Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail Page 3

  “I don’t want to sit next to you,” she says.

  “You’re serious about this?”

  Simone tells him yes and they walk down the mountain, he in the lead, she lagging behind. She crouches to take pressure off an old knee injury, wishes he would slow down so she could keep up. He looks back from time to time, but in the end seems to drop whatever is on his mind.

  Devon plans to hike to her first resupply point—Hiawassee, Georgia—a town sixty-four trail miles north of Springer. When she first heard he was joining her for the start of her thru-hike, a conversation that took place back in the winter when she was dehydrating food for her mail drops, she was happy. Now she’s not so sure. She’s not worried about pushing him off—long as she stays clear of him on ledges bad things won’t happen—but she thinks he might try to take over her hike and make it his. He is a male, after all, and genetically they are more comfortable when they are in control. She stretches out her stride until she runs instead of walks. Catches him at the next switchback. They hike to the base of the mountain and drop their packs in a clearing.

  “A fire would be nice,” Devon says. “Be dark before you know it.”

  Her lover prefers camp chores to gathering wood because he worries about getting lost. Getting lost never happens to Simone. She has a keen sense of direction, much keener than Devon’s.

  Knowing he will not stop hinting until she brings him wood, she walks out of camp, along a ridge interspersed with pines, poplar, and white oaks. Fiddleheads, green and slender, curl out of the ground, but higher up, where branches are without leaves, colors are muted slashes of gray and brown. An owl’s hoot drifts through the trees. Against the sky, in the upper reaches of a scarred poplar, wings unfold and a feathered shadow glides through the forest, gone before she can raise a hand and offer a hello.

  She picks up a branch and drags it behind her. Picks up another branch and adds it to the first. Head down, she walks a wide loop that takes her into an oak grove south of the campsite. She hoists herself onto a low-hanging limb, climbs high enough to see down into the clearing. In a fork gently buoyant under her weight, she watches Devon glance in the direction she has disappeared. He restakes the guy line at the rear of the tent, then restakes the guy line at the front. He’s fiddling, something he does when he is nervous. She wonders how long before he cracks, and an hour later gets her answer when he walks to the edge of the clearing and shouts her name.

  “Simone!”

  Simone wants him to go after her, rooting for his love to trump his fear of the forest, knows she wastes her time. Devon sees the trail as a conduit through the unknown. Venture from the footpath and he is doomed.

  “Simone!”

  She turns away, toward where the sun falls below the mountains. An orange band stripes the horizon and above the band the sky is the color of washed-out purple. Toward the north, where the sky is darker, the first star appears. She imagines the star hovers over the northern terminus, wonders how many steps it takes to get there from here. Devon believes she chose this journey because she wants to put off their marriage. He calls her thru-hike a 2,160-mile procrastination. But he’s wrong.

  “Simone!”

  She’s here because she’s convinced herself that no one can thru-hike the Appalachian Trail and be the same person as when they started. She hopes change will arrive like an erupting volcano, melting her genes so completely that when they cool she’ll become someone else entirely.

  “Simone!”

  Devon turns on his headlamp and the beam cuts a swath through the darkness, illuminates trees in its white glow. Guilt seeps through her, a nausea that washes into her stomach. She feels her way through the limbs, to the ground and the hardpacked trail.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Over here!” Devon says, headlamp bobbing. “I’m over here!”

  “I’m here.” She walks into the clearing and gives him a hug.

  He backs away. “I’ve been calling for hours.”

  “I got turned around but I’m back now.”

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I didn’t get lost on purpose.”

  “You never get lost.”

  He complains that it’s too late to bother making a fire, so she gets down on her knees and follows him inside the tent, where she unwraps a banana-flavored PowerBar and chews slowly, hoping to avoid conversation. The tent, with its low ceiling and narrow walls, feels cramped tonight. Devon takes off his boots, and she wrinkles her nose at the smell of dirty socks.

