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

The old man — he was second behind Beverly — took the opportunity to ask an involved question about the geology of the mountain, throwing around terms like “pre-cretaceous” and “metamorphic,” and the best Brice could do was to say he honestly didn’t know but that up top, up at nine thousand feet, there were all sorts of rare plants, like purple mountain parsley, which hadn’t even been discovered — or identified, that is — till 1976.

“Dead now, I suppose,” the old man said.

Brice acknowledged the point, taking a quick glance behind him to be sure everybody was still there, the group in single file now as the trail steepened and the switchbacks dug into the slope in the thinning air. “Just like the bugs.”

—

Two miles up was a saddle with a scatter of downed trees, where he liked to call a rest stop so people could catch up, refer to their water bottles and power bars and take in the view of the granite spires known as the Needles where they rose up like outstretched fingers from the grip of the mountain opposite. The group settled in, some of them spreading groundcloths, others easing down in the pine needles to sort through their packs. Everyone seemed companionable enough at this point, all the hang-ups and anxieties of their daily lives washed clean on the flow of blood pumping through their hearts and lungs and down into the loose working muscles of their legs. As advertised. And what had John Muir said? I never saw a discontented tree. Exactly.

He was unwrapping the avocado and bean-sprout sandwich he’d prepared in the kitchen before first light when Syl, the bill of her cap set at a rakish angle, eased down beside him and began sorting through her own pack. She was on a diet — a perpetual diet, though to his eyes her figure had scarcely changed over the years, her legs firm, her stomach flat and her small, perfectly proportioned breasts still right where they should be, whether she was wearing a bra or not, and never mind the striations above her upper lip or the way her throat sagged to give away her age — and so she’d passed on his offer to make her a sandwich, relying on her cache of low-cal fiber bars instead. She unwrapped one now and gave him a grin.

He grinned back. He was feeling good, better than good — he could have climbed up over Slate and kept on going down the far side and into the foothills, along the river course and all the way home. Car? What car? Who needed a car? “What were you two talking about back there?” he asked. “From what I could see it looked like you barely had time to catch your breath.”

“What? Mal and me? He’s a talker, that’s for sure. He’s still upset about his last wife — Gloria, the one we never met? They lasted two years, I gather, if that. Plus, he keeps repeating himself, starts on one story and then suddenly he’s off on another one and then another till he doesn’t even know what the subject is and you have to guide him back to it.”

“If you’ve got the patience.” He took a bite of the sandwich, gazed across the massed treetops below them to where the Kern River cut its canyon and then to the mountains beyond, mountains that rolled into other ranges altogether, on and on till they dropped off into the deserts to the east.

“I don’t know what it is between you two — I mean, after all these years. He’s Mal, what can I say? He’s got his charms. Still.”

The notion irritated him. “I thought he was a real bore.”

“That’s just because he was nervous.”

“Nervous? About what?”

“You. The situation. Seeing us both after all this time. You know what he said? He said I was as beautiful as the day we first met.”

He didn’t have anything to say to this. He studied her a moment, her legs sprawled in front of her, her lips pursed, her gaze eclipsed by some private memory. She took a bite of the fiber bar, a smear of chocolate caught in the corner of her mouth, then unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and took a long swallow.

“But what about you?” she said finally. “You seemed pretty friendly with your groupie there, what was her name — the one with the nails and face job and the hair dyed the color of a brick wall? What is she, a cosmetologist or something?”

He just smiled. “Beats me.”

“But she’s hot for something, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, smiling wider. “Aren’t they all?”

It had begun to rain, a light pattering in the dust that had people rising to their feet and briskly stuffing things back into their packs. Mal had already shrugged into his poncho and was making his way toward them, so he pushed himself up and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “All right, everybody,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the scrape and shuffle of activity, “gather round a minute. I don’t think the rain’s going to amount to much—”

“Scattered showers,” the old man put in, cutting him off. “That’s what the TV said.”

“Right, well, we can head down now or go on up to the summit — what do you think, show of hands?”

The majority, Mal and Syl included, raised their hands, while the remainder just stood there watching him. “Good,” he said finally. “I’d hate for a little weather to spoil the fun, so let’s go on as planned and see what it’s like up top — anybody has a problem, don’t be shy. Just let me know and we’ll head back down anytime you say. But really, I agree with”—gesturing to the old man—“what was your name?”

“Louis.”

“With Louis here. The forecast, I mean. A little rain never hurt anybody, right?”

—

They were up at eight thousand feet, moving along easily, the rain sucked back up into the clouds, the trail barely slick and the black sheared-off face of Slate Mountain looming over the treetops as if it had just dropped down out of the sky, when the cries of what must have been a whole flock of ravens broke the silence. The trees held fast. There was the scrape of hiking boots. Then a pair of the birds appeared from below, beating upslope, their wings creaking to gain purchase on the air, and everybody stopped to watch them go. “What’s that all about, you think?” Beverly asked, and there she was, right behind him, her hair clamped beneath a floppy pink hat now as a concession to the damp. “Something dead up there?”

“Probably a deer,” he said, “or the offal anyway. The stuff the hunters leave behind.”

“For a raven party.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, moving on, talking over his shoulder while keeping one eye on the snaking line behind him. He was thinking of the way a carcass disappears up here, beetles coming up out of the ground, flies laying their eggs, vultures and ravens at it, rot, bacteria, coyotes, even the mice sneaking out under cover of darkness to gnaw calcium from the bones. He wanted to say, Everything dies to give life to something else, but he didn’t want to come off sounding pompous — or morbid, especially with a group like this, when they were all out here to deny the proposition or at least forget about it for the time it took them to get to the summit of a mountain and back down again — and so he left it at that.

He turned his head and kept moving on up the trail, Beverly doing her best to keep pace, to show him she was fit, a fit widow, if that was what she was, as if he were in the market and this was some kind of test. Which, he supposed, it was. Why should there be limits? If you felt good, what did age matter? It was only a number. He didn’t feel any different than he had at fifty — or forty, even. His blood pressure was in the acceptable range, he and Syl had sex once a week and he slept through the night and woke each morning with the sense that there was something new out there in the world, something reserved for him and him alone if only he had the strength to go out and find it. His feet dug at the trail. He wasn’t even breathing hard.