Below the Thunder

by Robin Duval

  ‘That’d be one of your older guests then,’ he quipped to the receptionist as she came back to the desk.

  She revolved the book one hundred and eighty degrees to look at it.

  ‘No, that’s not the Hollywood guy,’ she said, after studying the entry for several seconds. ‘We don’t get the stars here.’

  She took Bryn’s credit card and ran it across her machine.

  ‘Yeah,’ she continued, ‘I remember him though. He was no way good-lookin’. Short and kinda heavy built with a baseball hat – San Francisco Giants. Always paid cash. Weird. Not my type, sir.’

  What were the chances?

  ‘I don’t suppose he was wearing high heeled cowboy boots?’

  ‘I think so,’ said the woman. ‘Yeah. Right.’

  ‘High voice, perhaps?’

  ‘Sure. Friend of yours?’

  ‘Sort of. Did he do anything here?’

  ‘Gee, sir, I wouldn’t know. He went into the bait store across the road. And then I guess he drove north. You should have said you knew him.’

  What she had called the bait store was more like a general hunting and fishing shop. There was a small section at the back devoted to wildlife books, with the names and pictures of the fish and game locally available for slaughter. Bryn found a cheap guide to American birds and took it to the counter.

  As he waited for his change, he asked the shop-keeper if he had much passing trade.

  ‘Not much,’ the man replied. ‘Local people and hunting parties staying at the motel. Business is lousy these days. Not much money around any more. The feds are taxing everyone to death. The sooner we get rid of this black dame the better. You’re not from the East Coast?’

  ‘No. British,’ Bryn said hastily, with a self-deprecatory little laugh.

  The man seemed pacified.

  ‘You were recommended by a friend of mine,’ Bryn said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll remember him. Short, stocky, likes to wear high heel boots and why not. Though I can’t defend the baseball hat. Let’s Go Giants!’

  The shopkeeper cheered up.

  ‘I know your friend. He comes here regular.’

  He stuffed the book into a brown paper bag.

  ‘Talks a lot, your friend, would you say?’ he added, after a pause.

  ‘I’m afraid he does.’

  ‘He sure does.’

  ‘Yes, he likes to chat, my friend.’

  ‘Sure as hell he does.’

  Nothing like common ground to break the ice.

  ‘And I suppose he still insists on paying cash?’

  ‘Always does,’ said the shopkeeper.

  ‘He would do.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said the man, warming to his topic, ‘your guy only buys one thing? Phones me up a week before to make sure I’ve got it. Not much call for it otherwise. Can you believe that?’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Well I shouldn’t tell ya. But since I guess you’re his friend. It’s a special arrangement, see. Would you believe lead free thirtyeight handgun ammo. Who wants that?’

  ‘Not much used?’

  ‘What for? He’s the only guy ever asks me for it. And when I get the stuff, he wants to check it matches his hand-piece.’

  ‘That sounds like him.’

  ‘Sure. And what a piece of business that is. S and W Bodyguard double action with laser sight. And customised. Special hand grip. Barrel down to an inch. You gotta have a lot of big ones for that. More than folks round here could ever run to.’

  An elderly man came into the shop and picked up a two kilogram bag of ground-bait.

  ‘I reckon you could still catch up with him if you get a move on,’ said the shopkeeper.

  It took a moment for this to sink in.

  ‘I thought he was here last week,’ Bryn said.

  ‘Sure. And again this morning. Not more than an hour past. Are you guys not together?’

  ‘No. Not so far as I’m aware.’

  The man shrugged his shoulders and turned away to the other customer.

  Bryn went outside and stood for a while, gazing at the lake.

  A V-shaped formation of geese came in from the north and settled noisily on the water. He pulled the bird guide out of its paper bag and flicked through until he reached a picture and a description he recognised. Cackling Geese: birds that summered in Canada and migrated south on the so-called Pacific Flyway, down the line of the Cascade Mountains – in late autumn. If his identification was right, then this flock was way ahead of its schedule.

