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 altitude?”
“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 fucking 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?”
“Of course he didn’t. He hates you. You should have never fucked with his car.”
“I shouldn’t have done anything I did this past year, Vonnie, but breaking the most expensive windshield in Jackson was as pure an act as ever I did.”
“You were drunk?”
“I was drunk for, let’s see, just about five months.” Mack turned to her and held open his hands. “I’m sorry, Vonnie. Sorry. But more, I’m done with it. I’m done with desperation. I was as lost as you get.”
“How was jail?”
“That is a great question. You always said I was in my own way with my pride, remember that?”
“You were.”
“I was. Jail fixed that. I’m not proud anymore. Jail is jail and I had weeks of it and those weeks were the same as a lot of weeks last year. I’m all even all over town, except for two more apologies and the bills. Bills and three more apologies, but I’ll get them.”
“Who’s on the ranch?”
“Jessups. He was going to get sheep, but as far as I can see they’re just living there.”
“Do you get a decent rent?”
“Decent minus the horses, the upkeep. I’m a little negative, but I’m working on some projects.”
“Did Yarnell come through?”
“Sort of.” Mack set sticks into the small fire. The last daylight was trading around from the rocky towers, and the gloaming would last half an hour. It took the darkness a long time to fill.
“Kent says you’re tight with Yarnell and that Yarnell is the enemy, a crook.”
“He’d know.”
“He’d know before you’d know.”
“Well, I’ve got some projects is all.”
“You could sell it all and just go.”
“I could and where would I go? Where do people go, Vonnie? San Diego? My knees are too bony. This is where I go.”
“You’re fighting the whole county.”
“I just want to keep the place. Stay straight and do what I can to keep the place.”
“The bank?”
“The bank is the bank. They were with me and now they’re deciding. You want me to sell so you can get that money?”
“Mack, did you look at the letters?” He had the five ivory envelopes unopened in his father’s rolltop.
“Not yet. I’m sure they explain your position. They are beautiful envelopes, Vonnie. That guy has some bona-fide stationery. My theory is that beautiful envelopes are full of terrible news. I can wait if you can.”
“You are still proud. And you are dumb as a stone.”
“Don’t let the stones hear you talking that way.”
There had been a dozen ups and downs before Mack really went down. He had lived forever at the edge of his money and he was tired of it. After they were first married, he had to rent the place out and he and Vonnie took a place in Driggs, across the border, an old refurbished trailer at the end of a road for the grayest year of his life. At first it was right. He could feel the money they were saving, positive four hundred dollars a month, almost, working the mortgage along, but the stupid place was built into the hillside and cold at all times and actually not even level, but they were in love and poor and so fine, but then they wore out poor and they did some damage to love. Her parents offered help and they took some, and it stung Mack and he took the stinging as a weakness, but he could not turn it into anything good.
He remembered one day when she came out of the little tin bath in just her shirttails holding up a pair of her underwear to the light and he could see them worn thin and she was laughing, saying, “This is us in the glory days, my ass a millimeter from the world. If I have to go to the hospital, change my drawers first, please. Promise me. Go to Woolworth’s and get me a highwaist pair of whities before they operate.”
She was laughing and laughing, and so he swallowed it all and laughed too, the poor ranch owner a millimeter away from losing the deed. But it hit him and was a seed of his desperation. He was working odd jobs, one in a bookstore drugstore/drive-thru liquor in Driggs, and she was teaching piano out at the ranchsteads. In the spring, when they moved to Jackson and took a two-bedroom townhouse a hundred dollars over their budget, the farmer they had rented from hauled their terrible trailer out to his summer house and buried it for a septic tank. They had laughed about that too. Seven years ago or six, he forgot.