Damaged (10 page)

“You can't be that naive, can you?” Hunter says. He's carry­ing a bottle of whiskey and I have a bag of corn chips and a jar of salsa. I feel like the girl in the movie
Dirty Dancing
when she shows up all nerdy at the underground dance party and says, “I carried a watermelon,” to sexy Patrick Swayze.

If we didn't already know they were here, we probably wouldn't have even noticed Chesapeake and Mountain's campsite. Their beat-up VW bus is perfectly hidden by a grove of birch trees. Folding chairs and a small table circle the campfire, laundry hangs on a clothesline strung between two trees, a picnic table is covered with a checkered tablecloth and a mason jar full of wildflowers, and they even have a rug laid beneath the bus's sliding side door. It looks like they've been here a long time and don't plan on leaving any time soon.

“Friends!” Chesapeake yells, crouched at the water's edge, completely naked, holding a washcloth and a bar of soap. The water is filmy from her bath. She splashes herself with the freezing water and lets out a yelp, then walks toward us without any shame. “Now where'd I put my towel?” she says. I look away, but there's Mountain climbing out of the bus, also naked. What the hell is going on?

“Hunter,” I whisper. I can hear the panic in my voice. I pull on his sleeve. “Hunter!” He's in a trance, staring at Chesapeake as she bends over to pick her towel off a rock. She seems to be taking her time on purpose, enjoying the attention.

“Oh, hey, guys,” Mountain says. “Didn't realize you were here. Let me put some pants on.” He gets back in the bus and I can breathe again. Chesapeake grabs some clothes off the clothesline and gets dressed. Hunter watches as she pulls on her jeans, as she raises her arms to put her shirt on. All I can see is the fuzzy blond bush of her armpits.

“Hunter!” I hiss. “Stop staring. It's rude.”

“It's only rude if the attention's unwanted,” he says, throwing me his signature grin. “Or are you jealous?”

“I hate you,” I say.

We sit around the fire and they immediately get to drinking. Hunter pours me a plastic camping cup half full of whiskey. I take a sip but nearly gag. In the time it takes me to consume maybe a tablespoon, the others do a quick progression of more shots than I can count, cheering to things like “freedom” and “chaos” and “sky.” Hunter's face is lit in a way I've only seen when he was taking pictures at the ghost town. So now I know there are two things that make him happy.

By the time the veggie dogs are done, everyone is drunk. Even I'm a little tipsy, which, as much as I hate to admit it, is not an entirely unpleasant feeling. It makes these people a little less annoying. But only a little. Chesapeake and Mountain start waxing poetic about life on the road, Hunter in rapt attention, hanging on their every word. They keep talking about freedom, about not having to follow anyone's rules, about being able to follow their bliss wherever it wants to take them. They are so full of shit.

“But you're not
doing
anything,” I blurt out. I must be drunker than I thought. Hunter laughs so hard he nearly falls backward, as surprised as I am at what came out of my mouth. But I keep going. I can't stop myself. “How can life be satisfying if all you do is wander around?”

“Not all who wander are lost,” Chesapeake says sagely, like she's the first person who ever thought to say that.

“That's just a bumper sticker,” I say.

“Excuse my friend here,” Hunter says with his mouth full of corn chips. “She's a little uptight. It's my mission on this trip to help her loosen up. As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.”

“Cool, cool,” says Mountain, smiling at me with wet lips. “We all gotta start somewhere, man.” Could he be any more patronizing? Does he really think he's more evolved than me?

“Yeah, like I used to want to be a ballerina,” Chesapeake says, her Southern drawl getting thicker the more drunk she gets. “But back then, my name was Edith.” That makes her crack up. She laughs uncontrollably while Mountain roots around in the cooler. Hunter just drinks his whiskey like it is completely normal to be getting wasted with strangers in a ghost town.

“This!” Mountain announces as he pulls out a tinfoil package. “My pal Ferret in Denver baked these. Best pot brownies in the country, I'd say, and I've sampled a few in my time.”

“Yum,” says Chesapeake, clapping her hands like a toddler.

Hunter looks at me and wiggles his eyebrows. “No,” I say.

“Your loss,” he says as he grabs a smashed glob of brownie out of the tinfoil Mountain offers.

“Bon appétit,” Mountain says, and they start chewing.