  Donner Memorial State Park lay a couple of miles east of the motel, within a forest of pines. On a high concrete plinth, like a socialist-realist monument raised to the workers of Soviet Russia, stood a bronze family group, the husband peering heroically into the distance. In a low nearby building was a museum full of sad mementos of that terrible winter of 1847: children’s toys, letters from survivors (‘Never take no cut-off and hurry along as fast as you can’), contemporary photographs, candle moulds, shaving kit, salt cellars. Beyond the museum, nature trails looped through the forest and alongside the lake.

  It seemed ironic that most visitors came to this dreadful site in the high summer, with temperatures in the seventies and fat-bellied wildlife – deer, squirrels, chipmunks, racoons, porcupines – scampering through the Park’s sparkling meadows. Not for tourists the privations of that winter: snow more than twenty feet deep, supplies exhausted, the survivors reduced to gnawing on leather and – finally – each other’s corpses. By the time the snows melted and the rescue parties arrived, many that were not dead were stark mad. The women survived best, preserved by their slower metabolism and body fat.

  The families had built cabins amongst the trees. The position of the Murphy residence was the most precisely known: widow Murphy and her adolescent children raised it against a monolith of polished rock that had bubbled from the earth in some primeval upheaval of molten granite. The three other sides of their dwelling had no window or door, merely a hole to crawl through. Pine logs formed the walls and the flat roof was ox hide – until the starving family dragged it off to chew on or boil down to a glue-like, barely digestible jelly.

  Bryn was glad to leave it all behind and drive on again to the north. Through more mountains and national forests, past Sierraville, Clio and Quincy. Towards the small town of Chester and beyond that to his current objective: Lassen Volcanic Park.

  There was only one lodging place in this wilderness – at least only one that had revealed itself to an internet trawl. He’d rung up a Sacramento management office and made a booking. Even scribbled down some helpful how-to-get-there instructions; and mislaid them.

  And now he was lost.

  He pulled up on a highway west of Chester. The hire car had come with a (very small scale) ‘vacation guide’ to the (very large) state of California. But he reckoned he might compute his position by comparing the mountains on the northern horizon with the pattern of tiny elevation triangles helpfully provided on the map. He could remember that he was supposed to take a turn-off that ran directly towards Lassen Peak itself. Identifying Lassen Peak, then, would be a start.

  He left the car by the road and climbed up through the forest to get a better view. A mountain rose before him, not twenty miles away. It had the classic pyramid shape of an old volcano, with a depression at its peak scooped out by more recent eruptions. It was smooth-sided and shone in the sun, like a pailful of wet sand poured out on the beach. Even at this time of the summer, there were ribbons of melting snow on its highest flanks.

  He stretched out on a rock. An eagle was soaring against the sun, a tiny silhouette of splayed wing tips and fanned-out tail. A skein of familiar geese passed down the eastern horizon. A white dirt track glinted between the pines to his right, running directly towards the peak. And again, as on the Tioga Pass, there was a faint rumbling sound, like a giant snoring in his sleep in some distant valley.

  As he climbed back to his feet, a puff of fine grey ash arose wi
th him. There was more of it in his hair and on the palms of his hands. He walked back, kicking at the ground, and a gossamer mist of the stuff swirled up in the sunlight, and as quickly vanished. When he reached the road, a fine film of powder had settled upon the car.

  Chapter 6

  He drove away from the sun towards the north-east until he picked up directions to Chester, the only settlement thereabouts of any size. It was a typical sleepy, one street, one-storey town with one turn off to the north – identified by a signpost as the route to his overnight lodging. He followed the track as it ran like an arrow towards the mountain, through the overhanging forest, on and on till it arrived at a group of pine cabins scattered among the trees at the edge of a flat, open meadow.

