Halfway to the Sky

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  That night Mom and Vivi and I ended up going to a pizza place for dinner. I could not stop crying, and I begged Mom to take me home. Vivi and Mom kept looking at each other, and nodding, and ignoring my tears. When the waitress asked, “Hey, is she okay?” Vivi said, “No, but she's getting there.”

  Now it was two days later, and I was still on the Trail, where I didn't want to be, while Beagle was home, wherever his home was. Mom and Vivi had stopped at Deep Gap and set up camp, and since they got there first I had to stop, too. I wished I could get away from them. If I couldn't go home, I wanted to be alone.

  Mom went for water. Vivi came and sat next to me. I had taken off my pack and gotten Springer's shirt out and was just sitting still, holding it. Vivi gave me a sympathetic look. “Go ahead and cry,” she said.

  “I've been crying for two days!” I wailed. I wiped my eyes. “I just can't believe Beagle left,” I said. “I can't believe he's gone.”

  Vivi didn't say anything. She handed me her water bottle and I took a gulp and wiped at my eyes.

  “Why did he just leave?” I said. Tears kept coming like they were never going to stop. I looked up and saw Mom coming back, coming toward us. “Why would he do that?” I said. “Why did he have to go and die?”

  I took a huge breath of air in a shuddering gulp and my shoulders started to shake. Vivi put her arms around me, and then Mom did, too. Shiny tear tracks ran down Mom's cheeks, and tears dripped from her chin. “I don't know,” Mom said. “I just can't understand it, either.”

  “I miss him,” I said. “He was not supposed to die.”

  “I know, honey, I know,” she said.

  Vivi patted me. “I'm sorry,” I said to her.

  “Blessed almighty,” Vivi drawled, “I've been sad some, too.”

  Eventually night fell. The stars came out and the air smelled strong and sweet. We made dinner and ate it, but we didn't clean it up. We just sat, quietly, and sometimes Mom and I cried. “He really was not supposed to die,” Mom said softly. Vivi shifted her weight and turned her head, listening.

  “He had a life expectancy of about twenty years,” Mom continued. “He was only thirteen. Duchenne kids—always boys, it's genetic and linked that way—start off seemingly normal, but their muscles get progressively weaker over time. They die when their hearts are too weak to pump blood, or their diaphragms too weak to let them breathe.”

  “Or both,” I said.

  Mom nodded. “Or both. Springer was in good shape—”

  “And then he got pneumonia,” I said. “He was in the hospital, but he was doing well. We all thought he was fine. I went to see him after school, and I told him I'd bring his homework in so he wouldn't get too far behind.”

  “I told him I loved him, but I didn't stay the night,” Mom whispered. I found her hand in the darkness and squeezed it hard. “I wasn't with him when he died. The nurses checked him through the night. At one check he was asleep, and at the next he was dead, and no one was with him when it happened.

  “And so here we are,” she said. “Taking a little walk. Katahdin and I.” She got up and picked up the supper pot.

  I thought Vivi was going to think we were completely nuts, but all she said was, “There you are, then.”

  “There you have it,” Mom replied.

  April 28

  Post Office, Bland, Virginia

  Miles hiked today: 7

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 585

  Weather: rain

  I woke up at Deep Gap still sad enough to cry. I didn't think I'd felt that sad since the morning Mom sat on the edge of my bed and told me Springer was dead. I didn't think I'd ever felt that sad. I lay on my back and let tears roll through my hair.

  After a while I got up and went out to find Mom.

  “Have you ever been this sad?” I asked her.

  “I don't know,” she said. “Some days.” She lit the stove and put a pan of water on to boil. “You can quit the Trail now if you want to,” she said. “You can quit today, or we can go on.”

  “Until when?” I asked.

  “You know the answer to that. We've got another ten days.”

  I didn't say anything until we'd finished breakfast. I'd stopped crying by then. I said, “I say we go on.”

  She smiled. “I figured you would.”

