After it's done, he takes the George Washington Bridge off the island, turns right into the Palisades high above the Hudson. The leaves are fully turned, speckled in the afternoon light, golds and blood oranges meshed into a fiery spectacle. To his right, through the few naked trees, he sees the city receding, high above the old Bronx waterfronts.
He's thinking about her and turns on the radio to distract himself. There's a song playing by a band he's never heard of, but the vocals are distinct and mournful, a deep brooding baritone singer. He listens for a while.
He hopes he's brought enough gear. He thinks he has. A big tarp, the sleeping bag and mat, rucksack with camping stove. Thick loaf of wheat bread and jar of peanut butter. Dried fruit. The wool sweater he's wearing starts to get hot so he steadies the wheel with his knee and pulls it over his head, throwing it into the back seat.
He turns off the interstate after an hour or two of driving, a no-name town in upstate New York without a Wal-Mart, a long string of cheaply built diners and hunting shops at the foot of the mountains. He's been here before, once a few years back, and drives on hazy memory, the look of the roads, the sound of the name, the bent tree with the tire swing, the bridge with rusted girders high above a rocky stream.
He'd forgotten how fast the sun sets up here this time of year. Already the sun is below the treetops, an orange fire through the limbs, strobing the road in warm gold as he drives north. Soon it's below the ridge and there's only the cold blue afterglow in the sky, dead ambient light.
He finds the trailhead and pulls into the parking lot. Only a few cars. He backs into the corner to hide his license plate from the road, a low hanging limb of yellow leaves covering his windshield. Then he unloads his gear and stuffs it into the rucksack. There's frost on the ground and his breath mists as he exhales heavy.
He starts up the trail and immediately remembers he forgot a flashlight. It hits him with a surge of nervous energy at the top of his spine, a dripping injection of nervous fear. It's ok, he reassures himself. Not going far in the dark.
The trail is mud and rocks and roots but he moves off it into the weeds and crunching leaves to find a place to pitch the tarp. He finds a hollow in the deepening shadows, three hundred yards from the trail behind an old uprooted oak, the big root base ripped out, leaving behind a muddy hollow. He fixes rope to the jutting branches, staking the corners of the tarp into the frozen earth. Then he unrolls his mat and sleeping bag, climbs in as the darkness closes.
When he stops moving the cold hits him, even here guarded from the wind. There are noises out in the dark, the crunch on the leaves, cracking of sticks, tree limbs rubbing together. He puts his fingers between his thighs, numb icy nubs, curls into a fetal ball. When he cranes his head he can see a cluster of stars through a gap in the leaves.
He's not tired, it's barely six o'clock, and he has probably twelve hours until morning. Lots of time to think. He thinks about the stars, the distance between him and them, light-years of empty space. He thinks about how far a light-year really is.
Then he thinks about the universe and whether he believes in God, and if there is some cosmic justice that reigns over all lives for all time. He can't make up his mind, and there isn't any sort of guilt over violating an unspoken law. Behind his confidence there's a taste of dread. A feeling that his best laid plans will crumble and he'll be left naked in the cold.
He thinks of her. He remembers the look of her eyes and cheeks after she's had a good laugh, the smirk at the corner of her lips. The way she tucks her straight brown hair behind her ear, cheap dangly earring sparkling on her neck. He wonders where she is right now.
After a number of hours in the dark, his stomach feels empty so he pulls out the bread and peanut butter by touch. It's so dark down under the tarp that he can't see his hand inches in front of his face as he eats, but he can feel the oily smear of the peanut butter on his lips, nose. He chews slowly to kill time. Before midnight the wind picks up, nearly rips the tarp from its moorings. He shivers into it, biting his lip. He gets up to piss, takes a sip from his water bottle to wash out the sour aftertaste of the sandwich, then folds himself back into a miserable night's rest.
In the morning the light comes white, so brilliant in the cold he rubs his eyes three times before he can focus. Everything is powdered in white crystal. His breath mists and the inside of the tarp is crisp with frozen moisture. He dreads getting out of his sleeping bag but the urge of his bladder forces him.
He pulls up the stakes and folds up the tarp and pushes it into the rucksack. Then he assembles the camping stove, the tiny metal clips and valves biting into his numb fingers. When the burner is lit it burns with a small steady blue flame and quietly roars. The water boils quickly and he makes soupy oatmeal and tea.
He's on the trail by eight. He hopes he beats any other hikers out the gate, the path before him fresh. Down here by the trailhead the snow is thin and settles in the cracks between the stones. He crosses a stream on a wooden bridge and there's ice on the planks. He almost loses his balance. He refills his water bottle on the far side.
From there on it's uphill, steady at first, rising through the dirt and stones amidst the thin white birches with peeling bark. Leaves weighed by the fresh snow spiral to the ground to settle on the white. He realizes there is beauty here and stops for a moment to look around, drink in the feel of it. Then he resumes walking.
