Big Mountain

The summer before Kell will die in Whitefish Lake, it is down to just the three of us: my mother, Kell, and me. Kell is fourteen, a mysterious boy, and I am on my way to graduate school in Bozeman. It is the summer of the boycotted Olympics and the hostages in Iran, and a cynicism has descended from a point in the sky and spread like crop dusters on the wind. A pair of bald eagles makes their nest in the tattered bell tower of St. Vincent's, and people gawk at their beauty, while, across town, one by one, small dogs begin to disappear. By the end of the summer, the earth has been baked a brittle brown, and the tourists load up their RVs in the fading light and head south along Flathead Lake to Missoula, or east or west over the mountains to where everyone figures are warmer, more exciting places.

This last week of summer begins with the incident in the basement. I am flying down the stairs, winding my way through a battlefield of old maple furniture to the back of the house where the foundation sits atop an exposed rock ledge. The light fades as it fans out from the stairs, and finally fails at a place where the walls are covered with a mossy growth. I am looking for empty boxes. I reach blindly into the air and pull the light chain, and there is Kell, seated on the concrete floor with my grandfather's shotgun. He is a couple of years away from what will surely be a moderate growth spurt. With the barrel in his mouth, his arms are too short to reach the trigger. When I find him, he is taking off his shoe.

"Jesus Christ!" I scream. He is sitting on the cold floor, silent, one leg crooked foot-to-knee. Sprinkles of moss are fluorescent in his hair. "Jesus, Kell, what the fuck is this?"

I hurry over, pull the gun out of his hands, and pop the breach. The dull brass head of the shell floats in the air magically, a penny on edge. I pull the shell out and roll it in my hand. When was the last time I knew him, the last time I paid attention? Six years ago? Seven? I scan his life's topography in an attempt to understand what may have brought this on: birth at the Albert Einstein in New York, first day of school, what else? Modest athletic achievements? A play here and there? There is no answer; the moment has been sucked dry of all context. I stare at him blankly. Water races overhead in a black web of pipes.

"Don't tell mom," he whispers.

We are brothers, born of different fathers, and I have him by almost ten years. His father, Jimmy Ruiz, was a Puerto Rican laborer from Queens; mine was a white banker from Chicago whose name has never been important. We lived in northwest Montana in my grandmother's summer home, Singing Loon, because we had finally grown tired of the city and because the home was all that she had left us after her stroke. A stroke of good luck, Jimmy Ruiz would announce, casting a self-satisfied look my way. For several years, he worked as a material handler at the aluminum plant. My mother works off and on for a company that rents out vacation properties.

Kell and I are not close, have never been close; our age difference has been an obstacle. My life has been a series of celebrated departures and arrivals: prep school at Andover, college at Chapel Hill, two years of community outreach at Mellon in Chicago--each sponsored by my benefactor, my father. Kell's life has been one of diminished expectations, the quiet racism of a small town. There are other things I cannot imagine.

I look at Kell--he is sobbing, his head is buried into his kneecaps, and suddenly I understand that our relationship must change. There must be a redistribution, a making of amends. I will see to it. I will take his hand and pull him along, faster and faster, and slowly, inevitably he will rise up like a kite over a windswept field. He will float in the high-blue, bobbing on the tide of all things possible. He will smile. Yes, he will look down and smile at me, and together we will feel silly and laugh the quiet, knowing laugh of brothers. In time, he will want to apologize. No need, Kell, I will say, dismissing his words with a casual hand. Then I will spin a bit of folksy wisdom, the kind that is easily extracted from a Norman Rockwell painting, and he will marvel at the simple clarity of it all. How true, he will whisper, and I will smile back and maybe even wink. Yes, I decided, I have one week. I will make everything right.

