by Nina Revoyr
Chapter Five
Oscar
As they headed north on the 2, and then west on the 210, Oscar stared at the huge swath of bare brown mountain. Three years ago, the Station Fire had set half the range aflame. During the day, dense smoke formations like nuclear clouds had loomed over the peaks; at night, the dark shapes were lit bright orange. Bears, deer, and mountain lions had fled down from the mountains, some ending up in suburban backyards. When the fire was finally out three weeks later, over 160,000 acres had burned and two firefighters were dead.
“All that damage,” Gwen remarked. She was sitting rigidly, fingers drumming her thigh. “It looks like a giant blanket’s been draped over the mountains.”
“It does,” agreed Oscar. A nice woman, and not bad looking, with a pleasant shape, he thought—but she was in way over her head. He’d watched her struggle in Tracy’s class with some of the tougher exercises and wasn’t sure she could handle this hike.
“They’ve finally just opened up some more of the trails,” Tracy said. “And it’s about time too. I mean, Echo Mountain’s nice, but it’s gotten so crowded. It’s like running at the friggin’ Rose Bowl.” Tracy was driving fast, weaving in and out of traffic. Every few minutes she reached over to take a gulp of coffee from her travel mug.
“The hikes out of Chantry Flats are cool,” Oscar said, trying not to glance at the speedometer. Chantry Flats had an old-time pack station, complete with mules, goats, and horses. He liked to take Lily sometimes, to see the animals.
“Mount San Gorgonio is awesome too,” Tracy said. “I was just up there last weekend, and there was still snow at the top. Best thing you can do down here to train for altitude.”
Now Gwen turned to her. “Train for altitude? How high up are we going?”
Tracy waved her off. “We’ll be fine. We’ll top out at Green Pass at about 11,500 feet, but not until the last day, so we’ll have time to acclimatize.”
Something occurred to Oscar. “If there’s snow on San Gorgonio, won’t there be snow on our route?”
“It’ll be fine,” Tracy said again. “There wasn’t much snow last winter and most of it’s probably melted off by now. If not, we’ll just make our way over it.”
“Is that safe?” Gwen asked.
“Don’t worry, it’s no big deal. Not like Rainier or even Shasta. You need crampons and ice axes for those, to keep from sliding down a slope or into a crevasse.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Oscar said.
“That’s part of the point, buddy. That’s part of the point. Climbs like that, one wrong step and you’re toast. You have to focus every second. But there’s nothing like a bit of risk to make you feel alive.”
This didn’t make Oscar feel better, but he decided to let it go. She was right—what was the big deal about a little snow? As they merged onto the 5 north and skirted up between the hills, he felt the first real sense of escaping, a sheer, uncomplicated joy at leaving his job behind. He was heading off to a place where income-to-loan ratios meant nothing, where no one cared about the best way to stage a house for a showing, where no one was even thinking about the steady drop in home values over the last five years, and where he wouldn’t see his empty, unfinished houses. In the mountains, he’d have no smartphone, no sharp clothes or fast car to fall back on. He’d have to depend on his endurance and grit, and if he got into a scrape, it would be his own guts and thinking that would have to get him out of it. He could do this, he knew it; he was up for the challenge. Coach Eric from the gym could kiss his ass.
“So, Todd,” Oscar said now, “have you hiked or backpacked much?”
Todd looked startled that someone had spoken to him.
“More when I was younger,” he managed. “I used to camp with my dad. But not so much as an adult, to tell you the truth. I go for hikes with the kids sometimes out in the Palisades or Malibu.”
Of course, Oscar thought. The Westsiders go farther west. This guy was probably soft.
“Most of my workouts these days are with Tracy,” Todd continued. “I went to SportZone for physical therapy last year for a shoulder injury, and then they referred me to Tracy. She pushes me hard, but it’s all in the gym—I’ve really missed being outside.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Yeah, a litigator. I work for a great firm, but it’s pretty dry to tell you the truth.” He sounded self-conscious. “The thing I like most is the pro bono work. I do some volunteer work for a couple of youth organizations.”
