Wild Within (Wild at Heart #1) (6 page)

She thought back to Lone Star’s message in the hiker register at the store.

Thinking of you a lot, Just Grace, and wishing our legs were walking this path side by side. You stay careful, bonita chica! I’ll write you a longer note next time. Tonight I’m too tuckered out. Sweet dreams.

Grace wiped sudden beads of perspiration from her upper lip. She dunked her head under the water and came up laughing.

The next morning, her blisters felt better. But her pack felt heavier. She scrolled through the maps on her phone.

Next resupply stop’s almost seventy miles north
.
No more water running freely from a tap. Only a few water caches and streams. Also a few horse trough options. Hope I won’t have to use those.

The PCT looped around and across bare, dome-shaped hills. Occasionally, hikers passed her. When she tried to keep up with them, she fell quickly behind.

My legs aren’t only too short for Lone Star. They’re simply too short.

Choir Master, a fiftyish section hiker, caught up to Grace early one morning on a long, barren stretch. The man’s round face, bulging stomach, and thick legs made an incongruous contrast to the skinny thrus Grace had gotten used to seeing. He paused a moment to catch his breath.

“I’m on my way to completing the entire PCT in five years’ worth of long weekends.” His chest expanded and contracted at a concerning pace. “Saw your signature in the Laguna Store’s register. Wondered if I could catch up with you. I hate hiking alone. It’s so much more fun to have somebody to talk to.” Soft circles of flesh nearly obscured his eyes when he smiled. He reached out a spongy hand.

Scents of summer grass and Choir Master’s sunblock mixed in the dry air. Grace took in the baggy shorts and sweat-stained shirt.

He looks like someone who could use a friend. I wouldn’t mind some company for a change. It’s weird not having anyone to text or talk to.

“Do you like singing? I always find it’s fun to sing.” He strode alongside her. Grace didn’t have time to respond before he launched into a high-pitched rendition of “The Happy Wanderer.” The warbling sounded familiar, but she didn’t recognize the lyrics.

He’s singing in German.

“Do you know it?” He stroked his triple chins as someone else might stroke a beard. “It’s such a wonderful hiking song. It works well as a round. I’ll teach it to you so we can sing together. Sometimes I sing it all afternoon. Right through supper time.”

Oh, no.

She shook her head. “I usually like listening to sounds of the trail. Birds and animals. It’s always so peaceful and quiet.”

“I understand. Nothing like the sounds of nature to make you feel like singing. So how about ‘The Other Day I Met a Bear?’ That’s a real classic. Everyone knows that one. The other day…” He paused. “Come on now. You must know it.” He swung his fleshy arms from side to side in rhythm with the tune. “I sing, ‘The other day,’ and you repeat, ‘The other day.’ Then I sing, ‘I met a bear,’ and then you sing, ‘I met a bear.’ It’s easy.”

Grace shrugged her shoulders and joined in, mumbling the words in a hushed soprano.

So glad no one’s here to post this on Facebook.

She trudged behind Choir Master in a wake of dust. The next song was “Doe a Deer” from
The
Sound of Music
. Then loud performances of “This Land is Your Land” and “Cottage in a Wood,” the latter complete with intricate hand gestures. By the time Choir Master reached the fifth verse of “Rise and Shine” she was rehearsing tactful ways to tell him she would rather hike alone.

She stopped for a bathroom break, urging him to go ahead without her. But he waited. She retied her shoes. He waited. She filtered water from a hopelessly shallow stream. He serenaded her with “Singing in the Rain” while her filter float bobbed in half an inch of water. She feigned a limp, and he offered his chubby shoulder as a support. No matter how slowly she hiked, saying she was holding him back, he stuck to her like a burr.

“I’m beat.” She dropped her pack on a flat area near the trail at three in the afternoon. “I know you have to go on. You told me you have to finish this section by Monday.”

Choir Master’s face reddened with the sting of rejection. Grace avoided looking at him. She pulled her tent out of her pack and expertly flipped the poles. The inner elastic cord sprung them together with a snap.

He took a few steps, then turned around. “I’ll hike slowly and keep singing, so you know where to find me if you change your mind.”

I made the right decision.

She lay for a long time on her mat, looking up through mosquito netting at the endless blue of the sky. The hushed sounds of the desert exhilarated her. Beetles skittered across pebbles. Unidentified birds settled on rocky outcroppings. Bees hummed, investigating her gear. She imagined Lone Star lying next to her. Then drifted off. When she awoke, she thought she saw an extra large pair of boots outside her tent flap.

Shoot. They’re only rocks.

Over the following week, the regular routine of walking, eating, and sleeping condensed her days to the essentials. The vast and severe landscape offered up intimate surprises, like a yellow flower thrusting its head between two rocks like a miniature sun, dew sparkling on her tent tie downs, and luminescent spider webs at dawn. A constant monologue heavily peppered with “Lone Star” kept her company.

Grace left the trail fifteen miles from Idyllwild, her next resupply stop, and stuck out her thumb when she reached the road.

I’ve never hitchhiked. But Lone Star’s note is waiting for me in the hiker register. Nothing short of Norman Bates is going to keep me from getting there.

A white Chevy Camaro pulled to the side of the road almost immediately. Grace coughed and fanned at the dirt as she ran to the passenger side. A handsome square face beneath close-cropped hair leaned toward her through the window.

“Where are you heading?”

“Idyllwild.”

“Then hop in the back, honey.” His face disappeared behind quickly rising grey tinted glass.

Grace opened the rear passenger door a crack. “In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven’t showered for a week. I don’t want to get your car smelly. I’ll understand if you don’t want to give me a ride.”

