I should think the guy who made the trail would like it to be used.
Yes, thats what we said.
As they ascended they saw three or four more of these little staircases, always making a hard section easier. After an hour or so the slope laid back in a graceful curve, and they were on the rounded top of the hill. Pemetic Mountain, said a wooden sign on a post stuck into a giant pile of stones. 1,247 feet.
The top was an extensive flat ridge, running south toward the ocean. Its knobby bare rock was interspersed with low bushes and sandy patches. Lichen of several different colors spotted the bedrock and the big erratics left on the ridge by the ice some granite, others schist. Exposed rock showed glacial scouring and some remaining glacial polish. It resembled any such knob in the Sierra, although the vegetation was a bit more lush. But the air had a distinct salt tang, and off to the south was the vast plate of the ocean, blue as could be, starting just a couple miles away at the foot of the ridge. Amazing. Forested islands dotted the water offshore; wisps of fog lay farther out to sea. To the immediate right and left rose other mountain tops, all rounded to the same whaleback shape. The peaks to both east and west were higher than this one, and the biggest one, to the east, had a road running up its side, and a number of radio towers poking up through its summit forest. The ice cap had carved deep slots between the peaks, working down into fault lines in the granite between each dome. Behind them, to the north, lay the forested low hills of Maine, trees green over snowy ground.
Beautiful, Frank said. Its mountains and ocean both. I cant believe it.
Caroline gave him a hug. I was hoping you would like it.
Oh yes. I didnt know the east coast had such a place as this.
Theres nowhere else quite like it, she said.
They hugged for so long it threatened to become something else; then they separated and wandered the peak plateau for a while. It was cold in the wind, and Caroline shivered and suggested they return. Theres a real trail down the northeast side, the Ravine Trail. It goes down a little cut in the granite.
Okay.
They headed off the northeast shoulder of the hill, and were quickly down into scrubby trees. Here the ice had hit the rock head on, and the enormous pressures had formed the characteristic upstream side of a drumlin: smooth, rounded, polished, any flaw stripped open. And exposed to air for no more than ten thousand years; thus there was hardly any soil on this slope, which meant all the trees on it were miniaturized. They hiked down a good trail through this krummholz like giants.
It was a familiar experience for Frank, and yet this time he was following the lithe and graceful figure of his lover or girlfriend or he didnt know what, descending neatly before him, like a tree goddess. Some kind of happiness or joy or desire began to seep under his worry. Surely it had been a good idea to come here. He had had to do it; he couldnt have not done it.
The trail led them into the top of a narrow couloir in the granite, a flaw from which all loose rock had been plucked. Cedar beams were set crosswise in the bottom of this ravine, forming big solid stairs, somewhat snowed over. The sidewalls were covered with lichen, moss, ice. When they came out of the bottom of the couloir, the stairboxes underfoot were replaced by a long staircase of immense rectangular granite blocks.
This is more like the usual trail on the east side, Caroline said, pointing at these monstrous field stones. For a while, the thing they liked to do was make granite staircases, running up every fault line they could find. Sometimes therell be four or five hundred stairs in a row.
Youre kidding.
No. Every peak on the east side has three or four trails like that running up them, sometimes right next to each other. The redundancy didnt bother them at all.
So they really were works of art.
Yes. But the National Park didnt get it, and when they took over they closed a lot of the trails and took them off the maps. But since the trails have these big staircases in them, they last whether theyre maintained or not. Marys dad collected old maps, and was part of a group that went around finding the old trails. Now the park is restoring some of them.
Ive never seen anything like it.
I dont think there is anything like it. Even here they only did this for a few years. It was like a fad. But a fad in granite never goes away.
Frank laughed. It looks like something the Incas might have done.
It does, doesnt it? She stopped and looked back up the snowy stone steps, splotchy here with pale green lichen.
I can see why you would want to stay here, Frank said cautiously when they started again.
Yes. I love it.
But
I think Im okay, she said.
For a while they went back and forth on this, saying much the same things they had said at the house. Whether Ed would look at her subjects, whether he would be able to find Mary
Finally Frank shrugged. You dont want to leave here.
