Sex & Sourdough (10 page)

Kevin had left Anders relaxing in the shelter while he went to fill out their backcountry camping permits so they could get into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“Hey there, Speedster!” The retired police officer who called herself Bumblebee waved at him and sat down on the love seat next to him.

“Speedster?”

“Yeah. We’ve been a day or two behind you since Mountain Crossings! Of course, I’m slow.”

“Meaning we’re only doing twelve or so miles each day,” Doc chimed in, stretching his knees. “How are you enjoying the Fontana Hilton?”

“So far it’s pretty cool,” Anders said. “The dam…. Well, it isn’t really what I think of when I think of big dams, but the lake is pretty. We’ve been staying in shelters so much I almost don’t feel like I’m camping anymore. We saw a cool waterfall on the walk into Franklin, though. How about you?”

“We hitched into town, and I was reminded how grateful I am that every town with more than ten thousand people has at least one Chinese buffet,” she announced. “If you aren’t crazy about Speedster, what else do you go by?”

“Anders.”

“Just Anders? Your name Alexander?”

“No, it’s Anders.”

“Then that don’t work. You got to have a nickname. Hey, Spider!” she called, her Southern accent becoming more pronounced as she got louder. A young black man with his hair in short braids smiled and came over. “This here is Spider,” Bumblebee said. “The first thing he says to me when he finds out I used to be a law enforcement officer was ‘I don’t do anything illegal!’
Which, of course, means he does. Spider, this is Anders. I was going to call him Speedster, since he got so far ahead of us, but he wants something else. Any ideas?”

The young man stared at Anders and grinned. “Chester.”

“Chester?” Anders laughed. “What?”

“Like Cheetos, man,” another hiker, a tall man with long brown dreadlocks, cried. “Chester Cheetah!”

“I’m not that fast. Sourdough’s been dragging me this whole time,” Anders insisted.

“Shoe!” the other man suggested, plopping down on the floor of the shelter. Spider elbowed him in greeting. “I’m Chuck, but this asshole’s been calling me Chex Mix since I first dragged him out hiking.”

“Chex Mix?” Anders looked between them, confused.

“First time I came into a town with a grocery store, the food cravings set in. I saw this big display of Chex Mix bags.” He shook his head happily. “Most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, man. I got a bit carried away.”

“So why Shoe?”

“Slowest Hiker on Earth,” Spider translated. “But he ain’t slow. Unless someone’s been carrying him, he stayed ahead of us on his own two feet. Where you from?”

“Florida.”

“Oh! Another Florida boy!” Chex Mix crowed. “Dude, me and Spider are both from Pensacola! Where you from?”

“Jacksonville.”

“Ah, there you go!” Spider grinned. “Jax.”

“Just because I’m from Jax doesn’t mean I like it enough to advertise it.”

“It’s Jax.” Spider grew serious. “There’s nothing there to like. It’s still where you’re from.”

“There’s….” Anders hesitated. It was true that Jacksonville didn’t have any of the huge tourist attractions the rest of Florida had. No white sand beaches like on the Gulf Coast, no theme parks, no space program. The area around Jacksonville was filled with oak and palmetto forests, wetlands and beautiful marshes, but the town itself was nothing to brag about. “All right, so there’s nothing there to like. But a trail name’s supposed to be special, right?”

Spider shrugged.

“What’s special depends on how long you’ve been on the trail,” Bumblebee explained. “Or how much teasing you’re willing to put up with before you start throwing things at people.”

“She’s right,” Spider agreed. “Me, I got my trail name because this old guy named Pirate saw my hair and screamed that I had a spider on my head. Literally screamed it, in the middle of a store. The more embarrassed I got, the more it stuck.”

“Chex Mix and Spider….” Anders laughed. “You know, actual Chex Mix sounds really good right now. Or popcorn.”

“Chex empties whatever’s in the vending machines,” Spider warned him. “If you want any, you’ll have to fight him for it.”

Anders stared at the man with dreadlocks. “You don’t look that big,” he said, trying to keep his voice serious.

They all laughed, and Spider slapped Anders on the knee. “The names you get along the way are the ones that stick, and they’re the best, even if you don’t think so at the time,” Spider explained. “I think you’re stuck with Speedster.”

“Or Butch.” Bumblebee laughed. “That’s what Sourdough christened him, anyway.”