Gwen turned around in her seat and looked at him. “Really? I work for a youth organization down in South LA.”
“Tracy mentioned that. I’d love to hear more about it.”
And so Gwen began to tell him about the kids her agency helped, and Todd asked questions that seemed genuine, if clueless. (“But why do the kids join gangs?” “Why don’t the families show up for services, if they’re free?”) Oscar was a little irritated at Gwen—she talked as if Watts were the only tough place in the city. So he spoke up about Highland Park and Cypress Park, the poverty and crime, his own friends who’d been lost to gang violence. He described what had changed and what hadn’t in the last few years, the mixed blessing of gentrification. And while this was mostly directed at Gwen, he was annoyed at Todd too, for being so Westside sheltered.
But Oscar decided to go easy on the guy. It didn’t make sense to write him off, not yet. Not when they were north of Castaic now. Not when they were actually on their way, and there was so much anticipation in the small shared space that it seemed like the car might lift off the road and fly. Oscar grinned as they passed Pyramid Lake, with its namesake land mass rising out of the water. Then they drove on to Tejon Ranch and down the other side of the mountains, where they were treated to a bird’s-eye view of open plains flanked by hills as they arrived at the southern gate of the Central Valley.
Which wasn’t, Oscar remembered now, anything to write home about. They passed a clump of gas stations, hotels, and fast-food joints, and stayed on the 99 while most of the traffic veered away on the 5 toward San Francisco. They were entering a different California. Oscar had only driven on the 99 once before, and again he was struck by the contrast between the state’s heartland and its cities on the coast. Near Bakersfield they started to see the antiabortion signs, one of which bore an image of an aborted fetus so graphic that Oscar had to look away. Other signs blamed the current drought on the Federal Reserve. All of them towered over a landscape that was stunning in its flatness. Once they passed Bakersfield, they were deep into farmland—fields of onion and alfalfa and groves of olive trees. The vibrant green was dotted here and there with spots of color—farm workers, surely Mexican, toiling in brightly colored clothes in the sweltering summer sun. Late-model cars were parked at the edge of the fields, and some rundown trailers too; the people clumped around them looked so destitute that Oscar felt a lump in his throat. His own grandparents had been migrant workers; they might have worked these very fields. But before he could think too much about the workers, the car was past them.
He saw haphazard stacks of pallets, discarded farm machinery, ads for irrigation systems and pest control. He saw motels that looked like they hadn’t had a guest in his lifetime. They passed signs for an Indian casino and a half-built housing development, and trailers and RVs dumped in empty fields. Twice they passed huge cattle pens maybe half a mile square, full of cows jostling each other for food and moving around in their own slop. And the towns, or what were called towns—low-profile clusters of buildings that were all some shade of brown. Near one of them was a billboard boasting, Guns! Next Exit! with a silhouette of an assault rifle. Scraps of tire tread and tumbleweeds bumped against the guard rail, and every few miles they passed a gruesome bit of roadkill, a cat and several skunks and a brown, bloated dog. Hanging over everything was a haze of more brown—dust and smog and insecticide and God knew what else. No wonder crystal meth was such a problem here, he thought. As if boredom weren’t enough, you could die of ugliness.<
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And yet, and yet. Out the window, to the right, Oscar saw a line of white against the skyline. “Is that the mountains?” he asked.
The others turned and stared out the window.
“Looks like it!” Gwen said from the front seat.
“That’s them!” Tracy confirmed, and as they looked closer, Oscar could see the dark shape of them, the uninterrupted mass, the very tops covered in snow.
“Wow,” he said.
“They don’t look real,” Gwen said. They were so startling, so incongruous with the ugly terrain, that it was as if someone had rolled in the wrong backdrop.
“They’re real, all right,” said Tracy, grinning. “They’re very real. And that’s where we’re headed, kids. Right into the heart of ’em. Right into the heart of it all.”
