Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter

by Michael J. White

  Twenty-nine

  Our summer vacation officially began in Glacier Basin, a chummy camping village of tents and cabins, a petite outdoor amphitheater, and the world’s most expensive general store. After renting all the basic camping equipment, including a requisite bear-safe container shaped like a miniature keg, I attempted to persuade Emily of the good sense of a pre-hiking warm-up and stretching routine in the debauched privacy of our tent. This plan was spoiled by a pair of hyped-up Oregonians expounding the rules of backcountry camping, which stated that all campers must hike beyond the basin, which required covering at least seven or eight hours of trail. Recognizing the couple as a source of much-needed information, Emily was soon plying them with all sorts of practical questions, including the cause of the black smoke plumes wafting over the western ridges.

  (The Oregonians were more than happy to answer her, and even indulged her in a ten-minute lecture on “prescribed fires,” a technique that involved clear-cutting, digging down to the mineral soil, and hiring helicopters to drop loads of fire suppressant.) Before I knew it we were scampering on our way, minus a map and a million other things, attracting more than a few laughs over Emily’s sundress and sandals and the pretty-boy khakis I’d worn to church. The most avid hikers were appalled, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues as we cut back and forth across the mountain. It was a great relief when we found a path of our own where we were free to be awed by marmots and falcons, rocky groves of aspens chatty in the breeze.

  “Not tired, are you?” she asked.

  “Going strong,” I said, for the first time realizing we hadn’t slept the night before.

  “I feel like I just woke up from a coma. I don’t know if I’ll sleep ever again. Maybe when I get to Chicago, I’ll rent my bed out and spend my nights smoking cigars at all-night jazz clubs.”

  “Why don’t you sing at the all-night jazz clubs?”

  “Even better. By the way, what do you know about your roommate up at Iowa?”

  “You mean over in Davenport?”

  “No kidding?” she said, slowing down for a few steps to catch her breath. I could already feel my legs swelling and the muscles shifting back and forth under my skin. My lungs were wide open, my tongue detecting the faint ash in the breeze. “Sometime you’ll have to show me the house you grew up in. I’ve got this mental picture of your old high school and your old neighborhood, but I’m probably very, very off.”

  “To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever go back there. All the good people moved away and my dad said that the people who live in our old house painted it lime green. I think they put up a fence. If they hadn’t insisted on moving in so soon, my family wouldn’t have spent our first night in Des Moines at the Holiday Inn.”

  “Oh, let’s not think about that,” she said. “I was talking about seeing your old house.”

  “It’s not my house anymore.”

  “Fine, fine, fine,” she said, taking the lead. Her ponytail swayed back and forth above her backpack. With each step her sundress bunched up under her waist strap, allowing a full view of her legs, barely covering her ass. When it became clear I was dogging it for the view, Emily pulled her dress down and motioned me ahead.

  “Beautiful country,” I said. “Makes you proud to be an American.”

  “I feel your pride burning two holes in my butt. You getting hungry yet?”

  “I can wait a little longer.”

  “Can you?” she said, taunting me with a last little flip of her dress. We kissed for a while. After catching sight of the first hiker to pass in over an hour we trekked on, holding hands. At the peak of the next ridge we found ourselves looking down over Loch Vale and its dark blue lake, perfectly mysterious and still. We sat on a set of loveseat boulders and absorbed the rugged skyline of forest, bald peaks, and black burned-out hills, all mirrored in the lake. A spindly waterfall splashed through a crevasse on the opposite side, falling at least fifty feet to trickle from one pool to the next.

  “I’ve got an ugly question to ask you,” Emily said, running her hand flat along the rock, almost massaging it. “Do you ever wish you never moved to Des Moines? Please don’t think I’m suggesting I wish you never came, I’m just wondering what you’d choose if you could turn back the clock.”

  “I try not to think about turning back the clock.”

  “But I’m asking you,” she said, leaning back on her elbows, looking tired for the first time the whole trip. “Just this once I’d like to know.”

  “If it meant Katie would still be alive, I’d stay in Davenport. Who knows, maybe I would’ve fallen in love with some other girl and ended up miserable like my friend Kevin. He moved to Atlanta with some girl who’s got him working the third shift at a frozen foods warehouse because it pays a dollar fifty more than the day shift. Who knows? Maybe if you never met me, you would’ve spent less time messing around after school, scored a few points higher on the SATs, and ended up at Yale just in time for some whacko who didn’t get accepted to shoot up a few lecture halls.”

  “All right, George. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not angry,” I said, softening my voice and looking her in the eyes to convince her. The sound of Katie’s name seemed to crank open the sky and pump up the heat. “If I could turn back the clock, instead of fishing, we’d have gone to a matinee, then snuck around from theater to theater all afternoon.”

  “And if the movie screen collapsed and killed all three of us?”

