The Middle of Somewhere

by Sonja Yoerg

  “Wow!”

  Dante came up beside her, grinning. “Wow, indeed.”

  A wind blew from the south, crinkling the surface of the lake. They searched for a sheltered spot, and soon found one, tucked into a knoll two hundred feet from the water. A flat area, barely large enough for their tent, was surrounded on three sides by boulders taller than a person. Someone had built a knee-high stone wall on the open end. Liz took it as a sign Evolution Lake could prove to be a windy place. She scolded herself for forgetting to get a weather forecast from the ranger in the valley. At the moment, there was only the usual high-altitude end-of-the-day breeze, but that meant absolutely nothing.

  Dante had unpacked and was setting up the kitchen. Liz positioned the groundsheet and erected the tent, crouching against the boulders that crowded the site. She searched the stuff sack for the bag of tent stakes, which she always rolled together with the fly. It wasn’t there. She emptied her backpack and pulled her sleeping bag out of its sack.

  “Dante, have you seen the stakes?”

  “For the tent?”

  “No, the New York sirloins. Seriously, I can’t find them.”

  “You always put them in the tent bag.”

  “I know. After I count them. Twice.”

  They went through everything they had, which took less than five minutes.

  He said, “What do we do?”

  She regarded the tent, as if it might contribute a solution. “We’ve got one stake in the emergency bag, and I should be able to use rocks to hold down the corners.”

  “What about the extra string?”

  “The emergency cord? I’ll use it if I have to, but I don’t want to cut it up otherwise.”

  Dante stared at her as if he suddenly realized his survival might very well depend on the length of a piece of nylon. “Sounds good to me.”

  “I wonder what happened to them.”

  He handed her a piece of salami. “Eat this. It’ll take your mind off it.”

  A voice came from nearby. “Hello!”

  Paul and Linda waved and climbed up to them. Linda said, “We’re neighbors,” and pointed to a stand of pines circling an enormous boulder. “On the other side of Bertha.”

  “She names things,” Paul explained.

  Dante cut them each a piece of salami, and they traded stories about the day’s hike.

  Liz said, “You been here long?”

  Paul lifted a shoulder. “A couple of hours.”

  Liz was amazed fifty-somethings could set that kind of pace. “Hey, I hate to ask, but do you have extra stakes? All of ours went missing.”

  “That’s weird,” Linda said. “We came over to see what your fuel situation was. We’ve got about a half a can, but the extra is gone.”

  Paul put a hand on Linda’s arm. “Not that we’re asking for fuel. We can manage. But sometimes people burn off their extra canister near the end.”

  Dante said, “We’ll conserve ours.”

  Linda added, “And if we’re below ten thousand feet, where there’s plenty of wood, we can all use fire instead.”

  “That’s why I wasn’t too worried,” Paul said. “Oh, I can help you a little with the stake situation. Hold on.” He trotted off toward his campsite.

  “He’s got a lot of energy,” Dante said.

  “He does,” Linda said. “Like a little boy.”

  A few moments later, Paul returned brandishing three tent stakes as if proposing they draw straws. Two were aluminum, the other red and slimmer. “Will this help?” He pulled out the red stake. “I found it on the trail today. Pretty expensive litter.”

  Liz took it from him, her mind spinning in ten directions.

  Dante said, “That’s exactly like ours. But I guess they’re probably common.”

  “No,” she said slowly, twisting the stake in her fingers. “These are fairly unusual. See how the cross section would be a Y-shape? They’re called Groundhogs, because they hold extremely well, plus they have a favorable strength-to-weight ratio.”

  “Engineer?” Linda asked.

  Liz nodded, transfixed by the stake.

  “What’s a groundhog?” Dante asked.

  “A flatland marmot,” Linda said.

  Liz glanced at Linda, who she could tell was also thinking about the Roots. “Paul, where did you find it?”

  “Near the Piute Creek bridge. In the middle of the trail. It struck me as an odd place. At a campsite, sure.” He handed her the other stakes.

  “Thanks a lot. It’s getting blowier by the minute.”

  The McCartneys said good night, and Liz secured the fly and the guy lines.

  As soon as the lake fell into shadow, the temperature dropped like a stone. Liz and Dante made dinner and stood huddled near the pines, their backs to the wind, and ate hurriedly. They scurried to the lake edge to rinse the dishes. The wind flew through the gap between the peaks, over a rocky archipelago, then swept across the water in gusts that pulled tears from their eyes. Liz, anxious to find relief from the cold, scrambled too quickly up the steep bank and tripped. Her knee hit stony ground, and dishes clattered down the hill behind her.

  “I’m okay!” she shouted to Dante before he could ask. She rubbed her knee and bent it a few times. Nothing more than a bruise.

  Fearing the strengthening wind, they stowed the cooking gear in their packs instead of leaving it out as they usually did, and took refuge in the tent before the sun had abandoned the summit of Mount Darwin. They stripped off their rain pants and jackets, and wriggled into their sleeping bags, facing each other.

  She dropped her head onto her folded jacket. “I am so damn tired.”

  “Me, too. How’s your knee?”