They were quiet for a moment. “How far are we going, again?” Oscar asked. He was so used to letting Tracy take the lead on things that he hadn’t paid that much attention to details. But suddenly he felt a flash of concern. The one time they’d had a beer together to celebrate the closing on her house, she’d let slip that she was bored of Sport-Zone, the neglected housewives and the midlife-crisis men who were trying desperately to hold on to their physiques. He had the sense that what qualified as interesting to her might be beyond what the rest of them were up for.
“It’s a thirty-mile loop,” Tracy answered. “We’ll start out near Redwood Station and take the Cloud Lakes trail clockwise.”
“I looked at a couple of trip reports online,” Todd offered. “It sounds pretty challenging—almost five thousand feet elevation gain.”
“Yeah,” Tracy said, “it’s going to be a butt burner. But this is the real deal, guys. No simulated experience, no obstacle course, no artificial Tough Mudder bullshit.”
“Should we think about taking one of the less strenuous trails?” Oscar asked.
“They’re all going to be strenuous,” Tracy said. “Personally, I’d rather do a route that has a bit of challenge. Get away from the day hikers and car campers, you know? But suit yourself.” She shrugged. “If you’d rather take one of the easy trails, we can. It just won’t be a real wilderness experience.”
Annoyance flared up in Oscar’s chest. Tracy did this during workouts too, subtly or not so subtly challenging one’s bravery or manhood, and his knowing this didn’t make it any less effective. He’d signed up for Tracy’s class because he’d thought she was cute, but that had worn off fast. He remembered the crazy grin she sometimes got when some poor bastard was pushed so hard he started to retch.
“I’m game,” Todd assured her. “I just want to know what we’re getting into.”
“We’ll be fine,” Tracy said. “This trail’s established and there’ll probably be a few other people. It’s not like we’ll get turned around, and besides, you can’t get that lost in the Sierras. Walk two or three days, and eventually you’ll get out.”
“I brought a GPS,” said Oscar.
“Cool,” Tracy said. “See, Todd? We’ll be fine.”
“What about bears?” Gwen asked suddenly, and Oscar realized she’d been listening with growing anxiety.
“What about them?”
“Are there bears on this route?”
Tracy smiled. “Yes, but it’s nothing to worry about. They just want our food, and as long as we use our bear canisters, they’ll generally leave us alone. They’re kind of like stray dogs, you know? Just need to be shooed away.”
Oscar wondered if Gwen was having the same thought that he was—stray dogs, in his neighborhood, were often of the unneutered pit bull variety.
“I took this trip two years ago where the craziest thing happened,” Tracy continued. “I was alone in the backcountry north of Kings Canyon, ten or fifteen miles off trail. I was camping at one of those lakes up there that doesn’t have a name. One afternoon a huge thunderstorm rolled in, crazy torrential rain, and all the little streams that fed the lake swelled up into rushing waterfalls. There was a big-ass bear across the river from me and I was keeping an eye on him. Then a deer comes tumbling over the falls, legs and head flailing. It fell about two hundred feet. At first I thought I’d imagined it, but then some other debris came over and then the water got real brown, full of mud. A river bank must have given way up there and swept the deer with it. Anyway, I’m looking at this, not believing my eyes—and then the bear stomps over to the river and picks up the deer. He drags the carcass up the side of the mountain. He’s got it by the neck and it’s broken and limp, and he keeps stepping on it, trying to carry it up. He finally hides it behind a boulder, and then he looks back at me as if I’m going to challenge him for it. I’ll tell you . . .” She whistled and shook her head. “That was a moment when I felt the power of nature. That was a sight I won’t forget.”
Everyone was quiet. What was the point of this story, Oscar wondered, except to freak them the hell out?
They got off at Visalia and took a two-lane road to the north. Here, in the eastern part of the valley, there were hundreds of citrus groves. Lemons and oranges were plump in the trees, in rows that extended to the horizon. Every mile or two, they saw a makeshift fruit stand. The citrus groves were broken up by low, open fields; there were signs for squash and bushels of cucumbers. With the opening up of the landscape, the small quiet roads, Oscar felt more of the city fall away. The old wood-frame houses had tall, square structures behind them that looked like guard towers.
