“Isn’t it?”
“You come out here a lot?”
She paused. “Did Elvin tell you why we’re here?”
“Not really. Are you part of his, uh, church . . . group?”
One-half of Maggie’s face broke into a ragged smile. “Church group,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right. We’ve been doing a little baptizing out here in the mineral water. Supposed to be good for you, you know. Cleansing. In a spiritual sense.”
“The water’s spiritual?”
“God willing,” she said. “So where you kids from?”
“Teyber. We’re just here for the weekend.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said.
“What about you? Where’re you from?”
Maggie nibbled at something out of a can. Tuna or sardines, something fishy and rank. I noticed that the tips of her fingers were smudged with black, like she’d been painting with raw ink or had had a ballpoint pen explode on her. “Arcata,” she said when she’d swallowed. “Just drove down yesterday.”
“That’s a long drive for baptizing.”
“What’d you bring to eat?” She leaned forward, pulling my backpack toward her with her grubby fingers, unzipping and rifling through my stuff. I didn’t have the strength to stop her, and her probing hands deftly found the mixed nuts and turkey sandwiches I’d packed, along with some Cokes. The only two I had. “Can I have some of this?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but a wave of pain snapped my jaw shut. I reached for one of the Cokes and pressed it to my cheek, while gesturing with my other hand to Maggie that she could have the rest.
“You’re not hungry?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She unwrapped one of my sandwiches. “You should eat more, you know. You’re too skinny.”
“I’m getting a migraine,” I said when my jaw decided to work again. “I can’t eat.”
She paused. “You get those a lot, migraines?”
I nodded.
“Sucks,” the woman said. “I get them, too.”
“You do?”
“Every month. PMS is a bitch.”
“Well, that’s not why I get them. I mean, obviously. But I got hurt when I was a kid. Head injury.”
“How’d you get hurt?”
“My mom’s husband,” I said.
“Your dad?”
“Stepdad.”
“He hit you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
I leaned back on the blanket. Closed my eyes and rolled the Coke can up to rest on my forehead. “I shot him.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he die?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t remember.”
Maggie snorted. “Well, if you did the shooting, how’re you the one who got hurt?”
How indeed? “Well, after . . . after I did what I did, my mom drove our car off the road. That’s when I got hurt. That’s when—”
“Wait, so you were in a car when you shot him?”
“No.” I couldn’t help myself. I rolled over and put my head down, one arm over my face, hunching my body like a pill bug. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel good.”
“It’s okay, kid. You do what you need to do.”
It was stupid, but there was something in her words or the way she said them that made my chest tighten, then grow tighter still. “Thank you,” I said. “And no, my mom, she put us in the car after I shot him—she was upset about what had happened, I guess, about what I’d done. She didn’t believe it was an accident, even though that’s what she told everyone later. But she was so mad when she found us that she tried to, to . . .” I choked. I couldn’t say it.
“Drive you off the side of the road?”
I nodded, then shrugged, but didn’t really answer because my stomach was starting to do the thing it usually did in response to the rising tide of pressure in my head, which was to thump around and around, like a clothes dryer filled with shoes. I also didn’t answer because what is there to say when everyone believes your mom drove her car off the road in a foolish panic, trying to save her son from the cops in the only way she knew how, but you know that they’ve got it all wrong? That what really happened is she tried to kill you, to punish you for what you’d done, and in her rage just considered her own life collateral damage?
“Shit, kid,” Maggie said, followed by a low whistle, and the funny thing was, she seemed to understand exactly what I meant without my saying anything. I appreciated that more than she knew because it wasn’t like I could tell anyone in my life about what my mom had done. She had a right to be mad at me, obviously. She still had a right. Guilt was a long game, and I’d ruined her life, after all. That was something we both ended up having to live with. An accident. It was just an accident, were words I’d repeated so frequently over the years, there were times I almost believed they were true.
“You want something for it?” Maggie asked. “Your headache? I got Percocet. I’ll give you some for the food. How’s that sound?”
In truth, it sounded like heaven. I lifted my head, forced open my eyes, and nodded. She reached into a canvas bag that lay at her feet and pulled out a bottle of pills. Handed me two and took one for herself.
Popping the Coke tab, I swallowed the pills gratefully. “Thank you.”
“Just don’t tell Elvin,” Maggie warned.
“I won’t.”
She gave a nod. “So you the one fucking that girl?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Well, one of you has to be. I saw the way she was looking at you. You’re either boning her or you’re her gay best friend. That’s a compliment, you know. You got a cute face, kid.”
“Thanks?” I forced down more Coke and tried not to blush. “I’ve got a girlfriend, though. That’s not her.”
“I didn’t ask about girlfriends.”
I blushed harder. “So, uh, what kind of church are you with?”
This made Maggie laugh. “What’d Elvin tell you about that?”
“Just that he’s a . . . preacher.”
She laughed more. “That he is, damn it. Church of goddamn Elvin. Ain’t nothing like it.”
“Margaret,” a voice said sharply, and we both looked up to see the Preacher standing right behind us, his arms folded, his body blocking the sun. “Have some respect.”
