Going down proved much easier, but, despite Peter’s best attempts to set a grueling pace, snow still covered the ground for as far as he could see when the sun began its descent across what could now be distinguished as a horizon. At least they were going downhill now, and trees seemed taller as the snow receded. Sam finally stopped Peter, who was still leading the three, and directed them with a wave of his arm to a place where there was an overhang in the rock. The overhang was too shallow to be called a cave but provided more shelter than sleeping in the open.
“We’ll have to make camp here,” Sam told them. Peter didn’t object. He was glad to take off his backpack and change his socks. Stanly got to work unfolding the tarp and setting it out. Peter pulled the tent out of his backpack and began work on the poles like he had seen Sam do the previous night. His gloves were thick and his fingers lacked the dexterity that they need for him to be able to get the poles through the loops. When he took off one of the gloves, his hand just froze to the metal. Sam must have noticed how much he was struggling and said, “Why don’t you and Stanly go and find some wood for a fire while I set up the tent.”
His suggestion was more like an order, but Peter didn’t mind, not now that they were headed back down the mountain. He took the hatchet from an outside pocket on Sam’s pack, and the two of them made their way back up the path to where they had just passed several trees.
* * *
Half a continent away, Julia was out seeing a movie with Scott, Lewis was at Tommy’s house playing games, and Hannah was left all alone in the empty house. She had treated herself to a bubble bath when she got home from work, before pouring herself a glass of wine. She’d drunk less than half of it when Abigail called and suggested that they meet for coffee.
* * *
Stanly followed close behind Peter as they climbed back up to the trees. The hill was very steep and by this point Peter had forgotten what comfort felt like. When they arrived, they got straight to work. They weren’t selective. Anything that looked dead they gathered.
“Let’s do this as quick as we can so we can get the fire going.” Peter’s comment was little more than a waste of breath. Stanly had already taken the hatchet and was working through the trunk of a slender pine tree that had fallen over. They alternated cutting and resting.
“Do you think it’s legal to cut this up for firewood in a national park?” Peter asked.
“I don’t care. I’ll pay whatever they want to fine me if this can get us warm and dry.”
“It’s kind of like going out to find a Christmas tree,” Peter said, as he stood a thick branch up straight in the snow and stepped back to admire it. Stanly looked over his shoulder and grunted as he worked through another branch.
“Did you ever do that with your dad when you were growing up?” Peter asked.
Stanly put his hands on his knees and bent over. His breath could still be seen despite the fading sunlight. Peter took the hatchet and began cutting through a branch on another tree.
Peter continued speaking while Stanly sucked in air. “It was a lot more fun than going to a lot and picking one out, that’s for sure. But now my wife and I can afford to buy a great big one and have it brought to our house so we don’t ever hassle with dragging one back and tying it on top of the car. But I sure enjoyed it back when I was a kid.”
Stanly didn’t say anything for a while. Peter used the silence to remember the last time he had gone with Hannah to pick out a tree. They were both getting ready to graduate from college. She was beautiful and they were in love. He was looking for an excuse to see her over winter break. They’d driven out on a seldom used highway one evening, parked in a place where the shoulder was wide enough for the car, and neglected the “No Trespassing” signs as they hopped over the fence. They wandered through the pines until they found the perfect tree. He cut it down on his own with his father’s handsaw. He knew she was impressed and they spent hours decorating it. Last year he’d stopped by the lot on the way home from work and told the worker how tall he wanted his tree and then waited while the teenage boy filled out a delivery form.
Peter piled the last branch on top of the others and told Stanly that if he lived through the weekend he was going to quit his job and become a pirate. Stanly agreed to be his first mate and they tied the wood together and set off down the hill, dragging the branches behind them in the snow.
They hadn’t gone far when Peter stopped. Stanly stopped, too, and waited while Peter rearranged the branches that he was dragging.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked when Peter pointed the trunk up hill. “It’s going to be much harder to carry them like that.”
Peter responded by saddling the branches and scooting forward by pushing off with his legs. The steepness of the slope made picking up speed easy and soon he was gliding down the hill at a dangerous speed. Peter was cold and wet enough that he didn’t care how stupid the idea was. Stanly, not wanting to be left behind took his branches and followed his coworker’s example.
The bundled branches made a horrible sled but Peter couldn’t remember the last time he had felt a crisp wind in his face or the excitement of doing something so out of the ordinary. If there had been a dry spot left on them, it had been taken care of by all the snow that had flown up their pant legs.
* * *
Hannah and Abigail had started off talking about Abigail’s weekend with her daughter and then moved to politics. It was only after a long pause in the conversation that Hannah asked:
“What did I do wrong in life?”
Abigail sat across from her in the same coffee shop where they always met, and took a sip of the latté that she always ordered.
“You let yourself become completely dependent on him,” she said flatly as if she had been waiting for Hannah to ask the question. Her tone made Hannah feel like Abigail was a doctor diagnosing something as common and insignificant as a cold. “To use a cliché, you put all your eggs in the same basket, and the bottom fell out.”
