the nature of the trouble, and offers up a silent prayer to his deceased wife that he will not regret answering its call.
The storm had come upon them without warning, a hungry, violent thing that roared in from the north, as if they’d camped on a railroad track assumed abandoned only to have a freight train barrel through in an explosion of sudden light and noise.
And now their tent was destroyed and they were lost in the dark woods, having fled in the kind of panic unique to unseasoned campers, shelter taking precedence over direction.
“Mike? Do you know where we’re going?”
“Sure, babe.”
This is the first of many lies he has told her on this trip, and he fears it won’t be the last. They’re lost, and it’s his fault—of course it is, isn’t everything?—but Mike is determined not to acknowledge the fact if only to deprive his wife of just one more reason to think less of him.
“You’re sure? ” Emma yells at him over the wind and rain that sends spectral horses galloping through his flashlight beam.
The verdure weaves and dances around them in submarine symphony. T hey are miles from anywhere. There are only trees here, tall and stolid and dark, the forest floor soft and spongy, greedily sucking down the rain and their ill-prepared feet after months of drought. Above their heads, the canopies of the beech, poplar, and oak are thick enough to appear conjoined, relegating the lightning to startlingly bright pulses between the crowded boles.
Mike stops, eager to go on, eager to be out of this interminable forest, but glad for the chance to catch his breath, which a quarter mile or so ago became labored and now feels like he’s pulling flaming cotton into his lungs instead of air. The hiking boots he bought just for this occasion are sawing open the backs of his heels, making each step torture. He turns to face his wife and son, knowing they need reassurance, knowing he could use it just as much, and struggles against the encumbrance of the backpack full of items that were of little enough use before the storm and are absolutely useless now, and his yellow slicker, which flaps madly as if eager to free of him. He empathizes, eager as he is right now to be free of himself and the situation into which he has thrust them. This was a mistake, and probably the last one he’ll ever make as a married man. That it was supposed to revitalize their crumbling union is only the larger part of the tragedy this trip has become. That he knew his luck would pull the rug out from under him is another. Because the last time he can remember his poor luck changing to any substantial degree, he was three weeks shy of his thirty-first birthday, still living with his parents, unemployed and flirting with alcoholism as a way to subvert his loneliness, when he answered the door to a perky blonde, her pretty face glowing with rehearsed Republican charm as she espoused the benefits of reelecting George Bush Sr. It had taken uncharacteristic levels of courage and impulsivity for him to ask out a girl he knew was so far out of his league they likely didn’t share the same quality of oxygen, but it had to have been pure luck, or some other strange upset in the mechanics of the universe, that had made her response an affirmative one. Luckier still that he hadn’t blown it on their subsequent dates, that she hadn’t seen—or that she chose to ignore—the insecurity that hounded him like a starving dog he’d been foolish enough to feed and now couldn’t shake.
That blonde is not as pretty now, and he knows not all of that can be blamed on the weather. Her red slicker clings to a body made shapeless by the years, the disappointment, and the stress of being married to a man crippled by the ever increasing weight of his own failure and unrealized dreams. Her hair, which has lost its luster and faded in synch with her expectations of him, is pasted to her pallid face, but not enough to hide the doubt from eyes
The storm had come upon them without warning, a hungry, violent thing that roared in from the north, as if they’d camped on a railroad track assumed abandoned only to have a freight train barrel through in an explosion of sudden light and noise.
And now their tent was destroyed and they were lost in the dark woods, having fled in the kind of panic unique to unseasoned campers, shelter taking precedence over direction.
“Mike? Do you know where we’re going?”
“Sure, babe.”
This is the first of many lies he has told her on this trip, and he fears it won’t be the last. They’re lost, and it’s his fault—of course it is, isn’t everything?—but Mike is determined not to acknowledge the fact if only to deprive his wife of just one more reason to think less of him.
“You’re sure? ” Emma yells at him over the wind and rain that sends spectral horses galloping through his flashlight beam.
The verdure weaves and dances around them in submarine symphony. T hey are miles from anywhere. There are only trees here, tall and stolid and dark, the forest floor soft and spongy, greedily sucking down the rain and their ill-prepared feet after months of drought. Above their heads, the canopies of the beech, poplar, and oak are thick enough to appear conjoined, relegating the lightning to startlingly bright pulses between the crowded boles.
Mike stops, eager to go on, eager to be out of this interminable forest, but glad for the chance to catch his breath, which a quarter mile or so ago became labored and now feels like he’s pulling flaming cotton into his lungs instead of air. The hiking boots he bought just for this occasion are sawing open the backs of his heels, making each step torture. He turns to face his wife and son, knowing they need reassurance, knowing he could use it just as much, and struggles against the encumbrance of the backpack full of items that were of little enough use before the storm and are absolutely useless now, and his yellow slicker, which flaps madly as if eager to free of him. He empathizes, eager as he is right now to be free of himself and the situation into which he has thrust them. This was a mistake, and probably the last one he’ll ever make as a married man. That it was supposed to revitalize their crumbling union is only the larger part of the tragedy this trip has become. That he knew his luck would pull the rug out from under him is another. Because the last time he can remember his poor luck changing to any substantial degree, he was three weeks shy of his thirty-first birthday, still living with his parents, unemployed and flirting with alcoholism as a way to subvert his loneliness, when he answered the door to a perky blonde, her pretty face glowing with rehearsed Republican charm as she espoused the benefits of reelecting George Bush Sr. It had taken uncharacteristic levels of courage and impulsivity for him to ask out a girl he knew was so far out of his league they likely didn’t share the same quality of oxygen, but it had to have been pure luck, or some other strange upset in the mechanics of the universe, that had made her response an affirmative one. Luckier still that he hadn’t blown it on their subsequent dates, that she hadn’t seen—or that she chose to ignore—the insecurity that hounded him like a starving dog he’d been foolish enough to feed and now couldn’t shake.
That blonde is not as pretty now, and he knows not all of that can be blamed on the weather. Her red slicker clings to a body made shapeless by the years, the disappointment, and the stress of being married to a man crippled by the ever increasing weight of his own failure and unrealized dreams. Her hair, which has lost its luster and faded in synch with her expectations of him, is pasted to her pallid face, but not enough to hide the doubt from eyes
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