The Girl of the Lake Page 7

  “I don’t read trash,” she said, trying to keep the tone of high comedy, failing.

  He wasn’t listening anyway, just shuffled through the side pocket of his pack, eventually tugged out his tiny jar of insane pot. Methodically he rolled a parsimonious and perfectly cylindrical joint, then lit it, one of their twelve waterproof matches, and they had two tiny hard-sucked puffs each.

  Coughing a little, trying to suppress it, trying to rescue the moment, Jean said, “So we’re the species that gets only so old. So I’ll get to catch up to you, yes?” She was three months younger than Timothy.

  He didn’t rejoin.

  The feeling of the pot overtook her immediately. She knew he’d have little more to say for a while. No one was around them in the woods, so Jean (in love) put her ear on Timothy’s chest to listen to his heart, and he leaned back against the rock and mulled his important thoughts while she undid his blue jeans just partly, just enough to get her hand in and hold his dumb, dependable willy, which rose tenderly to greet her grip. This, she liked. And he liked it, too, and tucked a hand back of her blue jeans and kind of hefted her on top of him for a long kiss, and on the moss there on the side of the faint trail they gradually got their pants down and wriggled to get his jacket on the rock beneath them without taking their hiking boots off, even, and had a very brief grind ’em (as he liked to call it—she didn’t mind so much anymore) and then some kissing, which showed that he was in a good mood, too, a very lot of kissing, as when they first met and would make love for hours in her old sublet, a great apartment in the Village now long gone, pretty white walls with art, and she couldn’t orgasm at all, he made her so nervous, and if she brought it up (she believed in communication) just said that orgasm was not a verb. Here in the woods and more firmly in herself she surprised herself coming quickly, if not too hard (coming was his word), orgasming to his overeager fingers while they kissed. Something about the forest made it easy and different, also that he bothered.

  “You are a glacial erratic,” he said.

  “That is an insult, Doktor,” she said, quite pleased that he’d been listening earlier, just saving it up. He’d know what a glacial erratic was, knew a lot about the world and the woods. They cleaned themselves up some with a paper towel that she dutifully stored in a baggie and pulled their pants up and hefted their packs. She could feel that hers was lighter.

  Timothy kept talking, named each bird and tree as they continued the hike—he knew so much. Ash tree, birch polypore (a familiar, bulging fungus on a dead paper birch), this warbler and that one, all the little plants everywhere. Jean liked it all but cared more about nineteenth-century women painters—that was her thing, she’d decided, and still dreamed of Paris—no reason that, married, she and Timothy couldn’t live in Paris. Goldman Sachs must have a job in Paris for their wonderboy. Two years, that’s all it would take.

  She felt great, if a little soggy in the underpants. “You are a glacial neurotic,” she said.

  Timothy rewarded her with a hearty laugh. This was one of those jokes they’d keep going for the weekend and that for years to come would tag this hike in their memories. She laughed, feeling light, suddenly; the pack was as nothing on her back. They could stop fairly early—no rush—perfect weather, get a really great camp arranged, set up that little stove, make spaghetti with the red sauce Timothy carried in a jar for a special first-night dinner only. She’d had stomachaches over the camping part for two weeks but felt free of every anxiety now. They had great equipment and great food and Uncle Bud’s advice, which was famously good advice, if not perfectly sober. (“Your mother told me last phone call that your father has never once said he loved her. Never once.”) Well, Timothy’s family was worse: aggressive teetotalers and potheads.

