Chapter 24
JUKES HOLLOW
The key to packing for the Tramp, if rain is likely, is to seal your clothes in ziplock bags. Keeps em dry and compressed. Last thing you want up there is wet clothing.”
The remnant of a slow-moving hurricane had dropped four days of heavy rain on eastern Kentucky, with more forecast over the next week, and we were prepping for the marginal weather.
I was giddy at the idea of hiking up into the mountains with Pops and living off the land mountain man–style. Almost two months in the cotton embrace of 22 Chisold Street combined with finally telling the truth about Josh had broken a sluice of dammed-up emotion in me. I was actually starting to feel a new way of being, as if I had finally hit on the hint of a trail leading out from the dark forest.
Pops placed his folded boxer shorts in a two-gallon ziplock bag, pushed out the air, and sealed the bag. He tossed it to me.
“Looks like freeze-dried underwear,” I said and laughed.
“You laugh now, but when I’m high and dry and you’re soaking wet for not taking an old man’s advice, I’ll be the one laughing.”
“You mean you wouldn’t lend me your freeze-dried boxers?”
“Nope.”
“You are a nasty old coot.”
He pulled out five or six bags and gave them to me. “Go ahead and try it. Works a charm.”
I took the bags and did as he suggested, taking my clothes out of the backpack and repacking them compressed and sealed in the ziplock bags. The new technique allowed the same amount of clothes in half as much space.
“We can use the rest of your pack space for my mash supply,” he said with a chuckle when he saw my progress. He picked up the old aluminum-framed canvas backpack and assessed its condition. “This was your mom’s, you know. I first took her on the Tramp when she was about ten. She used this every year until college. After that, tramping with her daddy stopped being quite so appealing. She found other interests, like tramping with your daddy.” He chuckled. “Held up pretty well, I think.”
The pack was faded green and smelled of mushrooms and mold. Mom’s earlier use of it gave the rucksack a special meaning for me. It was as if I could see her as a teen, hiking up the mountain with Pops, the many pockets filled with live-off-the-land gear, the straps wearing runnels into her shoulders from the weight of it all. I imagined them sitting side by side at the lake in a silence brought by simpler times, white-and-red fishing bobs floating on the water, shifting with the light breeze. “She became quite good at setting snares, you know,” Pops finally said, as if he had secretly read my thoughts.
“Can you teach me how to do that?”
“Most certainly. It’s a skill that will serve you well as a starving college student.”
I smiled and unpacked my rucksack again to try and make even more space. Pops sat in the chair in the corner of my room chewing on his pipe end and watching me with a wistful smile.
“You haven’t mentioned Buzzy much lately. What’s he been up to?”
“I’m worried about him,” I admitted. “He hasn’t been up to the tree house for two weeks, and when I walked down to his house they said they hadn’t seen him around.”
“He’s probably off on a tramp of his own. We holler kids do enjoy our tramps.”
But I knew better. I knew that the secret Buzzy was carrying had millstoned him. “When I asked his grandfather where he was, he didn’t even seem to care. He just said, ‘He’ll turn up… always does.’ I really think he may have run away or something. The whole Mr. Paul thing has him really upset.”
Pops chewed on his pipe end, thinking. After a while he stood and said, “Let’s finish up packing and get a good night’s sleep.”
We brought all of his camping equipment down from the attic into the living room—sleeping bags, fishing gear, tent, cooking utensils, hammocks—and laid it out along with our packs. Audy Rae was in the kitchen with Mom preparing food for our journey.
“We should be able to make it to Glaston in two days. It’s only about twelve miles a day, but it’s a hard twelve. When I was a kid…” His voice trailed and I looked up at him. His eyes were fixed intently on the doorway. I turned. Mom was standing in the arch, cupping her elbows with the opposite hands. The edges of her mouth turned up almost imperceptibly.
“Annie, you remember your first Tramp?”
The upturned edges became more pronounced. “I do,” as a whisper.
“You caught the grandaddy of muskies, as I recall—must have weighed as much as you.”
She smiled in full now. “I remember.”
“You had it on the line for, what, about a half hour? You just were not gonna give up, no matter what shenanigans it tried. You had more fight in you than that dang fish—and muskie are known fighters.”
She stayed in the doorway, smiling faintly, saying nothing, just watching me as I checked supplies.
“We’ll bring two weeks of coffee and cooking spices,” Pops continued as he loaded up a box full of fixings. “And just enough food to get us up there. Then we are on our own.”
“What if we can’t find any food?”
“Then we go hungry. Maybe eat bugs and roots.”
“Have you ever had to do that?”
“Never. Food is abundant up there. I doubt we’ll have much trouble, but I do make a tasty grub-and-dandelion salad.”
I laughed, then realized he wasn’t joking.
As we stowed all the gear in the packs, I could feel her gaze on me and on her old rucksack. I didn’t look up for fear of pulling apart the moment, but instead watched her from the corners as she went to a time when love was unconditional, loss was unknown, and she had more fight in her than a monster fish.