The Signal: A Novel Part 3

He had always carried her across, from the first year when it had been a surprise to both of them. He had suddenly picked her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, his hands clasped under her b.u.t.t, and as he splashed through, she had laughed.

"Then you carry me," he said now. She walked upstream to the place where the stepping-stones were set and she walked carefully across and continued up the trail. He watched her for a moment. Then he knelt and washed his face in the cold water. He stood and took a deep breath and blew it out, and he followed her, keeping his old boots dry for the first time as he crossed Cold Creek.

They had married in the dooryard of the home place, before fifty friends and Vonnie's family and the three horses standing witness at the corral fence. A half hour before the ceremony his buddy Chester Hance had carried Vonnie off as the bridesmaids were having their pictures taken on hay bales in the barn. He'd lifted her sidesaddle onto Rusty as if for a photo, and then he'd mounted behind her and trotted up the famous horse trail into the aspens, waving his hat and hollering, "This lady has been abducted! She is too good for this horrid fate."

The young women hurried out of the barn, and they could hear Vonnie's laughter as she struggled to say help and just laughed. Chester was a good rider. His colorful ransom note was discovered nailed to the barn door on a s.h.i.+rt cardboard. Half the letters were backward, and it occasioned another round of drinks. The entire scenario required Mack to ride up the trail backward on Copper Bob singing "Home on the Range." The horse knew what to do even with the man on wrong. The wedding party stood below as he disappeared still facing them, singing and happy into the trees. A moment later Chester hollered again and galloped into view. "I don't care if that gal is from the East Coast, she's more bobcat than any of the locals I know."

Someone called out, "As if you know any!" and the wedding party turned to see Mack and Vonnie ride down the trail together.

Sawyer Day, who was a justice, presided in his string bow tie, and they had a barbecue in the fragrant May day. Amarantha's husband Brett ran the pit, and she had set a fabulous buffet on sawhorse tables just off the porch. The fifty guests danced on the plank floor of the barn until midnight and then one o'clock; the band was jazz-bluegra.s.s from Cheyenne, led by a guy who had been at school with Vonnie. They played the extra hour gratis as a wedding gift. As the trucks filed out the ranch road in the dark, full of friends calling back their jokes and good wishes, Vonnie and Mack sat on the old porch swing and it grew silent, except for the sounds of the house settling which hadn't felt such traffic for two or three years.

It was the moment between the old and the new worlds. His father would have sat up with them a minute like this on the porch; he liked the still night, the sleeping ranch. And then he would have stood, pivoting with his hand on Mack's shoulder, and Mack that night felt the hand there, a blessing. His father would have stepped down into the dooryard on his way to the bunkhouse for this night, and still walking away, he would have touched his hat and raised his gla.s.s.

The horses looked at the couple from across the way. After half an hour in the night, Vonnie said, "I'm home."

"We'll keep this place," he said.

"Somehow," she said.

"There isn't much in making funky websites for the citizens of Jackson," he said. "We'll be land poor." For Mack the night yard was full of ghosts, and he knew he wasn't up to running a guest ranch. He could never greet the guests with the equanimity and grace-and real friendliness-his father mustered. He would feel a fraud.

"There's stuff," she said. "I'll teach."

"You married a ranch hand," he said.

"I did. I love that you're a hand."

"And you're a heart," he said.

"Now we're really talking," she said. "Let's kiss." The three horses stood in the dark, their eyes unmoving. She whispered, "I didn't marry you for that horse. Let's go inside."

Now it was the warm high center of the day, and Mack and Vonnie ten feet apart moved up the trail, the sun on their necks. She stopped when they stepped into the beginnings of the rock field between the two verdant mountains. It was a mile of slumped talus through which the pack trail wound, a white line in the gray rock, struck there by horseshoes for uncountable years. The wind now blew north unimpeded, cuffing every loose sleeve. "Let's go up to the cairns and eat some lunch," he said.

