Bad Call

by Stephen Wallenfels

  Her brown eyes flared a little when she made the Ceo comment. I take a beat before saying, “It read, and I quote: ‘Dude, you have a Q-tip in your ear. You’re freaking famous!’”

  It takes a moment for the truth to sink in. But when it does it hits her like a hammer.

  “Oh my God! You’re that guy!”

  “The video was posted on the school blog, which was then reposted on every social network site known to man. By the end of the day the YouTube video had over twenty-five thousand hits. Q-tip Guy was born.”

  “My friend Nadia sent me the link. You made the Jimmy Fallon show. I remember he called it the worst example of product placement ever.”

  “Make one tiny mistake in personal hygiene and the whole world knows about it.”

  “So that’s why you’re familiar,” she says. “But your hair was longer. And you had a ring in your ear. Fallon zoomed in a couple times.”

  “I cut my hair and lost the ring, which made my mother happy. So, anyway. There you have it. The story of Q-tip Guy, who now is known merely as Q.” I stand, throw a rock at the mirror, and hope that it doesn’t bring me bad luck. We put on our packs in silence.

  As we’re walking away from the lake Ellie says, “That must have been an important phone call.”

  I say, “Waxy buildup really sucks.”

  Ceo picks Colin up in the Mercedes outside his dorm. Says he doesn’t want him riding his bike on their big challenge match day and wasting energy. Colin says it’s only a ten-minute walk to class. Ceo says, No excuses. When I beat you, I want it to be your A game.

  Speaking of energy and excuses, Colin smells perfume on the seat and asks Ceo when he got to bed last night because isn’t that the same shirt you wore yesterday?

  Ceo says, I didn’t go to bed last night.

  Colin asks if he went to bed at all.

  We were in a bed, Ceo says. So technically, yeah.

  He drives top down because that’s what you do in SoCal on a morning like this, and Colin thinks about his night compared to Ceo’s. While Ceo was sneaking around off campus doing whatever, probably with that girl with a name that rhymes with caffeine, or maybe it was the girl he met yesterday at the taco truck on Wilshire, Colin was trying to study for a philosophy test while Grahame kept interrupting with practice questions from the ASVAB.

  Then he got the Mom call.

  She said she was going through Dad’s things in the garage and found that picture of you and him ice fishing the day you caught that big walleye. Do you want me to send it, since I’m going uptown anyway? It’s a Tuesday morning, so there won’t be a line at the Walmart.

  Since it was 10:39 p.m. SoCal time, that meant it was 1:39 a.m. in Vermont. He knew it was a red flag, that she wasn’t sleeping—still, after all these months, but what could he do from here? He could tell her no, please don’t send it because it would hurt too much to open the box, so he probably wouldn’t, at least not until finals were over. He could tell her she needs to go to sleep, maybe ask if she’s taking the pills, but that would open another can of worms, and there isn’t time. Not if he wants to finish studying and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. But he heard it in her voice, the backed-up ache of thirty years’ planning for a future that ended in an instant. How could he even think about not talking with her?

  I remember the day, he told her, stretching out on his bed and allowing a smile. Dad said I was fishing too deep. I brought up my line six inches, and when that fish hit, it almost yanked me into the hole. How old was I then?

  You were eleven, she said. It was the same year we had all that flooding in the spring after Hurricane Lloyd. The Renkeys’ dock broke loose, remember? They found it on the north shore up on the Holloways’ deck. Dad towed it back and only charged him forty dollars, which of course didn’t even cover the gas, not to mention three hours of his time.

  Colin knew she had more to talk about, more about this day and the day before that and all the fragments of Dad’s life still stuck in hers that have been reduced to details like what to keep and what to sell and what to give away. Today it’s the fish picture. Last week it was the binoculars he gave him for Father’s Day the year that Trevor Brandise broke his arm spearing pickerel. But Colin had a challenge match with Ceo the next day, and since Mom lit the Dad fuse, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on philosophy, so screw that, and he closed the book.

  Colin? Are you there? she asked.

  Yeah, I’m here, he said. Just thinking about that day. Dad got so excited, he slipped on the ice and bruised his hip.