  Outside the first of the cabins hung a wooden sign with the word OFFICE roughly branded on it. A yellow-bellied marmot, as fat as a stuffed toy, watched him mistrustfully before scuttling away under the raised lodge floor. Some horses stirred in a corral. It could have been the sun, or the long day, or simply a random rush of nostalgia, but he was reminded of the imaginary landscape of his own childhood. Perhaps a little of the Hundred Acre Wood; and a good portion of the Ponderosa.

  Then when he climbed the steps into the office, he was met by an elderly gentleman with a north European accent who introduced himself as the owner and invited him to write his name in the guest book. A bedquilt hung on the wall. There was even a rocking chair in the corner of the room.

  He had entered the Hollywood version of pioneer history. A forest clearing in a hostile wilderness. Wood cabins. A corral and horses. To cap it all, a strange old man who – whatever his actual name – was clearly Jorgensen from The Searchers or Ericson from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; or whatever emblematic Scandinavian immigrant the script required. A mythic world away from the version he had glimpsed by the lakeside near Truckee.

  ‘Vild turkey for dinner,’ said the old man. ‘Mash. Salat. Cheesecake dessert. You happy vid dat?’

  The old man’s wife, many years younger than him – the Vera Miles role of course – took Bryn to his ‘bungalow’, which was a smaller cabin raised well above the spring snow melts, with a single room inside. All the walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the bed and the cupboarding, were pine-planked.

  ‘No key,’ she said, with the same taciturn economy as her husband. ‘Folks don’t lock up here. No electricity neether. Kerosene lamp and early shut-eye.’

  When she had gone, he lay down on the bed, on a ‘homespun’ quilt probably fashioned by the owner’s wife herself, and composed himself for sleep. A small bird was chirping in a pine tree nearby, monotonously, like a ticking clock. As his eyes closed, he was vaguely aware of a faint odour of sulphur in the air.

  He awoke to the noise of hikers coming through the meadow, shouting to each other in unfamiliar languages. Someone – most likely the elderly owner – was remonstrating with a group of teenagers for feeding the horses. There was a smell of smoke now from a campfire that had been lit below the dining lodge and men and women were gathering around it with cans of beer. He splashed water over his face and shoulders, put on a fresh shirt, and went out to join them.

  It was already dinner time. A mix of different-sized tables were set out in the lodge, and the owner directed the guests one by one to their pre-selected places. Bryn found himself with four tanned young Israelis in big hiking boots, shorts and check shirts; and a couple of fit-looking all-American women of around his own age. As promised, the no-choice meal was roast turkey (in family-sized helpings), mashed potatoes and salad. The Israelis stuck with beer; the ladies fancied a Californian ‘blush’ Zinfandel and, since they were coyly uncertain of how much wine they could manage, Bryn gallantly agreed to share a bottle with them.

  In the event, one bottle became two and the evening blossomed.

  The Israelis, it emerged, were walking the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico, and already more than halfway down it.

  ‘We are a hiking nation,’ said one man. ‘In Israel we have one six hundred mile national trail but there is nothing like walking a fine distance with nature surrounding you. We have nothing like that in Israel.’

  ‘And you’re walking too, are you?’ asked another.

  ‘No. But I might go up Lassen Peak tomorrow,’ Bryn said.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Because it’s there?’

  The absence of a more structured plan puzzled the hiking nation and they tried hard to understand the reasons for his holiday. Their attention only wandered when he began to enlarge on local pioneer history and the special significance of their present location. As he had discovered in his internet trawl, the meadow had for thousands of years been a sacred summer site for native American tribes, principally the Maidu and the Atsugewi.

  ‘That is so interesting,’ offered the (to Bryn) less obviously attractive of the two ladies. ‘Thousands of years. Don’t you think we should give it back to them?’

  ‘Why?’ replied the oldest of the Israelis, vigorously returning to the conversation. ‘Because a bit of land has some totemic significance from way back, doesn’t mean it has to be theirs for ever.’

  ‘Interesting principle,’ said Bryn.

  ‘It’s tough on the tribes though,’ said the lady.

