by Sonja Yoerg
She raised her head to look out across the valley where the shadows of the peaks lay in great triangles upon the eastern slopes. She and Dante, alone in the middle of nowhere, with the truth.
She swallowed with effort, and spoke to the mountains. “A baby. There was a baby.”
“What?”
She finally turned toward him. He waited, tension strung tight across his features.
“A month ago, I learned I was pregnant.”
“You’re pregnant?” He leaned closer, amazed. “Now?”
“No.”
A long pause. The moments fell away until he spoke, his voice hushed. “What happened?”
“I had an abortion.”
“What?”
“An abortion. I’m so sorry, Dante.”
He blinked several times, then removed his hat and smoothed his hand over his still-damp hair. He turned the hat over in his hands and put it back on. He shook his head, his lips pursed. “I don’t believe it.”
“But it’s true.”
“You’re saying you were pregnant? And you didn’t tell me?”
She nodded. “I was afraid to tell you. I should have. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head again. “I’m not believing you, Liz. That you would do such a thing. That you would do it and not tell me. That you live with me, share a life with me, and then you would do this . . .” His voice trailed off and he hung his head.
Liz stared at the top of his hat where the stitching came together at the crown. She wanted to lay her hand on his head but did not dare. She was suddenly uncertain of him, and of herself. They were different now, on the other side of a divide, where a random drop might run in a different direction. Like the moment she told Gabriel about Mike. Her world, and Gabriel’s, had pivoted, and tilted sharply, throwing him off, throwing him and his car into oblivion. The change in her was definite. Emptied of her lie, she was carved out, hollow as a cave.
She watched Dante now, her skin prickling, terrified of what she had set in motion, but unable to look away. He exhaled loudly and returned to sit on the log, hunched over, elbows on his knees. He stared at her, his brow furrowed, his eyes begging her to tell him none of this was true. She looked away, shivering. It was getting dark, and cold.
After a few moments, he spoke in a whisper. “Was it mine?”
The question should not have surprised her. How much incrementally greater a sin was infidelity? Would it be easier for him if it had not been his? It didn’t matter. She could not lie now, even for the right reason. “Yes.” She choked on the lump in her throat. “Of course. Yes.”
He rubbed his hand roughly across his face as if wiping away cobwebs. His lips drew tight. She opened her mouth to say more, to apologize again, but his eyes had turned hard and glassy.
“I would never have thought—” He stood abruptly, his arms stiff at his sides. “Remember two days ago I said I trusted you? What a mistake!” He spun away and stooped to pick up a stout branch. He ran three steps, smashed it against a tree and cried out—a sound of agony and fury that echoed back to them. A piece of branch landed near his foot and he kicked it, swearing. Pine needles scattered in a cloud of dust. Liz got up, without knowing why. He strode away several paces, his fists balled, then wheeled around and came to stand in front of her. His eyes were wild with pain. She wanted to flee or at least close her eyes, shut him out, but forced herself to absorb the fallout.
“How could you do this?”
She had no answer.
“A child is a gift from God! A gift!” He cupped his hands to show her. A cradle. “You may not believe this, but you know that I do. Don’t you?” She nodded. He leaned closer, searching her face for someone he once knew. Dissatisfied with what he saw, his anger shifted an inch and became betrayal. “You, Elizabeth. The one I love with all my heart.” Tears filled his eyes. “How could you?”
He stood there for an unbearably long time, waiting for an explanation she could not summon and that would never suffice. Finally, he picked up a water bottle and his bowl of soup, left the campsite, crossed the trail and disappeared behind an outcropping.
The cold had tunneled in to lie along her bones. She hugged herself, teeth chattering, staring at the spot where he had vanished.
He wouldn’t go far, Liz knew. He couldn’t. There was nowhere for either of them to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
For the second morning in a row, she awoke alone. The light was soft; it was dawn. The sound of rustling nylon and boots scratching on gravel came from outside. She put on her warm clothes and climbed out of the tent, dragging her sleeping bag and mattress behind her. Dante was stuffing gear into his pack, which rested against a pine. A half-finished bowl of granola was balanced on a nearby rock.
“Hi,” Liz said.
“Hi.” His voice was flat.
They’d not spoken the night before. Or, rather, she had said, “I’m sorry,” several times and he had either put up his hand to stop her saying more, or ignored her. Between bouts of crying, self-recrimination and restless sleep, she’d spent the night thinking of what else to say. But if he wasn’t ready to talk, her speeches were irrelevant. She’d have to be patient.
Her clean coffee cup stood next to his dirty one. She checked for water in the pot and lit the burner. “You want more coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten last night. She poured granola, dehydrated blueberries and milk into her bowl and ate it standing up. When the water was ready, she stirred it into the coffee and chocolate mixture in her cup.
Dante cinched the top of his pack closed and applied sunscreen to his face and neck. His posture betrayed weariness, but he nevertheless appeared stronger than she’d ever seen him. She could discern the outline of his shoulder muscles under his shirt, and his calves were lean and brown. He had been hers. Pride rose in her before she could stifle it. But her shame was close at hand, and sickened her. Dante was too good for her. What goodness she might hold in her heart had been overshadowed by her actions, again and again. She wasn’t a bad person, but she might as well be. She sipped her coffee to stem her tears.