It is the day after the basement incident, and I am standing above his bed. He is sleeping, the sorrow straining his face like a weight suspended at his jowls. He rolls onto his side and mutters something, then pulls his shirt over his head. It is my first time in here in years, and the room smells like lemon polish and corn chips. Above his bed is the chaotic whirl of the Milky Way, a map from National Geographic cut into neat sections by paper creases. Insets highlight our solar system and the local field of stars: Alpha Centauri 3, Barnard's Star, Lalande 21185. This interest in astronomy is news to me.

"What?" he says from under his shirt. This time it is perfectly audible. He is annoyed.

What I want to say is, You tried to kill yourself, so don't give me what. But I must go slowly; things must proceed according to plan. So, instead, I walk over to the window, push the curtain aside, and finger the screen. The sound is grating and flecks of rust filter down to the sill. On his small laminate desk are a couple of color photos he has taken recently: a submerged turtle, a sunset over a hay field, a stand of white birches in the moonlight. He rolls over and pops his head back through his shirt.

"What, Gringey?" he asks. This is his name for me, a play on gringo. It used to be cute, but now it sounds ugly, the slur unmistakable. I ignore it.

"There's a go-cart track over in Columbia Falls," I say.

"You're leaving soon." The words are drawn out, the intonation suggesting this might be news to me. His eyes are tiny little slits.

"We have a few days," I say, buoyed. This is the truth.

He rises up slowly, his back against the wall. A pillow crease shoots from the corner of his eye. "Okay, we race cars," he says. "Then what?"

"We just keep it going."

He laughs at this, some hidden funny aspect. He yawns wide, rubs his eyes with two tight fists. Then he says, "Where?"

Columbia Falls is a do-nothing place in the northern part of the valley just east of Whitefish. At the center of the town is Nucleus Avenue, the main drag that bisects the rusty tracks of the Great Northern Railroad. Nucleus has a few restaurants and shops, a pharmacy, a grocery store where you can rent videos, and a travel agency. Parallel to Nucleus, running east and west, are the numbered avenues: First, Second, Third, etc. The degree of municipal organization is highly unnecessary for a town of three thousand.

We are crawling along Nucleus in our grandmother's LeSabre. "Let's open the windows," he says. "Maybe we can hear the cars."

I roll down my window and stick my arm out so that wind funnels into my face. A dense, cold air, thick like mist, hangs low over the road. I blink into the air, imagining it parting around me in visible white ribbons. I swallow hard, and the air races down and burns in my stomach. I look over at Kell: his head is thrust out the window, his arms disappearing over the edge of the door panel. I wonder if it is too soon to bring up the incident with him.

"Holy shit," he says. "There it is." He points at a plywood square nailed to a telephone poll that reads Phil's Formula One Raceway. An arthritic arrow directs interested parties to an open field behind a strip mall. "Oh, man, this ought to be interesting," he snorts. I guide the LeSabre off the road and down the alley that curls behind the buildings.

Out back, it is impressive: the brown-green foothills have been flattened into a tangle of hairpin turns and overpasses, and the result is a perfectly scaled version of a Grand Prix racetrack. Carefully manicured shrubbery and hay bale barriers line the gummy pavement. We step out of the car, and Kell runs to the rustic fence that separates the track from the barren parking lot. Four towering banks of light loom from each corner overhead, while two rows of mini Formula One cars crouch on the infield, cartoonish, ready to explode. I join him at the fence and he is speechless. Along the opening stretch, a brook filled with orange and white mottled fish winds its way along the track, then loops underneath and flows to the center of the infield where a fountain lobs tubes of colored water into the air.

"What day is today?" he asks finally.

"Sunday," I say.

We arrive at a small building that doubles as admissions and a snack bar, and I peer into the slatted glass window. Inside, a heavy middle-aged Asian man sits on a stool, his feet propped up on the rungs like a bloated parrot. He is wearing a mesh baseball hat with a picture of a Peterbilt tractor-trailer that reads Bite My Big Rig. He is eating a Push-Up.

"You Phil?" I ask, pointing with my chin.

