We follow route 270 out of Hot Springs through the beautiful and sparsely populated Ouachita National Forest. Every so often there’s a gas station and a cluster of buildings selling tired-looking T-shirts and commemorative rocks. We stop for lunch by a branch of the Arkansas River and feast on Gene’s leftovers. The stream is running low, and for a while we hang out and explore, skipping stones and jumping from rock to rock. Lyle starts a game of follow the leader, so we all shed our shoes and roll up our pant legs. The water is breathtakingly cold, and I linger on each dry rock, gripping with my toes and willing the warm stone to transmit some heat through the soles of my feet. G is right in front of me and Emily is following behind. Every so often I slow down so that Emily and I will end up together on an impossibly small rock. Every time it happens she giggles and grips the back of my shirt, pressing her body into my back. It’s bliss. I’m not even paying attention to where we’re going. I’m just following G, who’s following the leader.
I talk to Mom again, and she sounds a little less desperate this time. She tells me she’s been reading a book on raising the strong-willed teenager. I tell her this probably isn’t a bad idea, and I mean it. Something is different for me, so why shouldn’t things change for her too? I tell her about finding the divorce diary and she even laughs and asks me if there were any answers in there. I tell her no, only more questions. This strikes me as a very adult answer. I think we’re both a little sad to get off the phone. As soon as I hang up I want to tell someone about the conversation. I survey the scene at the gas station: Emily is stretching, Tim has his headphones on, and Lyle is reading his book while Jesse pumps the gas. G must be in the bathroom. As I look at them I realize how alone they are in the world; even as they’re together, they are alone.
***
Outside of Mansfield, too tiny to really be called a town, Jesse finds a small dirt track and turns down it by a wooden sign that reads “Rock Ridge Organic Farm.” The first three words are painted green and, as though that color ran out, the last word is orange. We bump down the road at about five miles an hour. The ridge between the tire tracks is grown high with grass and wildflowers. I hope Shirley can go in reverse, because I seriously doubt we’re going to find anything down here—including a way to turn around.
Just as I’m rehearsing the opening scenes of Deliverance in my mind, the road opens up into a farm field bordered by a split-rail fence. There’s a beat-up-looking trailer parked in the middle of the field, and chickens surround it, pecking diligently at the ground. On the other side of the road is a similar field, but this one has sheep in it and a couple of people pulling bales of hay off an old pickup truck. At the bottom of the hill is a good-sized red barn—the kind you’d find in a picture book—and a small farmhouse with a partially completed addition covered in building paper. “Uh, do these people know we’re coming?” I ask as the van grinds to a halt.
“I hope so.” Jesse grins impishly. The people who were up in the sheep pasture are walking down the hill towards us, and a beautiful woman holding an enormous bowl of green and purple cabbages appears in the doorway.
“Hi,” she says warmly. “You must be Jonah’s friends. Jeremiah said you guys might be stopping through. I’m Skye.” Skye has a wide forehead framed by dark blonde hair. Her eyes are a penetrating blue. She looks to be in her early thirties, but she’s one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five. Before anyone can respond or introduce themselves, the man from the field hops the last of the split-rail fences and walks over to where we’re standing. He has an enormous, bushy brown beard, and he’s trailed by a teenage girl wearing an odd combination of tight jeans and knee-high rubber boots. I try to smile at her, but she doesn’t meet my glance. She seems to be taking the whole group in with interest. “These are Jonah’s friends from Burlington,” Skye calls over our heads.
“I’m Jesse,” Jesse says with a little wave. “Jonah said he’d let you know I might be coming through. We’d love to hang out for a couple days and get a sense of your operation here. I mean, if that’s cool. We’re willing to help out however we can.”
“Jeremiah,” says the man with the beard. “You met Skye, and this is our daughter, Littlefern.” The girl in the tight jeans coughs and narrows her eyes at Jeremiah. “Sorry, I mean Lindsay.” We all give little waves or handshakes and call out our names. Skye and Jeremiah do that intense eye contact thing that I’ve almost gotten used to from Jesse. After introductions, Jeremiah points us in the direction of an unused pasture where we can set up our tents. “We’re glad to have you hang out for a couple days. Jonah mentioned you were interested in learning about small agro.”
