Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "The side trail to Bear's Den Hostel should be around here somewhere," Isis said. I remembered Anonymous Badger's descriptions of the place: an old stone mansion that had been converted to a youth hostel. He said it was one of the most beautiful buildings along the trail. "Oh, here we go." The side trail was marked with blue blazes, as usual, but instead of the customary rectangle, they were shaped like bear tracks. The hostel was an immense building of dark stone, set in a wide lawn that still held improbable vestiges of green. The light of sunset caught in the tall windows and the tops of the trees. We hurried for the door, amid the gathering chill of the shadows.

  Sharkbait sat on the porch smoking a cigarette. Bundled in all of his spare clothing, lie looked a little like a scarecrow. "Hey, ladies. Where did Lash and Black Forest go?"

  "Hey, Sharky. The others decided to go on;' I said.

  Sharkbait grinned. "Their loss. I met a trail angel here, guy named Fanny Pack. He's gonna slack me a twenty-three tomorrow. You in?"

  The prospect of slacking and returning to the hostel for another warm night sounded wonderful. I knew we could slack a twenty-three-we had hiked that distance and more into Harpers Ferry, with our full packs. -Definitely!" I said.

  Sharkbait ground out the last of his cigarette and dropped it in the ashtray, and we headed inside.

  "Welcome to Bear's IDen" This was a compact, vivacious woman with sparkling blue eyes and short gray hair. "I'm Melody. Patti and I are the caretakers here. Let me show you around. You can leave your packs here for now." She gave its a quick tour, pointing out the kitchen, the dining room, the bunk- roonts, laundry machines, and a freezer full of Ben and Jerry's. The common room caught my interest above anything else, even the ice cream; in one corner of the burnished wood floor, behind a row of comfortable couches, stood a piano.

  "May I play it?" I asked breathlessly.

  "Of course," Melody said with a smile. "The only rule is no 'Chopsticks' and no 'Heart and Soul"'

  "Got it. Thanks" For the next few hours, there was nothing but the black and white keys, and the sound, and I was happy.

  Isis cooked dinner from the hiker box: rice and beans with fresh onion and slightly stale bread toasted with butter. Afterward, we each bought a pint of ice cream and moved into the common room with Sharkbait.

  "Apple Crumble," I said. "Hnunni. I think I'll go back to Cherry Garcia in the next town "

  Melody joined us on the couches and introduced her partner Patti. She was a tall, slender woman with long dark hair and deep brown eyes. We shared stories from our hike, and Melody reminisced about her own hiking daysshe had finished the A.T. in 1999. Patti, who had hiked only a few sections of the Trail, was quiet at first, but as the evening went on she spoke more often. Her words revealed a sharp sense of humor.

  As the moon rose outside the windows, Sharkbait told the story of his trail name-the real story.

  "Tough break," Patti said, her forehead wrinkling with sympathy.

  "Yeah, well, you play the cards you're dealt." He dug into his ice cream. "I don't get it. This is my second pint tonight. I eat like this in every town, and I still can't keep the weight on "

  Patti's eyes sparkled with amusement. "That's because men are expendable."

  "What?" Sharkbait looked up at the four women around hint, slightly alarmed.

  "Oh, it's true," Patti said. "Biologically speaking, men are a dime a dozen. It doesn't take much sperm to keep the population going. Women, on the other hand, are built to last. Childbearing is pretty important. That's why men lose so much weight on the Trail, and women just keep plugging along." She gave a beatific smile. "It's just biology. Don't take it personally."

  Melody shook her head. "There you go again." She turned to Sharkbait. "That's how she got her trail name."

  "Which is ..."

  "Fembah." Patti smiled again, looking sweet and saintly. "It's short for Feminist Bitch from Hell."

  In the morning, we woke before dawn and ate our usual quick breakfast, instant oatmeal mixed up cold with a little dry milk. Sharkbait gnawed on a hunk of bread from the hiker box, bleary-eyed, saying little; he was not a morning person. We heard wheels crunch on the gravel outside, and we bolted the last few bites.

  The sky in the east was crimson, a bright bloodstain between the bare trees. To the west, stars still hung behind the branches on a curtain of indigo. A little wind sent the dry leaves stuttering across the ground. We shivered in our fleeces and Gore-Tex pants.