  “It’ll be fine, and serves as a reminder. Haste makes pain.”

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Sleep now. You had a bad night last night.”

  “Yeah. The good news is it’s too cold up here for snakes.”

  “Good night, carina.”

  “Good night, amigo. Te amo.”

  “Te amo.”

  She closed her eyes, her lids falling shut like trapdoors. Gradually, her body heat warmed the cocoon, and her hands and feet melted. Her legs sank through the mattress and tent floor and into the ground. If twenty rattlesnakes appeared in the tent, her mind would run screaming, but her body would stay right where it was. She drifted off.

  The howl of the wind woke her. The moon had risen, casting a low light through the yellow fabric of the tent. Above her head the tent bulged inward, throbbing with the pulse of the wind. She placed her hand against it and pushed, but the wind’s strength was greater. Outside, branches scraped against one another, creaking. The gust eased, and the tent returned nearly to its normal shape. For a minute or more, the wind relented, blowing now, she guessed, as hard as it had when they’d been outside.

  It was only a respite. From across the lake, she heard the wind gathering, whipping down the slopes and hurtling itself across the lake, closer and closer, louder and louder, then hitting the tent like a fist. The bulge above her head returned, pulsating. She rose to her elbow to see if Dante was awake, but his face was in shadow.

  The tent would hold. She’d assumed the wind would not shift direction and had positioned the tent to face the force along its strongest side. She’d staked it as best she could. But she doubted she could sleep. Maybe during a steady wind, but not with intermittent gusts buffeting them.

  Dante rolled over. “Not exactly a lullaby, is it?”

  She tested the force of the wind again with her hand. “You should feel this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was blowing fifty, sixty miles an hour out there.”

  “We okay in here?”

  “I think so. It’s a strong little tent.”

  They listened to the wind howling across the lake. The gust slammed into
them, lifting the edge of the tent floor near their heads two inches off the ground.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  “I wonder how Brensen’s doing in this. He’s not very experienced.”

  “True. He can’t pitch a tent to save his life. Probably he’s outside swearing at the wind.”

  “You should try to sleep.” He checked his watch. Its face glowed turquoise. “It’s only ten.”

  She did, but to no avail. During lulls between gusts she heard Dante’s soft snoring, which served to feed her growing frustration. Her body begged for sleep, but she could not supply it. Her mind was tuned to the wind, pointlessly tossing shreds of thoughts into her consciousness, spinning them around and around, then blowing them away again, into an unknowable space. She didn’t want to think, if this could be called thinking. She wanted oblivion. The wind wouldn’t let her have it.

  For hours and hours, she lay not simply sleepless, but tormented by her sleeplessness. The more she strove to clear her mind, the more debris the gusts blew in. The tent was secure, holding them safe in their beds, but inside Liz was chaos. Snakes, Dante, missing stakes, Mike, Payton Root, Gabriel, wrenched knees, General Petraeus. Thunder. Lightning. Radishes.

  Without sleep, she would go mad.

  Facing away from Dante, she pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed her lip to stop from wailing along with the wind. She rocked herself in time to the pulsing bulge above her head. The pressure pushed against her heart.

  A hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” He turned her over. She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid that in the moonlight she might see his pity for her. In a moment, he would want it back.

  “I cheated on Gabriel! I cheated on him!”

  He pulled his hand away. She opened her eyes. His lips were pursed with concern, but she couldn’t see his eyes. He twisted away. “Oh, Liz.” It came out like the last air in a balloon. “Did he know?”

  She pictured her husband’s face on that sweltering night, his disbelief morphing into pain and anger. “Yes—”

  “But his family doesn’t know? You’re still friends with them.”

  “No one knows! No one!”

  The wind bore down once again, as if to drown her out. She had the impulse to leave the tent to meet it, shout at it, run at it. Dare it to snatch her off this earth and take her away into darkness.

  He was talking to the ceiling. “I don’t see how you could do this. I know you were unhappy. I understand that now. But this?”

  She sat up and threw her hands in the air. “I knew you’d react this way, because nothing’s worse than cheating, right? In your little morality play, loyalty is everything! You don’t get it!”

  “What am I supposed to get? That you had your reasons? That he drove you to it?”

  “No!” She stuck her fists against her temples. “I told him! I told him and he got up and he got in his car. He got in his car and he crashed it! I told him and then he died!”

  She tucked her head to her knees and sobbed. The spasms, like the gasping wind, threatened to crush her. Dante put his arms around her. He held her until the spasms eased. She lifted her head to wipe her face and he zipped himself wordlessly into his bag. She lay down, and waited for the wind to scream across the lake and throw itself at the tent, at her, but it had steadied now, and howled in a single octave, not three. Shivering, she closed her eyes and pulled the bag over her face. She focused on the throbbing pain at her temples. In time, she slept. Her tears dried as frost.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The police came to the door the way they do in movies. A man and a woman, he with his hands crossed in front, she with her thumbs in her belt loops, both with serious, guarded expressions, as if showing sadness before delivering bad news was unprofessional. Information first, condolences after. You never know how people will react.