"You know him?" he says in a mock friendly manner. He slides off his perch and approaches the window, white flecks of ice cream framing his mouth. He is shorter standing than sitting and suddenly agitated. "Who you two now?"

"No," I say, trying to reassure him and electing to ignore his follow-up question. "I saw the sign out front. My brother and I, we want to take a spin around the track."

The man puts two chubby hands on the counter and pulls himself up onto his toes. He glances out the window left and right. I grab Kell by his collar and pull him in front of the window so he is in full view. It is a move calculated to demonstrate our sincerity. But the man squints suspiciously, his eyes darting from me to Kell and then back to me. "Not open," he says finally. "You two come back next week when Phil is here."

"But we want to ride now," protests Kell.

"Next week to see Mr. Phil," the man says. He dismisses us with a wiggle of his sausage fingers and heads back into the air conditioning. I scan the outside of the building looking for something to indicate his error, something to overrule him. A shiny placard announces Fifty-one Flavors of Ice Cream! Another proclaims Phil Welcomes Seniors!

Suddenly Kell rushes to the counter and throws his hands down heavily. "I can't wait until next week!" he screams at the cool shadows inside. "I'm dying."

The words explode like shrapnel and embed in my chest. I look at him, and he slowly begins to deflate, wither, turn skeleton-like. He throws me an indecipherable look before his head rises toward the window, slowly, eyes first as if pulled by invisible strings attached to his eyebrows. Inside, the man turns slowly and considers his admission. I consider it, too.

Is he dying?

It is conceivable. Maybe he is dying.

Yes, he certainly is dying. It is exactly the kind of information that my mother would keep from me. Kell is dying, it makes sense. He had endured months or years of steady but imperceptible decline, and now, finally recognizing that his last days would be unbearable, wants to end it all, not for his sake but ours.

"What you have?" The man calls out from the dim light away from the window. He is fearful that whatever it is may very likely be contagious.

Kell stiffens. "Aurora Borealitis," he says. "It's like cancer, but worse. I just finished the last course of chemo. The doctors said it's no use. I could go any day now."

The man takes a step closer. "Oh yeah?" he says, his face softening. He tosses the ice cream into a wastebasket and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "My cousin had the cancer and she . . . " He shoots me a knowing, sympathetic look, and I give him a shrug that says ain't life a kick in the ass? I am a trooper; I have made peace with the cruel duplicity of fate. Then we both look at Kell, who appears to have found a way to suck his eyes back into his skull. This, I think, is getting good.

The man says, "So you have your hair?"

Hair. Fucking hair. We are so stupid, so fucking reckless. Why did we choose cancer? It is an insane comparison; cancer is what every crazy, wide-eyed disease with a bus ticket and a dream aspires to be. Kell closes his eyes and chokes off a small cough in his throat. I look at him, and a louder cough blows out through his nose. What is this? Another cough, deep, guttural, comes exploding from his mouth. In seconds, he doubles over, and I grab his shoulders, expecting to see pieces of pancreas splattering at his feet.

"It's okay, Kell," I say. "Breathe, focus on my voice."

I look at the man with disgust and cry, "Good God, he's wearing a wig!" and with that, Kell lets out a loud moan, and his legs one hundred percent buckle. I try to hold him up, but his dead weight is too much for me. We slump heroically to the pavement.

And it is beautiful.

The man rushes out a side door and arrives as I am rocking Kell in my arms and whispering, "Jesus is with you, my son, Jesus is with you."

"This boy is your son?" The man pants, looks around for help, and sees the barren track, the foothills, the ass-end of a strip mall. In this part of Montana there is nothing.

"Not officially," I say. "But we are all sons of God."

Then Kell does the eyes thing again. He says, "Please, Father Ron, please can I ride in the cars?"

I brush the hair from his face and then look at the man. "Sir, it would mean so much to him. My boy, well, he just loves that Formula One shit."

