Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail (16 page)

“She's only coming for a visit, twenty-four hours and she'll be gone.”

“You are such a loser.”

Simone walks down the trail and doesn't look back. I shouldn't have told her about Roxie and our drug problems, but getting it out in the open is my way of moving on. When I lived in Atlanta, I did things no human should do. But I'm no longer
that
guy. I think that's what pisses Simone off the most. I'm
proof
her DNA theory is flawed.

I wait for an hour, then walk north. She has the tent in her backpack. I'll need to find Richard or a shelter if I want to sleep dry tonight.

*   *   *

That evening, I walk up on my friend in front of a campfire. He gave up his loincloth when the mosquitoes got bad and now wears long pants and a long-sleeve shirt. Next to him, strips of meat lay on a flat rock. He sharpens a stick, skewers a strip, swings the stick toward the flame.

“Blacksnake,” he says. “Cook your own.”

Richard showed me pictures of his mother and father on the ranch in Montana, and yes, they are blond haired, blue eyed, and look like they flew in from Denmark, but I don't buy his theory
an Indian gene hides for generations in his family, then emerges and produces a Blackfoot carbon copy. His mother slept with someone on the reservation and that's how Richard got his high forehead and ink-black hair. In his real life Richard is a tire salesman. He can name every brand, every size, wholesale and retail costs.

“I thought the snake was your spirit guide,” I say. “Or was it the bear? I can never remember that shit.”

“It might be the eagle.”

I take off my pack and sit on the ground. My ass has been in the rain all day long, so it's not like it can get any wetter. Least, for the moment, the sky has cleared.

“You can't change your spirit guide,” I say. “That's like one day saying you're Catholic and the next you're Baptist.”

“I was hungry.”

“You're out of food?” I ask.

“I was hungry for something that isn't in my pack.”

Richard swings the stick away from the flame and blows on the meat. He is the only hiker I know who can start a fire in a soaked forest. He's a natural. I boil water and cook a dish I've worked on for the last couple of weeks, a seasoned rice that I mix with chocolate oatmeal. I sprinkle in two drops of Louisiana hot sauce.

“I'm using less spices these days. Brings out the chocolate flavor,” I say.

He eats his snake and I eat my rice and oatmeal. The evening turns to darkness, and I throw a log on the fire, watch flames curl around the bark, listen to my white Indian friend make guzzling noises when he swallows. I tell him about arguing with Simone and proclaim her a bitch through and through.

“I've never even seen her take a break on a cliff,” I say. “What kind of hiker is scared of heights?”

“Maybe she thinks you'll push her off.”

It's a bad joke, brings up the memory of the dead guy Richard and I burned at the base of the cliff down in Georgia. I shove the memory back into its hiding place. There are some things I'd rather not think about. Richard gets out his bottle and offers me a drink. I sip and hand it back. He laughs, a crazy fucking sound, and drinks a quarter of the bottle in one long swallow.

“I wish I had your self-control,” he says. “I wish I could sip instead of guzzle.”

He leaps to his feet and hovers over the flames, extends his arms, and the smell of singed hair mixes with wood smoke.

“The white man,” he says, “stole this land. They raped and murdered and took what wasn't theirs. They killed with guns and cannon and knives and chicken pox.”

“Knives and chicken pox,” I say. “Guns and cannon.”

He sheds his clothes, and firelight turns his skin into a red-hued shadow. “My people were like the trees and the air. We were
everywhere
. Then the white man came and took it from us. I have a white mother, true. And I have a white father, that also is true. But my blood is red and in my chest beats the heart of a warrior.”

“Will you shut up,” I say. “You're giving me a headache with all this Indian shit.”

