The Hike

  “We never did catch anything.”

  “And he always brought along those shady friends of his, remember? The burnouts, and the divorcees who spent every waking minute after 11 A.M. getting shitfaced at Lord Fletcher’s. Nothing you hated more than that boat, right?”

  “I did. I hated it.”

  “It’s okay to be glad, Benjamin. You built a whole life for yourself even though he did nothing for you. Paid your way through school. Got a job. Got a wife. That was all you and your mother. You got everything you would ever need from him. And yet he still demanded you come out to see him. To that shitty apartment in Mound. It’s okay to be glad that’s all over: to have him out of your way, to know you can finally get on with your life. That’s why you never bothered to come look at his body or go to his memorial, right? I bet you looked forward to him dying.”

  Ben started to cry. “I did.”

  “You were hoping he’d die.”

  “I was.”

  “Fell right off you when you heard the news, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all right. Perfectly natural.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “You have an appetite for grief like a cow’s rumen, Benjamin. You have chambers inside you for all that grief and rage, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell me: What would you do with all that space if it were empty? Aren’t you tired of putting everything in there and leaving it?”

  The coroner grabbed a scalpel.

  “What are you doing?” Ben asked him.

  “Let’s free up some space.”

  “Get away from me. . . .”

  “Let’s see if we can get all that sadness out of you.”

  The coroner charged at Ben’s abdomen with the gleaming blade and jammed it into his stomach. There was no pain, only a great easing. Everything went slack. His jaw went soft. His muscles unknotted. He exhaled as if doing so for the very first time.

  • • •

  He woke up in Fermona’s hole. On the ground, three feet next to him, he saw a blackened lump. He reached out for it. It was a ring. His father’s class ring, still covered in soot. He wiped the soot off and the pockmarked brass gave off a dull shine in the torchlight. Then he slipped it over his right ring finger.

  He heard the flap in the door slap open and shut.

  “Psst!”

  “Who’s there?” Ben asked.

  “It’s me, Shithead.”

  “Crab?”

  “Shhh!”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Gas station gave me directions. How do you think I found you, you nitwit? I snuck around.”

  “For a week?”

  “Eh, I might have taken a few detours,” Crab said. “Lotta good fish parts down on that beach.”

  “You let me stew here for a week?”

  “I came back, did I not? Quit your bitching. You should have seen some of the other guys I found. You’re the picture of health by comparison. Besides, I found something of yours on the beach. . . .”

  Crab bolted from the door and then pushed an old water bottle through the slot. It was the same water bottle Ben had used to send the note to Teresa. But the scroll wasn’t inside. Maybe she got the letter somehow. Maybe she’s summoning forensic experts as we speak to analyze the salinity of the water trapped in the paper, to pinpoint my exact location, with a joint Coast Guard/Navy convoy setting off on the high seas to rescue me from this mountaintop: gunboats and warships and fighter jets with impossibly destructive payloads. . . .

  “Another crab probably ate the letter,” said Crab.

  Ben looked up, annoyed. “I need my bag,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “On that pile of crap the giant sits on.”

  “She sleeps on that pile, too.”

  “She does?”

  “Sure as hell does. How am I gonna get the bag?”

  “Grab it when she’s asleep.”

  “Easy for you to say. She’ll squash me like a bug if she catches me.”

  “What other option is there? I can’t help you get the bag if I don’t have the bag. You see my problem, Crab?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.”

  Crab thought about it for a moment. “All right. I’ll do it. Stay there.”

  Ben sank back down. A few seconds later, he heard the flap in the door. Another few seconds later, a flying backpack hit him in the back of the head.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry,” Crab said. He was not sincere about it.

  “That was fast.”

  “I’m not gonna take my time in there when the lady could wake up at any moment and stomp the shit out of me.”

  “You could have had me out of here days ago.”

  “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. This is a nice cave. I was wrong about it being boring. It’s got mud, centipedes. . . . I could hang out here for a while.”

  “Shut up and make sure no one is coming.”

  “You’re fine. She’s still asleep.”

  Ben rooted through the bag and then let out a heavy sigh.

  “What?” Crab asked.

  “My boots. My boots and pants and jacket . . . those are still on the pile. They’re not in here.”

  “So?”

  “I need the boots to put on the crampons to climb out of here,” Ben said.

  “You’re kidding me. I gotta go back and bring you more crap? That bag of yours was heavy!”

  “Yes.”

  “What if she wakes up?”

  “She didn’t wake up the first time.”

  “Yeah but she could wake up this time, you asshole.”

  “I need the boots.”

  “You need a lesson in manners, is what you need.”

  Ben took the ice axes out of the bag and started climbing in his bare feet, jamming his toes into the crumbly dirt walls of the hole.

  “What are you doing?” Crab asked.

