Deceit and Other Possibilities

by Vanessa Hua

  The first half-mile of the trail was flat, alternating between meadows and groves of trees before climbing steeply. Where the trail petered out, Anna checked the route against the topo map, trying to make sense of the rippling lines of elevation. Navigation was new to her.

  Laughter and conversation came up fast behind her. She stepped to the side and a family passed by: a mother, a father, a teenage girl, and a young boy. They weren’t going far, judging by their thin sandals, fanny-packs, and single bottle of water shared between them. The sandy-haired boy, maybe eight, with a narrow fox’s face, trailed behind. He halted and picked up a stick, which he banged against the trees. After a few more steps, he used it to dig into the ground, flinging stones and clods.

  His parents called for him—“Wyatt! Wyyy-at!”—and he dropped the stick and ran to catch up.

  Anna waited until she could no longer see or hear them before she started walking. She picked up the stick and hurled it into the trees. She and Ken had no children. She’d mentioned the trip to a few friends, but couldn’t imagine them or her siblings coming with her. She had to take this hike alone. She pushed forward with two spring-loaded walking sticks. Although she used to disdain extra equipment as unnecessary coddling, her knees and back ached without them. The pack bit into her shoulders and pulled at her chest. Winded, she rested, took a long drink of water, and looked at the steep switchbacks up the mountain. Was this a mistake? She and Ken trekked farther before, but she was older and slower now. She would have to hike faster or risk arriving at the campsite in the dark.

  The winter after Ken died had been unusually rainy and many sites were snowed in until late in the summer. Some had been closed for the entire season. She imagined the frozen campsites, never receiving the airy touch of spring nor the deep, still heat of summer nor the fading warmth of autumn. Come winter, fresh snow would fall on packed drifts untouched by the present. If she burrowed into the snow banks, what remained of the past would be hers.

  Several times, Anna climbed over fallen trees, grabbing their branches and hoisting herself, then jumping or sliding down. Each time she landed, she wobbled for a moment. With each jolt, she could see a flash of Ken in motion—the way he knelt to weed a tomato plant, reached for a platter high up or pulled her head to his chest. She scraped the back of her knee on a tree. Wincing, she stopped to check the damage—two long scrapes, and a trickle of blood—when a ranger loped up from behind her and asked to see her wilderness permit. She turned around, showing where it was tied to her pack. He wore green shorts and a button-up shirt, with a hat clapped over a short brown ponytail. No wedding ring, and looked to be in his early twenties, with a scraggly goatee, which might have been an attempt to add a few years to his smooth baby face. Billy was embroidered on his shirt pocket. He needed nothing more than what fit into his small pack. Was endurance a test of how little you could survive on? Proof of how much you carried inside yourself?

  “This is the best time of year to go,” he said. “After the crowds are gone.”

  He said he was going into the backcountry for a few days, first to Pear Lake and then to Bodie Lake, to check the conditions. She realized that he might be the last person she would talk to for days, and she had to resist calling after him as he disappeared from view. That was the unspoken rule of backpacking: you kept to yourself. Each hiker strapped on forty pounds to escape the crowds, and the only permissible topic was trail conditions, asked in the most concise manner.

  If the first day’s hike wasn’t too difficult, she might recommend it to the group that organized outdoor trips for girls, the latest in a series of nonprofits where she had worked. From her messy cubicle, she did the books, cut the checks, and clamped down on expenses. Ken had been a partner at a big law firm in San Francisco. He always said that she did enough good for the both of them, though each recognized they could live well on his salary alone. In the year before he died, Anna had come to believe that her noble calling was nothing more than a hobby. She resented his compliments about her good deeds, but how could she ask him to stop?

  She poured water onto a handkerchief and wiped at the slashes on her leg. The thin scar would join the others from a lifetime of walking through brush. Going uphill on the last stretch, she slipped in the dirt, her right ankle rolling to the side. Shit. She yelped, using her trekking poles to catch herself. It was her weak ankle, the one that gave out on uneven ground, that she had sprained badly as a kid.

