The Fall

On a mountainside things can change in an instant. Then the moment passes and the woods go silent

They'd driven where Uncle Bud had shown them on his tattered maps--west on a long, unmarked logging road deep into the woods, through two unattended paper-company gates, then north on a faint jeep trail, once much used, no longer. They were to look for a particular boulder. And the pickup truck did fine, as her uncle had said it would, even with no four-wheel drive, Timothy confidently pulling the shift lever and kicking at the heavy clutch, bounding them upward through the deep ruts and grassy sections and singing--Timothy singing!--except Jean knew him just well enough after two years to know that the singing meant he was anxious.

Jean was tense too. "Where do you think we'll pitch camp?" she said. And "I really do hope I can manage that pack--you said 35 pounds but it's 46 now, and I'm quite trepidatious about my back, sweetie. It's hurting now."

Timothy looked her over coldly and said, "She's trepidatious!"

"That's all you're going to say?"

"You're strong enough to carry me, for Christ's sake." And he bumped over a boulder submerged in the mud of the old road, very slowly, one mile an hour, said a soulful "Fuck."

Which made her laugh. She clamped down on her lower lip with her perfect teeth--he always said she had perfect teeth, but with a kind of disdain, seeming to hate even what he liked about her. He also said she talked too much, which of course led to fights. But she did chatter at times. Something on a vacation week in the warm August woods she ought to be able to prevent and by force of will did: She didn't say another word.

Pretty soon--before noon, just as planned--they were at the unmistakable rock Uncle Bud had described, mossy and dark under old trees. Timothy parked the truck and turned off the motor, leaving silence. They had wanted remote, and this was remote all right. Jean's idea, actually, she who'd snorted when Timothy suggested two weeks with his folks and his brothers on Cape Cod--again--after what had happened last August, dismal visit. And then Christmas--my God, was he demented? Two weeks in that paradise of stifled resentments and over-baked competition? But he'd gone for this. He had. Jean had to hand it to herself. She'd known him two years and had come to handle him passably well.

They had arrived, so she talked: "I'm just saying 46 pounds seems like a lot of pack for me." Jean was petite, especially small compared with Timothy (who didn't like to be called Tim and certainly not Timmy). One hundred five pounds, five-foot-two, eyes of blue, 25 years old, not the greatest beauty in the world, in her own estimation. Timothy was her giant bear, gruff, rational, reserved, a stark contrast to her more excitable (and in her opinion more exciting) nature. He said nothing, just pulled her pack and his easily from the back of the truck, her uncle's truck, old wrecks, uncle and car, both of them. (Uncle Bud in his cups last night had confided to her amusingly that he thought Timothy "a stiff" and then later "a cold fish," though he was glad to meet him: Now he could warn her off him. Wasn't he a tad bit too much like her father, speaking of stiffs? Speaking of emotional deserts? Uncle Bud's laugh was so infectious, even with his being so nasty. Wouldn't she do well to wait to get married? "Thirty is even too young, but at least, I beg of you, wait till then," he'd said. "I'll be your best man. I'll give you away! Find someone who's not so angry." They laughed and laughed until Timothy came into the big rustic room from one of many constipated visits to Uncle Bud's nice outhouse, and even then they could not stop laughing. Timothy, for his part, did not crack a smile and did not ask what was funny.)

At the parking spot in the deep woods Timothy put his hands on Jean's shoulders, pulled her up out of her reverie as he so loved to do and said, "We'll drink up that gallon of water in your pack there, and that weighs eight pounds alone." He'd said this before, ten times. He said, "We'll eat down the food." Ten times. He said, "And every day it'll weigh less. You'll be fine."

And he hefted her pack and held it to her back, let her find the straps.

He put his own on without help, staggering: 74 pounds, way too heavy too. And they hiked into the woods on the faint trail that would take them up Papawisset Ridge to Papawisset Peak the back way, Uncle Bud's way. For the first 20 minutes her thoughts were all ajumble and slightly furious--Timothy had talked her into too much weight. And too much weight for himself, too, always showing off. And no sign at all that he felt this was an especially romantic trip. But it was. Their relationship was the whole idea. And that you didn't always have to be off with your brother, or some replacement brother, someplace, doing manly things, making fun of everything on the planet, and Jean, for sport.