I don't know why I don't just leave then. I could easily walk back to our camp with my flashlight and leave Hunter there to spend the night with his new ridiculous friends. But for some reason I stay, quietly turning into a spectator rather than participant in the evening. They forget I am even there. I watch them get more and more wasted; I listen to them make less and less sense.

After an hour, they are barely intelligible. Their eyes are slits and their words are jumbled. Is this supposed to be fun? Do they actually enjoy being this fucked-up? I sit silently, like an anthropologist observing some lost tribe whose customs are so unfamiliar it's hard to even recognize them as the same species.

After being invisible for an hour, it is shocking when Mountain suddenly stares me down and says, “Are you loose yet?”

“What?”

“Have you loosened up? Or are you still wound up tight?”

“Tight,” Hunter mumbles beside me, only capable of single syllables by now.

“I could give you a back rub,” Chesapeake says. “I give really good back rubs.”

“No thank you,” I say.

“I feel loose,” says Mountain.

“Loose,” says Hunter.

Something suddenly feels very wrong.

“There's lots of room in the bus,” Chesapeake says. “It's really comfy.”

“I know Hunter's in,” Mountain says.

“In,” says Hunter. He can barely hold himself up anymore. His eyes are closed and his head is drooped against his chest. Hunter is not in for anything besides passing out.

It is definitely time to go.

“Hunter,” I say, tugging on his shirt. “Hunter, come on. I'm tired. Let's go.”

“You can sleep here,” Chesapeake purrs. “Both of you.” She gets out of her chair and glides over, the reflection of the fire dancing in her eyes. “With us.”

“Sleep,” Hunter mumbles. “Here.”

“No sleep here, Hunter.”

Chesapeake puts her hand on Hunter's shoulder and ­lowers herself onto his lap. He doesn't seem to even notice her weight. She puts her arms around him and attempts to kiss him, but he's too wasted to even try to kiss back. He's like a zombie sitting there, half-dead.

When I stand up, Hunter is startled back to life. “Kinsey,” he says. “Don't leave me.” He tries to stand, knocking Chesapeake off him.

“Ouch,” she says as she lands on her butt, then starts laughing the monotone huh-huh-huh of stoners. Mountain joins her, laughing from his chair on the other side of the fire, eating chip crumbs out of the bag and watching us through half-closed eyes like we're a TV show.

I reach for Hunter's arm as he struggles to get up, but his sudden momentum sends him forward. His leg gets caught in the cheap folding chair. He has no balance. He's blind and falling and I can't catch him. He's going forward, too fast, too hard, into the fire. Into the fire.

“No!” I scream.

Headlights. Metal. Brakes.

Scraping. Smashing. Gone.

Camille.

Going. Going. Gone.

I am blind as I reach for him. I grab onto air.

He is gone.

Burning.

Gone.

He is fire.

I am air.

We are nothing.

No. This is his arm in my hands. This is Hunter falling against me. That is my elbow slamming on the ground, Hunter a lump on top of me. “Huh?” his whiskey mouth says. The dreadlock twins continue their huh-huh-huh.

The fire flickers against the trees, turning the night on and off. And Camille's in the shadows, watching us, laughing.

After several tries, I manage to pull Hunter to his feet. Chesapeake and Mountain have laughed themselves into a passed-out stupor, Chesapeake a lump on the ground, Mountain slumped in his chair covered in chip crumbs. I have to half carry Hunter back to our camp, stopping several times on the way for him to lie down, once to hug a tree he finds particularly beautiful, and once to throw up. “My whiskey,” he says, wiping his mouth. “I left my whiskey.”

“Fuck your whiskey,” I say.

When we finally make it back to our camp, he falls into the tent and immediately starts snoring. I am exhausted, but I am too angry to sleep. I sit outside on the picnic table, listening to the darkness. I lie down and look up at the sky, but where there were once hundreds of stars, there is now just one. Its blinks taunt me, telling me I can never reach it no matter how hard I try.

I hear something splash in the lake. Something big.

The air is cold.

The trees and abandoned buildings seem to thicken, crowding around me, becoming solid, an impenetrable wall, a tunnel.

I look up but all I see is black; even the one cruel, lonely star is gone. There is black everywhere. I could search forever and only find black.

