by Sonja Yoerg
Payton grinned at her and ran a palm along his thigh. A shiver skittered down her spine. “It’s big, all right, but the trail is just a skinny little thing. Doesn’t take much to create an inconvenience, as you can see.”
“Speaking of which,” Dante said, “when were you on the Golden Staircase yesterday?”
“Yesterday? Can’t remember. Do you remember, Rodell?”
He rubbed his whiskers theatrically. “No, no, can’t say as I do.”
“Mr. Hollywood was there, though, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he sure was. Swearing a blue streak the whole way up.”
Payton frowned. “Took the Lord’s name in vain on multiple occasions.”
“We don’t approve, do we Payton?”
“No, we certainly don’t.”
“Daddy used to swear a blue streak. Even on the Lord’s day.”
“He did indeed.”
“Poor Mama. Every swearword was a knife through her heart.” The younger brother pinched the corners of his eyes with dirty fingers. “All that swearing and drinking. And raising a hand to her! Knocked two teeth out once, remember?” Payton rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Rodell exhaled and shook his head slowly. “Came in the door and there she was. Lying on the floor, bleeding and moaning.”
They stood in silent reflection, oblivious to their audience. Liz held her breath. All around, the granite waited.
“That was a good dare,” Payton whispered. “We fixed him, didn’t we, Rodell?”
Rodell patted his brother’s hand and looked up at him. A grin spread like oil across his face. “There’ll be no more swearing from Daddy.”
Payton’s eyes shone with affection. “That was the best dare you ever gave me.”
“So far, Payton. So far.”
Payton had moved toward his brother, leaving a narrow gap, but Liz’s legs were locked solid. Dante reached for her hand, and their poles, which dangled from their wrists, tapped. The sharp clinking sound in the empty morning released her. She tugged Dante’s hand as a signal, then let go and darted forward, squeezing past Payton, brushing his shoulder. Dante was right behind her. Liz hurried up the trail, head down, her breath loud in her ears. She didn’t look back until they were nearly at the pass.
• • •
As they ascended the switchbacks below Mather Pass, they discussed whether to talk to a ranger about the Roots. The next station was at Bench Lake, about a mile before Lake Marjorie—that evening’s destination. The problem lay, they agreed, in what to say. The Roots had made no direct threats, nor had they behaved illegally. Even collecting marmot feet was within the bounds of the law, if outside the bounds of good taste.
“What do you think happened to their father?” Dante said.
Liz pictured a desiccated souvenir—an ear, or a finger—then chased the image from her mind. Her imagination was running ahead of the evidence, and beyond common sense. “They could have scared him off, or turned him in. For some reason, they want us to think the worst.”
“It’s working.”
They removed their packs at the top of the pass and had a quick drink and a snack. Looking north the way they’d come, they were relieved to see the McCartneys a good distance ahead of the Roots who, having run out of passersby, had abandoned their troll-like position on the trail.
Liz said, “Let’s camp well off the trail tonight.”
“To hide from them?”
“Yes. As a precaution.”
“What about Paul and Linda?”
“They’ll be fine. The Roots don’t seem interested in them.”
Dante frowned. “You think that boulder was meant for us?”
“Maybe.”
He paused, considering. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.” He stashed his water bottle and put on his pack. “Shall we?”
• • •
To the south lay a surreal vista. A barren basin spread a thousand feet below, two miles wide and long, dotted with small blue-green lakes and nothing else. Liz and Dante began the descent along switchbacks carved in a vertical wall. With each turn, the desolate floor grew nearer, but no less foreign. A miniature lake, as green as an emerald, appeared at the base of the wall. The angle of the light created sparkles floating above the surface like hovering dragonflies. The scene was stunningly beautiful, but haunting in its lifelessness. Aside from the path, whatever humans had undertaken here had left no trace.
Liz crossed this rocky void, propelled from behind by her memory of the hostile stances and dark whisperings of the Root brothers, and pulled by the empty trail ahead of her, as if a gigantic winch sat atop Mount Whitney, reeling her in, ever southward. She felt the pull in her belly, and lower, as a cramp. An unseen knuckle pressed and twisted, releasing an ache that pulsed like a small beating heart.
She stumbled.
The tip of her pole screeched across a flat rock. Her arm collapsed and her knee hit the ground. The pack slid sideways and she toppled backward onto it.
She regarded the empty sky. That Color.
Dante appeared above her. “You okay?”
She nodded, but wasn’t certain. She unclasped her pack and wriggled free. Dante pulled her to standing.
“What happened?” he asked, scanning the area for clues as to how she could have fallen on level terrain.
“A moment’s inattention.” She brushed off her knees. “Doesn’t take long to be careless.”
• • •
She’d gone to the doctor to confirm the results of the home pregnancy test, but she hadn’t thought through what she would say at her appointment. Each day since the home test, she expected her period. She was due to start the John Muir Trail in three weeks. Her plans were set. Her menstrual cycle would resume, she would marvel at her lucky break and walk into the wilderness.