Jean and Timothy, hikers now, passed through thickset woods, mossy earth, an untouched old forest that loomed over a recent clear-cut so that there was a view out at times to the hills south and to Mount Abraham (she thought she recognized it but said nothing, not to invite derision in case she was wrong) and a strong, balmy updraft unto wind. Her pack felt light, actually. Her pack felt great, to tell the truth. No problem walking. Timothy pushed her to greater heights, and that was a good thing. They climbed, mostly--switchbacks, lichens, boulders right and left, warbler song, chickadees, wood-pewees. What a place Uncle Bud knew about! Timothy hadn't said two words.

"How's your pack?" Jean called forward.

"Heavy," Timothy said. He could say just the one word heavy in such an ironic way that it meant everything about the little argument they'd had last night and the bigger one this morning, and about all her complaining, and about how actually her pack was pretty light and comfortable even climbing up the big rocks here. To the right in the woods there was a gargantuan boulder, a glacial erratic, Jean knew, cracked magnificently, fallen into two pieces you wanted to push back together. "That is a glacial erratic," Jean called forward. Timothy said nothing and hiked on, though she knew he had heard her by the brief and infinitesimal tightening of his neck. They stopped a little higher, sat on a kind of wide shelf of cool, dry granite, pulled the top layer out of Jean's pack, ate a lunch of chicken roll-ups she'd made this morning and two carrots each (Timothy had peeled them nicely, making fun of Uncle Bud's garden and its very existence when there are grocery stores) and then two big pieces of the carrot cake she'd made for Uncle Bud that he had pressed on them this morning and a quart of water between them (which would be altogether nearly three pounds less for her to carry).

"Here's to Uncle Bud," Timothy said, layer upon layer of snide and arcane meanings packed into his tone. Then he was silent a long time. He was often silent. He was 25 too. Jean knew he was thinking and not to interrupt. He'd listen if she said something, but if she did talk he wouldn't say whatever was coming, whatever bit of conversation he was brewing up. This was the silence before the talk, and she loved to hear him talk, loved him, in fact, from the bottom of her shoes, despite what Uncle Bud had said late (Timothy already unhappily reading in bed)--poor, unshaven Uncle Bud slurring his whispered words, eyes liquid but so full of warmest caring and gentle humor: "You'll marry him and stay with him like your (continued on page 136)the fall(continued from page 116) mother stays with your fucked-up father, even not loving him, 30 years to realize it's so. Yes, Jean-Jean, it's so for her as for you, and she still can't shake him, just lies down for him, bed of nails. Nothing can stop you, I know. No, no, I know it's true, Jean-Jean. No, no, I'm right, no use to argue. It's misery you're courting, since that's all you've known."

Jameson Irish whiskey speaking.

There in the forest, waiting for Timothy to speak, she said to herself what she had whispered back to Uncle Bud (who had finally let her talk and listened unbelieving): She loved Timothy and felt just wonderful about him. And it was true. She could hardly remember what they'd argued about last night when she came to bed, what they'd argued about this morning (or ever, for that matter), and wanted to be his wife.

Suddenly Timothy spoke. "It's hard to imagine," he said. "Hard to think of ourselves like 50 years old, like Uncle Bud, huh, isn't it? That such a thing could happen? I mean, what if it's just a kind of joke they play on younger people, just to make 'em feel bad, right? Like, they know goddamn well we're always going to be just like this, more or less like this. I mean, there are young people, which is one unchanging species, and there are old people, which is another, and the old-people species has as a kind of group joke that they pretend it's all one-in-the-same species--that we young ones are on a long trip that leads to their sorry-ass state."

Jean laughed for him and he smiled, and that melted Jean, that smile. She looked in his eyes and said, "But, Herr Doktor, I distinctly remember being younger. I'm not sure you've included all the evidence here." Two years and they had this whole kind of private vaudeville act together; she played graduate student, and he played crazy, brilliant professor.

"Well, right, but we're the kind that goes from zero to about 26 and just hovers there, always 26, like someone in a book--always the same age every time you read it. We're the somewhere-under-26-always species."

"What about a book where the characters grow old and die? I can name a few."

"Written by the olds! Self-serving tripe! What on earth garbage have you been reading?"

He shuffled through the side pocket of his pack and pulled out his Baggie of pot and rolled the tightest, most slender, most parsimonious, most perfectly cylindrical joint and lit it, and they had two tiny hard-sucked puffs of powerful pot each.

