I was fresh from the cold inside of the diner, and the summer day roasted, stifling hot. I crossed the street, quick-timing it to the two-story building I hoped had A/C.
Two cars were parked in front of the two-story general store. One was a Chrysler van, complete with Baby on Board stickers on the back window. The sizable cargo area was overflowing with camping equipment mixed with various family paraphernalia: strollers, toys, and a box of diapers, its ripped-open corner betraying a roadside emergency. Discarded books and toys lay scattered over the seats.
The other car was a spotless white Jeep raised on a custom suspension system over off-road tires. A black metal bar bearing a fancy lighting rig rode the top of the windshield. I loved Jeeps—I wanted to buy one way back when, but Deb talked me into the reliability of a Subaru instead. I wandered over and glanced inside, holding my pack over one shoulder.
The inside of the car was disgusting. Cigarette butts cascaded from the ashtray. Sweat-stained undershirts, socks and pants pooled in the passenger footwell. The passenger seat acted as a repository for McDonald’s bags, stiff with coagulated grease. Ladies’ underwear magazines were strewn along the dash, spines well-creased, pages dog-eared. Behind the seats were two or three black duffels stacked haphazardly against each other. Industrial-strength black straps were bolted into the frame in the back—cargo holders for off-roading, at a guess. A handle of cheap whiskey glinted from a lazy hiding place in a corner, empty enough to wink sunbeams at me.
Charming. I thanked my lucky stars the window wasn’t open; you could probably smell the interior five feet away.
I walked into the general store.
As a person who spends a lot of time in the mountains, I’m familiar with your average mountain-town store. They’re dingy, cluttered, and poorly lit, with the faint hint of racism tinging the air. A decrepit old man straight out of Tales from the Cryptkeeper begrudgingly rings up your total on a pre-World War I register. God help you if you asked for a bag.
The Bedal general store was . . . different. Large, clean windows lit the interior, swathing the floor in puddles of sunshine.
Shelves with hiking equipment marched along the left wall. Everything from first aid kits to bootlaces, fishing nets, and spare tarps. And not cheap generic shit, either; I spied some heavy-hitting brands. A small but tasteful section of Osprey day bags, a rack of Patagonia raincoats. The right side of the store boasted an impressive display of dried food—a whole wall close to the door dedicated to freeze-dried foods. Mountain House, Packit Gourmet, and about a dozen flavors of Clif bars for good measure.
A guy my age looked up from behind a spotless white counter, holding an iPad in one hand. He tucked a strand of longish hair behind his round glasses.
“Hiya, friend!” He gave me a quick up and down. “You in from the PCT?”
Jesus, did I have a sign strapped to my neck? “I am indeed. Looking to supply up before I get back to the trail.”
“Well you’re in the right spot. If you want, you can put your bag down there, so you don’t have to carry it around in the store with you.” He nodded at a series of cubbies I hadn’t noticed, lining the wall, each the perfect size for a tall backpack.
“Oh, sweet. Thanks.”
Some way into the store, a woman moved what sounded like a pair of chattering kids through the aisles. I caught a glimpse of brilliant scarlet hair—either a great dye job or a genetic lottery.
“Not a problem. I’m Ronnie. Ronnie Coors. Like the beer empire, but no affiliation. Broke as a joke.” He moved around the counter and stuck his hand out.
“Switchback.” We shook. A port-wine stain birthmark curled around his wrist.
“Ah, trail names. Right on, man. Well, hey, I’ll let you look around, holler if you need anything.”
I thanked him, and he left me to my own devices while he ambled down an aisle to assist the woman.
A collection of baskets sat by the cubbies. I grabbed one and meandered to the dried-foods section. I did the basic through-hiker math, calculating how many days I had left on the trail times meals per day and snacks.
Another week left, seven days at one hot meal plus lunch and breakfast a day—
Absorbed in my musings, it took several minutes for the conversation to reach me across the store. I can’t tell you why I started paying attention. Could have been Ronnie’s shrill, squeaky laughter or the woman’s low-toned, one-word answers. Either way I started listening.