“Camille?” I whisper.

The wind blows and leaves rustle. The rusty swings in the decrepit playground creak. I flip the switch on my flashlight but it doesn't turn on.

A voice sounds in the distance, a cross between a cry and a moan. It sounds pained. Searching.

“Camille, is that you?”

Nothing. I'm being stupid. It's not cold. I try my flashlight again and it sends a beam of light across the campground. The voice was an owl, talking to the night like owls do. Camille is dead and there's no such thing as ghosts. I didn't dream last night. I haven't felt her for two days. She is gone.

When I crawl into bed, Hunter is snoring a sickly, wet snore, the tent full of his drunk breath. I wedge myself as far to the other side as possible, my face against the nylon wall. As soon as I close my eyes, I feel exhaustion pulling me under. Like quicksand. Like drowning.

Is that you, Camille? Are those your hands pulling me under? Are you waiting for me? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?

EIGHT

The golden morning sun sparkles
on the lake, but I am not impressed. Is this going to be the ritual every morning? Me getting up early and sitting around waiting while Hunter spends an extra couple hours filling the tent with his rancid breaths? We could be fifty miles from here by now, fifty miles away from crazy Chesapeake and Mountain, fifty miles closer to San Francisco, but I have to wait out his drunken hibernation.

I wonder if he dreams during these sleeps. Or does the alcohol turn everything off? Maybe that's the solution; maybe Hunter is on to something—maybe alcohol is the magic potion for keeping ghosts away.

For three nights in a row, I haven't dreamed; for three nights, I've slept beside Hunter. It's like something about him protects me from my own brain. I hate to give him that credit, but I don't know what else it could be.

I hear rustling. Like a repeat of yesterday, Hunter stumbles out of the tent and immediately pukes. Is this how he starts every day? I don't even want to think about the state of his torn-up stomach, his poisoned liver, his eroded esophagus.

“It's fucking hot,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He walks to the lake and splashes himself with water. “This water is fucking cold,” he says, then just sits there with his head in his hands, the sand sticking to his bare legs.

“Do you remember anything from last night?” I say. He doesn't respond. “Do you remember almost falling into the fire? Do you remember how those two freaks practically tried to date-rape us?”

“What?” Hunter says, almost soberly. He looks up and is almost able to focus his eyes on mine. But it's too much effort, and his head falls back into his hands again.

“You don't remember that? They wanted us to have some kind of orgy in the back of the van.”

“That did not happen.”

“Yes it did.”

“You are so paranoid. They were probably just being friendly.”

“Hunter, you're the one who was so wasted you can't remember.”

He mumbles something I can't quite make out, but I think I hear the word “prude.”

“What did you say?” My voice is shrill.

“I don't know what's more frigid, you or this water.”

“Fuck you, Hunter.”

“Yeah, right. It might help, though. Loosen you up a little.”

I turn around and stomp back to the tent. I throw out our sleeping bags, the pants Hunter managed to take off in the middle of the night, and everything else I can find. I start pulling out the stakes with way more force than is necessary.

Hunter, dripping and caked with sand, is in his boxers and long-sleeved shirt as he staggers toward me. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“We're leaving,” I say. “Right now.” I imagine I sound like what normal mothers sound like when talking to an unruly child.

“Don't get my stuff all dirty.” He reaches down to pick up his pants, his movements slow and pained like an old man's, his words still noticeably slurred.

“You're still drunk,” I say. “I'm driving.” My stomach lurches as I say it, fear threatening to change my mind. But there's no way I'm letting him drive in this condition. As scared as I am of getting behind the wheel, I'm more afraid of him.

“Fine with me,” he says, pulling down his wet boxer shorts without even turning away. I avert my eyes just in time. “Nap time for Hunter.” It takes all my strength not to turn back around and kick him in the balls.

My driving doesn't go very well at first. Luckily, the adrenaline of my anger is strong enough to overpower my panic, but I'm still overly cautious. I drive way too slow at first. I hit the brakes at the smallest surprise. When a squirrel runs across the road, I slam the brakes so hard, Hunter has to open the door to puke. I make him get out of the car and won't let him in until he brushes his teeth and drinks some water.