As they approached the junction with the highway that led up to the mountains, there was a cluster of buildings—a diner, flanked on one side by a dozen trailers. Across the narrow two-lane road stood a rectangular brick structure, the Franklin Cash Store.
“Let’s stop here,” Tracy said. “We can eat and grab some last-minute supplies.”
She parked in the dirt lot in front of the diner and they all stumbled out of the car. Gwen put her hands on her hips and leaned back, stretching; Oscar bent to touch his toes; Todd spinwheeled his arms like a batter on deck, loosening up his shoulders. “That was long,” he remarked.
“Yeah, I know, sorry guys,” Tracy said. “I was so pumped up to get here, I lost track of time.”
They had lunch in the diner, where the clientele was equally divided between locals—farmers and ranchers—and people headed up to the mountains. When they were finished, they walked across the road and over to the Franklin Cash Store. The building was boxlike, one story. It was painted white, or at least it had been white at one time; age and weather had stripped a layer of paint away. In the window there was a picture of the store in a previous incarnation, when it was the depot of a backwater train station. Tracy pulled the door open, which caused a bell to ring loudly, and they all stepped inside.
The place was chock full of stuff, so crammed with odds and ends that Oscar didn’t know where to look. Right in front of them was an old-fashioned punch-button cash register, and all around the store, on a continuous ledge that ran two feet below the ceiling, there were bottles and boxes and tins, everything from Morton’s Salt containers to SPAM tins to Hershey’s boxes to colored bottles of liquids and medicines that hadn’t existed since his grandparents’ time. Old street signs were mounted on lateral beams, and there were hand-painted messages on every wall. Don’t forget to be happy, one of these read. Never give up or grow up.
Oscar saw built-in shelves filled with random, haphazardly arranged goods—wooden signs with religious sayings painted on them, hand-knit scarves and socks, weird contraptions made from pieces of farm equipment, stacks of old paperbacks, colored soaps in the shape of feet, a display of local honeys and jams. Glass-fronted cabinets were stuffed with old newspapers and magazines, and flip-flops waved from a circular rack. There was a cluster of metal watering cans beside a bright pink piano decorated with black and white polka dots, and a bench with a leopard-skin cushion. There was an elaborate candleholder with half-burned candles, a pile of straw hats, a stuffed boar head wearing sunglasses, a cloth pig with an arrow through its shoulder. Ri
ght beside them a small refrigerator had a handwritten sign that read, Nightcrawlers and red worms. Fish love ’em! Straight ahead, on the back wall, was a collection of orange crate labels, and the railroad sign from the picture in the window. To the left, there was an old drugstore counter and a half dozen red-topped stools. A tall woman of indeterminate age stood behind the counter, and two middle-aged men in farm clothes and baseball caps sat facing her, nursing Coors Lights. A yellow sign on the wall behind her read, Danger: Men Drinking. A small black dog was perched on the end stool, watching them.
“Howdy!” the woman said cheerfully. “Come on in and take a look around!”
“Wow,” Gwen exclaimed. Her expression changed from uncertainty to wonder. She stepped in and wandered cautiously down one of the aisles.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Todd, equally happy, and Oscar looked at him. What was wrong with them? This was the store of crazy people. This was the store of someone who was not right in the head. Then he saw something else behind the counter: a display of Green Bay Packers paraphernalia—Topps cards, schedules, four or five felt banners, pictures of players from Paul Horning to Charles Woodson, a Sports Illustrated cover from their Super Bowl win in 1997. In the center of it all was a huge life-sized cutout of Brett Favre, who looked about twenty-five. The whole display was ten or fifteen feet wide and extended from the floor all the way to the ceiling.
Todd walked over to the counter, smiling. “This is the last place I’d expect to find a Packers fan,” he said. “Are you from Wisconsin?”
“No sir,” the woman said. “I just love ’em. I’ve always loved ’em.”
She was like an oversized bird, all wings and splayed feet, dressed in overalls, with a plaited pink and white shirt underneath. Oscar thought he detected a Midwestern twang, but maybe this was just the sound of rural white people everywhere.
“I grew up in Oconomowoc,” Todd said. “About two hours from Lambeau Field.”