“So what should I do now?” Hannah said.
“Don’t put your eggs in any basket. Hold them all yourself. You have to learn to be completely independent because people are always going to let you down,” Abigail continued.
“Is the answer really so cynical? I’d like to believe that there’s someone out there that I can completely trust.”
“Have you ever known someone who hasn’t ever let you down?” Abigail asked.
“I haven’t. You’re right. I’d be a fool to turn a blind eye to the facts, but I was much happier when I trusted Peter, before he let me down. I was happier than I am now.”
“Do you really want to be happy out of willful ignorance?” Abigail asked.
“You’re right. I understand,” Hannah responded.
“No, I don’t think you do yet. But that’s okay. We all have to learn some things the hard way.”
* * *
Peter and Stanly hadn’t been away for more than an hour. Sam had spent most of the time setting up camp and had cleared a significant chunk of ground on which the tent sat. Sam had also managed to start cooking, and dinner was boiling on the simple little camp stove. The packs had been placed in the tent to keep it from blowing away in the occasional gust of wind.
“Good job” Sam said when he saw the two piles of branches that Peter piled up in the clearing while Stanly sat down next the pot of boiling water. Peter didn’t sense anything forced in the affirmation and let his pride show by folding his arms across his chest.
“It was nothing,” he said.
Stanly chimed in, “No problem.”
“I’m glad that you guys are having such a wonderful time,” Sam snarled and turned his back to them. “While you guys were out cutting green wood for a fire, some people have been working so that we don’t freeze to death.”
Peter looked at Stanly who only shrugged his shoulders to show that he was equally baffled by the sudden change in Sam’s attitude.
When dinner was ready
to be eaten, Sam used the fire from the backpacking stove and managed to light the wet branches while Peter and Stanly started into their soup.
Soon supper was over, and they all huddled around burning pine branches. The wood burned hot and quickly once it caught. The fire warmed them up enough that they found something other than survival to talk about that night. Sam still didn’t have much to say, but Stanly and Peter went on about all the crazy things they had done in college.
“So how did you propose?” Stanly finally asked.
Peter collected his thoughts while Stanly leaned in to listen. Sam leaned back with his arms folded across his chest.
“We had just graduated from college and I took her to one of those nice restaurants that rotates to give you a full view of the city. I was really nervous and clammy, and I didn’t think that I would be able to work up the nerve, and I couldn’t, at least not at first. We ate dinner and dessert and I paid the bill and I still hadn’t made my move. But there was a home game that night, so I took her to the ballpark, not that I was really interested in baseball at that point but I needed more time to work up my nerve; she was really gorgeous and I couldn’t see why she was with me and I was terrified that she would say no. Well, I finally worked up the nerve to ask her during the seventh inning stretch. Pretty romantic huh.”
Sam finally spoke up. “If I were going to propose I’d do it on top of a mountain somewhere. I definitely wouldn’t wuss out and end up asking her at a baseball game.”
“She’ll have to be more of a man than I am if she’s going to make it to the top,” Peter said, not caring about the consequences of his remark.
Nothing came of it, and nobody said anything for quite some time. Peter finally stood up. “It’s a little cold for me, I’m going to bed.” He made his way to the sleeping bag and lay awake with his eyes open. He could still hear Sam and Stanly talking, or Sam talking and Stanly brownnosing.
“The cold wind sure makes you feel good to be out in the wild,” Sam noted
Stanly agreed, “It makes you feel like a real man.”
* * *
“Have you taken any concrete steps toward getting out of your marriage?” Abigail asked when Hannah came into the office the next morning.
“No, I haven’t gotten around to it,” Hannah replied.
“If you’ve changed your mind that’s fine but as a friend it’s my job to nudge you from time to time. I only want to see you happy.”
“I want to talk to him first. As soon as he gets back from his vacation I’m going to tell him,” Hannah said.
“Do you still love him?” Abigail asked. “You’re acting like you might, and if you do then maybe we should reconsider.”
Hannah didn’t answer immediately. “I don’t know if I still love him,” she finally said. “I never have the chance to find out these days.”
“I know I’ve been really pressuring you lately, but that’s because I thought it was what you really wanted.”
“When he gets back I’ll find out and make up my mind,” Hannah said resolutely.
“You do know that it won’t be the first time that you’ll have made up your mind on this,” Abigail said.
“This time I mean it. It really is his last chance. This is our last chance,” Hannah said, hoping to convince herself.
* * *
Even after a long day of hiking, going to sleep was no easy task. Peter had been kept awake several hours from the cold and wet, and several more from worries about his job and standing up to Sam. But when he woke up the sun was just making its way over the fields of snow. The light revealed a new layer of white that had worked to cover the clearing where they had slept. Cursing himself for not paying an extra sixty dollars for a warmer sleeping bag, he struggled to get dressed without exposing any part of his body to the cold air. Sam had suggested sleeping with the next day’s clothes in the bag, and, as much as he hated to admit it, Peter was glad for the advice as he fidgeted around in his sleeping bag in an attempt to put on his pants.