Hunter is in and out of sleep for the next hour. My ­knuckles are white on the steering wheel and I can feel every muscle in my body tense, ready to jump out of my skin. Images flash through my head, gruesome snapshots not quite in focus but threatening to solidify the more panic seeps in. The more peacefully Hunter sleeps, the more my chest tightens, the less I can feel my feet, my legs, my hands, until the numbness spreads to my lungs and I can't breathe.

I'm driving. I'm actually driving. I'm driving a car for the first time since I killed my best friend.

I pull over at a gas station just in time. My vision is cloudy as I put the car in park, turn off the engine, and stumble out the door. Only after I slam the door shut can I breathe again. The world comes back into focus. I watch Hunter through the window as he stretches himself awake.

How can he be so calm? How could he sleep while I'm driving? How could he even let me drive? Not after what I did. Not after what I did to Camille.

I must move so I will stop feeling. I must busy myself with a task so I will not think.

I buy him a Gatorade and a muffin and throw it at him. “Eat something,” I command. I look at him slouched and haggard in his seat, his greasy hair matted to his face in a dried pool of drool. Anger wipes away the fear and I can drive again.

“I don't eat in the morning.”

“It would settle your stomach.”

“What do you know about my stomach?”

“It helps my mom when she's hungover.”

“Fuck your mom.”

I stop the car in the middle of the road. Hunter rubs his forehead where it bumped against the side window. I hope it hurt. I hope it bruises. The anger calms me. The anger makes me strong.

“What the fuck?” he says, as if he's the one with a right to be offended.

“I don't care if you're hungover, Hunter. That is no excuse to be a fucking asshole. You cannot talk to me like that. Ever.”

“Okay, whatever.”

“And you can't do this every night.”

“Do what?”

“Get wasted like this. I don't want to have to babysit a drunk or hungover asshole for the whole trip.”

“Well, you should have said that before we left. Because that's what I am. A drunk asshole. Take it or leave it.”

He closes his eyes and leans his face against the window, as if pretending to sleep will make me go away.

“No you're not,” I say. “You're different when you don't drink. Better.”

“But that would require me to not drink.”

“So don't drink. It's not that complicated.”

“How would you know? Little miss never-been-drunk-in-her-life? Jesus, I can't believe Camille ever thought you were her best friend.”

He could have cut me open instead of saying that. He could have stabbed a knife in my chest and carved out my heart.

“What is that supposed to mean?” My voice is only a whisper. There is no air behind my words. They hang limp between us, barely there.

“Camille was fun. You are so
not
fun.”

I want to be strong. I want to find words so cruel they cut him. But I can't. I have no reserves of meanness. I search, but all I find is loss, a sad emptiness where Camille used to be, and all that place stores is yearning, and despite my holding my breath and clenching my jaw so tight it feels like my teeth are grinding themselves flat, the tears come, cascading down my face in a straight, silent line. I've spent my life not crying, but now it seems like I do it every day. I don't want him to see me. I don't want him to know he has the power to hurt me. But after so many moments of silence, he opens his eyes.

“Oh fuck,” Hunter says.

I wipe the tears away, blink my eyes and look out the window. But the tears keep coming, a tiny waterfall dripping off my chin and onto my seat belt.

“Oh shit, I'm sorry. I'm an asshole.”

I look at him and his face has softened, has lost some of the raggedness of his hangover. Concern warms his eyes just a little.

I sniffle and wipe my eyes again, and this time, no more tears come.

“She wouldn't have loved you,” I say.

“What?” he snaps, as if stung. His face hardens again.

“If that's all you were,” I say. “If you were just a drunk asshole. Camille never would have loved you for that. She wasn't the kind of girl who goes for guys who treat them like shit. She liked herself too much. So you must be more. You must be someone really amazing.”

He's quiet and still, his mouth slightly open, like he's been startled, shocked. Something like pain crosses his face, a ripple of feeling, and just as I notice his eyes getting wet, he looks away. His hands clench and unclench in his lap. Up until now, I've always wondered what Camille saw in Hunter, what it was that made her love him. But now a new thought hits me—did he love her back? Did she take his heart with her when she died?

“Will you keep driving?” he says.

As if driving will save us. As if moving will keep the pain away.

“Camille was a good judge of character,” I say. “And she said she loved you.”

“Shut up,” he says softly. There's no cruelty in his words. Just sadness. Sadness, and maybe a tiny sliver of gratitude.