  She asked him again if he wanted her to send the picture. It would be no problem—in fact I even have it in a box and bubble-wrapped all ready to go.

  Sure, he said. That would be nice. I’ll show my friend Ceo. He’s never even been fishing. And then he told her he needed to study for a philosophy final.

  She said she understood and told him she loved him, to make good choices, and hung up.

  The silence at the other end of the line was like an anvil on his chest.

  Colin tried not to think about her alone in that house with all those boxes of Dad and rolls and rolls of Bubble Wrap.

  He’d rather not think about it now.

  So he focuses on Ceo turning left into student parking, feeling stupid for accepting a three-minute ride. As they’re getting out of the car Colin asks him if he’s still on for poker this Saturday.

  Ceo says, Hell yeah. I’m always in the mood to take Grahame’s money. But I can’t next Saturday. My agent called last night with a thing, and I couldn’t say no.

  What thing is it this time? Colin asks.

  Some kind of catalog shoot. A guy pulled out, so I’m in.

  Where’s it at?

  San Clemente. Hey, you should come! I’ll introduce you to the girls….

  He leaves that hanging. The girls…As if Colin has a clue what to do with that.

  Thanks but no, he says. I need to hit.

  Q, this dry spell has gone on too long. It’s depressing the shit out of me.

  Colin says, You need to be thinking about the match this afternoon. That’s where your focus should be.

  He turns to leave for his class and the philosophy test he didn’t study for.

  Ceo says to him as he leaves, Remember, bring your A game. Nothing less. No excuses.

  Colin thinks about the box headed his way.

  Thinks about all that Bubble Wrap.

  The same goes for you, he says.

  And thanks him for the ride.

  After the lake, the crowd thins considerably. Once we fork left on the Snow Creek Trail, the crowd thins to exactly two. I thought there would be more people, since this is a weekend in prime foliage season. Back in Vermont, the hills would be crawling with hikers. I’m sure the smoke and threat of fire plays a role. Or maybe we got such a late start that everyone is already at the top, claiming the best camping spots.

  Another possibility is they know something we don’t and that’s why it is just the two of us on this trail, plus the occasional crow or indifferent mule deer. The important fact for me is we are alone. Alone in a beautiful forest under a mostly blue sky, and neither one of us seems to be in a hurry.

  I ask Ellie to tell me about her family. She says her father is an oncologist, currently doing research on immunotherapy treatments using different viruses, like polio, to stimulate the immune system into attacking cancerous tumors. She says the results are pretty amazing, and he’s doing a presentation this weekend in Seattle. Her mother is an airline pilot, but she stopped flying three years ago to focus on Ellie’s soccer. She has a twelve-year-old sister that loves gymnastics and dance and basically anything pink. Ellie has no pets at home (her sister has allergies), but after watching Must Love Dogs for the tenth time, she will have at least one dog as soon as she has her own place.

  Ellie’s voice helps distract me from the other voice in my head. The one that keeps whispering about this thing I read in the pages Ceo tore from the guidebook. He didn’t
mention it when he read the description to us outside the visitor center. Either he didn’t see it (which I doubt because it was in bold), or he didn’t think it was important (which I doubt because it was in bold). Either way, I feel the need to ask him if he got a wilderness permit. I don’t see how that could happen unless he bought one at the visitor center, which I doubt because he spent all his time finding the guidebook.

  The trail is too narrow to walk side by side, increasingly steep and rocky with great views but often with stomach-churning drop-offs. Ellie is in front setting the pace, which is steady and maybe even a little fast. I can tell she’s an athlete by the way she moves. Even with a pack on Ellie dances around and over rocks, never looks off-balance, and has bottomless lungs. My quads are burning, and she just isn’t slowing down. By my unofficial count we have thirty-five switchbacks down, seventy whatever to go.

  Whenever we pass through a clearing, we scan the switchbacks above us. Once, we caught a glimpse of what could be Ceo and Grahame, but they were way up there and not moving very fast. A few minutes ago we heard what sounded like a yell echoing across the valley, and seconds after it, something crashed down through the trees about fifty yards to our right. I add rockfall to my growing list of concerns.

