Getting Over a Mountain

1.

Memorial Day weekend had begun and with it my annual love affair with Lake Henry. Overnight the streets had filled with tourists and teenagers, trouble and time seemingly endless. It was the day after my fifth wedding anniversary and I had to work on the anniversary itself, so we had chosen to celebrate late. I had told Marie that if she made me a good breakfast we could spend the day doing anything she wanted. I had french toast and thick fat bacon and eggs and Pabst Blue Ribbon and Marie said; "let's hike Hope Mountain". I changed into gym shorts and filled a water bottle and we got in the car and drove through the now bustling village of Lake Henry.

The cars were backed up a half mile from the stoplight and we sat somewhere in it all. The a.c. wasn't working and we had the windows down. I watched girls in small shirts and smaller shorts and Marie did also. The weekend was a ninety degree record breaker and we were soaking through our clothes, but the view was nice.

"I hope we brought enough water," Marie said, not breaking her gaze.

"We'll find out, won't we?"

"True."

The light must have turned green because the cars ahead of us begun to lurch forward and we moved with them. Soon we were stopped again, but I could see the light now, just over the tops of the twenty or so cars in front of us. Sweat rolled down my forehead and followed my eyebrow, soaking into it. I was glad that I had remembered deodorant.

"Did you remember deodorant?" I asked.

"Shit. No."

I laughed.

"Damn it. I am going to stink so bad now," Marie said. "I'm already soaked as it is. Can you smell me now?"

"Not yet, but I am sure I will."

"Ugh," she said.

The light turned green and we followed the cars, crawled under it as it turned yellow and took a left onto a side street where there was no congestion. A left here, a right there, a stop sign at every corner and we found a place to park. It was only a quarter mile or so away from the trail head.

I locked up the car and tied my car keys to the lace in my shorts. I felt like there must have been something better to do with them, but I had no pockets and didn't want to chance leaving the keys in the wheel well or something and have someone run off with my car and trunk full of bottles that I still hadn't returned.

"Ready?" Marie asked.

"Yes ma'am."

We walked a few side streets in the back neighborhoods of Lake Henry and talked about how nice it would be to rent one of the houses here for a summer. How we would be so close to everything. How we could ride our bikes to the beach, or the park, and then not really have to worry about driving twenty minutes home if things became a little out of hand. We talked about it and then let it leave our heads before we had the nearly inevitable conversation about how nice it would be to just be able to pay our goddamned rent as it was.

We came to the trail head. A large grated steel staircase that led to a fenced in bridge crossing the interstate, which then led up to the mountain. We walked through the steel cage of the overpass and it reminded me of a ribcage and I thought about desert scenes and camel skeletons and vultures and thought about robots at the same time and thought about robot skeletons in the desert with Bubo from Clash of the Titans picking at the colossal steel bones jutting out of the post-apocalyptic Lake Henry waste land. Cars rushed loudly below us.

On the other side of the overpass, coming down the second staircase, I looked over the fence and saw small piles of sticks. 

"What are those?" Marie asked.

"Walking sticks, I think."

"Why the hell would people throw them over the fence like that?"

"I don't know. To be jerks I guess. They should leave them at the base of the path so other people can use them."

"Seriously. Jerks."

At the base of the path we turned a corner, into the treeline, the woods, the adventure, and there were walking sticks all over. Standing up against trees, lying in small piles on the ground. All over.

"Well, those other people are still jerks," Marie said.

The temperature dropped an easy ten degrees under the canopy. The slope was still gentle. Off to each side of us the occasional scuttle of a small invisible animal and all around us the fresh, clear scent of pine and stone and dirt and freedom. After a short comparison period I chose a walking stick from a pile. Marie took one.

Walking stick first, then step, we began climbing. It almost seemed to me as though using the walking stick instinctively made me walk worse. I could see the value of it, but not on such easy terrain. I kept it with me anyway. It was part of the experience.

"I'm glad we're doing this finally," Marie said. "I was really bummed that we pussied out the first time we tried it and I've been wanting to go hiking pretty bad lately."

"Me too, baby. Tired of being lazy."

"Yeah. That's what bothers me the most. I feel like I'm always tired and I never want to do anything, but I think it's because I'm so damned bored all the time. You know? I'm not really tired because I'm actually doing anything."

