Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail Read online

  Her daughter pads off, and Leona’s heart beats a fierce rhythm. Any woman who leaves Heather is a darn fool.

  * * *

  Leona almost reached the ledge yesterday, which is a mile up from where the trail crosses the road, but stopped short, like a kid who puts off opening a present to prolong anticipation. She has roamed these mountains since she was young, has stood on the edge many times. Back then she walked on legs that never grew weary. Now, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, big brown boots on her feet, she listens to her legs complain every step and satisfies herself with the knowledge reaching her goal is no small accomplishment. Her day pack holds water and a candy bar, along with a snipper she uses to cut flowers at home. She cannot move the larger branches that lie across the trail, but anything small she cuts and tosses into the weeds.

  The trail, which starts out level, begins an upward slope through the hardwood forest. The air is cool, enough to tingle her ears. A pileated woodpecker swoops over the brush and latches onto a tree trunk. The bird cries its shrill sound and flies onward. Her heart skips beats if she walks too fast, so she takes measured steps and turtles along. Later in the year, when the northbound thru-hikers reach New Hampshire, this section of trail will become crowded. She thinks of the hikers down in the southern states, toiling their way north, knows the journey will be too hard for most of them and they will quit in the small towns along the way.

  Her mind turns inward, and she can’t help but think her life has become an uphill climb. She has a son too itchy to stay in one place, a pervert for a husband, and a daughter who returns home whenever she has lover problems. Not that Leona begrudges the intrusion. It is nice to see Heather . . . it would have been nicer under different circumstances. Leona chides herself for the thought and walks faster for punishment.

  As the trail rises in elevation, spruce grows in clusters, and moss clings to outcropped rocks. Sound is muted, save for the crunch of her boots on the pebbles and the dry husk of her breathing. The change in Emanuel worries her the most, and Leona wonders if she should go along with his desire at least once. Do it, get it out of the way, move on with their lives.

  The precipice appears so abruptly she almost passes it in her concentrated state. She stops and looks down into the valley, where a creek, glittering in the sunlight, meanders across a pasture and under a two-lane bridge. In the trees at the bottom of the drop off, crows caw to one another. Leona stretches her legs, sips from her Nalgene. Her cell rings, and she puts it to her ear.

  “What?” Leona says. “What did you say?”

  “She called and wants to get back together.”

  “Oh.”

  “Pop’s taking me to the airport,” Heather says.

  “Now?”

  “Love you, Mom!”

  Leona swivels toward the direction that will soon swallow her oldest, picks out the notch on the horizon. There, a road sweeps down into a larger valley and T-bones into a highway that leads to the airport where Heather will board a jet on her way to Massachusetts. Her daughter is unlucky in love. It is not something a mother can fix.

  * * *

  “We’ve been swinging for five years,” Mr. Tannenbaum says. “The time has been most enjoyable.”

  Leona suggests they hold the interview in the backyard, adds that black fly season isn’t for another couple weeks, and the four of them head for the lawn chairs on the manicured grass. Mr. Tannenbaum’s mustache is too bushy for Leona’s taste, but his eyes are green and his voice is distinguished. Mrs. Tannenbaum has delicate gray hair, enviable cheekbones, and had once been beautiful. Leona glances at her blouse, checks all the buttons to make sure they are secure. Emanuel nudges her.

  “Honey,” he says. “They are asking if you have sexual preferences.”

  “I like to take it up the ass while my old man watches,” Leona says.

  Mrs. Tannenbaum says, “My stars.”

  Emanuel asks Leona to follow him to the kitchen. She does.

  “Are you going crazy?” he says. “Are you off your rocker?”

  Leona cuts coffee cake into four squares, licks crumbs off her fingers. “I’ve been reading your magazines.”

  “We are cultured people, we don’t talk that way.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I guess I’m not myself today.”

  “Okay, then.”

  She wonders where Parker is at the moment, has the vague suspicion she is forgetting something. Oh, the coffee cake. She slides the squares onto plates and asks Emanuel to carry two on his way out.