“Butch?” Chex Mix grinned. “That totally works. It’s always the scrawny little dudes you got to watch out for.”

Anders rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.

Anders listened to them all tell stories of their hometowns and their motivations for hiking the Appalachian Trail. More hikers wandered in, and several joined their growing circle around the fire. A father with two young sons in tow, who called himself Papa Bear, came in near sunset. The boys were twelve-year-old twins who insisted on going by Batman and Captain America. A lone young woman who looked about Anders’s age came in and introduced herself as Caboose, and Anders learned she had been the slowest hiker on the trail the first time she tried backpacking. Because she was only five feet tall, her short stride left her bringing up the rear of any group she hiked with.

Kevin came in, permits in hand, and sat down on the floor near the stone hearth. Anders winced when he saw how Kevin curled up, obviously sore. Anders gave up his spot on the love seat and moved to sit beside him.

“You okay?” he whispered.

Kevin shrugged innocently and smiled.

Anders had made use of the public computer at the last hostel, looking up systemic lupus erythematosus and all of its many effects. At first it had been hard to believe that Kevin could really be sick, but the more Anders looked at him, the more he began to put the pieces together. Lupus was a treatable disease, but it could still produce fatal complications, including renal failure, liver failure, and heart attacks. The worst part, though, was the fatigue and arthritis-like pain that were the hallmarks of the disease. Anders couldn’t imagine facing the reality of his own mortality, much less facing the pain of having his own body attacking his joints and muscles every day. Kevin’s fear was justifiable, especially since he lost his father to the same disease.

Anders looked at him and saw the hallmarks of the disease on his face, although Kevin tried to hide it beneath that horrible beard. Anders sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall beside him. “How’d it go?”

“Fine. We’ve got ten days, but it’s not going to take that long. Seventy miles, all up and down, should take us about five days.”

“Cool. I’m excited to see it. I kept thinking about all those old folk songs about the Smoky Mountains, you know?”

“Uh… I don’t listen to much except heavy metal.”

“Well, you’re missing out,” Anders insisted. He leaned back and listened to the thumps and pings of the rain. It almost sounded like a banjo when he closed his eyes. They listened to stories for a long time that night. Anders found he didn’t want to leave Kevin’s side, but he didn’t have an excuse to stay, either. When Caboose ended up moving into Spider’s lap, most of the other hikers quietly excused themselves, and Kevin nudged Anders in the shoulder, hinting that they should do the same.

Anders had noticed Kevin had been quiet and uncomfortable around him for several days, and he assumed they wouldn’t be able to talk about why until they were alone on the trail. But Anders had set out his bag next to Kevin in hopes of being able to talk to him anyway. The shelter had filled up because of the rain, so there was nowhere for Kevin to escape to. Most people weren’t huddling down in their sleeping bags just yet, though.

Anders watched Kevin set his running shoes down at the far end of his bag, take off everything except his boxers and tank top, and scoot into his tight mummy bag. Anders took off his boots and sat down on top of his own sleeping bag. He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“I have to ask,” he said softly. “Why are you out here?”

“I like to hike.”

“I figured out that much,” Anders said slowly. “But why are you thru-hiking? You already did it once. Why try to do it again? If it was just a bucket list kind of thing, why do it again?”

“I didn’t get to enjoy this whole section of the trail last time.”

“Was that when you got sick?”

“Nope. I got sicker.”

“A flare?”

In the dim light in the shelter, Anders saw Kevin sit up and stare at him.

“There was Wi-Fi and I was curious,” Anders explained, hoping Kevin wouldn’t be mad at him.

Kevin’s shoulders rose and fell, and then he dropped his head back down. Anders breathed out, relieved.

“Yes, a flare,” Kevin said, and his voice seemed to come more easily. “My blood pressure started to go up. It got high enough to hurt my kidneys. At the same time, my hands started to hurt more in the cold. They spasm and the blood vessels contract. It almost cuts off the circulation to my fingers. It hurts. A lot. I didn’t have meds for that. The right blood-pressure medication can control both, so I’m still here—just with four pills a day instead of three.”

“Huh. Guess it’s not like vegetables are really possible out here….”

“What do vegetables have to do with blood-pressure medication?”

