“They’re real, all right,” said Tracy, grinning. “They’re very real. And that’s where we’re headed, kids. Right into the heart of ’em. Right into the heart of it all.”
They were quiet for a moment. “How far are we going, again?” Oscar asked. He was so used to letting Tracy take the lead on things that he hadn’t paid that much attention to details. But suddenly he felt a flash of concern. The one time they’d had a beer together to celebrate the closing on her house, she’d let slip that she was bored of Sport-Zone, the neglected housewives and the midlife-crisis men who were trying desperately to hold on to their physiques. He had the sense that what qualified as interesting to her might be beyond what the rest of them were up for.
“It’s a thirty-mile loop,” Tracy answered. “We’ll start out near Redwood Station and take the Cloud Lakes trail clockwise.”
“I looked at a couple of trip reports online,” Todd offered. “It sounds pretty challenging—almost five thousand feet elevation gain.”
“Yeah,” Tracy said, “it’s going to be a butt burner. But this is the real deal, guys. No simulated experience, no obstacle course, no artificial Tough Mudder bullshit.”
“Should we think about taking one of the less strenuous trails?” Oscar asked.
“They’re all going to be strenuous,” Tracy said. “Personally, I’d rather do a route that has a bit of challenge. Get away from the day hikers and car campers, you know? But suit yourself.” She shrugged. “If you’d rather take one of the easy trails, we can. It just won’t be a real wilderness experience.”
Annoyance flared up in Oscar’s chest. Tracy did this during workouts too, subtly or not so subtly challenging one’s bravery or manhood, and his knowing this didn’t make it any less effective. He’d signed up for Tracy’s class because he’d thought she was cute, but that had worn off fast. He remembered the crazy grin she sometimes got when some poor bastard was pushed so hard he started to retch.
“I’m game,” Todd assured her. “I just want to know what we’re getting into.”
“We’ll be fine,” Tracy said. “This trail’s established and there’ll probably be a few other people. It’s not like we’ll get turned around, and besides, you can’t get that lost in the Sierras. Walk two or three days, and eventually you’ll get out.”
“I brought a GPS,” said Oscar.
“Cool,” Tracy said. “See, Todd? We’ll be fine.”
“What about bears?” Gwen asked suddenly, and Oscar realized she’d been listening with growing anxiety.
“What about them?”
“Are there bears on this route?”
Tracy smiled. “Yes, but it’s nothing to worry about. They just want our food, and as long as we use our bear canisters, they’ll generally leave us alone. They’re kind of like stray dogs, you know? Just need to be shooed away.”
Oscar wondered if Gwen was having the same thought that he was—stray dogs, in his neighborhood, were often of the unneutered pit bull variety.
“I took this trip two years ago where the craziest thing happened,” Tracy continued. “I was alone in the backcountry north of Kings Canyon, ten or fifteen miles off trail. I was camping at one of those lakes up there that doesn’t have a name. One afternoon a huge thunderstorm rolled in, crazy torrential rain, and all the little streams that fed the lake swelled up into rushing waterfalls. There was a big-ass bear across the river from me and I was keeping an eye on him. Then a deer comes tumbling over the falls, legs and head flailing. It fell about two hundred feet. At first I thought I’d imagined it, but then some other debris came over and then the water got real brown, full of mud. A river bank must have given way up there and swept the deer with it. Anyway, I’m looking at this, not believing my eyes—and then the bear stomps over to the river and picks up the deer. He drags the carcass up the side of the mountain. He’s got it by the neck and it’s broken and limp, and he keeps stepping on it, trying to carry it up. He finally hides it behind a boulder, and then he looks back at me as if I’m going to challenge him for it. I’ll tell you . . .” She whistled and shook her head. “That was a moment when I felt the power of nature. That was a sight I won’t forget.”
Everyone was quiet. What was the point of this story, Oscar wondered, except to freak them the hell out?
They got off at Visalia and took a two-lane road to the north. Here, in the eastern part of the valley, there were hundreds of citrus groves. Lemons and oranges were plump in the trees, in rows that extended to the horizon. Every mile or two, they saw a makeshift fruit stand. The citrus groves were broken up by low, open fields; there were signs for squash and bushels of cucumbers. With the opening up of the landscape, the small quiet roads, Oscar felt more of the city fall away. The old wood-frame houses had tall, square structures behind them that looked like guard towers.
As they approached the junction with the highway that led up to the mountains, there was a cluster of buildings—a diner, flanked on one side by a dozen trailers. Across the narrow two-lane road stood a rectangular brick structure, the Franklin Cash Store.
“Let’s stop here,” Tracy said. “We can eat and grab some last-minute supplies.”
She parked in the dirt lot in front of the diner and they all stumbled out of the car. Gwen put her hands on her hips and leaned back, stretching; Oscar bent to touch his toes; Todd spinwheeled his arms like a batter on deck, loosening up his shoulders. “That was long,” he remarked.
“Yeah, I know, sorry guys,” Tracy said. “I was so pumped up to get here, I lost track of time.”
They had lunch in the diner, where the clientele was equally divided between locals—farmers and ranchers—and people headed up to the mountains. When they were finished, they walked across the road and over to the Franklin Cash Store. The building was boxlike, one story. It was painted white, or at least it had been white at one time; age and weather had stripped a layer of paint away. In the window there was a picture of the store in a previous incarnation, when it was the depot of a backwater train station. Tracy pulled the door open, which caused a bell to ring loudly, and they all stepped inside.
The place was chock full of stuff, so crammed with odds and ends that Oscar didn’t know where to look. Right in front of them was an old-fashioned punch-button cash register, and all around the store, on a continuous ledge that ran two feet below the ceiling, there were bottles and boxes and tins, everything from Morton’s Salt containers to SPAM tins to Hershey’s boxes to colored bottles of liquids and medicines that hadn’t existed since his grandparents’ time. Old street signs were mounted on lateral beams, and there were hand-painted messages on every wall. Don’t forget to be happy, one of these read. Never give up or grow up.
Oscar saw built-in shelves filled with random, haphazardly arranged goods—wooden signs with religious sayings painted on them, hand-knit scarves and socks, weird contraptions made from pieces of farm equipment, stacks of old paperbacks, colored soaps in the shape of feet, a display of local honeys and jams. Glass-fronted cabinets were stuffed with old newspapers and magazines, and flip-flops waved from a circular rack. There was a cluster of metal watering cans beside a bright pink piano decorated with black and white polka dots, and a bench with a leopard-skin cushion. There was an elaborate candleholder with half-burned candles, a pile of straw hats, a stuffed boar head wearing sunglasses, a cloth pig with an arrow through its shoulder. Right beside them a small refrigerator had a handwritten sign that read, Nightcrawlers and red worms. Fish love ’em! Straight ahead, on the back wall, was a collection of orange crate labels, and the railroad sign from the picture in the window. To the left, there was an old drugstore counter and a half dozen red-topped stools. A tall woman of indeterminate age stood behind the counter, and two middle-aged men in farm clothes and baseball caps sat facing her, nursing Coors Lights. A yellow sign on the wall behind her read, Danger: Men Drinking. A small black dog was perched on the end stool, watching them.