It was overcast. A light but relentless drizzle had been coming down for three days, pattering annoyingly against the shell of his once waterproof jacket. He felt as though water had worked through the crevices of his skin into the secret place where his spirit resided. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been dry or comfortable and his usual lust for adventure had flat-lined under the misty onslaught.
In different circumstances he was the type of guy that sought the rain out. A tempest of thunder and sheeting water was his mechanism to show the world that he was not, in fact, afraid of anything. It was his cleansing ritual; his one concession to the new age hippy crap that seemed to have overtaken his generation. Yoga was not for him. Instead, he had devised his own communion. Personal, natural… but unregulated, unhindered by any rule or master, any doctrine or dogma. It was just him and the rain.
So he had pressed on with this trek despite dire predictions from a dozen weathermen forwarded to him by friends making their excuses. He had persevered even when the clouds had descended and this damnable drizzle had begun. Amy alone had stuck with him for a day after that. She loved him that much anyway; just enough to suffer through 24 miserable hours. To be fair, the outdoors were not her favorite even when the sun was out. She professed to enjoy their trips but he knew that enjoyment was often just an exchange of goods or services, a means of getting something out of him later by humoring him now. She was a master of the relationship, in the generic sense, and master of their relationship specifically. If he chose to stop and reflect on why he was doing any-given-something – which as a general rule he did not do because he often found it unsettling -- the answer could usually be traced back to her.
Yet in the end, not even the promise of future returns could win out over the drizzle. As the clouds brightened slightly to reveal the morning of the second day she had stopped on the shoulder of the first bit of pavement they came across and begged him to hitch a ride with her back to “civilization.” He hadn’t said anything but had sat on the guardrail with her taking turns tossing small pebbles into a puddle in a pot hole. He waited there only long enough to see her climb into the cab of the beat-up red truck and say something pithy and vaguely flirtatious to the driver. She hadn’t waved. Her mind was already focused on dry clothes and a heart attack breakfast at the Waffle House on the interstate off-ramp.
Now, at the end of the third day he was alone and thinking that he had been a fool not to let himself be convinced. The rain and the solitude had ripped away the beauty of the external world and replaced it with the shadowy ghosts of a depression that haunted his quiet inner moments. The trip had gone from being an escape and a reminder of the joy and beauty of life to something that was much more reminiscent of a prison. A carnival house of mirrors that no matter which way he turned only confronted him with another distorted self-image, each more warped than the one before. This particular moment, in the fading light, he was shocked to discover he was more afraid than he had ever been before in his life.
He reached into his bag and began to pull out pieces to his sodden tent, letting the elastic filled poles snap together between his clammy trembling fingers and assembling the shelter in a flat space under the spreading boughs of a maple. He clicked on his headlamp, which sufficed to make the evening minimally brighter but did nothing to push back the oppressive gloom and tried in vain to light his small stove. Unable to coax any sort of flame with any tool he possessed he filled a packet of dehydrated food with rainwater and let it sit for five minutes before shoveling the soupy, salty mush into his mouth with his fingers. He felt the weight of his knife in his pocket and found it comforting, but in a way that left him even more disturbed.
The darkness progressed and he climbed into the tent and lay on his back, looking up through the fogged plastic window of the rain-fly at nothing. Sleep eluded him and suspicious shadows danced in the corners of his vision. Sometime during the night he realized he was crying but did not have the energy to wipe away the tears. They trailed down his face and dripped onto the floor of the tent. When it became light again, he had not yet closed his eyes.
Sitting up was the hardest thing he had ever done.
Trembling, but not now from the damp or chill, he stuffed his supplies back into his bag haphazardly and staggered out of the camp, careening from one tree to another, deeply - he feared mortally - wounded in some way he could not understand. He emerged from the trees into the gravel trailhead parking lot without any recollection of the miles he had covered from the camp, or how long it had taken him. He felt broken. A car door slammed someplace far away as he stood in the clearing, lost, eyes darting everywhere but seeing nothing.
And then one of the ghosts called his name.
Again.
Louder.
Insistently.
He shook himself and looked around again just as Amy reached him, sliding her arm between his pack and his back and pressing the length of her warmth against his side. He felt her lips on his as if he was an observer in his own body.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “You look like you’ve had a bit of a rough time. Come sit in the car for a bit and warm up. I brought you some clothes and some coffee and we can go get some breakfast, or a shower -- whatever you want.”
The words failed to register but he felt himself nodding and she guided him to the car with the gentle pressure of her body against his. He leaned on her gratefully.
And with each step the ghosts receded a little more, back into the mist.
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