“My father…,” Anders said, gesturing wildly in the air. “He had a stroke two years ago. He was on blood-pressure medication for a long time, and it didn’t help. After the stroke, he managed to get off the medication by eating a lot of vegetables. Pretty much nothing but vegetables, to be honest. It worked, though, when three different blood-pressure medications all failed. Who knows if it would even work the same, with your immune system….”

“I eat vegetables,” Kevin insisted. “There were mushrooms on the pizza, and we find blueberries at least once a day. We’ll be up in Virginia in about three weeks, and there are wild strawberries there too. Of course, the ponies eat most of them.”

“Ponies?” Anders hoisted himself on his elbow.

“Yeah. You haven’t heard about them?”

“No.”

“As soon as you get into Virginia, near Mount Rogers, there is a big herd of wild ponies. They’ll come right up and lick you, if you’re covered in sweat.”

“Wild ponies? Like Old West wild ponies?”

Anders saw Kevin shake his head quickly. “Not wild horses. Real ponies. Like the tiny little kind they let kids ride on at carnivals.”

“Why are there wild ponies in Virginia?”

“I have no idea. They’re cute, though.”

“Sounds like that’s going to be a fun day.”

“Fun weekend. The trail goes down into a little town called Damascus just before it hits Mount Rogers, and it’s an awesome little town. Best place to stop ever. Everybody’s friendly, everybody’s helpful, and the trail goes straight through town, so you don’t even have to hitchhike. If you ever go through Damascus earlier in the season, they have this big party called Trail Days. They have a hiker parade where everybody gets pelted with water balloons and squirt guns. I only got to hear about it last year, because I was going the other way.” Kevin grew quiet for a moment. “And we started too late to go this year.”

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Started too late, just so you have an excuse to hike next year too.”

“No,” Kevin said. “I need to find a warmer place to hike next year. I might hop on a bus and come just for the party, though.”

Anders kept Kevin talking, asking questions about the trail itself and about his first attempt at hiking this section the previous year. When Kevin finished, Anders asked him questions about the Pacific Crest Trail and growing up in Bishop. Talking about hiking put Kevin at ease more than anything else except making bread. When Kevin ran out of hiking stories, Anders tried to get him to talk about bread again, anything to keep him from going back to avoiding his gaze. Kevin yawned and rolled over, facing Anders with his eyes only half-open. His answer faded into sleepy mumbles.

“Are you mad at me?” Anders asked.

Kevin huffed and smiled. It might have been a laugh, if he’d been more awake. “Embarrassed.”

“Over being sick?”

Kevin cracked his eyes open a bit wider. He pressed his lips tight together and trembled, obviously trying not to laugh.

“Oh, come on. What is it?”

Kevin shook his head, rolled onto his stomach, and buried his face in his sleeping bag. “Good night, Anders.”

The next day left Anders with plenty of doubts about which one of them was sick and which was healthy. The climb to the first shelter inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was almost ten miles, and large chunks of it seemed straight up. Anders had to stop to catch his breath more often than he wanted to admit, and the way Kevin just kept climbing like a damn mountain goat was as impressive as it was annoying. Five miles up, Anders stumbled upon Kevin eating a sandwich on a boulder and looking totally relaxed in the late afternoon sun. Kevin held out a sandwich for him as he collapsed on the rock.

“You okay?” Kevin asked when Anders didn’t attack the offered food.

Anders had to gulp down a few deep breaths before he could force out an answer. “Switchbacks…,” he gasped. “I know Georgia’s heard of switchbacks. Why the hell aren’t there any switchbacks in North Carolina?”

Kevin shrugged. “Steps, switchbacks…. They all go up.”

“Not straight up,” Anders gasped. He took a long pull from his water bottle and then reached for the proffered sandwich. “Thank you.”

“Sure. I had all the time in the world, waiting on you.”

“It’s straight up!”

“We’re halfway there. I got a chance to make bread, and to take pictures, waiting on you.”

“I stopped to stare at the mountains as much as I stopped to rest. The fog is really pretty.”

Kevin smiled at him, and suddenly Anders felt like he could keep climbing forever provided he could see Kevin’s smiling face waiting for him at the top of the mountain. The warmth that spread through him hit him harder than any attraction he had ever felt. It left him light-headed, feeling like the rocks beneath his feet were trembling.