Chapter 10 - The Man of Wind and Moss

Part Two: The Man of Wind and Moss

As predicted, the whole thing would’ve been easier in the day, but, by the grace of God, the path still proved relatively simple to follow. Highlighted markers wrapped around branches and the skinny trunks of white pines. Blazes on bigger trees tilted them right and cautioned them left. The air was cool, and mosquitoes buzzed and bit at their sweaty necks, and the six of them moved along in small bobbing motions as if on camelback.

Marco took point and Pansy kept right behind him, her headlight over his shoulder scanning left to right at every branch snap and rustle of ferns. Marco liked having her nearby. She was trying to show everyone that she had what it took. Like the comment she made in the car lot, she wasn’t infirm. Not by a long shot. She kept her back straight and she planted each boot down assuredly, stepping on rocks and over fallen branches. Dean had fallen to the back, talking bullshit with Keith, and there was a suggestion in Pansy’s reticence that she and he needed some time apart after being cooped up in a car for several hours. Marco looked at the map Paula had given him. It was clearly marked at numbered miles that coincided with wooden posts stuck in the ground or nailed to a tree. Perhaps the rest would come easy, he thought. The cabin wasn’t in sight yet, but maybe the worst of it was over.

Thus far, his biggest regret, maybe unsurprisingly, was his stubbornness to bring along the guitar. Now, sweaty in his left hand, he was feeling its strain on his shoulder and a growing tension in his forearm. It tilted him to the left, which made him have to readjust the bag on his back. His muscles were tightening, and he felt a cramp coming on. He tried to distract himself with talk.

“How was the car ride?” he asked. White blazes on a tree announced the path was still straight ahead. He moved at a humble pace and listened to Pansy catch up a little and appear at his shoulder.

“How do you think?” It dripped with sarcasm.

“You guys looked tense at lunch.”

“You’re fishing for drama,” she said. He could sense her smirk. He smiled too.

“I’m not fishing for nothing,” he said.

“Just ask what we were fighting about,” she said. “You can do it.”

“Oh, come on.”

“If you want the goss, you gotta ask for the goss, it’s that simple.”

“Okay, bet. What were you guys fighting about?”

“When?”

“At lunch.”

“Today?”

“Man, fuck you.”

Pansy laughed. She turned to him, and her headlight made him wince. He couldn’t see her face behind it. “Am I blinding you? Do you hate this?”

Marco flashed his light back in her eyes and she retreated. “You’re a crazy person.”

“If you really want to know, we were fighting because he’s quote unquote closing the loop on some girls he’d been seeing.”

“Closing the loop?”

“Quote unquote.”

He thought about what Sasha said in the car ride over. Nobody wants you to make it awkward. The two walked shoulder to shoulder, and he kept his eyes on the ground before him, his boots stepping over gnarled roots and mossy stones so dark in the night they looked dipped in ink. He could tell by her headlight that Pansy kept glancing over at him for a response. Any follow-up question seemed silly. How does that make you feel? They fought the whole way over, you could glean enough from that, Marco thought. But if he chose full neutral, then he might lose her trust as a confidant. That was always the tricky part about their relationship. She came to him because she knew that more often than not, he’d take her side and blindly dunk on whoever crossed her—Dean, a boss, a teacher, Doll. But goddamn, why was this ballet so hard? Didn’t he bring her to this cabin to confess his love to her in the first place? Isn’t that why his back was pinching and his arm hurt? Because he brought a guitar on an hour hike like an absolute clown? Here he was measuring his response when he should be grabbing her hand and pulling her into a nearby glade and kissing her, holding her, spilling himself onto her feet beneath the stars, brilliant and dead, the last thing they witness romance.

“Well?” Pansy said, breaking his thought. “Any opinions on that?”

But wait, what else was it that Sasha said? Marco felt dirty repeating it to Pansy. Co-opting it. But Sasha was far enough behind not hear, so he went for it.

“I care about you in a lot of different ways,” he said.

Pansy went quiet. She smiled. She nodded. Before she spoke—

“How much further?” Keith called from the back of the line. “My legs are gonna give out.”

Marco put the flashlight in his mouth and looked at the map. They were twenty minutes out. He looked back and adjusted his glasses. He didn’t realize he had been sweating, and his frames had slid a bit down his nose. “Like twenty minutes!” he shouted back.

Keith gave a shrill scream from the back of the line. Ice stole over Marco’s chest, but then Doll and Dean laughed and then Dean screamed too. Marco let a smile form. They were just kidding. The good energy had returned. Marco played along and screamed into the night. Then Pansy. Then Sasha.

And then someone else screamed.

“Who was that?” Pansy asked.

Marco had heard it but couldn’t make sense of it. His smile faded.

The person screamed again. It was a woman. Far away. Marco pointed his flashlight to the tree line. He couldn’t see anything. The trees were too thick. The ferns so unruly. Days earlier he had studied up on the flora of the Adirondacks. He had been ready to spot beardtongues and blue flags and milkweeds and Great Blue Lobelias, blue columns of curled knuckles. But now there seemed some twisted irony as his first venture into the woods was at night. He couldn’t tell one plant apart from the next. Each one looked black, dark green, shaded violet, all bleached of color if he put his light on them. Through the dashes of night between the trees he only saw more night. The screaming woman could’ve been a yard away and still in darkness.

“Did you guys hear that?” Doll asked. The concern in her voice made Marco’s throat tighten.

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, turning the flashlight in her direction. Over her shoulder Keith’s backpack caught the light and the reflectors on his shoulder glimmered like yellow eyes.

“Ow, blinding me, hello,” Doll said, turning her face.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s nothing,” Keith repeated, surprisingly confident. “We were screaming first. Maybe it’s an echo or like a call and repeat. Like a hiking game.”

“A hiking game?” Doll asked.

“We did start screaming first,” Sasha said. She made a look at Marco and then also looked at Pansy like she was trying to predict what they had just been talking about.

“But our screams were playful and hers weren’t,” Doll said.

“Doll, come on, don’t try to scare people,” Pansy said.

“What if it’s the other hunter?”

“It was a woman scream.”

“So?”

“Enough,” Dean said. “We can’t figure out anything standing here in the dark, and I’m not trying to argue while my knees buckle. Can we keep going?”

“He’s right,” Marco said. “Let’s go.” He made a move forward along the path.

“They’ll probably scream back, look,” Keith said and then he let out a large, aggressive scream.

The six of them waited in the dark, each one’s light on a different patch of trees. The woman’s scream never came.

“Guess she’s done playing,” Keith said.

“Let’s just move,” Marco urged. He kept walking and before long he realized Pansy stopped keeping up with him. The distance between him and the others grew, but he was fine with that. He didn’t want them to see him worried.