Marcus looked down at himself, then at me, and started flapping his hands like he wanted to fly away, all the time wailing at the top of his lungs. Dad lunged at him and carried him, running full tilt back to the campsite. I ran after them, stumbling in the soft, wet sand.
Dad dropped to his knees outside the tent and crawled in with Marcus, who was completely hysterical, slapping at his head and face. I tumbled in after them.
“Hold him down.” Dad scrambled in his knapsack. Hands trembling, he freed a Camel nonfilter from its pack and lit it. Marcus ran around and around the tent in his little madras bathing trunks, arms outstretched to either side, screaming.
I sprang at him, caught his legs, and pulled him into my lap, roping him in with my arms.
Dad held the lit cigarette against the biggest one; it hung down long, twisting and writhing, from Marcus’s chest. I could almost see his little heart hammering underneath his pale skin. The thing sizzled and thickened under the glowing cigarette, retreating into its meatiness, blackened, then dropped to the canvas floor.
We all watched it coil and loop, smoldering, as the rain pelted the tent until, with a steady hand, Dad lit the next cigarette.
Two hours later, the three of us pulled into a McDonald’s. Dad let us order anything we wanted, as much as we wanted. Marcus got two of everything: two cheeseburgers, two chocolate milk shakes, two orders of french fries. We sat in the red plastic booth mostly in silence, the rain slashing at the gray highway, Marcus cramming himself with food and signing “Good” and “More” every now and then.
I was starving too and busy stuffing myself with all my favorite things—chicken sandwiches, shakes, and fries—but I noticed Dad hadn’t eaten much at all. He sat back in his seat, arms folded, alternately staring into space and looking at us like he was disappointed we were still ourselves.
? ? ?
One by one, the book lights switched off and total darkness entered, like another presence. I listened to the trees bluster and fill with wind, creaking and rustling. A few raindrops tapped at the roof here and there before a gust of much colder air blew in through the gap between the walls and the floor as if it wanted in, was looking for us. Soon the rain gathered all its strength and came pounding down.
I wanted to wake Pia and ask what the plan was for hiking and white-water rafting in a storm, if there even was one. Shivering in my sleeping bag, forming and re-forming my makeshift sweater--as-pillow, I couldn’t imagine a more miserable thing to do. I lay there ruing the day I said yes to this thing, thinking: I came on this trip out of loneliness and fear of being left behind by my friends. What good can come of that?
Lightning flashed, illuminating the narrow slice of ground between the walls and the floor, followed by booms of thunder. With a wave of nausea, I felt in my jaw the shame of how it would feel to stay back, alone in the lodge, forever remembered as the one who—immobilized by cowardice—could only watch as her braver, stronger friends hiked up and over the hill and out of sight.
Friday
June 22
8
Like so many mornings after a torrential rainstorm, the day broke awash with brilliant sunshine and fresh air. Though the sun had warmed the tin room to the point where I’d grown hot in my sleeping bag, the wretched position in which I’d finally fallen asleep had morphed into borderline comfortable.
I gazed at the cot above me expecting to see the impression of Pia still sleeping there, but it was flat. To my left, Rachel’s bed was empty too, her bedroll neatly tied. I was relieved to see Sandra still bundled in her red sleeping bag, head tucked down. Like Pia, she was a natural-born sleeper.
Led by aromas of French toast and coffee, I climbed up the hill across grass flattened by the night’s downpour. In the distance, our destination: smoke-blue mountains obscured and then revealed by morning fog. I felt equally pulled and repelled. What did the mountains care about our plan to climb them, rafting the waters that divided them? They had eternity before us, and eternity after us. We were nothing to them.
? ? ?
We swung out onto the main road—Sandra, Rachel, and me crammed in the backseat—and drove about twenty minutes or so before Rory turned sharply onto an unmarked dirt road not much wider than his truck. Up in front, he and Pia kept up a lively conversation the rest of us weren’t privy to with the radio blaring and the roar of the engine. I watched her demonstrate some point with her long, elegant hands, then laugh. His white teeth flashed as he smiled at her, his strong arm resting on the open window.
We three sat in silence, bumping along so hard my teeth were chattering, feeling the main road recede as the forest came at us fast. Branches reached out and scraped across the windshield, snapping back behind us. The road decayed into two muddy grooves with grass down the middle, and the truck bounced so violently in deep ruts I thought the engine would fall out.