“—so I told them, you know, I won’t stand for that kind of behavior in my store. You can’t disrespect veterans or any other member of the armed services in here. And then I kicked them out. Teenagers, you know? No sense of civic pride.” He paused, waiting for an appreciative murmur or a “How brave you were, you gallant man, you.” He received neither. The scarlet-haired woman tightened her lips into a fake smile and steered her kids down the aisle.
“So, what brings you to Bedal? Going camping?”
She couldn’t not give an answer to a direct question, and I suspect he knew it.
“Yes. I’m taking the kids to the campground down the road while my husband is away on business.” She couldn’t have hit the word husband harder if she had a bat in one hand.
“Lovely. You know, there’s a stunning hike in the area, up the road. Meadow Mountain. Great views. You’d really like it.”
I blinked. Wow. He plowed right past the dump truck-sized hint, oblivious. I peeked over the Mountain House bags in front of me. Ronnie had an elbow propped up against a shelf, blocking her exit. The poor woman ushered her kids along as she scoured the shelves for what she needed, hustling through the shop.
Every time she took a step, so did he.
“Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.”
“It’s a little steep for the kiddos, mind.” Not a single glance at the kids in question. He jutted an upper lip in mock thought, then brightened. “Hey, here’s a thought—just throwing it out there, seeing what sticks; I could show you the trail. Yeah, I’ve been a few times, so I know it really well.”
Oof. The awkward moment of silence felt so palpable I physically cringed. He knew it well? It’s a hiking trail, man, not the minotaur’s labyrinth.
“I appreciate it, but I have the little guys here to think of.”
“And a righteous mother you are because of it, m’lady.”
M’lady? Oh no. He was a tipped fedora away from the single worst trope of all time.
The poor woman picked up two boxes of mac ’n’ cheese and made a beeline toward the counter. I doubted she pulled into the general store for two boxes of Easy Mac, but if I were in her shoes, I’d want to get the hell out of there too. I thought about stepping in and saying something, but I hesitated. Every chance she was a strong, independent woman who could take care of herself—I didn’t want to overstep. So I stared at the shelf of freeze-dried food and listened. If things devolved into violence, I’d step in; at least that’s what I told myself.
Ronnie Coors didn’t bother jumping behind the counter. He leaned against it, tapping away on his iPad, close enough to the woman to make her turn and fuss with a nonexistent zipper on one of the toddlers’ coats.
“Two boxes of Easy Mac, two-seventy-five. Card? Not a problem.” That’s when he pulled out his magnum opus, his big try. Holding this poor woman’s credit card so she couldn’t leave. “Maybe the little guys could watch themselves? Say tomorrow afternoon? I’d have you back in four hours, easy.” He flashed her the same smile he gave me: quick, charismatic. Or at least in his mind. “Unless you wanted to stay out a little longer.”
I turned around, jaw dropping.
The woman straightened, the expression on her face withering.
“I’m not in the habit of leaving my children to their own devices or going for hikes with strange men.” She held her hand out, flat. “Give me my card back, please. We are leaving and will not be returning.”
Ronnie’s face shifted in an instant. The easy smile curdled on his lips, and an ugly flush rose to his cheeks. Behind those round spectacles, his eyes turned cold. He slapped the woman’s card in her hand.
“Have a nice day, cunt. I was just trying to be nice.”
“Uh-huh, I bet you were. Come on guys, let’s go.” She stuffed the Easy Mac in her purse and hustled the kids out of the store without so much as a backward glance.
“Bitch!” he shouted as she pushed through the door. She turned and gave him the middle finger. I wanted to cheer.
The bell chimed, the door closed, and it was just the two of us. I turned back to perusing the shelves. Ronnie muttered something under his breath and busied himself organizing shelves. I left him alone, giving him time to compose himself. I shouldn’t have been so considerate.
“Psst, you believe her?” Ronnie called across the store.
I looked around. Surely he was speaking to someone else. He couldn’t expect sympathy from anyone short of a close friend in this situation, right? But no, I was the only person inside.
“I mean . . . I sort of get where she’s coming from.” I hate confrontation, and therefore put up a weak sort of measly defense, but I would be damned if I backed up his horrid display of arrogant . . . I couldn’t even come up with a word. It went beyond sexism—like he expected her to go on a hike with him, and the asking had been a courtesy gesture. Misogyny, perhaps, might have been closer to the mark.