Jean said, "So we're the species that gets only so old. So I'll get to catch up to you, yes?" She was three months younger than Timothy. No one was in the woods, so Jean (in love) put her ear on Timothy's chest to listen to his heart, and he leaned back against the rock and talked while she undid his blue jeans just partly, just enough to get her hand in and hold him, hold his dumb, dependable penis, which rose tenderly to greet her grip. This she liked. And he liked it too and tucked a hand in the back of her blue jeans and kind of hefted her on top of him for a long kiss, and on the moss there on the side of the faint trail they got their pants down, and underpants gradually, and wriggled to get his jacket on the rock beneath them without even taking their hiking boots off and had a very brief fuck (as he liked to call it--she didn't mind so much anymore) and a very lot of kissing, which showed he was in a good mood too, a very lot of kissing, as when they first met and would make love in her grad suite and she couldn't orgasm at all, he made her so nervous. Here she surprised herself, coming (his word too) quickly, if not too hard, to his fingers. Something about the forest made it easy and different.

"You are a glacial erratic," he said.

"That is an insult, Doktor," she said, quite pleased that he'd been listening earlier, just saving it up.

They cleaned themselves up some with napkins and pulled up their pants and hefted their packs. Hers did not feel particularly lighter.

Timothy kept talking, named each bird and tree as they continued the hike. He knew so much--ash tree, birch polypore (a familiar bulging fungus on a dead paper birch), this warbler and that one, all the little plants everywhere. Jean cared more about the declension of verbs. That was her thing, and next year she'd go to Italy, required second year abroad, finish off her master's program back at Dartmouth, and then maybe they'd get married. Timothy would have a job by then, you'd think. For now, she liked him as nature boy--snowboarder, brain, not altogether clumsy lover, silent as a stump.

She felt great. "You are a glacial neurotic," she said.

Timothy rewarded her with a hearty laugh. This was one of those jokes they'd keep going for the weekend and that for years to come would tag this hike in their memories. She laughed, feeling light suddenly; the pack was as nothing on her back. They could stop fairly early--no rush. Perfect weather, get a really great camp set up, set up that little stove, make spaghetti with the red sauce Timothy carried in a jar for a special first-night dinner only. She'd had stomachaches over the camping part for two weeks but now felt free of every anxiety. They had great equipment and great food and Uncle Bud's advice, which was famously good if not perfectly sober. ("Your mother told me last phone call that your father has never once said he loved her. Never once.") Well, Timothy's family was worse: aggressive teetotalers and potheads.

They broke out of the trees suddenly in a dry-pond meadow (Timothy called it) and were in sight of the bald blade of the famous ridge that hunkered just beneath the famous mountain peak, and the view of it all was just--it was just spettacolare. She said the word with exaggerated accents and giggled (the marijuana), and Timothy giggled with her and they walked side by side, holding hands. The trail tightened then, so Jean dropped behind him, and they marched on duckboards thoughtfully placed through a mossy bog. "Thuja occidentalis," Timothy called back, and these words were as beautiful to Jean as the trees they described, big white cedars curving up from hummocks and snags. The bog resolved into a pond--a beaver flowage, as Timothy called it--no beavers in sight, and at the deeper end they stopped on another flat rock and soaked up sun and, very hot from die hiking, stripped down and had a swim. Then they kissed and petted nicely--cold, fishy gooseflesh skins pressed together. She climbed up on the next rock naked and he leaned against it, and it was hot in the sun. He licked her legs, not altogether seriously. He licked her legs, then he licked her (she didn't like to say it, the word he always used), and she had a bigger orgasm this time and said so, using his word, which made him grin and go cocky. And then he climbed up and fucked her hard on the rock, an uncomfortable performance. Her neck was bent back. He was too rough sometimes, but she could let that go. He stopped thinking of her, stopped thinking altogether. You traded one thing for another. (Chick, her last boyfriend, was tender and very slow, but he couldn't kiss.) And it wasn't ever long, in any case. She would have to remember to take her pill each day of the hike, and she wondered if she'd get a rash from the sleeping bag, as at Girl Scouts, and thought of Mimi Stevens, her counselor, the witch, and of the particular way the logs of cabin 12 came together. And Timothy grunted and squirted (as she preferred to call it) and that was that, and she rose back up through several layers to him and kissed him awhile, but he didn't want to kiss too much. "Better get moving," he said.