A nurse appeared holding a clipboard and called her name. As Liz set the magazine on the side table, she imagined the doctor watching her for a reaction to the news that was not news, but a denial of her denial. She could not anticipate her own reaction. Either she or the doctor would glance at her ringless hand.
She put on the gown and folded her clothes neatly upon the chair. The nurse returned, took her blood pressure and checked her pulse. The word “procedure” winked on and off in Liz’s consciousness, helped along by the tray of metal tools beside the sink and bare stirrups at the end of the exam table. Intellectually she knew the scene was identical whether you welcomed the baby or not, but her history in such rooms (and they were all the same) was only ever about preventing pregnancy and sexual diseases. On the wall to her left, an innocuous painting of a house among windswept dunes evoked nothing.
Naked under thin cotton, she felt more child than woman. “Mother” she could not imagine. Her own mother came vaguely to mind, then wandered off, distracted.
She could not swell with life. Much of the time she barely managed to blow warmth to the edges of her own existence. She hadn’t given up on love—not yet—but neither could she support another life. She would cave.
The doctor knocked and entered. Liz remembered Dante had business in Atlanta the following week. By the time the doctor returned the speculum to the tray and asked her to sit up, she knew what she would do.
Leave no trace.
• • •
At Lake Marjorie they searched for twenty minutes before locating a campsite hidden from the trail, a hundred feet above the lake, tucked behind boulders the size of trucks. Their first chore was to fill all their water containers—including the cooking pot—so they wouldn’t have to venture down to the exposed shore until they set out the next morning. They worked quickly and in silence, taking turns pumping the filter. They washed their faces and hands in the icy water, and scurried up the slope without bothering to dry off.
While Liz erected the tent, Dante set up the kitchen an
d inflated the mattresses. Every few minutes he climbed atop the boulders and peered over the edge to scout for Paul and Linda, calling himself Tonto.
“What are you planning to do when you see them?” Liz asked. “There’s no space for them to camp up here.”
“I want to make sure Linda’s all right.”
“I’ve been concerned about her, too. But it’s only four o’clock. Even if they don’t get here for another two hours, it’ll still be light. They’ll make camp by the lake.”
A half hour later, he waved her up to his perch. “Look who’s here.”
She flattened her body on the sun-warmed stone. Payton and Rodell strode along the lake margin, heads down. “They don’t seem to be looking for a site. Maybe they’re going up over the pass.”
“Another one? This late in the day?”
“Probably another dare in contention for a Darwin Award.”
“They don’t know where we are, so you can relax.”
A small reprieve.
A while later the evening breeze carried voices from below. The McCartneys had arrived and ditched their packs. Linda sat on a log while Paul inspected the two campsites visible from the trail.
Dante opened his mouth to call to them, but Liz placed a hand on his arm. “The Roots could be within earshot. Paul and Linda seem perfectly fine.”
“You’re right, carina.” He slid down the rock, crossed to the kitchen area and bent to stir the soup. “We’ll talk to them tomorrow. We could even hike together.”
“Safety in numbers?”
“Yes, as you are worried about the Roots.”
She noticed he didn’t say “we.” “Maybe.”
Dante put the lid on and turned to her. “Why ‘maybe’?”
“I guess I’m still hoping this’ll become the hike I imagined.”
His face drooped.
“I didn’t mean the solo part,” she said, laying a hand on his cheek. “I meant the contemplative, serene part. Or, at the very least, the not-creeped-out-by-stalkers part. Or the not-attacked-by-falling-rocks part.”
“Or the not-confess-your-most-shameful-moments part?”
“Yeah. That.”
She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and, on the pretense of assembling the bowls and sporks, turned away.
“I want to tell you something, Liz.”
She noted his serious tone and lowered herself onto a rock. “What is it?”
“When we were in Mexico with my family, I only shared part of the conversation I had with my parents about my sister. And about Rico’s role in the family business.” He would not meet her gaze. “I was upset about Emilia. Maybe I was seeing it through your eyes a little. My parents—my father—was judging Emilia without even talking to her, and was taking Rico’s side. I told him that just because Rico was his right-hand man—excuse me, his son—didn’t mean his daughter should count for nothing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said his mind was made up and it wasn’t my business.” He looked at Liz with a pained expression. “I lost my temper.”
“Did you say something you didn’t mean? Couldn’t you simply apologize?”
“That’s the problem. I told the truth. I admitted that I never intended to work with him—for him. I knew it before I even left for college. I never told him because he wouldn’t have paid for it. I couldn’t have gone.” He studied her, measuring her reaction.
Six years of full tuition, plus full support in the lifestyle to which Dante had been accustomed. A quarter of a million dollars, or more. No wonder Señor Espinoza was miffed. On the other hand, Dante was determined to make it on his own, and believed an American education was his ticket, despite the fact that lots of people with fewer advantages than he enjoyed succeeded without a free ride to a U.S. college. “I’m not sure what to think.”
“You can say it. It was wrong.”
“Did you know it at the time?”
“Yes. But I knew what I wanted. I was determined. I felt my father owed me for being so unreasonable about my future.”