  And, as in a movie, Liz knew why they were there as soon as she opened the door. Police don’t stand on your doorstep, unhurried and grim, on the same hot August night your husband stormed out, for more than one reason.

  “Is this the residence of Gabriel Pemberton?”

  “Yes. I’m his wife.” She almost asked them what had happened—even though she knew—but went along with the script. They were in charge. They had Gabriel. Somewhere, he was lying on—what?—a stretcher, a gurney. There would be blood. His clothes would be torn. She tried to remember what he had been wearing, but couldn’t. Maybe his arm, or his leg was the wrong shape, or detached. Maybe he was still in the car, pinned by the steering wheel, or upside down, hanging from the seat belt like a parachutist. No, they would have taken care of that first, before they came here.

  Heat radiated off the concrete landing. She felt it go through her, and put a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself.

  The officers glanced at each other. “Do you mind if we come in?”

  She turned and lowered herself into the nearest chair. She never sat in that chair. From this new vantage the house appeared unfamiliar. The officers sat on the couch—her usual spot.

  They told her what had happened. He’d lost control of the car on Central Boulevard. He might have been speeding. They weren’t sure. They would know more tomorrow. He hit a retaining wall, flipped. They said he was “already gone” when the paramedics arrived on the scene and hadn’t suffered. They offered their condolences.

  The woman said, “Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

  She shook her head, eyes on the jute rug at her feet, following the pattern of the weave. Over, under, over, under.

  The man said, “We need to ask you a couple of questions, if that’s all right.”

  She nodded once.

  “When was your husband last here?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Had he been drinking?”

  “We each had a beer at dinner. The last two.” She felt a drop of water on her bare leg. She put a hand to her face. It was wet.

  The man said, “We can do this later.”

  She looked up. “What else do you have to ask?”

  “Was your husband depressed?”

  “No.”

  “Then he went out because . . .” He leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them, making it easier for her to toss the answer.

  “We ran out of beer.”

  The officers stayed while she made a phone call. She called Valerie, and kept it short.

  “Okay,” the woman officer said. “Someone’s on the way?”

  “Yes.” But she neglected to say Valerie lived in Paris.

  Valerie wasn’t just the first person Liz wanted to tell about Gabriel; she was the only person. She did call the Pembertons that night, because there was no escaping it. She had killed their son. Her hands shook so much it took three tries to get the number right. Pastor Thomas Pemberton answered. She told him the bare bones of the story because that was all she could manage. A man used to dealing with death, he took the news calmly, or calmly enough, even asking Liz to confirm someone would be looking after her. Yes, of course. He said they would speak the next day, to make arrangements. At first she misunderstood what he meant. She thought it bizarre he would suggest arranging flowers when his son had just died, then the word locked into its context. Arrangements for the transition to the next world. For the pastor it was heaven; for Liz it was tomorrow, and all the days afterward, absent of Gabriel because of her.

  She hung up and imagined the ripple of shock and sorrow as it passed from the pastor to his wife, to their other children (four now, only four), and to other relatives and friends, outward through their many branches of kinship, love and support, connections they tended with care. The community of people the Pembertons had nourished would now nourish them. They would all say, in their messages, that losing a child was the greatest loss of all, and wish them strength. Liz was the domino that fell, knocking Gabriel flat on hi
s back, and starting the wave that set the Pembertons and their world in tragic motion.

  She did not call her mother.

  Valerie was ignorant of Mike. She barely knew anything about the problems between Liz and Gabriel. Or, more accurately, the problem Liz had with Gabriel, because he never acknowledged anything was wrong.

  Valerie was her best friend. She knew her better than anyone else, but that didn’t mean she knew Liz well. They met in college, not long before Liz met Gabriel, so Valerie knew only the Liz who was loved by Gabriel. She hadn’t met the marginalized high school Liz or the Liz who played alone on her bedroom floor, tinkering with the guts of some machine. Liz in love with Gabriel was so much more acceptable than any previous versions—or that’s how it seemed to Liz—so she filed her other selves away, and referred to them infrequently. She did so out of habit, not concerted effort. Liz believed she would always have Gabriel as he was during their courtship, so her life before him was irrelevant to Valerie, and to herself.

  When Gabriel began pulling away, Liz talked to Valerie about it. Her friend laughed and said not to worry. He loved her madly, anyone could see it, she said. It was probably nothing more than the inevitable mellowing even the most romantic relationship experiences. Normal life. Had she used that phrase? Now Liz wasn’t certain.

  More than a year ago, Valerie moved to Paris to study at an art institute, and there never seemed to be a right time to talk since she’d left. Liz was reluctant to complain about Gabriel across such a distance, and the differences in their schedules discouraged her further. Morning in Albuquerque was dinnertime in Paris, when Valerie was either out, tired or on the wrong side of a bottle of wine. If Liz called during her evening, her friend would be groggy with sleep or impatient to start her day. It was too difficult, so she kept her own counsel more and more.

  Valerie, and the rest of the world, never learned about Mike. For so long, there was nothing to say. She imagined the conversation.

  “I eat lunch with a guy at work.”

  “Are you attracted to him?”

  “No.”