  They are silent for a long time. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep, opens them when he pulls up her shirt and traces a circle around her belly button. She stiffens, but he seems unaware of her reluctance. His fingers drift under her panties toward the mound between her legs. She’s dry but moistening and at that precise moment—yes, right there, just the tip of the finger—no, she should say no, say it loud like she was taught in high school; “No means no; girls, say it like you mean it”—No!—but there is only yes, and the finger thrumming and her mind focused on the swollen button until she is there and nowhere else, submerged in that hot river pulling her to the precipice—just the tip, there, yes, please, just the tip, please Devon—and her back arching and her legs contracting and her toes curling and her breath harsh and unabated—don’t stop, don’t stop, please don’t stop—and the free fall over the edge, and the magnificence and the pleasure and the transcendent energy of being there, only there. . . .

  . . . . Her voice, when it comes, is low and guttural.

  “You bastard,” she says.

  “You love it.” He guides her hand toward his crotch, but she won’t have it, any of it, aware this is the first time she has refused to reciprocate.

  “You’re not playing fair,” he says.

  Simone spins her diamond palm down and makes a fist, winces as crystallized edges slice skin. The time on the trail was supposed to bring them closer together, but the opposite has happened.

  * * *

  That night Simone wakes to rhythmic noise she can’t place. The noise is insistent, drawing her toward consciousness. She gives in and opens her eyes. At first she thinks the noise is Devon rubbing his leg, then recognizes the sound for what it is. The rhythm speeds, and her lips form a shy smile. She has never heard him masturbate.

  “Devon,” she says.

  The noise stops.

  “Devon?”

  His voice has a fake grogginess. “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” She straps on her headlamp, opens her trail guide, and muses over tomorrow’s hike. In the forest an animal skitters through the brush. The footsteps are so light she can hardly hear them—probably a squirrel or a night bird, maybe a raccoon—but she’d have to look outside to know for sure. The air doesn’t smell as bad as it did when she went to sleep. Devon’s socks must be drying out.

  “The light’s in my eyes,” he says.

  “Sorry.” Simone flicks off the headlamp and darkness returns. The animal in the brush has stopped or moved out of hearing range. She rolls over on her stomach.

  “Devon?” she asks. “Hey, are you awake?”

  No answer.

  “I feel a little sore, same spot as yesterday,” she says. “I think I might have to take some ibuprofen.”

  A rustle, and Devon’s hand finds her back. He applies gentle pressure, and every so often she lets out an appreciative moan.

  “Is that it?” he says.

  “A little higher.”

  “There?”

  “Hey,” she says, eventually tiring of his touch. “Did I tell you there was a road crossing tomorrow?”

  Simone hasn’t the courage to ask him to get off the trail, not even sure she wants him to leave. Devon turns his back to her, and she does the same to him.

  “I’m thinking about rearranging my summer,” he says. “I’m thinking I’ll stay on the trail for a while longer. Maybe hike another couple months.”

  “I thought you wanted to go house hunting.
”

  “The house can wait.”

  Simone listens for sounds in the forest, thinks of owls winging through the night. She wonders what it feels like to soar above the trees.

  * * *

  In the morning, they eat breakfast and hike north, soon arrive at Woody Gap, where Highway 60 intersects the trail and runs down the mountain in opposite directions. A station wagon pulls off the road and a white-haired man gets out and hobbles toward Devon. The man has a narrow forehead, hooded eyes, hands that shake when he waves hello. He hands Devon a business card, who, in turn, hands it to Simone. Mr. Quinton calls himself a trail angel, and he has a house five miles down the mountain.

  “Thru-hiker?” Mr. Quinton says, directing his question at Devon.

  “Georgia to Maine,” Devon says. “One step at a time.”

  “You livin’ my dream,” Mr. Quinton says. “I tried to hike her when I was a young man but I got this trick ankle that would have none of it. I hang back now and try to help you fellows out. Do what I can here and there. Shower’s hot, got a couple rooms, beds to sleep on.”

  Simone moves up to where she is shoulder to shoulder to Devon. She is the thru-hiker in this duo. Devon is the tagalong.

