“I found Rocky Mountain National Park.” She opened the atlas to give it another glance. “If we keep on keeping on, we’ll be there when the sun comes up.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you. Last week I was high most days by ten in the morning, which I think means I’m becoming a pothead.”
Emily turned sideways to face me, waiting for her smirk to wear off enough that I’d receive her question sincerely. “Are you carrying pot on you right now?”
I pulled the film canister from my pocket and handed it to her. She opened it and took a deep whiff. “All right,” she said, nodding and pursing her lips, like this revelation was unexpected and significant, but one of those things that happen that we simply have to handle the best we can. “I haven’t been driving more than ten or so over the limit, which I can easily correct. We’re not exactly in a hurry, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. I’ve seen at least one of our highway neighbors passing a joint,and they looked like completely normal, responsible, nine-to-five kinds of people. Besides, maybe it will be nice for you to get high while I tell you about my dreams. They’re epic these days. They go on and on for so long that I feel like I’m sleeping when I’m awake, and really living when I’m asleep. It’s like my dreams are where the real action takes place. Is there anything else I should know about you?”
“I don’t like being ignored for long periods of time when I’m upset, especially when I know that you’re upset, too.”
“Understood. I can’t explain it, but I didn’t like it, either.”
“And if I take my shirt off, so I can feel the wind blowing on my chest, I don’t want any trouble about it.”
“I can handle that,” she said. “Everyone gets a little jealous of hillbillies driving around with their shirts off.”
“Davenport people aren’t hillbillies. They’re just regular people.”
“
I know, George
. I didn’t say that. But ten o’clock sounds a little early to get stoned, even for a hillbilly. Anyway, this subject relates perfectly to one of my dreams. About a week ago I dreamt I was singing
Jesus Christ Superstar
with a bunch of skinny hillbillies in tap shoes. I believe we were panhandling on a subway train. And everyone else on the train was wearing tuxedos and evening dresses. I’ve never been on a subway in my life.”
“I don’t have any interest in riding a subway. It’s humiliating being forced underground like that.”
“It’s cowardly,” she said, buckling up again and starting the engine. On the entrance ramp, when Emily reached for the stereo, I leaned over and kissed her lips. The tires hummed over gravel as we drifted onto the shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, swerving back onto the road.
I packed the one-hitter I’d been sucking on like a pacifier all summer. It was a giddy and lackadaisical high with the windows down and Emily rattling on about dreams, then dreamlike directors like Bergman and Kieslowski and Lynch, which eventually led to a lesson on the sordid history of old Hollywood. My stomach hadn’t completely settled since the phone call, but I was feeling better. I’d even convinced myself that our escape really would benefit Emily’s parents, that it would wake them up to the reality of being on the verge of losing the one daughter they had left. Emily and I made bets on how many bridges we’d cross before reaching Rocky Mountain National Park. We mused on techniques for avalanche self-defense, the existence of carnivorous plants, the probability of simultaneous cougar and bear attacks. We stopped at more rest stops than we needed to and bought travel toothbrushes with toothpaste loaded in the handles. We took our time on the road to the lower Rocky Mountains, those squat sumo wrestlers with poker-faced peaks, the sunrise bright across their stone blue bellies.
Twenty-nine
Our summer vacation officially began in Glacier Basin, a chummy camping village of tents and cabins, a petite outdoor amphitheater, and the world’s most expensive general store. After renting all the basic camping equipment, including a requisite bear-safe container shaped like a miniature keg, I attempted to persuade Emily of the good sense of a pre-hiking warm-up and stretching routine in the debauched privacy of our tent. This plan was spoiled by a pair of hyped-up Oregonians expounding the rules of backcountry camping, which stated that all campers must hike beyond the basin, which required covering at least seven or eight hours of trail. Recognizing the couple as a source of much-needed information, Emily was soon plying them with all sorts of practical questions, including the cause of the black smoke plumes wafting over the western ridges.