Two miles in he's getting hot and strips off a layer, affixing it to the back of his rucksack. He's on the lee of the mountain and ascending and the air is getting cooler but he's working hard. A rustic trailhead chiseled out of old wood is nailed to a post. He looks at it for a moment then continues on.
He's becoming suspicious that he is not the first one on the trail today. He sees prints in the mud that have crisp edges, not dried out or covered in flakes. And then a boot print on the rock in the snow. Probably less than an hour old.
He wonders what he'll do if he overtakes the other hiker. Maybe he'll ascend a ridge and the other man will be sitting there, eating lunch, studying a topo map. Will he nod and continue on? Share a bite of food with the stranger?
But no, he can't. It's too risky. He can't let another know he's here. He stops and sets down the rucksack, unzips the top. He pulls out a plastic bag of spare clothes and the tarp and sets them aside. Then he reaches in and pulls out the revolver and looks at it. It's an old thing, not well kept, the metal tarnished and grimy. But there's a weight to it. He releases the chamber and looks at the bullets snug. He figures it will work when needed. He puts everything back in the rucksack with the pistol on top, then hefts it over his shoulders.
He thinks about what she looked like when she was holding it, hands shaking, nervously grasping the stock. Her manicured nail through the trigger guard, lips quivering.
Set down the gun, he said. Set down the gun and lets talk about this. She had started to cry when he moved for her, hands out, and he saw when she tried to squeeze but the safety was still on.
Another hour and he still hasn't caught up to the man. The tracks wind through the trees in the snow and the frozen mud. The white is deeper now that he's higher, hanging on the needles of the evergreens, drifting up beside the trail. As he walks it covers his boots, soaks into the hemline of his jeans.
At the base of a rock face the tracks veer to the side and he follows them instinctively before they dwindle out in yellow melted snow. Fool, he mutters, looking up for the red blazes of the trail. They lead up the rock face, straight through a cleft in the boulders, edges lined in rows of dirty icicles, opaque mammoth spears half a dozen feet high. The handholds frozen and grimy, he slips twice pulling himself up. He lets go his dignity, hugging the lichen-lined rock, his face scraping the rough ice. His rucksack catches in the wedge and he slips it from his shoulders and hefts it to the ledge above. When he finally stands he's powered in snow and his knees are bruised and soaked.
Within half a mile there are three more ledges like the one before, each different arrangements of boulders and handholds, some with cold icy roots looping out from the overhanging earth, others with thick icicles that shatter. He's exhausted when he climbs the last twenty feet, the muscles in his legs sore, his fingers biting numb. He lays for a moment in a soft drift and stares up at the laden evergreens.
Beyond the naked branches the sky is cloud, gray and impenetrable. The sun is only a lighter region, void of any shape or focus. He sips from the water bottle, the liquid heavy and frigid, sinking deep in his gut. Struggling to sit up, he munches on a handful of dried fruit.
It starts to snow again, small flecks that billow and nest on the branches of the trees, dim the world. He trudges another mile in the cold, head down against the flakes. He reaches the ridge and the mountain slopes away on both sides of the trail, a narrow path on the edge of a knife. At another time the view would be spectacular, through the leafy trees into the Hudson valley, the foothills of the Catskills and Harriman. Now it's only a misty abyss, a narrow world of crooked trees, blowing snow and cloud.
The wind picks up, long ways across the ridge, rushing through the tops of the tall lone pines. He watches as they bend and twist, shaking free heavy clumps of snow. The sound is a frightening roar, here among the trees a steady rush, but higher up in the sky a freakish wailing. Both played as one, unceasing.
He wonders if God is pressing down about him, demonstrating rage or power or vengeance. Or no, he thinks, its only molecules of air, the physics of weather, and I'm personifying the wind. He wonders which is more frightening.
Another half mile and the trail descends off the ridge, down through the weather beaten rocks, ice coated towers of stone. He lowers himself with his arms given the proper handholds, otherwise sits on the ledge and scoots off, sliding on slick moss and mushy leaves.
The snow is deepest here, drifting half a foot in places, cold enough that it's dry like sand. An outcropping of rock is buried beneath the white, a scattering of stunted pines clinging to the windswept edge, then nothing down and out for a thousand feet. He stands on the bluff, back to the wind, staring out over the edge, clenching his jaw. His eyes are watering and he convinces himself it's the bite of the wind in his face.
He steps in the virgin drift and feels his foot go down through the soft fluff, further still into open air, and he loses his balance and falls sideways. His ankle is caught in the sharp bite of the rocks under the snow and he hears a muffled crack, feels it racing up his shin and hip. He screams and swears, his heart sped with adrenaline.
He attempts to move some weight off his ankle and sit in the drift on the edge of the rock, to lift his foot from the hole. He yells again, pulling up with his palms cradling his thigh, his boot pointing wrong. He tries to wiggle his toes inside his bent foot and whimpers.