Its true, she said. I like it here. And I feel hidden.
But now you know better. Someone looked for you and they found you. Thats got to be the main thing.
I guess, she muttered.
They came to the road they had parked beside. They walked back to his van and she had him drive south, down the shore of Jordan Pond.
Some of my first memories are from here, she said, looking out the window at the lake. We came almost every summer. I always loved it. That lasted for several years, Id guess, but then her parents got divorced and I stopped seeing her, and so I stopped coming.
Ah.
So, we did start college together and roomed that first year, but to tell the truth, I hadnt thought of her for years. But when I was thinking about how to really get away, if I ever wanted to, I remembered it. I never talked to Ed about Mary, and I just made the one call to her here from a pay phone.
What did you say to her?
I gave her the gist of the situation. She was willing to let me stay.
Thats good. Unless, you know I just dont know. I mean, you tell me just how dangerous these guys are. Some shots were fired that night in the park, after you left. My friends were the ones who started it, but your ex and his friends definitely shot back. And so, given that
Now she looked appalled. I didnt know.
Yeah. I also I threw a rock at your ex, he added lamely.
You what?
I threw my hand axe at him. I saw a look on his face I didnt like, and I just did it.
She squeezed his hand. Her face had the grim inward expression it took on whenever she was thinking about her ex. I know that look, she muttered. I hate it too. And then: Im sorry Ive gotten you into this.
No. Anyway, I missed him. Luckily. But he saw the rock go by his head, or felt it. He took off running down the Metro stairs. So he definitely knows something is up. Frank didnt mention going by their apartment afterward and ringing the doorbell; he was already embarrassed enough about the hand axe. So, what Im still worried about is if he starts looking, and, you know, happens to replicate what my friends friend did.
I know. She sighed. I guess Im hoping that hes not all that intent on me anymore. I have him chipped, and hes always in D.C., at the office, moving from room to room. Ive got him covered in a number of ways a spot cam on our apartment entry, and things like that, and he seems to be following his ordinary routine.
No. Anyway, I missed him. Luckily. But he saw the rock go by his head, or felt it. He took off running down the Metro stairs. So he definitely knows something is up. Frank didnt mention going by their apartment afterward and ringing the doorbell; he was already embarrassed enough about the hand axe. So, what Im still worried about is if he starts looking, and, you know, happens to replicate what my friends friend did.
I know. She sighed. I guess Im hoping that hes not all that intent on me anymore. I have him chipped, and hes always in D.C., at the office, moving from room to room. Ive got him covered in a number of ways a spot cam on our apartment entry, and things like that, and he seems to be following his ordinary routine.
Even so he could be doing that while sending some of his team here to check things out.
She thought about it. Sighed a big sigh. I hate to leave here when there might not be a reason to.
Frank said nothing; his presence was itself proof of a reason. Thus his appearance had indeed been a bad thing. The transitive law definitely applied to emotions.
She had directed him through some turns, and now they were driving around the head of Somes Sound again, back toward her place. As he slowed through Somesville, he said, Where should we put my van?
She ran her hands through her short curls, thinking it over. Lets put it down where my car is. Im parked at the south end of Long Pond, at the pump house there. First drop me off at the house, then drive down there, and Ill sail down on the iceboat and pick you up.
So he turned at the firehouse, drove to her camp and dropped her off at the house, feeling nervous as he did so. Then he followed her instructions, back toward Southwest Harbor, then west through the forest again, on a winding small road. He only had a rough sense of where he was, but then he was driving down an incline, and the smooth white surface of Long Pond appeared through the trees. The southern end of its long arm was walled on both sides by steep granite slopes, six or seven hundred feet high: a pure glacial U, floored by a lake.
He parked in the little parking lot by the pump house and got out. The wind from the north slammed him in the face. Far up the lake he saw a tiny sail appear as if out of the rock wall to the left. It looked like a big windsurfing sail. Faster than he would have thought possible it grew larger, and the iceboat swept up to the shore, Caroline at the tiller, turning it in a neat curlicue at the end, to lose speed and drift backwards to shore.
