“All the time,” I said.
The smells of damp earth and cold water greeted us as we stepped out of the car, closing the doors with a sound that echoed and made the stranger wince. There was a short path leading down to the gully where the trail actually began, and we trod along it, weaving around the jagged outcroppings of quartz and granite that protruded from the soil. Within moments, we could hear the low, mumbling chorus of the stream. The clearing revealed itself abruptly, the way it always did, hidden behind a sharp curve in the path and a dark, dense patch of holly.
“It’s wonderful,” he murmured, standing before the stream with its fragile bridge of lashed-together branches, the water trickling down through the tree roots before forming the ice-edged pool at our feet.
“Yeah,” I said quietly as I looked around. “It is.”
We crossed the bridge, holding our arms out like winter scarecrows. The mud bank on the other side was steep, and I led the way, prodding roots and stones with my foot to make sure they would hold. The stranger clambered after me, grasping boulders and branches. The sound of water filled our ears, and we walked single file as the trail narrowed, ducking under fallen trees, the light shining down into our faces. The stream was partly frozen, the sunlight making the rolling arcs of ice look even whiter.
“Are you okay?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. “You can do this?”
“Yes,” he said, breathing heavily. His shoes sank into the mixture of snow and mud. “Of course, it’s fine.”
Following the water, we made our way over patches of slippery dead leaves, loose rocks, thickets whose dried blackberry vines grabbed at our sleeves. I rubbed my hip to quiet the persistent note of pain that had begun to sound there, raising my feet to break branches and flatten undergrowth that stood in our way. It was something that made me feel more than a hint of pride, this knowledge of how to get through the difficult places. How to help us both make it to where we were going.
After what felt like an hour but was probably far less, we came to the waterfall that was halfway up, where a glacial cascade of boulders lay tumbled steeply, the tree roots growing around them and binding them in place. A cedar tree had fallen across the waterfall long ago, and there was a smooth spot where people would clamber across to sit on it, their legs dangling over the steep descending stretch of forest.
I pointed at it. “Do you need a rest?”
“Well, I—only if you—” He wiped sweat from his face. “I mean, yes, please.”
We laughed.
“Be careful not to slip,” I said, and sat down on the log, edging out over the empty space.
I made my way toward the middle and looked down at the water—melted snow from higher up—that glimmered back at me. The pang in my hip was becoming more insistent, and I shifted in place, trying to settle into a position that was more comfortable.
The stranger sat next to me, grasping the bark, seeming afraid to let go.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” he said, still trying to catch his breath. “To be honest, I never knew I could.”
“You don’t hike?”
“No, I’ve literally never done this. I’m an indoor guy.”
It was certainly much easier, I thought, to picture him hunched over a dozen books than slogging his way up a peak, even a modest one like this.
A thread of water trickled musically behind us.
“So,” I said, turning to him, “I’ve been wondering. Are you happy here?”
“Here?” He jumped slightly and rubbed at a splinter that must have pricked his finger. “You mean right here? Now?”
“No, I mean staying up here on the mountain.” I swung my feet, watching their reflections below. “You know, for someone like me, it’s no big deal—I grew up here, I’m used to it—but I thought for you it might be…” I didn’t want to use the word “lonely,” maybe because it felt like some kind of accusation whenever anyone applied it to me. “I guess I thought you might miss home.”
He looked surprised. “Well, yes, I do miss home. Unfortunately, home is a place I can’t go at the moment.”
“Oh.” I pulled my ankle up to rest on my thigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right. There’s no reason for you to have guessed.”
We sat, listening to the quiet, glass-like sound of the stream.
“May I ask you a question?” he said finally.
“I believe you just did.”
He threw his head back and laughed appreciatively. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that sign, down on the road. Not the road we took today, but the one that crosses by your store. What is it?”
“You mean the Underground Railroad one?”
“I’m not sure. It’s blue, with flowers tied to it. I saw it when I first came here, but I never got a chance to read it.”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
“You know it?”
“Yeah, I know it.” I leaned forward slightly, feeling the tug of gravity.
“What’s it about?”
I looked out over the tangled roots, the branches heavy with softening snow. Although the stranger kept glancing cautiously around us, he seemed to be in good spirits, and I found myself reluctant to bring him to earth. “Nothing, really.”
“I thought—since it had the flowers—”
“I mean nothing very cheerful.”
“Well,” he said after a moment, raising an eyebrow, “I’m rather used to hearing about things that aren’t very cheerful, I’m afraid. Uzbekistan, as you may know, isn’t an especially cheerful place. But of course there’s no need for you to tell me—I can see you don’t want to talk about it.”
I realized I still didn’t know a thing about Uzbekistan, although I silently resolved to find out. A hawk that had been circling above us settled into a tree, shifting its feet and folding its wings, turning its head to watch us. I looked back at it; like so many things in the woods, it was unsettlingly large when seen close up, its ferocity giving it the grandeur only dangerous things have.
“It’s okay,” I said slowly. “I understand why you’d be curious.”