“I was trying to be friendly.” He sidled back toward the counter. “She was the rude one—she was. I just asked her to go on a hike.”
“Didn’t she say she had, like, a husband?”
“I didn’t ask her if she wanted me to stick my dick in her, man,” he snapped. “Just if she wanted to go for a hike. That’s it.”
I wished I was back on the trail. Shit like this didn’t happen on the trail. I didn’t have a good way out of this conversation, so I grunted, shrugged, and fell silent. I didn’t care enough to attempt to change his mind; I wanted to buy what I needed and leave.
“She’ll get hers, one day,” he muttered, glaring at the road in the direction the Chrysler had disappeared. “Women like her always do. Women who think they can treat men like shit, walk all over them.”
If looks could kill, the window between Ronnie Coors and the parking lot would have melted into slag. Not quite the charming and organized shopkeeper he wanted to be, then. I threw eight random packages of food into my basket with two fistfuls of Clif bars. He rang me up on his iPad, swiped my card, and handed it back to me.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” I was desperate for a change in conversation.
“Shoot.”
“Is there a ranger station nearby?”
“Why?”
“I—I found a, uh, a body, out in the woods yesterday.”
Ronnie didn’t even bat an eye. He homed in on his iPad, tapping buttons I couldn’t see. “Not here. Closest one is up the road, in Darrington.”
I frowned, scratching my chin. “I guess I could hitch another ride, be back on the trail in a few hours.”
“Why? Who cares?”
I half turned, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t.
“Are—oh, you’re . . . I mean, there’s probably a family looking for him, man. It’s common decency. Part of being the species, am I right?”
“I mean, it’s the same as Andy McKlennon. Dude from town, went missing . . . oh, I dunno, last year sometime. His wife Beth put up a huge search party, fucking tore the woods apart west of here. Made a big hoo-ha of it all, found not a goddamn thing. I told her at the time, but she didn’t listen to me. Good odds were he wasn’t lying with a broken leg in the woods, he was in a Motel Six in Chehalis with a rubber band around his balls and some woman—or dude, before you give me any crap, I don’t discriminate—bouncing on top of him. Tough truths, man. That’s the way it be, sometimes.”
“I . . . what?” I had no idea what he was babbling about. “Look, I’m just . . . I wanna tell the rangers about the dead person I came across.” I emphasized the word; maybe he hadn’t heard me. The dead person. As in, dead.
His face didn’t change; his eyes bored into mine from behind his round glasses. He didn’t say anything. He stared at me. Jesus, this dude was a real creep. Time for me to go. I was halfway through shoving the food into the top of my pack when he hit me with it.
“Hey, you seem like a chill guy—”
I braced myself; no one has ever followed that sentence with anything good.
“—wanna buy some mushrooms?”
“What?” I was determined to keep silent and not engage, but his proposal had been so batshit nuts it slipped out. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” He adjusted his glasses, leaning back against the counter. “I grow my own strains up in the mountains. It’s good shit, man, ask anyone in town. I like to brew them into tea. It’s relaxing.”
What the . . .? Ask anyone in town? Worst ad slogan for drugs ever, of all time.
“Uh . . . no? No thank you.”
“You sure? I’ve got a good price—five bucks for an ounce.”
My experience with recreational marijuana ended with a puff on a joint maybe twice a year. Nothing against it; it wasn’t for me. But even with my inexperience, his price sounded way too low. And you know what they say: the best drugs are outrageously cheap.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks, though. Have a good one.” I swung my pack onto a shoulder and got the hell out of there.
“Hey, come on! I’m doing you a favor, you prick!” Ronnie’s voice, high and indignant, floated over the bell chime, following me outside. “Fine, be that way!”
I made straight for the road leading back to the PCT. The hell with the real world—I counted the seconds until my boots were back on dirt.
Across from the Shell station a small group of people waited, staring at their phones, standing five, six feet apart. They didn’t chat with each other, didn’t talk at all—they stood like they were quarantined—made safe by distance. Several threw glances in my direction, clocking my position even at a hundred paces away.
One stood by herself, her mousy brown hair tied in a loose bun, a thermos clutched in one hand. I put on my best “I’m not gonna murder you” smile and approached.