Maggie ignored him. She winked at me before yawning and stretching her body across the blanket like a cat. “Think we got time for a nap, kid?”
“Uh, we’re going to need to get going if we want to get to our campsite before dark. I should probably find my friends.” I sat up and looked around. I didn’t see Avery anywhere.
“Where’s this campsite?” she asked.
“We’re trying to get to the lake.” I gestured toward the summit. “We’ll camp in the meadow by the waterfall, though.”
Maggie lifted an eyebrow. “Not worried about the storm, are you?”
“What storm?”
“Some guy in Willits told me there’s one coming. Could be snow and everything. I wouldn’t go up on that mountain, if I were you.”
“It’s eighty degrees out,” I said, but I was looking right at Maggie and she was looking back at me. She’d said Willits. There was no way they would’ve driven through Willits if they’d come from Arcata. Arcata was north, up on the water, near the Oregon border, and Willits was a hundred miles south of here and inland. It didn’t make sense.
“What’re you thinking about, Ben?” the Preacher asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You know, we really should get going.” I cleared my throat and started gathering my things. “We’ve got a long ways
to hike.”
“Oh, there’s no hurry,” Maggie said. “Stay awhile. At least until you feel better.”
“I don’t think—”
“Stay awhile, Ben.” This came from the Preacher, who wasn’t smiling anymore. “I insist.”
I opened my mouth to argue or, hell, at least do something, when I heard my name being called. Startled, I turned to see Archie and Dunc stumbling from the woods, both with huge grins spread across their faces. Clearly drunk off their asses. Or stoned again.
But for once I didn’t mind, because the next words out of Archie’s mouth were, “Hey, asshole! You deaf or something?”
“Huh?” I asked.
He pointed toward the ridge where we’d sat and spied on the Preacher and the women bathing naked in the water. And there, like the most welcome mirage, was Mr. Howe and the others, all standing in a row, waving frantically, trying to get our attention.
“They’re waiting for us, dickhead,” Archie said. “So hurry your shit up already.”
18.
PERCOCET OR NO Percocet, it wasn’t easy to walk with a migraine, much less hike with one. But I didn’t care. Abandoning my Coke and any questions I might have had about where this group of people had actually come from, I muttered a halfhearted good-bye to Maggie, leapt to my feet, and grabbed my backpack. Once upright, however, the ground betrayed me, tilting in this seasick sort of motion.
But I held it together, managing to stagger full tilt toward Dunc and Archie like a blundering buffalo. My sunglasses offered a slight respite from the sun’s whip-strong glare, and I was relieved to see that Avery was well ahead of us, as usual, apparently having gotten away from the Preacher on her own accord—something I hadn’t been able to do. In fact, she’d already made her way back over the China Spring and was currently climbing out of the gorge.
“Come on,” I gasped when I reached the other guys, not bothering to stop. I lurched right past them. “Let’s go.”
“What’s the hurry?” Dunc asked, loping alongside me.
I glanced over my shoulder, back at the campsite in the woods. “Nothing. It’s just, my head really fucking hurts.”
“Your head? Is it one of your migraines?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit,” breathed Dunc. “How are you even walking?”
I couldn’t very well mention being stoned out of my mind on Percocet, so I shrugged. Looked over my shoulder again.
Saw nothing.
My headache grew worse. I turned around and kept walking. I wanted to get the hell out of there. Actually, what I wanted was to go back in time and change the past so that I’d never come down into this gorge in the first place. Regret, it seemed, was becoming a staple of mine.
Archie caught up with us, wheezing from the effort. “Hey, was that Preacher guy trying to convert you or something?”
“No,” I said.
“Was he trying to fuck you?”
“No.”
Archie shrugged. “Too bad.”
“Did either of you happen to see anyone else around?” I asked. “Another person, maybe? In the woods?”
Archie and Dunc both gave me funny looks. Guilty ones, really.
“What?” I asked.
“We didn’t see anything,” Archie said.
“You sure?”
“Scout’s honor.”
That was laughable, but whatever. We kept going, crossing the stream and keeping our feet dry. It was heading up the steep trail where I really started to fall apart. My whole body went shaky, and the Percocet made me heave. Archie had to take my pack, which he complained about, but Dunc helped me walk the rest of the way. I kept my sunglasses on. My hand over my eyes. The breeze bruised my skin, and I ached with each step.
When we got to the junction marker, Mr. Howe grabbed my arm and Shelby was the first to ask if I was okay. I thought I gave an emphatic yes, but maybe not, because I got the idea people were really worried about my well-being, which was beyond mortifying. Someone mentioned possibly needing to turn back, taking me to a doctor, but Rose took charge, pushing one of the medicated inhalers up my nose and insisting I’d be fine. Then she held my arm and held me together and guided me the rest of the way to Hunters Camp. I clung to her. If my migraines were punishment—and they always were—then Rose was my salvation.
I met a rebel preacher, I longed to tell her. Be careful. He’ll double-cross you. That’s what they all do. But I couldn’t speak, which was for the best. My brain had lost its connection to both my mouth and reason.
