by Stacie Ramey
Two guys and a girl I don’t recognize approach. The sound of their shoes crunching the gravel path in synch is insanely beautiful. They talk in soft tones, and I wonder if they are sharing a word of the day or counting double-point answers. I wonder if they like the same books and love the same first lines or the same music. I close my scratchy eyes. Relief unwinds the tension in my jaw as I rest my heavy lids. I’m thinking about how funny it is that my eyes are connected to my jawbone, but all I can focus on is the cold smooth rock beneath my cheek.
• • •
“Hey. Hey, you okay?”
Someone shakes my shoulder.
“Dude, you fell asleep on a rock!” A guy with a scraggly red beard and red hair, a bandanna tied tight around his head and one of those CamelBak hydration systems tells me.
I blink up at him. The sun behind him makes a star-shaped light through the tree canopy. From the angle of the light, I’m guessing it is late afternoon. I’ve slept all day.
My neck is cramped from being in a weird position. Drool collects under my hand. That doesn’t stop the red-haired dude from putting out his hand to pull me to my feet. “Thanks.” I rub my neck.
“You okay? Must’ve been pretty tired to sleep on a rock.”
“Yeah.” I look around. Where am I? How did I get here? My gaze finally lands on the big rock at the foot of the hill marked Dicks Creek Gap.
The memories sift back slowly, and I hold my hand in front of my face to shield myself from the light. An urgency burns in my stomach. Rain Man. I was trying to get to Rain Man. Blue-blazing off of Sassafras Gap.
“What is the date?”
“May third. The trail will make you forget who you are and where you are and when it is. You need anything?”
“Nah. I’m good.” I’m two days good. I start toward the trail.
“Hey, you’re going the wrong way,” unknown guy says.
I give him a wave of thanks as I reorient myself. Thinking about the old joke about one-way signs. “But officer, I was only going one way,” I mumble as I head SOBO on the trail. I figure I can make it to Sassafras Gap in a couple of hours, easy. I take a drink and eat one of Gator’s energy bars. It’s sweet and crunchy. Both things I like. And the wrapper says it’s got some coffee in it. I’m not sure I believe that, but it’s better than nothing.
It’s so stinking hot that the sweat drips in my eyes. I make my legs move forward.
The sun starts drawing toward the horizon, but the air has yet to cool. I wish I could talk to Emily. I wish I could talk to Sophie. I’m so busy listing all of my wishes that I almost bypass Sassafras Gap.
There’s a flat campsite where a few hikers have set up their tents. I look for Rain Man’s navy tent and don’t see it. There’s a sign that points to water. It’s off of a blue-blaze trail. I need water anyway, so I head down the incline. My legs are tired, despite the limited hiking I did today, and I skid on leaves and dirt. I stop myself from falling, but I have to spread my arms to balance myself.
“We could have called you Surfer instead of Wild Thing.” Rain Man’s voice snaps me to attention. “What are you doing here, son?”
In my mind I say, “I’m here to save you!” as superhero music plays the background. All I can think about is Sophie, and all I want to do is tell her I got here in time, that Rain Man is fine. That she’ll get to see him again, that he wasn’t like her mother, there for a while and then gone. I want to tell her I heard the birds her mom liked. That I found the trees that my dad liked. But here I am with Rain Man, and I’ve got to do what I came here to do. So instead, I say, “I was looking for you.”
“I thought you and Ghost were northbound.”
“Yeah. About that…”
“You hungry? I can make us dinner while you tell me all about it. My camp is about a quarter mile from here.”
I look around and remember that Rain Man’s wife went off the trail when she hiked that last time. That she died because she couldn’t find her way back. We aren’t far from the trail, but in the woods, it’s easy to get lost, which is why they mark the trails. “You’re blue-blazing?”
“Today I am.”
I can hear and smell the water as we walk toward it. “Where’s Ghost?” Rain Man asks.
I run my hand across my beard, which is filling respectably, even since the other day. “Sophie. Her name is Sophie, and it’s a long story. Not a good one.” I sit on the bank of the creek and take off my boots off.
He nods. “I’ve known Sophie since she was a kid. Before she had that trail nickname. She was always a serious little kid. Quiet and serious, but she loved the trail.”
“You knew her parents?”
“Yeah. They hiked a little every year. Nice people. A shame about her mom.” Rain Man kneels by the stream. “The trail is filled with the good and the bad. Trail magic is great, but trail magic can’t heal everything.” He puts one bag in the water to fill, but it pulls out of his hand and floats downstream, which is weird because the current isn’t that fast or strong. I wade into the stream, letting the cold water trickle over my feet. Just before I overtake the bag, it washes out of reach. I can’t help but laugh as I chase the damned thing down, but when I turn back, I can’t see Rain Man. How far did I go? I get a little panicky. I look at the trees and try to place where I am while fighting the anxiety that crawls into my throat. This is how Rain Man’s wife must have felt when she was lost.
“I got it,” I call, my voice shaky.
“Over here, son.” Rain Man waves from maybe two hundred feet away and I jog back, ignoring the hard stones under my bare feet as I do.
