by Frank Haberle
hot chocolate
The
Gas-Man warned them about the volcano, that sometimes it wasn’t so bad.
Sometimes nothing happens at all. Other times, something happens.
“You
don’t want to be up on the mountain if it gets bad,” he said. He scratched his
head, looking out across the bay at the shimmering peaks, just frosted with the
first September snow. “The ash is one thing. But there’s another thing you got
to look out for down here for real, and that’s the flats at low tide. Every
year we lose a visitor out there by the bend. They get all hypnotized, I guess,
when the water rushes out and that sand, it glimmers like toothpaste, what with
the mountains all snowy in a ring round the bay, the sparkles shining in the
still water puddles, the glass-lookey rocks and the sea-plant glimmer green, they
can’t help it. They don’t know, the visitors. But we know. We know when the
tide shifts and starts coming in, and you better get up quick. Because the
thing is it ain’t the sand, it’s the mud beneath the sand and it sucks down
your feet and that’s it man, the tides rise eight feet and think of it. Just think
of it. They try to rescue them but the head goes under and they end up pulling
on limp arms. It’s like that. There’s a sign there. Read the sign. Shit.”
The
Gas-Man told them this while pouring gas from a faucet at the end of a rusting drum,
then pouring that gasoline into Katie’s car with a watering can. It was five
bucks to fill it.
“That
will be five bucks,” The Gas-Man said. He took the five singles from Dale
without looking at him. He walked across the muddy road to the beat-up diner
with the picture window, ordered two cans of beer and sat there staring out at
the flats.
Katie
and Dale drove on, following the mud road around the last arm, and that’s where
the wind first hit. They pulled up onto a rise and Katie’s old Datsun,
bald-tired, groaned itself asleep while they rushed to get the tent up, slapping
the fly and the buckling tent poles into place. They tried to get a fire going
but with the wind and the sea spray they quickly gave up and climbed in the
tent. Outside, the early nightfall darkened the sea. The tide rolled toward them
like a giant log, or like a runaway pack of horses, all white foam and
splashing, a brown surge of sea horses wrapping around the bare little knoll.
Sea horses. Dale could not unsee the sea horses, just outside the tent, dancing
and laughing at all the terror they brought. He wanted to say something,
something reassuring, to Katie. She was rolled up on her side of the tent with
a flashlight, reading a self-help book by Shirley MacLean. He decided not to
bother her. The rushing surf never made it as high as the tent, and Dale
drifted off to sleep.
*
They
were a mile up the trail when the rain blew in. This rain was like somebody
threw a bucket of cold water on them, sideways, in an arcing motion, again and
again. It blew straight through their cheap
ponchos and poured down their backs. It hung to their ribs. They plodded up that rocky track through a tangled,
drippy forest, for hours and hours. Dale was yelling ‘Yo bear’ and ‘Here bear’ so
much he thought they’d never see a bear. They didn’t see any bears. The track
became increasingly overgrown, with big slippery vines reaching down from the
branches. They pushed through and climbed higher and then a clearing emerged on
the edge of the tree line, a rock shelf with a creek plunging back down ten
miles to the safety of the car. The rain had stopped by then and thin trails of
light filtered down from the bowl of mountains above.
They
set up the tent in silence. Dale tried to get a fire going again, but the wood
was soaked through. He set up the camper stove. It spat out little blue flames.
Katie cupped her hands beneath the pot. She was finished. She was angry. She
was angry at Dale. This last hike was Dale’s idea. And she was angry at the
bears. She was angry at the mud and the slick rocks. They cooked a pot of
noodles and ate quietly, on another ledge, way from the tent. They climbed up
further and bear-hung their little bag of food in an old tree. They looked up
at the ledges, the green chrome of the plants clinging to the sides of the
black rocks, and that weird silver glacier light fading behind the
mountains. Then they climbed into their
bags. Katie snored immediately. Dale thought he was sleeping too. A lot of time
passed. Dale was listening. He was squeezed with fear. He thought he heard
something, a snort or a huff-huff. Then he
heard something else. He knows he heard it. Howling. Howling, like in the
movies. Dale couldn’t tell if they were standing outside the tent or on the
other side of the mountain. He opened his eyes. There was a strange green glow
to the tent’s thin skin, like there was a yellow moon was out there some place.