He was ready to go. He swept his hand to indicate the tent and remaining gear. “You got all this?”
“Yes. But, Dante, we should talk.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” He hoisted his pack onto his back and clicked the hip belt. “But I don’t feel like it, Liz. I’m going to walk.” He pointed at the sky. “It’s a clear day, so you won’t need me to hold your hand during a storm.”
She winced. It wasn’t like him to be mean. She had hurt him and he was biting back. “I’ll see you at Wallace Creek, then, if not earlier.”
He nodded, in acknowledgment if not in agreement. He slipped his hands through the loops of his poles, turned on his heels and left her and the empty tent behind.
She finished her coffee and packed everything, working deliberately. There was no reason to rush. She wasn’t chasing Dante. If he needed to—or wanted to—he could camp on his own, without the tent. It’d be cold, but feasible. He had food in his bear can and she was pretty sure he had the water purification tablets. She had the map, but it was nearly impossible to get lost. When it came down to it, they didn’t need each other.
She stowed all the gear in her pack and carried it to the small tarn east of the campsite. The surface was a sheet of steel. The mountains stood mute. Wisps of fog clung to the peaks, claiming them.
The trail to the pass lay to the right but she faced, instead, the way she had come. She couldn’t see far down the trail—not more than a hundred yards—because it snaked around a corner, but she knew the way. The way back.
To what? At the moment, she didn’t care. Like the winter fox that leaves a foot in a trap, she felt lighter. She’d done what she needed to do. It hurt like hell, but what of it?
&nbs
p; She imagined retracing her steps, down where she’d gone up, up where she’d gone down, camping first where she had camped last. Perhaps she should walk at night—she had a headlamp—and sleep during the day. Some nights, there would be a moon. She’d enter the tent after dawn and gradually the sun would warm her as she slept. She’d be short of food, but she would need little, light as she was.
John Muir had crossed these mountains again and again with nothing more than a hunk of bread in his pocket. Of course, he had God with him and, he believed, all around.
She turned her back on the trail she had already walked and headed south, as always. She could not undo anything by retracing her steps, and her legs itched to climb. For two miles and two thousand vertical feet, she hiked without rest across talus, welcoming the ache in her thighs and the stab in her lungs. The tarn fell away behind her and the fog on the peaks evaporated. A trio of men in their early twenties passed her halfway up. She said hello and carried on. A few times she tried to discern where the trail found the pass, but as before it remained a mystery. Only the increasing proportion of sky to rock—and the decreasing availability of oxygen—told her she was near.
She came at last to a small level area surrounded by a scramble of boulders and marked with a sign: ENTERING SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK. FORESTER PASS, ELEVATION 13,200 FEET. Liz felt light-headed and glanced at her watch. Quarter to ten. She considered stopping for a snack but a frigid wind pushed at her chest. As from so many other passes, the southern vista was striking, if barren. To her left, a massive wedge—Diamond Mesa—spilled from the back side of Junction Peak. Two royal blue lakes lay at its base. Framing the scene to the right was the Great Western Divide, a wall of mountains that appeared to be a world unto itself. In between the Mesa and the Divide was a wide plain, broken only by low rock ledges. The tree line was miles away.
Liz started down and wondered how the trail engineers could possibly have chosen this route. The switchbacks were tight and rock-strewn, some cut into solid granite and others built atop stone walls. One foot in front of the other. A pole, a foot, a pole, a foot, as she had done for so many miles. She braced herself with her poles to relieve the stress on her legs, and caused her shoulders to ache. Somewhere soon she would rest.
A falcon appeared, tracing an arc against a dark cliff. She stopped to see where it would go, what it could possibly desire here where there was nothing. She lost it in the shadow of an enormous outcropping, and thought it possible it had flown through the mountain. But then the bird materialized against a white cloud, at a distance farther than she imagined it could have reached. She strained to see it, and tipped sideways, jamming a pole into her armpit. She cried out, and the cliff ricocheted the sound back to her.
She lowered herself onto a stone and slipped off her pack. She pulled her knees to her chest, bent her head and began to cry. She was alone, exhausted and afraid. Earlier in the trip, the overwhelming scale of the wilderness had seemed a blessing; she paled to insignificance. Her secrets and fears and desires could fall upon the hard rock and into the deep blue pools and fly away into the endless sky without notice. But now that she had confessed, she was open, exposed. The indifferent wilderness was now harsh and she longed to be comforted. She thought of Valerie and the ease of their friendship. She thought of Muesli and the simple happiness they shared. Neither her friend nor her cat was enough, but she longed for them, for someone.
After a time, hunger and thirst brought her around. She pulled a bag of almonds from her pack and tossed a handful into her mouth. Four more handfuls and half a liter of water, and she was ready to walk again. Somewhere ahead of her was Dante, or so she hoped.
