Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail Read online

  At the window I study my backpack. The dirt is wet with dew and the sun is coming up. It will be a hot one today, and I look around for a fan. There’s the needle, the empty Baggie, a dozen empty beer cans, the noise from the shower, and Odell on the couch. Breakfast coming up, I say in a voice too loud. I heat a skillet on the stove and get four eggs out of the fridge. I break the eggs over the skillet and watch the whites bubble and brown on the edges.

  I set full plates on the table, walk out the door, and rummage through the backpack for my hiker clothes. I put them on and stand around in the dirt. It feels odd wearing shorts and trekking shoes, a T-shirt made out of something other than cotton. I strap on the pack and walk around the car, imagine I’m on the trail, try to smell the woods after a rain. The only odor I pick up comes from an overflowing trashcan in front of the adjacent trailer. Roxie appears at the door. Odell stands beside her and brings his knuckles to his eyes.

  “You make sure his grandmother knows his mother locked him in that bedroom,” I say. “You make sure he’s fed.”

  She nods.

  “Come inside,” she says.

  Roxie is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Cheekbones, the green eyes, the cocked-hip attitude, I must be crazy for thinking about leaving her.

  I get in the driver’s side, drop the backpack into the passenger seat, crank the sleepy piano music up as loud as it will go. The door speakers rattle and the pounding itches my eardrums. I am older, wiser than when I stepped in the acid in that extraction facility. I slam my hand on the dashboard, a smack that jolts my arm clear to the shoulder.

  Fuck that gutter.

  4

  LEONA BROUGHAM ENTERS the attic and walks up to a sofa she and her husband had retired years ago, extends a finger and smudges SOS in the dust that coats the broken arm. She had been so certain their lives would unfurl in a way that would keep them together until the end. Now, with Emanuel joining Swingers In Their Golden Years to spice up their sex life, she thinks she might end up alone. Sex life? That part of their marriage ended years ago, along about the time he began snoring so loudly she was forced to sleep in another room.

  She plops a box on the sofa and dust mushrooms into the air. Inside, under the knickknack clutter, wrapped in a towel for safekeeping, lies a cassette tape Emanuel recorded during his Vietnam tour. Leona has listened to the tape three times in her life: once when it arrived; once when she got the seven-year-itch and almost ran away with Trevor, chief editor where she worked at Howell Publishing all those years; and once when she was thirty-seven and her husband had an affair. She never discovered the woman’s name, but the lipstick on his collar, the perfume on his body, his propensity to shower before pecking her cheek and saying hello, added up to nothing good.

  She drops the tape in her pocket and makes her way down the steps, walking carefully so she doesn’t aggravate her joints. In the living room, Emanuel relaxes in a recliner in front of the television. His head turns toward the bay window, where the trim frames New Hampshire mountains that rise out of the ground like great humpback whales. A hot spring has burned off the snow, and craggy boulders etch the sky. A million thaws have eroded the peaks—splitting fissures until rocks gave way and rolled into valleys—yet the mountains are still here, still strong—a longevity that stirs her soul.

  Leona studies the profile, knowing it well, harking back to when she tromped the Appalachian Trail on summer weekends, carrying hoes and pruning shears, digging water bars, and cutting back the growth to offer clear passage to hikers. Now she feels old as the trail and leaves the job to the younger crowd. The Appalachian Mountain Club honored her with a dinner and plaque when she retired. She is not given to bragging, and the plaque resides in the top dresser drawer instead of hanging on the wall.

  She pauses next to the fireplace and watches her husband. He is a proud man, especially of his height, and it galls him that he now tops out at five eleven instead of six foot. The shrinkage should have taken him down a notch in more ways than one, but what he lacks in stature he makes up for in hair. Not only does he have all of it, a dense wave that curls around his ears and sweeps toward his collar, it is the same color as the day they met. Yellow as a fall maple leaf, no gray to be found. He looks her way and shifts in his seat, tells her the Wasatch couple will be here any minute.

  “For an interview,” he says. “You remember, don’t you darling?”