"This has always been a weird place," she said, falling in behind him. For a while the world was rock and sky pressed by the wind. This was where the earth ended and the sky began, and the sky worked steadily for more. The trail was rippled and craggy and every step asked a balance, and Mack and Vonnie kept their arms out as if skiing. Mack's knees burned as they stepped over the top and found shelter from the sharp air. They sat at the crest against a sunny wall of the granite and looked ahead at the pitched green pine slopes of the ma.s.sive upper valleys of the Wind River Range. South were the rocky towers of a grand cirque, Armitage, Bellow, and Craig, mountains that were in a score of picture calendars in Europe every year, mountains that had claimed a hundred lives, mountains with a dozen saucy nicknames each, the nicknames climbers give to dangerous places, wicked names and apt. North were the blankets of evergreens that ran aground at 11,500 feet and showed the round rocky promontories of the oldest mountains in Wyoming, striations of silver rock run and capped most of the year with snow at the summits.

"You get up here and you can see the planet again," she said.

"Our planet," he said.

"It's not ours."

"You don't know that. It looks like ours."

"You got any Vienna sausages?" she asked.

"I might," he said. "I've got this for you now." He handed her a round of fresh pita bread and then a thick slice of yellow cheddar. He peeled the lid from a tin of sardines in olive oil and lifted half of them onto her open bread with his pocketknife.

"All the food groups, thank you very much." They ate in silence. It was strange and pleasant out of the wind, and they could now both feel the high chill of being sunburned.

Then the trail was packed dirt winding down the first western slope, sage and berried-scrub and willows until they entered the trees again at a place they called the Gateway because of the great dead skeleton of a ponderosa standing over the trail, and high in it on a huge branch strung an old withered pair of hiking boots that had hung there through the years. Every time they saw someone barefoot in Jackson, one of them would say, I know where her shoes are, or I know where that guy could get a pair of boots. The descent leveled off and they crossed a tributary of the river, a stream that needed just a long step, and then the trail followed it gradually downhill. This became a valley that twisted north and south, the creek bubbling as they went and they moved apace. It was in this place that Mack always began to feel finally a long way from his truck, from town, from all of it. He could breathe; they were almost in.

From here Mack could see the switchbacks of the western trail that led over the rim to Jackpine Lake, which was really three lakes, where his father had taken him when he was ten. It had been a great trip and a lesson, his father talking on the drive out from town, saying, "What have we got now?"

"Sir?"

"How many horses?"

"Eleven." Mack knew them all by heart.

"Here," his father said, "right now?"

"None. No horses."

"And how many acres and ranches and buildings big and small, including tractors and saddles and tables and chairs and ladders and fences all totaled?"

Mack looked at his father's face as he drove. The faint smile. "None?"

"That's right, Mack. Just us and the truck and our gear, as I see it. You with me?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

At the trailhead they'd packed up and when they had climbed over the first hill, he'd said, "And how many trucks?"

"No trucks," Mack had said.

They'd camped at Jackpine, between the lakes, and the next day they'd walked around Larger Jackpine, and his father had said, "And now no tents, no pans, no stove."

"Daypacks and gear," Mack had said.

At the far end there was a rock spill onto which they walked. First they'd stashed their packs and stepped out carefully to fish.

Mack already knew the answers. "Our poles and some gear."

"That's about right," his father had said. "You got your knife, Mack?"

"My knife and some matches. Four flies."

"Well, this is very fine indeed," his father had said. "We're just about ourselves now. This is working perfectly. Three lakes and three days. We're getting down to some very fine mathematics." He swung his line free and gathered it back to cast. "Let's fish."

Mack had looked at the man, sleeves rolled, lifting a cast out onto the blue-brown mystery of the lake surface, and that line marked the known world from the unknown, and Mack wondered how he understood the depth of this little bay, how he knew where the fish were, how he knew everything he knew. The wondering seemed to hurt Mack's heart which he understood simply to be love, the aching desire to measure up, to master the mathematics.

The stream joined the Wind River in a muddy open glade criss crossed with game trails, deer, elk, and moose tracks, a party. Mack walked the perimeter of the area and toed a small fist of bear scat. "This guy got into the gum," he said. "There's a bear full of tinfoil in these woods."

The sun was way west now and the shadows had changed, the day turned. They walked up along the Wind River to the two fallen logs, a bridge they'd used all the times, and they walked across the mountain river and sat down.

"Can you feel the alt.i.tude?"

"I think so. Let's have some water." Three deer came upstream and saw them and turned around and walked down.