  “Coming up there so that I can kill you.” Ben made it halfway up before falling back down again.

  Crab looked down on him, a principal disappointed in his student. “I’ll get you your boots. But you need to make me a promise, you whiny baby.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t give up. I know that’s not easy given the fact that you’re trapped in that fucking hole and she wants to kill you, but don’t give up. No matter how long it takes. No matter what it takes for you to keep going. Promise me you won’t stop.”

  “Why?”

  But Crab didn’t answer. Instead, he scampered away from the door and came back with a boot, the laces gripped in his tiny pincers. Then he left again and came back with the other boot, then the jacket, then the pants, and then the sweater. Ben put everything back on, including the boots and crampons. He was about to crawl up the side of the hole when he paused for a moment and took the phone out of his bag. The screen was dead and black. He tried to turn it on but nothing happened. He gazed up to the earthen dungeon ceiling.

  “I know I said just that one time, but please . . . Please, let me see them again.”

  There was no answer.

  Ben dropped the phone into the dirt and pressed a crampon spike through the screen, the glass shattering and the guts of it cracking up inside. Then he took the stuffed fox that Fermona had gifted him and put it in the sack instead.

  He scaled the side of the hole effortlessly. His muscles had rebuilt themselves. Nagging pains aside, he felt fitter than he’d ever been.

  “I promise you that I won’t stop,” he told Crab.

  “Good.”

  “Let’s go.”

  At the end of the dungeon corridor, he and Crab found a dead end. When the
y turned back and entered the main cavern, a very large and very awake Fermona was waiting for them. She had nothing but welcoming smiles for Ben.

  “Well, I think you’re strong enough to fight now!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE FIGHT

  Crab buried himself in the dirt as Ben ran up to Fermona and planted one of the ice axes in her foot. She howled in pain as she pulled it out with one hand and smacked him down the stone hallway with the other.

  “I’ll have to make a new death matrix for you just for that. Some sort of z-axis.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You know, I’ve been more than nice to you, and I have yet to see that friendliness reciprocated.”

  “You want to kill and eat me.”

  “Well, duh. But who said that had to be a drag? I’m doing my best to make it a memorable experience for you. You’ve been a downer about it the whole time.”

  Ben held up his remaining axe. “I’ll kill you.”

  “No you won’t. But I like your determination. I think it’s really fantastic that you’re trying so hard. You should be proud of that.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Try all you like, but I will overpower you. You are quickly running out of ways to make up for your surliness, so I suggest you give up now, and make the best of an unfortunate situation.”

  He dropped the axe.

  “Good,” she said. “Now gimme all that stuff again.”

  He threw her the bag and stripped down to his underwear.

  “Your underwear, too.”

  “Come on.”

  “Drop ’em!”

  He stripped off the boxers and she wadded everything up in her palm, which was the size of a kitchen table.

  “These are going right into the fire,” she said. “Sorry to inform you, but you’ve lost pile status. Now get back in the hole.”

  He walked through the door and slid back down the hole. Naked. Defenseless. She poked her head through the door and stared down at him.

  “One man or five dwarfs?” she asked him.

  “What?”

  “Do you want to fight one man, or five dwarfs?”

  Ben had no idea how to answer.

  “You know what? Sleep on it,” she said. “Tell me in the morning. I’m not gonna put a gun to your head over it.”

  She slammed the door and Ben was left in the pitiful torchlight. Ten seconds later, the door opened again. There was Fermona’s big, jolly head.

  “Oh!” she said. “They’re unarmed.”

  “What?”

  “The dwarfs. And the man. Either one you pick, they will be unarmed. And they possess average hand-to-hand skills, much like yourself. Dunno if that helps you winnow down your selection, but it only seemed fair to tell you. Adieu.”

  And the door slammed shut again. He lay down and curled into a ball. After a while, he pawed the dusty floor for the phone he’d smashed, just so he could curse at it again. There was a skittering coming from the hallway. Crab poked through the flap.

  “Psst!”

  “Hey,” Ben said.

  “She’s burning all your stuff.”

  “Yeah, she said she would do that.”

  Crab crawled down the wall of the cave and rested in front of Ben’s face, his eyes bobbing on their stalks. “What did she say to you just now?”

  “She said I had a choice between fighting five dwarfs or one regular human.”

  “Wow, that’s fucked up.”

  “Fucked up is my new normal.”

  “So which one are you gonna pick?”

  “I have no idea. You said you went into some of the other holes?”

  “I peeked around, yeah.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “A bunch of sad, naked guys in each one.”

  “Did they look, you know, jacked?”

  “Jacked?”

  “Muscular.”

  “Not really.”

  “Did you see any dwarfs?”

  “You’re humans. You’re all fucking enormous to me.”

  “Did you see anyone who appeared to be smaller than normal humans, despite being relatively large compared to you?”

