The Middle of Somewhere(24)

Pine-ageddon was by far the most interesting thing they witnessed all day. The trail never left the forest. Where the pines were sparse and a view was possible, there was nothing to see. The surface of the trail was either fine dust or pine needles, both easy on the feet. Dante insisted on taking the rear position for most of the way, and blew his nose frequently because of the dust Liz inadvertently kicked up.

They had lunch at a verdant stream crossing. A few larkspur and asters hugged the banks, remnants of what would have been a riot of blooms earlier in the year.

“Those flowers remind me of the last people left at a party,” she told Dante.

“I wish I’d seen the party in full swing.”

“It’s crazy pretty. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes crash it every year.” She decided to hike the JMT in September partly because, from the snowmelt until the end of August, mosquitoes threatened to exsanguinate hikers. She liked flowers, but not that much.

He handed Liz a bag of trail mix. “When were you up here in the summer?”

“Here? Never here. But Gabriel and I went for a weeklong trip out of Mineral King. We had to eat in our tent because the mosquitoes swarmed into our mouths.” She rarely spoke about Gabriel to Dante, or to anyone else, for that matter. The more she talked about him, the more the public version of their relationship stuck in her mind. As much as she avoided thinking about how their marriage really was, she also didn’t want to forget.

“Sounds disgusting.”

“They attacked Gabriel in particular. He’d get furious with them.”

Dante said, delicately, “I didn’t know he had a temper.”

“He didn’t. He just hated mosquitoes.”

Dante brushed crumbs off the front of his pants. Liz suspected he wanted her to keep talking about Gabriel but was reticent to ask. It went beyond the understandable hesitation of knowing about his girlfriend when she had belonged to someone else. Maybe he was afraid of her dead husband. She hadn’t met anyone who asked a follow-up question once they’d learned about Gabriel’s death.

“Come on, amigo,” she said as she stood. “We’re behind schedule.”

At Duck Lake, twelve miles from Red’s Meadow, they agreed it was time to start searching for a campsite. In fact, it was past time; she was bushed and Dante had gone quiet, a sure sign of exhaustion. They dropped their packs and began hunting along the shore, their shirts clinging to their sweaty backs. She was puzzled as to why Duck Lake sounded familiar. After fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, she thought it might be among the prohibited camping areas listed on their wilderness permit. She dug the permit out of her pack. Sure enough, no camping at Duck Lake. Too tired to complain, they set off for the next water source: Purple Lake. Two miles more, uphill for the first half, then a sharp slide to the tiny lake. Liz hoped to God there were empty campsites.

When they came around a bend, the lake materialized before them. Its surface held a perfect reflection of the scree slope that poured from the granite peak towering over its southern end. Liz heard a commotion and turned to see Brensen, twenty feet away, brandishing a tent pole and chasing a chipmunk.

“Get out of my food, you f*cking rat!”

She laughed and Brensen spun toward the sound, catching his boot on an exposed root. He stumbled headlong toward a tree. At the last second, his hands flew up and smacked the trunk, breaking his fall. As they crossed the grass toward Brensen, Liz wondered if he did his own stunts.

“Fucking squirrels!” Brensen said, by way of greeting. “That bastard tore into my cashews.”

“It was a chipmunk,” she said. “And it’s lovely to see you again, too.”

“Chipmunk, squirrel, rat. Who cares?” He adjusted the waistband of his pants, smoothed his hair, and addressed Dante. “Hey, Duncan. Good to see you back in the game.” He raised his eyebrows at Liz.

She returned the look, magnified to ridiculousness. She and Dante said, simultaneously, “It’s Dante.”

“Dante, yeah. I knew that. Losing my mind up here. What a goddamn boring hike today. If I didn’t hate pine trees before, I do now.”

“Hey, Liz,” Dante said. “Do you think it was Mr. Brensen who killed all those trees right after Red’s Meadow?”

Brensen smiled for the first time. “I wish. Funny enough, I can tell you what happened there. The Devil’s Windstorm last November. After it went through here, it blew into L.A. Made a hell of a f*cking mess.”