"Yep. I know. I feel like I do a lot, but when I look at the things I do, save for fucking working, it's a lot of sedentary shit. Like writing. Music. Website shit. You know? It's not like I coach soccer or weld shit in my free time. I don't know. Is welding a thing people like to do?"

"Sure."

"Well, then yeah, that's what I mean."

"Oh, I understand you. Believe me. Even when I am working, I'm just sitting at a desk all day," she said. "Then I come home and just want to lay down and watch television on the couch. It's awful. I mean, in the moment it's perfect, but after a while, you start thinking about it and it's awful. It's just... It makes you feel like the laziest piece of shit in the world, you know?"

"Yep."

We passed the sign in stand for the trail. We didn't sign in but on it someone had spray painted in pink; "LOVE EVERYTHING." I thought it was beautiful.

"But we're out now, doing something. Hiking this mountain. In the fresh air, the heat. We aren't pieces of shit today," I said.

"That's true, we aren't. I just hope we can do this type of stuff more often. I'd really like to just change our whole lifestyle."

"Agreed baby. Well, maybe not the whole lifestyle, but a large portion of it."

"Yes," she said. "That works."

The sunlight splintered on the ground around us. Bright glowing patches of leaves and rocks and puddles shimmered and the patches all swayed and shifted as the trees did. The forest was deep and manageable and beautiful and for a moment you could imagine that you would be safe there and that nothing could ever hurt you there. It offered lies of comfort, promises of safety. I thought of the sign in sheet and considered going back to sign in. I didn't.

We climbed a gentle slope of small rocks that may have been a stream for run off as the winter faded, but was now more a staircase.

"I can't believe we've been married for half a decade," Marie said.

"It's quite a while."

"Seriously, it is. And together for almost ten. Jesus. Most people I know can't stick it out past the first year or argument."

"Well, most people tend to just shack up with whatever will take them, I think. Especially as everyone we know are creeping into their thirties and are all realizing that we can't just fuck our way from bar to bar and be happy anymore. Rarely do I see a couple and think there was a real spark there. A courtship of any value. I don't know, I see a lot of people that I have known just sort of pairing up with each other, like 'Well, no one else wanted us, let's get together', 'Okay'. You know? But, I guess even those people could say; 'We've known each other for years, and it's always felt right', even though they've already fucked their way three or four times around their circle of friends."

"That got cynical fast."

"People settling depresses me," I said.

"But, not us, we didn't settle."

"No, we didn't. That's true. But that isn't to say we had the most ideal of origin stories."

"Fair enough."

"And it isn't to say that we didn't react poorly to the effects of a long term relationship when we both realized where it was going."

"You mean when we got married?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I know."

A chipmunk darted in front of us and I watched it disappear somewhere in the shadows and sticks to my left.

"It wasn't all my fault, you know," she said.

"I have never said it was."

"No, I know, it's just sometimes I can see it on you. Like sometimes after you've drank too much or we have an argument or things are just tough, sometimes I think I can see you still blaming me. Still holding it all against me."

"It still bothers me."

"So you do still hold it all against me?"

"No. Not really, I don't think."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"I mean, I've made a lot of progress with it. I've spent a long time now trying to understand it all. Trying to understand what any of it really meant. Justifications. Excuses. I've spent a long time telling myself that none of it matters now. We're past it all. We're better and stronger as a couple and as individuals now because of it. Sometimes though, I remember, you know?"

"Can I have the water bottle?"

I handed it to her and she took a drink. "No, I mean, yes. I remember too. I mean, I'm sure it was a different experience for you and your memories might be, I don't know, harsher? But I remember too."

"You don't remember. Believe me. You don't remember because you never knew."

"Never knew? Never knew what?"

"My side of it all. You remember what you blame me for. You remember how you reacted. You remember the aftermath of it all, but you can't possibly remember what it did to me. What fucking hell I was in. For years because of it all. You can't remember, because you've never felt it."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Fine."

The incline grew steeper and a trickle of water fell between the rocks in the path now. I was working up a sweat, but I wasn't thinking about the hike anymore. I took wider steps. I moved faster. I wanted to get to the top so I could get back down to the fucking bottom and leave.

