Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail Read online

  “The counselor said we needed to spend more time together. Said your mother leaving and all that screwed you up in the head.”

  “NA meets every Wednesday,” I said. “Down at the Methodist church. We could sit together and cry big fat tears.”

  “Don’t be a smart ass.”

  He braked at a stop sign and waved an old woman across. She had her head down, and she pushed a cart filled with grocery bags.

  “Paper or plastic,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m thinking of getting a job. Down at Green’s Grocery, maybe bagging—”

  “Nope,” he said. “I already got you a job. Come Monday, you get out of school you walk your sorry ass down to the pound.”

  From that point on, Monday through Friday I fed and watered dogs, cleaned the cages with a hose I coiled in the corner when I was done. Every other Friday I herded dogs down a hallway and into the gas chamber. Some dogs went with tails between their legs, others growled and snapped. My father shut the door, turned knobs, and stood in front of the porthole. I stood to the side and watched him reflect the struggle behind the glass. It was like watching a slideshow where one picture fades into the next. The first few seconds he was the man who left the house after eating cereal for breakfast, a man in a hat and untied shoes headed for his everyday job. As time progressed—time that felt like hours but was only a few stretched-out minutes—his body stiffened like he was resisting a strong wind. The skin on his face stretched and his jaw melded into something cold, hard, and immovable. I looked at him for as long as I could, then looked away, understanding that no amount of narcotics could blur what he was watching. When it was over, I saw another man altogether. But this was someone I recognized. His voice was brittle, his eyes held defiant shame. His movement, when he lifted carcasses and dropped them into the wheelbarrow, was slow and shaky. Someone needed to put their arm around him and tell him it was okay, but we didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  One Friday, he walked up while I huffed paint out of a paper bag during my break. It was a hot, clear day and I was sitting on the picnic table behind the pound and dreaming about anywhere but there. Mostly I thought about jumping a freight car and going wherever it took me. I never dreamed about what I would do when I got to where I was going. My dreams were leaving dreams.

  “I need you inside,” he said.

  “I hate this.”

  He sat across from me and took off his hat, ran a finger around the brim. “They’re just dogs, better off dead than running the streets.”

  “You hate it Pop, I can tell. You hate the living hell out of this job.”

  He went inside, and I huffed until that weightless feeling rushed over me and my mind felt like a cloud in the jet stream—fast moving and light—vapor held together by the weakest of bonds. The door to the pound swung open and smacked into the wall, a crack that made me jump, and Pop appeared in the opening and crossed his arms. His hat was squished down on his head, a look that would have been comical if it hadn’t reflected his frustration. I got up and spoke in a voice too boyish for the moment.

  “I’m outta here.”

  “Put that shit away and get your ass back to work.”

  I stared him down—took in his gray pants, the blood-stained gloves, how his collar was turned up to keep the sun off his neck, the firmness he always had above his eyes when he ordered me around—tried to think of a reason to stay. My gaze met his, and his forehead softened, a fluidity that seemed to slide down his cheeks toward his chin, and I think that’s when he realized this might be the last time we would see each other. When he spoke, his voice held a fuzziness I had not heard since I was a child.

  “Do you have any money?” he said. “Do you have enough to get by?”

  I nodded and he took off his gloves and we shook hands. He tried to say something and the words caught in his throat. I turned and walked away, spoke over my shoulder when I got to the street.

  “See ya, Pop.”

  I headed to Piper’s Truck Stop, where I caught a ride with a trucker headed east. Those were the last words I spoke to my father. There was nothing left to say.

  * * *

  “There’s a whole lot we could do with the money,” Maria says. “It wouldn’t hurt to dream a little. We could go on a cruise to Alaska, see some whales, maybe feed some sea lions.”

  The motel room is exactly as she described. Vibrating mattress and pink wallpaper. Her leg is propped against the wall within easy reach of the bed. She’s showered, and her wet hair fans across the pillow. She wears bra and panties, both green, a floral pattern of tiny roses embedded in cotton. Einstein, outside on the sidewalk, scratches the door. I look from her to the door, at her, at the door. We pass a whiskey bottle back and forth.

