Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

He shrugged, conceding defeat. "I like to think of it as a challenge," he said. "Maybe if I'm cool enough, you know, I can change the way people think about Bob-ness. Bob-hood. Bob-itude."

  Isis and I took our packs up to the bedroom Elmer had prepared for us. Lamps in wall sconces, turned down low, illuminated the spacious, highceilinged room. Dark wooden furniture contrasted with the cream-colored wallpaper. Behind gauzy curtains, a broad window with panes of wavy antique glass gave a view through treetops of the street below. Cars slopped past, the hazy cones of their headlights reflecting from the snow in the gathering dusk, but otherwise it was a space that belonged to a previous century. I set my pack down in a corner, suddenly aware of my ragged clothes and filthy, sweaty self.

  After a shower and a change into my least dirty clothes, I felt better. Bob gave us a tour of the old mansion, ending with a room that made me feel as though I had stepped into heaven.

  "This is the music room.' He flicked a light switch, and the room materialized around us. Three guitars and a banjo leaned against the pink satin settee; African drums, beaded gourds, tambourines, and castanets occupied corners of the slightly threadbare oriental carpet. Various shelves and tables held flutes from around the world. And in the corner, a piano. It had been months, but my fingers still remembered the patterns. I lost myself in Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin.

  My reverie was interrupted in the middle of Chopin's 1) flat major nocturne. Bob appeared in the doorway in his apron. "Suppertime!" he said with a flourish and pointed inc toward the dining room. Most of the hikers were already assembled. The long table groaned under tureens of soup, bread baskets, dishes full of rice and spicy stewed vegetables, and two enormous salads. The salads were the most tantalizing sight: bowls piled high with mixed greens and sprouts, decorated with sunbursts of cherry tomatoes, pepper strips, feta cheese, and raisins. After the iceberg lettuce and pallid tomatoes of most Southern Trail towns, these salads were an ambrosial vision.

  "Welcome, everyone;' Elmer said from the head of the table. Now that all the guests were present and the feast was ready, his deep voice sounded considerably calmer. "We have a tradition here called the dinner question. We go around clockwise, and you can start eating as soon as you've answered. Tonight's question: if you could be any kind of animal, what would you choose, and why;"

  Bob, at Elmer's left hand, said, "I'd be a lenitur. It would be pretty excellent to have a striped tail that I could hang from trees with "

  "I think I'd be a kangaroo," Spike said. "I read somewhere that their muscles are like springs. They store up the energy from their landing and use it to propel their next bounce, so they don't get tired. I'd like that"

  "Hnumu" Caveman rested his chin on his hand for a nionient, thinking. "A squid:'

  "A squid Spike said through a mouthful of bread.

  "They live in the sea. They have tentacles. Some of them glow in the dark. Does there have to be a reason""

  Isis

  brief heat wave melted all the snow from the ground during our stay in Ilot Springs. The temperature reached sixty-five for three days in a row; even at night, it stayed so warm that we were able to bathe in the town's famous springs by starlight. During the day, we congregated on the lawn of a seasonal hotel near the center of town, reading, writing letters home, or conversing in small groups under the bare maple trees. Jackrabbit found out that Caveman and Big Ring were also black belts, each in a different martial art; the three of them spent hours sparring and demonstrating their forms for each other.

  One afternoon, Spike told me the story of her relationship with Caveman. It really is our third date," she said. "Pretty unbelievable, but there it is" She laughed her marvelous laugh, wild and deep as a stream in spring rush, her head thrown back and the sun glinting in her short dark curls. Across the lawn, Caveman paused in the midst of a sparring match to glance our way, failed to block jackrabbit's round kick, and ended up flat on his back on the grass, laughing also. Jackrabbit leaned over to offer him a hand up.

  Granny Gear told a different story. Before the Trail, she and Big Ring had been involved in a long-term, long-distance relationship. A few weeks of hiking together had proven to both of them that the romance was over. Still, their paces matched pretty well, and they both wanted to finish the Trail. They'd decided to stay together as hiking partners, posing as a couple to avoid awkward explanations.

