***
Our days in Hot Springs fall into a kind of rhythm. We’re all on our own after breakfast until around noon, when we meet up at the van and prepare for the first show. I get a map of the parks and trails at the visitor’s center and usually head to one and find a spot to read or go for a walk. It’s the kind of thing I never would have done at home, but here it just feels right. I’ve gotten to the point in the book where it’s just the gritty details of his starvation leading up to his death. It’s not like I don’t know what happens, but sometimes I think if I read closely enough I can change the outcome. Something about the book is bothering me lately. I think it’s his journal entries—the parts where Krakauer quotes his writing directly. McCandless writes in the third person, something that never bothered me when I read the book before. But this time it strikes me as contrived, especially for someone so intent on the importance of having experiences. How can you really experience something if you’re always observing it from the outside? Maybe it just hits a little too close to home.
A lot of my mood depends on how Emily’s treating me that day. I give her plenty of opportunities to spend time with me alone, but she always manages to worm out of it—or to invite Tim to come with us. Just when I’m ready to write her off completely, she’ll plunk herself down in my lap or wrap an arm around my waist. Beyond those occasional touches there’s been nothing else physical between us. I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined that whole night in the bathhouse. I certainly imagine it enough when I’m drifting off to sleep at night.
There are darker things that come to me at night too. I dream of Mima—which is usually a good thing. I remember how safe and secure I felt when I was at her house; how I trusted her to take care of me. That’s not the dark part. The dark part is that when I wake up I think about Emily and my parents in equal but very separate parts. I pretty much wrote Dad off a while ago. But I wonder when I stopped trusting Mom and when, and if, I’ll ever be able to trust Emily.
JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES
It’s after one of these strange dream sleeps that I come up with a plan to take Emily out on the closest thing to a date that our situation allows. I know it’s kind of a test I’m setting up, even though I’m not willing to fully admit it. The biggest hurdle is getting her to agree to go. I wait all day until I’m sure it will just be the two of us alone. When I ask her if she wants to join me for a secret mission that night, I’m surprised at how easily she agrees, given the way she’s been avoiding time alone with me. My plan is almost thwarted by another free concert in the park, but luckily it’s Lyle who asks if anyone wants to go. They’re back on speaking terms, but things are still a bit tense.
So everyone else heads over to the park after we finish at Gene’s, and Emily and I go our own way. “So what’s this all about?” she asks as I lead her down an alley between an art gallery and a restaurant.
“Secret mission,” I say, and I hold my finger up to my lips. The forced silence is good. I don’t want to talk about what we’re doing or even think too much about it. I just want to know how she’s going to react. The alley leads us behind another set of buildings. There’s a big blue dumpster, and naturally Emily assumes that’s why we’re here. She lifts the lid, but its only occupants are the flies that come buzzing out. She raises an eyebrow in my direction.
I push on an unmarked door next to the dumpster and boldly take her hand in mine. We’re in a dark room. I wait a minute for my eyes to adjust. Then the bright green sign for coming attractions illuminates the faces and open seats in the darkened theater. I grin as I hear her let out a tiny gasp of excitement. I pull Emily behind me into two seats at the end of a row and turn nervously to see her reaction.
“Oh my gosh,” she gushes. “This is perfect. How did you know about that door?”
“I was scouting the dumpster a couple days ago and someone had left the door open just a crack,” I whisper. “So I rigged it so it would stay open, just a crack.”
“Awesome.”
“Yeah, sorry I couldn’t get us some popcorn too.”
“Oh, I can handle that,” Emily says. Before I can ask, she’s out of her seat and moving quietly through the darkened theater. A preview for some action movie that came out last month in New York is flashing across the screen. She comes back a few minutes later with a bag of warm, buttery popcorn and a two courtesy cups of water.
“Don’t tell me Curtis works here too?”
Emily snorts and laughs, attracting a glare from the people in front of us. “No, dummy, I just got all teary and told them I dropped mine inside. Works every time.”
I timed it so we would enter during the darkness of the previews, but not miss any of the movie. My movie choice seems perfect given Emily’s self-proclaimed cheesy taste in cinema. It’s a romantic comedy about a guy who dies but prearranges to have his girlfriend receive a series of letters designed to help her move on with her life. I’m not really paying attention to the plot. I’m too busy paying attention to Emily. Little things, like the way her breath catches during the really sappy parts or her fingers, which have drifted over to my knee and are absent-mindedly rubbing the ribs of my corduroy pants.
When the lights come up, I see her face is red and tear-streaked. For a second I wonder if this was a terrible idea and she hates me for picking such a cornball movie. But then she sighs loudly and says, “That was wonderful. Totally cathartic. I’m like a new person!” The middle-aged woman sitting in front of us turns around and smiles at her.
Outside the movie theater, she wraps her arms around me in a huge friendly hug. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s a start. “You picked that out for me, didn’t you?” she asks as we walk back towards the van.
“Yeah.”
“You remembered what I said about movies?”
“Yup.”