“Well, I am,” Jesse says. “These guys are just humoring me for a couple days.”
“Well, as long as they don’t mind pitching in, we’re happy to share what we have here with you.” We all answer in one way or another that we’re happy to help out, do whatever is needed. Out of the corner of my eye I see Linsdsay roll her eyes. She walks away from the group and starts pulling at the tall grass around one of the fence poles and waving it at a nearby sheep.
Jesse backs Shirley up into the open field and pulls five olive green pup tents out from underneath the back seat. They’re all labeled with rubbery yellow peeling letters that say Camp Nawaka. “Boy Scout camp went out of business near home and had a big yard sale,” he explains. There are five tents and six of us. We all look awkwardly at them arranged in the grass like overstuffed sausages.
G grabs one first. “Come on, Em, you and I will share,” she says and stakes out a prime spot underneath one of the browning alder trees. The tents go up easily and smell like sunbaked rubber on the inside. There’s just enough room for two sleeping bags or one sleeping bag and a backpack. If I can’t share a tent with Emily, at least it will be nice to have a little space of my own for a couple nights.
Once the tents are set up, Lindsay wanders over. She’s changed into a clean T-shirt as tight as her too-tight jeans. It’s white and says the word Pink in sparkly green letters across her chest. “Jeremiah said I should see if you guys want to hike up the ridge,” she offers. She throws a couple cloth bags at us. “There’s an old orchard. It’s pretty overgrown, but we can usually still get some apples.”
We traipse along after her across the fields. “Watch out for Gus,” she adds as we pass through the sheep pasture, pointing to a ram with a particularly menacing-looking set of horns. “He’s wicked aggressive when he’s horny.” Gus follows us as we make our way through his territory, but he keeps at a safe distance. I walk quickly to avoid finding out what a two-hundred-pound, aggressive-looking sheep can do when he’s horny, and I find myself walking next to Lindsay.
“So how come you’re not in school today?”
She looks at me like I’m a complete moron. “It’s Saturday.”
“Right,” I say. “Yeah, I guess I’ve kind of lost track of the days lately.”
She eyes me up and down. “How come you’re not in school like ever?”
“How do you know I’m not eighteen?”
“You’re not.”
“Yeah, I’m not. I guess I’m on a little hiatus from school.” As soon as I say it, I wish I could have said break instead. “I guess I’m just trying to figure some things out.”
“Oh,” says Lindsay, rolling her eyes for the umpteenth time. “Wel,l you’ll fit in great here. Everyone who shows up here is trying to figure something out. Jeremiah and Skye don’t even care if I go to school or not. I mean, I’d have to study something, but they don’t care if I want to stay home and be homeschooled or whatever.”
“But you don’t want to?” I ask.
“Are you kidding me? There’s absolutely nothing to do here and no one around for miles. It’s boring enough here on the weekends. I’m glad to go to school on Monday morning just to get away from the chickens and the sheep shit.”
“It’s pretty here,” I offer.
“Yeah, pretty freaking dull.” We walk in silence for a while and then stop to wait for the others to catch up. Tim is lagging behind, as usual, and Gus starts trotting after him.
“He likes me!” Tim shouts as Gus nudges him with the top of his head.
“That’s because he hasn’t smelled you yet,” Lyle shouts back.
The ram hits him again in the back of his upper thigh. This time Tim stutter-steps forward. “Hey,” he calls out, a bit surprised. “That was hard.”
“Walk faster,” Lindsay calls out. Tim looks back nervously at Gus and starts taking big strides across the field. The ram is fixated on him, but not moving. Now he starts trotting after Tim, his head lowered
“Here comes your boyfriend,” Lyle shouts out.
“Shit!” Tim shrieks and starts running for the fence, but Gus is steadily gaining on him. He hops over the split rails just before Gus delivers a bruising blow to the wooden post and collapses in the long grass, panting.
“I don’t know why you’re being so picky,” Lyle says, grinning. “I think he’s kind of cute.”
“Wrong species, wrong gender,” Tim says, his chest still heaving.
“Hey you’re the one who’s always complaining about not getting any. Beggars can’t be choosers.” Tim glowers at him from the ground.
“What about your parents? They don’t care that you’re not in school?” Lindsay asks me.