The switchbacks gave way to open, sandy terrain. Liz headed across the basin, a dot in an empty Euclidean space marked by a single vector, the trail. Over the course of an hour, she passed the twin lakes and the edge of Diamond Mesa. There, to the east, far in the distance, was Mount Whitney. It presented a strange profile, a massive cylinder sliced at an acute angle, and didn’t conform to any template for a Sierra mountain that Liz’s mind had developed. She’d seen pictures, of course, but was struck anew at how unlikely, how unimpressive it appeared. It was high, no doubt about that, but not magnificent. Still, to see where she was going, to have in her sights the place where the trail ended, moved her. She continued walking—she would have to leave the mountain farther behind in order to approach it—but glanced at it frequently. She wondered if Dante had seen it, if he even knew which peak it was.
Before long the tree line was in sight. She spotted what appeared to be a person a half mile or more ahead, but the shadows from the pines complicated her view. As she neared, she became more and more certain it was Dante. He stood in the trail without his pack, looking her way. At first she was cheered to see him. He had waited for her. She was under no illusion that he would have forgiven her so quickly, but perhaps he was opening the door. His position in the middle of the trail, however, seemed odd. She slowed. Now she could make out his face, and his worried expression.
She lifted her trekking pole in greeting. A strange sound came from her left, a good distance way. At first she guessed the high, undulating cry emanated from an injured animal, but then realized it was human. Or humanish. And a little bit musical.
She stopped in her tracks and listened for it to repeat. Dante had oriented toward the sound as well. The wind swirled in the treetops. At the top of a pine, a nutcracker squawked twice. The cry came again, pitches rapidly alternating between low shouts and falsetto. Someone was yodeling.
It was ludicrous.
From a different location, perhaps nearer, an answering call. She tried to pinpoint its source, but the steep slopes around her played with the sounds, sending notes across the valley and back again, until the cry seemed to come from everywhere.
Her pulse quickened and she hurried along the trail to Dante.
“What was that noise?” he said.
“Sounded like yodeling.”
“Like in The Sound of Music? You’re right. You think they’re doing it for fun?”
She shrugged. “It was used originally to communicate.”
“Communicate what? Mental problems?”
“Position. Maybe identity. I’m just guessing.”
Dante nodded, then frowned. “I stopped because I found something very disturbing.” He turned to indicate the trail behind him. “Someone put a marmot, a dead one, on a sign just ahead.”
“What?” Dread swam to the surface of her consciousness like a feeding fish. “Show me.”
“I took it off and threw it as far as I could. It was disgusting. But I’ll show you where it was.”
A dead marmot. Liz immediately thought of the Roots. She scanned the sparse woods around them for movement or a flash of color. Nothing. Had that been the Roots yodeling? She unbuckled her hip belt, slid her pack to the ground and followed Dante.
He led her a short distance to where the trail dipped behind a rocky ledge. A sign, similar to those they’d seen everywhere on the trip, marked an intersection. It was waist-high, constructed of metal, with the place names and mileages drilled through the metal plate, like a stencil. This one said, LAKE SOUTH AMERICA 2.8 with an arrow pointing to the right. The rusted metal was stained with blood, still wet in places. She had imagined the marmot draped over the sign, intact. A chill spread down her arms.
“Dante, what exactly did you find?”
“You really want to know?” It was a challenge as much as a question. He waited until she nodded. “Okay. The belly was split open and the head was bent over the top of the sign.” He reached into his pocket. “And whoever did it used these to hold it in place.”
Liz stared at his open palm, unbelieving. Two red tent stakes.
“I washed them in the stream.”
“I don’t understand. Hold it how?”
He hesitated, deliberating how to answer. “The stakes were d
riven through each paw and into the letters.” He pointed at two places either side of the central post.
She pictured the marmot’s head in the middle, the forelimbs splayed. Her stomach rolled and her palms became damp. “A crucifixion.”
His eyes widened. “Yes, I suppose it was. I didn’t think of that. I wanted to get rid of it before anyone else had to see it. Without touching it, of course. I used my poles.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Disgusting.”
Out of habit, she reached for his hand to comfort him and to thank him for removing the carcass before she got there, but he moved away and headed back to where they’d left their packs. A thick ache of sorrow passed through her as she realized he was avoiding her touch and might never accept it again. Everything had played out exactly as she had feared. She had broken his heart, and her own.
Another thought pushed to the front of her mind. She returned to where Dante stood with his pack.
“How long do you think it had been there?”
“The marmot? How could I possibly know?”
His anger was palpable, but she had to pursue the questioning. “Well, the blood hadn’t dried, for one thing.” She thought for a minute. “Did you pass three guys earlier?”
“Yes. Maybe a half hour or forty-five minutes before I got here.”
“They would’ve mentioned the marmot.”
“Of course. So, it wasn’t here very long.”
She stepped closer. “The Roots saw you coming, Dante.” A shadow of worry passed over his face. “And the yodeling happened as I arrived. They’ve seen me, too.” She reached out her hand, and noticed it trembling.
