Cheryl Strayed - Wild

“I’ve got a little something for us,” he said, reaching into the glove compartment to remove the flask of whiskey. “It’s my reward for a hard day’s work.” He unscrewed the cap and handed it to me. “Ladies first.”

I took it from him and held it to my lips and let the whiskey wash into my mouth.

“Yep. That’s the kind of woman you are. That’s what I’m going to call you: Jane.” He took the flask from me and had a long drink.

“You know I’m not actually out here completely alone,” I blurted, making up the lie as I spoke. “My husband — his name is Paul — he’s also hiking. He started at Kennedy Meadows. Do you know where that is? We each wanted the experience of hiking alone, so he’s hiking south and I’m hiking north and we’re meeting in the middle, and then we’ll go the rest of the summer together.”

Frank nodded and took another sip from the flask. “Well, then he’s crazier than you,” he said, after thinking about it for a while. “It’s one thing to be a woman crazy enough to do what you’re doing. Another thing to be a man letting his own wife go off and do this.”

“Yeah,” I said, as if I agreed with him. “So anyway. We’ll be reunited in a few days.” I said it with such conviction that I felt convinced of it myself — that Paul that very minute was making his way toward me. That in fact we hadn’t filed for divorce two months before, on a snowy day in April. That he was coming for me. Or that he would know if I didn’t make it any further down the trail. That my disappearance would be noted in a matter of days.

But the opposite was true. The people in my life were like the Band-Aids that had blown away in the desert wind that first day on the trail. They scattered and then they were gone. No one expected me to even so much as call when I reached my first stop. Or the second or third.

Frank leaned back against his seat and adjusted his big metal belt buckle. “There’s something else I like to reward myself with after a hard day’s work,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked, with a tentative smile, my heart hammering in my chest. My hands on my lap felt tingly. I was acutely aware of my backpack, too far away in the bed of the truck. In a flash, I decided I’d leave it behind if I had to push the truck door open and run.

Frank reached under the seat, where the gun resided in its little black case.

He came up with a clear plastic bag. Inside, there were long thin ropes of red licorice, each bunch wound like a lasso. He held the bag out to me and asked, “You want some, Miss Jane?”

I devoured a good six feet of Frank’s red licorice as he drove, and I’d have eaten a good six feet more if it had been available.

“You wait here,” he told me once we pulled up in the little dirt driveway that ran alongside his house — a trailer in a small encampment of trailers in the desert brush. “I’ll go in and tell Annette who you are.”

A few minutes later they emerged together. Annette was plump and gray-haired, the expression on her face unwelcoming and suspicious. “Is that all you got?” she grouched as Frank pulled my pack from his truck. I followed them inside, where Frank immediately disappeared into the bathroom.

“Make yourself at home,” said Annette, which I took to mean that I should sit at the dining table that bordered the kitchen while she made me a plate of food. A small blaring television sat on the far corner of the table, the volume so loud it was almost hard to hear. Another story about the O. J. Simpson trial. I watched it until Annette came and set the plate down before me, then turned off the TV.

“It’s all you hear about. O.J. this and O.J. that,” she said. “You wouldn’t think there were children starving in Africa. You go on and start,” she said, gesturing to my food.

“I’ll wait,” I said in a casual tone that belied the desperation I felt. I gazed down at my plate. It was piled high with barbecued ribs, canned corn, and potato salad. I thought to rise and wash my hands, but I feared doing so might delay dinner. It didn’t matter. The notion of whether it was necessary to wash one’s hands before eating was now as distant to me as the news report on the TV.

“Eat!” Annette commanded, setting a plastic cup of cherry Kool-Aid before me.

I lifted a forkful of potato salad to my mouth. It was so good I almost fell out of my chair.

“You a college girl?”

“Yes,” I said, oddly flattered that I appeared that way to her, in spite of my filth and stench. “Or I used to be. I graduated four years ago,” I said, and then took another bite of food, realizing it was technically a lie. Though I’d promised my mother in the last days of her life that I would finish my BA, I hadn’t. My mother had died on the Monday of our spring break and I’d returned to school the following Monday. I’d staggered my way through a full load of classes that last quarter, half blind with grief, but I did not receive my degree because I’d failed to do one thing. I had not written a five-page paper for an intermediate-level English class. It should have been a breeze, but when I tried to start writing, I could only stare at my blank computer screen. I walked across the stage in a cap and gown and accepted the little document baton that was handed to me, but when I unrolled it, it said what I knew it would: that until I finished that paper, I would not have my bachelor’s degree. I had only my college loans, which, by my calculations, I’d be paying off until I was forty-three.

The next morning Frank left me at a convenience store on the highway after instructing me to catch a ride to a town called Ridgecrest. I sat on the front porch of the store until a guy who distributed chips came along and said yes when I asked him for a ride, in spite of the fact that it was against company rules to pick up a hitchhiker. His name was Troy, he told me once I’d climbed into his big truck. He drove around southern California five days a week, delivering bags of chips of all varieties. He’d been married to his high school sweetheart for seventeen years, since he was seventeen.

“Seventeen years out of the cage, and seventeen years in,” he joked, though his voice was raw with regret. “I’d do anything to trade places with you,” he said as we drove. “I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.”

He left me at Todd’s Outdoor Supply Store, where Mr. Todd himself dismantled my stove, cleaned it, installed a new filter, sold me the correct gas, and then led me through a stove-lighting trial run just to be sure. I bought more duct tape and 2nd Skin for my wounded flesh and went to a restaurant and ordered a chocolate malt and a cheeseburger with fries, feeling as I had at dinner the evening before: shattered by each delicious bite. Afterwards, I walked through town as cars whizzed by, the faces of the drivers and passengers turning to look at me with cold curiosity. I passed fast-food joints and car dealerships, unsure of whether I should stick out my thumb for a ride or spend a night in Ridgecrest and head back to the PCT the next day. As I stood near an intersection, trying to figure out which direction to go, a scruffy-looking man rode up beside me on a bicycle. He held a wrinkled paper bag.

“You heading out of town?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. His bike was too small for him — made for a boy instead of a man — with garish flames painted along the sides.

“Which direction you headed?” he asked. His body odor was so strong I almost coughed, though I guessed I smelled almost as bad as he did. In spite of the bath I’d taken the night before at Frank and Annette’s after dinner, I was still dressed in my dirty clothes.