"I love you," she said.

He spanked her bottom and said, "You love me."

They had a quick swim and she rinsed him off her and they dressed side by side. Her socks felt wet and her T-shirt too and her underpants, everything a little damp from the earlier sweat and now the swim, but it was a hot afternoon and beautiful in Maine, and there was plenty of time to get to the camping place Uncle Bud had told them about. She should be glad. She knew what it was--the pot. Also the orgasming (why shouldn't it be a verb?), which sometimes let you down. And now she felt a little swollen and uncomfortable down there, walking. Twice in three miles of hiking! Well, that was love. And there were worse ways to be sore.

She followed Timothy up the very steep path, which was nothing but a field of rocks. His butt was cute, that was for sure. "You're just plain erratic," she called lightly to no response.

They came to the beginning of the open granite ridge--what a view. The stoned feeling from earlier had settled into something of a headache. The sun hurt her eyes. Something in her belly ached.

"One hour," Timothy said.

"That's all?"

"That's what Drunkel Bud said. One hour from the cairn." He pointed up the hard stone slope to their left.

She hadn't noticed the massive cairn. And he was competing with her, that condescending tone: He'd seen the cairn, she hadn't. He'd win only if he could annoy her, though. And she didn't feel all that bugged. Her pack felt like nothing, actually, nothing at all. She thought about how to cook the dinner, how good that would be, their neat little gas-bottle stove, precious folding pans. And here they were, already on Papawisset Ridge, which was dramatic.

To the right the granite sloped sharply 20 or 30 feet to the sudden cliff edge. Ahead the ridge curved a little so you could see the long face of the fall. The impression was that you were walking the shoulder of a steep cathedral roof covered with stones. The sunlight fell into the canyon below, lit the spruces climbing the other side. Jean panted--this was what breathtaking meant. The trail had been carved out of plain rock. "WPA," Uncle Bud had said fondly.

"Welfare," Timothy had snorted. Why did he have to call him Drunkel? Why especially that name, which she had twice told Timothy annoyed her. It's what her father called Bud, who was a very kind and calm and gentle soul, really, her mother's only brother, a sweet, soulful man who'd built his own eccentric, amazing house and lost his wife to cancer. Why shouldn't he drink?

Timothy got walking faster, the way he did when excited by a competition--they were almost to tonight's campsite, and he'd be first. Just along this roof of granite, then back into the woods. The camping spot was on a bigger pond than the first one back there and just under the mountain proper. Uncle Bud said it was the nicest spot in all of Maine. She and Timothy would have an easy morning there tomorrow, swimming or whatever, then onward up the mountain, then a few days on the Appalachian Trail, then the Fire Warden's Trail down from Bigelow Mountain and back to the car: seven days. Ahead the trail became even narrower, just a kind of shelf carved in the rock, strewn with loose stones from above.

Timothy hurried faster. "Hey," Jean said. She wanted a kiss from him right now on this precarious place. She said hey, and he didn't hear. A kiss just to slow him down. He was almost jogging, and later if she nagged him about it, he'd frankly love the attention and crow and mock her. She slowed. Walked at her own pace. Breathed at her own pace. Enjoyed the view up to the mountain, the view down into the gorge beside them.

Far ahead Timothy slipped. His flying foot hit a nothing of a rock, which slid under him, and he dropped to one knee. He reached for a handhold on the path, missed, went down on his shoulder, couldn't quite catch himself, continued to slide in gravel. It was all so slow. He put the other hand out, grabbed a large stone that was sliding too, tried to turn, awkward under the weight of his pack. He couldn't get around to sitting, so he dropped down on all fours, visibly putting the brakes on. But all the rocks large and small around him were moving now, a slow, gentle slide with Timothy a part of it. He dug the toes of his boots in, gripped the solid granite of the ridge with his fingernails.

But he just kept sliding. Jean trotted, then raced to get to him--there was a length of rope on the side of her pack, and she reached back for it as she ran. But Timothy and the rock slide picked up speed as she did. He didn't shout, didn't cry out, didn't say a thing, just looked back at her, a profound look, grabbing at the rocks around him, starting everything he touched to movement. And with everything around him he slid to the edge of the drop. Rocks flew off the cliff into the sky below his feet. His boots hung over, then his knees. He bent at the hips, legs dangling, still slowly sliding. Jean threw the rope perfectly. But the overweight pack pressed Timothy down, restricted his reach. He missed the rope end, missed it again, arms flailing. Then with a sharp cry he went over the edge. The rumble of rocks continued briefly; then everything stopped and there was silence.