“Excuse me?” I waved from ten feet away, trying to catch her attention. She turned. She’d been singing to herself, or humming; a snatch of music floated away from us. She’d applied her lipstick haphazardly—it bled into the corners of her mouth like tacky blood. It made me think of the buck, and my stomach flipped. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I’m, uh . . . I need to get up to Darrington. Any idea how far it is from here?”
Her face tightened, but she couldn’t ignore me. She jerked a chin to the road winding north. “About forty minutes that way.”
I’d spent enough time in this town to know better than to expect a follow-up. I stared at the road, frowning. Too long—an hour and a half there and back, longer if the rangers decided to ask a bunch of prying questions. I’d lose the light, have to overnight in Bedal.
Pass.
“You a hiker?” She eyed my pack and took a sip from her thermos. A muscle flexed in her mouth. Something rattled inside the thermos, ice cubes. I got the sneaking suspicion she wasn’t drinking sweet tea.
“I am.”
A beat, a pause. “Good luck gettin’ a ride.”
I frowned. “I mean, I got one coming into town, so I don’t know if it’ll be that hard. I’m thru-hiking. Doin’ the PCT.”
I didn’t think it possible, but the lines in her face deepened even further. Some of the color drained from her cheeks, and she looked at me—really looked at me. Like I was gonna morph into a Muppet right in front of her. “What did you say?”
“Jesus, what is it with people here? Some of you answer questions, some of you don’t. Am I having a fucking hallucination? Do I have a giant sign taped to my back? What is your collective fascination with the Crest trail? Huh?” The wafer-thin door sealing my stress away vibrated, about to burst. She took an instinctive step back. The others were staring; I felt the weight of their eyes. Pinched, unforgiving. Suspicious.
“Sorry. Sorry, I—” I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to. Her, them, me . . . everyone. I took a breath. “I just—”
“I don’t know you,” she whispered, like a prayer for help. Another step back. “I don’t know you. Please, just . . . leave me alone. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Trouble . . . lady, I just asked you a question.” Ronnie’s voice haunted the edges of my words, and I bit down on my tongue, struggling not to scream. I wasn’t like him. Everything came back up; Green-Eyes, Boots, Appletree, my trashed campsite, swirling around me in a fog. What the fuck was happening here?
A yellow school bus rolled down the road and around the corner and stopped a few feet away in a squeal of rusty brakes, unleashing a flood of kids with neon-colored backpacks. Mousy-Haired Woman took the first opportunity to flee, grabbing a sticky-fingered kid wearing a Fortnite T-shirt. The other parents snapped their kids up, ushering them into cars or up the street with sharp gestures and glances over their shoulders—at the kids, at the other parents.
At me.
Two minutes after the bus left, the citizens of Bedal were gone, safely back to their houses, far away from the main road. What did she say? She didn’t know me? Of course she didn’t fuckin’ know me, why would she? Jesus, maybe Ronnie was the normal one, and the town was skewed way out of whack. Time for me to get the hell back to my woods. My own voice floating back to me was the only thing stopping me, following the sweet salvation of the PCT logo.
Part of being the species.
Shit. I had to tell someone about Green-Eyes, or at least make the attempt. He might have someone out there looking for him. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to Darrington—too far, too much time, plus I straight-up didn’t want to. But . . . I sighed and walked back down the street, shouldering through the door into the diner.
“Back again, honey?” the waitress asked. Weird; she stood in the exact same spot as when I left. I shook it off; I was jumping at shadows. One phone call, and then I could be back on the trail.
“Do you have a phone? I want to call . . .” The words stuck in my throat. I was, of course, about to talk about old boy Green-Eyes and his leftover sausage casing of a stomach. But I couldn’t shake Ronnie’s eyes, staring at me through his glasses, flat as the corpse lying alone in the woods. Maybe I was seeing things, or maybe something in this town stank. I hadn’t been here long enough to get perspective, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to be. Either way, no harm in playing my cards close to my chest.
“I have to call my wife.”
Oof. The first excuse that sprang to mind, and each syllable took a slice out of my tongue.
“Well aren’t you the sweetest.” Sarah dimpled. “Cell service is spotty ’til about Darrington up the road a bit. We got a phone, but Jeremy here hit the telephone pole with his car two days ago. Cable company said they can’t get out here ’til Monday.”