As I get closer, Rain Man’s face looks weird. Like the muscle tone is gone out of it. I drag the bag through the water, then traipse back to him, holding the bag high like a big catch from the sea. He smiles, but his lips don’t lift as high as they usually do.
“You okay, Rain Man?”
He stumbles a little, and then catches himself. “Just tired, son.”
I follow him to his camp, wordless and worried (that might be a two-point score but, I’d have to defend it to Emily, because it would be hard to believe that the category would be how you felt on the Appalachian Trail or anything else that would make those two emotions make sense).
“You like rice and beans? I think that’s all I’ve got.” He starts a fire and I’m surprised, because he usually has dueling stoves, and because otherwise he uses a preapproved fire ring, so as not to needlessly burn the forest floor. I want to point that out to him. The asshole in me wants to shake my finger at him, tell him he’s forever changing the way people will see this place for years to come. Except I’m here to save him. Only now that I’m here, he doesn’t look sad. He looks tired and worn and sort of angry, but not depressed. But maybe I don’t know what depressed looks like.
Rain Man interrupts my thoughts. “You said you were looking for me. What’s up?”
How am I supposed to answer that? “We…I mean, Sophie and I.… We… I was worried about you. We both were.”
Rain Man stirs the food. “You heard about my wife and wanted to check on me?”
I stare at the ground. “Kind of.”
“Well, you can see that I’m all right.”
“Yeah.”
“So no need to worry.”
“I’m sorry about your…” Using a person’s name is more personal, I remind myself. “I’m sorry about Mary.”
Rain Man doesn’t answer, he simply goes back to tending the fire and the food. Fiery food. Two points. Category: name two things you find on the Appalachian Trail. Or a new category: what you use to avoid answering hard questions when camping on the Appalachian Trail.
“She got lost around here?” I ask.
“Two miles back that way.” He gestures. “We were supposed to hike together, but we had a big fight and she left on her own. She was as stubbor
n as I am.”
“When people die, everyone always says it’s not your fault,” I start but it’s not coming out the way I want it to. It’s coming out the way I see it though. For me, especially. “My father died. I feel like part of that was my fault.”
“How could that be?”
“It’s just what I feel. Do you feel that way about Mary’s death?”
Rain Man stares at me, full on for almost five seconds. That’s a long time to stare at someone. “You think it’s my fault Mary died?”
“I don’t know. I only know for me, how I feel. Or how I felt before I came on this trail.”
Rain Man shakes his head. “And now?”
“Now I think we can’t be responsible for someone else’s life. Or someone else’s death.”
“That’s probably true, Wild Thing.”
“But there’s still guilt. Isn’t there?”
Rain Man stirs the beans and rice. “Probably.”
“My dad died of a heart attack.” I breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out. This is still so hard. “He had arrhythmia. That’s what killed him.”
“I can’t see how that could be your fault in any way.”
I clear my throat. Swallow. “See, I used to have a lot of these…meltdowns.”
“Uh huh,” Rain Man keeps stirring the food, but looks at me to keep me talking.
“Dad used to always hold me when I was freaking out. His heartbeat was the sound I’d focus on to calm myself. Dum dum. Dum dum. Dum dum dum.” I tap the rhythm on my leg. “That extra blip was always there. I heard it. I knew.”
“Wow. That’s intense.” Rain Man leans forward, both hands in front of him. “But it’s not right to blame yourself. You didn’t know it was a bad thing, and it doesn’t change anything. Hell, most people wouldn’t even pick up on something like that. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. But it’s hard not to blame yourself, you know?”
Rain Man nods. Then it’s his turn to clear his throat. He looks at me like he wants to change the subject. “You want some coffee, Wild Thing? I know you like that stuff. Mary sure did. Said she wasn’t herself until she’d had her morning cup of joe.”
“That would be awesome. And it’s Dylan. My real name is Dylan.”
Rain Man turns to inspect me. His look tells me that maybe it’s weird I told him my real name?
“I don’t want to lie to you anymore,” I say. “My name is Dylan Taggart.”
Rain Man’s eyebrows rise. “Using a trail name isn’t lying.”
“It isn’t telling the truth either.”
“When you’re on the trail, you get to be someone else for a while. You’re holding yourself to a higher standard. Maybe too high.”
“My being on the trail isn’t about being someone else. I ran away. I am hiding. My mom wants to send me to a special school, you know for kids with emotional problems. But I don’t want to go.”
Rain Man nods.
“I have issues,” I explain.
Rain Man makes a face. “We all have issues.”
“Apparently, my issues make me ‘a danger to myself and others.’”
He stirs the food. “I’m not sure I buy that.”
“My teachers actually wrote that in my record. Whatever. The point is—”
“Were you pushed?” Rain Man asks.
“What do you mean?”
“A man will do things he normally wouldn’t when he feels he has no choice.”
I think back to that day in the auditorium. Then to a year before that. Dad and I were supposed to go to a lecture at Wesleyan University on star death. The talk included some time at the Van Vleck Observatory and an opportunity to join the astronomy club.
“That’s what you call the trifecta,” Dad had joked when he printed our tickets. I wanted to point out it was more ecofriendly to send the tickets to the app on his iPhone, but I didn’t want to “harsh his mellow,” as he called it. So I smiled. “Awesome, Dad.”