The argument that morning had been about her cell phone. She'd promised she wouldn't use it to call friends; it would be for an emergency only. He had won--one entered the wild on wild terms--and she had left the phone behind in their sweet little room at Uncle Bud's. So her first thought got her nowhere. Her second thought was to scoot on her butt down the incline to the cliff edge, get a look. But that would be stupid and impossible: She'd go over too.

"Timothy!" she called to echoing silence. "Timothy!" Nothing.

She stripped out of her pack, left it at the exact spot he'd stumbled. There were no noticeable marks from his plight. So many loose rocks: New ones had simply replaced those that had slid and then fallen with Timothy.

Jean ran. She was an excellent runner and sprinted ahead smartly, mindful of the loose rock. From the end of the curve, from right where the path descended back into forest below the mountain, she looked back. The cliff wall was dark. The odd tree grew up from the odd ledge. The whole fell into a field of boulders. Trees at the bottom of that and a million smaller rocks. And somewhere Timothy, though there was nothing of him to be seen at such a distance. She raced back to the spot marked only by her pack. All was quiet. Warm breezes. Dulcet day. Perfection. Jean perspired, felt that edge of a headache from the pot, no buzz, felt a cramp in her womb from making love. She kept having the urge to turn and ask Timothy what to do.

Be calm, she told herself. Make a plan.

She could run back to the truck. They'd been four hours to this point--but all uphill and with two long stops. She could run it in an hour maybe. But the truck offered nothing but a two-hour drive on rutted logging roads to where? To that gas station? So three hours. Second option was to go back along the ridge to where it first started, leave the trail, head down into the gorge, try to walk down below the cliff, keep it in sight. That could take three hours too, but at least Timothy would have her help at his side. He was down there, probably okay, maybe landed cushioned by the pack, just so, broken bones not deadly. Feetfirst he'd gone--his head would be fine, though any bleeding anywhere would be dangerous. She didn't let herself think he was dead.

The truck was best; outside help was best. She hefted her pack, deciding she needed it (water, food, dry clothes, first aid), kicked some stones into a pile to mark the spot for any rescuers, took the pack off, built a proper cairn of 10 large stones to mark the spot for any possible helicopter, only then shrugged back into her pack and ran, buckling the hip strap even as she flew--ran fast, then faster, clear to where the ridge ended in loose rocks, down into the forest, retracing their path, before she remembered that Timothy had the keys to Uncle Bud's old truck.

She stopped, moaned. She spoke Timothy's name. She would save him. She turned back, ran hard. Where the old trail pegged upward mounting the ridge she broke into the woods and headed down. Quickly the cliff established itself, grew higher, then formidable, a sheer rock face, but with so many boulders at the bottom that it wasn't that high a fall, not really. But it grew higher quickly.

After half an hour, breathing hard, Jean had no idea how far she'd traveled, thought she must be near. She could not have missed him. She kept to the bottom of the scree, looking up and down constantly--his pack was brilliant crimson--trotted along a faint path maybe made by animals. Below her a stream tumbled, so she'd be able to wash his wounds even if their water ran out. That joke about carrying him? She couldn't carry him. She could stabilize him, do whatever was necessary, make him comfortable, put the tent up around him, cover him in their sleeping bags and all their clothes, be to the truck by nightfall with the keys. By now the cliff was deadly high. She prepared herself in case he was hurt badly. Tourniquets could be dangerous, she recalled. Splints could be made with sticks. Underwear, hers, his, could be used for bandages.