  “One step at a time,” she says, “that’s the only way to thru-hike a trail.”

  The man glances at her, refocuses on Devon.

  “So, how about it? You want a ride in?” Mr. Quinton says. “Five dollars each coming off the mountain but you and your gal friend ride free coming back. . . . If you stay with me, I mean.”

  Devon says, “Sounds reasonable.”

  “I don’t say it on my card, but I cook pancakes for breakfast. Not all mornings, sometimes I sleep in. Breakfast is five dollars each if you want it.”

  “What about a ride to the nearest airport?” Simone says.

  Now she has the man’s attention. Devon’s too.

  “You thinkin’ about gettin’ off, honey?” Mr. Quinton says.

  “Just asking.”

  “I don’t blame you one bit,” he says. “It’s a hard go out there. Wear you to a nubbin’ no time flat.”

  Devon flops his arm around her and squeezes. “She gets grouchy at night but she’s been pretty good so far.”

  Mr. Quinton produces a paper from a rear pocket, runs his finger over jotted notations. “I can never remember these figures. Let’s see, shuttle to Atlanta run you a hundred twenty dollars. Pretty lady like you I’ll knock off the twenty.” Yellow teeth show between parted lips. “No offense, just trying to be helpful.”

  “I might have to stop and pee,” she says. “You know us womenfolk, we got us these small bladders, no bigger than a thimble, really.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Mr. Quinton says. “I had me a wife who couldn’t drive no more than fifty miles without wantin’ to run out to the bushes. When a woman has to pee she has to pee.”

  “I could pee right here,” she says. “Right here before God and country and this here highway.”

  The man says, “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “You’d like that,” she says. “Bet you come up here and hide in the bushes just to see hikers pee.”

  “Now see here,” the man says. “There ain’t no call for—”

  She steps onto the highway, dashes through a gap between a semi and a glimmering Porsche. Devon is close behind. He catches up and tugs her Osprey, spins her around.

  “That was rude,” he says.

  “Who was rude, him or me?”

  “You don’t have to be such a bitch,” he says. “He was trying to be helpful, trying to make a living.”

  Simone, with a downward slice of her hand and a severe point of her finger, motions him up the trail. She watches him stalk out of sight, then pulls down her shorts, squats behind a bush, and lets loose a stream that sends a beetle scurrying across the leaves. She hops behind the beetle, urine splashing the leaves, her boots, everywhere but on that blue back. She gives up the chase, thinking if she had been born with a penis, then life would be different all the way around.

  That afternoon she catches up to Devon as he sits outside Blood Mountain Shelter and reads the register. Granite ledges surround the peak, and she suspects Devon, who never stays angry long, will ask her to sit with him and watch the sunset. She prefers to walk on, down the other side of the mountain, to a lower elevation free of temptation. He hands her the notebook and pen, disappears inside the stone building to roll out his sleeping bag. She flips to an entry made in mid-February and reads about September Sunset and Lizard Boy, a couple who started their thru-hikes earlier than most, and who hiked through a cold snap the day they crossed this mountain. Then comes Gregarious George, a man who hikes with a copy of Robert Frost poems and writes about starry skies and clouds white as cotton. She skims forward, stops on trail names like Monkey Toes, Greasy Spoon, Riot Boy, Sweet Dreams, Strider, Dances with Ravens, and Sloppy Seconds. She comes to Devon’s entry. Devon and Simone passing through on the 7th of March.

  Her lover appears in the doorway, extends a finger and pushes his glasses up his nose, tells her he’d rather keep hiking.

  “It’s like a dungeon in there,” he says. “Like sleeping in a horror movie.”

  “I hate my name.” She’s delighted he has changed his mind.

  He rolls up his bag and crams it in his pack. “I like Simone.”

  “Never mind,” she says. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “No, really, why obscure who you are?”

  “Come on, Devon. We’re not talking about plastic surgery.”

  His voice has a helpless tone. “Please, Simone, I don’t want to argue.”

  “Never Lost,” she says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never Lost, my new name. Simone is history.”