We race for free all afternoon. We drive until the gas gives out, or until one of us plows into a barrier, or until we are convinced that our car is a lemon and isn't giving us the performance we require. When that happens, we slam on the breaks and hop out and gesture to the Asian man to hurry over with a shiny new machine. We are demanding, our patience thin. We dismiss cars at the slightest annoyance, for reasons real and imagined--

"This car blows. The steering is loose."

"It's a suspension thing."

"Everyone knows blue is the slowest color."

--and do so only in the most dramatic and indecipherable ways. I screech to a halt, jump out with arms flailing, point to the tires, and berate an imaginary pit crew member in a fierce southern drawl. Kell pulls up and watches the theatrics and grades me on the effort. Or, later, I zoom around a corner to find Kell squatting on the hood of the car pretending to take a dump. Kell uses this excretion metaphor on several occasions, each time appearing more pained than the last. He knows excretion grades out high.

Then the Asian man drives over, lazy and one-handed. When he arrives, we gesture wildly and bellow in languages we just made up.

"Ja lanni la bobo!" Kell screams, his arms spread wide, fingers pointing skyward and jogging in place. It is something along the lines of a rain dance.

"Ni hanni tu bobo," I reply, firing an accusing finger at the startled Asian man.

At the start, I choose the number nine car, insisting to no one in particular that I am Racer X. I work myself into character: I am insecure, belligerent, shunned by my father. I pound on the hood and become Stanley Kowalski. I scream Papa in long tortured syllables, and for a moment become distracted by my mixing of pop culture references. Kell stares with vague amusement, but he is too young to remember any of this. He isn't impressed.

"Who the hell is Racer X?" he asks.

"Exactly."

"No, really, who?"

"Rex Racer. Speed Racer's older brother."

"Oh . . . Who's Speed Racer?"

"You're a moron."

We speed around the track in the oblique afternoon light, neither of us sure who is leading. Kell starts with the number one car, the idea being he will go sequentially to ensure he tries every one. But the one car is sluggish, and the two is bad, too. The three is good, and he drives this for a long time, maybe twenty minutes. Then I creep up behind him and turn my front wheels into his rear end and send him reeling into a stanchion. I look back in time to see Kell, the same Kell who tried to kill himself a few days ago, jump out of his car and disappear over a soft wall of hay. I turn back with an insane grin and speed around the track, accelerating out of turns like a pro, racing to see what he has planned.

When I get to his car, he isn't there. I rev the engine, and the car lurches forward (there is no neutral, so I have to step on both the gas and the brake to get the desired effect). My face hurts from smiling. Then I see him, standing in the fountain at the center of the infield--he is in his underwear pretending to take a shower! Pure genius! He looks over at me as the fountain spits water over his head. What is the meaning? My mind chases down possible translations: in Jungian archetypes, water equals the subconscious. Is Kell expressing a desire to plumb his emotional depths, to excavate his demons? Or yes, of course, when one thinks water one must think of birth or rebirth. Is this psychodrama a thinly veiled commentary on our improving relationship? In truth, I am not sure what he is getting at as it pertains to the car's performance--really, I have no clue on that. But the symbolism, whatever it is, is rich; it speaks volumes. The Asian man yells something from the snack bar window and then ducks back inside. Kell comes running over.

"What happened to your clothes, goofball?" I ask.

"Did you get that one?"

"Not really. But I sensed it was powerful."

"I was washing my hands of that car."

"Oh . . . " I pause.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just thought there was more to it than that."

The Asian man drives over with the number four car. He looks at Kell in his soggy underwear that hang off his bones like loose paper maché. "So skinny," he says and shakes his head. Then he extracts the car from the hay wall and walks it back to the starting line.