She came to a geological fault that ran the width of the narrowing canyon, creating a sharp drop, nothing compared with the cliff at her left hand but a good 12 feet at first guess and sheer. How could she climb it to come back this way and get to the truck? Maybe use the rope, tie it to that tree, but then she wouldn't have rope for later, and who knew? Wasn't there some knot you could tie and then free with a twitch once you were down? Timothy would know. If he could only have caught the rope when she threw it so well. The stream had to make the drop too, and the roar of the little waterfall invaded her thoughts, made them urgent. She breathed, took off her pack, dropped it down there just so, exactly right, where she could land on it to break her fall. The pack took a foot or more off the height of the fall, too. Still it was a long way down, 20 feet at second guess. The rope was down there on the pack. Oh! She could have tied the rope to the tree, climbed down using it, then simply cut it with her Swiss Army knife, just left the remainder behind, keeping plenty. All this in Timothy's voice, carping, as she lay down in the dirt and loose rock and scooted herself over the edge of the drop-off till she was hanging by her fingertips, barely gripping a fragrant spruce root. She hung a long minute, without the arm strength to pull herself back up in any case, and finally got the nerve and dropped. She hit the pack hard with her feet and fell backward into loose rock.

But she was fine. She was really totally fine. Her butt wasn't even bruised. That she was sore was from before. The cut on her hand was nothing. He'd fallen feet-first too, so there was at least some chance he was only slightly hurt.

The canyon fell deeper, darker, the stream louder and louder and closer, the scree pile looser, her footing more insecure. Jean forced herself to walk--what else was there to do? She picked her steps carefully, watched her feet intently, stepped on his hand.

Timothy was sitting up straight, that famous posture, his shoulders pulled back by the straps of his pack, head back too, legs buried in the rocks that had accompanied him, hips twisted more than perpendicular to his shoulders. Jean didn't have any moment at all of thinking he was alive or needing to check his breath or heartbeat: He was dead.

High up the canyon wall she saw the last sunlight climbing, orange. It would be night very soon. The stream roared and echoed in the canyon. Timothy smelled like defecation. But the spruce smell and the oxygenated stream smell were strong too, and a breeze moderated the stench. It wasn't like she was going to eat. She sat a long while in perfect calm, perfect acceptance, which was not entirely like her and which she tranquilly thought must be shock. In a way it was easier that he was not in need of first aid. She simply sat and thought, long elegant lines of thought with no bearing on the emergency: She remembered meeting Timothy at her brother's best friend's wedding. Horrendous blue tuxedos, all of them. She and Timothy made love steadily, it seemed, for the next three weeks, till he had to go back to his internship at Goldman Sachs, which august corporation would give him a job once his MBA was in hand. Things she was ambivalent about: investment bankers (Professor Della Sesso called them bloodsuckers in a beautiful accent, and ricattatori, roll that first r), suburbia (Timothy's dream was Short Hills, New Jersey, ask Uncle Bud his opinion of that place), any one of Timothy's friends, including her own brother, who was a certified pig.

And her brother, come to think of it, was exactly like their father, as was Timothy, when you thought about it, from banking to suburbia to his chilly reserve. Why was she with him? "You are beautiful," Uncle Bud had whispered. "You are capable. Does he make you feel either?What can I do to convince you?"

She didn't touch the corpse. The sunlight climbed out of the canyon and was gone. The stream grew louder, comforting in a way, but hiding who knew what scary noises. A lone bird sang briefly, good night. And then it was dark and darker. And chilly, then cold. Jean dug in her pack, found her flashlight, pulled her sleeping bag out awkwardly, unfurled it from its stuff bag. Such a good sleeping bag, old gift from Uncle Bud, bright blue. She got herself in there, moved more rocks, leaned back as if to sleep. But despite all, she was hungry.

The bulk of the food was in Timothy's pack, as was the little gas stove. In her pack were useless things like couscous and expensive freeze-dried chicken divan in foil packets. Oh, but gorp--there was a one-quart Baggie of gorp--and this she ate in little absent increments till it was gone. And she drank water from her metal bottle. And felt she could sleep some, get through the night somehow. If Timothy weren't such a show-off and always in such a heat to win, they'd be camping right now. Or if they'd left the first pond just one second earlier or later: They'd be camping. Thoughts of the camping place, which she'd been picturing for two months, brought her to Uncle Bud, that idiot, sending them into danger and Timothy to...this.

Then again, the whole backpacking trip was her idea, her own, and she'd fought for it over going to Timothy's horrendous family reunion on the Cape--and that bunch, oh, that bunch would blame her squarely, squarely. Every happy thought she'd ever had of marrying Timothy these two years had foundered on the image of that screwed-up family. She sat and thought the same moody thoughts as always about Timothy, added these to Uncle Bud's observations of last night.

All moot now.

