Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

“The Bearclaw?”

“One of the highest points in the area,” Luke says. “You can see all the way to the sea.”

“You know this area?” Thomas asks.

“A little. But not the Bearclaw. I’ve only read about that.”

They drive for almost an hour, passing small farms and house-clusters with yards like automobile graveyards and free-range chickens pecking at the ground. A gas station, a signpost for some small town. Alice tells them how Kristin has begun working at the hospital, and that she commutes an hour each way. She used to work at the midwife’s clinic in one of the villages. She can drive the girls now, so they don’t have to ride the school bus. But they have to leave the house by 6:30 every morning. “And they hate getting up early. I think they hate going to school, too. So did I.”

Luke stares ahead, his face revealing nothing.

Gradually the thin layer of clouds dissolve and the bright sun beats down on the landscape. New spring buds grow along the shoulder of the road, yellow-green fields extend beyond, and pines speckle the slopes. They turn off the main road and slowly ascend the tortuous mountain pass. With the eggs sloshing around in his stomach, Thomas feels carsick, nauseated. Finally they reach the parking lot and get out. There are no other cars. “It looks like we have everything to ourselves,” Luke says, satisfied. Thomas lights a cigarette. It’s windy up here, and there’s that special mountain silence that’s not a silence, but the wind whipping across the earth, through the leaves. And there’s birdsong here, and cicadas, and the buzz of bees and wasps. A thick deposit of moldering pine needles covers the ground. A small swarm of butterflies circle a cluster of purple flowers. The view from here is impressive. A couple of high-altitude lakes, clear green in color due to the calcareous soil below it, and steep black cliffs. But there’s vegetation where they stand, and the trail leads into the trees and disappears.

“You guys ready?” Luke asks, shrugging into his backpack. He smiles at Alice and squints for a moment. The bright sunlight makes his eyes appear even more golden. His high cheekbones rise above his smooth cheeks.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Alice says excitedly, hopping forward. When she moves, her windbreaker swishes. Since her hair is stubbly, her neck seems long. The tattooed snake appears to slither every time she turns her head. “Are you coming, Uncle Thomas?”

Uncle Thomas is coming. Luke takes the lead on the narrow trail, with Alice right behind him and Thomas bringing up the rear. He decides he’ll stay in the back. He won’t compete with Mr. Hiker , won’t give Luke the satisfaction. His back aches. He didn’t sleep well on the thin air mattress. He runs his hand across his unshaven chin. He didn’t even brush his teeth.

Soon he begins to sweat profusely. The trail grows steeper, and now and then they pass between astonishingly precipitous crevasses with views deep into the abyss. Overturned trunks lay scattered across a thick bed of ferns and nettles. The winter storms have clearly ravaged this place and ripped enormous trees up by the roots. The sun’s hot and piercing now. Alice sings as she jumps over a babbling brook. Thomas is short of breath. After they’ve walked for more than an hour, they pause to rest. Thomas doesn’t need to lag behind on purpose, it happens automatically. For some time he watches Alice and Luke walking along chatting far ahead of him. What are they discussing? Lactic acid flows into his shins. When he climbs upward, his knees crack, and his lower back aches. By the time he reaches the others, they’re seated on the grass drinking water from the bottles in Luke’s backpack. Alice bites into a chocolate bar and spreads out her windbreaker so Thomas can sit beside her. They’re both sitting cross-legged and it looks as though they could stay that way for hours. But Thomas can’t do that, his backache won’t allow it. Greedily he guzzles water then plops onto his back, staring into the cloudless, ice-blue sky. He hears a mosquito approaching, and smacks it on his neck.

“Beautiful weather,” Luke says, closing his eyes. “Can you feel how thin the air is up here?”

Alice has also brought coffee. They take turns drinking from the thermos cap. Thomas smokes. Luke lies on his stomach and sticks a blade of grass between his lips. As he observes Thomas, he plays with it, pushing it around in his mouth, first the left corner, then the right. “I’m hearing rumors that you’re going to expand your store,” he says.

“Where did you hear that?”

“From me,” Alice says. “I told Luke. That you’re offering me an apprenticeship.”

“Yeah?”

“But I don’t know,” she says, putting away the chocolate. “I have no idea what I want to do.”

“But you’ll only find out what you want to do if you give something a try.” With some effort Thomas sits up. “We’ll just agree on a trial period. Then you can decide whether it’s something for you. You need a job in any case, right? You don’t have any money, you said.”

She glances down. “Maybe.”

“What do you mean by ‘maybe’?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long. I need an answer before Tuesday.”

“Before Tuesday?” Luke tilts his head and spits out the grass.

“Yes.”

Luke gives him a long, thoughtful nod. “Before Tuesday,” he repeats, as if to himself. The way Luke nods, the way he closes his eyes, as if he knows more than he’s showing — even though he might not at all — gets on Thomas’s nerves. He forces himself not to snap at him. Something tells him that he needs to avoid doing that. Something’s at stake between them, Luke’s in charge of this hike, he’s the one calling the shots. It’s best that Thomas know his place, as the tag-along that he is, and it also has to do with his age, and dignity, but Thomas can’t quite decipher how it all fits together, what it is . It’s just this intuition that tells him not to snap. Do not cause any trouble now . Luke rolls onto his side and rests his head on his fist for a moment. Then he scrambles to his feet and they all continue up the trail. Though Thomas tries to keep up with the youths, he’s quickly soaked in sweat. His feet slide in his shoes. He wipes sweat from his forehead with his arm, then blows at the hair that keeps falling across his forehead. They suddenly encounter a chamois standing on the trail, motionless, perhaps one hundred feet ahead. It’s reddish brown, with a darker stripe ridging its spine, and gnarled horns twisting backward. It stares at them, black bulging eyes, nostrils quivering, ears nearly flat against its head. Then it leaps elegantly into the trees and is gone. They’ve stopped to watch, and Thomas has reached Alice.

“It was a male,” Luke says. “They’re solitary.”

“Solitary?” Alice leans against Thomas. “What do you mean?”

“They’re loners. The females live in groups of up to twenty.”

“You’d almost think you studied biology,” Thomas says breathlessly.

“I just know what I need to know,” Luke says, with the precocious air of someone who always thinks he’s right. He scratches his arm. “What I need to know. We’re almost there. I think we have another half-hour or so, but the path gets so steep soon that we’ll have to scale the mountain.”

“Scale?” Thomas stops. “What do you mean by ‘scale?’”

Luke laughs. “We’re ascending a mountain. Pretend you’re a chamois. It’ll be much easier.”

“He looks a little bit like a chamois. A tired little chamois,” Alice clucks. “Oh, you look really beat, are you okay?”

Grimly, Thomas asks for a sip of water.

“You can also wait for us here,” Luke says. “If you can’t go on.”