Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail (15 page)

Giuseppe now grasps a photo and brings it close to his eyes, moves it away and Pike's face comes into focus. He wears a beige T-shirt and white shorts, and his hair is tangled from the wind. Behind him, a rippled inlet reflects the sun. Giuseppe puts the photo back and walks over to the window. They were so young back then, each concealing his sexuality, a secret that wrapped around them like an invisible cocoon. Times have changed, and now the whole world seems different. They live in a town full of
tolerant
people. Pike and Giuseppe go where they want, when they want, and no one cares. Giuseppe misses the covert glance, the thrill of the secret rendezvous. When their relationship was new, Pike didn't need another to feel complete, certainly not some acne-faced hustler trying to make a buck.

Giuseppe parts the curtains, looks down at three tents in a rainbow triangle. Never Lost, Tazmanian Devil, and Red Bear have stayed overnight. His instinct tells him Never Lost and Tazmanian Devil are a couple, even though they don't act like it in public. Red Bear is an Indian, and he has the shiniest black hair Giuseppe has ever seen. He'd like to get to know them better, especially Tazmanian Devil, who has this hunk of a jaw and curly brown hair, but hikers at the B&B are an ever-changing group, here today, gone tomorrow, and making friends with someone who will soon leave is a waste of time. Some days he wants to put on a backpack and follow them down the trail. North, south, the direction doesn't matter, so long as it's anywhere but here.

Dobbs and Pike walk into the bedroom and nausea comes over Giuseppe, a light-headedness that threatens to topple him to the floor. Dobbs takes off his clothes and hops in bed. He has a tattoo of a snake on his chest; venom drips from pink fangs.

“Come over here,” the boy says. “Let me make a man out of you.”

Giuseppe kisses his lover roughly on the lips. Pike returns the kiss and in a scramble of creaky arms and legs, they join the boy. For the next hour, Giuseppe exists in a timeless fog, moans and whispered words too dispersed to comprehend. He dreams of the bottom line, thinks of the papers he will sign.

*   *   *

In the utility shed, Dobbs at his side, Giuseppe pours gas from a red can into the John Deere. The shed smells like grease and gas and dusty corners and is the only room on the property Pike never visits. Auto parts, left over from the previous owner, sit on yellowed newspapers with dates as far back as the 1960s. Jars and tin cans on the workbench hold random assortments of nails, screws, nuts and bolts, fasteners, assorted extension cords, and electrical sockets. The effect, so many things in so many places, reminds Giuseppe of controlled chaos, and he supposes the shed is fitting locale for the conversation he's been having with the boy.

“You should have asked for my ID before we hit the sack,” Dobbs says. He tilts a half-empty bottle of Chablis from the collection in the cellar, swallows, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Hell, I'm not but fourteen.”

“What do you mean you're ‘not but fourteen'?” Giuseppe asks. He entwines his fingers in the boy's hair, yanks his head upwards. His breath, so close to Giuseppe's face, smells like fermented bubble gum. Dobbs's eyes are glassy, open but seeing nothing.

“Let me go.”

“What do you mean you're ‘not but fourteen'?”

“Fuck damn,” Dobbs says. “Be fifteen March.”

“You little shit.” Giuseppe turns the boy loose and sets down the gas can.

“I ain't nobody's fool. You homos fucked me in the ass and came in my mouth and made me do things no child should bear. That's what I'll tell the police next time they come to visit. I'll tell them you raped me in the bedroom. I'll describe both your dicks and that little mole on your balls and you'll both get twenty years.”

Cold creeps into Giuseppe's bones. He spent the morning waiting for Pike to come back from the bank, hoping his lover, no, that's not right,
knowing
his lover will honor his word. Pike has money, and plenty of it, which means Giuseppe will soon be rich. He can afford to buy off the boy.

“I'll give you a hundred dollars,” Giuseppe says. “You go away and never come back.”

“Shit.”

“Pike fired you first thing this morning.”

The boy does a strange hopping dance, a wobbly skeleton in designer clothes. “He needs someone to take care of the house.”

“That's my job.”

“
Pow
,” the boy says, and points his finger at Giuseppe's chest. “
Pow! Pow! Pow!
Was your job, your wrinkled ass is packing up and leaving.”

