In The Forest Of Harm (7 page)

EIGHT

Mary stared out the window as Alex drove to the trailhead. So that's what Little Jump Off looks like now, she thought as the woods sped by the car in a dark blur. The same fireplace, the same bait cooler, the same knotty-pine floor where your mother died. Only now your ex-lover is the proprietor,
and you want him just as
badly as you ever did
. The words swept through her brain like wind through parched grass. As much as she longed to sit still and sort it all out, she would have to do that later. She'd promised Alex that she would devote herself to having fun after Little Jump Off, and she never welshed on her deals with Alex.

“There's our turn.” She pulled herself out of Jonathan's grasp and pointed at a battered sign that read War Woman Road.

Alex turned left onto a gravel path that led to a small unpaved overlook, where she braked beside a tangle of wild honeysuckle. Thirty feet to the right, a tiny footpath seemed to plummet off the edge of the world.

The three women got out of the car and walked to a crumbling stone wall that skirted the overlook. Alex hopped up on the wall, putting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the expanse below.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. Her cry floated out over the mountains like a bottle launched upon an ocean.

For miles, a sea of trees undulated away from them. Still green at the lowest elevations, it swelled to red and gold and brown until distance tinted it mauve, then lilac. Finally it disappeared, miles away, into a hazy blue nothingness. As they watched two faraway hawks glide on a high thermal, the only sound they heard was the breath that rose from the forest itself. Cool and unwavering, it carried the fecund smells of growth and decay and made the fine hairs on their arms stand erect.

“Jeez,” Joan murmured, standing beside Alex. “And I thought Central Park was something.” She fumbled for the disposable camera she'd stashed in her purse. “I gotta get a picture of this.”

Mary watched as Joan snapped away. She knew from experience that her pictures would come out disappointing—the colors would be flat, the scope less majestic. Photography was frustrating that way. Only the images etched in your memory remained crisp, with colors undiluted.

“Can you imagine how the pioneers must have felt the first time they saw all this?” Alex spread her arms, as if all the acres below were a wild empire that belonged only to her.

Mary smiled. Alex's imagination had always been able to soar at the slightest provocation, thrusting her back into history or forward into some crazy future. Though it made for interesting conversations, sometimes when she stood next to Alex she felt as dull as a stump.

“If we got lost could we follow those electrical wires out?” Alex pointed at a phalanx of power lines that stretched over the trees like strands of some giant spider's web.

Mary squinted at the TVA cables linking the Cheoah and Calderwood dams. “I suppose, if we could climb a high enough tree to get a fix on one. It's probably a day's hike from pole to pole, though.”

Joan stared at the vastness before her and frowned. “Mary, are you sure you can find one little Cherokee hot spring in the middle of all those trees?”

“If this were New York could you get us to Coney Island?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” said Mary. “Then just think of this as my Manhattan.”

“Great, but when you take the subway to Coney Island, all you've got to deal with is muggers and street gangs and your basic New York loonies. Here you've got a jillion acres of God-knows-what hiding in the trees.” Joan pushed her Yankees cap back on her head. “I don't know if I'm up to this, guys. I smoke, remember? I don't know a fox from a ferret and I don't jog every day like you two.”

“I haven't jogged in six months,” Alex told her. “Anyway, I'll take care of you. You'll be back at the office Tuesday raving about the fun you had.”

Joan scowled. “If I pass out, will you give me CPR?”

“In a heartbeat.” Alex's laughter was rich and genuine. “I swear you'll have a good time up here.”

“Well, okay,” Joan sighed. “But just remember I'm supposed to have dinner with Hugh Chandler next Saturday. I don't want to have a broken leg or poison ivy or anything.”

“All you'll have is thrilling tales of hiking through Appalachia,” Mary assured her. “Hugh will think he's eating with Superwoman.”

Joan shot Mary a dubious glance, but she followed her two friends to the car and watched Alex unlock the trunk.

“Good grief!” Alex cried, hoisting Joan's backpack out onto the ground. “What in the world did you pack? Free weights?”