  Plus there’s my decision to leave the hiking boots in Vermont. I was standing in the garage staring at them on the shelf next to the box labeled IRRIGATION SUPPLIES, and couldn’t pull the trigger. Now my right tennis sneaker has a dime-size hole where I drag my toe when I serve. The duct tape I used to cover the hole fell off somewhere between here and the lake. When a pebble slips in, which it often does, I have to shake my leg till it pops out. Most of the time it works. Not this time.

  I ask Ellie to stop.

  She waits at the top of the next switchback, glazed with sweat and sipping from her blue water bottle. I slip twice on the smooth granite covered with gravel on my way up to where she’s standing, then shake my leg one more time, trying in a vain attempt to dislodge the stone wedged under my big toe. She hands me her water bottle and asks, “Are you having a seizure?”

  I take three grateful hits, give it back to her. She tops it, stows the bottle in her pack, and waits while I kick off my sneaker and dump out the pea-size stone. The trail has already worn an embarrassing hole in my recently new sock.

  Lacing up my shoe, which isn’t that easy with a pack on, I say, “These are my lucky Nikes. In case you’re wondering.”

  “They look pretty lucky,” she says.

  “I would have worn my fancy boots like yours. But then I wouldn’t have any luck.”

  “Why do you need luck?”

  “That’s the thing about luck. You never know when you’ll need it. For example, it would be very lucky if you had duct tape in your pack.”

  “Sorry. I had to choose between tape and toilet paper. At least they’re both on rolls.”

  I’m framing my response when voices from above cut me short. We look up and see three men wearing packs making their way down. It takes a couple minutes for them to reach us. All of them are older, easily in their forties, one with a green do-rag and impressive beard dripping sweat, another with trekking poles, which I openly eye with envy. The last one has gray hair spilling out from under a go navy cap. He’s the oldest by far, maybe even in his sixties, but tall, lean, and barely breaking a sweat. Navy Guy is the one who asks us where we’re headed.

  Ellie looks at me like yeah, sport, where are we headed?

  “To the top of this. After that I think we’re going to either Tenaya Lake, or maybe climb North Dome, or do the Yosemite Falls loop.” I sound like I know what I’m talking about, but really I don’t. It’s straight from the pages in my pocket and the trail descriptions Ceo read aloud in the parking lot.

  Navy Guy, after a lingering look at my shoes, says, “Those are all good options. I did North Dome in February last year. Great views once the storm cleared.” He nods toward the ridge. “Where’re y’all spending the night?”

  “We’ll probably hike in a ways, then look for a spot.”

  “How many nights?”

  “Two.”

  Navy Guy’s brows gather in concern. He looks past me, scans the sky toward the west. I can tell he’s about to say something when his buddy with the poles says, “Do you folks have a bear canister?”

  “No,” I say, not even knowing what that is and not liking the sound of it. “Is there a problem?”

  He grunts. “Yeah. A three-hundred-pound problem.”

  Navy Guy says, “I was taking these guys on the Clouds Rest loop, but a bear got most of our food last night. Turned a three-day trip into an overnighter.”

  Do-rag adds, “I guess he’s a pretty nasty one. We ran into a couple like you on their way down yesterday. They tried to scare him off with whistles and spray, but that didn’t go so well. He wiped them out, too.”

  Navy Guy says, “Y’all better do a good job hanging your food. Better than us, anyway. An’ I thought we did a damn good job.” Unsmiling nods from his friends. “But you know how it goes. If a bear wants your food, he’s gonna get it.”

  No. I actually don’t know how it goes. My experience camping in the Green Mountains of Vermont never included a wild animal encounter other than a moose, and it was on the other side of a lake. I look at Ellie, wondering how this development works for her. She smiles at my oh shit expression and says to me, “Don’t worry. Ceo will probably talk it into bringing us a trout.” Then to the three men, “Speaking of determined animals, our friends are ahead of us. Maybe you saw them? They’d be the crazy ones running up the trail.”

  Navy Guy frowns. “Those two yay-hoos are with y’all?”