  "Hi there! You must be the Barefoot Sisters. I've been wanting to meet you!" Fanny Pack shook our hands enthusiastically. He was a heavyset man in his fifties, with sparse gray hair and a wide, animated face. His silver minivan was emblazoned with A.T. stickers. A banner taped to the rear window read, "not all those who wander are lost."

  As we drove out to the trailhead, Fanny Pack regaled us with stories from his '99 hike. "Best six months of my life. I'm saving up right now to do the PCT." At the Gathering, I had seen slideshows of the Pacific Crest Trail tra versing sharp-crested western Mountains. I knew many A.T. hikers who'd gone on to hike the PCT, and I could imagine why.

  "I've got to get back in shape first, though," Fanny Pack continued. "Working with computers, I don't get out as much as I'd like to"

  As we drove, the light in the sky changed from red to orange to gold. The sun's blinding rays came through the trees on the ridge at last. "Tell you what," Fanny Pack said. "I could slack you guys all the way through Shenandoah. I'm due for a few vacation days anyway."

  "Are you sure?" Isis asked him. "I mean, it would be awesome for us .. We had been wondering how we would carry enough food for the national park. In summer, we knew, concession stands and convenience stores kept hikers well-fed. In this season, it would be 107 miles of trail with no amenities but the shelters and a few pay campsites, and without easy access to townshitching was forbidden on the parkway.

  "Oh, for sure," Fanny Pack said. "That way, I could come and park at road crossings and hike in to meet you guys, and then hike back out ... I'd get some exercise, that'd be good. Then I could take you guys down to a hotel in town at night. You wouldn't have to sleep out in this cold."

  As he spoke, he became more and more excited. I did, too. I had been a little Worried about Shenandoah; even though I knew the trail in the park was supposed to be well-graded and smooth, and even though we were in nuich better shape than we had been at the start of the Trail, I didn't relish the thought of another Hundred Mile Wilderness. Especially not in this season. Fanny Pack Was offering us an easy way out, and we jumped at the chance.

  "I have to work tomorrow," he said, "hut I can drop you guys off at the trailhead in the early morning, like today, and then I'll meet you the day after, in the park. How's that sound?"

  "Sounds perfect. You're an angel."

  "Great. Oh, here's the trailhead." He pulled into a gravel parking lot by the side of the road. We jumped out of the vehicle with our hiking sticks and the daypacks that Melody had lent us the night before. "You guys take care. I'll see you tomorrow!" Fanny Pack sped off with a cheery wave.

  Sharkbait zoomed down the trail. Even with his flat-footed stride, he was one of the fastest hikers I had ever seen. In no time, he rounded a bend and disappeared. Isis and I moved faster than we had with our packs, but still not exactly fast. The chill of morning made my feet sensitive, and half the trail here was gravel. I leaned heavily on nay sticks.

  The trail started out flat, but toward afternoon we hit the Roller Coaster. It was maddening; the trail went up and down over steep-edged spurs that extended down from a ridge. We struggled upwards maybe 5(1(1 feet, then dropped down in a knee jarring descent, over and over. I lost track after ten of these mindless hills. The most exasperating thing was that we could see easier potential trail routes all around us. At every vista, we saw the long, flattopped ridge extending above us on the right side. Below, the valley floor was smooth and level. The trail seemed to be routed in the hardest possible place.

  The slack took
us all day and into the night. The wind picked up, chilly and fierce, as darkness cloaked the ridges. Luckily I had a headlamp now; I had decided to buy one in Harpers Ferry after our epic night-hike. The days were only getting shorter. It was the lightest headlamp I could find, made from the same LEI) technology as our Photons. It would run for nearly a hundred hours on two double-A batteries. The glow it cast was cool, though, bluish-tinted and faint. When I glanced down, my feet looked pale and corpselike. For once, I longed for an old-fashioned flashlight, with its comforting yellow glow.

  My left knee began to hurt on the downhills. It was an old injury; I had torn my ACL in high school track. Usually it would begin to ache when a storm was coming, and given the red sky that morning, I tried to dismiss the pain as the usual weather warning. But this time it was more insistent, and it began to slow inc down as the dark miles went by.