"That's a nice pack Kent got you."

"I got it."

"For this trip?"

"For my trips."

"Kent backpacks?"

"He might."

"At two hundred seventy-five dollars an hour, it would be expensive hiking for that guy."

Vonnie rose and hefted her pack back into place high on her shoulders, cinching the waist strap. She led them away from the river on the old trail through the pines. A mile later she stopped at the rim of the upper bowl. Mack joined her and they looked down into the wilderness. "Where are we going to camp?"

"We always camped at Valentine." This was their neighborhood.

"Where are we camping today?"

Mack lifted his chin. "Let's go over there," he said. "I know where there's a ring of stones and some firewood."

Valentine Lake was a twenty-acre heart of silver blue rimmed to the edge by pines and red sandstone. They came over the low ridge and saw it set out as if invented this morning. Circling west they stepped up the stony terrace to the rock porch where they'd been before. It had the advantage of a level place for the tent and the boulders made a kind of room, good for sitting and leaning the packs. The fire ring was still in place, remarkable in that it was unused; this wasn't on any trail. They had gathered the six rocks, each the size of an unabridged dictionary, ten years before and set them here on earth above the lake. Mack shrugged off his pack and leaned it against one of the boulders. He marched off into the trees, counting them to ten and finding the steel wire oven rack where he'd hung it. Over three stones it made a perfect cook stove.

"We are golden," he said, returning.

Vonnie hadn't moved, her pack still on. Now she walked to the perimeter of the campsite, her hands clasped behind her, a strange look on her face. "This is such a bad idea."

He had seen this face before, almost a year ago. He said, "Let's get some firewood." The day had broken on the evening's clouds, and the surface of the lake was a million coins in the breeze. She looked at Mack and he stopped.

"How's Trixie?"

He folded his arms.

"No, how is she."

He knew to stand and face it, but it was against the grain. "Her name was Trisha."

"Trixie."

Mack waited, but he knew to be silent was to lie and he was done with that. "And she's gone. You know that."

"Oh, what happened, big boy? Did you lie to her?"

"Don't, Vonnie. I mean, you don't need to."

"Don't."

He had resolved in his bitter extremity to say things as they were, not to duck or feint. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, and it hurt every time before the relief descended. He hated to have this conversation here, above the lake in their camp, but he would do it. "Trisha is gone. I made a mistake. A series of them."

"Just one series of mistakes?"

"Vonnie."

"Did you just lie to her?"

"Don't."

"No, I won't. It's a stupid question, no? To ask a liar if he lied."

"Vonnie. Let's get some wood."

"Liar. A lying liaristic lie-maker."

"I stopped lying."

"Oh, when, ten minutes ago? How does a liar stop lying?"

"Vonnie."

"Do they remove something?"

"Vonnie."

"Yvonne. And let's not get wood. No fire. Let's just go up to Clark Lake." She was crying now and her pack was shaking a little as she stood. "And catch a fish and get out of these f.u.c.king mountains."

"You love these mountains."

"I used to." Her pack trembled. "But they're full of liars now. You even ruined the mountains."

"Do you want to camp someplace else?" She didn't answer but turned and stood looking at the corrugated lake in the mountain twilight. "I'm sorry, Vonnie." He now too felt it a mistake, all the mistakes. "This was the wrong spot, all wrong. I'm sorry."

"Valentine Lake," she said. "Go get some wood."

The wind was steady, but the small fire bent and flourished, and he cooked the tomato soup as always and burned the bread on his long fork so they could dip strips into their bowls. The fire helped. Vonnie took off her boots and wore her camp moccasins, sitting by the fire. They'd unpacked and Mack had set his tent. Vonnie was reading, holding the book flat to catch the light.

"How's the school?" he asked.

"It's going well; every time they cut the music program some rich parent steps up. Somebody gave us a grand piano, but we don't have a room for it, so now they're building a room. There's a lot of money in that town, but it only comes out in certain ways."

"A grand piano."

"Yeah, and Kent started a board that does fund-raising."

"He's got to be good at that. And he gave the school a car."

"He did."

Mack had wiped out the bowls and wrapped them in the dishtowel. "Did he not want you to do this?"