T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

It was a Saturday at the end of October, the leaves bronzing on the lower slopes, deer season safely in the can and the mosquitoes gone to mosquito hell till spring at least, and seventeen people had signed up, including Mal Warner, who’d been a member of the group executive committee of the Los Padres Chapter for as long as Brice could remember. “So we’ll have two executives along for this little stroll,” Syl had pointed out at dinner last night. It hadn’t really occurred to him to think of it in those terms — he and Mal went back forty-five years, to the time of Brower and the fight over the Grand Canyon, though they’d grown apart in recent years — but he’d looked up from his vegetarian lasagna and salad of nopal and field greens to give her a little nod of recognition. “Yes,” he’d said, acknowledging the point — he was on the executive committee of the Kern-Kaweah Chapter, after all, not to mention leader of a dozen or more group hikes a year—“I guess so.”

He’d set down his fork and gazed across the room, beyond Syl and the calendar on the wall and out the window to where the evening sun burnished the top rail of the fence till it shone as if it had been waxed, wondering all over again why Mal had decided to drive all this way to join them — and not for dinner or a drink or a night of reminiscence out on the deck but for a routine day hike up a mountain that held no challenges for either of them. Plus, Mal had chosen to e-mail rather than telephone, as if he couldn’t bother to waste his breath, though the message itself was amiable enough: See you’re leading one of your 60-plus hikes up Slate Mt. next week and thought I’d come join you. You’ve got to admit I qualify. And some. Looking forward. Yours, Mal. P.S. Say hi to Syl.

Now, as the breeze shifted and a high vanguard of cirrostratus crept into place around the sun like dirty wash, he sipped his coffee and thought of the pleasures of the trail. It had been over a month since he’d been up in the mountains because of what he liked to call the special use tax of the hunting season, Fish and Game making their pile out of it and everybody else left to duck for cover. You’d have to be suicidal to leave the paved roads when the hunters were on the loose, whether you were dressed in Day-Glo orange and carrying an air-raid siren strapped to your back or not — Christ, if it was up to him he’d impose a ban on all hunting, even of rodents, and make it permanent. Over a month. He was looking forward to stretching his legs.

Just as he was about to go in and urge Syl to get a move on — it took nearly an hour to drive the switchbacks up to the seven-thousand-foot elevation of the trailhead where the group would assemble, and he, as leader, had to be there first to reassure them as they emerged from their vehicles in a confusion of coolers, daypacks and binoculars and the like, no dogs allowed, thank you, and alcoholic beverages discouraged — a glint of light caught his eye and he looked up to see a boxy silver car swing off the main road and start up the drive toward him. It took him a moment — the flash of wire-frame spectacles, the outsized head, the gleam of a perfect set of old man’s choppers working over a wad of gum — to realize that this was Mal behind the wheel, and it took him a further moment to recollect and replay the unhappy occasion of their last meeting, which had nearly brought them to blows over the very pettiest of things, so petty it embarrassed him to recall it: a dinner check.

How long ago was it? Five or six years anyway. They’d been entertaining a party of Angels — donors in excess of the $100,000 range — after a horseback trip into the Golden Trout Wilderness, regaling them with a feast at the local lodge, no expense spared and everybody aglow with the camaraderie of the trail, when the check came. It was pretty hefty, but that was only to be expected, the overheated faces up and down the table glutted with filet mignon and lobster tail and the cocktails and wine and desserts and after-dinner drinks that preceded and rounded out the meal, but he and Mal had agreed beforehand to split the cost between their chapters. The waitress had brought the check to him, and while he was fumbling with his reading glasses and frowning over the figures that seemed to swell and recede in the candlelight, Mal had pushed himself up to come jauntily round the table, lean in and whisper in his good ear, “You’re going to have to cover this — I must have left my wallet in my other pants.” Which was exactly what he’d said, word for word, the last time. And the time before that. The upshot was a discussion out in the parking lot that managed to exhume some buried resentments, not the least of which involved Syl, who’d been Mal’s lean leggy golden-braided hiking companion before Brice had ever met her, on a hike, with Mal, some forty years ago. He’d said some harsh things. So had Mal.

And now here he was, easing out of the car and slinging a daypack over his shoulder in one fluid motion, looking not a minute older than he had in the parking lot that day, though he must have been, what? Sixty-eight? Or no: sixty-nine. Sixty-nine and loping up the walk without the slightest hesitation, no hitch in his stride, no tics or palsies or spastic readjustment of the lower back muscles after the long drive, just forward momentum. When he reached the bottom step, Brice came down to him and they shared a solemn handshake. “Brice,” Mal said.

“Mal.”

“Hope you don’t mind my stopping off here instead of meeting you up top. Thought it’d be nice to drive up with you. Plus”—and here he grinned, as if in acknowledgment of what had come between them—“it sure saves fuel.”

Before he could respond, Syl came tearing out the door. “Mal!” she cried, scooting across the porch in her hiking boots, no-nonsense jeans and down vest to fall into his arms for a sisterly embrace that might have lasted just a beat too long. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Mal said, his jaws working and his eyes shining, “you too.”

—

Hiking wasn’t a competitive activity, or that was the party line anyway, but of course it was. It was about endurance, about knowledge, wisdom, woodcraft, and it was as testosterone-fueled as any other sport, which was why he liked leading the sixty-and-up groups — it eliminated the young studs with their calf-length shorts and condescending attitudes, the kind who were always pressing to pass you on the trail. He could really get worked up about that if he let himself, because the first rule of the group hike, to which they’d all sworn allegiance beforehand, was never to pass the leader (or, for their opposite number, the bloated ex-athletes and desk jockeys and their top-heavy wives, never to lag behind the rear leader). Now, as they stood assembled at the trailhead, he went over the printed rules for the twelve hikers who’d showed up: four couples in their early to late sixties, a single man wearing lace-up knee boots who looked to be seventy-five or so and three stocky women in matching pastel hoodies he took to be widows or divorcées. “And remember,” he said, “always keep in sight of the person ahead of you in case there’re forks in the trail and you’re not sure which way to go. Any questions?”

“What about bears?” one of the stocky women asked.

He shrugged, gave her a slow smile. “Oh, I don’t know — what did you bring for lunch?”

“Tuna. On rye.”

“Uh-huh, well that just happens to be their favorite. They’re probably all lifting their muzzles in the air right now, taking a sniff.” He waited for laughter, but there was none. “But seriously, it shouldn’t be a problem. I rarely see bears up here, especially this time of year after the hunters have got through with them. But if a bear should come for you, you know the drill: stand up tall, wave your arms and shout. And if that doesn’t do it, abandon your pack. And lunch. Better to go hungry than have a four-hundred-pound black bear pinning you down and licking your face, don’t you think?”