“What do you think now?”
He let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “I feel guilty. I’m considering paying him back when I can.”
“He’d probably respect that.”
“Only if I included interest.”
Liz could sympathize with Dante’s desire for an American education, but was surprised he’d strung his father along for so many years. She wondered whether Dante’s actions were fueled as much out of anger at being pushed into the family business as out of determination to earn a premium degree in the land of opportunity. She herself had never put her hand in her pocket for her schooling, and was reticent to judge. And at the moment, it mattered more to her that he had told her.
“Let’s hit the tent,” she said, putting her arms around him. He returned her embrace, his arms strong and warm against her back. They held each other as the wind whistled low between the peaks and swept the last of the day into the valleys below. In the remaining shreds of light, they tucked their packs and gear under the boughs of a stout pine, climbed into the tent and zipped themselves in.
Early the next morning, the sun cast a pale yellow glow on the peaks above the lake. Dante noticed the McCartneys were up, so he and Liz clambered down the hill and explained why they had kept to themselves last night. Paul and Linda agreed the Roots probably had continued over Pinchot Pass.
“I’d be happy to have seen the last of them,” Paul said. “Bloody weird pair.”
Liz asked Linda, “How’s your leg?”
“Not too bad. When it hurts in the night I just stick it out of the sleeping bag and it goes numb in a few minutes.”
The couples separated to break camp, then set off together for the Rae Lakes, sixteen miles away.
No two passes they’d encountered had been the same: a notch sliced in the V between sharp peaks, a flat gravel lot on a broad saddle, or a site for a shelter, such as Muir Hut. Pinchot Pass was the highest thus far, and Liz was surprised to arrive there so easily along a gradual incline. Reaching a pass was usually cause for a small celebration, but not at Pinchot. Though early in the day, the wind howled from the north, swept up the slope and hurled itself over the edge with icy abandon.
“I lived in Wales for a year,” Linda said, yanking the collar of her jacket tighter. “They called winds like this ‘lazy.’”
“Why?” asked Dante. “Doesn’t feel lazy to me.”
“Because instead of going around you, it goes straight through.”
They turned their backs to the wind and descended. As on Mather Pass, the north side of Pinchot was precipitous. Narrow switchbacks covered in broken stone prompted Liz to watch her step. At the bottom, she paused and craned her neck to see the way they had come, but the rock wall was too steep and she lost the trace of the trail halfway up. She turned her gaze south to admire Mount Cedric Wright, so broad and imposing it might have been a range unto itself. She remembered from the guidebook Cedric Wright had been a mentor and friend to Ansel Adams. Wright’s ashes had been scattered on this peak, above which a few small clouds had already gathered. She shivered at the prospect of a change in weather.
After a water break, Dante walked in front, and Liz allowed the gap between them to grow until she could no longer hear the tap of his poles on the rocks or the crunch of his boots on the ground. If she lifted her head, she could see him—the terrain was open, for the most part—but if she gazed into the middle distance and allowed her mind to wander, she was alone.
She wondered if Dante’s father would ever forgive his son, and if repaying the debt would matter. She wondered if forgiveness was real. Perhaps it could be, for the one doing the forgiving. But for her there was no possibility of a clear conscience, merely the weak absolution of honesty, of confession. If only she had been raised Catholi
c—or within another religion that embraced the concept—she might find forgiveness and believe in it. But faith was not part of her fiber. She could not buy into the cycle of sin and penance, of death and resurrection. She would always remember what she had done, and it would always sting. She would not be washed clean.
But next to this certainty was another truth: mornings on the trail gave her hope. Hope of what precisely, she couldn’t say. Each morning of this journey, even after a terrible night, proposed a new beginning. She crawled out of the tent and started over by breaking camp—undoing what she had constructed the night before. When it was as it had been, save for a few boot marks, she returned to the task of walking. But she did not walk over the same ground—everything was new, in the intricate and fractal sameness of rock, lake and sky.
Perhaps that was why she had confessed, and would confess again. Not because she held out hope for forgiveness—it wasn’t in her even if it was in Dante—but because there would always be morning. When she had told Dante everything, their relationship would die. The sadness of the fact sat heavy and full in her heart. But the unfathomable emerald lakes and the towering mountains that cared nothing for the heavens into which they reached, proved the next day would be a new one and she would begin again. Even if it was alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By noon they’d covered ten miles and dropped thirty-five hundred feet in elevation. Woods Creek followed them much of the way, a cascading rush of white water pausing briefly in bottle green pools, only to tumble down noisily once more.
The trail veered sharply left. Dante stopped and Liz came alongside to stare at the elaborate suspension bridge before them. Tall wooden towers on either bank anchored steel cables supporting a narrow walkway thirty feet above Woods Creek. Undergrowth blocked Liz’s view of the far bank, but she estimated the span to be a hundred feet.
“How weird to find such a fancy structure here,” Dante said, not having read the guidebooks.
“How convenient.”
The McCartneys arrived and Liz led them, single file, up the dozen wooden steps to the beginning of the span. A sign warned them to cross one at a time.
