7.

Jack was banging on my door by 5.04 a.m. The blinds were open but the bedroom was dark. I got dressed, putting on my Converse and shorts just like I was told. Diane was at the kitchen bench preparing lunches. ‘Can you tell me where we’re going?’ I yawned. She sighed as she spread butter over bread.

‘I’m just his wife. Now you get to meet his one true love.’

Jack and I drove west through the darkness, passing Holbrook and Winslow then turning north at Flagstaff. We passed a sign for the Grand Canyon. ‘No …’ I said. Jack smirked and kept driving.

We parked on the canyon’s South Rim. The sun was coming up, piercing the icy air and changing the sky. Jack pulled a pack from his truck and two sticks that looked like a skier’s poles.

‘Ha, really?’ I asked.

‘I’m not as young as I used to be.’

‘Might as well skip the bullshit and go straight to an all-terrain walking frame, no?’

‘Alright, we’ll see how you feel about it later on.’

‘Whatever you say, old man.’

Boarding a shuttle bus full of hikers who seemed a lot more excited to be there than I was, we pottered along the rim. A young couple rotated in their seat ahead and asked what trail we were doing.

‘Maybe only to the river and back today,’ Jack replied.

‘Oh jeez, that’s ballsy!’ the girl exclaimed.

‘Well, I’m just an old man, after all.’

The shuttle drove for fifteen minutes and we arrived at another site full of people.

‘We’re just walking back to where we got on the bus, right?’ I asked Jack as we disembarked and he tied his boot against a rock.

‘That’s where we end up, yes. Let’s get moving.’

‘So a few miles?’

‘Yeah, a few.’

‘Doesn’t seem too far.’

‘It isn’t,’ he said, walking away without looking back. ‘In a straight line.’

We set out, soon leaving the paved parking lot and entering a rough trail. We descended into the shadows one peak of rock drew onto the next and reached a cliff. It seemed impossible that a walkway might negotiate the gradient, but it managed to by switching back on itself with tight turns over and over, taking a nibble out of the precipice with each.

We would traverse hundreds of yards of path to descend what the near-vertical canyon wall did in twenty straight feet. I looked down, concentrating on aiming each step, trying not to slip as the worn soles of my Chuck Taylors skated on loose sand. Each step sent a jolt through my foot, up my knee and through the rest of my body.

‘I don’t think my shoes are cut out for this,’ I said.

‘Seriously? Excuses already? I don’t think it’s the shoes that aren’t cut out for this,’ he grunted. After a mile of thuds and slips, as we dropped further into the canyon, there was still no sign of the trail smoothing out or any climb back towards the altitude we’d started from. Jack powered on ahead, stabbing the earth with his poles.

‘Where the hell are we going?’ I yelled.

‘Didn’t you hear me before? Rim to river and back.’

‘You know that doesn’t mean anything to me. Where is this river?’

‘You can’t see it from here.’

I looked out over the canyon. Rock rose and fell without sympathy, stretching into the distance for miles and miles, but no hint of a river anywhere.

‘Jack, how far is the river?’

‘I’d say about another seven miles and, hmm, maybe four thousand feet of descent.’

‘What …’

‘A little less than ten miles on the way back up though, which makes the incline a breeze.’

Dread washed over me. I stopped, almost slipping as I did.

‘Fuck this, I’m going back.’

‘Hey, wait a second now,’ Jack ordered, turning and striding towards me. ‘I don’t bring just anybody here. I thought this might be good for you.’

‘Well, thank you for the privilege, but I’m not interested.’

I turned and lifted myself up a step. He grabbed my arm, a lot stronger than he looked.

‘Get off me.’

He didn’t. I wanted to push him, but could’ve counted aloud how long something would take to find earth resting beyond the edge of the trail’s steep edge. A couple passed by. I took notice of them and they of us, but Jack didn’t seem to care.

‘Let yourself be fixed. Let this place fix you.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘You need to let go of all this anger you’ve built up. Walk the trail with me.’

‘I’m not angry; I just don’t want to hike through your goddamn canyon.’

‘You don’t want to, or you don’t think you can?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Get off me, you senile son of a bitch.’