  “Listen to that retard,” I say.

  “We could fly out to Seattle and get on a ship. That’s where those Alaska cruises start, right there in Seattle.”

  “I’m thinking about going for a long hike, maybe walk the Appalachian Trail end to—”

  “Or we could go to the Bahamas. I happen to know they have some great cruising down that way.”

  I look at her stump, then stare at the wooden leg, tilt my head so I see it from different angles. Disconnected, the leg looks lonely.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “What?”

  “If we had a shipwreck we could use your leg as a life preserver.”

  “That’s my sweetie,” she says. “Now you’re thinking.”

  “I think I’m going to give Einstein a bath. Buy some flea powder and give him a good dusting.” I take my shirt off and sling it over a chair.

  “We need us some meth. Something to get us revved up. I can fuck all night long on meth.”

  “Shut up about the meth,” I say.

  “Quarter’s only forty—”

  “Shut up!” I raise my hand like I’m going to backhand her. It’s a bluff. I never hit a woman who didn’t hit me first.

  “You smack me around and you’ll wake up tomorrow without a dick.”

  Taz Chavis walking around without a dick strikes us as funny and we laugh. When we settle down I tell her dope put me in jail and damned if I was going back.

  “No dope. Got it?”

  The softness leaves her eyes and annoyance takes its place. I’m no idiot. She offered love hoping I’d get her high, and now she’s mad for wasting her time. Tough luck is what I think.

  We lie on the bed without talking, then I remember about giving Einstein a bath. I coax him and his road-kill odor inside, to the bathroom, where I set him in the tub, wet him down, and work motel shampoo into his fur. He’s angles and knobs, skin stretched over backbone and shoulders.

  “Hold still,” I say.

  He quivers but his legs are stiff like he wants to run but has made up his mind to endure. I ask him if he wants some Wild Turkey, we have half a bottle in the other room, tell him to stay clear of the meth-head with the wooden leg. I tell him today is my last fling and tomorrow I’m flying straight. I tell him I have the money to fulfill a dream, and I’m not going to fuck up and go back to prison. I tell him Pop never dreamed, that he was an addict who killed dogs. I tell him the lawyer said Pop was high when he hid in his closet and shot himself in the head. I tell him Pop’s better off, wherever he is. The dog cocks his head and lifts his ears. His eyes are wary, and I wonder if he feels like he’s looking in a mirror. I scrub until the water swirling the drain turns clear. He shakes and droplets fly. I call into the other room.

  “I think I’m going to order a pizza, something with meat on it. I bet he likes hamburger.”

  I look around the door. Maria’s eyes are shut, and a rhythmic hum comes from her nose. I wipe off my hands, walk to the TV and turn it on loud enough to drown her out. The dog, smelling like fresh-picked blackberries, sidles to my side of the bed, curls around three times, and settles on the carpet. I call the front desk and ask if anyone still delivers pizza in this town, write down the number, make the
call, and order a large with extra hamburger. I can afford the extravagance.

  * * *

  It’s morning and my head hurts. I don’t remember much about last night. Maria’s gone and so is her leg. She took fifty bucks out of my wallet. That leaves me with change and the check. I suppose, if she thought she could get away with it, she would have stolen it too.

  Einstein and I leave the motel room. The sky is gray, slow to wake after a night’s sleep, but in the east flame crawls across the horizon. I’ve forgotten about desert sunrises, how they begin so far away and seem so alive.

  I ask Einstein if he’s hungry and consider his wag an enthusiastic yes. I have a hungry dog and a $9,000 check in my wallet. I have a headache and a cottony tongue—

  In my peripheral vision, a fist appears. A punch that catches me by surprise. It’s a wide loop that misses my chin and spins my ambusher in a circle. I smell sour breath, cheap wine, unwashed clothes. I see a head matted with dirty hair and recognize the man at the terminal. Maria, wearing a twisted smile, stands behind him.