  “They’re racing.”

  “Well, that figures. I’ve seen some crazy shit in my navy days, but running up this trail wearing full packs? I’m gonna say that bypasses crazy and goes straight to dumb as a stump.”

  Sweaty Beard says, “We heard them before we saw them. I thought, Shit, it’s another bear. Then we saw them two switchbacks below us—running! The guy in back was trying to pass the guy in front. The guy in front moved like he was trying to knock the other guy off the trail.”

  “He did not do that,” the other friend protests. “It was incidental contact.”

  “Of course you say that, Darryl. That’s how you play hoops. Everything is incidental. Even if you hacked off a limb, you’d still call it incidental.” Darryl smiles and shrugs. “So anyway, back to what really happened. We lose track of your pals in the trees. Hear a kind of yell-scream…” He pauses while I trade troubled glances with Ellie. “Then it’s just one of them on the next switchback. No sign of the other guy. We’re thinking, Oh shit, what happened to him? Did he get knocked off the trail or what?”

  Ellie drinks from her bottle. “I’m confused. Which one are you talking about now?”

  “The blond guy carrying the ax. He was the one that was trying to pass. Except now he’s all alone. He jogs up to us, stops for a second, barely breathing hard, and asks if we could please check on his friend. Said he wasn’t looking too good. Then he jogs on up the trail. We’re thinking this is a little unusual but okay, whatever—”

  “Maybe you’ve figured it out by now,” Darryl says, leaning against his poles. “Charlie’s the talker in our family.”

  Ellie says, “Keep talking, Charlie.”

  “So we walk down to check on his friend. He’s sitting on a boulder, face as red as your shirt.” He points to Ellie. “Boy, does he look pissed! I’m talking the red-faced and frothing kind of pissed. Then get this. He rips off his pack. Opens the top. Hauls out what had to be a goddamn twenty-pound rock! You know, like, isn’t his pack heavy enough already? Then he yells, excuse my French: FUCK THIS FUCKING ROCK! and hurls it over the side.” Charlie shakes his head, freeing a couple more drips of sweat. “Un-freaking-believable.”

  I say, “You’d be surprised how freaking believable that is.” I’m pretty certain based on Ellie’s nervous glance up at the rim that she�
�s thinking what I’m thinking. Grahame and Ceo alone together is not a good thing right now. “Thanks for the update,” I say. “We’d better go.”

  Ellie puts her water bottle away.

  Charlie says, “Hang on a sec, I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.”

  “There’s a good part?” I ask.

  “Hell yeah. So we give him some Gatorade and a granola bar, stay with him a couple minutes until his breathing settles down and his color comes back. He thanks us for the help, says he’s good to go, mon, in some kind of accent. Then my dad,” he says, looking at Navy Guy, “opens his mouth like usual and says this stupid thing.”

  “What did you say?” Ellie asks Navy Guy.

  “I warned him about the bear.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Not so good,” Navy Guy says, his gray eyes smiling. “Y’all’s friend threw up that Gatorade and peanut butter granola bar all over Charlie’s boots.”

  They’re driving back from a tournament in Burlington where Colin lost in the semis to a kid from Stowe he beat last summer. Either the kid improved or Colin got worse, because it was basically a 6-1, 6-2 blowout. Colin nervous behind the wheel, ready to talk about anything other than the match, or nothing at all, which would work, too. But his father likes to fill empty silences with buckets of words.

  He starts by asking Colin for an update on his boss at the hatchery, does he still think that Champ, Lake Champlain’s version of the Loch Ness Monster, is real and eating all the perch? Which somehow morphs, as all conversations eventually do these days, into whether or not Colin should bail on that Chandler Gates school in California because that doesn’t seem to be shaping up like we all hoped. Colin knows he’s right. That decision has to be made, but letting go of this particular dream is a reality he’s not ready to face. Consequently the conversation doesn’t go so well for either of them, leading to a silence that even his father can’t fill. They stare out at all the green under gathering clouds with low black bellies promising a dump that Colin wishes had come two hours earlier. Lightning flashes down to treetops in the distance.