  They broke out of the trees suddenly in a dry-pond meadow (Timothy called it) and were in sight of the bald blade of the famous ridge that hunkered just beneath the famous mountain peak, and the view of it all was just—it was just spettacolare. She said that word with exaggerated accents and giggled (the marijuana), and Tim giggled with her and they walked side by side, holding hands. The trail tightened then, so Jean dropped behind him, and they marched on duck boards thoughtfully placed through a mossy bog. “Thuja occidentalis,” Timothy called back, and these words were as beautiful to Jean as the trees they described, big white cedars curving up from hummocks and snags. The bog resolved into a pond—a beaver flowage, as Timothy called it—no beavers in sight, and at the deeper end they stopped on another flat rock and soaked up sun and, very hot from the hiking, stripped down and had a swim. Then they kissed and petted nicely, cold fishy gooseflesh skins pressed together. She climbed up on the next rock naked and he leaned against it and it was hot in the sun—he licked her legs, not altogether seriously. He licked her legs, then he licked her (she didn’t like to say it, the word he always used), and she had a deeper orgasm this time and said so, using his word, which made him grin and go cocky. And then he climbed up and fucked her hard on the rock, an uncomfortable performance. Her neck was bent back. He was too rough sometimes, but she could let that go. He stopped thinking of her, stopped thinking altogether, called it boning. You traded one thing for another. (Wayne, her last boyfriend, was tender and very slow, but he couldn’t kiss.) And it wasn’t ever long in any case. She would have to remember to take her pill each day of the hike and wondered if she’d get a rash from the sleeping bag, as at Girl Scouts, and thought of Mimi Stevens, her counselor, the witch, and of the particular way the logs of Cabin Twelve came together. And Timothy grunted and groaned and then laughed a little and that was that and she rose back up through several layers to him and kissed him a while, but he wasn’t into it. “Better get moving,” he said.

  “I love you,” Jean said soulfully.

  He spanked her bottom, said, “You love me.”

  They had a quick swim and she rinsed him off her and out of her and they dressed side by side. Her socks felt wet and her T-shirt, too, and her underpants, everything a little damp from the earlier sweat and now the swim, but it was a hot afternoon and beautiful in Maine and there was plenty of time to get to the camping place Uncle Bud had told them about. She should be glad. She knew what it was—the pot. Also the orgasming, which sometimes let you down. And now she felt a little swollen and uncomfortable down there, walking. Twice in three miles of hiking! Well, that was love. And there were worse ways to be sore.

  She followed Tim up the very steep path, which was nothing but a field of rocks. His butt was cute, what there was of it anyway, that was one thing. “You’re just plain erratic,” she called lightly to no response.

  They came to the beginning of the open granite ridge—what a view. The stoned feeling from earlier had settled into a headache. The sun hurt her eyes. Something in her belly ached.

  “One hour,” Tim said, tugging on his pack straps to adjust them.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s what Drunkel Bud said. One hour from the cairn.” He pointed up the hard stone slope to their left.

  She hadn’t noticed the massive cairn. And he was competing with her, that condescending tone: he’d seen the cairn, she hadn’t. He’d only win if he could annoy her, though. And she didn’t feel all that bugged. Her pack felt like nothing, nothing at all. She thought about how to cook the dinner, how good that would be, their neat little gas-bottle stove, precious folding pans: boil water, cook spaghetti. It would never taste so good! And here they were, already at the verge of the famous Talon Ridge, which was superdramatic, something a nineteenth-century male artist would put in a painting, finding the curve of it complex, a kind of bridge to the mountain, a mile terribly exposed (imagine a storm blowing over it!), none of the soft fields and cloud vistas of women, more subtle, the tensions interior, or such was a lecture she recalled.

  To both sides, the granite sloped sharply twenty or thirty feet to sudden drops. To the left, a kind of bog, not far down, a lot of dead spruce trees, beautiful skeletons, but to the right, a shee
r drop of hundreds of feet. Ahead the talon sliced that direction, just enough that you could see some of the long face of the fall. The impression was that you were walking the apex of a cathedral, the Abbey Church of Saint Denis, perhaps, a place she’d written about once in a paper—got an A, too.

  “Here we go,” Timothy said, and led the way.

  Jean followed sprightly—with Timothy, you always felt you had to hurry.

  The bog side was brightly lit, the cliff side dark in its own shadow. She tried not to look down. She actually panted—this was what breathtaking meant. The trail had been carved out of the plain rock. “WPA,” Uncle Bud had said, fondly.

  “Welfare,” Timothy had snorted. Why did he have to call him Drunkel? Why especially that name, which she had repeatedly told Timothy annoyed her. It’s what her father called Bud, who was not a drunk, not really, just bereft, a very kind and calm and gentle soul, her mother’s only brother, a sweet, poignant man who’d built his own eccentric, amazing house and lost his wife to cancer before they could live in it, thus the retreat to his cabin. Why shouldn’t he drink?