‘If you don’t, then it’s because you refused to. If you can’t, then it’s because you never gave yourself the chance. The canyon doesn’t say no, only we do.’

I looked along the trail. The couple had stopped within earshot, pretending to take a photo. They saw me watching. ‘You looking to take the real fast way down?’ I barked. They continued walking. Jack shook his head.

‘You’re an angry kid, Mark.’

‘Get off me, Jack,’ I said calmly.

He released my arm and waited.

‘Have you done this trail before?’

‘Yes, a few times a year for the last thirty.’

‘Why?’

‘Because once upon a time it saved me. It fixed me when I thought I was beyond fixing. And maybe it doesn’t do a damn thing for you, but you’d be a fool not to give it a chance.’

A cool breeze blew. The day was still young and suddenly I felt the same. It, and maybe I, could still be made into something worthwhile.

‘You’re a cheesy prick, you know that?’ I asked.

‘It’s possible.’

We stood facing each other. There was peace in Jack’s eyes, his white hair tossed about in the moving air. He was the desert. I let out a sigh.

‘How long does it take?’

‘Most manage it in a little under ten hours.’

‘Fuck me … What have you done it in?’

‘Eight, once, but I was a younger man.’

‘Alright then,’ I said, looking out over the expanse of indifferent rock. ‘Let’s do it in eight.’

‘I can make it there and back up, but not that fast.’

‘Seriously? You’re gonna give me a pep talk then excuses with the same breath?’

Jack extended his upper lip, pushing moustache into his nostrils. I placed hands on his shoulders, which were the same height as mine with him standing down a step, and turned him around. ‘Come on, old man. Let’s go find enlightenment in the dirt. Shouldn’t have forgotten your skis.’

I nudged him and we carried on.

‘Cocky little bastard.’

Jack’s strides were huge compared to mine. It seemed like I needed almost two for every one of his. Sections with stairs levelled the playing field as we each took them one at a time, but with his hiking boots and poles, Jack traversed them as if they were paved concrete, while I teetered left and right on each with a thump. I took to flexing my feet, curling my toes like a cat’s claws, and stomping directly down instead of leaning forward. It helped for grip, but my feet and knees soon burned as they bore the brunt of my weight compressing them over and over.

We passed mile marker after mile marker, even catching and overtaking the occasional hiker. For a while, we managed to outrun the sun, staying inside the shadows as they receded down the canyon with us, but were soon consumed as the valley filled with heat. Rocks changed colour at various points, indicating how far we’d plunged. Jack listed the names of each layer and their order, trying to have me recite them. He still saw himself as a teacher and, I supposed to some extent, a guide. Every time I forgot a term, he’d get a little more frustrated, though I was only concerned with the balancing act of absorbing as little wear on my knees as possible while matching his pace.

I’d never concentrated so hard on walking while sober, but I’d have rather fallen from the edge than asked him to slow down. The canyon transformed in ways I wasn’t expecting. The coarseness of the dirt, the shape of the land, even the air seemed different. We moved aside as a convoy of mules carrying tourists plodded up the trail in the opposite direction. The animals’ eyelids sat low, draped over tired, black eyes – dust of the land coating their long lashes. They’d been born into a world that should’ve gifted them freedom, but were instead having their backs broken by fat sightseers. Each seemed to acknowledge me as they passed. We’d all been deceived that day.

Again and again, we reached a section’s end, rounding a bend or arriving at a place where the land fell away, only to be greeted by the next, the path ahead navigating down a gully or snaking along a plateau to vanish at what seemed like some unreachable point. The canyon was made of them. Callous sections, one after the other, taking turns to break you, the only prize at the finish line of each being the realisation there was another one waiting. Your body and mind accumulated wear from the miles before, begging you to stop, and telling you that if you were going to fall, this would be the one. But, after that, elation from remembering you’d felt the exact same each time before. Laughing at yourself, you’d get moving, knowing you’d made it further than you thought possible and were about to again. Even though my body ached, I began taking pleasure in the chance to take a first step over and over. A person who looked at each day making up their life in the same way might just be damn near unstoppable.

Arriving at one of the points where the land fell away, I looked back up the steepness to the spot from which I’d gazed at it earlier. It too seemed impossibly far. I took a deep breath and pushed on.