Richard swings his arms in time with his feet and throws back his head. He stomps clockwise around the fire, pauses, and drinks more whiskey. He staggers and I jump up and grab his shoulder, sit him with his back against a tree. I rummage through his pack and get out his tent, pitch it in the firelight, then unroll his sleeping bag. I haul him upright and guide him inside. He sprawls diagonally.
I don't have the heart to push him aside, which means there is no room for me, so I sit next to the fire. Above, stars speckle the sky, winks of light on a black background, and I sit for a long time without moving. Clouds move back in, bring a quick shower, and I face the rain without blinking an eye. The clouds leave and the stars return, the fire now a smoldering memory. I think of my father and how he enjoyed the outdoors from time to time. He took me places, like to see horses in the desert, but back then I was an outsider in the wild. Now things are different. I've been on the trail for so long I feel it coursing through my veins. The AT has become my lifeblood, my sustenance, and sitting in the rain in the middle of the forest feels like the most natural thing in the world.

A breeze whispers out of the darkness, a coolness over my skin, and I kneel and blow across the coals until they flame upward. From a nearby tree, I break off a dead branch, snap it into pieces, drop them into the pit. The breeze switches direction, and flames bend toward my legs. I step away from the heat and the smoke, pat my pockets for a snack.

A twig snaps and I swivel to peer into blackness, see Simone's face reflecting the firelight. I lunge into the forest, hear crashing in the brush. I call out her name and no one answers.

*   *   *

Richard thinks the weather god is a she. Mine swings both ways. On good days, she's a she. On bad days, he's a he. Today, as we ascend Killington Peak, a mountain that tops out at 4,235 feet, the weather god is a soggy bastard. Water runs down the trail in miniature creeks, veers into eroded ditches that V into ferned-over slopes, only to start anew like an eternal spring put on this earth
to annoy hikers. My feet have been wet for three days. My shirt and pants cling to my skin in sodden clumps. The storm comes in waves, bands of a hurricane that angled away from land but is determined to leave a mark. Clouds whip past in long shreds that shadow the forest for minutes at a time.

Simone's right foot turns outward more than her left. Sometimes her footprints are close together and sometimes they are stretched out, like she hears me coming and jogs to put distance between us. I've done Downward Facing Dog ten times a day since she showed it to me, and my foot pain has disappeared. If I want to catch her, I can. I speed up, strides that squish into the mud.

An hour later I see her on a switchback. She has an odd walking style, a semi-crouch like she creeps up on something, arms that cock at her elbows and swing out of rhythm with her legs.

The trees, the steel-colored boulders, the muddy footpath, congeal into a watery mosaic that absorbs edges and stretches shapes into long curves. I blink away the moisture, watch the world refit itself. She has a determined stride, but I walk up behind her soon enough.

“Hey,” I say.

She looks over her shoulder.

“You might have told me it wasn't over between you and Roxie.”

Simone starts walking faster but she can't out-walk me and eventually realizes the futility and slows down. Which is a good thing because we will soon be above treeline, close to the top of this mountain, and no sane hiker will chance electrocution to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. I walk toward her, and she walks up the trail. I stop and she stops. We repeat this several
times, then I grin like the game has been fun, tell her we should wait out the storm, watch her walk up the trail. Expecting her to come back, I wait a few minutes. When she doesn't, I follow her to where the trail exits the trees and winds around the side of a rocky summit. I move quickly, trying to limit exposure, see her leave the AT and scramble up a blue blaze trail that leads to the peak.

She reaches the top, looks down at me, and seems to be saying something. Wind and rain gouge at her words, and all I hear is the storm across the Appalachians. Above her the clouds are nasty colors of gray and black, bruises that slide over the peak and rush onward. She raises her arms and extends her middle fingers. Light bridges heaven and earth, an explosion to her left, and a sizzling spiderweb scuttles toward her. The air turns green, like I'm looking through night-vision goggles. Another bolt, and she disappears in the flash like she disintegrated, only that isn't possible and before I know it I'm running up the slope. The granite is slick and I lose my footing. I slide down, regain my balance, scramble upward until I arrive at where she lies on the rocks. Her eyes roll back in their sockets, and I shake her until she focuses. I help her to her feet, down the blue blaze trail, back to the AT, where I press my palm against her back and guide her into the relative safety of the trees. I tell her if she had been standing twenty feet to the right, that bolt would have fried her top to bottom. She regains her bearings a little at a time, and a quarter-mile down the ridge says something I will never forget.