  She looked out over the rooftops, toward the mountains we'd hiked down from two days before. "If I had it to do over, I'd hike alone. Carry a light pack and walk faster. As it is, he makes all our decisions, from what to eat for breakfast to whether to stay with a group of friends or leave them. I argue and give in. For instance-I weigh ninety-eight pounds, and illy pack weighs sixty, because he's decided that we need a lot of gear. It's not my pack weight that bothers rile, though; it's the ... the slow erosion of sympathy. Every day I ask myself what I loved in this person, and every day it gets harder to remember."

  At night, we stayed at the Sunnybank Inn, fondly known in the hiking community as "Elmer's." Like Kincora, Elmer's is a Trail legend; as early as Massachusetts, northbounders had told me about a hostel in a Victorian mansion, run by a famous vegetarian chef. Of course I hadn't believed them. At that point, I hadn't been on the A.T. long enough to know that Trail rumors, however outlandish and wonderful, tend to arise from realities more extraordinary than a five-minute conversation between sobo and nobo can convey.

  No rumor could have prepared me for Elmer's. For the usual hostel price of$15, we slept in a high-ceilinged room decorated with what appeared to be the original Victorian wallpaper, formal armchairs and end tables, and heavy mirrors with ornate gilded frames, in which I was always surprised to see myself dressed in tattered shorts instead of a ball gown. Bookshelves filled the corridors: geography and poetry, ancient history and Zen Buddhism; books in French, Latin, and Japanese. The kitchen, where the orange-and-yellow light from a stained-glass window filtered through racks of spices and columns of fragrant steam. And the dining room, where we ate four-course meals every evening by candlelight.

  When he wasn't busy cooking, Elmer was a fascinating conversationalist. He had a wealth of knowledge in areas ranging from Chinese architecture to organic gardening. With his thoughtful, measured arguments, punctuated by brusque, dramatic gestures that betrayed his enthusiasm, he reminded me of a favorite professor.

  For most of our stay in Hot Springs, I felt like I was back in college. Sitting in the sun, writing or chatting with the other young adults of our group, reminded me of the long weekend at the end of spring term, when the warm, clear days and the sense of freedom so near at hand tended to outweigh my worries about the upcoming finals. In this case, our final exam would be the Smokies in February, and neither worry nor study could prepare us for it. This strange thaw, too early to herald spring, might melt the heavy snow from the ridges, but it could also be the calm before a winter storm as ferocious as the one that had caught us on Grayson.

  By the dictates of logic, we should have hiked as far and as fast as we could while the warm weather lasted, but Hot Springs held us in a strange spell. Between the antique splendor of our lodgings and the springlike temperatures, it seemed that we'd stepped out of time, out of the Trail's relentless progression of miles and seasons and storms. I imagined that winter was waiting for us, just outside of town, and I wasn't in any hurry to walk back into it. Even jackrabbit, usually so eager to cover ground, raised no argument about staying in Hot Springs.

  "Every time I want to hike out, I close my eyes, and I see this vision of Elmer's salad," she sighed. "Lettuce, olives, cherry tomatoes, sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, feta cheese ... and that incredible tahini dressing. I could stay here for the rest of my life!"

  We took one zero, then a second and a third. On the first day, the Family caught up with us, and the children joined us on the hotel lawn for an energetic, hour-long game of tag. On the second day, Miss Janet visited, bringing some photographs that I'd left in Erwin to be develope
d. Although we'd planned to meet Miss Janet somewhere down the Trail, her sudden appearance in Hot Springs added to the town's mystique; along with gourmet vegetarian cuisine and its own weather pattern, this small Southern town seemed to have the power to gather friends from other times and places on the Trail.

  jackrabbit

  n our third morning in Hot Springs, it was so warm that Elmer threw open the windows to let the fresh air wash through the old house. After a breakfast of granola, biscuits, scrambled eggs, fruit, and orange juice that satisfied even my winter hiker appetite, I came to the music room again. I don't know how long I had been there, playing, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. At first I was annoyed at the interruption. When I saw who it was, though, I was overjoyed.

  "Lash! How are you, nian? Hey, it's great to see you!"

  "Hey, how's it going, jackrabbit?" He gave me a lazy smile. He was fresh off the Trail, still sweaty and dressed in his rank Capilene, but I hugged him anyway.

  "When did you get hack on Trail?"

  "Like a week ago. Kincora" He shrugged.