A brief cameo in a two-month swirl of clouds. He wasn’t going out there to
check. He was staying right there in the tent. Katie was curled up in her bag,
breathing quietly. Was she awake? Did she hear it? Was she as scared as Dale was?
He decided she was asleep. He thought about waking her up. He decided not to
wake her up.
*
In
the morning they wedged themselves between boulders that climbed up into a
ravine. Below them, in the shadows,
rocks skittered and splashed into a silty green plume of creek water. But then they
turned a corner and they were standing in a spectral bowl of morning light.
Everything was sparkling-the green and silver tundra, the rocks, the blue
streaks of mountain and the snow—like powdered crumb cake—resting gently on the
big peaks. It was a last breath of summer. The sky was clear blue like
porcelain, with just a brief hint of little puffers emerging from someplace
just beyond the ridge. They could see the pass, not like a ‘U’ now, but just a
little notch between two sharp, heavy mountains. Somebody who’d been there once
told Dale, if the weather clears, you can see the curve of the world from up
there. They would be there by the end of the day.
The
trail twisted around another bend and they came to a brilliant twenty-foot
waterfall. “Waterfall, waterfall,” Dale
said. Katie said nothing. There with the ice water bubbling down, she held out her
cold cupped hands. She held that water in her red hands for a moment, looking
into it, deeply looking in. Dale thought she wanted to show him something. But
when he walked up to her, she splashed the water on the rocks, and wiped her chilled
hands on her sweater. Within an hour, big bustling clouds
rose above the forest they just climbed from, and another wall of rain swept
down on them from the sea.
*
That second-day climb up to the pass
was even harder than the first. The higher they climbed, the harder it rained. Water
poured down the back of Dale’s backpack as they trudged up the trail, one foot
in front of the other. They were fully exposed to the wind’s breath pushing them
farther and farther up into the ledges. Dale really wanted to turn around, to
head back down; they’d given it a go. And there was no place to camp up there. They
needed some sort of shelter. Some sort of protection from the wind and ran. It
was only going to get colder. Dale knew that Katie felt the same way. But Katie
had this thing. This transformation. When she was in the wilderness, she was a
machine. She bulled her way to the top, shrugged, and bulled her way back to
the bottom. He saw her do this before. It was a quality Dale admired. He wished
he had it. He didn’t have it.
Then they saw it, almost at the same
time. In the ledges above, folded between two slates of rock, there was a tangled
twist of pine scrub. They both scrambled across the wet shale. They crawled under the branches in a tunnel
that opened to a sheltered cove, just big enough for the tent. It was the perfect setting to get trapped by
wolves or a bear, but they were too cold and wet to care. Wind whistled through the rocks and the green
tundra above them; but nestled in this place, they were sheltered. They set up the tent. He tried, again, to get
a fire going. “Fire, fire,” he said. Again, nothing—hissing but no fire. He got
the stove going and they cooked up some noodles.
The
wind died down and the rain stopped. They quietly ate their noodles. But then
there was something else—flecks of gray appeared in Dale’s bowl, then on his
wet sleeves, and the tent fly. And they
sprinkled down from the sky, and then more, and more, and a strange cloud,
darker, mounted the peaks just above us. Snow, Dale thought for a moment. The
first snow. But then there was a rumbling noise and a strong sudden smell, a sulphur. Everything was trimmed with angry orange.
Flames seemed to lick the bottom edges of the great cloud descending toward
them. Rocks started skittering above them.
The earth rumbled. Dale could feel it in his belly; in his teeth. Katie wrapped
a bandanna around her face. Dale did the same.
“Well, looks like we finally got a
fire started,” Kate said.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s
the volcano,” Katie mumbled, in a detached voice.
“What
do we do? Do we run? Do we run?”
