Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail Read online

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  * * *

  Twelve days into my hike, 106 trail miles north of Springer, I arrive at Winding Stair Gap and hitch east to Franklin, where I check into the Franklin Motel and settle into my room. The air has a pine scent odor, like the maid sprayed freshener on her way out the door. The carpet is new, and the walls are freshly painted. I take a shower and wash clothes in the sink, scrub my socks three times before the water turns clear. Then I walk to the grocery store, where I buy enough food to reach Nantahala Gorge, which is less than thirty miles to the north.

  On my way back, plump plastic bags dangling from both hands, I hear cars traveling highways, a barking dog, the hum of a transformer bolted to a street pole, a woman screaming at two kids in a van parked in front of the check-in office. I’ve lived in towns for most of my life, but this is the first time I’ve listened to one. The noise is constant, a nervous old man who can’t stop jabbering.

  Richard, on the sidewalk, holds up a bottle of Scotch and invites me in for a drink. I stash my groceries in my room and head his way. Inside, Stacy sits on his bed and so does Valerie, who has been in town for three days waiting for a tent manufacturer to send new poles. Valerie tells a story about a branch that fell on her tent during a windstorm, and Richard tells one about how his spirit guide, the bear, stopped him from stepping on a rattlesnake. I make one up about throwing rocks at a skunk that wouldn’t get off the trail. Richard and I look at each other and a silent agreement passes between us. What happened—burning the dead guy, taking eighty dollars off him—is between us and no one else.

  Valerie, a forty-six-year-old professor, takes a sabbatical every seven years and goes on an adventure. She has black eyes, a marine haircut, looks at Richard like she could swallow him whole. Stacy stares at me from where she sits on the bed. I drink what’s left of my Scotch and hand my glass to Richard, who gives me a refill and hands it back. Roxie’s failure to show, not even leaving a message at the front desk explaining why, only means one thing.

  There is no us.

  Instead of feeling sad, euphoria sweeps over me. For the first time in my life I am only looking forward. It’s an airy feeling, like I’ve been transported to a surface with minimal gravity. I watch as Richard shrugs out of his dress and Valerie sits on his lap. Stacy sits on mine. We kiss and this time I do not move away. We leave and go to my room, where we take off our clothes and go at it. She moans and twitches, and I get into it after awhile. We screw for a half hour or so, and I roll off and stare at the ceiling. I’m breathing hard and so is she.

  “How was it?” she says. “Was it okay for you?”

  “Sure. . . . Sure, it was great.”

  I step into my shorts and walk outside. The moon, pumpkin colored and half round, suspends above the mountains. The door opens and Stacy comes across the parking lot. She’s dressed, and her cheeks shimmer under the neon sign on the motel wall. I tell her goodnight and she says the same, walks down the sidewalk toward her room.

  In the morning I take four aspirins to get rid of my headache, dump the food I bought yesterday into Ziploc Baggies. Richard comes in and asks if I want breakfast before we hitch to the trail. His eyes are red and I can tell I’m not the only one hungover.

  “I could eat,” I say.

  “I’m a pancake man.”

  “I could eat a cow,” I say.

  He says Valerie was a regular cougar and asks about my night.

  “We mostly talked,” I say.

  “I’m sorry your girlfriend didn’t come.”

  “Ex.”

  “Like that?”

  “Like that.” My voice has a finality to it, but yesterday’s euphoria over my new freedom dissipated overnight, and I’m already thinking of the letter I plan to write before I leave town.

  Richard and I walk a block down the street to a diner, where I order coffee and a double order of steak and eggs. Richard orders a triple stack of pancakes and shovels it in like he ’s starved half to death. My seat has a rip that digs into my back, and I shift away from the aisle, settle next to the window, where I spin the saltshaker in circles. Behind a long counter a man in an apron and a white hat turns sizzling bacon with a spatula. A woman in a booth in the rear of the restaurant holds a baby to her chest and rocks back and forth. The front door opens, a squeak of metal hinges, and Stacy comes in and sits beside me.