  The mountains of Virginia were pretty, covered in full green leaves. Between Deep Gap and Sugar Grove, a town where we stopped to buy groceries and do laundry, it was thirty-eight miles, and we covered it in less than two and a half days.

  I was still sad part of every day, but for the first time it seemed okay to be sad. I didn't know why it hadn't before. As usual, Mom never seemed especially sad or especially happy. She did talk more, to me and to other hikers we met along the way, and not just about Springer, either. She started naming wildflowers for me, and pointing out different varieties of trees and birds, and kinds of rocks and other things I hadn't known she knew. We sat around after dinner talking with the other hikers besides Vivi, and it didn't feel strange. The day after Sugar Grove a whole group of us accepted an invitation to stay in someone's cabin for the night. I wouldn't have felt safe doing that if Mom and I were alone, but with five other hikers, three of them big, stinky guys, it was fine. From Sugar Grove to Bland, Virginia, was fifty-six miles. Four days. Mom said it would be our last resupply. “Don't make faces at me, Katahdin,” she said. “I can't help it. Our grand adventure is coming to an end.”

  Bland was not the place to end it. Bland was bland. We stood outside the post office. “Can I call Dad?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “You can always call Dad.”

  Lisa answered. “It's Dani,” I said. “Can I talk to Dad?”

  “He's not here,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “How's the hike?”

  “Fine.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “Mom says next week.”

  “Well.” She paused. I could imagine her on the other end of the phone, rolling her eyes at how hard it was to pretend she liked me. “We've got good news. You've got a—” She cut herself off in midsentence.

  “A what?” I asked.

  “The baby's a boy,” she said. “We just found out.”

  You've got a brother. That's what she had been going to say. I couldn't decide if I hated her more or less for not saying it.

  I had a brother. “We've picked out a name,” Lisa said. “David. David Harper Brown.”

  “David Harper Brown?”

  “That's right. Do you like it?”

  “It's okay.”

  Lisa didn't say anything else for a moment. Neither did I. “I'll tell your dad you called. He'll be sorry he missed you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You're sure you're okay? Nothing's wrong?”

  “Nothing's wrong.”

  I hung up the phone and stared at it. David Harper Brown. Harper as in Harpers Ferry, I was sure of it. Not a mountain, but the midpoint. Another child named after the Trail.

  “Do you like Lisa?” I asked Mom later. We were doing laundry at a motel that would let us use their machines even though we weren't going to stay there. Vivi had put her laundry in and left for the grocery, so I had a chance to talk to Mom alone.

  “Lisa? Mmmm, no. Not really. Not at all, actually. It's kind of an odd question, wouldn't you say?” I told her about the baby's name. Mom nodded, then went back to the book she was reading—a dilapidated paperback someone had left in the laundry room.

  “Don't you care?” I asked.

  “Don't judge me, Katahdin,” she said, sounding bored.

  “But every time I'm around Lisa, I get the feeling she wishes I didn't exist.”

  “Well.” Mom didn't say anything else for a few moments. “I don't know. People are complicated. How you feel about her, and how she feels about you, isn't set in stone. It can change.”

  “Do you wish she didn't exist?” I asked.
/>   Mom grinned. “I won't say.”

  “If she didn't exist, would you still be married to Dad?”

  Her grin faded. “I don't think so. I can't imagine that we would be. Our divorce was not her fault.”

  “If Springer hadn't died—”

  Mom interrupted. “We talked about that once before. You're going to have to let it be. When you're older, I think you'll forgive us. Maybe not until then.”

  “If Springer had never been born—”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I wasn't sure how to end the sentence, wasn't sure what I was trying to say. “I can't imagine it,” I said.

  “No,” said Mom. “Nor can I.”

  May 1

  Pine Swamp Branch Shelter (Virginia)

  Miles hiked today: 20!

  Total miles hiked on Appalachian Trail: 637

  Weather: clear, cool evening

  We were flying down the Trail, just flying. Twenty miles in a single day, nearly full packs, good weather. At lunch I brought up leaving the Trail, or rather, not leaving it. “You could get another month's sabbatical,” I said.

