by Walter Kirn
He showed me the back of my head in a hand mirror, but took it away before I could look closely. “Sit tight; I missed a spot. Don’t budge.” I heard a snipping sound and moved my eyes and saw a red Swiss Army knife, open to its little pair of scissors.
“You’ll need one of these when we go out west,” Mike said. “You could cut tinder, build a signal fire.”
He trimmed around my ears. The scissors were dull.
“Remind me to get you the big one, with the saw,” he said.
I didn’t ask him why we’d need a signal fire.
Nailed to a post where the trail entered the woods was a hikers’ registration box containing slips of paper and a pencil stub. I sharpened the stub with my knife and followed the instructions inside the box lid. I wrote down the size of our party, the date, and that we’d be gone for two days. When I dropped the slip in the box, I saw another slip.
Don’t bother to follow.
I need to be alone.
I shouldn’t have dragged you along on
this. I’m sorry. I can get back to
Minnesota by bus.
I shoved the note in my pocket and kept walking; Joel and Audrey were still five minutes behind me. After a mile or so of level ground the trail started switching back and growing steeper. A trickle of water running down the middle deepened and widened and branched off into deltas, forcing me to jump in certain spots and tiptoe balance-beam style along dry ridges. My boots’ waffled soles attracted clumps of mud, creating broad, heavy pads that felt like snowshoes. I trimmed the pads with a stick but they grew back.
Audrey and Joel approached, already puffing. The laces of Joel’s boots were loose and dragging.
“I’m parched,” Audrey said. “I forgot to carry water.” A dry white crust had formed around her lips.
I handed over my dented tin canteen. “We have to conserve.”
Audrey gulped the water and gave the canteen to Joel.
“Conserve,” I said.
“Where are the iodine tablets?” Audrey said.
“Mike’s pack.”
“He thought of everything. Terrific.”
The canteen came to me but I barely wet my lips. The sun was high and harsh above the peaks. Audrey brought out a Baggie of salty trail mix but I warned her that eating it would make her thirstier.
“We have to do something for energy,” she said.
“I think Mike left me a Snickers.”
“Starvation rations. He should have just shot us and put us out of our misery.”
Out in the woods, so far from towns and people, the Snickers bar tasted unreal to me, synthetic. I outlined my plan as I broke it into thirds. I would go on ahead, walking fast, and Joel and Audrey could follow at their own pace. If, in three hours, I hadn’t caught up with Mike, I’d come back and we’d pitch a tent and wait for him.
“So who gets to keep the water?” Audrey said.
I checked the canteen’s neck and cap for leaks, then clipped it to a D-ring on Joel’s pack. Tears had pearled in the corners of his eyes, and the tip of his nose was already pink from sunburn.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Joel said.
Audrey said, “Of course he’s coming back. He’s only trying to scare us.”
“Why?” Joel said.
“For all I know, it’s chemical. He wants us to understand how much we need him. He did it when he played football: walked out of practice until his teammates begged him to come back. It’s how he lifts himself up when he feels low.”
“I’ll see you two in a couple of hours,” I said.
“Stay. Don’t let him play with you,” said Audrey. “This is about attention. Don’t give it to him.”
I fingered the note in my pocket. Audrey was wrong. This was more serious than attention-getting. I reminded Joel to save water, then turned away. I walked slowly in case they wanted to join me, but when it was clear they weren’t going to, I sped up.
I lit a cigarette with a waterproof match and looked up the side of the mountain, toward the snow. The zigzagging scar of the trail went up and up, vanishing into a stand of pines with brown exposed roots that shelved out over a cliff. There were hot spots on my shoulders under the pack straps where it felt like the skin was being rubbed away.
My endurance surprised me as I gained altitude. By staring at the ground and counting my steps I found I could easily mount the steepest grades. Each time I looked back to see how far I’d climbed, it was twice as far as I’d expected. My only regret was playing the martyr and leaving my canteen behind. Mistake. Rescuers have a right to be selfish, to put their mission first. Next time I put myself out for someone else I was going to make certain demands up front.