“Too
late for that,” she said, more pissed than scared. “We crawl in the tent, I
guess. We crawl in the tent and die.”
*
At
some point Dale fell asleep but somewhere later he woke up entombed in an icy
blackness. He reached his hand out and the tent wall was leaning down on him,
heavy to touch, covered in something. He
climbed out into a world caked in gray ash. Everything. By the time they packed
up and broke camp it was smeared all over them—their clothes, gear and hair. They
crawled back out of the scrub brush. There was a deep, rich fog all around them.
Everything was a shade of gray—the mountain, the trees. Their boots made a sucky sound with each
sodden step. Dale thought they should go down the way they came. But Katie turned
up toward the gap to finish the job, and he followed.
It
started raining again, big plops of water slapping the ash. They passed through the gap but they couldn’t
see anything. The world was socked in.
“Some
view,” Dale said.
Katie
said nothing.
They
started climbing slowly down the other side, to the tree line. Now they were slipping, caked in the
muck of rain and gray ash. The mountains around them were shrouded in vapors. The
dense, cold rain turned the world into a clay-dripping, boot-sucking mess.
Some
hours later they came across an old abandoned ranger cabin. It was locked, but
it had a porch with a roof that was still pretty solid. They stood there,
stripped their clothes, and changed into the last dry clothes they had. They
got the stove going and made tea. The rain swept through the bowl of peaks
behind them. As they watched, the strangest thing happened—the mountains around
them started changing color. The gray ash started rubbing off in the rain.
Overnight, beneath the ash, the tundra had turned from green and silver to red,
gold, orange. Then the sun burst through the clouds that suddenly swept
themselves away. Everything erupted in a sea of sparkles.
*
Later, they were sitting next to a
spectral lake. The surface of the lake looked like mercury from the ash—silver
and bubbly with streaks of red and purple.
Darkness was creeping into the woods around them. The great scramble of
mountain peaks twisted their way, south and west, endless, standing in line to
fall into the sea.
Katie was slumped
on a boulder, staring at her boots. On rare moments when she lifted her
head, the clumps of dried volcanic ash in her long curly hair knocked together
like chimes. Every so often, Dale tried to say something cheerful or
sarcastic or brave. She looked up, mumbled something, shook her head and
turned back to her boots.
Dale tried,
again, to get a little fire going. The
birch bark, the fine needles. A hundred little sticks. A hundred bigger sticks.
A ring of rock. He tried a pyramid. He tried a log cabin. It hissed, and it
hissed.
After some
time, Kate took a deep breath.
“I miss my friends so much,” Katie said. “I miss the sun. I miss the desert.”
Dale started going on about how beautiful he thought
it was up there, how sad he was that they had to start heading back. He
just wanted to keep going, to head further down the chain of mountains and
islands, to see where it went, to see where it ended.
“Wouldn’t that be great, if we could do that?” Dale
said.
He didn’t really mean it. He was still terrified. To Dale, every boulder in the fading light was a bear. Every rustle of leaves was a pack of wolves. And the volcano—the volcano was still out there somewhere, just over that lip of mountains, a flaming spire, waiting to blow more ash and gas and death in their direction. He blew a damp match. He was running out of matches.
“I don’t know why you keep on with how beautiful it is here. I see no beauty here,” she said. “It’s like the end of the world, and it’s nowhere. It’s all so dead here.”
She
shrugged and looked away from Dale, staring into a bare stand of birch trees
sitting alone on a hill. Dale sat on a log across from her, blowing on the wet
little embers. He pictured her back with her friends in the desert, sitting cross-legged
on a rug drinking tea. He pictured himself, back and sitting alone at a bar in
the black-and-white shadows of a great city, slowly drinking himself to death.
Everything was different, but nothing had changed. All the things Dale wanted
to say required courage. He didn’t say them.
“That’s
cool,” Dale said to the back of Katie’s head. “We’ll be on our way
tomorrow." There. He said it.
And
as soon as he said it his little pile of bark and sticks burst suddenly,
resolutely into a bright ball of flames.
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