“Sweetie, you obviously haven’t thumbed before.” The driver, a lanky, greying man so tall that his head bowed slightly under the low roof, waved her toward the back seat. “You get in first and let the driver get going.
Then
you tell him anything that might make him change his mind. So don’t let all our AC mix with your hot desert air. Get in.”

Grace yanked off her pack and threw it in the back seat before hopping in behind it.

The passenger stuck out his hand. “I’m Marlowe and this is Alphonse. We’re heading back to LA after a week in Palm Springs.”

Grace took in the manicured fingernails as she shook the firm warm hand with her grimy own. “I’m worried I’m going to stain this seat with my sweaty shorts.”

Marlowe giggled. “Never mind. It’s a rental. And you’re so much more interesting than the audio book we were listening to. Alphonse, we got ourselves a real live hiker.”

Marlowe twisted farther in his seat to get a better look at her. “Why don’t you drive if you want to go to Canada? Or how about the train?”

Their questions only stopped when she got out at the grocery store. Twenty minutes later, when she emerged swinging Fairway Foods shopping bags stuffed with snacks and half gallons of chocolate ice cream, she found the two men still seated on the hood of their car.

“We changed our plans, honey.” Alphonse opened the trunk. “We called a local B&B. We’re spending the night here so we can escort you back to the trail tomorrow morning. You’re too cute to be trying to get rides at the side of the road. You never know what might happen.”

Grace hoisted her bags in next to the leather luggage. “I’m unlikely to appeal given my stinking condition.”

“You obviously don’t get around too much.” Marlowe nudged Alphonse in the ribs. “There’s a whole seedy underworld in this country. Man or woman. Stinky or dirty. You might be just what they’re looking for.”

“If you’re right, then that’s an underworld I can do without.” Grace sniffed hesitantly in the direction of her armpit. “Phew. Anyone who likes the way I smell right now needs their head examined.”

“So where to next? Shower?”

“If you don’t mind, I want to stop by the post office first. They’ve got a hiker register. I’m kind of eager to see if there’s a message for me.”

“Ah, a woman of mystery. We love it.” The three climbed into the Camaro. “Post office it is.”

The next day, Grace watched the white car disappear over the horizon at the Pines-to-Palms Highway trailhead. Bright sunshine warmed her arms as she waved. As the smell of exhaust faded, she inhaled deeply.

Then she turned on her phone and took a hundredth look at the photo of Lone Star’s note.

Darling Just Grace,

I turn around whenever someone comes up behind me, hoping it’s you. Do you forgive me for leaving you behind? This is just a temporary separation, I promise. Something we’ll look back on fondly someday. Because you’ve already dug your way deep into my heart. I think of you ever so much. I’ve even begun composing a poem for you.

The leaves that rustle in the breeze

Remind me of your hair.

Your lips were parched, your skin so fair,

Your stride had lost its ease.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’ll continue in the next note.

Picture me giving you a long hug. And more.

Missing you,

Lone Star

I’ve dug into his heart.

The idea tickled a mysterious spot in Grace’s belly and a quick laugh burst from her, as it had every time she’d read the note.

The company in town was terrific. The food was filling. But I’m so glad to be back on the PCT with Lone Star ahead of me.

She left the road and climbed the right-hand side of a long approach valley.

Hiking isn’t as difficult as I expected. The next segment’s twenty-six miles across the San Jacinto Mountains to the San Gorgonio Valley. My first substantial elevation gains and drops.
I’m not worried.

At first, the sun burned her arms and she was thankful for the frequent shade offered by lichen-splotched boulders, prickly pear cacti, and tall brush. But an hour later when she stopped for lunch, a thick fog descended from the heights ahead and enveloped her. Before she finished eating, cold drizzle forced her into jacket and rain pants. A mile later, the once bright day degenerated into nasty gusts and raindrops the temperature of ice water. Another mile in, the sky was the color of slate. The path before her rose steeply onto the Desert Divide crest and into the unexpected storm.

By evening, the gale whipped hail and snow. Grace humped along, bent low like the wind-distorted firs around her. The narrow ridge afforded little protection. All she could do was lurch forward, one step at a time, into the maelstrom.

Hours earlier, a solo hiker had passed her, but he was nowhere in sight.

It’s crazy cold.

Grace swallowed her fear.

The storm attacked first from one direction and then another, trying to knock her off her feet. Winds whistled eerily through the firs. Grace picked up her pace. In the increasing whiteout, even cacti became unrecognizable as their shapes morphed in the storm’s deadly grip.

Icy roots pulled at her feet, threatening her balance.

“Okay, that does it. I’ll set up my tent here. It’s got to be safer than going on through this mess.”

She pulled the nylon shelter from her pack. The tent poles whipped and beat her legs as she fitted them into the appropriate holes. The normally two-minute job defeated her numb, gloveless hands. With only one end of the tent standing, Grace thumped her ten fingers against her thighs.

Then a sudden gust seized the flapping material. She blinked. Her orange shelter whipsawed into a fir, billowed like a forgotten sail, and flew into the sky. The raging white closed around it.

My tent. Gone.

Grace’s heart beat against her jacket.

What do I do now? I can’t stay here. I’ll freeze.

She tried to run. But all she could do was stumble through the punishing snow along the exposed ridge.

Keep going.

The trail ahead forked. One branch continued straight. Another dove into the relative shelter of a grove. Grace descended, head bowed. The trees were plastered glassy white. Her feet slid on the thin coating of ice.

She shivered uncontrollably.

Make a shelter. Where’s my knife?

She clutched the one-inch blade between her palms and sliced at the nylon rope of her bear bag. After several attempts, she succeeded in tying the four corners of her ground cloth to surrounding trees, creating a protected area for her head. She laid out her waterproof bivy sack and stuffed her pad and sleeping bag inside. With the wind raging through the sparse trees, Grace zipped herself into her makeshift refuge.