The stream down there was loud, luckily loud. She was spared the gurglings and belches of the dead, sounds she knew well from working at the veterinary hospital every summer through high school, back when she was going with Bruce, who was no Timothy but sweet and talkative and a listener--funny you could ever miss Bruce. Timothy did not twitch, did not jump; all that was over.

Jean woke with a start, kicked her feet out and sent rocks tumbling, sat up, reached for Timothy's hand, found it, so cold--and, worse, stiff. She let it go with a shudder--it was not in his possession any longer; it was not his, or him, but a disgusting object.

Oh, God. She wanted to feel his spirit was with her, but she was profoundly alone, hard stars above, no known constellation, just the hard line of the killer cliff and across the narrow gorge the jagged line of the tops of fir trees. She listened to the stream a long time with deliberate concentration.

How could Timothy be so clumsy?

How could he be so stupid?

She woke to the stream sound. High above, a group of stars was familiar but unnamed. Funny, but she could relax. She'd been so unfair! He wasn't to blame--the trail was unsafe. He was hurrying for her--he knew how much she wanted to be at the campsite, be set up in their tent, be eating, cooking. He was so good. Such a good person. She would marry him despite all. Best if Mountain Rescue found them together here. She'd never leave his side. She'd sit here through the days it took to starve, and in a few weeks Uncle Bud would look up from his Jameson and remember where his old truck was and call the family, who'd call the police, who'd call the rangers, who'd come out looking and certainly find the truck (probably they'd already be well aware of the truck and wondering about it), find the truck and follow the trail clear to the campsite on the beaver pond--no sign of Timothy and Jean. Perhaps the scrap of the cairn she'd built would alert them. She should have written a note--how stupid--several hikers a day must pass. But no. Perhaps after days of futile searching, the youngest member of the ranger team, the most insecure, would notice the cairn, the plight of rocks, and they'd all be led to the tragedy--broken Timothy and his girl, starved at his side, his bride in death. Oh she loved him! And she reached to touch his hair, which felt lovely, soft and fine as always, and accepted his condition, which would be hers soon enough.

But not soon enough. She should write a note in the morning and cut her wrists to be his bride. She'd be his bride by his side in death, die endless night.

She woke to daylight next, birdsong. The stream, too. She blinked and stretched and was surprised they'd slept under the stars, then sat up and remembered. She wriggled out of her bag, walked demurely out of Timothy's sight, peed behind a boulder, clambered back, had a long look at him. His face was no longer his. His fingernails were all broken from trying to stop his slide. She worked to get his pack off him, struggled with the resistant arms. His upper body was simply loose on his hips. Oh, Timothy! She found the loaf of raisin bread he'd allowed, crackers, block of cheese, chocolate, found his compass, retrieved the little stove just in case, their little tent, his hunting knife, the keys to Uncle Bud's truck (in Timothy's moist front pants pocket), stuffed all this in her own pack, stuffed her sleeping bag in its sack, tied it carelessly to the pack frame, pulled the pack on, balanced step by step and rock to rock and got out of there, quickly backtracking upstream and all the way to the drop-off by the waterfall.

She tied their rope to her pack so she could pull her belongings up if she made it, attempted a hopeless free climb with the rope in her mouth, fell four times, not even close. So she tied the free end of the rope to an oblong rock, tried to toss it over the one practical branch of the high spruce up there--impossible. She stacked rocks to make a climbing platform--exhausting. After an hour she had a solid block of stone to climb only a few feet high. To get all the way up the drop like that would take days and days and all her strength.

She gave up, made her way back to Timothy. She'd had what he would call a paranoid thought. Digging in his shirt pocket, she found his Baggie of pot. Fast she emptied the powdery, potent stuff to the wind, stuck the Baggie under a large rock, threw his rolling papers into the stream. She felt in a rush of horror that she was abandoning him, so she sat awhile beside him.

Unbidden thoughts: There were other boys. She'd be something of a tragic heroine, very attractive in that way. She'd be wary of love, magnetic in that way. She stood, pulled on her pack, made her way carefully through the loose rocks he'd brought down with him, rehearsing the story she'd tell and basking in the sympathy and wonder she'd receive. Sinful, disgusting thoughts. She shut them off. She tried to pray for Timothy but hadn't prayed or been to church since she was 10. Her last confession (to Father Mark, a saint) was about stealing Barbie accessories. Timothy! So impatient and disdainful. Just as Uncle Bud had said: He was her dad. There were other kinds of men. Start with Uncle Bud. Subtract the tragedy of him and the drinking. That beautiful house he'd built! Timothy called it a shack. Think of all the men she hadn't met!