I peeled a dead leaf from my shoe and dropped it into the water, watching it fall.
“The story is that there was a man who was passing through here,” I began. “This was back during the Depression, nineteen thirty-one or thirty-two, I think. The man had lost his job somewhere else and came here looking for work, but he couldn’t find any.
“He had three daughters with him, young ones. I think the oldest was maybe twelve or thirteen. Their mother was dead, although they had a stepmother of some kind, their father’s girlfriend or fiancée or something like that. So, this man and the fiancée and the three girls, they were driving through Pennsylvania looking for work—he had a Model T or something—but there wasn’t any to be found, even on the farms. They ran out of money, and then eventually they ran out of food.”
The stranger was listening intently, gazing down at the toes of his shoes.
“We think the man tried, for a while, to find something to feed them, but there were three of them, plus the woman. It was hard, even when he went through town and begged. No one had anything to give.
“As the winter came, he realized there was no hope, at least not here. He decided to go out to California and look for work in the fields there. A lot of people were doing that, thousands of them, driving or walking across the plains out west.
“The girls, of course, weren’t very strong, especially not having had anything to eat aside from what they could scrounge. He loved them, or so people say. But he didn’t know what to do. And he couldn’t bear to see them suffer.”
I looked down at the pool of water that reflected our dangling feet, our hands poised next to each other, gripping the log. “So he drove them up here,” I said, and fell silent.
“And he left them?”
“Well, yes.” I replied. “In a manner of speaking.”
The stranger’s expressio
n grew puzzled. Then he suddenly looked at me. “Wait. You mean he killed them?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” He grimaced. His gaze moved to the middle distance, as if the scene were being played out somewhere in the tree limbs. “You’re right. That is terrible. Especially for a beautiful place such as this.”
I flicked a hand dismissively. “Beautiful places are just like anywhere else. People still suffer.”
He sat wordlessly, his face troubled. One of his hands moved over the bark, then came to rest.
“That’s terrible indeed,” he said after some time, as if he hadn’t heard my words. “I can see why there would be a sign there. I suppose that kind of thing leaves a mark on people here.”
“For a long time, we all heard something completely different, actually,” I told him. “The father laid them all next to each other, just like they were going to sleep. And that’s what everyone used to say—that he left them in the woods to fend for themselves, and eventually they got tired and curled up together, the younger ones around the oldest one. But then a couple of years ago one of the newspapers ran a piece on it, and we all found out the old story wasn’t true.”
There was a sound in the brush, and I looked up, but it was nothing, probably just some small animal whose winter rest we had disturbed. Or, I thought, the hawk had finally gotten its prey.
“‘On this spot were found three babes in the woods,’” I said. “That’s what it says on the sign.”
“Do you wish they hadn’t told you the truth?” he asked.
I thought about this for a moment. “No. No point in being sentimental about it, I guess. Nobody benefits from that, in the end.” I turned slightly, and one of my joints cracked. “People do horrible things to the ones they say they love sometimes. Hurt them, abandon them. No reason to pretend they don’t.”
He reflected on this, putting his hands on his knees. For some reason, he looked less odd in profile, more like the thoughtful, if slightly shabby, student he’d claimed to be.
“Well,” he said after a long moment, “I think sometimes we do things like that when we don’t mean to. Sometimes we think we’re doing the right thing, and it’s not until later that we realize it was a mistake.”
“That’s not an excuse,” I replied, more sharply than I had intended. As I spoke, I pictured my parents, Amos, the priest on his darkened porch. The stranger, of course, couldn’t know this, and gave me a surprised look.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “We all do things we regret. For example, I…I know I’ve put my wife through some unpleasant things. Being a lawyer in Uzbekistan has its risks, you could say. And I knew that from the start, but…” He rubbed his thumb over a knot in the wood. “Sometimes things happen, and we do what we think is best. It’s only later that we understand the consequences.”
Neither of us spoke for a time. I busied myself scratching a series of shapes into the log with a twig.
“So your wife is…still there?” I asked.
He looked away and nodded. “Yes. She’s still there.”
“I noticed your ring, that first time you came into the store,” I told him, for lack of a better idea of what to say. “It’s nice.”
“This?” He held up his hand, his expression lightening. “Yes, isn’t it? I got it—and hers, too, of course—when I took a trip to Paris once for work. The authorities let me have an exit visa that time.”
“Paris?” I couldn’t hide my envy. “When were you there?”
“Oh, about fifteen years ago, I suppose.”
I studied his face, his eyes. “That can’t be right. You’re not that old.”
“I’m thirty-nine.”
“What!” I gaped at him. “No, you’re not.”
“Oh, really?” He laughed. “I had thought I was. Have I been wrong all this time?”
“I had no idea. I thought you were ten years younger than that.”
“No—I’m an old man, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll say. Twelve years older than me, and I’m already ancient.” Stretching, I flicked a piece of bark at him. “Should we keep going?”