  “Theoretically, maybe,” Mom said. “Practically, I think it would be more than my supervisor could take.”

  “But if you don't like your job anyhow—”

  “I'd still rather keep it until I found a new one.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Dani.”

  Vivi squeezed my hand sympathetically, and later, when we had stopped and were waiting for my mom, she said, “I know you want to keep on, but you'll have time to come back when you're older.”

  “People always say that,” I said. “It's complete garbage. You know it is. You told me all about your cancer and how you were treasuring every moment.”

  “Well, right. I mean, yes, you're correct, but you're also not old enough to make your own decisions. In a few years you will be, and statistically speaking you should still be alive at that time.”

  “Hah.” We could see Mom now, making her way toward us. “Would you keep going, if you were in Mom's place?”

  Vivi's face grew sad and thoughtful. “Honey, my kids are grown up and healthy. I can't even imagine your mom's place.” She thought a moment longer and added, “You started out without her. Would you keep going without her, if you could?”

  I thought about my first night on Springer Mountain, and all the nights since then. I shook my head. “No.”

  “Might want to tell her,” Vivi said as Mom came within hearing range.

  “Tell her what?” Mom asked.

  I shrugged. “I'm glad you're here with me. I wouldn't have been able to do it alone. I wouldn't have wanted to, either.”

  “Thank you,” Mom said.

  At the end of the day, twenty miles from breakfast, we were all walking together in a row. Vivi led. She made a snorting sound about thirty yards from the shelter. “Hmph,” she said, pointing. “Teenagers.”

  “I'm practically a teenager,” I said.

  “Oh, honey, you don't count. They've probably got boom boxes and beer.”

  Mom grinned. “If they've got beer, I'm going to make them share it.”

  They did not have beer, or boom boxes, or even CD players that I could tell. Their names were Flip, Jake, and Andrew. They had external-frame packs and well-worn boots, and they looked cool to me.

  I couldn't tell you how I looked to them. It was hard to say which smelled worse, me or my pack, even though we'd done laundry in Bland only three days ago and so my clothes were cleaner than usual. You wouldn't believe how much you sweat, hiking in hot weather.

  Vivi said, “Any bunks left for us?” We could see their gear lined up along the front of the shelter.

  The one I later learned was named Jake said, respectfully, “No bunks, ma'am, there's just a floor in this shelter.”

  Vivi grinned. “Any floor left?” “Yes, ma'am.” He moved their stuff to one side a little and let us climb in. There was plenty of room. Andrew, who was a little kid only eight or nine years old, looked at us with wide eyes. He had black hair falling low over his forehead. “Are you thru-hikers?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Vivi is,” I told him. “Mom and I are doing the first seven hundred miles.”

  Some people have never heard of thru-hikers, some think it's weird (“Why would you want to do that?”), and some think it's very impressive and want to ask questions for half an hour. Flip, Jake, and Andrew were none of those. Flip said, “See, bud, told you we'd meet a thru-hiker,” and Andrew said, “Wow,” and Jake said, “We can show you where the water is— you went over the creek, but it's better if you go downstream a bit.” In the end it was Flip who helped me carry the water bags and the filter.

  He was tall and stringy-looking. The muscles on his calves stood out like he hiked all the time. He said, “I didn't know anybody my age thru-hiked.”

  “Section-hiked,” I corrected him. “I want to go all the way, but we can't.”

  “Section-hiked that far,” he said. “Pretty long section.”

  “I haven't seen anybody else our age, except weekend hikers,” I said. “Nobody really serious. I'm sure I'm not the first, though.”

  “I heard once about a five-year-old boy,” Flip said. “I figured he must be a rumor.”

  “Mom says someone told her his name once, so she thinks he might be for real.” We reached the water, which was really running low, and I started to filter some.

  “You heard about the blind guy?” Flip said.

  “Everybody's heard about the blind guy,” I said. He started his thru-hike with only his Seeing Eye dog as a guide. The dog was named Orient, and the blind guy called himself the Orient Express. They made it all the way.