  She dropped her pack and sat down on a boulder. She massaged the tender ankle, flexing and moving it from side to side. Anna hobbled her way over the crest, stopping every few yards, bracing herself against gnarled trees to keep from toppling over. She descended towards Harte Lake. This was her favorite part of every hike, when she caught the first glimpse of her destination. Here, Ken would move ahead, scouting for a campsite while she trailed behind. She had felt serene in the knowledge that he would find a safe, comfortable place for them. Even now, she could see his back, broad and muscled, exposed after he dropped his pack. The way his exquisite muscles rolled and pitched beneath his thin shirt. For a moment, she could not breathe, electrified by her desire.

  She set up camp on a sloping patch of ground backed by pine trees. On the other side of the lake, a field of specked granite boulders led up the ridge. A flash of green—a tent? A bush. The solitude made her uneasy, and she had to admit she had counted on neighbors who could help if anything went wrong. She assembled their battered two-person tent. The walls sagged, no matter how tight she staked the pegs, but it would have to do. Their routine had been for Ken to raise the tent and put on the rain fly, and for her to inflate the air mattresses and unfurl their sleeping bags. She eased her boot off her swollen ankle and slipped on a pair of Tevas. Without the backpack, she felt light and nimble. She walked into the chilly lake, up to her knees, and washed off the grime. She trailed her hand in the water, watching the ripples spread to the other side of the lake. The luxury and dread of freedom opened before her.

  Anna retreated into tasks, and grabbed the water filter from her backpack, throwing one end of the tube into the lake. She visualized the giardia, grit, and other foul microbes bunching against the filter, unable to reach her. Nothing tasted better than water that was out of reach of most people. She could pump all day, draining the lake.

  To escape the thickening mosquitoes, she climbed into the tent. She probed her ankle, puffy and sore, and tightened the bandanna. She was drifting off when she heard a creature, a marmot maybe, knocking about her gear. It wasn’t loud enough to be a bear. Hey, she shouted, hey, hey, and it shuffled off. Anna slept for an hour and awoke as the sun was starting to set. Alpenglow lit the granite above the lake gold-orange as she tried to start a fire, but the kindling flared and the logs never caught. She pictured Ken lighting the fire, and all the little tricks he did to get it going. Anna snapped a stick in half and threw the pieces in the pit. She was able to light the fire when he coached her. Why hadn’t Ken been a better teacher? No. She had been a poor student, following without understanding or memorizing. She hated him for undermining her. For acting like he would always be there. Anna gave up. She sat in the dark, waiting for her self-heating package of beef stew to warm. She took a few bites. The noodles were slimy and the beef chunks smelled like dog food. She dug a hole, buried the rest and went inside the tent.

  She curled into a ball, holding herself in the sleeping bag, when she heard a plaintive animal cry in the distance. Like a baby’s wail. Now, and on other nights since he died, she longed for the child that she never had with Ken. She regretted not having some part of him that would live on. Not the genetics of it, his re-born puckish dark eyes or dimples, which she could revisit in photographs and memories. Not as a companion or a substitute, but for someone else who had experienced him, in private, without the world intruding.

  Two decades ago, she had miscarried. During the ultrasound, the doctor said he could no longer detect the baby’s heartbeat and soon sharp cramps turned her inside out. G
ray clumps and bloody clots. Broken helpless incomplete unfit.

  They were already picking names. Michiko. Emi. Hitomi. Keiko. Ken, who was sure the baby was a girl. Within months, Ken wanted to try again, to help them to start over. She miscarried again and yet again, four times in all, her body unable to hold onto a child. Did the babies know she feared their all-consuming need? She grew up in a family of seven and saw how her parents had lived for their sons and daughters, and no longer for each other. She did not want to share her husband’s love. Ken, the only son in his generation of cousins, wanted a child of his own blood. Anna had tried, for him, but never longed for a baby.

  They stopped having sex.

  She recoiled when Ken stroked her cheek, his touch a reminder of her failure as a woman, a wife, a mother. He began spending late nights at the office and going on weekend business trips. He took showers at night instead of in the morning. He confessed, after Anna found a crumpled receipt for a San Francisco bistro that she wanted to try out with him. She had liked the looks of the black awning and cheerful red and yellow storefront.