I knew I was weakening when I found myself wanting to pick and eat a ring of mushrooms growing on a log. I opened my trail guide to edible wild plants but couldn’t match the mushrooms with any pictures. Horse-flies were buzzing around my sweaty scalp. I slapped one with an open palm and combed out the crisp, stubby body with my fingernails. Next a wave of stinging gnats attacked. Their bites raised welts I could feel my heartbeat in.
I needed fluids. I was burning up.
Though Mike had warned me that drinking untreated water could give me parasites, I decided to risk it. I cupped my hands below a dribbling spring and splashed cold water on my face and lips. After the first drink, there seemed no point in stopping; either I’d been infected or I hadn’t. I drank until my stomach strained my belt and I wondered how long it would be before the cramps came, if they came at all. I might get lucky. Maybe Mother Nature cut breaks for people when she saw them doing the right thing.
The next priority was to treat my sunburn. Using my Swiss Army knife, I sliced strips of cloth from a T-shirt in my pack and tied them around my head in a loose turban. That’s when I remembered Audrey’s makeup bag. I took it from my pack, removed the lipstick, and scooped out a blob of it with the smallest knife blade. I spread the cool grease across my nose and forehead, sealing out the sun.
I’d come through, alone, with no one’s help. I inspected my face in the mirror of Audrey’s compact and liked what I saw: a painted wild man. Appearances no longer mattered. Just the mission.
I pounded my chest with my fists and whooped my name. It disappointed me not to hear an echo.
I reached a spot on the trail where fires had burned. Without their needles, the trees seemed thin and spindly, and in the coal and ash green plants were growing, some of them with yellow starlike flowers. Now and then I heard a chattering squirrel, but otherwise the forest seemed deserted. I’d expected the mountains to be filled with wildlife, but instead they felt like a vacant stadium or a big house whose owners have moved away.
I stopped and touched my stomach. No discomfort. Apparently, the water had been pure. I raked another dead fly out of my hair.
Suddenly, I heard voices up ahead. A man and a woman came striding down the trail, followed by a panting yellow Lab with a red bandanna around its neck. The couple had lean, bowed legs and sun-worn faces. Various camping tools and cooking utensils dangled from loops on their army surplus rucksacks.
“Down the up staircase,” the man said, coming near me. He handed a plastic bottle to his companion, who squeezed the sides and drank the arc of spray. These people knew what they were doing. They were serious.
The woman passed me the water. I drank and drank. I was too far gone to be polite.
“You lose two quarts an hour up here,” the man said. He fixed me with a disapproving stare. “Tell me you’re not alone up here this evening.”
“I’m here with my family. We got separated.”
The man faced the woman. “They got separated.”
“I’m wondering if you passed someone?” I said. “Tall guy. Unshaven. Orange pack. Green shirt. He has a bad leg, so maybe he was walking funny.”
“Don’t tell me he’s in your party?”
I kept my mouth shut.
“You listen up,” the man said, pointing a finge
r. “These mountains are not a playground. They’re not a park. Getting ‘separated’ has consequences. Lacing your boots too tight has consequences.”
The woman said, “Loring, regulate. You’ll frighten him.”
“This is not good,” said Loring. “This is bad. Besides your father—and yes, we passed him—how many more of you are there?”
“Only two. How did he seem?” I said. “Upset? Depressed?”
The couple looked at each other with lowered eyes. I got the feeling they’d been alone so long that they no longer needed to use words.
“You’re coming with us,” the man said. “That’s an order. We can send up a ranger once we’re down. If your father is having some kind of mental episode, it’s better if he deals with an authority figure. Come on, let’s go, kid.”
“I can’t.”
“You want to die up here? Is that the plan?”
“I don’t have a plan.”
“I see that. What have you been doing for liquids? Don’t tell me.”
I sidestepped the couple and broke into a trot. My turban unwound in the breeze and blew away and the heat of my breath began to melt the lipstick covering my face. I realized I must have looked crazy to the couple, and yet they hadn’t said a word about it, either out of kindness or from embarrassment. The thought made me want to put more distance between us, and when I heard them calling after me, I pressed my hands to my ears and started running.