"Slow down please," Marie said.

I stopped.

"So what? Are you pissed now?" she asked.

 "No."

"Whatever."


2.

A road spirals around Hope Mountain so people in cars can come picnic on the top without all of the hassle of earning it. When we got to the first section of road, the first break in the woods, Marie stopped and sat on a rock.

"I need a break."

"Okay," I said. I looked at the water bottle and it was almost empty. "You might want to take it easy on the water though. It's got to last us and I doubt we're even half way up, and then the descent."

"We'll be fine. I'm sure there's a water fountain at the top."

"I've driven to the top before. I've never seen one."

"Well then I guess we'll run out of water. I'm sorry, but if I'm climbing a mountain and I get thirsty and I have water, I'm taking a drink."

"What happens when you are climbing a mountain and you're thirsty and you've already drank all of the water?"

"I guess I suffer. We'll find out, won't we," she said.

"I guess." I sat down on another rock and stared at the next tree line. I had no idea how much was left. I wasn't tired but the sun was hot and we were getting angry. I could see Marie staring at me from the corner of my eye and I refused to acknowledge her. It was a trap. Well, if I looked it was a trap. If I didn't look, it was a trap. Damned if I am.

She kept staring.

"I don't know why you are getting upset," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"I said I don't know why you are getting so upset. It's not like anything is happening now. It's not like I am mad at you or you at me for shit that's happening now."

Marie got off of her rock and began to pace around it. "No, but it's great how you choose to bring this shit all up when we're supposed to be celebrating our anniversary. I don't know what the hell I was expecting. I should have known you'd find some way to fucking ruin it."

I looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing. Let's keep going." She walked toward the treeline and I got up and followed her.

"No, wait, what do you mean I'd ruin it? You act like I ruin everything all the time. Also, I didn't really even bring it up. We both sort of did. We were thinking about years gone by and good times and bad and it was a huge part of our time."

"Yeah, but then you got all fucking mopey about it and, Christ, it's been years now. Can't you just let it go?"

My eyes had to adjust to the dark as we crossed into the treeline. The slope inclined and there were less stones and more roots. The sun was still fractured about but seemed somehow duller. Everything did, as if color had drained from the top of the mountain and flowed to the bottom. Two hikers on their descent passed by us.

"Hello," one of them said, nodding slightly.

"Hello," Marie said. "How close are we?"

"About fifteen minutes or so I guess." The hikers disappeared out onto the road and into the lower section.We kept moving. The woods seemed silent around us.

"No," I said.

"No? No what?"

"No. I can't just let it go."

"Of course not. Why would you be able to? You need something to be fucking miserable about, don't you? Mr. dark and mysterious tortured fucking writer. Whatever. Be fucking miserable then."

"Holy shit. That's not even remotely true. Why are you being so nasty?"

"Because I'm sick of hearing about it. And you know what? It is true. You somehow think you're only as valid as the pain you think you have. Whether it's money or jobs or your father or whatever the fuck else you can be miserable about."

I stopped walking. "Maybe five years is enough."

Marie stopped and turned to me. "Excuse me?"

"This is just... This is stupid. You know, every time you have a fucking problem, I'm expected to drop everything and walk you through it and comfort you, and I do. Gladly. But when it's me, when something is even vaguely awry, all of a sudden I'm this massive piece of shit who hates the world and deserves nothing. I don't get it. Is this your 'tough love' schtick? Is this somehow you trying to be comforting in some barbaric fucking way? Or do you honestly find any disturbance that isn't yours so tedious and unbearable that you can't, even for a moment, stand the thought that you might have to listen to someones, my, problems?"

Marie was fire. Silent and burning, staring at me. "You're right."

"I know."

"No," she said. "Maybe five years is enough. I'm going to the top now. You have until then to figure out if we're going home together."

"What makes you think I want to?"

Marie turned and resumed her climb. I had no idea what the fuck was happening.


3.


I hate snakes. I hate the way they look. The way they move. Their whole shitty attitude. Occasionally I will see one and dart away in the other direction, never to return. Fuck snakes. Fuck everything about them.