  That was what wounded her: he had experienced what she wanted, with someone else. He was giving up on the life they were meant to have together.

  ~~~

  When she awoke the next morning, her ankle still throbbed. She decided against moving on and went for a walk around the lake. She saw no other hikers. She wondered what the solo ranger was doing. Meditating at sunrise, smoking pot at twilight, and bounding cross-country, his life ahead expanding, not narrowing.

  With each step, she expected to see Ken round the bend to greet her. She grabbed a handful of trail mix, his favorite, coconut, dates, chocolate, and peanuts. She could hear his low, delighted mmm mmms. She reached her hand out to the rough brown bark of the lodge-pole pine behind her. The solid bulk comforted her at first, and then she trembled and dropped her hand—sickened by its solitary life. The trees lived for hundreds of years, alone, dropping cones that needed a forest fire to explode them and release their seeds. Their survival depended on forces beyond their control.

  At sunset, the wind stirred and Anna could see fast, faint clouds overhead. A storm was supposed to blow in Tuesday, but she planned to be back home by Sunday evening. She would get an early start, gulp down a couple packets of oatmeal, power down the mountain, and take a late lunch at their favorite hamburger stand. She buried the rest of her dehydrated spaghetti dinner and climbed into the tent.

  She nestled into her sleeping bag. She delighted in her aches, even the twinge in her ankle, proof that she had pushed herself to the limit. She was too excited to fall asleep, anticipating her return. What she had looked forward to the most—before she set foot on the trail, before she left her house in Berkeley—was to get through the trip. She only had to last until the next morning to prove that she could survive without him. In the year since Ken had died, she marked off special dates this way: his birthday, their wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. She focused on the end rather than experiencing the event itself. The day was speeded up, disregarded, and afterward she savored the accomplishment of getting through it.

  ~~~

  In the months after she learned of his affair, they had pledged twice to make the marriage work. It fell apart each time. He could not forgive her for not wanting children, she knew. She could not forgive him for wanting more.

  The other woman did not want a family, not until she made partner, and maybe not after, he told Anna. The knowledge burned her, to think that he might be with his lover if she had been willing to have children.

  On the eve of their third and final reconciliation, they had camped in Desolation Wilderness. It was the first time they went backpacking in more than a year, after they began sleeping in separate bedrooms. They passed the first day with exceeding politeness, commenting on what they saw on the trail. They could agree on the beauty of a dead tree, struck by lightning, or discuss the geologic forces that shaped a granite peak, but could not talk about their past or their future.

  At sunset, he said he was going for a walk around the lake. The low, slanting light turned him gold, his skin glowing and his black hair shining. He was hers to lose, she knew. He was almost gone.

  “Back in awhile,” he said.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped and turned.

  “Can you go by the store?”

  “What do you want?” He had a half-smile on his face. An old joke of theirs, to ask for impossible foods in the middle of nowhere.

  “Ice cream. Mocha fudge. With hot sauce.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He disappeared into the trees.

  She put on her jacket and pulled out bags of couscous and dried mushrooms, and then packed and repacked their food in the bear canister, in the order of when they would eat it. She spent another fifteen minutes gathering twigs and fallen branches for the fire. Her busy work done, she walked to the edge of the lake. She could see Ken already on the other side, popping in and out of the bushes. She wished he would hurry. He returned a half hour later, his hands behind his back. He took out a capful of snow from a slow-melting patch under the trees.

  “Will this do?”

  She had scooped a loose handful, marveling at snow in June. “Thank you.”

  She put a careful measure on her tongue. He clapped his hands around hers, the heat melting the snow into rivulets between her fingers. Out in the wild, they would know nothing of a nuclear war, a terrorist attack, or an alien landing that ended civilization. They alone would hold onto the perfection of the world that existed before calamity. That night, inside the tent, they zipped the sleeping bags tight, past their heads and pulled the drawstring on the hood. The mummy bag bound their arms and legs. Although she could not see him in the darkness, she sensed him looking at her.

  “This is all I have to give,” she said.