  Timothy got walking faster, the way he did when excited by a competition—they were almost to tonight’s campsite, and he’d be first. Just along this roof of granite, then back into the woods. It was as if the incredible view to all sides—even down—simply weren’t there, the only direction forward. The camping spot was on a bigger pond than the first one back there, and just under the mountain proper, Independence Peak. Uncle Bud said it was the nicest camping in all of Maine. She and Timothy would have an easy morning there tomorrow, swimming, sunbathing, bird-watching, no doubt making love, then onward—up the mountain, then a few days on the Appalachian Trail, then the Fire Warden’s Trail down from Bigelow Mountain, finally back to Uncle Bud’s truck, a grand loop: seven days. Ahead, the trail became even narrower, just a shelf carved into the rock and strewn with loose stones.

  Tim hurried faster. “Hey,” Jean called. She wanted a kiss from him right now on this precarious place. She said hey, and he didn’t hear. A kiss just to slow him down. He was almost jogging, and tonight if she nagged him about it he’d frankly love the attention and crow and mock her. She slowed. Walked at her own pace. Breathed at her own pace. Enjoyed the view up to the mountain, the view down into the gorge beside them. She had come to the end of the bog and now the mountain was a wall to her left, the abyss to the right all the deeper, the talon coming to a point ahead, Tim’s bright pack bobbing as he ran.

  “Hey,” Jean called again.

  But he was too far ahead.

  And then he slipped. She saw him slip. His flying foot hit a nothing of a rock, which slid under him, and he dropped to one knee. He reached for a handhold on the path, missed, went down on his shoulder, couldn’t quite catch himself, continued to slide in gravel toward the fall. It was all so slow. He put the other hand out, grabbed a large stone that was sliding, too, tried to turn, awkward under the weight of his pack. He couldn’t get around to sitting, so he dropped down on all fours, visibly putting on the brakes. But all the rocks large and small around him were moving now, a slow, gentle slide with Timothy part of it. He dug the toes of his boots in, gripped the solid granite of the ridge with his fingernails.

  But he just kept sliding. Jean trotted, then raced, to get to him—there was a length of rope on the side of her pack and she reached back for it as she ran. But Timothy and the rockslide picked up speed as she did. He didn’t shout, didn’t cry out, didn’t say a thing, just looked back at her, a profound look, grabbing at the rocks around him, starting everything he touched to movement. And with everything around him he slid to the edge of the drop. Rocks flew off the cliff into the sky below his feet. His boots hung over, then his knees. He bent at the hips, legs dangling, still slowly sliding. Jean threw the rope perfectly. But the overweight pack pressed Timothy down, restricted his reach. He missed the rope end, missed it again, arms flailing. Then with a sharp cry he went over the edge. The rumble of rocks continued briefly, then everything stopped and there was silence.

  THE ARGUMENT THAT MORNING had been about her iPhone. She’d promised she wouldn’t constantly be looking for a signal, wouldn’t be Snapchatting friends little stupid photos, it would be for emergency only. He had won—you entered the wild on wild terms—and she had left the phone behind in their sweet little room at Uncle Bud’s. So her first thought got her nowhere. Her second thought was to scoot on her butt down the incline to the cliff edge, get a look, dangle the rope. But that would be stupid and impossible: she’d go over, too. Her heart pounded in her throat, her ears.

  “Timothy!” Jean called, to echoing silence. “Timothy Beal!” Nothing.

  Best to stay calm. She stripped out of her pack, left it at the exact spot he’d stumbled to mark the place. So many loose rocks—new ones had simply replaced those that had slid and then fallen with Timothy. Free from the weight of the pack she sprinted back down the ridge the way they’d come, a sense almost of leaving her body, of perfect ease on the loose gravel, fearless warrior. At the forest end of the curving ridge she skidded to a stop in gravel, fell to her knees turning, that anxious to look back. Her pack was nothing but a blue shape perched on the ridge. The edge of the cliff wall, what you could see of it, was dark. The odd tree grew up from rough rootholds. You might land on a ledge. A tree might break your fall. You might be okay. The bottom, not visible. Rocks, no doubt, more trees. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Run for the truck? Drive out for help?