Archie, on the other hand, was able to speak just fine, and he recounted our detour into the gorge as loudly as possible, all while walking directly behind me. As if he knew his voice were the last thing I might want to hear.
“Those people were freaks,” he crowed gleefully. “They were shady as fuck.”
“Could you be any more annoying?” Rose asked him with a glare.
Archie hooted. “Oh, don’t get your pretty head ruffled just because your boyfriend was down there trying to bang some old lady.”
“You’re going to get your pretty head ruffled when I smack you.”
Archie ignored her. “Church group, my ass. Those people were hiding something back there. I know they were.”
“Enough,” Mr. Howe warned. “Whatever they were doing, it’s none of your business.”
This was true, but it also didn’t mean Archie was wrong. But at least he shut up about it for the time being.
We reached the camp, at last—a shaded grove. I collapsed in the pine needles beside Rose and put my head in her lap. She draped a T-shirt over my face to block the light, then a hat. She also asked Mr. Howe for a Tylenol 3 and a Zofran. Saying nothing about the Percocet, I swallowed both pills and hoped I wouldn’t OD. When I was done, Rose kissed my hand. Stroked my back.
She let me sleep.
19.
I WOKE TO hazy warmth and an even hazier mind. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but when I looked around, I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one who’d dozed off. Archie and Dunc were both crashed out. Shelby’s eyes were open, but she lay curled in the shade in a tank top with her shoulders bare and pink from the sun. She was staring at the trees, which seemed fairly pointless, although for all I knew, she was counting alpacas in the clouds. Avery wasn’t anywhere in sight and I was grateful for that. Rose was the loyal one, the one I needed; she remained sitting beside me, and she was reading a book. I twisted my neck trying to see what it was but couldn’t make out the title.
“Any good?” I asked.
Rose peered down at me. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
“You’re not going to barf, are you?”
I scowled but shook my head. Rose had a thing about barfing. Only when I did it, though. Not her. I mean, not that I was a fan, but feeling bad about getting sick didn’t exactly do a lot to make me feel better. But there was no cause for alarm; both the Zofran and the inhaler had worked, aborting the migraine while I slept, leaving behind only trace amounts of tenderness. My brain remained cottony from the Percocet, but cottony was fine. I reached to pry Rose’s book from her hands, realizing that the reason I hadn’t been able to read the title was because the cover had been torn off it. In fact, a huge chunk of the entire book was missing.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“You said to pack light.”
“So you tore the pages out?”
She shrugged. “I read the first half yesterday, while you were talking to Howe, so it made sense to only bring the second. ‘Weight matters on the mountain,’ you said. Oh, and you were right, by the way. It’s a decent book.”
I turned to look at the spine. Rose’s preference was for old crime novels, books no one else bothered to read, but this was Into Thi
n Air. “Wait a minute. Is this my copy?”
Rose nodded.
“That you ripped in half?”
“You already read it.”
I bristled. That wasn’t the point and she damn well knew it. I also hadn’t paid for the book—it was from the FREE shelf at the library—but that didn’t mean I could afford to replace it.
But I swallowed my ire. After what I’d done, I owed Rose that. I owed her more.
“So you really like it?” I ventured.
She leaned back on her elbows. “I don’t know if I like it. Do you like reading about people dying doing something useless?”
“I guess I don’t think what they were doing was useless,” I said.
“Well, I do.”
“Then maybe what we’re doing right now is useless. Maybe everything we do is useless, all the time, so none of it matters anyway.”
Rose touched her nose, gave a faint smile. “Ding. Ding. Ding.”
I felt exhausted. I laid my head in her lap again with a sigh.
She played with my hair, wrapping it around her finger and unwrapping it. “So are you ever going tell me about this old lady? The one Archie says you were trying to bang?”
“There’s nothing to tell, Rose.”
“You sure about that?”
I rolled on my back. I looked her in the eye.
“Absolutely,” I said.
—
Perhaps it should’ve followed naturally that if I felt guilty for cheating on Rose with Avery, then the obvious and just thing for me to do would’ve been to confess. To ask for forgiveness and apologize for my sins.
I thought about doing that. I really did. I thought about a lot of things as I took Rose’s hand and we headed off on the second leg of our hike, heading up the mountain and leaving behind the Preacher and Maggie and whoever else they might’ve been with, as well as the sunlit spot where Avery and I had feverishly torn off our clothes to screw in the dirt like dogs. Truth be told, it made total sense that I should want to clear my conscience and make things right between us.
But I didn’t.
Looking back, the only way I can explain it is this: I didn’t want to lose Rose. I knew I would someday, but someday wasn’t yet. Plus, my guilt was worthless. It always had been. That was the way it was with my mother, whose misery reminded me every minute of every day of what I’d done to her. Not that I didn’t deserve my guilt. I mean, when you shoot your mother’s born-again asshole of a husband after years of watching him try to beat the devil out of her for her sins, which include your very existence, and then she goes and tries to kill you for the trouble—well, there isn’t any easy answer for that other than maybe you should’ve let her continue to suffer.
When I Am Through with You Page 9