(The Oregonians were more than happy to answer her, and even indulged her in a ten-minute lecture on “prescribed fires,” a technique that involved clear-cutting, digging down to the mineral soil, and hiring helicopters to drop loads of fire suppressant.) Before I knew it we were scampering on our way, minus a map and a million other things, attracting more than a few laughs over Emily’s sundress and sandals and the pretty-boy khakis I’d worn to church. The most avid hikers were appalled, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues as we cut back and forth across the mountain. It was a great relief when we found a path of our own where we were free to be awed by marmots and falcons, rocky groves of aspens chatty in the breeze.
“Not tired, are you?” she asked.
“Going strong,” I said, for the first time realizing we hadn’t slept the night before.
“I feel like I just woke up from a coma. I don’t know if I’ll sleep ever again. Maybe when I get to Chicago, I’ll rent my bed out and spend my nights smoking cigars at all-night jazz clubs.”
“Why don’t you sing at the all-night jazz clubs?”
“Even better. By the way, what do you know about your roommate up at Iowa?”
“You mean over in Davenport?”
“No kidding?” she said, slowing down for a few steps to catch her breath. I could already feel my legs swelling and the muscles shifting back and forth under my skin. My lungs were wide open, my tongue detecting the faint ash in the breeze. “Sometime you’ll have to show me the house you grew up in. I’ve got this mental picture of your old high school and your old neighborhood, but I’m probably very, very off.”
“To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever go back there. All the good people moved away and my dad said that the people who live in our old house painted it lime green. I think they put up a fence. If they hadn’t insisted on moving in so soon, my family wouldn’t have spent our first night in Des Moines at the Holiday Inn.”
“Oh, let’s not think about that,” she said. “I was talking about seeing your old house.”
“It’s not my house anymore.”
“Fine, fine, fine,” she said, taking the lead. Her ponytail swayed back and forth above her backpack. With each step her sundress bunched up under her waist strap, allowing a full view of her legs, barely covering her ass. When it became clear I was dogging it for the view, Emily pulled her dress down and motioned me ahead.
“Beautiful country,” I said. “Makes you proud to be an American.”
“I feel your pride burning two holes in my butt. You getting hungry yet?”
“I can wait a little longer.”
“Can you?” she said, taunting me with a last little flip of her dress. We kissed for a while. After catching sight of the first hiker to pass in over an hour we trekked on, holding hands. At the peak of the next ridge we found ourselves looking down over Loch Vale and its dark blue lake, perfectly mysterious and still. We sat on a set of loveseat boulders and absorbed the rugged skyline of forest, bald peaks, and black burned-out hills, all mirrored in the lake. A spindly waterfall splashed through a crevasse on the opposite side, falling at least fifty feet to trickle from one pool to the next.
“I’ve got an ugly question to ask you,” Emily said, running her hand flat along the rock, almost massaging it. “Do you ever wish you never moved to Des Moines? Please don’t think I’m suggesting
I
wish you never came, I’m just wondering what you’d choose if you could turn back the clock.”
“I try not to think about turning back the clock.”
“But I’m asking you,” she said, leaning back on her elbows, looking tired for the first time the whole trip. “Just this once I’d like to know.”
“If it meant Katie would still be alive, I’d stay in Davenport. Who knows, maybe I would’ve fallen in love with some other girl and ended up miserable like my friend Kevin. He moved to Atlanta with some girl who’s got him working the third shift at a frozen foods warehouse because it pays a dollar fifty more than the day shift. Who knows? Maybe if you never met me, you would’ve spent less time messing around after school, scored a few points higher on the SATs, and ended up at Yale just in time for some whacko who didn’t get accepted to shoot up a few lecture halls.”
“All right, George. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not angry,” I said, softening my voice and looking her in the eyes to convince her. The sound of Katie’s name seemed to crank open the sky and pump up the heat. “If I could turn back the clock, instead of fishing, we’d have gone to a matinee, then snuck around from theater to theater all afternoon.”
“And if the movie screen collapsed and killed all three of us?”