  Crab thought for a moment. “I’m not sure.”

  “This is some kind of trick. She probably thinks I’ll take the dwarfs, but the dwarfs will all have the power to fly.”

  “Then pick the one man. Oh, but that could be a trick as well. He could have fire breath or something like that.”

  “You’re not helping,” Ben said.

  “You were thinking out loud, so I started doing likewise, you prick.”

  “So who would you pick?” Ben asked.

  “The one guy.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because it’s one guy, isn’t it? Only one set of pinky toes for me to clip off.”

  “All right, so I pick the one man.”

  “You know how to fight?”

  “My wife taught me a little.”

  “Your wife taught you to fight? She cut your steak for you, too?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Crab. So I beat the one man, and then . . . what then?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yeah. How do we beat Fermona after that?”

  “I dunno, shitbird. Sounded like she was really big on killing you.”

  “There has to be a way. The path wouldn’t lead me here just to have me get eaten by some giant.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Because it just wouldn’t.”

  “You’re assuming there’s a reason behind all this.”

  “I am.”

  “No offense,” said Crab, “but you’re a real sap if you buy that.”

  “Why don’t you crawl up out of that door and go get fucked by a turtle?”

  “That’s completely unrealistic, anatomically speaking. That’s not even something the turtle would want.”

  “Shut up and go away.”

  Crab slipped back through the door as Ben dug up the cracked phone and stared at the punctured screen. He was so used to grabbing at the thing that even now, with it busted and caked in filth, his first instinct was to pick it up and stare at it.

  Minutes later, Crab was back.

  “Maybe you don’t beat her,” Crab said.

  “Come again?”

  “She’s a giant, right? She’ll crush you no matter what. So maybe you ask her to help you instead.”

  “I’m not gonna do that. She’s a cannibal.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “But if you befriend her, maybe she won’t eat you.”

  “This is your strategy?”

  “Yeah,” said Crab. “I mean, it probably won’t work. She’ll probably impale you on a fork and then rip your heart out and then eat it like it’s a chicken nugget. But hey, you never know.”

  “Go to sleep, Crab.”

  “I don’t sleep. I’m a crab. I only lie dormant.”

  “Why don’t you sleep?”

  “Because things will kill me if I do. I need to be in a state of constant awareness. Even if you think I’m sleeping, I’m not. I’m saving my energy so that I can fuck you up. Heads up 24/7.”

  “Then lie dormant, or whatever it is you do.”

  Crab rested his belly on the lip of the hole and froze like a stone, his pincers folded. Ben rolled over onto his side and hugged himself for warmth. His determination came and went down in this pit. Those periods of steely resolve that welled up in him were usually followed by moments of sloth and despair. He was in one of the valleys now. Search parties only search for forty-eight hours, you know. It’s been much longer than that now. You’re dead. Or the world is dead. Your family will never find you. You’
ll never find them. The time has come for shock to become grief, no?

  He wondered about the man he was going to have to fight for Fermona’s pleasure. In his mind, he played a game of Guess Who? with a million face cards in little plastics slots. Is your opponent blond? Does he wear glasses? Is he black? Does he wear a hat? He slapped the cards down one by one until, via the process of elimination, he had his guess. Looked a whole lot like the man who punched him in the airport parking garage. He remembered telling Teresa about the incident after it happened.

  “You’re coming with me to the gym,” she told him.

  “It’s fine. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Yes, it is.” She sent the kids to her mother’s house that weekend and dragged Ben to the ratty jiu jitsu place across the street from her hospital (Ben always found it telling that the two facilities were adjacent to one another), where she trained. She had gotten into fighting a couple of years earlier, right around the time she had that nervous breakdown after losing (killing?) a patient, and started to work out at the gym three times a week—either before a day shift or after a night shift—willing to write off the lost sleep as a sunk cost.

  There, on a cheap gym mat that had whole chunks gouged out of it, she drilled him on arm bars and knee locks and other basic moves. He was fatigued after four minutes. Exhausted.

  “Can’t we just go back home and nap?” he begged her.

  “No. Focus. What if you see this guy again?”

  “What are the odds?”

  “What were the odds that guy was gonna hunt you down and punch you in the first place? You learn this stuff so that you never have to use it.”

  She charged at him as if she were holding a knife. He responded by mimicking her first demonstration, pulling her lead arm across his body and holding it fast against his chest.

  “Good,” she said. “Now lock it.”

  “I can’t hurt you.”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You can’t waver.”

  She yanked her arm out of the lock and wrapped her leg around his. Then she shoved him to the ground.

  “Focus!” she said. “What if this guy never stops? What if he keeps coming back again and again? What if you’re so stunned by it that you have no defense at all? You need to be ready, Ben. Do you understand? Just try.”