  “Told you,” she says. “I told you he was stealing your dog.”

  “That’s my dog,” the man says.

  Maria’s eyes are twitchy, and she chews her lip. She’s high, tweaking on my fifty.

  “It’s my dog,” I say.

  “Liar.” The man raises his fist.

  I remove change from my pocket and hold the coins palm up. It’s enough for a bottle of MD 20/20.

  “Have one on me,” I say.

  “He’ll pay more,” Maria says. “He’ll pay a thousand dollars for this dog. He loves this dog.”

  The man throws another punch, a lazy arc. I duck and then I have him by the throat. Coins fall to the ground and Maria kneels and paws at the dirt. My words are flat and hard. “Do you know how many dogs I’ve killed?”

  The man’s eyes are unfocused, but Maria glares up at me.

  “Seventy-seven,” I say. “Do you understand? We gassed them. You ever seen a gassed dog?”

  I release my grip and point toward the ground at my feet. I tell them that’s all the money they’re getting.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” I say.

  Einstein and I walk across the parking lot to a street that curves around a gas station and heads east. At an intersection that leads down a street to the house I grew up in, I jam my hands in my pockets and lean against a weathered light pole. The lawyer said the house is up for sale and I’ll reap the proceeds if a buyer comes forth, but not to look forward to it anytime soon. One part of me wants to revisit my youth and one part of me says that’s where my father blew off his head and I have no desire to see blood-spattered walls.

  I turn away and take a road that crosses the city limits, where I step over a sand-clogged gutter and arrive at the cemetery. I shield my eyes, trying to see the bone-white headstones. The sun is over the horizon, and the desert is on fire. It’s burning up. The dog trots back into town, and I follow him for a block—watch him turn into an alley without a backward glance. I don’t blame him, know I’m not worth taking a chance on.

  Instead of going after him, I think about the last time I was in this town. Back then, my dreams were all about leaving. It didn’t matter where I ended up or what happened when I got there, so long as it was anywhere but here. Now, I’m leaving with a dream that has substance and direction, a dream that began while I was behind bars. I promised myself then, and I’m promising myself now: I will walk the Appalachian Trail end to end. Or die trying.

  It feels good to have a long-range goal, my first ever, and my feet feel lighter as they contact pavement. For the first time since I can remember I have a reason to get up in the morning.

  2

  ONE MINUTE SIMONE Decker, enjoying Day Two of her thru-hike, watches a hawk windsurf the updraft and the next she wants to push Devon off the cliff. He sits beside her, eats a cracker and brushes crumbs into the abyss. The urge intensifies, and she smothers it with thoughts of how much she enjoys spending time with him, and how tonight they will pitch the tent and snuggle into their sleeping bags and talk about whatever. She enjoys his voice in the darkness, likes how it surrounds and caresses her with its easy tone.

  Marveling at the absurdity, she allows her thoughts to dissipate and the urge to reappear. Devon, in that quiet way of his, talks about buying a house with a spare room. He wants a studio that faces east so he can catch morning light while he works on his drawings. She nods agreeably, aware that sitting next to someone on a cliff is an act of implied trust. Has he ever thought about pushing her off? Simone lays her hand on his back, applies the tiniest pressure. She studies his eyes, looking for a flicker of recognition, and in the end decides he is oblivious.

  They swing their legs over the void, stare at the view that begins a quarter mile below their feet and spreads toward the horizon. It is early March, and the Georgia forest is stark and barren. She is in her late twenties, they both are, and she has the build of an athlete, strong bones and strong muscles left over from her gymnastic days when she was a teenager in Oklahoma. Her eyes are hazel, and Devon often comments on the gold flecks in her pupils. She thinks her jaw is crooked and her nose is too big, and her hair is too flat, but her lover never mentions any of those things. He’s an aspiring artist and sixth-grade teacher on spring break, and she’s a laid-off scientist who worked for Luctow Labs in Tuscaloosa for five years. They have been together four of those years, met at a cocktail party after she attended a downtown art exhibit one Saturday evening.