“Of course.” He worked his way gingerly back across the log, holding out a hand to me when he reached the land. I could see the tiredness in his face, but he seemed determined to offer help, even though I didn’t need it. His grip was warm and surprisingly firm.
Now that I knew, I could see his age, especially in the fine lines around his eyes. I had thought they came purely from worry.
“You have children, back at home?” I asked as we returned to the trail.
He was panting, attempting to scramble up a pile of boulders after me. “No, unfortunately. We couldn’t have any, it seems. Can’t,” he corrected himself. “Can’t have any.”
“Does she get to visit you here?” I pulled myself over the rocks, their edges rough against my hands.
“No, it’s…not that easy, I’m afraid. I wish it were.” His foot slipped on a vein of ice, and he caught himself awkwardly on a branch. “I do hear news of her from time to time, when another exile from Tashkent comes over. We knew a lot of people there. But sometimes I don’t hear anything for months, and sometimes what I hear isn’t so good.”
I gave him a questioning look, and he hastened to add, with seeming embarrassment, “Not that there are any other men, I mean. But that she’s…” Climbing the last few paces to the foot of the slab of rock at the top, he searched for words. “Not safe.”
“Oh.”
When he remained quiet, I stopped and pointed. “We’re just going up that short path and then over that ravine you can see. And then we’ll be at the top.”
Our shoes scraping against the stone, we made our way to the summit, standing together on the immense slab of rock and looking out over miles of evergreens and glimmering, ice-coated ashes and cedars. The gap where the park was fell away below us, the lakes and road hidden by the endless web of branches. On the other side, the mountain rose again, its rounded peaks undulating into the distance.
We sat down, and I reached into my coat pocket, pulling out two oranges. “Want one?”
“Oh—yes. Thank you.” He took the fruit from my hands and held it, looking perplexed. “So the place where I’ve been staying, it isn’t at the top of the mountain? I’d thought it was.”
“Yeah, mountains are deceptive like that. You think you’re at the top, and then you realize you’re nowhere near it.”
He settled back onto the rock and began peeling his orange. “Apparently so.” There was some graffiti on a boulder near us, and he looked over at it curiously. “What’s it called, this mountain?”
“This one?” I looked around us. “I don’t think it has a particular name. We call this whole chain South Mountain. And the chain on the other side of the valley is North Mountain. That’s all I’ve ever heard anyone call them.”
“Oh.” He considered this for a moment. “But what if you go south of South Mountain? Or north of North Mountain?”
I arranged my face in a serious expression. “You can’t.”
“What? Why not?”
“That’s where the world drops off.”
He smiled.
Sitting next to one another, we ate in silence for a while, juice dripping from our fingers onto the stone.
“You never seem to mention your husband,” he said after a time.
I gave a start, but did my best to keep my expression blank. “No, I suppose I don’t. There isn’t much to say.”
He smiled almost indulgently. “That can’t be true. After all, you’re married to him. I assume he’s an interesting person. Does he work in the park as well?”
“Nope.” I brushed dirt from my jeans with my palm. “He’s dead.”
The stranger flinched. “Oh. Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It was four years ago. We were in a car accident.” A cold breeze picked up, and I hunched my shoulders. “Although I do think it’s odd that Martin would have told you
I was married, but not that my husband was—” I paused, reflecting that “dead” sounded unfeeling. “—Gone. I’m assuming it was Martin who mentioned it.”
“Yes,” he replied thoughtfully. “I suppose I find it odd, too. In any case, I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“It’s all right,” I repeated. Then, to my own surprise, I told him the thing I had never acknowledged, never said out loud. “People here think I killed him. It’s very strange.”
“What?” He looked at me, shocked.
“It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“But how could they think that?” he asked, still looking stunned. “People think all sorts of things.” I shrugged. “It’s just how they are. There isn’t really much point in trying to figure out why.”
“But—but you’re so kind.”
The words were so unforced, so full of genuine distress, that for a moment I didn’t know how to respond. “I’m just ordinary,” I told him finally. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. They can think whatever they like.”
“Well,” he said, still sounding unsettled, but he didn’t seem to know what else to say.
We perched beside each other, the only humans, it seemed, for miles in any direction. Our faces turned up, we watched the sun as it slowly traced the arc of one of the shortest days of the year.
When it touched the tips of the trees, I looked at him. A pink tinge was beginning to appear on his nose and cheekbones, probably from the sunlight. At last, I broke the silence. “Are you glad we came here?”
“What? Oh, yes, very. You were right—it’s good to have the chance to do these things.” There was something vaguely wistful in his tone, almost melancholy, but he laughed as he went on. “Although it does make me realize I should perhaps get more exercise.”
“Well, this is a hard climb for anyone.” I glanced back down the rocky path behind us. “But I’m glad you like it. It’s one of my favorite places.”
We resumed our silence for a while, watching the colors of the forest change as the sun began to set. When the cold became too much to bear, I stood up, shaking leaves and twigs from my clothes. The stranger did the same.
Ways to Hide in Winter Page 8