“Oh, Drew,” she sighs. “What am I going to do with you?” I have some answers, but none of them are anything I dare say out loud. “Oh, look at the moon!” Emily shouts before I can try any of my terrible one-liners.
***
I study the moon that night through the camper window. I’m not sure what I expected to learn about Emily’s feelings or my own. I had a good time. I like being with her. But I already knew that. My eyelids are heavy, but I’m reluctant to fall asleep—afraid my dreams will reveal something I don’t really want to know.
***
Jesse and G spend some time scratching their heads and staring at a local events calendar taped to the pharmacy window before determining that it’s time to move on. Jesse wants to spend at least a week at this farm he keeps talking about before making the final push to the festival in New Mexico. On our last night in Hot Springs Gene promises to cook us a feast of “his food,” as he calls it. It turns out he’s from Haiti. He made a boat crossing about fifteen years ago and ended up in Florida before making his way north to meet up with some cousins who were living here in Hot Springs.
Gene outdoes himself on the feast. In addition to a huge platter of rice and beans, he makes a vegetable stew with okra and corn and a grilled fish dish wrapped in plantain leaves, as well as a pile of fried plantain chips. We stuff ourselves, knowing the next hot meal might be a ways off.
“I wish I could afford to hire you all,” he says, looking down at his meaty palms as we get ready to leave.
“You’ve done more than enough for us,” Jesse says. “Thanks to you, we’ve been able to save our money, and we’ll have more than enough to make it across Texas.”
“To New Mexico,” Gene adds. We’ve told him about the festival. “And then where will you go?”
“Who knows?” Jesse says and grins. “Wherever the wind takes us.”
“It’s no good forever,” Gene says. “All this moving around. Eventually you find your home. You find your way back home.” I feel like he’s looking right at me when he says this, but it’s just for a second. “You find your way back here to my place any time,” he adds, this time addressing the gro
up, and gives one of his enormous grins. As we’re leaving he makes Emily a present of his smoked tofu recipe written on the inside of a cardboard cornmeal box. She promises to guard it with her life.
G stays behind for a few more minutes, talking to Gene. I’m far enough away that I can’t hear what they’re saying. When she catches up to us she’s wiping her eyes and shaking her head like she’s trying to get rid of something.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“I just told him I admire him for what he’s done; starting over from nothing in a completely new place.”
“Yeah,” Emily adds, “Gene is a really wonderful decent human being,” she says. “So are you, Drew.” I pull her arm and her body closer to mine in kind of a hug. I look back at G, expecting her to be rolling her eyes or looking angry, but she seems as confused as I am by the comparison.
ON THE FARM
We follow route 270 out of Hot Springs through the beautiful and sparsely populated Ouachita National Forest. Every so often there’s a gas station and a cluster of buildings selling tired-looking T-shirts and commemorative rocks. We stop for lunch by a branch of the Arkansas River and feast on Gene’s leftovers. The stream is running low, and for a while we hang out and explore, skipping stones and jumping from rock to rock. Lyle starts a game of follow the leader, so we all shed our shoes and roll up our pant legs. The water is breathtakingly cold, and I linger on each dry rock, gripping with my toes and willing the warm stone to transmit some heat through the soles of my feet. G is right in front of me and Emily is following behind. Every so often I slow down so that Emily and I will end up together on an impossibly small rock. Every time it happens she giggles and grips the back of my shirt, pressing her body into my back. It’s bliss. I’m not even paying attention to where we’re going. I’m just following G, who’s following the leader.
I talk to Mom again, and she sounds a little less desperate this time. She tells me she’s been reading a book on raising the strong-willed teenager. I tell her this probably isn’t a bad idea, and I mean it. Something is different for me, so why shouldn’t things change for her too? I tell her about finding the divorce diary and she even laughs and asks me if there were any answers in there. I tell her no, only more questions. This strikes me as a very adult answer. I think we’re both a little sad to get off the phone. As soon as I hang up I want to tell someone about the conversation. I survey the scene at the gas station: Emily is stretching, Tim has his headphones on, and Lyle is reading his book while Jesse pumps the gas. G must be in the bathroom. As I look at them I realize how alone they are in the world; even as they’re together, they are alone.
***
Outside of Mansfield, too tiny to really be called a town, Jesse finds a small dirt track and turns down it by a wooden sign that reads “Rock Ridge Organic Farm.” The first three words are painted green and, as though that color ran out, the last word is orange. We bump down the road at about five miles an hour. The ridge between the tire tracks is grown high with grass and wildflowers. I hope Shirley can go in reverse, because I seriously doubt we’re going to find anything down here—including a way to turn around.
Just as I’m rehearsing the opening scenes of Deliverance in my mind, the road opens up into a farm field bordered by a split-rail fence. There’s a beat-up-looking trailer parked in the middle of the field, and chickens surround it, pecking diligently at the ground. On the other side of the road is a similar field, but this one has sheep in it and a couple of people pulling bales of hay off an old pickup truck. At the bottom of the hill is a good-sized red barn—the kind you’d find in a picture book—and a small farmhouse with a partially completed addition covered in building paper. “Uh, do these people know we’re coming?” I ask as the van grinds to a halt.