Have to get out of this wind, he thinks. He wants to brush away the snow and look at the skin beneath his sock, feel the run of the bone. Maybe fashion a splint. He's not yet thinking of this as a mark of damnation.
He makes the mistake of testing the foot, limping on its bent side, involuntarily screams and he feels the bone grinding inside the swollen flesh. His entire foot feels heavy like a balloon filling up with water, warm and flush and red.
A dozen meters and he has to stop, flopping down on a fallen spruce. He opens the rucksack and pulls out the tarp, draping it over his shoulders. He rolls up his pants and pulls down his sock, looking long at the awkward purple bulge. He feels nauseous.
Divine justice, he thinks, but immediately banishes the thought. Just unlucky. He wonders which is more comforting, which more frightening.
He wonders if the man ahead heard the screaming. He could sit here in the trail and wait for a possible savior. Only five miles downhill, they could hobble along and get out before nightfall. Drive to the ER, get his ankle fixed up, he could be out the next day.
But no, it would be a trip straight to lockup, months of trail and lawyers and drab gray paint. Then years more of the same, evil minded men in orange jumpsuits for company.
If the man comes I'll shoot him, he thinks. I chose this mountain, and maybe I was a fool but I chose it. I'm my own man.
The snow is blowing harder now and his tracks will be covered in an hour or two. He remembers climbing a warren of overhangs and ledges a few hundred yards back, the potential for a cave, a way out of the wind.
Hugging the rucksack to his belly, he slides backwards along the trail, his bad leg dragging behind, leaving a long mud lined furrow.
He screams in his throat through gritted teeth pulling up a ledge. Then through a deep trough of light snow to the other side beneath an overhang. The drifts slope away two feet from the dry center, a nest of mud frozen in twisted branches. He places the tarp on the ground and sits, his leg stretched out before him.
A part of him thought this would be a comical adventure in the late autumn, catching trout in a glistening brook, a tree house in a sprawling old oak. But in a way he knew it would be like this, battered by the frozen wind in the dark north. His whole life had been like this, the gap between how he had seen himself and the events that came to pass.
He takes out the revolver and holds it in his hands. The metal is deathly cold and sticks to the skin of his moist palm. He stares down the barrel, the lightless black hole.
She held it that way and he saw the abyss the very same when it was aimed at his eyes. He stared it down, drawing closer, palms up. He spoke to her, slowly, like a man talking down a rabid bear.
Then she wavered and he saw the barrel was no longer at his eyes and he grabbed her wrist and pulled the gun away. He pushed her to the ground unhearing her screams, his hands around her neck. He wanted to scare her, a good scare that would knock her out of this listless depression.
You want to shoot me? he yelled, thumbs on her windpipe. How do you think it feels? How do you think it feels to have a gun in your face? Why do you do this to me, don't you know I love you?
She had broken down now into choking sobs, mucus caught in the back of her throat, her vision blurred in thick pools of tears nestled in sunken eye sockets. Makeup smeared to ugliness. He pressed harder, his own mouth closed and solemn, watching her struggle.
Then she stopped beating his chest with her tiny fists, her chest heaving with gasps for air. She closed her eyes and broke the surface tension on the pools of tears, and the water spilled over her cheeks and down over his fingers on her neck. She was still.
It was then he broke away and realized what he'd done. It was if he had been in a trance, outside himself, watching from behind his head with detached interest. Now, merged back with the skin and flesh of his guilty hands, he felt as though he'd been led down this path. This was his fate. I'm my own man, he muttered.
He looked at her a long time, her hair sprawled on the floor, the wet trails down her cheeks like the branches of a naked tree. Then he got up and wet a washcloth, wiping away the smeared makeup. He picked her up and cradled her in his arms and set her in the bed. He kissed her on the lips. Goodbye, he said. I love you.
He gathered his gear quickly after that, raining it down over his head from the top shelf of the closet. He packed hazardously, throwing whatever item or tool that struck his mind in the bottom of the rucksack, starting with her revolver. When he was done he laced his boots, turned off the lights and appliances and bolted the door. Then off to the mountains.
He's very cold and begins to shiver uncontrollably. He hugs himself and clenches his teeth against the chattering.
This was the path of my life, he thinks. This is where the road led and I had no choice but to follow.
He thinks back to the moment before slipping into the rocky crevice and shattering his ankle. A footprint, maybe half an hour old, crunched solidly atop the snow. The same spot he stepped and fell through.
The step that had led him up the mountain, and now to this, crippled and broken, cowering beneath the roar of the wind. How long had those very steps led his entire life?
I'm my own man, he thinks, cocking the revolver. They'll never find me, body gone before the snows melt, taken by wild animals and the cold of the mountain. He nods to himself. This is the way it was meant to be.
A gunshot rings out clear in the cold, echoes between the limestone behemoths. Then the wind in the trees moves through the clefts of the rock and it is gone.
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