“I'll give you fifty thousand.”

The boy stumbles and grabs the workbench, knocks a jar to the floor. Shattered glass and screws scatter across concrete. He rights himself, brushes off his clothes. “Me and Pike will get married and I'll fuck him to death. I will fuck your sugar daddy so hard he'll be dead inside a year.”

“He's got a million in the garden, in a safe buried under the broccoli. You leave us alone and it's yours.”

“A million?” The boy's eyes clear, only for a moment, and the glaze returns.

“Cash, some jewelry—”

“I always wanted one of them gold necklaces like a music video pimp.” He takes another swallow. “That's what I'm talking about.”

“He has gold necklaces and rings and a diamond bracelet so shiny it'll make your eyes hurt.”

“Bullshit.”

“Suit yourself.”

Giuseppe picks up a shovel and walks out of the shade into the sun. He blinks blindness from his eyes, steps over the carrot row, and walks around the fast-growing zucchini. A ladybug lands on his hand and he flicks the bug away and walks deeper into the garden, pauses when he comes to the hole. It seems so long ago he lay at the bottom staring up at the sky. Dobbs stands ten feet away, wine bottle at his feet. He looks lost, a tourist at an intersection and no map in sight.

“I think I drank too fast.” A stain starts at the bottom of the boy's zipper, spreads outward. “I think I should have slowed down.”

“Hey,” Giuseppe says, “ever see a praying mantis?”

“A what?”

“It's a bug that eats other bugs, rips their guts out and everything.”

The boy looks interested. “It rips out their guts?”

“They sort of remind me of you,” Giuseppe says. “They sneak up on you, then move in for the kill.”

The boy thrashes through the corn and stops short of the hole. “I can't see him.”

“He's about a foot from the ground. See, he's on the stem, stalking that caterpillar.”

The boy sags to his knees, clutches dirt in both hands. The praying mantis, a twig with matchstick legs and bulbous eyes, closes in on its prey. Giuseppe always feels sorry when he sees a bug about to die, but he never interferes with nature. In the garden, the strong survive.

“Look,” the boy says. “That's me and you.”

“So it is.”

“You're the caterpillar,” the boy says. “You sucked yourself right in with Pike and now you're fat and happy and about to die.”

“You got me to a tee, Dobbs, you nailed me to the wall.” Giuseppe studies the house, looks for open curtains, a patron on the porch, glances at the campsites and sees only trees and tents. He grips the shovel handle, nails digging into the wood, and raises the blade. Giuseppe stares at the boy's neck, at the spine at the base of the skull, imagines the swift arc, the downward thrust, the spray of blood and the crunch of metal against bone. It would be so easy, one
thwack
, then fill in the hole and forget about him. A coolness comes over Giuseppe, a chilliness that spreads through his extremities. He shivers and raises the blade high. Lowers it when he spots movement out of the corner of his eye. It's Tazmanian Devil, who crawls out of his tent and drapes a sleeping bag over a picnic table. Giuseppe lowers the shovel and kicks Dobbs into the hole.

“You don't know how lucky you are,” Giuseppe says.

“Oh,” the boy says, and falls on his back.

Giuseppe clambers down and presses the shovel point against the quivering throat. The boy squirms and mouths words that don't come.

“What?” Giuseppe says. “What did you say?”

“I was fucking with you.” The boy turns his head and vomits into the dirt. “I'm a month over eighteen. Are you crazy or what?”

Giuseppe grabs the boy's head, drives it into the earth. The chilliness is still there and Giuseppe is so cold he is shaking.

“Eighteen or fourteen,” he says. “I don't give a shit. You hurt Pike and bad things will happen. Do you understand me? Something very bad will happen.”

*   *   *

Candles flicker on the dining room table, turn the champagne glasses into shimmering mirages. Pike's cologne drifts through the air. The aroma is rich and sweet and reminds Giuseppe of summer walks in meadows thick with flowers. Pike wears his robe, but Giuseppe chose something more formal for the occasion: shirt and tie, black pants, and a pair of brown loafers one size too small. He wears the toe squeezers for a reason. They are his pinch on the arm, the self-invoked pain that reminds him this is really happening. Pike removes papers from a briefcase, and he and Giuseppe lean forward.