Soon, green dotted the otherwise barren land.

‘Does that mean we’re getting close?’ I asked.

‘Mhmm,’ Jack replied. He’d become less chatty.

Scaling a short stretch of incline, I saw the river at last. It was way down, a bridge passing over it. From where we stood, the trail made a swift cutback away from the ravine, drawing a massive, tilted horseshoe around a gully. It led to an opening in rock on the other side – a whole lot of nothing and a huge fall the only things inside its wide arc. The tiny speck of a hiker moved towards the black dot of the opening on the other side like an ant. It must have been three or four hundred yards across, and a hundred down. I didn’t want to know how long the walk around was. We kept going.

My feet were giving up; tendons and soles burning, my toes throbbing as they slammed into the ends of my shoes with every jarring step. With each step, they swelled a little more, making the next one perpetually worse. We reached the opening in the rock face and Jack stepped through. I stopped and looked back. Hikers stood at the beginning of the horseshoe-shaped section I’d just navigated. I wondered if they could see me, and if they were doubting whether they could make it, just like I had.

Stepping into the tunnel, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. They did, but just enough to make out faint licks of light accenting rock at my feet, the path worn smooth by so many tired steps before mine.

Jack hadn’t waited; I was the only one in there. Sounds of rushing water could be heard like the whispers of a hundred faraway voices. Their chatter grew as I made my way through; it felt like they were speaking about me. Murmurs turned to talking, yelling and then screaming, deafening by the tunnel’s end.

I stepped out into the sun and onto the bridge, the Colorado River wide and furious below, a huge fall between. Jack was there. His mouth moved but I couldn’t hear him over the torrent. We crossed and began following the bank. My feet were giving out now, and Jack could tell. Passing a campsite, we headed up a narrow path into what looked like a garden. An offshoot of the river weaved through as a thin, gentle stream, a small clearing leading right to it. A large rock sat with half its mass in the dry and half in the wet, stained at the waterline.

‘Soak your feet,’ Jack said.

‘That an order?’

‘It’s whatever gets you to do it,’ he said as he left to refill our drinking bottles.

I stood up straight until he was gone, then slumped on the ground at the creek’s edge, draping my tired body over the rock’s hardness like linen. My throbbing legs melted into the ground as I pulled my shoes and socks off, running a finger along the distinct shift from desert brown to white skin where my sock had been. Maybe Mother Nature had decided I’d done enough damage to my body and was reclaiming it. I straightened my legs out and dunked them into the freezing water.

Pebbles of the creek’s bank felt like coarse ice as I brushed my soles against them, its current so cold I felt my heartbeat in the bones of my feet. They tingled and the skin pulled tight like it was about to tear. Within minutes, they went numb, and I rested my head against the rock. I wouldn’t have believed someone who said there existed a lush garden in the belly of the Grand Canyon, but here I was, recovering in its waters. I closed my eyes and listened to the trickling creek.

Jack returned and retrieved four sandwiches from his pack, handing two to me. Three Spanish-speaking women walked by our small clearing as we ate. My gaze met one of theirs and she smiled, pushing hair behind an ear.

‘There’s a lot of beauty here,’ Jack remarked, a reflection of the canyon in his eyes. ‘It’s almost overwhelming. Bit like medicine for the soul.’

Her ass pushed against spandex, moulding and folding with her hips as they swayed into the distance.

‘You’re damn right, Jack,’ I responded, chewing with a dry mouth.

The trail wound along the riverside. Having already reached the height of its arc, the sun was beginning to fall. We were on track for eight hours and to make it out before dark. Further down, another bridge thrust us back over the river and we were on the South Rim again.

‘Ooh, boy’s wearing Chuck Taylors,’ a woman whispered to her friend, pointing to my feet as we passed.

‘Out of his damn mind,’ the friend replied, wiping sweat from her brow and returning to her water bottle.

The trail leading back up the canyon was different to the one that lowered us to its guts. It was wider, made of greyish rocks, not the dusty rust of the earth from earlier. More forested, too, with greens and browns filling the gorge, a narrow creek nearby. The incline began and the reduced strain on my knees felt like heaven in relative terms compared to the downhill.