  “I’m getting off,” she says. “Valerie and I are going out to New Mexico to work on a ranch and ride horses for the summer.”

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  Richard walks to the counter and pays for his breakfast, says he’ll meet me at the motel. I nod, sip my coffee, cut steak into chewable pieces. The steak is medium rare, how I like it, and red juice oozes onto the plate. The coffee is hot and black.

  “Valerie doesn’t mind if you come,” Stacy says. “The more the merrier.”

  “You’re asking me to get off the trail?”

  “You don’t have to make it sound so horrible.” There’s a red mark on her neck, a hickey I don’t remember leaving.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  I drain a glass of milk, ask the waitress for another. The waitress brings the milk and I drink it down. Stacy speaks in a firm voice.

  “If she loved you, she’d be here instead of me.”

  Although I don’t look at Stacy, I feel her watching me. I finish eating, and we get up and walk to the motel, where she kisses me and gets into a rental car with Valerie and drives away.

  In my room, I write Roxie and tell her I’m sorry I missed her, that I’m not ready to give up on us. I list my upcoming resupply points and estimated dates of arrival. Then I kid around and say I look forward to chocolate chip cookies in my packages. I doubt she’ll send anything but it’s worth a try. My hands are shaking and my body feels weak as hell. Roxie is a drug I have never been able to quit. Maybe I can walk her out of my system and maybe I can’t. Time will tell.

  Richard meets me at the mailbox across the street, asks if I want to carry what’s left of the Scotch.

  “You want it, you carry it,” I say, adding there is no way in hell I’m adding the extra weight to my pack. He studies the bottle, like he weighs the pros and cons, and wistfully turns it upside down. Alcohol puddles at our feet.

  “I need to lay off,” he says. “I don’t want to be falling off any boulders.”

  * * *

  On the north side of Winding Stair Gap, a bird sings a three-note song. The notes have a tubular sound, a haunting that comes without warning, music that stops me in my tracks. High up, clouds ride the jet stream. The temperature is in the sixties, perfect weather for hiking this forested mountain. The pickup that dropped Richard and me at the trail head drives down the road, and he walks up the trail.

  I stay where I am and watch cars speed past. I don’t know what I’m waiting for or why I’m here. I think about the dead man in the forest, if the good outweighed the bad when his life flashed before his eyes. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. Dead is dead.

  I study a white blaze painted on the side of a tree. White blazes are the secret out here. As long as a hiker’s seeing white blazes, he’s on the trail. I try to think about the thousands of white blazes between Georgia and Maine, but the trail is too stretched out to imagine all at once.

  6

  “HON?” DALTON SAYS.

  Six AM and his eyelids feel sandpapery, each scrape across his pupils a reminder he spent the night staring at the shadowed ceiling. Deirdre entwines her feet in his and issues a grumbled moan. Her nightgown smells of something he can’t place. Vanilla, maybe.

  “We’re not getting any younger,” he says. He likes looking at his wife in the mornings and rises on an elbow to study her face. Her gaze, as she drifts toward consciousness, seems innocent and pliable and reminds him of how she looked during the first years of their marriage.

  “Go back to sleep,” she says.

  “I’ll
be twenty-eight next month and you’re turning thirty-nine.”

  “I’m turning twenty-nine.” She comes fully awake, wary gaze focused on his.

  “Like I said, you’ll be turning forty-nine and I’ll be turning twenty-eight and it’s time we started thinking about it.”

  “I have thought about it.”

  Dalton sits on the side of the bed and scoots his feet along the floor in search of his slippers. Barefoot, he goes to the bureau, peers into the mirror, and rubs a sleep mark off his jaw. The brush on the doily is his. The comb is hers. She cut her curls short and despite his objections will not grow them back. He raises his arms and bends at the waist. He’s not as limber as he was in college, and it takes three tries before his fingers touch his toes. His cotton pajamas sag in the rear, an aggravating circumstance he mitigates with an upward jerk of the waistline.

  “It’s that girl,” Deirdre says. She wraps the comforter around her shoulders. “Ever since she went missing you started back on this pregnancy kick.”