  She crosses out Devon’s entry and writes: Simone solo-hiking the trail and renaming herself Never Lost. Me here. Me gone. See ya when I see ya!

  Devon says it is time for them to go and she looks at him, asks herself if he notices anything different about her.

  * * *

  Day Four of her hike, she crosses a road and ascends in elevation. Hardwoods give way to waist-high mountain laurel bushes. The air is clean and cool. She watches her quadriceps expand and contract, notes with satisfaction her shorts are already feeling looser around the waist, not so much they are in danger of coming off, but enough so that she thinks she is losing weight.

  She comes up behind a hiker headed north. He’s an older man, a slow hiker who started the same day as she and Devon. Christopher Orringer walks with his head down, plodding steps, and he starts his day early and ends it late. She and Chris O, which is his trail name, have talked a few times, and he is a widower with no kids, had decided to thru-hike before his body gave out and he wound up sitting in a nursing home for the rest of his life. He steps aside with a grunt and allows her to pass, which she does with a quick hello, knowing he’s too out of breath for conversation.

  An hour later the trail tops the ridge, and she sees Devon sitting on a ledge. The mountains are blue and ripple into the distance. Down in a narrow valley smoke curls above the trees and bends in the wind. She imagines a house, or a factory down there, a place where humans live out normal lives.

  Devon faces the expanse, shaking his head, as if locked in silent debate. She gazes at the flat spot between his shoulder blades. Estimates the distance, twelve feet across gray rock, and takes a step his way, heel to toe, like Indians walked when they stalked these mountains. He grips the ledge, and his fingers whiten at the knuckles.

  “I want you to come sit by me,” he says.

  Simone closes the gap one step at a time.

  “It’s beautiful,” he says. “I love the azure tint.”

  He’s shaking, doubting her love.

  “It’s my breath, isn’t it?” His laugh is feeble and ends abruptly. “I knew I should have carried some mints.”

  “I can’t believe you’re testing me.”

  “We can fix thi
s, this, whatever it is,” he says. “It’ll go away . . . therapy, whatever you need, we’ll get it.”

  Simone raises her arm and in her mind sees the sudden shove, followed by the sprawl of his body into open air. She hears his scream, long and shrill, stops mid-stride, and backs up a step. The ring comes off in a single twist. She releases it into the air and watches it drop and bounce at her feet. His face pales, and his eyes open wide.

  “You can catch a ride into town back on that highway,” she says. “Plenty of cars coming by.”

  Simone jogs down the trail, bends her knees more than usual to reduce impact. She will not allow herself to feel sorrow for the breakup, hopes leaving Devon is the catalyst for the change she seeks, imagines DNA bubbles inside her cells, molecules heating and realigning, cooling into something benign. The scientist in her says this cannot happen, that she will remain who she is until she dies, but she ignores the thought, wanting, for at least one time in her life, to believe anything is possible.

  3

  MY ROOM’S OKAY for a hundred and fifty a week. I’ve lived in worse places in downtown Atlanta. An air conditioner blows cold wind across the bed, and on the wall I’ve hung a picture of a hiker on the Appalachian Trail. The hiker stands on a rock at the edge of a cliff and has a cocky smile. He’s in Virginia, on McAfee Knob, and the mountains below are green as a fairway. A cloud floats in the sky, far off, a whiteness above the horizon. Next to him, above an empty bookcase, is a picture of a Maine chef with fingers wrapped around a lobster. The chef has contented eyes, like, if he cooks for the rest of his life, it’s fine by him.

  The pictures, motivational when I tacked them to the wall, now serve as a source of irritation. If I hadn’t called Roxie Scarborough after leaving Hawkinsville, if she hadn’t invited me for a drink so we could talk about old times, if I hadn’t said yes, I’d already be on the trail. But here it is, closing in on April. It’s almost a month past the start of thru-hiking season, and I’m still in town. I don’t beat myself up about it. A guy should have the right to enjoy himself after spending a year in the pen, shouldn’t he?