  He sighed. “This is all I need.”

  They kissed and rested their foreheads against each other.

  ~~~

  It was silent the next day, on the morning of her departure. Anna fumbled for her watch—8:30 am! Usually, while camping she was up by 6:30 or 7 am, awakened by the discomfort of sleeping on the ground and her excitement to start the day. She unzipped the tent door and poked out her head. The sky was confusing, the color of dull, wet concrete. She looked up. Was that volcanic ash falling through the sky? Or pollen? She reached her hand out to feel the cold wet flakes. Snowing, drifting overnight to two feet or more around her tent. She had gone to sleep in a world of greens, blues and browns but now everything was white flurries. She sat back, zipped the door shut, and sank into her sleeping bag to salvage the residual heat. The snow accumulated on the roof in a spatter pattern, filtering kaleidoscope shadows, and when she touched the side of the tent, it pushed back. Snow pressed against the walls.

  She fumbled for her boots. A light layer of snow covered her backpack, which sat under the tent vestibule. Her food was tucked in the bear canister, a hundred feet away. Her stomach rumbled, and she scrounged in her pockets, where she found a half-eaten energy bar. They—she, now—had been lucky too long. She and Ken had gone over what to do in case of emergency. If a bear attacked? Stay on your feet for as long as possible, and then lie in a fetal position, using your backpack to protect vulnerable areas. Create a diversion by banging pots and pans. In a forest fire? Run into the lake or river. Take turns bobbing up to check when the fire has passed. Broken leg? Get the victim back to the tent, keep them warm and elevate the leg. Run like hell for help. And even, what to do in a snowstorm? Stay put, stay dry. Zip the sleeping bags together for warmth.

  In each of the scenarios, Anna now realized, the plan involved both of them.

  By early afternoon, the snowfall had lightened and cracks of blue broke through the clouds. The snow was now about three and a half feet deep, judging by the height next to the tent. She decided to hike out the eight miles and leave behind her gear. Snow hid the trail, but she figured she would keep walking downhill. She strug
gled to break through the heavy, wet snow and within minutes she was exhausted and soaked. Her foot plunged into the powder and pain shot through her weak ankle. She pin-wheeled and fell. Panting, she willed herself to rise before her clothes were soaked. After a half hour and progressing only 300 yards, she turned back.

  She spent an hour digging for the bear canister, using the lid of a pot to dig through the snow. She blew on her hands, but it did little to warm them. She thought of the stew that she buried in disgust. Hunger dug at her. She made many false starts before she heard the dull thump of metal on plastic. Yes. She cradled the black canister in relief, her hands wet and stiff, scratched and bloody from the ice. Her ankles and feet were numb but she could still wiggle her toes.

  Back in the tent, she upended the canister and poured out a packet of oatmeal, a few crumbs of trail mix, a couple granola bars, scrapes of peanut butter and one freeze-dried meal. She inhaled the musty, earthy smells and took a small handful of the trail mix.

  She told herself that help was on the way, that it was an early winter storm that would soon pass. Besides, she had registered at the ranger station, indicating she had set out from the trailhead three days ago. But—they did not know when she was returning. What if the rangers thought she was already gone? There was no one to expect her at home.

  ~~~

  No one had been expecting her at home, the night she started her affair.

  A decade after he had betrayed her, Ken introduced her to the man who became her lover. He and Jack Olson, both playing singles at the Tilden Park golf course, had been paired up. The two lawyers had a beer at the clubhouse after their round, and Ken offered to take out Jack and his wife, Becky, who were both new to town. Ken and Anna were always looking for other childless couples who did not have to cut their evenings short because of the babysitter, who did not spend hours conversing about potty-training and summer camps.

  Ken, Jack, and Anna were all in their forties. At twenty-eight, Becky seemed younger, favoring overalls and brightly colored clothes and ponytails. She was adopted from South Korea and raised in Minnesota, where she said there was one lake for every adoptee. Jack, the son of a Korean war veteran and his war bride, looked almost fully Asian, with a strong jaw and a faint tilt to his eyes. His Swedish origins were manifest in his height and his hair the color of dark honey.