  In less than an hour they plan to size up potential sex partners. Leona wonders how one should act in these situations. Should she flop out a breast and allow Mr. Wasatch a squeeze? Should she roll down her nylons and expose the pink between her legs? She glares in Emanuel’s direction. Men and women their age should have better things to do.

  * * *

  Leona prefers taking her children’s calls in the kitchen. This room, floor tile reflecting the fluorescent lights, was the center of her world when Heather and Parker were young, their orbits bringing them to the counter for help with homework, to the fridge for snacks, to their mother’s arms for childhood bruises, real and imagined. Talking to her children on the phone brings those memories to life. If she closes her eyes, she can still smell cookie dough in the oven, still see birthday cards tucked under Mickey Mouse magnets, still hear the young voices chatter about anything from ants to the Man in the Moon.

  At the breakfast nook, she adjusts the phone so it won’t dig into her earring, says hello to her son. He starts right in on the elephants he’s seen playing soccer in Thailand. Thailand? She never can keep up with her youngest. Parker, a sweet boy who inherited his father’s hair, caught the wanderlust soon as he could crawl, and by the time he was three she’d had to leash him when she walked the grocery aisles. She blames his divorce on his restless spirit. Sometimes she wishes he was more like Heather, her oldest, who has lived in a small town outside Boston for the last twenty-five years. Least he’d come around more often.

  “So, how are you?” he says.

  She glances toward the living room where the Wasatches sit on the sofa. Mrs. Wasatch wears a slinky dress, mail-ordered from Macy’s, and her high heels reveal tiny feet. Tiny feet irritate Leona, whose own are so wide she has trouble finding the right fit. Mr. Wasatch, three times the size of his wife, wears a Hawaiian shirt that does little to hide his belly. His wife worked as a bookkeeper for their hot tub company, and they both believe sitting in steamy water is good for the constitution.

  “We’re entertaining. The Wasatches are in the living room.” Leona craves her son’s company, and the strangers in her house amplify her feelings. She doesn’t want to start crying, so she goes to the sink and runs water into the coffeepot. The mechanics of doing something soothes her. Parker is silent, and she knows he is trying to place the name. That’s how it is between them. They talk on the phone and trade news. Try to fit it into the larger picture.

  “Your father wants to start swinging,” she says. “We’re interviewing couples.”

  Emanuel calls her name, and she puts down the coffee filter. For the occasion her husband wears a long-sleeved corduroy shirt, a crosshatch of brown and green she gave him for Christmas several years back. He calls again, says Mrs. Wasatch requests bottled water. Bottled water? Brougham water comes out of the tap, no fancy shenanigans in this household. Parker chortles in her ear. She wishes she was there to see his head slant back and his belly jump in and out. Her son is a whole-body laugher, able to give all of himself to the humor of the moment.

  “It’s not that funny.” Leona, who chose a pink blouse for the interview, forgot about a problem button that comes undone if she moves around too much. She buttons up and holds her stomach in. She is forgetting something. Oh, the tape. She forgot to listen to it, cannot remember where it wound up.

  “Heather told me you two had gone wild,” Parker says, “but I thought she was yanking my chain.”

  “It’s your father. He’s having another crisis.”

  Her son cackles, then settles down. “I expect next you’ll order the Pla
yboy Channel.”

  “Parker, you watch that mouth.”

  The phone hisses and pops, and she taps it in her palm. She knows it’s unusual for a woman her age to share her sexuality with her children, but she began telling them everything about her life soon after they moved away. This desperate attempt to keep them close to her breast only works with Heather, who reciprocates by revealing things so intimate they make Leona blush. Parker holds back, has a reticence she blames on a gene passed from his father.

  “I have to go,” Parker says.

  “You be careful around those elephants, don’t get stepped on.”

  “Okay, Mom. I love you.”

  She says the words back, half a mind to ring Heather. Emanuel calls again, and she heads his way.

  “Sorry,” she says to the couple. “We’re out of bottled water. I’m making coffee if you’d like some.”