“No.” A flush of embarrassment pinkened Joan's cheeks. “Just my things. Clothes. Makeup. Wine. Something to read.”

Alex shook her head. “It feels like most of our law library. Unbuckle that pack and pull out everything that's not absolutely vital to your survival.”

Grumbling, Joan knelt and unbuckled her pack. Moments later she'd fished out three pairs of jeans, two wool sweaters, five cans of soup, a Coleman lantern, two bottles of Chianti, two extra pairs of shoes, and a hard-back biography of Beverly Sills.

Alex looked at Joan's supplies and started to laugh. “I've seen less junk crammed on a moving van. You'll have to ditch about half that stuff.”

“Half my stuff?” cried Joan. “What about half
your
stuff? Your trunk doesn't exactly look empty, Alex.”

“You guys sound exactly like you did three years ago when you had to share that office,” Mary reminded them. “Why don't we all ditch half our stuff? Then we can fit everything into two big packs, and one of us can always be traveling without any extra weight.”

“Well, I will if she will,” agreed Joan grudgingly. “But are you sure you wouldn't like some wine tonight?” She held up one raffia-covered Chianti bottle.

Mary shook her head as she discarded a bulky sweater from her own pack. “Not enough to carry it uphill all day. Anyway, I brought some brandy in a plastic flask.”

They each pared their supplies in half, then Alex helped Joan repack her gear. As Mary attached the tent to one pack frame and the stove to the other, Joan held up a tiny cell phone.

“Shouldn't we take this? In case of an emergency?”

Alex smiled. “We won't need it. Charlie already put one in my pack.”

“Can I make a call on it?”

“Of course you can.”

“Cool,” said Joan. “I'm going to call my mother as soon as we get there and say, Hey, Ma, I'm in the middle of Nantootlah!”

“Nantahala,” Mary corrected.

“Okay, okay, whatever.”

When they got everything repacked, Alex locked the Beemer and shoved the keys deep in her pocket. She shouldered the heaviest pack while Mary carried the other, giving Joan the first easy shift. For a moment the three friends grinned at each other like children who'd managed to play some incredible piece of hooky; then Mary led the way down into the leafy green sea.

To Mary's great relief, the Little Jump Off Trail had escaped the notice of both the current timber barons and the latest crop of Cherokee teenagers. The ancient oaks that towered above it had not been clear-cut and planed into coffee tables, and no discarded condoms or flattened beer cans littered the path. The trail cut through the mountains as rough and rutted as it had been when she'd first walked it with her mother. Back then she hadn't wanted anything to do with the forest. She hated it here, with these strange people who ate something called bean bread and used words she didn't understand. She missed her father and french fries and wondered why they couldn't go back and stay with the Andersons at Fort Bragg. The Andersons had offered. But her mother said no.
“Sometimes we have to be brave, baby,” she had whispered,
holding her tight. “As much as we want to stay put, sometimes
we just have to go forward.” Then her mother had smiled, and
helped Mary put on her jacket. “Go get your crayons. I'll take
you to a magic place and we can draw some pretty pictures.”

“Hey, Mary! What do you think happened to those missing people on that bulletin board?”

Joan's question came out between little gasps of breath. The trail from the highway had bottomed out in a stretch of wild ginger, and they were at the foot of a trail that twisted steeply through tall sweet-gum trees, ascending one of the minor Unicoi Mountains. Beads of sweat decorated Joan's and Alex's foreheads and Mary could tell by the trudging way both walked that they were already beginning to feel the hike in their legs.

“I don't know.” She stopped, removed her pack, and sat underneath a tree to allow her friends to catch their breath. Alex pulled off her pack and flopped down beneath another tree while Joan rummaged in her pocket for a cigarette.

“Got lost, probably. It's easy to do.” Mary opened her paint box and dug out her sketch pad and a small piece of charcoal. “I mean, look at how thick these woods are. If I walked ten feet off this trail you probably wouldn't be able to see me.”

“That's why I'm not letting you out of my sight.” Joan sprawled beside Alex, her cigarette bobbing in her mouth as she talked. “Consider us joined at the hip until we get back to Atlanta.”

