Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

“What time is it?” Sara asked.

“I have no idea. How long were we walking?”

“We couldn’t have been going that long,” she repeated, looking again at the map.

They peered around at the rocky cliffside, hoping to spot one of the red and white trail markers.

“Let’s say at most we were walking around for an hour. Moving maybe two or three miles an hour, given the conditions?”

As Sara watched, he cautiously spread his fingers out to measure three miles. Then he set his thumb down on the pebble beach and rotated his hand around this point. It was a huge area, filled with all kinds of strange squiggles and shapes that she couldn’t identify on the map key.

“So… basically, we could be anywhere in here?” Sara said.

“Basically.”

George climbed up on some nearby rocks to get a better view, but he couldn’t make out any significant features. The sun had come out from the clouds between two barren cliffs along the horizon, but neither had any houses or roads that he could see — only some old, falling-down link fences along the white rock shores and the occasional cluster of sun-baked trash.

“I think this way is the best option,” George said. “Where there’s litter, there’s bound to be a path, or people.”

But there were no people, and there was no path. By the third cliff, Sara was beginning to doubt they could even find their way back to the stream. The next set of rocks turned out to be an extension of the previous one, and still there were no signs of civilization.

“I don’t understand,” she cried. “There were dozens of hikers out here with us this morning. Now nobody?”

George took out the map again, and scrutinized it. “None of this adds up at all,” he shouted.

He tried tracing little circles on the map representing the distance to the horizon, as far as the eye could see before the earth curved away. Wherever he saw a clump of rocks, he traced a circle, until it was covered with possibilities. He began to feel dizzy. They had not had their lunch and he could only assume their cheese, the wine, and Sara’s pack were all long gone.

“Sara, what’s left in the canteen?” he shouted.

“It’s about half full,” she said. “Goddammit. We should have refilled it at the stream.”

George shook his head. “I think we’re cursed.” He was dying for a real drink. Usually by now he’d have had at least his first of the day, and this had been a far more stressful day than most. He kissed Sara on her sunburned forehead and continued studying the map.

There was no key, and he wondered what any of it meant. The small purple triangles marked what he presumed were mountains: la Blache and Clau and Mandarom, with numbers next to them. 1725, 1549, 1667. At first he thought these were dates, but no, more likely altitudes. Only standing where they were, all the mountains loomed equally huge. And there were dozens of them! Some had no names at all, only numbers.

“What are you doing ?” Sara called from where she was resting.

“This goddamn map doesn’t make sense! Nothing’s where it should be.”

“How can things not be where they should be?”

“They can’t. But they aren’t.”

Then Sara was screaming. She had spotted someone in a white shirt, moving through the woods down below them, maybe a mile away. George joined her as she hurtled down the slope, trying to get to the only person she’d seen in an hour before they somehow disappeared. It was a person — she was sure of it — a pale, angry man with a voluminous white beard, who as he became aware that they were bearing down on him, rushed quickly in the other direction.

George called out to him to “stop, slow down, wait!” When at last they got within a hundred yards of the old man, Sara waved her floppy white hat at him. “Sir! Sir! S’il vous plaît . Please! Could you help us? Help… um. George, what’s the French word for ‘help’? How do I say, Which way is it to”—she paused, not sure where they even wanted to get to anymore—“town. La ville! Am I saying that right? Is it ‘vil’ or ‘veal’?”

George had no idea, and the little man was yammering in French so quickly that she couldn’t even tell when one word ended and the next began. From the way his face pinched up at them, she could guess that he was in no mood to help them. He continued to duck around the trees and scowl.

“ Allez-vous en! ” he shouted, terrified. “Je veux être laissé seul.”

“Help!” George yelled at him, waving both hands. “We’re… WE ARE LOST!”

“He doesn’t understand,” Sara shouted. “George! The guidebook has travel phrases. On the back cover. Back cover.”

As George dug inside the pack to find the guidebook, Sara tried to beg the little man, who shouted at her in French as he tried to get away.

“Please. We’re Americans. We’re lost! Americans? Lost!”

The man picked up a rock and hurled it at her, and it fell halfway between them.

She screamed and hid behind a tree. “We don’t want to hurt you!” she shouted. “We need to find Point Sublime!”

“What’s that in French?” George shouted.

“That is French! Sublime is a French word. Maybe it’s ‘Pont’? Sub-lime? Subleeem? Suble-me? George, what’s ‘lost’? How do you say ‘We are lost’?”

Sara called again to the little man, but it was no use. He was rushing away, flinging rocks at them as he went.

“George, hurry up!” she screamed.

“I’m looking!” he screamed back.

The little man made it to the cliffside and nimbly climbed up the face, turning back occasionally to shout and make obscene and angry gestures. Desperate, Sara tried to climb after him, but it was no use. The tiny man was pulling up onto a ledge that led around to a higher part of the canyon.

“ Perdus! Perdus! Perdus! ” cried George as he rushed over to the cliff, clutching the guidebook in front of him. “ Nous sommes perdus! ”

But as he ran, holding the book up in the air like a flag, he stubbed his toe on a rock, and the book dropped onto the dirt behind him. The man was gone, and the sun beat down on them as they sat there exhausted and miserable, more perdus than ever.

“How could you let him get away?” Sara sobbed.

“Me?” George yelled. “You were scaring the hell out of him.”

Neither of them could even look at the other. They were still panting from the climb, shaking with both fear and adrenaline. George wordlessly got out the compass and began his ritual of smacking it and spinning in circles, trying to get the needle to land somewhere. Sara looked for any sign of the little man but saw nothing but wide expanses of woods in front of them, with no paths or mountains.

“There’s got to be something somewhere, right?” George said after another several hours of walking. “I mean, at some point we’ll end up in Italy or Spain or something.”

Sara didn’t answer him — she’d fallen into a dark silence, which put George into his usual jittery-talking mood, which only further fueled her irritation.

“We’re going north, right?” he said.

She didn’t reply. She didn’t care which way they walked.

He peered at the cheap little compass. “It says we’re going north,” he said, “but then why is the sun setting behind us?” They hadn’t been able to see the sun behind the rocks for some time, but now it was visible, dipping below the clouds, big and red.

“How can the sun set in the south?” he asked, whacking at the compass.

It was then that she snapped. “How in the hell should I know?”

“Don’t blame me for this, okay? You’re the one who was so eager to do this today. If we had waited and gone with the group, this never would have happened. I’m doing the best I can here!”