The good-natured razzing from the gathered good old boys hummed, muted in my dead ears. I’d seen the telephone pole, outside—there wasn’t a scratch on it.
Sarah’s smile stretched her lips too far. “Can I get you anything else, honey?”
“No—ahem—no, I’m good. I’m just gonna . . .” I pointed to the door. I had a powerful and unyielding desire to be anywhere but there at that moment.
“You have yourself a good day now, you hear me?”
I muttered a nicety, turned on my heels, and fled.
* * *
The trail sat less than a mile from Ronnie Coors’s front porch, past a cracked-asphalt parking lot. I let out no small sigh of relief when my boots left the pavement. The woods swallowed me, just like that hiker I’d met the other day. I couldn’t remember his name; I’m sure it didn’t matter. He shot for an unnamed peak and left me on the trail. That’s all I could remember. Like pulling leaves from the forest at midnight, scratching around in the dark.
The path wound through an east-bearing river valley, flat and wide. The water rushed past, emerald green and sparkling beyond the trees lining the banks. I passed a dozen tents on the pebbled shore and nodded in casual hello to a dozen hikers making their way back to town. The day started to wind toward late afternoon, and I was the only person headed into the mountains.
I caught glimpses of the peaks on the far side of the river, towering over the valley. I wondered which one was Meadow Mountain.
The unease of confrontation now drained from my gut, I wished I’d stood up and given that prick a piece of my mind. Asking a married woman out for a hike? What kind of man these days asks a woman he just met to go out in the woods with him, alone, for three to four hours? As my mom used to say, that’s how people wind up on the news.
Only an hour from town, I could still turn around, go back to the store, and chew out the pouty Mr. Coors. But to what purpose? The woman was long gone, so no need to defend her honor—she saw to that herself anyway. Good for her. And Ronnie . . . well, something told me Ronnie had been this way for a while, and not much I said would change him one way or another.
Plus, there were only a handful of daylight hours left, and I wanted to reach the PCT sooner rather than later. Being off it was too jarring. The trail was safe, the trail was secure. You walked one direction, looked at the pretty sights, ate when you were hungry and rested when you got tired. There were no creepy shopkeepers hitting on married women or offering me drugs for bargain-bin prices. Talking shit about missing people or corpses found in the woods. No, on the trail everything was open, everything was honest. Switchback took over, and Josh could sleep.
Every few minutes I glimpsed a fluttering in the trees and jumped. I kept waiting for the wind to whisper in a singsong over the rushing river, but it never happened. And wouldn’t. I don’t know why I wasted so much thought on the kid from back before I hitched a ride into Bedal. He’d been fifteen miles down the road and up a ravine. No chance he’d be this far. I thought the words, but I still checked the trees.
The sun sank, the sunbeams filtered through the trees burned to a deep gold.
After about two hours of pleasant riverside trail walking, I happened upon a fork in the trail. To the right, the flat river valley meandered on to what I suspected would be a lake of some variety. On the left, the trail narrowed and straggled over rocks and roots before curving uphill. A wooden sign nailed to a tree with the official PCT trail marker on it pointed to the uphill trail. Of course it would be the difficult one.
I made it about a mile before I had to take a break, panting and sweating against a tree beside the trail. Best guess, I had about two or three hours of daylight left. I remembered the basic layout of the main Crest trail, but I wasn’t on the Crest trail. I had no idea how many miles this tributary meandered before the two linked up. Could be over the hill, could be fifteen miles.
I had two options. I could throw down camp here, enjoy a golden afternoon with my feet in the river and American Gods on my e-reader. Which sounded nice, but I wanted to get back to my trail, and sacrificing three hours of daylight wasn’t ideal.
The second option: I could hike the trail and see where it led me, keeping an eye out for a prime tent spot as I went. The Cascades were the most-backpacked mountains north of the Sierras. Good money said someone before me had been in my shoes and was nice enough to flatten out a section of dirt and leaves beside the trail. I could close the gap between me and the PCT, if not put boots on the main trail tonight. I decided on the second option. The more distance between me and that town, the better.
The trail turned into a gradual but constant climb, pivoting on the shoulders of one hill to climb the next. The flat river valley beneath me filled with deep, burnt sunlight as I walked. A steep streamlet chattered over rocks beside me. I was alone on this trail; the day hikers had all gone home. The sound of crunching dirt beneath my boots and the breath in my lungs were my only companions.