  The afternoon temperature is comfortable, and Leona sits quietly in her chair. Conversation turns to retirement, and Mrs. Tannenbaum talks about how she volunteers in a soup kitchen in downtown Buffalo. Her husband competes in senior triathlons, had set a New York State record in the mile swim in his last event. Emanuel drops his fork, picks it up, wipes it on his napkin.

  “I must ask for the recipe for this cake,” Mrs. Tannenbaum says. “It’s very moist and sweet.”

  Leona dips her finger in her tea and swirls the ice cubes.

  “Moist as a juicy pussy,” she says.

  Feeling Emanuel’s glare between her shoulder blades, she excuses herself and carries the plates to the kitchen. Mrs. Tannenbaum walks in, wets a dishrag, and dabs a spot on her dress, says it had been a long drive and they stopped for hamburgers and she spilled ketchup on her lapel.

  “You needn’t worry,” Mrs. Tannenbaum says. “All we do is go to separate rooms and talk. It’s good for their egos.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing ever happens. We don’t actually do anything.”

  Leona follows her guest to the yard. Nothing ever happens? She snorts her disbelief, then whispers in Emanuel’s ear.

  “I’m giving in,” she says. “You want this, you’ve got it.”

  Emanuel clambers to his feet and suggests they retire inside. The four of them, sore from sitting, limp into the house and down the hall. Mrs. Tannenbaum and Emanuel enter his bedroom, and Mr. Tannenbaum and Leona enter hers. She sits on the bed, up near the pillow, and Mr. Tannenbaum sits next to her. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, does it again. Poor thing, he is nervous as a teenager. He smells like sweat and Aqua Velva aftershave, a musky scent that stirs her in a way she has not felt in a long time. Leona unbuttons her blouse and shrugs it over one shoulder, a pose she has seen in the movies. She feels displaced, as though the top of her head has unscrewed and the real her wriggled out and floated against the ceiling. She watches her hands shrug the blouse to her waist, watches Mr. Tannenbaum unbuckle his belt, unzip his trousers, part the opening in his boxers.

  “We need to hurry,” he says.

  The shock of seeing him on display is like falling into an icy puddle, and she gradually returns to her body, aware of a constant knock from out in the hall. The knock grows louder, and Mrs. Tannenbaum whispers for her husband. He zips up, goes to the door, and Leona glimpses his wife peeking around his shoulder.

  “She has her blouse off,” Mrs. Tannenbaum hisses. She draws her husband into the hall, and Leona doesn’t need to watch them leave to know they are on their way back to New York.

  She stretches out on the bed, belly rising and falling, wonders how far Emanuel had gone with his date in the other room. She lifts her dress, and her fingers creep beneath her panties. Her husband has always been so careful with her, so gentle. . . .

  Another knock, this one much softer, and she invites Emanuel inside. Her legs are spread and she has never felt more vulnerable, should be embarrassed, is not. His fingers take the place of hers, and he asks if this is what she wants. She says this is the only thing she ever wanted, then asks if Sinatra might be appropriate for the occasion. He tells her that he’ll be right back, that it will only take a moment to find the right album, and sometime later she discovers him asleep in his recliner. Leona covers him to the neck with her shawl, slips off his shoes. He wakes and apologizes for getting sidetracked, holds her hand, asks her to visit him tonight.
She runs her fingers through his hair, loses herself in the yellow strands, marvels at the fullness. . . . That forgetting feeling comes over her, ephemeral, elusive, like whatever she seeks floats in a mist just out of reach.

  The mist clears, only for a moment, a clarity that prods her toward the phone. She has forgotten to call Heather to see if she made it safely back home to Boston. Leona dials and looks out the window at the mountains while she waits for her oldest to answer. The last remnant of the lowering sun paints the slopes a deep amber, and on the ridges fog tendrils snake out of the folds like wood smoke. She nods respectfully and sits at the breakfast nook. Leona and Emanuel Brougham are not dead yet.

  5

  APRIL 7TH: I drive to a used car lot and sell my Buick. The money more than pays for a shuttle up to Amicalola Falls, where the approach trail ascends to Springer Mountain. On the way out of town, I ask the driver to stop at a pay phone and I get out and call Roxie. Across the street, a woman and a fat kid sit in deck chairs next to a hotel pool. She wears a one piece, and the kid has on baggy trunks that hang to his knees. The woman shakes her finger at the kid, who unwraps a honey bun and crams it in his mouth.