  “Andrew's my brother,” Flip told me. “Jake and I come up here a couple times a year. We kept telling him he could come with us sometime.”

  Here is a list of questions Flip could have asked: Do you have brothers and sisters? (Did I? With Springer dead? Did David count?) How old are you anyhow? (He was fourteen, I would have guessed; I thought he looked older than me, but I still didn't know how I looked to him.) So where's your dad? How come your mom doesn't have a job?

  Here is what he asked me: “Hiking that long, does it get lonely?”

  “Yes and no,” I said.

  He picked up one of the water bags. “I always thought,” he said, “that it would be a good kind of lonely.”

  We made a small campfire, the first I'd been near in several weeks, and we roasted hot dogs over the fire. They were Flip, Jake, and Andrew's hot dogs, but after they saw us watching them, they offered to share. They had plenty anyhow. Andrew looked amazed when I ate six. “Food is fuel,” I told him. “I'm burning lots of fuel.”

  “Want another?” he asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Andrew fell asleep first, worn out from the hike, I guess, and then Mom and Vivi. Flip and Jake and I stayed around the fire, tossing small logs onto it and watching them fall into embers. They told me all about Pearisburg, West Virginia, where they lived, and about all the places they'd hiked nearby. I told them my favorite Trail stories. The night got cold, the wind sweeping down the mountain, and we built the fire higher. I got my long underwear top out of my pack and put it on. “It was snowing in North Carolina,” I said. “It was frightening.”

  Flip looked at me over the edge of the fire. “Man, you get to wake up and hike every day!” he said. “That would be so cool. I wish I had your life.”

  I don't think he really meant it. But I let it be, all the same.

  In the morning Mom and Vivi and I woke early, like we always did. Early mornings are the best times to hike. We moved around quietly so as not to wake the boys. I thought I saw Flip's eyes open as we walked away, but I couldn't be sure.

  May 3

  Near Niday Shelter (Virginia)

  Miles hiked today: 12

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 667<
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  Weather: cooler, clear and sunny

  Vivi left us that day.

  She had been in a strange mood all morning. She had been walking fast, and waiting when we caught up, with an uncharacteristically impatient look on her face. At lunch she didn't want to rest, she wanted to keep going. Mom, on the other hand, wanted a nap. They stood facing each other and spoke like they were bad actresses in a play, reciting lines they didn't mean.

  “No, if you're tired, we should rest.”

  “No, if you'd like to keep going, I'm fine.”

  They were both very polite and fairly cross. In the end we rested for half as long as Mom wanted, which meant they were both unhappy.

  I wanted to keep walking, to tell the truth, but Mom looked so worn out that I didn't say so. At three-thirty P.M. we reached Laurel Creek Shelter. We'd made astonishing time. “Early night tonight,” Mom said, unclipping her pack.

  Vivi, our friend, looked so unhappy.

  “What's wrong?” Mom asked her.

  “I want to stay with you guys so much,” she said. “But at the same time I want to keep hiking so much. I feel so strong now, I could easily go another five miles tonight.” She paused. “Anyway, I can't decide whether I should stay with you all the way to the end. Maybe you need a little time on your own.”

  Mom said. “You can be with us. You're like our family. But you don't have to stay. You're going to need to find some new hiking partners anyhow. We won't be hurt if you start looking now.”

  Yes, we will, I thought. I saw the concern on Mom's and Vivi's faces. I saw how much they loved each other. All in that instant I realized that my mother would not be talked into continuing, tonight or later on. In three days we were leaving the Trail.

  I held out my hand to Vivi. She took it and squeezed it. “I'll walk with you a little farther on,” I said.

  “Okay,” Vivi said. “That would be good.”

  We walked another half mile. I'd left my pack at the shelter, so I could go along easily. “Good luck,” I said when I was ready to turn back.

  “You too,” she said. She hugged me, quick and hard. “I'll keep in touch. You keep in touch, too.”