A long black fucker as thick as my forearm writhed past me. I kicked dirt at the damned thing and kept walking in confused and furious silence behind Marie. Devil before the demons.

She didn't talk, only made guttural noises as the slope steepened and we were pulling ourselves up, rather than walking in any sense. She was a few yards ahead of me and she had finished the water. I didn't know what to say to her.

I love you.

I'm sorry.


I didn't mean it.

But none of those things would solve any part of the issue. Yes, I still felt the reverberations of years past. Yes, I felt as though she condemned me for ever feeling poorly. It didn't make my love or potential apology less true, they just seemed irrelevant and giving in would only mean giving up. It wouldn't solve a goddamn thing. I kept quiet and pulled myself up the final stretch of Hope Mountain. Snakes or not.

After climbing over what looked like a dirt luge chute, we came to the second, and apparently final section of road. Across it was the picnic area and peak of Hope Mountain.

Marie didn't stop to rest. She strode across the street, careless and strong, and when she got to the other side went to the closest picnic table and laid down with her back across it, under the shade.

I walked up and sat on the table's bench.

Silence. A cool breeze blew across the summit and there were people a few hundred yards away eating and talking and laughing and I thought; they have no idea.

After a moment Marie sat up. "Well?"

I kept looking at the other people. "Well what?"

"Are we going to be able to get past this? Are you going to be able to let shit go?"

"Marie," I said, "I love you."

"I love you too," she said,  nearly begrudgingly.

"I mostly am over all of that shit. Mostly. But I doubt I will ever forget it. Or the way it affected me. Or the way I felt. And sometimes, I am going to think about it. Sometimes, I am going to hurt because of it. And it's not because I need pain, or whatever. It's because it hurts. And that's what happens. I get that listening to people talk about their problems is tedious. I get it. It's like listening to people talk about their dreams. Who gives a shit? And I know it's even harder to listen to problems people have that you're involved in and I try to be sensitive to that. I try to understand that. But baby, you're my love. You're my best friend and you're the person I trust with my feelings and thoughts and all of that tedious crap. You're the person I want to, and need to talk to. But, I love you. And I am not still angry over anything. And of course I want to go home with you tonight."

Marie looked at me a moment and bent forward and kissed me.

"I'm sorry honey. I'm just... moody."

"It's okay," I said. "You don't have to be sorry. These things happen."

"I don't see a water fountain anywhere."

"We're fucked," I said.

A Rock and a Hard Place

"That goddamn rock!" I said.

"What?"

"In my shoe again! That goddamned rock!"

Marie and I walked through a quiet Wednesday downtown evening. The air was warm. Yellow street lamps shone gently against a deepening blue sky. All around the sounds of people living. And me, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, kicking my foot against the side of the library trying to dislodge the stone from under my toe.

"Have you taken the rock out since last time?" she asked.

"No!" I kicked again and the rock fell somewhere else in my shoe. I stepped down. It was under my heel. I kicked again and it went under the arch. That was tolerable.

"And I take it that means you aren't going to, right?"

"No. It's fine now. The goddamned thing." I began to walk again and Marie strode beside me.

"You want food?" she asked.

"No. I'm not hungry. I want to go home."

"Okay. I just figured, it's a nice night out and we could find a cafe, sit outside, have a salad or something..."

"If we find a cafe on the way home, then fine, but I am fucking beat."

"Why are you so grumpy?"

"I can't stand the thought of going to work in the morning."

"You and everyone else."

"No," I said. "You don't get it. I've worked jobs. I've hated jobs. I've felt the blue collar plight. This isn't it. This is some sort of fucking blue collar post-traumatic stress."

"It wouldn't be post-traumatic, because you're still working there."

"It's post-traumatic every fucking time I clock off for the day. Fucking thousand yard stare the whole drive home. I never even remember the drive."

"Oh," she said. "Fair enough, you want to stop off at a bar then? Get a beer or two? Relax for a bit?"

"I'd love to. I have to get up before the goddamned sunrise though and beer always makes me wake up in the middle of the night."

"Wine doesn't."

"No, but I'd sleep right through the alarm."

"Okay. I was just trying to make you feel better," she said.

"I know. I appreciate it."

We walked out of the main strip of town and didn't see anywhere for salads or outside seating or anything.