Sinful thoughts, disgusting.

And now flashes of yesterday's sex assaulted her, and Timothy's fall, too, the way his fingernails dug in, sex and fall somehow equally unpleasant, even horrible. She stepped faster, picking her footfalls, scrambled down the scree, got to the stream, drank from it--the hell with giardia and all microbes forever--drank deeply, washed her face, struggled to stand under the weight of her pack and the growing feeling that this was all her fault.

Had she slept even two hours last night?

She headed downstream. By the time the sun got into the canyon an hour had passed. She'd find help. The stream would cross a road. She'd find help and they'd recover Timothy and she would be something of a tragic heroine, and perhaps even Professore Frederico Della Sesso would see this new thing in her eyes, the deep sadness and horror in her eyes, and take her seriously as he had not, take her in his arms there in the oaken doorway of his dust mote and sunbeam and bookshelf-filled office. Sinful thoughts. She closed them out and pushed on. By noon she was out of the canyon, and the forest had opened somewhat. But then the stream widened at a flat place and became a bog. Jean slogged her way halfway around to where it became a pond, looked out over the water and was at last overcome. She tugged her pack off, threw it down violently, threw herself on the ground after it, wailed and wept, clutched the mossy duff. Then came a vision, as if from above, of herself in this position, the dirt of the forest sticking to her tearstained cheeks, herself spread out on the ground in grief and remorse and horror. The rangers would listen attentively to her when she finally found them. They'd be older guys and have the bluest eyes, both of them. She could have a new man now.

Sinful thoughts. She cried more, at her own shallowness, felt a wave of love for Timothy, felt in the same wave that she had come back to her true self ("You are not yourself," Timothy would say when she was upset with him). But what if the true self she'd always known was false? Jean stood, crossed her arms over her chest, grasped her ribs in confusion--and started walking. She'd go back to him. Only as an afterthought did she even return in a moment for her pack, put it on slowly, aware but uncaring that it was open and things were falling out of it. She walked very slowly, deep thoughts of Timothy--his humor, for example--a certain joke ("All your intelligence is in your brains, Jeanie"), his tricky smile. She was starved. She stopped at a sunny rock, pulled out crackers and their block of cheddar cheese (these had been on his back!), ate feverishly, found their bag of baby carrots (on his back!), gobbled them all, a pound of them, sucked at her water bottle, then found their large chocolate bar (had fallen with him!), ate half of it. There'd be raisin bread for later. Uncle Bud had offered it, and though Timothy said no, too heavy, she'd accepted the small gift. She lay back on the rock in tears.

When she woke, her mission was pure again: Get help. She retraced her steps around the bog to where she'd thrown the pack down, picked up her sleeping bag, her wading sneakers, four pairs of tiny blue panties still neatly folded, the keys to Uncle Bud's truck. What had she been thinking?

She carried on, climbing to higher ground, made her way around the bog till she saw the beaver dam and climbed down to rejoin the stream, which was three times wider than in the gorge. She walked fast, then faster, fairly jogged, singing loud, then louder, "My Favorite Things," screamed it out as she ran among trees in the old forest, leaped boulders, pushed aside underbrush, downhill, singing as hard as she could to stop her thoughts of Dr. Delia Sesso, which had grown pernicious. Frederico. His gaze had always lingered on her eyes. Now he'd find her so dolorosa, so tragica.

Now the stream fell through a steep glade, quite straight for hundreds of yards. But just before it turned and flowed out of sight, promising nothing but more hard bushwhacking, Jean could just discern a hard horizontal painted red: a bridge. She made her way down to the road--narrow, nicely graded gravel--and simply lay down, flopped down, pack and all, lay there frozen by her thoughts, exhausted. In an hour a father and young son, tenters from Quebec on their way from their campsite to the grocery store in Farmington, stopped their Subaru and leaped out to her aid. She heard their mild French-Canadian accents so clearly--so different from Parisian French--heard them clearly as they leaned over her, asking one another what had happened here.

"How's your pack?" Jean called. "Heavy," Timothy said. Just the one word meant everything.

With everything around him moving he slid to the edge of the drop. Rocks flew off the cliff into the sky below his feet. His boots hung over, then his knees....