  Today she wears a Nike shirt and has on long pants because they conceal her thighs, which are more solid than fat, but she lives with worry Devon will lose sight of the difference. Her lover is skinny and can eat all he wants and not put on weight. She wears his ring. The diamond is bright and hard and promises two people wish to live together forever.

  “Do you think I’m a bad person?” she says, rising and backing away. She picks up her pack, an internal Osprey she selected because she likes how it fits against her back.

  “You are a fire-breathing monster.”

  “Devon.”

  “Ask a ridiculous question, get a ridiculous answer.” Devon has brown eyes behind thick glasses and the magnification gives him a serious look. They are the same height, something she thinks he finds annoying because she often wears two-inch heels when they go out.

  “I almost pushed you off the edge,” she says.

  “Now you’re talking crazy.”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “With me?” He sounds surprised.

  “With others.”

  She closes her eyes and sees a murder gene twisted inside her DNA. The gene looks thin and flexible, deadly, like a garrote wielded in experienced hands. She was seven when the gene first showed itself, on the edge of the quarry where she stood behind Bobby Heavenside. Bobby had a crooked leg and walked with a limp, did not like it when other kids poked fun at him. She was big for her age, often rode a red bicycle her father bought for her seventh birthday. The boy stiffened against her thrust, was so off balance he could not stop moving forward. She jerked her hand away, like it was on fire, and peered down at his tumbling body, listened to the shrillness in the air. She felt no remorse, only a hot hand and a numbing stillness inside.

  There had been one more, a girlfriend shoved off the top deck of a parking lot, an act Simone tried to delude herself into believing was an accident, but she gave up after a while because she knew the truth about herself. Deep inside she carried the intense desire to push people over the edge.

  Strangely, the desire came and went on its own, submerging and resurfacing like a demented creature that only needed to breathe once in a great while. In high school, the desire surfaced when she was in a gaggle of kids atop the bleachers during a football game. The urge was strong, but she was so worried about getting caught she was able to shove her hands in her pockets and walk away. That was the first time her rational mind took control, and it gave her hope for the future.

&n
bsp; At Ohio State, she studied genetic biology and familiarized herself with the intricacies of DNA, polymers and nucleotides, chromosomes and replication. She read the works of Dr. Bristow, a scientist who theorized that one secret of the human race is that every person is born with a genetic flaw that leads to his fall. His theory comforted her. It meant the deaths were not really her fault, but at the same time she felt depressed. If her desire was gene based, that meant it would linger until the day she died.

  During that four years, the desire surfaced from time to time, never strong enough to act upon, and she was, more often than not, amused with herself afterward. Eventually, she felt so confident she had gained control that she began driving to the Appalachian Trail during her summers, often testing herself when she came up on hikers taking pictures on overlooks. With each successful interaction she became even more confident and often sat with the hikers and held conversations that lasted for minutes at a time.

  Then, during a day hike in the Whites, the urge reappeared with such ferocity it left her shaken. The boy had turned toward her as she neared, had stepped away from the edge in a hurry. He had looked frightened, as though he had seen something in her eyes.

  That was the moment she decided to seek out ways to force change. She experimented with Buddhism and Catholicism, then finally resorted to self-help books. Her favorite was How to Become a Completely New Person in Twenty-One Days , and she read it three times in a two-week period. Afterward, she affirmed, she wrote negative notes to herself and set them on fire, she adopted positive attitudes that turned every half-empty glass half full. Nothing worked.

  Now, as she contemplates her earlier interaction with Devon, she’s annoyed with herself. This is the man she plans to marry. Soon as the urge appeared, she should have gotten up and walked away.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Simone and Devon crest another mountain and arrive at an overlook, and he glances at her with curious eyes. He asks if she wants to stop and enjoy the view.