Tim Horvath - Understories

“Thanks,” I said hastily. My heart was pounding like in an anxiety attack. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I clapped my hands, rallied the troops. “Let’s step outside, how ’bout? Get some of that mountain air, what we’re here for.”

It was a relief, that air, as soon as I opened the door. We descended the stairs to an overlook with a railing, and I tried to look casual leaning against it. And there was Scully, still with us, no intention of letting this be a fleeting run-in. He was talking to the kids, pointing. “So, the Continental Divide, huh? Place where the rivers flow in different directions. Where the weather systems change. Two completely different weather reports up here in Glacier, one east and one west.”

As he held forth, he gestured toward the side of a mountain across the road. The air was clear, but in my mind it began to shimmer like those pyramids Lena and I had visited in Mexico on one of our first vacations. Striations of rock alternated with clumps of plants, making it look like something made, with stairs leading up to the flat top. Now I recalled how tawdry and giddy that trip had made us, how it had made us want to clamber up and strip in the Yucatán sun. When we’d gotten back to New York, Lena had announced that she thought she was pregnant, but then her period came along a couple of days late. We chalked it up to the water. Suddenly that felt like a long time ago.

“So how is it that you know each other?” asked Lena.

“Ah!” Scully laughed. “Class of ’89, is it? I don’t exactly think of myself as an alum of the illustrious ‘Tompkins Tech,’ but they did give me a diploma.”

“Wow,” said Lena. “Small world.” She started explaining it to the kids. “Remember the school we visited, the time we drove by Daddy’s old school and pulled over to look? Remember?” Kelly’s “Yes” sounded dazed, and Emmett was curled up near the railing like the marmot we’d seen at one of the turn-offs on the way up. Kelly had singsongily dubbed him “Emmett the Marmot,” and I was on damage control, since I’d been the one to point out the resemblance.

Scully said, “I do my best to avoid thinking about that place. And I do a pretty darned good job!” He laughed. Then, like he was about to embark with us on a private tour, “So. . the Continental Divide, huh? Family vacation?”

“You guessed it,” I said.

“How long you out for? I take it you’re still in New York?”

“Six days,” I said. “Not long enough. Then we head for Seattle to see their aunt and uncle, my brother. Then back in school come Labor Day, of course. She’ll be starting the second grade. Emmett’s going to be in nursery school. Yes, to answer your question, we’re still in New York. We made it to the Slope, though,” I said, and then added, “Park Slope.” I looked around. The mountains made Flatbush Avenue feel like the Visitor Center’s handicapped-accessible ramp.

“What about you,” I said. “On vacation, too? Kids of your own?”

“Nawp, nawp.” I heard his voice change a bit. Or maybe it had been like that before and I just hadn’t noticed. “I’m here permanent. Live over in Kalispell, about a half hour from the western edge of the park. I run my own company, actually, lead adventure tours of the backcountry. Some fishing, some horse, some canoe. Heck, licensed in hot-air balloons, haven’t had the opportunity to do much of that. And in my free time, do volunteer work in the park, trail maintenance and the like.” He pointed back behind the Visitor Center. “If you’ve hiked the Highline, you’ve seen some of my handiwork: reinforced cable wire so you don’t go tumbling. Just for heavy wind. Just in case.” His smile was easy and generous. “And no kids,” he said, holding up his hands, thick, muscular.

“Wow,” I said. The wind was picking up. Somewhere around that moment, I realized I was going to have to reassess Scully here. What I mean is, he wasn’t the guy I’d always assumed he’d become. I hadn’t really thought about him over the years, but in my not-thinking, punctuated with the occasional thought, he’d become someone else. An engineer, like me. Or a lawyer. Or maybe gotten his M.B.A., gone into business. It was assumed. I didn’t need to consult an alumni directory or Google him to confirm it. Maybe I’d bump into him at the twentieth, and he’d be Old Scully, “Skulky,” junior partner at his firm, or head of Public Relations. He’d have a wife with a tan that you couldn’t miss even under reunion lighting. Maybe I’d have a brief, drunken flirtation with her. He’d have a kid, maybe two. One of them would want to talk internship.

The guy in front of me quite simply wasn’t the right Scully. It was someone who had begun as Scully but whose life had diverged imperceptibly from Scully’s at some point, two vectors departing from a single node. An old professor of mine, O’Connor, had explained this sort of thing best: “Shooting an arrow at a razor blade,” he’d said, “and hitting it dead-on.” I pictured O’Connor with his crazy beard, sketching it out while standing amid the chalk and all the equations.

“Did you say the Highline?” I said.

He pointed. “A ten, maybe twelve-minute walk from here to the trailhead. That’s where the catch line is. If you haven’t done it, I highly suggest we do. No pun intended,” he said. Maybe my face showed reservation. He added, “Don’t worry — it’ll hold ya!” His laugh was puffed out with air, like an accordion. I’d kind of thought of Scully as being mildly asthmatic.

What bothered me most was not that I had to revise my initial impressions, but that I couldn’t find any trace of the old Scully here, as if he’d been wiped utterly away. I wanted something — the grade grubbing, the carping about the special treatment of athletes on game days, the boasting about his dad’s trips to Singapore and Hong Kong — that I could fix onto, attach to the guy that I remembered. And none of it was there. It was like he’d just thrown the old Scully over the side of a cliff.

“Hey, why don’t we go check out that trail of yours?” I said. “Hey, kids, Scully helps to build the trails here in the park. He’s like a ranger.” I looked at Lena. “We can take a few minutes to see the trailhead of the Highline Trail, no?”

Lena looked a bit confused. She said, “These guys need food.”

“Oh, I’ve got stuff,” declared Scully. “They like granola bars? The chewy kind?” He offered a thumbs-up, and when I returned it, he said, “Wait right here.”

Scully handed out the chocolate chip and the peanut butter bars, and we set off through shrubbery and scruff. The whole family was chewing as we followed the trail through its downward dip, passing through a meadow. I’d pinned a compass to my shirt pocket, and now watched the needle bobbing in the general direction we were headed. We were surrounded by mountains — two to our left, one behind, and a ridge straight ahead. Above that was a giant pile of rock shards culled together. Behind it lurked a mountain that resembled a skyscraper. It felt as if they’d been designed by some architect, even the ice field mimicking a sheet of glass.

Lena was looking down, pointing to the wildflowers that dotted the grass with yellow and orange-red. She said, “Those are glacier lilies. That’s Indian paintbrush.”

Scully said, “Right you are. Pretty good for a bunch of city slickers.” Kelly skipped off the trail and reached down to grab a handful.

Gently, Scully called, “Hey, you don’t want to pick those.”

She looked at Lena, who, in turn, looked at Scully, who shook his head.