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

When they got close, he could see that the ravens were squabbling over something just off the trail. They hung in the trees like ornaments, fought along the ground in a black flap of wings, their voices harsh and constricted. He sliced away from the trail then, dodging through waist-high brush until he was there and the ravens lifted off silently and he saw what it was they’d been disputing: a bear. The carcass of a bear, its paws removed and its gut slit open, but otherwise intact. Before he had time to think (Rule #2: Never leave the trail), Beverly was there at his elbow and he could hear the others following behind, their voices muted, legs scissoring through the brush. He hadn’t wanted this: these people were old, they could misstep, break a leg, break everything.

“What is it,” Beverly said, breathless, “—a bear? Is that a bear?”

There was an anger churning in him — poachers, and they’d got the gallbladder and the paws to sell on the black market and left the rest to rot. What was wrong with the world? Christ, you couldn’t even take a hike anymore, not without this, this obscenity, this shit. Suddenly he was shouting. “Get back, all of you! Back on the trail!” But it was too late. Half of them were already gathered round, gaping at the swollen dead thing before them, its eyes gone, tongue discolored, the stumps of the legs rigid as poles, and the rest picking their way toward him. Beverly had her cell phone out, taking pictures. And here came Syl and Mal and then the old man, high-stepping his way through the bushes as if they were about to come to life and take him down.

“We ought to report this,” Beverly said. “What number do we call? You know what number?”

He would have told her it was useless, useless because there was nothing anybody could do about it, nothing that would put the animal together again and breathe the life back into it or eliminate the superstition and ignorance that drove the market for animal parts, for degradation, for destruction, but instead he just said, “There’s no signal up here.”

It was then that the trees began to stir, a breeze there, a sound like distant freight. When the rain came, it came in earnest, a heavy pounding that slicked everything even as they struggled back to the trail and fumbled with their rain gear, and then it was sleet, and then it was snow.

—

This time there was no debate, no show of hands, no further pretense: if they wanted to make the summit it would have to be another day because he was in charge here — he was the captain of this ship — and they were turning back. “We’re calling it a day,” he said, and he wanted to tail it with a joke, a quip about the weather or maybe the weatherwoman on the radio and how she’d been right after all, but all the lightness had gone out of him. It was always rougher on the way down than the way up — people never seemed to realize that — and with the wet snow the footing would be worse than usual. He’d have to keep an eye on the old guy — Louis — and on Beverly, who’d already slipped twice, the rear of her shorts sporting a long dark vertical smear that ran down the back of her right leg as if she’d just stepped out of the mineral bath at the spa. They hadn’t gone a hundred yards before he almost lost it himself, looking back over his shoulder to keep everyone in sight when he should have been watching his own two feet, but he managed to catch himself at the last minute. That would have been something, the group leader taking a muddy pratfall, and whether he’d have wound up hurting himself or not, he could imagine the sort of multi-faceted joke Mal would have made of it — and you didn’t see him slipping. Not Mal. He had the agility of a surfer, all out-flung arms and flapping lips.

No one had much to say, not even Beverly, who was right behind him (and Louis behind her, as if they’d drawn lots). Every once in a while, negotiating the sharp corner of a switchback, he’d hear a snatch of Mal’s voice in mid-discourse, but the rest were quiet, focusing on their own thoughts and maybe their disappointment too, because if you didn’t reach the summit, no matter how illuminating the scenery or soothing the exercise, the hike was a failure. For his part, he was disappointed too — the bear had cast a pall over everything and then the weather had come down on top of that, and if he had to think about it, there was Mal too, Mal as pure irritant, and why he’d ever agreed to get back together with him he’d never know. Some misguided notion of being cool or democratic or nostalgic or whatever it was. His neck ached from looking back over his shoulder and his left knee was sore where he’d strained it to keep from falling. He was thinking he’d beg off on dinner plans, thinking maybe Mal could get a ride back with somebody else— Next time, he’d tell him, we’ll do it next time —and then they were down at the seventy-five-hundred-foot level and the snow tapered off to sleet and then a light rain and by the time they reached the parking area it had stopped altogether.

He stood there patiently at the trailhead, making a checkmark by each name on his reservation list as people filed by him. Most just nodded or gave him a muted thanks, eager to get to their cars and back to their recliners and sofas and wide-screen TVs, but the old man stopped to jaw awhile— Hell, I could have made it to the top, no problem, but I respect your decision, what with the women, but maybe next time we’ll do an all-male hike and really put some miles under our boots, huh, what do you say? — and Beverly stopped too, standing there beside him as if she were ready to hand out certificates of achievement.

Five minutes passed. Ten. He kept looking up the long flat final stretch of the trail, expecting to see Syl and Mal come striding round the corner at any minute, but they never showed. The old man climbed into his car. The lot cleared. Beverly snapped open her compact and touched up her lipstick, making a kissing noise that seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that had descended after the last of the cars rattled up the rutted road to the highway. “Where could they be?” she murmured, as if thinking for him. “They were right behind us, weren’t they?”

He looked back across the dirt lot to where his car stood beside a bulky black SUV that must have been Beverly’s, straining his eyes to see into the darkened interior, as if somehow Syl and Mal had slipped by him and were waiting there for him, talking quietly, making jokes, wondering why he was lingering here with this boxy widow while the sky darkened and everybody just grew colder and hungrier.

At fifteen minutes he cupped his hands and began to shout. “Syl!” he called, “Syl!” until he was bleating it. At twenty, he started back up the trail, Beverly tagging along like a dog, though he tried to dissuade her. “You don’t have to feel responsible,” he told her. “It’s nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“I want to help. I can’t just leave you out here by yourself.”

He had nothing to say to this. He could feel the incline in the long muscles of his legs. His breath steamed before him. “I can’t imagine what happened,” he said, moving quickly now, but not panicking, not yet. “They’re both experienced in the woods and they’re both — Syl especially — in good shape.”

“Maybe she turned an ankle. Maybe—” Beverly let the thought trail off. She was eager, keeping pace, her arms swinging at her sides.

He didn’t want to think about heart attack or stroke or even broken bones. He called out till his voice went hoarse and the shadows deepened and the trail was gone and they had to turn back. It was full dark by the time they got back to his car. He sat there, the heater going, Beverly shivering beside him, and tapped the horn at intervals, signaling into the night. An hour crept by. The battery light kept going on and he had to keep starting the car up to run the heater and then shutting it off again. What they talked about, he and Beverly — this stranger who was sitting beside him in the dark while his thoughts raced and collided — he had no recollection of afterward. But at seven, when there was still no sign of Syl, he backed the car around and drove the three miles to the lodge, where there would be a telephone available to him, a ground line that could get him through to anybody, to the county sheriff, the paramedics, Search and Rescue, and what was he going to say? Just this: I’ve got two people missing.