  Roxie says hello, and I tell her I sold my car and I’m on my way to the AT.

  “Just like that?” she says.

  The fat kid jumps into the shallows. Water splashes over the side, onto the woman, who closes her book and towels off her legs. The woman scoots her chair away from the pool and lies back down. My ear—the one pressed against the phone—itches, so I move the phone to the other ear and scratch away.

  “I have to do this,” I say.

  The fat kid waddles to the deep end and dips his hand in the water. I hope Fatso can float because the last thing I want is to fish some drowned kid out of the swimming pool. The woman looks up and says something, and the kid walks across the concrete to a trash bin and throws away the plastic wrapper. I change the phone to the other ear, listen to Roxie breathe in and out.

  “I’m giving up coke for good,” she says. “You, me, we’ll work it out. We’ll get regular jobs and move into a—”

  “I want you to meet me up in Franklin, North Carolina. Twelve days from now. I got us a room reserved. It’s a trail town over the Georgia border.”

  Her words have a bite to them. “I’ll have to borrow my mom’s car.”

  Roxie’s pissed because I didn’t leave her the Buick, but I know her too well. She’d drive it for a week, then sell it for a high.

  “Come if you can,” I say.

  “I’m not saying I will, and I’m not saying I won’t.”

  I give her directions, hang up, and watch the fat kid wade through the shallow end. He wears blow-up floaties on his arms, and he flails in tight circles. The kid takes aim at the deep end. He has this grim smile and paddles for all he’s worth. His eyes are wide open, like he’s scared and surprised at the same time. I know the feeling. I’ve lived my life on flat land, never walked through mountains. Am I scared? Hell yes. But there’s no sense admitting it, no sense saying it out loud.

  * * *

  Normally, when I think of a shelter, I think of a building in a city where crackheads go for free meals and cot space for the night. Springer Mountain Shelter, perched on the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, is something altogether different. On a mountain north of Atlanta, 3,780 feet above sea level, this shelter has three walls made out of logs that intersect at the corners and rise to a slanted roof. Inside, five guys and one girl mill around. Water bottles, camp stoves, headlamps, guidebooks, boots, food bags; name it and it’s scattered to hell and back. The girl wears a purple fleece and purple shorts, trail runners to match. A guy with dreadlocks lights a pipe and passes it around. An earthy smell fills the air. I stand at the edge of the shelter, under the overhang. When the pipe comes my way, I hit it and hold it out to a guy who waves it off. The guy has a bear tattoo on his neck, and he wears his hair in a black braid that falls over his shoulder and down his chest. He has flat cheekbones and wide-set black eyes. Tells me his name is Richard Nelson, and this is his first thru-hike. He opens a bottle of Crown Royal and passes it around. I sip and the liquid turns to fire in my stomach.

  The girl’s name is Stacy, and she watches me. Her eyes glaze over, and I don’t know if that’s because of the pot or if she likes what she sees. Matching silver bracelets jingle when she moves her hands. She gives me a half wave, says before I walked up they were taking turns saying why they’re hiking the trail.

  “I’m here to grow,” Stacy says. “I’m a plant and the trail is my nourishment.”

  An older man, white hair frizzed around the ears, says he’s getting over a divorce and he wants to live a little for the first time in his life. He says you’re never too old for adventure.

  “I’m a shaman,” Richard says. “My people call me Waknashatee, which means Man Who Talks to Spirits.”

  “That’s very cool,” Stacy says.

  Richard whispers in my ear. He says, “White man, if you want to get laid on the trail, you best come up with some New Age shit mixed with nature.”

  I hit the pipe its third time around the shelter, exhale, and zip up my fleece. There isn’t much of a view—too many trees in the way—but there is a vastness beyond the forest, a wildness that settles like a cold hand on my neck. Stacy smells like cinnamon and weed, and I stare at her legs, at the fine blond hairs on her thighs.

  “I bet you have a secret reason for coming out here,” she says. “Something you’ll never tell a soul.”

  “It’s no big deal.” I glance at Richard, who looks at me slant.