I noticed Jack’s tempo slow. He suggested I set the pace for a while, as he had for the entire hike. He was fading. It was a strength and endurance game from here, and I had him on both. The climb’s grit gave good friction compared to the fine sand of the descent and my shoes seemed not to hinder me. My strides became longer and more confident; all I had to do was keep an eye out for stones big enough to trip over camouflaged among the smaller ones. We powered past three men who walked at the pace of people with nothing to prove. Whenever Jack picked up his pace to match mine, I shifted it another gear. Each time I sped up, Jack’s breath became more laboured as he drove spikes into the gravel behind me with desperation. With each clink of their metal tips, I imagined myself as some master sculptor chiselling away at his stony will.

‘Hey, grandpa, I’m kind of fading. Got any more words of inspiration back there?’ I yelled.

‘No, I just … let me concentrate,’ he worked out between stabbing breaths.

It wasn’t graceful, but everyone has to eat and choke on their own words at some point. Jack had underestimated me, and now his moustache and his big nostrils and his goddamn ski poles were paying the price. The only way I was going to get his respect was by wrestling it from his grip; it wasn’t going to be had any other way. And surely, I thought, he was smart enough to ask me to slow down before his heart gave out.

‘Come on, old man. That all you got?’ I asked as we stomped up the path. Even I was beginning to breathe heavily.

‘Pace yourself, son, there’s plenty more miles.’

‘Tell you what,’ I said, turning and walking backwards up the incline to face him. ‘You just say the word and we’ll take a break. I promise I won’t tell anybody, not even Diane.’

‘Cocky … little bastard …’

‘You know, this canyon may be the love of your life, but I think she wants to take me behind the bleachers and make me her boyfriend,’ I said, curling fingers of a hand and jerking it up and down in the air a few times.

Jack looked like a red-faced bull trying to charge me. My cackling echoed through the ravine like a hyena. He was about to break; I could feel it. Maybe I’d pour him a drink after I’d carried him home.

I took another few steps backwards, licking the teeth of my wicked smile, then turned to face up the trail. As I did, my left foot came down to find the top of a large stone, skating a few inches to the side. There was a throb in my knee unlike all the others. I’d been in pain for six hours; after six hours of rain, one droplet might be hard to tell apart from the others, but this one wasn’t. Less of a pinch, more of a bang, like hitting a pothole in a car with blown shocks. A sting shot up my leg and hip like a twisting corkscrew, causing them to go weak.

I tried to keep the pace, placing my right foot underneath and thrusting up the canyon, but that same pain was waiting as I tipped back onto the left. My knee buckled as if I’d lost all connection to it other than via pain receptors, the leg about as useful as a crutch made of string. I toppled, slamming my kneecaps, then palms, into the coarse hardness below. Jack strolled up beside and stopped.

‘Don’t say a word.’

‘Would I even need to?’

‘I just slipped, is all.’

‘Mhmm, I’ve found it helpful to face the direction you’re going, especially when hiking. Maybe I should set the pace.’

‘I’ll set the pace.’

‘Okay. Overtake me again and you can set the pace.’

I clambered to my feet, following Jack with grinding footsteps. The pain in my left knee amplified with each. Inside fifty yards, my eyes watered and the pain became overwhelming. The knee gave out and I collapsed again.

The three men we’d overtaken passed us. I looked up from the ground and waited for Jack’s wisecrack; the sealed stamp of his victory.

He just looked at me like he had the first time we’d met. Bringing one hand to the other, he looped a pole’s wristband over his thumb, lifted it off, then did the same with the other. He unfurled both hands towards me – one holding the poles, the other empty and upturned.

‘You can take one or both,’ he said, ‘but you can’t take neither.’

I deliberated, then forced myself back to my feet without help, unable to mask a groan as I did. It felt like someone was hanging off my back as another forced a nail through the space behind my kneecap. I rubbed my palms together, dislodging fragments of gravel embedded in them. Pricks of blood followed, mixing with the dirt.

‘Wise choice,’ he said, handing me the poles. ‘There are a lot of miles left.’

Digging into his backpack, he withdrew two head torches, ensured they worked, and handed one to me.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Something tells me we’re not getting out of here before sundown anymore.’