  He’s always been this way. Faces on milk cartons, AMBER Alerts, anything to do with a missing child starts him thinking about what he and his wife don’t have. If only she would go off the pill and let things happen. Later today, maybe he’ll light a candle, turn on some easy listening, and cozy up with her on the sofa. He’ll remind her, tactfully of course, that only two months ago he shut down his furniture outlet company to follow her from California to western Virginia. She’s the first woman postmaster in the county, an accomplishment that pleases him. It’s her turn to give a little.

  “Dalton,” she says. “I invited a couple for lunch.”

  “Today?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

  “Not a problem.” He thinks it’s best to stay on her good side. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

  * * *

  On the edge of a road, on a mountain that drops to finger ridges flattening into a valley, Dalton calls for the girl, listens for a response, and hears only the trill of a distant thrush. He is amazed at how dissimilar this land is from the prosaic browns and yellows of the California desert. Here, in the belly of the Appalachians, trees have leafed out and green tints the ridges. Instead of cacti and mesquite growing out of hot sand, ferns and mushrooms populate the cool forest floor, and water trickles down narrow ravines. Chipmunks dart over logs and scuttle from hiding place to hiding place, each dash accompanied by a rustling sound. Too, the air is different, and the breeze, leftover from a recent cold snap, feels cool as a moistened washcloth against his skin.

  He zips his windbreaker to the throat and thinks of the question Deirdre asked a couple days ago. He could not answer her coherently, could not tell her exactly why he wants a baby. It’d be nice to have a baby, he finally said. They left it at that, but last night, between beating his pillow into submission and watching the moon shadows, he started wondering if his desire to procreate is instinctual. I am, therefore I breed. Can it be that simple?

  Now, he watches a forest service truck drive up, front tires bouncing across the ruts. A man in a green uniform leans out the window.

  “We got a tip she’s on the other side of the mountain,” the man says, and sweeps his arm in a half circle.

  Dalton is not surprised conversation started without exchanging names. There are no strangers when a child is lost.

  “We’re forming another search party this afternoon,” the man says. “We could use the help.”

  “I can’t. I have to get back home, have some things I have to do.”

  He slides into his sedan, waits for the truck to drive off, continues his stuttering crawl through the mountains. Stopping. Calling. Listening.

  Three miles along, a fox—red tail flowing—minces through a hemlock grove, raises its hind leg, and marks a boulder. Dalton’s mind drifts away from the mountain, to a sunlit meadow. Honeysuckle scent floats in the air, and bees fat as jellybeans dart between wildflowers. Deirdre’s face is turned toward the sun, and she wears a dress loosely over her mounded belly. They come to a blueberry bush and he tastes the fruit. It’s sweet and juicy; a blue sky on his fingers. The baby is kicking, she whispers. He wraps his arms around her and moves his palm over her stomach. We did this, he says. You and I. We did this—

  Whirling blades, hard chop of metal against air, and a helicopter flies over the ridge. The gravity of the search yanks him back to reality, and he is embarrassed about using the lost girl to fuel his fantasy. He gets out and calls one last time, then, remembering Deirdre’s request to come home in time for lunch, turns the sedan around and drives down the mountain.

  * * *

  “Not now,” Deirdre says, and opens the refrigerator. Although Dalton shares cooking chores—Latino-style breakfasts are his specialty—the kitchen is distinctly his wife’s, and like the fox on the mountain, she marks her territory. Her notes in tiny, cursive lettering hang on every cupboard door. Things like:

  SHATTER THE GLASS CEILING, SISTER.

  I THINK, THEREFORE I CAN.

  I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!

  The first six years of their marriage, Dalton did not begrudge this selfish tone. Only recently has he wondered if she believes her career is more important than his happiness.

  “I haven’t even said anything,” he says. “I haven’t even brought it up.”

  “I’m tired of it, understand?”

  Her attitude needles Dalton. If anyone should be irritated, it’s him. He came home early to hear lunch has been canceled, that Cloyse and Poppy Rue are coming for an afternoon visit instead. Dalton sniffs the faint odor circulating over the counter.