  “I bet it’s mysterious,” she says. “I bet wild horses couldn’t drag it out of you. If anyone found out you’d dry up and blow away like a tumbleweed.”

  “I’m a Druid,” I say, and wave off the pipe. “I’m out here to sleep under oak trees and gain power from the forest. Thru-hiking the trail is a spiritual adventure.”

  Stacy’s hand seeks mine, and warmth seeps into my skin. She clears a space next to the wall, and I unroll my ground pad and sleeping bag, light my stove and cook a dinner of Lipton noodles. The salesman tried to sell me freeze-dried meals, and I turned him down. Lipton Dinners are super-light and less than a dollar at the Dollar Store.

  When it gets dark, Stacy props herself on an elbow and kisses me. I drag my sleeping bag over our heads, speak in a low voice. “My girlfriend is meeting me in North Carolina.”

  “No strings,” she says. “Two hikers having fun.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I don’t know why I’m playing hard to get. Seriously, I’m acting like Roxie and I have a regular relationship, the kind where people say “I love you” and swear to always be true to each other. Roxie and I were never like that, even when we were living together. We had an unspoken agreement. You screw whoever you want, but you come home to me at night. Anything else was too complicated.

  Stacy’s hand slides under my shirt and up my stomach, and her fingers search out a nipple. Her elbow brushes my crotch and I resist the urge to push upward. I remove her hand, shift toward the wall to put a little distance between us. Turning her down feels good in a way I can’t pin down.

  “Are you really a Druid?” she says.

  “Hell no. I don’t know why I said that.”

  She giggles. “I knew you were full of it.”

  “I’m a plant?” I say. “The trail is my nourishment?”

  She giggles louder. “I’m here for the party.”

  We quiet down and I sit up in my sleeping bag, look at moonlight shafting through the branches. A wind blows across the mountain, and tree shadows move over the ground. On the other side of the shelter, the old man mumbles in his sleep. Stacy’s face, a pale oval in the darkness, turns toward me. I tell her goodnight and lie back down. I have 2,160 miles in front of me, and every step takes me further from Roxie. She better have her sweet ass in Franklin.

  * * *

  In prison, to pass the time, I thought abo
ut past lovers, tried to list them all and gave up when I realized my Atlanta memories were too chaotic to sort out. A redhead I met in Hawkinsville was first on the list. Suzette had this way of pursing her lips and looking at the ground like she was thinking about something important. I was the bony kid who followed her around the playground and tapped her shoulder when she wasn’t looking.

  In eighth grade—this was the grade when I started jacking off—we went to her house to share homework assignments. I was good at math and she was good at history, which is the class where I fell asleep on a regular basis. We sat at the kitchen table, and I looked at the mounds under her shirt while she did word problems. I couldn’t stop looking, and one day I squeezed her boobs. She bent over her notebook like there was nothing going on, so I went for it and unzipped her pants. This is around the time her mother came home from where she worked at a factory two counties over. I withdrew my finger and opened my textbook, but my mind was on the slick hole between Suzette’s legs.

  She told me she wanted a senior to pop her cherry, and I suppose that’s what happened because there wasn’t any blood when she and I snuck into an abandoned house months later and I spread my jacket over a lumpy couch and we went at it. She kept her eyes closed, like she didn’t want to see what was going on. I didn’t last long, hell, it was my first time. Later, when she came up to me after school, I walked in the other direction and said things like “I have to get home and help around the house.”

  Which was partially true. After my mother took off with that rich ex-rancher, Pop depended on me to clean house and have his dinner made when he came home from shooting pool.

  The second night after she ran away, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom and cracked the window so I could hear the truck if Pop drove up. I sniffed the air, breathed in my mother’s perfume, a scent that was already giving way to the mustiness of my father. The sheets were rumpled into a ball at the foot of the bed, and I suspected Pop had slept on the mattress last night. His pill bottles were lined up atop the dresser, and I cracked one of the lids and looked inside. The pills were white and large, and I studied them with all the hatred my young body could muster. I wanted to throw them away, but my father had prescriptions and there was an inexhaustible supply of narcotics at the local pharmacy. Not to mention that he would probably beat my ass.