After racing, we drive back to Whitefish along a highway that bisects a horse field studded with granite outcroppings. The sun exhales, resting gently on the mountaintops, and the air quickens to a chill. I wonder about talking with Kell, but he seems fine; today was a good day. The image of him in the basement has softened and is fading into dream. It was a freak impulse fueled by a momentary chemical imbalance, I tell myself, a hallmark of adolescence: too much growth, not enough chemical, or more likely, too much chemical. I am feeling better, and he is feeling better. I reach over and turn the radio on, and the soothing monotone of National Public Radio fills the car. An asthmatic man discusses oil prices, the promise of reserves hidden beneath the North Sea. Soon Kell growls, places a hand on the dashboard, and plays with the dial.

"Voyager One reaches Saturn this fall," he says.

"Really?" I say. "All the way out there?"

"Jupiter last winter, Saturn this fall. That's how it works."

"I have no idea how all that works," I say, forcing a casual laugh through my nose, as if this is a discussion I could easily take or leave. But I know this is it, we are about to touch on something fundamental. My leg stiffens, and the road spools beneath us with a fury.

"In twenty years, it will pass Pioneer Ten as the most distant human object in the universe."

"The Slingshot Effect," I say, not knowing if I read that or just made it up. Just like that we are talking like normal people, like two brothers. And it is good.

"Gravity-assisted propulsion," he says.

"That's the one."

He has no luck with the radio and gives up. The asthmatic man is back with his soothing informative drone. "Three-point-six astronomical units per year," he says.

The speed of it all is impossible to fathom. "Fascinating!" I say with a moronic grin, and suddenly my voice becomes strident, unable to support the urgency of my enthusiasm. Kell shifts in his seat, and the moment is broken. Soon, it is just the two of us and the radio and the wind whistling beneath the damp floorboards. I ease off the accelerator, and his eyes return to the window, nothing gained. The radio man wheezes praise for Danish engineering. These oil platforms are cities teetering above the ocean floor.

"It's simple," Kell says suddenly. "Your father is alive--"

"What?"

"--so you don't know."

"What are you talking about?" I say this reflexively, and it sounds discordant and vaguely threatening. I immediately want to take it back. I can hardly believe what I say next: "What about today? What about this week?"

"This week is nothing."

"Don't say that." The words spill out, and I hate myself, but I am angry and resentful, and I don't want it to go down like this. I want to pull the car over and talk like human beings. I want to take what he is feeling and swallow it down deep. I want to hold him, if he will let me, if that's what one does.

"You're right," I say. "I don't know. I don't understand. Jimmy was a good man, but he is gone, and I can't change that. You know, I loved him, too."

"That's what I mean," he says.

We drive on in the failing daylight, the rhythmic flashing of telephone poles throwing bands of darkness in our path. His cheek is pushed against the window. A circle of steam forms on the glass, advancing and retreating with each breath like a slowly beating heart.

At the end of the week, Kell appears in my room. It is the early morning, and the sun angles through the cracked window shade in dusty yellow planes. Somewhere outside a dog is losing its mind. It is my last day before school, and I haven't begun to pack. "Get up," Kell says. "I want to climb Big Mountain."

"What time is it?"

"We're climbing Big Mountain. Get up, shitbag."

"No way." I lob a pillow over my shoulder. I learned this from him.

"When's the last time you climbed it?"

"A few years ago, more or less," I say. Everyone climbs Big Mountain at least once. It is like learning to tie your shoes.

He moves over to the window. "That dog barking," he says.

"Yeah?"

"It's the eagles. The eagles are getting him."

Imagine for a moment the winter driving conditions in Montana: the raw elements, the ice, the snow. Then factor in the narrow road, frostbitten and barely roomy enough for one car, snaking its way along the high hills around the lake. One December morning, Kell takes the car, our dead grandmother's LeSabre. It is found in the lake, its demonic taillight eyes poking through the ice-crusted surface. A swath of flattened brush points down the hillside exclaiming, Look here, look what just happened. The wreck is discovered within twenty minutes by a man and his dog. However, the rescue, because of the physics and geometry of it all, takes over six hours. Kell had just turned fifteen, but age is not a factor: we had both known how to drive since we were twelve.

