.