  “We’d make the front page,” I said, trying to sound as assured as an old monk who’d pondered such questions for decades. I could’ve been more honest. I could’ve shared my feeling that Katie’s drowning was more than a random accident, that there was culpability to be shared. In the end my remarks were no more than a pale reflection of Emily’s own advice on the pedestrian bridge over the highway, a submission to inevitability and fatalistic acceptance that absolved all three of us. We marched on into a thinning afternoon, saving our breath as we marveled at butterflies and hawks, towering spruces as perfectly straight as giant handcrafted spears.

  It was late afternoon when we realized we hadn’t bought nearly enough food or water, our muscles having clearly absorbed every calorie of our banana-sandwich-and-trail-mix lunch. The altitude was catching up with us, causing prickling hands and pulsing heads. We found our first argument at a crossroads beneath a signpost indicating two opposing trails to campsite #21, the first backwoods campsite outside Glacier Basin. When we couldn’t agree on which was the shorter route, we decided to split up and bet two tanks of gas on who would arrive there first. This was without doubt the most foolish decision possible, even given our certainty that we were less than an hour from the site and that a healthy competition was just what we needed to raise our spirits. But there was no hiding the fact that our road trip had already evolved into some kind of knowledge quest, in the very least a search for a new and more natural perspective. Under these terms, the decision to trek alone and cover two paths instead of one wasn’t as idiotic as it sounded. It seemed the most legitimate way to feel the mountains and glean a modicum of wisdom from them.

  “Don’t touch our rations,” I said, as we back stepped in our own directions.

  “Still glad you saved ten bucks on mosquito sauce?”

  “They don’t go for O negative.”

  “They sure as shit went for O negative on the Upper Iowa.”

  “And if you see a bear, stay calm and talk to it. Convince it not to eat you.”

  Emily stopped for a moment to search the skies, apparently for help in dealing with me. “No camping on the trail,” she shouted as she started around the bend and out of sight.

  I’d hardly turned my back before regretting our decision, not to mention feeling guilty about laughing off the possibility of a mountainside emergency. I couldn’t forgive myself three hours later when I ran out of water. By then I was regularly fooling myself into thinking I’d reached the summit only to discover another ridge and the understandi
ng that I was still several uphill miles away. I hadn’t seen another hiker since I broke with Emily. I found my only company in a lone helicopter that occasionally circled overhead, seeming to defend the theory of life’s randomness by offering the possibility of being fire-bombed on my summer vacation. Anxiety turned to rage and delirious panic, incremental with every step. The burning sun leaked carelessly into clouds, painting a watercolored sky. As darkness approached I prayed and chased butterflies, hoping if I caught them before the sun fell beneath the horizon that the campsite would suddenly appear and I’d find Emily happily sprawled across a pair of sleeping bags, which she’d already zipped together for warmth. At some point I imagined one of the forest service helicopters swooping down with Katie leaning out, holding on by one hand, her big-time mood cracking loud and clear through a megaphone.

  “Would it help if you changed into your wrestling tights? Maybe you should ditch those sally boy boots for the final lap. Pain in the feet is the best kind. This will clean you right out.”

  “I’m hungry,” I shouted back, not bothering to look up.

  “Tell you what. If you keep going I’ll meet you at the peak and give you a little hint about my time capsule. I’ll sit with you by the fire and you can ask me anything you want. By the way, you still thinking about that life jacket?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, marching faster, lifting my knees higher. “It’ll never make sense to me. If you weren’t strong enough to swim, why would you unbuckle yourself after you fell in?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said. “With erotic campfire stories and all the answers.”

  I stopped to face her as the helicopter drifted upward. I imagined her sitting down now, strapped in with her bare legs dangling over the side. She held the megaphone out like a pistol, and closed one eye and aimed.

  “See you at the peak, okay? That is, if you think I’m worth it.” She fired a few warning shots near my feet. Pebbles scattered inches from my heels. I marched into the darkness, fearing twisting an ankle or climbing that mountain for the rest of my life. My flashlight dimmed and I tripped and skinned my knees. I swallowed trail dust. When I felt my lips splintering like the scales of a dead fish, I reconsidered the acting ability of those crybaby lost boys from Into the Night. My flashlight was practically dead by the time I reached the final ridge. I made out the faint sparkle of a campfire at the end of a needled pathway through the thicket.

  Thirty

  After an all-too-brief motherly scolding and hands-on physical, Emily opened a surprise package of hot dogs and Wonder bread buns she’d covertly acquired while I was debating myself over an extravagant purchase of camping pillows. After dinner, more or less rejuvenated, we set up our tent and hid the bear box that now contained two hot dogs, three buns, an apple, and a handful of trail mix. Together we scavenged for more firewood, which was not so simple a task in spruce and fir environs with one working flashlight. The farther we wandered from the campsite, the more we concerned ourselves with the task of bear detecting, stopping every few feet to scrutinize all upcoming bushes, boulders, and even a few blank pockets of moonless night. Through the right eyes they all resembled black bears in sinister, shape-shifting poses. The most convincing of them crept onto the trail thirty feet behind us, then camouflaged himself low against the thicket to play an inchoate evergreen. He stared at us through sad, crescent-shaped eyes, his short sigh-breaths like a warm, bulky breeze.

  “Let’s spear him,” Emily whispered. “We’ll make bear hamburgers for breakfast.”