  Or go to Timothy? She trotted back up the harrowing talon and to her pack, more cautious now. Oh my God, oh my God. All was quiet. Squawk of a raven below. Breezes warm and flowing upward. Jean returned to her body as if falling into it, her sweaty body, that edge of headache, the cramp in her womb from making love. She kept having the urge to turn and ask Timothy what to do.

  Be calm, she told herself. Make a plan.

  She checked pockets for her phone, but no. They’d been maybe four hours to this point—all uphill and with two long stops. She could run it in an hour, maybe, get in Uncle Bud’s sweet old truck, two hours on the faint jeep road, then two more on rutted logging roads to where? To that gas station? So five hours. In that time she could maybe also get to Timothy, give first aid, set a broken leg—she’d taken a course at summer camp ten years past—staunch any bleeding, give comfort if nothing else, take his advice from there. He knew about so many things. She hefted her pack, slipped into the straps, kicked some stones into a pile to mark the spot, pathetic. So she took the pack back off, built a proper cairn of ten large stones to mark the spot for any possible rescuers, a helicopter even, only then shrugged back into her pack and ran, buckling the hip strap even as she flew, the decision coming as she ran: truck. The trail got easier off the ridge, the deep shade of trees somehow comforting. She ran fast, then faster, clear to the beaver flowage before she remembered that Timothy had the keys.

  WHERE THE OLD TRAIL pegged upward to Talon Ridge, Jean broke into the woods and headed down over tangled deadfall and among the boulders of eras gone by. Quickly as she made her way the cliff below the ridge established itself, sheer and cold in hard shade, but with so much fallen rock at the bottom that it wouldn’t be that high a fall, she thought, not really. After a full and difficult hour, breathing hard, climbing rocks, skirting crevices, the cliff wall soaring higher, the scree field tilted steeper, rocks tumbling under her feet, Jean rested. She had no idea how far she’d traveled. She couldn’t have missed him, not with that crimson backpack, pure attention. She tacked lower—found a faint path maybe made by deer, moved more quickly, examined every ledge and crack in the cliff above her, stopping to listen for cries. Below her a stream tumbled—good: she’d be able to wash Timothy’s wounds even if their water ran out. That joke he’d made about carrying him? She couldn’t carry him. She could stabilize him, do whatever was necessary, make him comfortable, put the tent up around him, cover him in their sleeping bags and all their clothes, be to the truck by nightfall with the keys,
best plan. The cliff was so high. She prepared herself in case he was hurt badly. Tourniquets could be dangerous, she recalled. Splints could be made with sticks. Underwear, T-shirts, flannel, hers, his, it could all be used for bandages.

  She came to a fault that ran the width of the narrowing canyon and created a sharp drop, nothing compared to the cliff, but twelve solid feet at first guess, and sheer. She could jump down, perhaps, but how could she climb back this way to get the truck, and help? Maybe use the rope, tie it to that tree. But then she wouldn’t have rope for later, and who knew? Wasn’t there some knot you could tie and then free with a twitch once you were down? Timothy would know it. If he could only have caught the rope when she threw it so well. The stream had to make the drop, too, and the roar of the little waterfall invaded her thoughts, made them urgent. She breathed, took off her pack, dropped it down there just so, exactly right, where she could land on it to break her fall. The pack took a foot or more off the height of the break, too. Still, it was a long way down, fifteen feet, at second guess. The rope was down there, tied on the pack. Oh! She could have tied the rope to the tree, climbed down using it, then simply cut it with her Swiss Army knife, just left the remainder behind, keeping plenty. All this in Timothy’s voice, carping, as she lay down in the dirt and loose rock and scooted herself over the edge of the drop-off till she was hanging by her fingertips, barely gripping a fragrant spruce root. She hung a long minute, without the arm strength to pull herself back up in any case, finally got the nerve, and dropped. She hit the pack hard with her feet and fell backward into loose rock.

  But she was fine. She was really totally fine. Her butt wasn’t even bruised. That she was sore was from before. The cut on her hand was nothing. He’d fallen feet first, too, and so there was at least some chance he was only slightly hurt, a twisted ankle, dislocated knee.

  The canyon fell deeper, darker, the stream louder and closer, more narrow, the scree looser, her footing more insecure. Jean forced herself to walk—what else was there to do? She picked her steps carefully, watched her feet intently, stepped on his hand.