  I did a quick mental calculation. Traveling with the Family, we'd gone slowly and taken a lot of stops along the way. The 120 miles or so between Kincora and Hot Springs had taken us nearly a month, and he'd done it in a week. "You must have been flying"

  "Yeah, well, I kind of missed you guys. It's not as much fun out there alone."

  "I'm glad you came back." I tried to say it lightly, but I felt the color rising in my cheeks. For some reason, I remembered the dream I'd had in the laundry room at Big Meadows, with Lash as an evil ninja, his eyes flashing behind the mask.

  "I kind of liked going fast, though," he said. "Me and Tim were thinking about hiking together, finishing the Trail by the end of the month, you know? I feel like we've been out here way too long already."

  "Come on, Lashy-Lash. Don't leave us, we'd miss you too much"

  He rolled his eyes. "Enough of this `Lasky-Lash' business! But I guess I'd miss you guys, too." He looked around the room. "Dude! There's guitars here. Sweet!"

  "You play?"

  "Yeah, a little. I gotta take a shower, get cleaned up"

  As it turned out, Lash played beautifully. He sang in a smoky voice that was strangely different from his speaking voice. He'd written some lovely songs, mostly bittersweet ballads. I listened, spellbound.

  After a while I noticed Isis standing in the doorway. Her hair was unbraided, a dark blond cascade down to her waist, and she wore a clean white tank top and the red miniskirt she had sewn from handkerchiefs. She didn't look like a hiker any more. I felt eclipsed.

  Lash stopped in the middle of a song, the chord hanging unresolved. "Hey, Isis" he said, almost shy. "It's good to see you."

  "Yeah, good to see you, too. Lash, would you do me a favor There was a glint in her eyes.

  "Sure, Isis. What is it?" he said, a little too eagerly.

  "It was illy sister's birthday a couple days ago. Take her to the pub tonight to celebrate."

  "Oh" He looked at me. "Yeah. Sure"

  The Paddler's Pub was bright and loud and empty. Lash and I took a seat in an orange Formica booth near the door and ordered a pitcher of the local dark brew. On the table, a red fighting fish circled in its glass bowl.

  "I've had a good time hiking with you, Lash. It's really been fin"

  "Yeah, I've had a good time with you guys" He stared into his glass. His last word hung in the air.

  "It's weird; the first time I met you, I thought I'd never see you again. You were hiking so fast.'

  He laughed. "It is weird, isn't it? I thought I'd be done with the Trail by now. Thought I'd be done in, like, December. And it's weird, too, how ... dit/irernt it feels. Winter hiking. I )ude, it's not hiking, it's survival" He took a long swig of his beer. "My brother hiked in '99, northbound, in a normal season. When he got done with the Trail, it was like it had been this grand adventure, and then he just went back into his ordinary life. And for vie, even just going into towns now is strange. I look at all these people, and I think, none of them know what I've been through. Nobody else knows what it's like out there. I mean, I think about the Grayson Highlands, and that place where the drifts were over the kids' heads, and we just had to pick them up and pass them to each other ... And how do you go from that back to working in a bank or whatever'

  "It's going to be hard, leaving the Trail."

  ... There's some things I won't miss. Lipton dinners. Mice, the bastards.' He fingered the hole in his jacket pocket, scowling. "I'ni just gonna miss ... the way things are out here. It's all so intense. It's like life in the 'real world' is all sleep-walking, and out here we're the only ones awake. You know what I mean:'

  I nodded. "Lash, I just want to say ... I mean, I know you want to hike faster than Isis and me and the Family. And that's cool, you know, hike your own hike and all that ... but I wanted to say, I'll miss you"

  "Yeah, I'll miss you, too, jackrabbit. Take good care of your sister for nie ... Hey-hey! Tiny, my man!"

  Tim came in and sat down next to me. Soon he and Lash were deep in conversation, planning how fast they could get through the Smokies. I sat in the corner and drank down the last of my beer and poured another one from the pitcher, feeling stifled and conflicted. There was so much I wanted to say and couldn't. Instead, I sat there drinking, steadily emptying the pitcher.

  After a while I excused myself. Tim and Lash looked up vaguely as I left the pub, as though they had forgotten I was even there. "Hey, take it easy," Lash called as I stumbled toward the door, and then he turned back to Tim.