We trekked up the canyon, every section becoming steeper than the one before. I transferred my weight onto the poles as I brought my left leg forward. They really did take a load off the knees. The old man wasn’t a complete fool. Our trail became more populated as other paths merged onto it heading to the top. Group after group of hikers passed us as we moved with the most haste I could muster. After another mile, an ache began to build in my right knee. I had been carelessly shifting more and more weight onto it to save the left, but now its debt was due.

My pace dropped to a crawl as I clambered over even the slightest obstruction. Jack found a way to appease the situation, and his ego, by speeding off until just out of sight and waiting there until I caught up. ‘Hey, look on the bright side, we’ll both be old men by the time we’re done,’ he said at one point as I reached him, before powering away. ‘Earlier, when you said eight hours, did you mean per mile?’ he asked at the next before disappearing again.

The pain in my legs went beyond what I thought possible; my arms and back fatiguing as I propped myself up on the poles, now having to reset them for every step. When I reached Jack again, he didn’t vanish, but instead walked ahead at my pace.

‘You know, Mark, when I used to teach, there were a lot of Navajo children, and each new class liked to give me a Navajo name for the year.’

‘Uhuh,’ I mumbled, focusing on placing the pole tips between rocks.

‘Well, I decided a while ago that I liked that, so I started giving them to people I took through the canyon. I mean, I dumbed them down, but I tried to base them on qualities they showed during the hike. The way they handled adversity.’

‘Right.’

‘For instance, I named one buddy “Wise Hawk” because he just seemed to intuit where the trail was going next, as if he were seeing it from above. I even named another “Selfless Bear”, because he had the strength to carry his wife’s pack and his own for their entire hike.’

‘Is this going somewhere, Jack?’

‘Yes. I’ve finally come to a decision for yours,’ he said, stopping and turning back to me.

‘Really?’

‘Indeed, seeing you standing there like this, the way you’re struggling to balance as you lean on those poles, huffing through your nose as you push yourself up this canyon. There’s really only one name that makes sense.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. “Lame Horse.”’

‘Lame Horse? Lame Horse!? Are you fucking kidding me?’

‘Ha!’ he scoffed as he turned and began walking. ‘I don’t know why I would be. It’s perfect!’

I swung a pole at him in anger, missed, and almost fell. He didn’t notice and for that I was thankful, but still defeated. The whole place seemed to be laughing at me: the gurgling creek, the stones, the trees and the sky. The canyon’s lesson, if there was one, was out of my reach.

Agony sent me into a sort of autopilot. I negotiated each step as a new, separate challenge, soon unable to discern whether I’d taken three minutes or three hours to reach Jack where he waited at the next turn. It was the canyon’s own form of Chinese water torture. The only thing confirming I wasn’t stuck in some infinite loop, taking the same steps over and over without moving, was when the shadows had climbed as far as me. My feet waded in them like the tide coming in. I tried to up the pace, but it was no use; soon my legs were submerged, then my sore, tired ass. Darkness crept up my neck and past my mouth. I lifted my nostrils but it got past them too, and then I was drowning. Still, though, I kept going. It astounded me I was still going.

When the grinding of sand and stone came up behind me, I’d move over on the narrow path to make room for faster-moving hikers. Some said thank you, some nodded, some did nothing at all. I hiked with my head down, staring at the ground in front. It helped place the poles, but also let me maintain the perpetual fantasy I was only a few steps from the top.

More footsteps. I shuffled to the side. They came up beside but did not overtake me.

‘Are you okay?’ a soft voice asked. She spoke with an accent; white teeth, blue eyes and blonde hair illuminated in the dusk light.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I replied, feigning ease.

‘What happened?’

‘I hurt my knee. I’m alright.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Do you mind if I walk with you?’

‘Up to you; I’m taking it pretty slow.’

‘That is okay. I have lost my group and it is boring to walk alone.’

‘You’re telling me … French?’

‘Swedish.’

‘Lovely.’

She smiled and slid thumbs down her backpack’s straps from shoulders to hips. A skin-tight top glowed with the outline of her chest. Suddenly I felt better about the whole situation, relaxing my looking-forward-and-down policy. ‘You can walk with me as long as you like.’