  At last we came back to the hostel, tumbling into the common room and shutting the door quickly behind us to keep the cold wind out.

  Sharkbait wore a look of concern. "I was about ready to come lookin' for you two. '

  "What time is it?"

  "Six thirty."

  "That's not so late. What time did you get in?"

  He looked a little sheepish. "Four"

  Fanny Pack picked its tip before the crack of dawn again. The sky was overcast; instead of the brilliant colors of yesterday morning, we saw a blanket of oppressive gray. Fanny Pack was as cheerful as ever. "Ran into some friends of yours yesterday!"

  "Who? Where?" Isis asked.

  "Oh, a couple of young guys, hiking gist. One of them had a bright orange hat-"

  "Lash and Black Forest!" I cried, delighted.

  "Right. Those were their names. And a girl, too. Curly hair. Name started with N ..:'

  "Netta!" I was glad to hear she was still on the Trail and so close ahead. She hiked fast and hardly ever signed in registers.

  "Yeah, that was it. And a guy with a dog. Heald. Well, I saw them at a road crossing yesterday. I told then about slacking you guys through the park, and they wanted in on it too. So here's the new plan: I'm going to meet you guys tomorrow morning in Front Royal. Place called the Pilgrim's Court Motel. We can all slack from there."

  "Sounds great," Isis said. "Thanks so much, Fanny Pack"

  "Hey, it's no problem. I got my trail name 'cause I slacked so much on my hike. I like to pass on the favor. What goes around comes around, you know . . . well, here we are again." He pulled into the parking lot. The sky was lightening gradually, almost imperceptibly. "See you tomorrow!"

  It was a short hike, slightly more than half yesterday's mileage, but by the end of it I was exhausted. My knee felt a little swollen and hot to the touch, and it ached on long downhills. I was ready for a night in a motel and a few more days of slacking.

  The sun was just above the ridgeline when we reached the highway into Front Royal. Traffic sped past us without slowing down. We waited, and the sun sank under the rim of trees. Shadows thickened along the spines of the ridges. I was cold, tired, hungry. Still the cars raced past on the highway, a ceaseless stream.

  "I'm going to try something," I said, taking my hat off.

  "What, let your hair down?"

  "Yup." I started loosening my braid.

  "Jackrabbit, I don't know if that's such a good idea. I mean, I know it worked for Waterfall a couple times, but we might just get a ride we don't really want ..:" The last word trailed off as an oversized pickup that had just Hashed past us hit the brakes, swerved into the breakdown lane, and began backing up. We glanced at each other, then at the driver. I saw a cowboy hat, a puff of blond hair, a kind face decorated with an abundance of blue eye shadow and shocking pink lipstick.

  "Y'all hop in," she called through the open window. "Go on and toss your bags in the back there. At first I wasn't gonna stop, but then I saw y'all was ladies."

  She dropped us off at the Pilgrim's Court motel as dusk thickened. We checked in at the office, with the mouthwatering aroma of a Pakistani dinner wafting in from the room next door. The owner, a tiny wizened woman with dark eyes, told us that our friends were expecting us in room twelve. She indicated the one-story complex across the parking lot. When I asked about ice for my knee, she ducked into the room next door and brought out a bag of ice cubes from her own freezer. Isis asked about restaurants in Front Royal.

  The woman wrinkled her nose. "Not any good restaurants in this town. Mcl)onald's, Burger King, steakhouse, pizza, Mexican, Chinese food. Have nothing good."

  Isis thanked her. We took our stinking packs over to the room, where Netta met us at the door. We tossed our packs down and hugged her.

  "It is very good to see you," she said. "I miss talking to women. The boys are in room sixteen. They watch television." She made a face. "They ask me to watch with them, but I am tired of men. You know what I mean"

  While Netta was in the shower, Isis and I did pay a visit to the boys' room. We had been hiking by ourselves for so long that we weren't tired of their company yet. The guys were watching "The 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" on VHI. Black Forest bounced oil the bed in time to an Iron Maiden tune.

  "Any thoughts on dinner?" I asked him over the electric scream of guitars.

  "We are going to the steakhouse. We are men. We are meat-eaters." A gleeful smile lit up his round face.

  "Lash, I thought you were a vegetarian," I said.