But the day we were supposed to go, I came home from school and found the front door wide open. Mom was screaming. I raced inside. I saw Dad’s legs on the floor first. His body was blocked from view by the couches. Mom was on the phone, screaming into the receiver. “Please hurry. He’s not breathing.”
I force my wandering attention back to the here and the now on the trail. With Rain Man. And I say, “The day I got in trouble at school, I was thinking about how I found my dad and…”
“You were the one who found your dad?”
“Well, first Mom did, but I walked in right after her. Last year. And my incident happened on the anniversary, which is something I just realized.”
Rain Man nods. “Makes sense to me. Anniversaries are pretty tough.”
Rain Man’s face looks all serious and concerned, like my grandfather’s face, Dad’s dad, the one in California that we only see once a year usually. So, I keep talking, I tell him about the last straw for my school.
My social skills training has taught me not to monopolize the conversation. To check in with my listener. Rain Man stares off into the distance, nodding occasionally. I’m smart enough to know that means he’s not listening to me. That he’s got something else on his mind. But I’m on a roll, the smell of coffee igniting parts of my brain that have been sleeping for days. So I keep talking even though I should maybe shut up. Rain Man hands me the mug of coffee, and I take a sip. It’s even better than I remembered, despite being instant. So I take another swallow, even though it’s hot and burns the roof of my mouth and my throat. I drink and drink it and hope that this coffee will help me focus enough to do this next part.
Rain Man divides the food into two bowls. He hands me one and stares at his. The smell is amazing, but I’m not ready to eat yet. My mouth is still recovering from the coffee scalding. So I say, “The thing is, I never really thought anything could happen to my dad, you know? I thought he’d always be there. I worried about stars burning out and how bumblebees are dying. I never worried about what I should have.”
Rain Man takes a bite of his food and swallows, then he waves his spoon around in the air. “Your parents are supposed to be your constant. You shouldn’t have had to worry about your dad. He wouldn’t have wanted you to.”
I nod. But I tell him how Mom used to get so frustrated because she didn’t think I showed enough interest in other people, that I didn’t show that I cared enough about what other people cared about. He nods. Mom didn’t get that I showed my emotion differently than she did. Like at the assembly. I tell Rain Man about how all I could hear was the sound of my dad’s heartbeat.
“It grew louder and louder, until it thundered in my ears—but I couldn’t make it stop. I squeezed my head, but the pounding got stronger.” I feel my heartbeat matching that day. “I felt like I was suffocating, drowning. I had to breathe. But everything—my sadness, my clothes—was weighing me down. So I started stripping, right there in the auditorium. My skin needed air. People were laughing and pointing, but I didn’t care. I had to breathe, had to make the pounding in my ears stop, to squeeze the sound out of my head.” They wouldn’t fault a drowning man for trying to save himself and gasping for air when the surface, but somehow my behavior was inappropriate.
The words take the wind out of me. I’ve made myself open and raw, but it’s the right thing. I put Rain Man’s safety before my own. It’s hard and painful, but it will be worth it if it saves him.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Rain Man says.
I take a bite of my rice and beans. That’s when I start to cry.
“It’s hard, Dylan. It really is. Losing someone you love.”
“It’s not my dad. It’s just… I love rice and beans.”
He chuckles.
Through my tears I say, “There are moments in life that are as perfect as the first line in a good book. Or the last line. They’r
e waiting for you to notice them. This is one of those moments.”
Rain Man salutes me with his spoon.
“I’m serious. I’m tired and starving from the hike. And the food is good. After days without caffeine, there’s coffee. It’s perfect. But I had to go through all of that to get here to enjoy it. So in some sick twisted way, I’m glad it all happened, which would include my dad dying, How fucked up is that?”
Rain Man shakes his head. “Man, you think too much.” Then he gets serious. “It’s no sin to want to be happy, Dylan. Your father doesn’t want you sad or moping or denying yourself happiness. Parents always want their kids to live. Especially the good parents, like your dad.”
“Are you a good dad?” I ask.
“I used to be,” he says.
“What changed?”
“Mary died.”
“But you’re still a dad. Their dad.”
“They have their own lives. Plus I know they blame me for what happened to her. She and I were both really stubborn, but she was their mom and there’s no messing with that.”
“Yeah. Moms are the best. But dads…”
“So tell me, if you’re so smart, why aren’t you home right now with your mom?”
“As soon as I’m done here, I’m going home. And I’m going to tell her I’m sorry.”
“Good.”
“Well, I mean, after I go see Sophie. If she’s even up to seeing me.”
“Where is Sophie anyway?”
“She’s in the hospital.”
Rain Man’s eyebrows raise. He waits for me to continue.
“You know how I went after her that night, when the trail was flooded?”
“Yeah.”
“I found her pinned under a tree. Her ankle was hurt, but we took it easy and it seemed to be getting better.”
“Then.…”
“Then I decided I had to chase after you, and I sort of left her behind, which kind of pissed her off… She hiked all night to find me.” I put my head in my hands. Retelling this story is as bad as retelling the other story. The auditorium one.