I began to find things on the ground. Sunglasses. A coil of rope. Some tent stakes. I collected the objects as I walked, but when they got heavy I stashed them under a boulder. A few minutes later I glimpsed Mike’s pack lying off the trail on a steep slope, its contents strewn about like crash debris. Either it had burst open during its fall or a wild animal had found it.
It was time to stop and put my thoughts together. I shrugged off my pack and leaned it against a rock, then turned in a slow circle to get my bearings. I was standing at the bottom of a gravel field, below an icy, teakettle-shaped peak. I called out Mike’s name but my voice seemed weak and small.
I considered turning back but I didn’t feel up to it. I didn’t feel up to going forward, either. It hit me then that the hikers had been right: a person could die this way. From indecision. From not being able to do anything but stand there feeling his heart beat and his mouth dry up.
I had to eat. I dug through my pack and came up with a package of freeze-dried Stroganoff. I bit off a chunk that melted to salty broth and looked around for wood to build a fire. I was too high, though—well above the tree line. I started pulling up hunks of dry brown grass, then I tore up my field guide, added it to the pile, and struck a paraffin match. A flame burst up. Even once it was going strong, though, it gave off no real warmth. It seemed to need all its heat just to keep burning.
I called out again. No response. Again. Again.
Finally, an answer. “I’m over here.”
“Where are you?”
“Hurry up, I’m freezing. Hurry.”
It was dark by then. I followed Mike’s voice across the gravel field, stepping with care but slipping and tripping anyway. Ahead, I saw water shining. Reflected stars. The moon was an egg, just short of full, and orange. A rodent stood up on a rock in silhouette and shrilly chuckled, then skittered out of sight.
“I’m coming. Stay still. Are you hurt?”
A wavering groan. Too unsteady and strangled to be an act.
The footing was swampy. The suction slowed me down. One leg sunk down to the thigh in muck and when I pulled it free my boot came off. That’s when I spotted him, lying on a rock slab. His T-shirt was stained dark around the bottom and one of his legs lay extended in the pond as if it had been burned and he was cooling it.
“I cut myself. It’s deep. It isn’t clotting.”
There is the normal brain and the first-aid brain. I switched on my first-aid brain. The leg in the pond was surrounded by a haze visible as a distortion of the star-shine. The water was bleeding Mike, leeching out his blood. I crouched, got hold of the leg, and lifted it, but couldn’t locate the cut for all the dripping.
“Where is it?”
“Kneecap. Put it down again.”
“It needs to be elevated. Christ,” I said.
I saw the wound: a pair of ragged flaps around a shredded lump of oozing meat. The blood welled up and warmed my numbing fingers as I managed to cradle the leg with one hand and unbutton my shirt with the other. I bit down hard on my collar, tore it free, then started bandaging.
“You must be thinking I wasn’t serious. I would have cut my wrist if I’d been serious. That’s what you always hear about: the wrist. Isn’t that what you always hear about?”
The trauma had soured Mike’s breath; I turned my face away. “Lie still,” I said.
“You followed me.”
“I had to.”
Mike clutched my arm and pulled himself half upright. “I want to kiss you. You followed me. You came.”
The kiss was all beard, all scratch. It scoured my cheek.
“I’m better now. I feel better now,” Mike said. “Lighter or something. Clearer.”
My stomach gurgled and turned over. “Oh God.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I gave Mike my shoulder. He held on tight.
“I faked the whole thing. I was fine after the surgery. All the knee needed was a little exercise. Woody knew. I could see it in his face. Your mother knew, too. She just pretended she didn’t. She had her reasons, I guess. I had mine, too. Sometimes I wish they’d sawed the whole damn leg off.”
It was an interesting speech, enlightening, but I was in no shape to take it in. The parasites had come to life inside me. Millions of them, nibbling their way out.
A breeze blew across the pond and shattered the moon.