“This one,” Pike says, and hands Giuseppe a gold pen, “is a mutual-fund account I opened around the time I was offered senior partner. Remember the party we had afterward? You and me drinking all those martinis? I had such a hangover the next day.”

Giuseppe starts the ballpoint rolling with a downward curve, signs first and last name, ends with a triumphant swoop. The fund is worth 1.2 million. Pike hands over another paper and Giuseppe signs again, half interest in an office building in Philadelphia, an investment Pike says is paid off and worth 3.5 million last time he had it appraised, which was back in the late nineties so it's worth a lot more now.

“I knew you had money,” Giuseppe says, “but I really had no idea.”

“
We
had money.”

“I knew
we
had money but this is crazy.”

“You were going to get it all, sooner or later,” Pike says. “You are the sole beneficiary in my will.”

“I don't even have a will.” Giuseppe loosens his tie and works his toes, eases the pain shooting through his feet.

“We'll need to draw one up for you. Or maybe you'll want to go to another attorney and have it done. That's a very private occasion.”

“You can do it, Pike. It's not like I have anything to hide.”

Giuseppe signs his name on nineteen more pieces of paper—various stocks, insurance funds, and savings accounts—drops the pen to the table and leans back in his chair.

“Listen,” Pike says, “feel free to paint the bathroom back the way it was. I guess you really don't like chartreuse.”

“I'll get used to it.”

“Dobbs did a nice job.”

“Yes, he did,” Giuseppe says.

“Do you know what he said to me after I fired him?”

“That boy was liable to say anything.”

Pike sips champagne and stacks papers into a neat pile. “He tried to extort money, said he was only fourteen years old. Said by the time he was done with us he'd own the B&B.”

“Well, he's gone now.” Giuseppe rolls the pen across the table, one way, then the other.

“You took care of the problem?”

“Let's just say he decided to hike north.”

Pike pours champagne, a swirl of silver bubbles. “He reminded me of you, you know? When you were young.”

“Yeah?”

“Take away the acne, dye his hair black, and you could have been twins.”

One of the candles goes out, and Giuseppe holds a match to the wick. It won't relight and he gives up. “I was a hustler.”

“Yes, you were.”

“I hustled you into giving me a place to stay.”

“Yes, you did,” Pike says.

Giuseppe closes his eyes and tilts his head back. “Have any regrets? Anything you wish you could take back?”

“About us?”

“Anything, anything at all.”

Pike waits awhile before answering. “None I'm aware of. You?”

Giuseppe takes off his loafers and studies Pike's face, wonders how he would have reacted if roles had been reversed in the garden. Would Pike kill for his lover? A melancholy comes over Giuseppe, a roaring sound across a barren land. He braces against the relentless wind, faces the loneliness of his world.

9

SIMONE AND I
have hiked into Vermont, our twelfth state, and today a smattering of rain blankets the trees. The clouds open and close, send random shafts of sunlight through the leaves, a mottled landscape of greens and browns that lighten and darken the forest floor. A clearing in front of us opens to a large pond and we stop and sit on a log, drink from our water bottles, and eat a snack. A rainbow trout flashes against the surface, a fusion of red and silver, and the swirl it leaves behind ripples across the waves. Frogs peep in the weeds near the shoreline, a chorus that seems to grow louder the wetter it gets. Across the pond, deer ghost in and out of the trees, their brown backs turning gray in the shadows.

“Roxie and I go way back,” I say. “There's nothing between me and her like you're thinking.”

True to the words Simone spoke back at Pen Mar Park, she only fucks me when we are on the trail. In town she gets a motel room and so do I. In town she acts like I'm a stranger. She plays a control game, and I willingly follow along. Part-time pussy is better than none at all.

I touch her elbow, and she jerks her arm away. My hand drops to the log, to the soggy moss and rotted bark. In my other life, I would have washed off my gritty palm. In the mountains, life is different. There are no sinks, no paper towels, and now, judging the ferocity in Simone's gaze, no girlfriend.

“Taz,” she says. “You don't need my permission to go back to your cokehead lover.”