"I'm sorry I've been such a prick lately," I said.

"You haven't been, really."

"Well, I certainly feel like I have."

"Thanks, but I understand. Times are difficult. We've got next to no cash. Working a job you can't stand. I know. But, really, this is the first time I've thought you were even being grumpy in quite a while."

"Okay." I wished I had worn a jacket now that the air was beginning to cool. I owed money to a lot of people and I didn't have any and when I was a kid I heard of a man who killed himself over a debt to the IRS and back then I couldn't understand it. It frightened me that now I almost could. Over the winter I had been laid off from a decent paying job where my debt had been tolerable. I lived on unemployment for a bit, but after the garnishments each week, I was left with only enough to pay my portion of the bills and have five dollars extra. I took the first (and thus far only) job available. Forty plus hours a week (which is fine and good), landscaping, for ten dollars an hour. Now, after garnishments and bills I had twenty dollars to live on for the week. I had received a few threatening phone calls and letters and had myself in a bit of a panic. If they took any more money, I couldn't pay my bills. If I couldn't pay my bills, Marie would leave. Eventually, I'm sure. I couldn't find a better paying job, there were none available. I was stuck and left to the wind. I was scared and angry. Working all day in the sun, busting my ass and coming home each week with essentially nothing. I would watch the people around me work and save and smile and all I could do was keep waking up. Keep going to work. Keep drowning. I would lie in bed each night, hoping against hope for a solution. A savior. Anything. I would lie in bed each night and fear the morning. Listen to Marie breathe next to me. Listen to the sounds of quiet disappointment and loss in each breath. I was no man. No husband. No provider or supporter. I was trash. Hopeless, broke trash. I kicked a stone down the sidewalk and we turned the corner onto our street and Marie took my hand.

"I love you honey. Everything will be okay," she said.

"I love you too. Why do you say that?"

"I can see it on your face. Everything will be okay," she said again. "We've made it through worse."

"Yeah. I suppose."

A breeze wafted down the street and we walked up our driveway. To our apartment because I couldn't afford a house. We went inside and from the apartment below us I could smell something that might have been a roast cooking and heard my neighbor and someone else laughing. I went to the fridge and took out the wine that I had been trying to save for the weekend.

"Don't miss the alarm in the morning," Marie said.

"I won't."

I poured a tall glass and took the bottle with me as I went to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed and tried not to suffocate.

I couldn't understand how this had become my life.

In the Passenger Seat

The sun would beat through the windshield as we drove from job to job and Kevin would drive sometimes and I would sit staring at the passing houses thinking about killing myself. You have to think about killing yourself sometimes. It's like being in a committed relationship and wondering about fucking other people. Sometimes, if your lucky, the fantasy will kill the temptation and you won't ever fuck anyone else and you won't ever put a gun in your mouth. No one gets hurt and for a moment, you get to pretend that you're in control. 

The back country road stretched on for what seemed like hours in the May humidity and I always assumed I would use a gun. The wrist cutting thing always seemed a bit dramatic for my taste, and hanging just seemed boring. I was always a bit leery around guns, and I wasn't ever sure if that was why. Again, if you are tempted to think about fucking someone, try not to hang around them. Kevin was playing the country station much too loud but I was relieved that today he had chosen to not sing along. 

I had my foot up on the dash with my leg bent and the wind from the open window was knotting and knocking my hair all over the goddamned place. I was going to be a mess when we got to the next job, but the wind felt wonderful.

I wasn't necessarily more or less upset, sad, or bothered than normal. I sat with the breeze on my face and could feel my mood dropping. Suicide seemed too active now. I just wanted to go home. Kill the lights, crawl under the sheets and calcify. Become some stone. Buried under blankets and forgotten forever.   

I tried not to think about Marie.

Who she was with. What she was doing. Smiling. Better off without me. In love and life must be perfect for her and she must be completely on her way to success and happiness and riches and her new man must fuck her better than I ever could and give her all of the things I never could. And she doesn't remember me. I never existed. It was all a lie. A memory. I never existed. It would be fine and better if I never existed.

Each thought was a needle under my fingernails.

I had rehearsal after work and just a few dollars in my pocket. 

I need a drink, I thought.

We drove on.