We started down the mountain in the dark. I made Mike wear long pants to cover the bandage and I broke off a tent pole for him as a cane. And though the limp he’d given himself was real, it seemed like he was hamming this up, too, teasing out the dramatic possibilities. He hobbled, he hopped, he slumped, he stiffened. I told him that if he didn’t cut it out I’d take away the cane.
He cut it out.
I was suffering, too. The cramps came on gradually, with mounting force. The first ones struck a minute or two apart; I handled them by clenching my stomach muscles. Then they accelerated and spread out. I couldn’t hold back. Hot pliers wrenched my gut. The liquid drained down my leg into my boot and the stench hit me hard and cleared my sinuses. The next gush, full of gas and bubbles, was blisteringly hot, all steam and acid.
“Don’t stop,” I said. Mike was slowing.
“It hurts.”
“Don’t whine.”
Time flattened out. The woods were quiet, birdless. Every few minutes Mike would start explaining himself. Audrey’s love had drained him of his drive, making a pro career seem grim and miserable. But football had spoiled him for a normal life, pumping him full of juice that made his heart pound, even in his sleep. He’d sold his mind and education short by coming on as he-man to sell hunting knives. I asked him to save it; to speak to a professional. I told him my job was to get him down the hill and his job was to look normal when we got there.
The sky was lightening when we saw the glow of Joel and Audrey’s campfire. Either they hadn’t gone to sleep or they’d just woken up. The couple was with them. Loring sat next to the fire holding a skillet; he flipped a pancake and the others clapped. Their camp smelled of coffee and bacon and burning sap and they seemed to be having a high old time together. Audrey hummed a bar of an old cowboy song and everyone joined in, Joel keeping time with a saucepan and a spoon. The others rocked side to side and waved their cups.
Mike let go of my shoulder and sat down. He rested his cane on his lap and bowed his head.
“You coming?” I said. “I need liquid. I have a parasite.”
“I can’t.”
“New rule. It’s simple.” Mike raised his
eyes to me. “Whatever you can’t do, you have to do. You got it? The worse it hurts, the more you smile. Get up. And no sad stories. You got lost. I found you. An everyday adventure in the woods.”
Mike took his time, but eventually he stood. I told him to leave the cane behind. He dropped it.
“Good. Now walk. Chin up. No limping. Good.”
“You’re stronger than I am. I’ve sold you short,” Mike said.
I’d been waiting a long time for him to say this, but somehow it didn’t please me the way it should have. I’d hoped we’d be strong together, not just one of us. I hadn’t planned on being strong alone.
kingdom come
1
When the doorbell rang and I rose to answer it, putting down a book from the school library on jobs in the communications industry, how was I to know a new religion was waiting on our porch?
They were no more than boys, just a few years older than me. They looked like college athletes dressed for a banquet in suits and ties and name tags. Black vinyl briefcases hung from their right hands and I could smell talcum powder on their skin. One boy was blond, with a smallish, turned-up nose and pebbly cheeks the texture of elbow skin. The other was dark and handsome and wore glasses whose lenses were thickly smudged with fingerprints. A scar from a cleft palate operation knotted his upper lip. He lisped a little.
“My name is Elder Jessup,” he said, “and this is my partner, Elder Knowles. We’d like to speak with you, if possible, about God’s plan for the American family.”
I waited for him to say more. He’d startled me.
“It’s Elder Knowles and my privilege to represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
“The Mormons,” Elder Knowles said. “Ever heard of us?”
I had, in fact. I’d seen their ads. Beautifully shot and cast with flawless models, the inspirational television spots, stuck between commercials for cars and wine, had always jarred me a little, but in a good way. Their style was corny but professional, their messages mysterious yet reassuring. They seemed to promise a life of health and peace, of cheerful board games played in front of fireplaces and nourishing suppers shared in cozy kitchens. What’s more, I remembered meeting a Mormon boy at Camp Overcome—a bed wetter named Tyson from Salt Lake City who’d covered his ears when the campers told dirty jokes and had the blondest hair I’d ever seen.