The Middle of Somewhere(50)

“Near the Piute Creek bridge. In the middle of the trail. It struck me as an odd place. At a campsite, sure.” He handed her the other stakes.

“Thanks a lot. It’s getting blowier by the minute.”

The McCartneys said good night, and Liz secured the fly and the guy lines.

As soon as the lake fell into shadow, the temperature dropped like a stone. Liz and Dante made dinner and stood huddled near the pines, their backs to the wind, and ate hurriedly. They scurried to the lake edge to rinse the dishes. The wind flew through the gap between the peaks, over a rocky archipelago, then swept across the water in gusts that pulled tears from their eyes. Liz, anxious to find relief from the cold, scrambled too quickly up the steep bank and tripped. Her knee hit stony ground, and dishes clattered down the hill behind her.

“I’m okay!” she shouted to Dante before he could ask. She rubbed her knee and bent it a few times. Nothing more than a bruise.

Fearing the strengthening wind, they stowed the cooking gear in their packs instead of leaving it out as they usually did, and took refuge in the tent before the sun had abandoned the summit of Mount Darwin. They stripped off their rain pants and jackets, and wriggled into their sleeping bags, facing each other.

She dropped her head onto her folded jacket. “I am so damn tired.”

“Me, too. How’s your knee?”

“It’ll be fine, and serves as a reminder. Haste makes pain.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Sleep now. You had a bad night last night.”

“Yeah. The good news is it’s too cold up here for snakes.”

“Good night, carina.”

“Good night, amigo. Te amo.”

“Te amo.”

She closed her eyes, her lids falling shut like trapdoors. Gradually, her body heat warmed the cocoon, and her hands and feet melted. Her legs sank through the mattress and tent floor and into the ground. If twenty rattlesnakes appeared in the tent, her mind would run screaming, but her body would stay right where it was. She drifted off.

The howl of the wind woke her. The moon had risen, casting a low light through the yellow fabric of the tent. Above her head the tent bulged inward, throbbing with the pulse of the wind. She placed her hand against it and pushed, but the wind’s strength was greater. Outside, branches scraped against one another, creaking. The gust eased, and the tent returned nearly to its normal shape. For a minute or more, the wind relented, blowing now, she guessed, as hard as it had when they’d been outside.

It was only a respite. From across the lake, she heard the wind gathering, whipping down the slopes and hurtling itself across the lake, closer and closer, louder and louder, then hitting the tent like a fist. The bulge above her head returned, pulsating. She rose to her elbow to see if Dante was awake, but his face was in shadow.

The tent would hold. She’d assumed the wind would not shift direction and had positioned the tent to face the force along its strongest side. She’d staked it as best she could. But she doubted she could sleep. Maybe during a steady wind, but not with intermittent gusts buffeting them.

Dante rolled over. “Not exactly a lullaby, is it?”

She tested the force of the wind again with her hand. “You should feel this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was blowing fifty, sixty miles an hour out there.”

“We okay in here?”

“I think so. It’s a strong little tent.”

They listened to the wind howling across the lake. The gust slammed into them, lifting the edge of the tent floor near their heads two inches off the ground.

“Whoa,” she said.

“I wonder how Brensen’s doing in this. He’s not very experienced.”

“True. He can’t pitch a tent to save his life. Probably he’s outside swearing at the wind.”

“You should try to sleep.” He checked his watch. Its face glowed turquoise. “It’s only ten.”

She did, but to no avail. During lulls between gusts she heard Dante’s soft snoring, which served to feed her growing frustration. Her body begged for sleep, but she could not supply it. Her mind was tuned to the wind, pointlessly tossing shreds of thoughts into her consciousness, spinning them around and around, then blowing them away again, into an unknowable space. She didn’t want to think, if this could be called thinking. She wanted oblivion. The wind wouldn’t let her have it.

For hours and hours, she lay not simply sleepless, but tormented by her sleeplessness. The more she strove to clear her mind, the more debris the gusts blew in. The tent was secure, holding them safe in their beds, but inside Liz was chaos. Snakes, Dante, missing stakes, Mike, Payton Root, Gabriel, wrenched knees, General Petraeus. Thunder. Lightning. Radishes.