We reached Jack waiting at a switchback.

‘Who’s this? Your new hiking partner?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said, passing without looking at him, the girl following.

‘I’m offended,’ he responded, strolling after us.

‘Well, she’s a lot nicer to be around than you. A lot nicer to look at too.’

‘I can see that. Are you going to introduce me?’

‘He did not even introduce himself,’ she chuckled.

‘A real charmer … Let me have the honour then. I’m Jack.’

‘Hello, Jack. I am Alicia.’

‘Well, nice to meet you, Alicia. Like I said, I’m Jack, and this is –’

‘Shut up, Jack,’ I barked, looking forward as I negotiated steps.

‘This is Mark.’

I looked back with thin eyes. The old fucker was unreadable. Alicia looked at me.

‘Hello, Mark.’

‘Hi,’ I said, turning back to the path.

‘Well, I mean, he was called Mark, but I decided that name doesn’t really suit him.’

‘Oh? It does not?’ she replied, intrigued.

‘Shut the fuck up, Jack.’

‘No, it doesn’t, but I came up with a much better one. Would you like to hear it?

‘Yes, of course.’

I sighed. I didn’t want another minute in that canyon, but I couldn’t pick up the pace. Jack’s voice was inescapable, like one in my own head. I gritted my teeth and kept aiming the poles – it was all I could do.

‘You see how he’s walking now? Or, well, not quite walking.’

‘Mhmm.’

‘Well, I decided if he were here a century back, the Navajo would’ve named him Lame Horse.’

‘Lame Horse …’ Alicia repeated, pondering for a moment then giggling. ‘Lame Horse – that is funny!’

‘Isn’t it?’ Jack laughed along. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Lame Horse?’ he yelled ahead to me.

‘Yeah, you’re a riot.’

The three of us moved as the last light in the canyon drained away, soon so dark the only way to discern cliffs from the sky above was where the stars began. Torches clicked on all around – a string of lights plotting the now unseeable path ahead like fireflies. They zigzagged in wide arcs towards the sky, never letting me forget the massive trek still remaining. I looked back to see the same lights extending down towards the floor of the canyon. ‘At least I’m closer than they are,’ I murmured to myself.

Alicia didn’t have a head torch, so she shared our light by following Jack while I followed her. She squeezed my shoulder as she passed, letting her fingers drag a bit. It was the first nice sensation I’d felt in hours and sent a little shot down my spine. Her ass swayed ahead like a hypnotist’s watch. I found myself in a trance, dumbly mimicking the rhythm. Ascending each step, her shorts pulled tight and outlined her body ever so slightly.

Before I knew it, we were moving at a regular walking pace again. ‘Those knees feeling better, Lame Horse?’ Jack asked from the lead, jolting me from my fantasy and the only thing bringing any respite from the discomfort.

‘Just keep moving!’ I yelled back. I tried to ignore the pain in my body. She swayed to and fro. We were nearly at the top.

Light fixtures appeared, dust turned to paved stone and we’d made it. I was taken aback by how underwhelming it was. No parade or cheer squad waited, just the quiet, indifferent night. Alicia’s party was waiting in the cold air, breathing steam. The three of us said our goodbyes as I pretended not to prop as much of my weight on the poles as I was. Jack went to retrieve his truck while I sat on a bench.

Fatigue may have been the only thing ascending the canyon slower than me, arriving a few minutes later. A toot accompanied the outline of familiar headlights and I dragged myself towards them. Collapsing into the passenger seat, we began the drive back. Jack pulled into the parking lot of a dive and we went inside, collecting strange looks as I struggled onto a stool at the bar. He ordered two burgers and asked what type of beer I liked. I shook my slumped head and sipped water.

The glass of the passenger door was icy against my temple as we headed east. I looked up at tired stars in a tired sky. People say they twinkle, when all they really do is inhale and exhale just like we do. I let air push its way up my nose and back out, as if doing my breathing for me. Jack was speaking about something but I couldn’t hear him. The sky had that weight to it again. The stars began to fade and I didn’t know if it was my eyes closing or if they were all finally being blown out like candles. I seemed to know less and less with each passing day, though I was beginning to realise nobody gets any better at seeing in the dark by spending all their time in it.