  The Wasatches say caffeine elevates their blood pressures, and they swore off years ago. Mrs. Wasatch sports a face-lift, and she brags about her surgeon, believing he is top-notch. “We’re actually older than dirt. I’m seventy-four and my husband is seventy-six.”

  “Thank God for Viagra,” says Mr. Wasatch. “It assists the angle of the dangle.”

  Emanuel snickers, Leona can’t help but titter, and after that things loosen up. Her husband moves his hands when he talks, florid gestures befitting an orchestra conductor, and Leona suspects he is elevating his heartbeat to stay alert. She crosses her legs, her dress glides three inches up her thigh, and the fat man’s mouth forms an oval. She does not want Mr. Wasatch kneeling over her body, thinks he might hurt her if his arms give out.

  “What I’m suggesting,” Mr. Wasatch says, “is I don’t know why we can’t jump from the interview to the bedroom.”

  Mrs. Wasatch removes a jar of mentholated balm from her purse. “For the pulled muscles afterward.”

  Leona starts laughing. She doubles over and gulps huge breaths and points at the jar. Emanuel pounds her on the back but she isn’t about to stop and she laughs the Wasatches and their mentholated balm out of the house and into their Cadillac. Then she laughs all the way to her bedroom, where she yanks her dress over her head and sits in cotton-shrouded silence. Out in the hall, Emanuel knocks and tells her in a loud voice next time it will go smoother.

  “I don’t see why you don’t pick up woodworking,” she says, matching volume. “I bought you all those chisels for your birthday.”

  Her husband has not stepped happily into retirement, misses the plant, where he was floor supervisor and responsible for turning out seventy-five ceiling fans an hour. He has tried to keep himself occupied, first by fixing every little thing that was broken around the house, then attempting a failed run at a county seat. She blames his latest obsession on a roving eye he developed on their trips to the spa, has tried to reduce her weight to the woman of her twenties, cannot keep up with the pretty young things who squeal through entire aerobic classes without breaking a sweat.

  “I never should have quit,” he says. “I should have worked until they forced me out the door.”

  The next few minutes pass without a word between them. She thinks that is that, is surprised to hear him ask if she is all right.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “Okay, then.”

  It is not okay, not even close.

  * * *

  Leona finds the tape while she searches pockets prior to washing clothes, waits until she is in her room that night to turn on the cassette player. She hears an explosion. Then the crackle of gunfire, sporadic, then never ending. She pictures the jungle all around, banana leaves so broad they block sunlight.

  “I’m in a muddy foxhole,” Emanuel says. “I’m here and all I can think of is you.”

  The noise becomes so loud it is impossible to hear him and it is easy to imagine he is dead, blood gushing like a crimson waterfall out of his chest. Leona holds her breath through this part, thinks the worst possible things, so when his voice comes on again the relief is sweet as can be. Another explosion sounds. This one louder than the first.

  Emanuel’s voice cuts through the chaos, and he talks about coming home and starting a family. He wants two kids, doesn’t care if they are boys or girls. Leona thinks that is poignant, the part about new life in the midst of all that death and destruction. She draws into herself and imagines bullets ricocheting off trees, mortar shells detonating nearby. She smells gunpowder, hears the screams, senses young men expiring around her. She tries to imagine what she would think of in Emanuel’s place, if she’d worry about herself or dream of her lover.

  The tape ends, and Leona unscrews the top to a perfume bottle. Rose. Her husband’s favorite. She dabs the sweet scent on her wrists, tiptoes down the hall, and stops at his door. Leona yearns for the warmth of his bed, but does not have the courage to take another step in his direction. She turns and heads to her room. Her room. How odd the lines that now etch their lives.

  Later, as the moonlight shines through the curtains and casts textured shadows across her bed, she replays the tape. Young Emanuel had loved her with a passion all the bombs in the world could not extinguish. She had loved him back.

  That seems like a long time ago.