  “Shhhh!” I warned her, attempting to draw out the bear with a fist-sized stone. It thumped against the trunk and shook the branches. I laughed out to embolden myself.

  “I told you it was nothing,” she said. She moved onto a flat slab of rock to pick up a few midsize logs. After gathering a few of my own, and while reaching for what I assumed to be a long shadowy branch, my stomach suddenly dropped. A feeling of intense vertigo struck me as I realized that the black branch I’d been reaching for was the spectral night and nothing more. Emily screamed and dropped her logs, which clanked against the rock. She continued screaming on the ground, kicking backward, and I dropped down next to her, gripping the rock with my hands and knees, my elbows and feet, sensing the cliff moving in on all sides.

  We turned the flashlight off and waited. When our eyes had adjusted to the darkness we crawled back to the campsite hunched over like frightened cavemen knuckling their way to safety. We assembled the tent and then lay silent on uneven ground, side by side, awaiting the next disaster. As my fears gave way to exhaustion I silently laughed at my recent attempts at religious faith and servitude, those mysterious creeds my parents and grandparents had clung to over the years. Already sliding toward the foot of the tent, I threw an arm over Emily and whispered good night. I placed my hand over her chest and felt her heart thumping. After I’d begun rubbing her breasts and she’d rolled onto her stomach, I tried to guess where we would’ve woken up after our near free fall in the cool black sky. Midway through the night I dreamt up the faint murmur of a phone ringing. I squirmed from the bottom of my sleeping bag and crawled from the tent, digging the phone out of a cubbyhole in the side of a boulder.

  “This is George Flynn,” I said.

  “I know,” the voice answered, low and throaty.

  “Who am I talking to?”

  “This is Special Agent Tikki Tavi of the FBI.”

  “Oh,” I said, quickly coming to my senses. “Did you get him yet? Did you catch Nicholas Parsons?”

  “Gotcha!” Katie yelled, cackling much longer than seemed fit. “Come on, George. Rikki Tikki Tavi? Are you even awake?”

  “Barely. You didn’t keep your promise, did you?”

  “I’m keeping it now. I’ve never been to Colorado, except when I changed planes once in Denver. So if you care at all about my time capsule, you’re pretty friggin’ cold searching around up in the mountains. And one more thing. I miss you, George. I’ve got lonely lips over here.”

  Thirty-one

  I suddenly feel I’ve wasted enough pages on our Rocky Mountain camping trip that in the end proved more unorganized and toiling than adventurous and romantic. I’ll consequently forgo detailed descriptions of our mournful alpine descent and even more tragic return to Des Moines, which mostly involved Emily jerking from lane to lane, begging me to comment on her nerve-racked recklessness. Concluding the matter, I’ll say that on witnessing Emily’s bloody-footed reappearance, Mrs. Schell was far less sympathetic than my own parents, who were still adhering to the laissez-faire mind-set of the weeks following Katie’s death. While Emily merely sketched the punishing new schedule she’d been assigned, the severity of her situation was well reflected in a stony new expression and pair of black aviator sunglasses that perfectly articulated her detachment from any emotion connected to sorrow, vulnerability, or pain. That said, she made no attempts to seclude herself, and engaged nearly every trick imaginable to arrange our furtive rendezvous. She was as enthusiastic as ever when it came to impersonating our inimical Perkins waitresses and psychoanalyzing foreign dictators and outwitting her mother, though her soldierly posture in more intimate situations hinted that she was not only a hardened babe with a history, but smarter than all the nitwits around her, including myself. (It should be noted that two weeks after our trip she was fired from the Public Playhouse performance of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner after taking up the cause of her Sudanese co-lead, a fellow cast member from Othello who confided grave fears of exploitation, typecasting, and alienation from his community of disapproving brothers.)

  Only three days before my collegiate departure, I received a call from a Menard’s pay phone where Emily was meant to gather materials for a laborious gardening project in her parent’s backyard. She asked me to meet her at Saylorville Beach, which had recently expanded when the park board bought a load of sand from Saudi Arabia. This purchase turned their little pebble farm into a quarter-mile of Maui, only with an infestation
of milfoil weed and much fewer coconuts or waves. While I can’t explain why, I was certain Emily had chosen this venue to more dramatically present her plan for our bold new lives as urban Chicago cohabitators. Before hanging up I was already imagining massive bartending tips and hands-on business training programs.

  It turned out that the only other beachgoers that day were a glaringly pale middle-aged couple fumbling with an unassembled volleyball set and two obese preteens trying to wade as far out as they could without getting their shorts wet. We laid our towels down at the edge of the woods, allowing ourselves to easily switch between the sun and the shade. After ten minutes of silence I was still convinced that Emily had some major news to impart, though I was certain it had nothing to do with us moving to Chicago together. She didn’t make the slightest attempt at conversation and went about sunbathing as though I wasn’t there. While I first interpreted her behavior as a statement about the peaceful quietude that average nincompoops always felt the need to fill, I soon gathered that the real cause of her silence was her anger over the fact that I hadn’t brought a swimsuit.