  Over the meal, the dynamic of the group began to settle out. The younger Israelis concentrated upon the second American lady who was doing a skilled job of flirting simultaneously with all three. Bryn guessed she might be old enough for any of them to have been her son, and he admired the coolness with which she strung them along. This was a woman who had been manipulating boys and men since she was a toddler; and was not about to put aside all that accumulated expertise for the sake of some notional age difference. He wondered if the energy the young men were investing in a quite complicated relationship might end tonight in tears, for someone.

  Her companion’s manner, by contrast, was self-effacing and unsure. To dismiss her, as he had a moment previously, as the less obviously attractive was unkind, probably to both of them. She had a figure that a much younger woman would have been proud of, and looked as if she could hike thirty miles a day with ease. Unlike the other, she wore no makeup, and her angular features had a healthy – and attractive – honey-coloured, Californian glow. It was not that she lacked conventional looks: rather that she seemed to have surrendered her sexual confidence to her maneating friend.

  He made some attempt to strike up an acquaintance; but the going was hard. It was difficult to break through her diffidence and discover a viewpoint that did not merely echo his own. He was not helped by the continued presence of the fourth Israeli – whom he took to be inexperienced with the ladies – frequently bursting in on their conversation. After a while, however, these interventions – usually expressing some opinion too forthright even for her – began to have a more useful effect. To escape the young man’s attentions, she became markedly warmer towards Bryn. And he, naturally, responded in kind.

  ‘Are you both single ladies?’ he asked.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Nadine is never single.’

  ‘I meant, unmarried.’

  ‘That too.’

  She looked deep into her wine glass as though even this tiny aperçu had been an intimacy too far.

  ‘Do you ever worry about hiking alone, just two women?’

  ‘We can look after ourselves,’ she said, with a faint flash of contention.

  ‘We’ll look after you,’ said the Israeli. ‘Why don’t you come with us? We can take you on to Truckee.’

  ‘We’re going further than that,’ she replied. It was a quiet response, but firm enough to close off discussion.

  The rest of the table started to get to their feet. Bryn caught one of them gazing at him and had a momentary sense that they had perhaps met before. But the man turned away and called to his friend.

  ‘Are you coming with us, Eyal?’

  ‘No,’ said the unwelcome companion. Then ‘Yes’. And
, without a goodbye, he joined the little crowd, all jostling excitedly around the departing Nadine, like carp at feeding time.

  ‘Looks like they’re going to enjoy themselves,’ Bryn said.

  ‘They’re going back to our bungalow, I expect,’ she replied, and pursed her lips.

  ‘Not your scene?’

  ‘No.’

  She toyed with the remains of her cheesecake dessert.

  ‘This is what I don’t like about Nadine. She’s a very good friend, the only one who walks with me. But we don’t have the same attitude at all.’

  ‘She’s a free spirit.’

  ‘She’s not a Christian.’

  It took a moment or two for this to sink in.

  ‘Do you think she’s immoral?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you think she is?’

  ‘I… I… think she’s having a good time.’

  ‘Well, I wish she wouldn’t.’

  And as if she had already gone too far: ‘I guess you think I’m some kind of old maid.’

  He didn’t know how to respond. He should have come back immediately with a tension-dispelling quip, but nothing offered itself. Her humility unmanned him. And he wished he had the wisdom to understand what was going on. If she was so trapped by her principles, why did she choose the scandalous Nadine as her companion? Not, so far as he could tell, in order to convert her.

  Somehow they had worked their way into a third bottle of the blush. The other hikers were beginning to disperse to their cabins and a small group, clustered around the campfire outside, were singing boy scout songs. Vera Miles was already setting for breakfast and their table would soon be the last one to be cleared. He was at a loss as to what to do next.

  ‘Shall I take you back to your cabin?’

  She shook her head.

  It was clear that their jointly shared lodging would be busy for some while yet. And she did not seem in the mood for campfire anthems.