Mary looked down at her sketch pad. The image of two people joined at the hip brought Jonathan Walkingstick back to mind. A wife in England. She tried to picture the woman's hands, her mouth. What had she cooked for Jonathan? How had she made love to him?
Stop it
, she scolded herself as she felt a catch in her throat.
Don't think about that now.
“Sit still, Alex,” she commanded as she grasped the charcoal and started to sketch.

“Not a problem.” Alex lay collapsed against the tree. “Work as long as you want. Draw a masterpiece.”

With a sudden yelp Joan leapt up as if she'd sat on a pin. “Is that poison ivy?” She pointed to a scraggly green vine curling up the tree trunk.

“Has it got three leaves?”

“No.” Joan squinted at the plant. “Five.”

“Don't worry about it. It's probably Virginia creeper.”

“You wouldn't kid me, would you?” Joan frowned as Alex snickered.

“Honest Injun,” Mary reassured her. “That one particular part of the forest will not harm you in any way.”

Joan folded her arms across her chest and looked nervously around the woods. “You know, I don't think I've ever seen as many trees in my life. It's spooky—almost like they're alive.”

Mary laughed. “They are alive, Joan. They're breathing in carbon dioxide right this very second.”

“That's not exactly what I meant,” Joan whispered as she peered into the shadows.

Altering her pose for a moment, Alex pried up a spiky brown sweet-gum nut. “Hey, Mary, did your mother teach you woodlore and herbal medicine and stuff?”

“Some,” Mary answered, bent over her drawing. “Things like what plants are poisonous and how to splint a sprained ankle.” She shrugged. “At the time I thought the whole Native American thing was pretty hokey. Now I wish I'd asked her more.”

Joan inhaled greedily as a yellow maple leaf spiraled gracefully to the ground. “My great-aunt in Sicily used to brew up some pretty weird cures. I wonder, though, if all that herbal medicine stuff isn't just wishful thinking.”

Mary looked up from her drawing. “Beats me. My mom and I just took aspirin.”

They switched packs and climbed higher. The trees grew more intense in color—red sourwoods mingled with gold poplars and crimson black gums, all standing stark and vibrant against a brilliant sapphire sky. They stopped often at streams, where Joan would sit and smoke, Alex would dangle her bare feet in the icy water, and Mary would lie back in soft, mossy beds of galax, the old smells and sounds of the Little Jump Off store fresh in her head. After they climbed one of the higher ridges, the trail split in two directions. Mary stopped and shrugged off her pack.

“Okay, scouts, we've got a decision to make here.” She pointed to the right, where the trail escalated into a high, unending stand of bright orange maples that glowed like lit matches.

“That way is the official Little Jump Off Trail, which goes over Chestnut Knob. It's high, it's hard, but seventy years ago it was blazed by the Babcock Lumber Company.”

Joan was scratching at a mosquito bite. “What do you mean
blazed
?”

“They cut a path through the woods and carved marks on the trees along the way.”

“Okay,” puffed Joan, beads of sweat now dotting her upper lip. “One hard, but marked trail. What's behind Door Number Two?”

Mary turned left, toward a much fainter footpath that tunneled between two rows of dark, low-limbed spruce pines. “That will lead us to where we want to camp through more level ground. There's just one thing you need to know about it.”

“What?” Alex's face was flushed with exertion.

“It goes through the Ghosts.”

“The Ghosts?” Joan's voice rose. “That thing Jonathan was talking about?”

Mary nodded. “I'm not sure how to explain the Ghosts. When we were kids we thought it was where the old dead Cherokees hung out. Now I'm guessing it's some kind of underground spring that's eroded the top of a mountain. It's weird. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else.”

“So is it, like, haunted?”

“No, but it's seriously foggy. The only danger is getting separated from each other.” Mary looked at her friends. “If we take the Babcock trail, we'll have go slow. If we go through the Ghosts, we'll have to be careful.”

Joan looked at Alex. “Isn't this just
sooo
Mary? Take this way to get lost, or that way to have a coronary. We should never have let her go into criminal law, Alex.”