  Lash was lying on the bed, braiding Isis's waist-length hair. He looked up with a slightly dreamy smile. "Whatever, dude"

  Heald and Annie curled in a corner of the floor, exuding a stench of wet dog and unwashed human. "I want steak," Heald said simply and went back to waxing his boots. Sharkbait said nothing. He was busy addressing his first sixpack of the night.

  I made an argument for Chinese food, but there were no takers. The odor of humanity in the close-packed room and the noise of the television were beginning to grate on my nerves. "I'm going back to the girls' room," I said. "I've gotta ice my knee. Maybe Netta will have some better ideas about dinner."

  Isis and I left for the sanctuary of our room, with its plaid curtains and paisley bedspreads in shades left over from the 1970s. Netta sat on the bed, combing out her wet hair and softly singing a Hebrew song. After icing my knee, I began the town chores, which were now so automatic I barely thought about them: washing and filling water bottles, sorting through my food bag to separate trash from reusable Ziplocs, hanging the tent and the ground cloth over the bathroom door to dry out. Isis stepped into the shower. In a few minutes the phone rang. I picked it up.

  "Black Forest says he has a compromise," came the dry voice of Sharkbait. "He says we can go to Burger King, and he'll give you his tomato" There was a pause and then a burst of laughter in the background. "He says he'd like to give you his pickle, too►"

  Over the next few days, we slacked the smooth trails of Shenandoah National park and stayed in cheap motels in town. The cold of winter deepened; once an inch of water left in one of my bottles froze solid. The trail was rough gravel underfoot. But we always had enough to eat now, and we slept in a warm place each night in the company of friends. Compared to the preceding month on the Trail, when we had suffered from loneliness, hunger, dehydration, and cold, this was a life of total luxury.

  One night, we went to the Mexican restaurant. The place was packed. The waitress found a few extra chairs, and we just barely managed to cram all seven of us into a booth made for four. When all our food arrived, the little table creaked ominously. There was no conversation for a while, as we addressed the yuesadillas, enchiladas, and heaping plates of nachos.

  "This has been the best year of my life," Lash said, wiping the salsa from his beard and sitting back from the table with a satisfied smile.

  I agreed. "Yeah. Finishing college, and now hiking the Trail. It's been pretty sweet"

  Black Forest made a face. "I do not think so"

  "What was the best year of your life, then I asked.

  "The year I was
fourteen" We all laughed, but he protested. "No, this is true. I had no worries. I would like to be fourteen for the rest of my life."

  "I don't know," Isis said. "I'm a lot happier at twenty-five than I was at fourteen. Trail life is pretty worry-free, too. The biggest concern I've had in the last couple days is trying to find gloves that fit-my hands are so big ..:"

  Lash held his up for comparison. Her hands were almost the same size as his. "Wow. They are pretty big, for a woman's."

  Black Forest, crammed in next to Lash, immediately put his hand up against my sister's. His fine-boned, almost delicate fingers were easily half all inch below the tips of hers. He looked incensed. Just as the crowd around us reached a lull in conversation, he shouted out loudly, "you should not judge my manliness by the size of my-" He stopped, noticing the silence around him and the looks of shock on the restaurant patrons' faces. "-hands," he finished in a tiny voice.

  That night, while Isis was in the shower, I sat next to Black Forest on the bed in the girls' room, watching the Simpsons. His hand gravitated toward mine, and eventually our bodies leaned together as well. We ended up lying there, side by side. He put his arm around nee, and I reached out to embrace his shoulders. It felt strangely innocent and necessary, as though holding him could somehow make up for the pain, the cold, the loneliness of the last few months. Netta watched with a sad and knowing smile.

  Black Forest kissed my forehead. "You are a beautiful woman."

  "Don't flatter inc. I won't fall for it."

  A sly, calculating look came into his eyes. "Everybody has a price. What's yours?"

  Coming from anybody else, that remark would have elicited a swift slap in the face. I couldn't hit Black Forest, though. I thought about what he had said in the restaurant: (,urteeu was the hest year of my lif'. I knew he was twentythree, a year older than I was, but he looked about fourteen then, with his wide blue eyes and eager face. The thought of sleeping with him was laughable. "What's my price? Well, more Snickers bars than you could carry!"