“I hope so.” Jesse grins impishly. The people who were up in the sheep pasture are walking down the hill towards us, and a beautiful woman holding an enormous bowl of green and purple cabbages appears in the doorway.
“Hi,” she says warmly. “You must be Jonah’s friends. Jeremiah said you guys might be stopping through. I’m Skye.” Skye has a wide forehead framed by dark blonde hair. Her eyes are a penetrating blue. She looks to be in her early thirties, but she’s one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five. Before anyone can respond or introduce themselves, the man from the field hops the last of the split-rail fences and walks over to where we’re standing. He has an enormous, bushy brown beard, and he’s trailed by a teenage girl wearing an odd combination of tight jeans and knee-high rubber boots. I try to smile at her, but she doesn’t meet my glance. She seems to be taking the whole group in with interest. “These are Jonah’s friends from Burlington,” Skye calls over our heads.
“I’m Jesse,” Jesse says with a little wave. “Jonah said he’d let you know I might be coming through. We’d love to hang out for a couple days and get a sense of your operation here. I mean, if that’s cool. We’re willing to help out however we can.”
“Jeremiah,” says the man with the beard. “You met Skye, and this is our daughter, Littlefern.” The girl in the tight jeans coughs and narrows her eyes at Jeremiah. “Sorry, I mean Lindsay.” We all give little waves or handshakes and call out our names. Skye and Jeremiah do that intense eye contact thing that I’ve almost gotten used to from Jesse. After introductions, Jeremiah points us in the direction of an unused pasture where we can set up our tents. “We’re glad to have you hang out for a couple days. Jonah mentioned you were interested in learning about small agro.”
“Well, I am,” Jesse says. “These guys are just humoring me for a couple days.”
“Well, as long as they don’t mind pitching in, we’re happy to share what we have here with you.” We all answer in one way or another that we’re happy to help out, do whatever is needed. Out of the corner of my eye I see Linsdsay roll her eyes. She walks away from the group and starts pulling at the tall grass around one of the fence poles and waving it at a nearby sheep.
Jesse backs Shirley up into the open field and pulls five olive green pup tents out from underneath the back seat. They’re all labeled with rubbery yellow peeling letters that say Camp Nawaka. “Boy Scout camp went out of business near home and had a big yard sale,” he explains. There are five tents and six of us. We all look awkwardly at them arranged in the grass like overstuffed sausages.
G grabs one first. “Come on, Em, you and I will share,” she says and stakes out a prime spot underneath one of the browning alder trees. The tents go up easily and smell like sunbaked rubber on the inside. There’s just enough room for two sleeping bags or one sleeping bag and a backpack. If I can’t share a tent with Emily, at least it will be nice to have a little space of my own for a couple nights.
Once the tents are set up, Lindsay wanders over. She’s changed into a clean T-shirt as tight as her too-tight jeans. It’s white and says the word Pink in sparkly green letters across her chest. “Jeremiah said I should see if you guys want to hike up the ridge,” she offers. She throws a couple cloth bags at us. “There’s an old orchard. It’s pretty overgrown, but we can usually still get some apples.”
We traipse along after her across the fields. “Watch out for Gus,” she adds as we pass through the sheep pasture, pointing to a ram with a particularly menacing-looking set of horns. “He’s wicked aggressive when he’s horny.” Gus follows us as we make our way through his territory, but he keeps at a safe distance. I walk quickly to avoid finding out what a two-hundred-pound, aggressive-looking sheep can do when he’s horny, and I find myself walking next to Lindsay.
“So how come you’re not in school today?”
She looks at me like I’m a complete moron. “It’s Saturday.”
“Right,” I say. “Yeah, I guess I’ve kind of lost track of the days lately.”
She eyes me up and down. “How come you’re not in school like ever?”
“How do you know I’m not eighteen?”
“You’re not.”
“Yeah, I’m no
t. I guess I’m on a little hiatus from school.” As soon as I say it, I wish I could have said break instead. “I guess I’m just trying to figure some things out.”
“Oh,” says Lindsay, rolling her eyes for the umpteenth time. “Wel,l you’ll fit in great here. Everyone who shows up here is trying to figure something out. Jeremiah and Skye don’t even care if I go to school or not. I mean, I’d have to study something, but they don’t care if I want to stay home and be homeschooled or whatever.”
“But you don’t want to?” I ask.
“Are you kidding me? There’s absolutely nothing to do here and no one around for miles. It’s boring enough here on the weekends. I’m glad to go to school on Monday morning just to get away from the chickens and the sheep shit.”
“It’s pretty here,” I offer.
“Yeah, pretty freaking dull.” We walk in silence for a while and then stop to wait for the others to catch up. Tim is lagging behind, as usual, and Gus starts trotting after him.
“He likes me!” Tim shouts as Gus nudges him with the top of his head.
“That’s because he hasn’t smelled you yet,” Lyle shouts back.
The ram hits him again in the back of his upper thigh. This time Tim stutter-steps forward. “Hey,” he calls out, a bit surprised. “That was hard.”
The Other Way Around Page 14