I keep driving. My anger is replaced by something else, something softer, with a different kind of resistance to fear. I decide to let him sleep for a while.

* * *

After an hour or so longer on back roads, I feel confident enough to get on what passes as a highway in the UP, which is still pretty much just a two-lane road through the forest. Around one o'clock, Hunter speaks for the first time in what seems like forever: “I'm hungry.” Like a child. With no words to communicate anything but the most simple of needs.

We stop at a diner in a little town close to the Wisconsin border. The sign in front advertises the best Cornish pasties in the UP. Hunter pulls the road atlas from the backseat to bring with us. Everything inside the diner is greasy and dusty and at least twenty years old. Faded photos of smiling men holding big fish line the walls. The frumpy waitress doesn't even smile as she leads us to a booth by the window. There are only two tables with customers at prime lunch hour—a booth full of oversize fishermen and a tiny table in the back seating an ancient man slumped over a cup of coffee. The waitress hands us our menus, the cloudy lamination peeling at the corners.

“What the hell is a Cornish pasty?” Hunter says, pronouncing it
paystee
, like the circles strippers wear on their nipples, when it actually rhymes with “nasty.” The menu has things like burgers, sandwiches, and fried perch. But the specialty is obviously pasties. They have the traditional chicken and beef options, but also venison, buffalo, pork, and today's special, quail.

“You've lived as close as you have to the UP for the last year, and you've never heard of a pasty?”

He just shrugs.

“It's like a potpie but you can hold it in your hand. The UP was settled by people from Cornwall in England in the mid-1800s. Hence, the proliferation of Cornish pasties in the region.”

A little smirk lightens his eyes, which I assume means his hangover is loosening its grip.

“What?” I say.

“You sound like a Wikipedia article,” he says. “How do you even know that?”

“I don't know. I just do. I remember things. I like to know stuff.”

He laughs, not unkindly, and I feel the morning's anger dissipate. Why is it so easy to keep forgiving him?

The waitress appears to take our order.

“I'll have a chicken pasty,” I say. “And a Coke.”

She nods and turns to Hunter.

“Cheeseburger and fries,” he says. “And coffee. Lots of coffee.”

“And water,” I add. “For him. He's dehydrated.”

The waitress looks at us blankly for a moment, then turns and walks away.

As we wait for our food and Hunter guzzles down two refills of coffee, we look at the map and try to plan our next move.

“What's fun in Wisconsin?” Hunter says, mixing creamer and insane amounts of sugar into his third cup of coffee.

“Cheese?” I offer.

After a big gulp of coffee, Hunter smiles and says, “Boy, you really know how to party.” His smiles are coming easier now, as if passing the noon hour somehow turned his Mr. Hyde back into Dr. Jekyll.

“We could go to Madison?” I offer.

“Why?”

“I don't know. It's a big city. There's probably cool stuff happening.”

“Madison isn't a big city.”

“It's bigger than Wellspring.”

“Everywhere is bigger than Wellspring.”

“Yeah, so it's big to me.”

“Wait a minute,” Hunter says, setting his coffee down. “Have you ever been to a city?”

“I've been to Traverse City a few times. I've been to Petoskey.”

“Traverse City and Petoskey are not cities. They're largish towns. Really? That's seriously it?”

“I lived in San Francisco when I was a baby, but that doesn't really count since I can't even remember it. I think I went to Grand Rapids when I was four.”

“Wow,” Hunter says, shaking his head.

“It's kind of hard to travel when your mom doesn't have a car or money.”

“This is seriously tragic.”

“Which is why I want to go to Madison.”

“No way. Madison can't be your first city. Chicago. We're going to a real city. Chicago is a real city.”

“Okay,” I say, and my stomach jumps a little. Chicago is definitely a real city. A really real city.

“You're being mighty agreeable all of a sudden.”

“I'm an expert on a lot of things, but not cities. I trust you on that one.”

“Well, I'm honored.”

“Don't get used to it.”

When the food comes, Hunter asks for another coffee refill. He scarfs down his burger like a maniac.

“How is it?” he says. “Your
paystee
?”

“It's like a really salty, meaty, dry potpie.” I poke around in it with my fork. “There's isn't a single vegetable in it.”