“My mouth tastes like pennies.”

Then she says something else.

“I wish I was dead.”

I didn't think our breakup was
that
big of a deal.

*   *   *

In the motel parking lot in Norwich, a town a few miles from the New Hampshire border, a used Toyota pulls up and the driver steps into the twilight. I have been on the trail for over four months and in that time Roxie's cheeks have thickened. Her skinny, haunted look is gone. Instead of T-shirt and jeans, she has on a beige dress and high heels that click the asphalt. I've known her for years and never heard her click when she walked. I wasn't sure what to expect, know it wasn't a Toyota and high heels.

We walk inside, out of the shadows, into the light of my room. If Roxie notices the trail smells, she doesn't say anything. Least I'm clean. Took four showers and washed clothes, applied deodorant under my armpits.

“So,” Roxie says. “Here I am.”

“You look good.”

“So do you.”

We sit across from each other, a round table between us, make several attempts at small talk like ex-lovers do when they try to find their way back to each other. Memories from our past are impossible to sort out, and our conversation is a series of dead ends. We didn't get much sleep when we were together, that I remember. She has a distracted look, like she can't remember why she's here.

“If we get back together, you got to promise me some things,” she says. “You got to make some fucking changes.”

Roxie ticks off a list, which starts with no drugs and alcohol and ends with no staying out all night. She's moved into an apartment and works for a travel agency in northern Atlanta. Right
now she only takes phone calls, but she has a chance to make something of herself and doesn't want to screw it up.

“I don't even think about it anymore,” I say.

We talk about
it
, never once saying
coke
out loud. She's off
it
for good. Thinks
it
came close to killing her but now she sees the light. I tell her I haven't even thought of
it
since I started walking the mountains, add that
it
is in the past for me.

“My thru-hike is going well,” I say. “I'm a purist, which means I'm walking every foot of the trail and not taking shortcuts.”

She looks around the room, like she sees my gear for the first time, and a narrowness invades the flesh between her eyes. My tent hangs from the bathroom door, and food bags are strewn across the carpet. My sleeping bag blankets the air conditioner in the window. I'm like every other hiker who walks out of a wet forest, I dry my gear when I get to town. This is not a bad thing. I open my data book and point out the mileage, tell her about the springs and the shelters, and how it took me a long time to walk into hiking shape.

“New Hampshire and Maine,” I say. “Two states left to go.”

Roxie drags a brush through her hair. A ripping sound. Like there are tangles she will never get out. She makes a flicking motion, as though she clears the air before starting a new conversation. “I want you to pack up and come back to Atlanta. If it goes well, you can move in with me. But not right away. . . . We have to see first.”

I touch her cheek, want to ignite something inside me. My hand lingers for a long time. She stares at her purse like she wants to pick it up and leave. I should have known she would ask me to choose between my life and hers. The phone rings and I pick up the receiver.

“Hello?” I say.

The hiss of a bad connection, someone breathing.

“I cut my wrist with a razor but you needn't worry,” Simone says. “It didn't go deep enough.”

Drama queen comes to mind, then an image of a man tied between horses straining in opposite directions. I have a choice, get off the trail and try to make a life with Roxie, or continue hiking into an unknown that may or may not contain Simone. I study Roxie, take in the dress and the searching green eyes, come to a decision I hope I don't regret.

“Meet me in the parking lot,” I say into the phone.

I tell Roxie I'll be back, slip outside. The town is spread out and has a white glow that washes out the stars. Cars and trucks drive down the highway, and the smells of oil, gasoline, and a catalytic converter tinge the breeze, scents that didn't bother me pre-trail but now nauseate me. Simone steps out of a room five doors down and heads toward the street.

“Hey,” I say.

She does not turn around. I jog up to her, and, in the glare of oncoming headlights, spot the nick on her wrist. The cut is an inch long, over the vein, and barely deep enough to break skin. I follow her into town, where we parallel show windows so glassy and dark they remind me of black ice.