18. Three for one
Sarah leads Joe and Carmen into the wilderness, looking for the wall. Chapter 18 of The Lost City of Desire
Carmen came forward and put her arm around me.
“That’s your first time hearing a gun?” she said.
“Yup.”
“You ok?”
“I kind of like it,” I said.
She chuckled.
“What about that guy? You saw the blood draining into his jeans?”
“Yeah. We took care of him, didn’t we.”
I realized this is what I’d wanted -- action, taking action, being the boss of myself.
“I bet they won’t let it drop,” Carmen said.
I nodded. I hadn’t thought of this.
“Jesus,” she said, lighting a cigarette, the smoke blowing over her face and into the wind.
I hadn’t ever seen her smoke. I asked her for one.
“I think we’ve got two days max before they come over to kill us and steal the boat,” she said.
“No doubt.”
“We’ve got to get out of here for a while if we don’t want to end up murdering somebody -- in self defense, of course. Ha ha. Isn’t everything in self-defense now?” she said, giving me a quizzical expression.
“Looks like we’re gonna come with you on your little journey to the wall. If you don’t mind. We can’t hang around Hudson as we’d planned.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted murder. But I was expecting adventure, and it might be good to have them with me. The shift in her thinking took me by surprise, after planning to do it without them.
“If you come, can I carry the pistol?” I asked.
“Of course,” Carmen said.
“Can I shoot it?”
“Not really,” she said. “We’ve only got three bullets left. We should probably save them.”
“Does Joe know you two are coming with me?”
“No.”
We paddled the boat up an inlet. At one point Joe swam to shore holding the bow line, and walked the towpath, pulling us forward until we reached a lake with a good breeze. We pulled into a boathouse they knew of, and locked the valuables upstairs in the attic storeroom. From the window I could see the mountains, the forests, the bears, the deer, the ducks, the wilderness. We were going to cross that wilderness until we found the wall. I watched hummingbirds flit about a flowering bush while Carmen cooked.
As we ate canned chili, Carmen told Joe she wanted them to come with me.
“No way,” he said. “No way I’m going anywhere near The Westerners.”
“What about the guy you shot?” she said.
“What about him?”
“You know he’s gonna come for you.”
Joe looked sheepish, and walked away from us.
“He’ll change his mind,” Carmen said to me.
I slept fitfully that night, the pistol at my side. Early the next morning we ate canned sardines, gathered our supplies, what little we could carry on our backs, and set off into the backcountry, following a black road with a faint double yellow lines down the middle that sometimes turned into dots and then got solid again, sometimes splotchy white bars painted down the middle -- I couldn’t figure out what it meant, some kind of warning for cars, no doubt.
The land was far emptier than I was used to. Vast -- fewer buildings, more trees. We walked uphill a long way, past a sign reading “The Irish Alps,” with a bunch of faded four-leaf clovers in the background, and the words, “Drink at Donnegals, 3 miles” below. Eventually the road wound cliffside above a river and another sign warned us to keep away from the edge, which, obviously, we did, because it was a huge drop down a sheer rock face. All these signs, do this, not that, curve ahead. Seriously? Wouldn’t I just see the curve when I got to it? Sometimes you had to wonder about the people back in the day. I came across an empty plastic pack of Planters peanuts that read “Warning: may contain peanuts.” I wished it contained peanuts, cause I was hungry as hell. Another time I opened a 40-year-old fortune cookie and found this prediction: “You like Chinese food.”
The cliff eventually gave way to a lovely little wood with a protected clearing. Since it was a clear sky we laid out our sleeping bags on the tarp and prepared for sunset. We had some tea and some jerky and that was enough to put me right to sleep -- early morning we’d head towards the wall. I wanted to see this beast that separated me from my mother and father, this feared pile of granite and cement that meant one world -- the paradise of the Hard Fork -- would always be superior to my own urban wasteland. I was gonna see what’s on the other side.
I called Carmen and Joe over and unfolded the map. I pointed to the spot where we would meet if we ever got separated.
“We won’t get separated,” Joe laughed. “That’s the whole point of going together.”
“Still, I said…”
I’d chosen a spot that would be easy to find, at the confluence of two main trails, right near the wall.
“If anything happens, I’ll meet you there.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart,” said Joe.
“And hope to die,” Carmen said. “Stick ten needles in my eye.”
“Serious, right? I don’t ever want to lose you two,” I said.