“No, they care. I just didn’t really give them a choice about it.” This sounds tougher than I intend it to.
“You ran away?” For the first time Lindsay sounds a little bit impressed.
“I mean, I plan on going back eventually.” Why is it so easy to say it to her?
“How long have you been with these guys?” she asks.
“Why do you say it like that?”
“I don’t know. You just seem different than them.”
“A couple weeks.”
“Wow. Skye and Jeremiah are pretty laid-back, but they would completely lose their shit if I disappeared for a couple weeks.” She reaches over and playfully punches me in the arm.
“How old are you?” I ask, wondering if she’s flirting with me.
“How old do you think I am?”
Hmm. I know there’s a trick in here. I can’t remember if you’re supposed to guess older or younger. “Fourteen?”
She rolls her eyes like I’m wildly off. “Almost fifteen. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
She shrugs. “Pretty much the same.”
At the top of the hill the woods open up into an overgrown field filled with small bushes and miniature birch trees. The rows of apple trees with their twisting and gnarled branches are still clearly defined among them. Most of the apples are rotting or gnawed at our feet, but there are a few small ones left on the trees. Lindsay says if we pick enough Skye will make an apple crisp, and that’s reason enough for me to start climbing. The sun is sitting low in the sky, and after I’ve filled my bag more than halfway I find a place up in one of the trees where I can lean back against the trunk and prop my feet up on a branch. It’s a perfect spot. Emily is scrambling around in one of the trees, her dreads swinging wildly as she reaches for an apple. Her long skirt rides up around her thighs as she straddles a particularly large branch. I close my eyes, and the voices of the others fade into the background. Soon all I can hear is my own breathing, slow and steady. And oddly it seems like I can feel the tree breathing too, moving against my back like we’re somehow connected.
I think about Jesse and what he said about fending for yourself and growing your own food. My stomach rumbles at the thought of warm apple crisp. Is happiness really that simple? I feel pretty good right here right now, and the only thing I’m observing or paying attention to is myself.
Something tugs on my shoelaces. I open my eyes and see G smiling up at me. “Having a moment?”
“It’s nice right here. Come on up.”
She drops her bag of apples and scrambles up beside me. She leans back in a little crook right next to me and lays her legs across my lap. She drums her fingers quietly on her leg. Her fingernails are gnawed down to nothing. “You’re right,” she says, surveying the surroundings. “It is pretty nice up here.” She tips her head back so it rests against the tree. “Andrew, what are you going to do when this is all over?”
“Eat apple crisp,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure that’s not what she means.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? I don’t know. Go back to school, I guess. Go back to my old life.” It’s the second time I’ve said it in an hour, and it’s starting to sound more and more like a plan. But not yet, I want to tell her, not yet. I wonder if G thinks I’m wimping out by running back to my suburban lifestyle instead of heading off like Gene into uncharted waters. I know I’ll be different somehow, and hopefully everything else will be different too.
G sighs. “I think you should be writing some of this down.”
“Some of what down?”
“This! You know, this moment and this tree and this farm and everything. And what you think about it. Because once you get back into your life, you’re going to wonder what it all meant.”
“Did Ms. Tuttle send you?”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” I say. I know she’s right, but I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of being my Yoda. I swing down from the tree and pick up my bag of apples. “What about you, G, are you writing this all down?”
“This?” she says. “This is my life. Nothing confusing about that.” It’s meant to be a joke, but I hear a tiny bit of sadness in her voice. She must hear it too, because she screams out “Geronimoooo,” jumps out of the tree, and tackles me in the grass.
That night during dinner I get up from the table and go the bathroom. Next to the composting toilet is a warped mirror framed by chunks of broken pottery. I stare at myself in the mirror, and I’m honestly a little surprised by what I see. My eyes seem brighter, and there are a few more freckles on my nose. My hair has grown out a little bit. It’s almost as shaggy as Jesse’s. I touch the back of my head where I always pat down an annoying cowlick, but it’s all grown in. Jesse’s green-and-black-checked lumberjack shirt is the same one I’ve been wearing for days. It’s become like my St. Mary’s uniform. I think about what Lindsay said and wonder what she sees that sets me apart from the Freegans and if that’s a good or a bad thing.