After three miles, I crested a ridge.
The path sloped down into a basin around a shallow lake. The basin swelled in ridges, honing to sharp, rocky faces towering hundreds of feet above me. The basin’s edge (three, four miles away but seemed close enough to touch) looked sharp and distinct.
At the top, a single splintered peak rose in a spire of collapsed rock shards and crumbling cliff faces. For some reason I thought of a massive, spindly clocktower, reaching up to graze the pale lavender sky.
Glacier Peak hovered over the ridge behind the basin. The PCT trundled along the base of Glacier before hooking northeast. I was close.
Behind me, the sun went down in full now, slashing the basin open with ribbons of burnt orange. It would be dark in less than an hour, which meant I would have to stop . . . until I caught a glimpse of the moon.
The rim rose behind the three-finger summit of Glacier, already bright enough to wash the mountain in the promise of a ghost glow. Not full, but close enough that it would light my way, no problem.
The trail dropped, sliding into the basin before arcing around the lake, climbing. The wind blew cool but not cold, and the stars came out as I descended. Small groups of two or three as the band of lily-blue dusk slipped from the horizon, and then dozens at a time. They glittered in patchwork spiderwebs. My neck ached from staring upward. I didn’t care.
The night was young and beautiful, and it made my tired feet and legs feel new again. I hummed to myself as I walked.
The trail rose to the ridge, and I paused to catch my breath. To my right the basin fell away in a seamless, rolling bowl. To the left, Glacier dominated the skyline. A thin trail led southward down the opposite side of the basin, a stand-alone sign with the PCT logo on it. Three miles, maybe less. I’d made it.
I stood beneath the path to the stone spire, listening to the breeze. Sweat cooled on my face. The trees rustled in the valley below me. A buried river crashed unseen around the ridge. Maybe I’d take a little time and climb that tall spire. Switchback had nothing but time. Switchback wasn’t in a—
A single, high-pitched bubble of laughter, floating on the wind.
I spun on my heel, whipping around, trying to see where it came from.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
He moved, separated himself from the shadows of the ridge. A short man standing alone, almost camouflaged by the boulders dotting the ridge. No, not a man, I realized. A boy, no older than eleven or twelve, wearing tattered shorts and a T-shirt, staring at me.
I recognized him. The same prankster from this morning, hidden behind the pines. Except now we were far removed from any excuse of living nearby. Now we were in the wilds. No more pranks.
“What are you—what are you doing here?” I stammered.
His face was hidden in shadow, but the moonlit side—thin, too thin. His cheeks were sunken, almost skeletal. His shoulders jutted, angular, beneath his shirt. Wasn’t he cold? I suppressed a shiver, and I’d just been climbing uphill.
“I see you.” His lips moved, but his flat eyes never left mine for a second. I fumbled for the blade at my shoulder. The same voice from earlier today.
“Stay away from me. I’m warning you—I don’t know what kind of bullshit—”
“The mountain.” Now his voice croaked, dead and flat. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. His feet wept carmine tracks onto the dirt.
“The mountain,” he repeated, and then he smiled. Smiled so wide his lips cracked open and began to bleed. That smile sent ice water into my gut. He took a step toward me, and I took an instinctive one back.
The boy looked east, toward the three-fingered Glacier.
“What are you—oh my God, what happened to you?”
The entire left side of his emaciated face—the side that had been wreathed in shadow—was disfigured. No hair grew in a fistful of his scalp, instead showing barely-healed skin over scar tissue. The flesh of his cheek and jaw was puckered and curled in a deep cleft. One milky eye glared at me, scarred over.
My pack suddenly seemed to weigh twenty more pounds than it had fifteen minutes ago. My mouth ran dry.
He turned back to me, the smile still stretched over his cracked face. He ducked one hand behind his back . . . and pulled out the unmistakable silhouette of a hunting knife. The same knife I’d seen this morning, buried in the stag’s throat, left on the trail for me to find.
He stepped toward me again, too quick. I tripped on a rock, stumbling backward, twisting to keep my feet. I turned back in time to see him lunge at me, swinging the knife at my head, his dead lips still twitching in a wide smile.