Amazing, Frank said.
Here, wait park your van up in those trees, just past the stop sign up there.
Frank did so and then returned to the craft, stepped in and stowed his daypack before the mast. The iceboat was a wooden triangular thing, obviously handmade, more like a big soap box derby car than a boat. Three heavy struts extended from the cockpit box, one ahead and two sideways and back from the cockpit. It was an odd-looking thing, but the mast and sails seemed to have been scavenged from an ordinary sloop, and Caroline was obviously familiar with it. Her face was flushed with the wind, and she looked pleased in a way Frank had never seen before. She pulled the sail taut and twisted the tiller, which set the angles of the big metal skates out at the ends of the rear struts, and with a clatter they gained speed and were off in a chorus of scraping.
The iceboat did not heel in the wind, but when gusts struck it merely squeaked and slid along even faster, the skates making a loud clattery hiss. When a really strong gust hit, the craft rocketed forward with a palpable jolt. Franks eyes watered heavily under the assault of the wind. He ducked when Caroline told him to, their heads together as the boom swung over them as part of a big curving tack. To get up the narrow lake against the wind they would have to tack a lot; the craft did not appear able to hold too close to the wind.
As they worked their way north, Caroline explained that Marys grandfather had built the iceboat out of wood left over from when he had built the garage. He built everything there, even some of the furniture. He dug out the cellar, built the chimney, the terraces, the dock and rowboats Marys father had told them about this; Caroline had met the grandfather only once, when she was very young.
This last month Ive been feeling like hes still around the place, like a ghost, but in the best kind of way. The first night I got here the electricity wasnt on and there was no sound at all. I never realized how used to noise weve gotten. That theres always some kind of sound, even if its only the refrigerator.
Usually its a lot more than that, Frank said, thinking of how D.C. sounded from his treehouse.
Yes. But this time it was completely quiet. I began to hear myself breathing. I could even hear my heart beat. And then there was a loon on the lake. It was so beautiful. And I thought of Marys grandfather building everything, and it seemed like he was there. Not a voice, just part of the house somehow. It was comforting.
Good for him, Frank said. He liked the sound of such a moment, also the fact that she had noticed it. It occurred to him again how little he knew her. She was watching the ice ahead of the boat, holding the boom line and the tiller in place, making small adjustments, splayed in the cockpit as if holding a kind of dance position with the wind. And there they were barreling across the frozen surface of the lake, the ice blazing in a low tarnished sun that was smeared out in long bars of translucid cloud the wind frigid, and flying through him as if the gusts were stabs of feeling for her for the way she was capable, the way she liked it out here. He had thought she would be like this, but they had spent so little time together he could not be sure. But now he was seeing it. His Caroline, real in the sunlight and the wind. A gust of wind was a surge of feeling.
She brought the iceboat around again, east to west, and continued the smooth curve west, as they were now shooting into the channel that began the other arm of the lakes Y. Here the north wind was somewhat blocked by the peninsula separating the two arms of the lake, and the ice boat slid along with less speed and noise. Then another curve, and they were headed into the wind again, on the short arm of the Y, running up to a little island she called Rum Island, which turned out to be just a round bump of snow and trees in the middle of a narrow part of the lake.
As they were about to pass Rum Island, something beeped in Carolines jacket pocket. Shit! she said, and snatched out a small device, like a handheld GPS or a cell phone. She steered with a knee while she held it up to her face to see it in the sunlight. She cursed again. Someones at camp.
She swerved, keeping Rum Island between the boat and Marys place. As they approached the island she turned into the wind and let loose the sail, so that they skidded into a tiny cove and onto a gravel beach no bigger than the ice boat itself. They stepped over the side onto icy gravel, and tied the boat to a tree, then made their way to the islands other side. The trees on the island hooted and creaked like the Sierras in a storm, a million pine needles whooshing their great chorale. It was strange to see the lake surface perfectly still and white under the slaps of such a hard blow.
Across that white expanse, the green house and its little white boathouse were the size of postage stamps. Caroline had binoculars in the boat, however, and through them the houses lake side was quite distinct; and through its big windows there was movement.