  “Don’t get mad at me,” he says. “It’s not my fault the tofu is getting cold.”

  “I’m thinking of serving chicken wings instead.” Deirdre, in blouse and tights, house slippers whispering over the floor, shuts the refrigerator and clatters through the utensil drawer.

  “Maybe we should open some wine?” He taps her shoulder, a boyish move that appears out of nowhere.

  “Dalton.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to promise me you’ll engage in conversation.” She opens the dishwasher. “Have you seen that blue bowl? The one with the gold leaves etched on the rim?”

  “Are you saying I’m a stick in the mud? Because if you are, I’m not.”

  “I just want this to go well, okay?”

  “Why don’t you serve those cream cheese balls, the ones with celery and carrots on the side.”

  “Dalton?”

  “Deirdre.”

  “Don’t you have a brilliantly designed table in the works? Or something?”

  “I’m going,” he says. “You don’t have to be rude.”

  In his study, he turns on the computer and watches a chair revolve against a black background. Deirdre wants him to open a retail outlet in Roanoke, but he thinks he might open a woodworking shop instead, an idea that began in California, where—between sales calls, employee problems, and shuttling cheap furniture out the door at AMAZING LOW PRICES WITH NO PAYMENTS FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS—he spent a few minutes each day handcrafting dining room sets. The intimacy of bringing a design to life gave him a satisfaction the bulging cash register never did.

  Deirdre pokes her head into the room and asks him to grab a log from the woodpile. Oak, she says, will burn longer. He waits until she leaves, shrugs into a windbreaker, and heads outside. The acre behind the ranch house has been cleared, grass planted. The woodpile is adjacent to a barbed-wire fence that runs the southern edge of the property line. On the far side of the clearing, oaks, hickories, and pines rise above ferns and form a dense forest. Above the treetops, a mountain blocks the western sky. Devoid of trees along its crown, the mountain reminds him of a balding, old man.

  The window in his study opens, and he feels Deirdre’s gaze on his back. A keen sound comes through the screen—steady at first—then escalating into shrieks that crash over his ears. He walks into the house, to the study where Deirdre sti
rs white cream in a blue bowl. The source of the screaming sits on the keyboard. The doll, a boy in sailor overalls, appeared a month into their marriage, precisely three days after Dalton brought up having a baby. Deirdre, who apparently spent a healthy sum for express delivery, named the doll Psychological Prophylactic, shortened it to PP. That first night she turned the little screamer on high and locked it in the closet so Dalton couldn’t get to the control switch. The next morning, with more delight than he thought was necessary, Deirdre introduced him to each accessory, and, in less than an hour, the doll vomited a whitish liquid on Dalton’s collar, defecated a gelatinous substance into a cotton diaper, and urinated a vinegary stream that splashed his forehead.

  Now, Dalton’s fingers find the switch between the doll’s shoulder blades, and the sobbing subsides.

  “Pulling out all stops?” he says.

  Deirdre holds a spoon to his lips.

  “Taste this,” she says.

  “Maybe too much basil.”

  “You can’t hold them like that,” she says.

  Dalton has PP by his straw-man hair.

  “It’s a doll,” he says.

  “Do me a favor and change out of those clothes. Change into that white cardigan, okay?”

  “Hear me out,” he says.

  “For the last time, I don’t want a baby.”

  “I don’t mind at all staying at home while you pursue your career,” he says, but it is too late, she’s out of the room and down the hall. He pats PP’s plastic bottom. “Daddy Dalton,” he says under his breath. He says it again—louder—but not so loud that she can hear it.

  * * *

  Cloyse Rue raises her wineglass and takes a noisy sip. The merlot has stained her lips bluish-black, a vivid contrast to her peach-colored hair. The hem of her dress settles at her knees.

  Her husband, Poppy, rests his hands on his thighs and crosses his legs. Pants ride above shoelaces, expose knobby ankles encased in white socks. Poppy said, “Hello, pleased to meet you. . . . No, no thank you, I’ll pass on the wine,” upon arriving and has not opened his mouth since.