When he was properly bundled up he unzipped the bag and crawled out quietly trying not to wake up the others. He found the stew can that they had used for cooking along with the stew pot and the oatmeal for breakfast. He poured the alcohol into the bottom of the can and threw in a lit match before putting the water on to boil.
The oatmeal was almost ready when Peter noticed Stanly and Sam starting to stir. “Just one more day, less than a day actually,” he thought watching his breath warm his hands. “Just one more day and then I can go home to my wife, just one more day and then I can say that I made it.”
“What are you thinking?” Stanly asked. He’d dressed and was now standing behind Peter with his bowl ready for oatmeal. Sam was lacing up his boots.
“Nothing really,” Peter said and scooped out two bowls of oatmeal.
“Hey Peter,” Stanly said after eating enough oatmeal to warm his insides.
“What?”
“Thanks for getting up and making breakfast this morning.”
Peter looked over to his friend who was squatting so as not to let anything but the bottoms of his boots touch the snow.
“No problem.”
Sam came over with bowl in hand and let Peter scoop out the last of the oatmeal from the pot. They ate in silence before packing up and starting back down the trail.
Chapter 5
“Life is suffering”
-Buddha
After his excursion on Windy Gap, Peter felt like he could start life all over, and he had every intention of doing it all right this time. But when he returned from his trip, life in the Manchell household was much the same by all external appearances, which, for all practical intents and purposes, meant that life was much the same. And Peter soon found himself slipping right back into his old habits as well.
His relationship with Hannah was still cordial but a bit more distant. “Fixing that is my number one priority,” he told himself each morning when he got out of bed. And he genuinely intended to take care of it as soon as he eliminated the mounting paperwork from his desktop.
He wasn’t surprised in the least to discover that Julia was spending all of her free time with her new boyfriend, though he had to be careful not to refer to him as Jason anymore. And Lewis was still a twelve-year-old boy who brought Tommy home after school to eat chips and play video games. Thomas was still at college neglecting to call, write, or visit. The only bright spot was the letter from David that Hannah had left on his desk.
So existence continued for the members of the Manchell family for days and weeks—time had lost meaning—and by all external appearances they were the perfect American family, which, for all practical intents and purposes, meant that they were the perfect American family.
* * *
Julia and Scott sat across from each other in the trendy little coffee shop that they’d begun frequenting. It was a Thursday afternoon and Scott had offered to buy her a snack before taking her back to his place. He looked very handsome in his beige cashmere sweater. If not for the circumstances Julia would have felt very grown up. But as it was she sat across from Scott eating her cinnamon roll in silence, allowing Scott to carry the conversation.
“What’s the matter?” Scott asked when he finally realized that Julia wasn’t herself. Julia hadn’t decided whether she would tell him, but felt like there was a weight on her chest and forced herself to take a breath.
“Julia?” Scott asked again when she didn’t respond right away.
“I’m late,” Julia said.
“Where are you going? What’s going on?” Scott asked obviously confused.
“No. I mean I didn’t have my . . . I got one of these tests and it came back positive.” Julia’s words spilled out of her mouth and Scott sat across from her bewildered. Julia tried again and was finally able to make him understand the problem without using that horrible word that had been haunting her for the last several days. Scott finally understood, and he seemed to be as petrified as her.
“But I thought you were taking the pill. You mean you weren’t on any sort of medication?” Julia could tell that he wasn’t thinking about his words and shook her head in response.
“What were you thinking?” he asked.
Julia managed to get out the words, “I don’t know,” and repeated them under her breath.
Scott seemed more angry than concerned as he sat in that state of bewilderment and frustration, but then he composed himself and said calmly that everything would be okay. This comforted Julia immensely despite the fact that she had no idea how he could make anything better.
“Have you told anyone else?” Scott continued.
“No. You’re the first. I don’t know how I’m going to tell my parents. And everyone at school will find out soon enough. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just keep a secret. In a few months everybody’s going to know. And how am I going to pursue an acting career with a . . . with this extra responsibility? Don’t you see? This is going to ruin my life—our life.”
“Everything is going to be fine,” Scott said again. “First of all you shouldn’t tell anyone. I can get some money from my father. They’ll understand and there’s a place downtown and we can go there right now and get everything taken care off.”
“You mean get an . . .” Julia hesitated so Scott cut her off.
“Exactly. Have an operation. It will fix everything and life can go on just like before.”
“But what do you know about this place? How do you know if it’s safe?”
“Don’t worry about that, but we should go now so we can get the whole thing done with as soon as possible.”
“Yes the sooner the better,” Julia agreed and they gathered their things and were out the door before Julia realized what she had agreed to. Scott took the interstate and used his cell phone to make a call. It seemed to Julia that it must have been his father. She listened as Scott explained the situation and what they planned to do.