  It was late, and the streets were almost empty as I walked back to Elmer's. The full moon cast thick shadows everywhere, even in the orange pools of streetlights. The air still felt warm. The loud music of the pub faded until my footsteps were the only sound. I took a deep breath of the night air, smelling the catfish rankness of the river at the edge of town, and looked up at the heavy moon. With the alcohol coursing through my veins, the night seemed freighted with possibilities, and I felt powerless in the face of them all.

  In Elmer's driveway, I found Miss Janet and Yogi and another hiker gathered around a bottle of wine.

  "Jackrabbit, come have a drink with us!" Miss Janet said.

  "I think I'm drunk already," I answered, hearing my own voice slur the words.

  "Nonsense. This is just muscatel, anyway; ain't no harm in it. Jackrabbit, have you met Yurt Man?"

  The unfamiliar hiker stepped forward to shake my hand. In the moonlight, I could just see his dark curly hair and clean-shaven face. I thought his eyes were blue, but I wasn't certain.

  "I've heard quite a few stories about you and your sister," he said. "It's a pleasure."

  "Well, thanks. Good to meet you. I'm going to bed"

  "Jackrabbit," Yogi said thickly. "You can' do that. You're in the South now. You gotta come with us, have a drink. You Yankees don' know how to have a good time."

  "Come with you? Where?"

  "We're going up to the balds around Max Patch," Yurt Man said. "Build a little fire, drink a little whiskey, have a good time. You coming?"

  "No thanks, nman. I'm tired. I got to sleep."

  Yogi leaned forward. "Jackrabbit. You don' unnerstan'," he said, stabbing at the air with his index finger. "There are things, you know, things in your life . .. if you don' do them, y' always gotta wonder." He stumbled sideways and leaned against Miss Janet's van for support.

  "Yeah, that's the truth, Yogi" And there are things that you do, and re'ret, and it'c impossible to tell beforehand which is which. But I took the cup of perftue- sweet muscatel from Miss Janet's hand, and I climbed into the back of the van as she settled herself unsteadily into the driver's seat.

  "Don't y'all worry one bit," she said cheerfully. "I been driving drunk since I was sixteen, and I never once had an accident"

  The ride to the balds was short and uneventful, punctuated only by Yogi's wild Rebel yells. "Wahoo!" He shouted as we careened down the gravel road. "We're gon'
show you how South'ners have a good time!"

  The moonlight on the balds shone so bright I could see colors-the yellow stubble of grasses and the rainbow stripes of Yurt Man's sweater. He and I gathered firewood from the edge of the forest, where the moonlight painted the ground in bands of black and blue and silver.

  "You hiking this year, Yurt Mangy

  "Just a section. I was living in a yurt outside Asheville this winter. It got so cold there I just said, I've got to keep moving. So I came back out on the Trail. I started hiking in '95, 1 guess, and I keep coming back to it." He grabbed another fallen branch and added it to his load. "The Lord leads my steps in mysterious ways sometimes. I don't question it."

  He lit the fire in an old blackened ring of stories in the middle of the field, and we sat watching the flames, saying nothing. Somebody brought out a whiskey bottle and we passed it around. The moon danced in the air, distorted by smoke and heat, and I had the sense that I could feel the earth turning underneath us.

  "So, Yogi, are you having a good time I asked.

  He didn't answer. I looked over and saw him slumped next to the tire, heavy and inert, passed out.

  Isis

  n the morning of our fourth day in Hot Springs, Elmer, who must have been tired of working long hours in his offseason, announced that he wouldn't be cooking supper that night. Jackrabbit and I took this as the sign we'd been waiting for: time to hike out. Big Ring and Granny Gear wanted to stay another day and eat a little more town food, even if it wasn't Elmer's cooking. Caveman's mail drop hadn't arrived yet, but Spike wanted to get back on the trail. She decided to hike with us and wait for Caveman at Roaring Fork Shelter, fifteen miles out.

  We left in the late morning, after a final breakfast at Elmer's. The sixty-five degree heat, so comfortable in town, seemed stifling in the forest. I remembered what Lash had told us: slack-packing this section the day before, he had decided to hike naked.

  "Dude, it's not like I was going to run into anyone," he had responded, when jackrabbit and I pretended to be scandalized.