  * * *

  Heather shows up on the doorstep, says she needs to get away for the weekend. She wears her brown locks cut close to the scalp, a grim hairstyle she has not changed in three decades. Her dress, gray as an approaching cold front, hangs off her shoulders to her calves. Leona puts fresh sheets on the bed, goes up to the attic, and digs out a bunny rabbit. Sets it atop the dresser. Hopefully the pink will brighten her daughter’s mood.

  The surprise arrival has come just in time. Emanuel has lined up an interview for tomorrow afternoon, this with a couple close to their age. She must admit that riding the stationary bicycle down at the spa has done her husband good. He still sleeps more than she thinks is healthy, but he’s dropped at least two pant sizes and seems lighter on his feet. Trying to do her part, Leona has started day hiking the trail, an exercise that makes her sore in the ankles and hips. She thinks, if she can become fit enough, that she might bring along a pair of pruning shears for old time’s sake. Maybe she’ll hide them in her day pack, snip a few briars when no one is around to make a fuss over someone her age maintaining trail.

  After a dinner of vegetarian chili, Heather’s favorite, Leona and her daughter sit on the porch. The night breeze pushes through the screen and brings out goose bumps on Leona’s arms. She wraps a shawl around her shoulders and studies her oldest. Heather wears the same moody dress, has her head down, seems determined to while away the evening staring at her nails.

  “I think your brother left Thailand and went to Iceland,” Leona says.

  “I found a swinger magazine when I was in the bathroom. It was under the fresh towels.”

  Leona draws the shawl around her neck. “I throw them away when I find them, but he’s like an alcoholic hiding a bottle. You can never find them all.”

  Heather takes on a chiding tone. “It’s one thing to talk about it and laugh over the phone, but actually seeing it is disgusting.”

  Her daughter’s opinion surprises Leona.

  “Your father and I are not prudes,” she says.

  Bluish light strobes out of the living room, through the sliding glass doors onto the porch, and she knows without looking Emanuel’s finger incessantly taps the remote.

  “Mom, do you think I’m stuffy?”

  Her oldest doesn’t know how to enjoy herself, an attribute she put to good use at Ohio State University, then later when she interned at Massachusetts General. Heather is in perpetual control, and Leona suspects more than a few pregnant patients appreciate her daughter’s focus.

  “You’re a doctor,” Leona says.

  Heather sips her cocoa, holds the mug in both hands. The breeze changes direction and carries with it the aroma of grilled hot dogs. A balloon drifts across the yard, settles in front of the screen door, bobs on t
he ground as though it lacks energy to continue its journey. Her daughter’s voice sounds tired and broken. “She left me, and this time it’s for real. She took all her things, including the bed and the breakfront.”

  They talk in low tones, Heather getting it out one strained syllable at a time. Her lover has taken another, a stripper who drives a Corvette and dances around a chrome pole on an elevated stage. Heather claims the relationship won’t last a week and her lover will come crawling back, but this time she is drawing a line in the sand.

  “I am not a piece of shit,” Heather says. “She can’t come and go as she pleases.”

  Emanuel appears and asks how his girls are doing, walks back inside. Her husband gravitates toward his kids when they are in trouble, yet he exercises the good sense to stay clear when they talk to their mother. Appreciative, Leona pours a cup of cocoa, takes it to him, and returns to the porch.

  “You really should stand up to him,” Heather says. “You should stop this nonsense once and for all.”

  “It’s not so bad. We both like to meet new people.”

  “Mom!”

  “Now hush, we haven’t actually done anything.”

  Heather chuckles. Unlike Parker, she barely moves when she laughs. Leona’s hand seeks the warmth of her own stomach, and she marvels at how one womb can produce such different people. She gives her daughter a big hug and thinks about asking if she wants to go hiking tomorrow, nixes the idea. Heather likes to sleep in whenever she visits.

  The strobing coming out of the living room stops, and Leona goes in and unfolds a blanket over her husband’s lap, leaves the television on so he won’t be confused when he wakes. She meets her daughter in the kitchen. In the bright light, Heather looks older than her age. Leona’s stomach twists. Growing old is one thing, watching it happen to your children is something else entirely.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you and Pop,” Heather says.