“We’d make the front page,” I said, trying to sound as assured as an old monk who’d pondered such questions for decades. I could’ve been more honest. I could’ve shared my feeling that Katie’s drowning was more than a random accident, that there was culpability to be shared. In the end my remarks were no more than a pale reflection of Emily’s own advice on the pedestrian bridge over the highway, a submission to inevitability and fatalistic acceptance that absolved all three of us. We marched on into a thinning afternoon, saving our breath as we marveled at butterflies and hawks, towering spruces as perfectly straight as giant handcrafted spears.
It was late afternoon when we realized we hadn’t bought nearly enough food or water, our muscles having clearly absorbed every calorie of our banana-sandwich-and-trail-mix lunch. The altitude was catching up with us, causing prickling hands and pulsing heads. We found our first argument at a crossroads beneath a signpost indicating two opposing trails to campsite #21, the first backwoods campsite outside Glacier Basin. When we couldn’t agree on which was the shorter route, we decided to split up and bet two tanks of gas on who would arrive there first. This was without doubt the most foolish decision possible, even given our certainty that we were less than an hour from the site and that a healthy competition was just what we needed to raise our spirits. But there was no hiding the fact that our road trip had already evolved into some kind of knowledge quest, in the very least a search for a new and more natural perspective. Under these terms, the decision to trek alone and cover two paths instead of one wasn’t as idiotic as it sounded. It seemed the most legitimate way to
feel
the mountains and glean a modicum of wisdom from them.
“Don’t touch our rations,” I said, as we back stepped in our own directions.
“Still glad you saved ten bucks on mosquito sauce?”
“They don’t go for O negative.”
“They sure as shit went for O negative on the Upper Iowa.”
“And if you see a bear, stay calm and talk to it. Convince it not to eat you.”
Emily stopped for a moment to search the skies, apparently for help in dealing with me. “No camping on the trail,” she shouted as she started around the bend and out of sight.
I’d hardly turned my back before regretting our decision, not to mention feeling guilty about laughing off the possibility of a mountainside emergency. I couldn’t forgive myself three hours later when I ran out of water. By then I was regularly fooling myself into thinking I’d reached the summit only to discover another ridge and the understanding that I was still several uphill miles away. I hadn’t seen another hiker since I broke with Emily. I found my only company in a lone helicopter that occasionally circled overhead, seeming to defend the theory of life’s randomness by offering the possibility of being fire-bombed on my summer vacation. Anxiety turned to rage and delirious panic, incremental with every step. The burning sun leaked carelessly into clouds, painting a watercolored sky. As darkness approached I prayed and chased butterflies, hoping if I caught them before the sun fell beneath the horizon that the campsite would suddenly appear and I’d find Emily happily sprawled across a pair of sleeping bags, which she’d already zipped together for warmth. At some point I imagined one of the forest service helicopters swooping down with Katie leaning out, holding on by one hand, her big-time mood cracking loud and clear through a megaphone.
“Would it help if you changed into your wrestling tights? Maybe you should ditch those sally boy boots for the final lap. Pain in the feet is the best kind. This will clean you right out.”
“I’m hungry,” I shouted back, not bothering to look up.
“Tell you what. If you keep going I’ll meet you at the peak and give you a little hint about my time capsule. I’ll sit with you by the fire and you can ask me anything you want. By the way, you still thinking about that life jacket?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, marching faster, lifting my knees higher. “It’ll never make sense to me. If you weren’t strong enough to swim, why would you unbuckle yourself after you fell in?”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said. “With erotic campfire stories and all the answers.”
I stopped to face her as the helicopter drifted upward. I imagined her sitting down now, strapped in with her bare legs dangling over the side. She held the megaphone out like a pistol, and closed one eye and aimed.
“See you at the peak, okay? That is, if you think I’m worth it.” She fired a few warning shots near my feet. Pebbles scattered inches from my heels. I marched into the darkness, fearing twisting an ankle or climbing that mountain for the rest of my life. My flashlight dimmed and I tripped and skinned my knees. I swallowed trail dust. When I felt my lips splintering like the scales of a dead fish, I reconsidered the acting ability of those crybaby lost boys from
Into the Night
. My flashlight was practically dead by the time I reached the final ridge. I made out the faint sparkle of a campfire at the end of a needled pathway through the thicket.