My mother's call comes, devoid of specifics: Kell. An accident. I stuff personal items into a bag and drive for hours. I make it home before they are done. Divers in wetsuits, an elaborate system of pulleys. Six hours or sixteen. It doesn't matter.

When people close to me die, it's either from old age or something much worse, something sudden and gruesome that invariably involves getting crushed. One day, Jimmy Ruiz was jawing with a co-worker in the warehouse, and he stepped out from behind a rack of tires and into the path of a forklift that was carrying a mold envelope. The forklift jerked to a halt, and the envelope slid off and dropped on him. He died instantly. Four thousand pounds--the number was repeated with hushed solemnity. Four thousand pounds? Yep, poor bastard didn't have a bleeping chance. Weeks later, Billy Zito, a high school buddy of mine, was working under his Charger while his two brothers played ball in the driveway. One slammed the other into his car, and the car slid off the blocks and pancaked him.

I'm used to shocking, graphic deaths that explode the human body, but Kell's death is different. He is horribly disfigured, fine, but the cause of death is asphyxiation. He drowned, and that just doesn't count. If you're going to die, then pay the fuck attention to what you're doing! Follow the fucking rules! Up on the mountain that day, why not then? It was the perfect place, a moment to take in the view, an innocent meander over to a steep, gravelly decline. A quick glance around, and then a Greg Louganis half-gainer off the edge. One minute you're there, floating in the high-blue, and the next? I would have been caught completely off-guard. My first reaction would have been to smile. I'd watch you sail over the edge, and my eyes would widen, but then--I'm almost sure of this--I would smile and shake my head. I would do this even before taking a step to help because there would be no need for help--you would have planned it too perfectly! I would stand there and listen closely because maybe, just maybe, you'd be yelling on your way down, "I GOT YOU HA HA HA HA!" It would be a shame to miss that, the cherry on top. I might, just might have to give you first place on my list.

The days following his death roll by in a somnolent haze. The hospital, the funeral home, the shipment of the body: all details are carried out with military efficiency by local death professionals. I am required to do nothing but comfort my mother and grieve. I do neither very well. In my haste to leave Bozeman, I did not think to pack a suit.

There are no more contrite, well-dressed individuals attending Kell's wake than our host, Mr. Sundun, and his genuflecting sons, Peter, Chris, and John, Jr. I hate them, these lap dogs; I resent their hushed tones, their feigned urgency, their precise choreography poorly concealed by bumbling Hugh Grant personas. It is a charade, these men turning tricks at the doorway, selling their grief. It's all part of the package.

But there is a problem: this Kell is not Kell. His hue is pasty; it is the color of a boiled plant-root. The color is to be expected. The disfigurement we can live with. But the swelling, what the fuck is that? His head is like a pumpkin, his mouth a gash in its wrinkly surface. They said the swelling would diminish. Three days ago, the fucking doctors said this, but this is grotesque. Why the swelling? What is the physiology behind it? Shouldn't the fluid go somewhere else, a simple osmotic redistribution? It is a big problem.

I want to pull Mr. Sundun aside: a slight issue, sir, no, not here, maybe in the coat closet, discretion, yes, thank you. I would throw him inside into a wall of coats, and he would fall, an avalanche of wool and camel hair. I would rush over, casting a glance back over my shoulder, anyone there? Then I would lock my hands around his rubbery Nixon face, squeeze and contort it, pull his jowls down like a bloodhound. I would manipulate, draw, kneed. I would loop a jacket around his neck and pound him like a sack of potatoes. This is a fiasco. I will not remember Kell like this.

I'm plotting my assault when a group of high school kids files in, three boys and a girl, his friends. The boys are angular, stiff in their sweaters and ties. Soccer teammates. The girl I don't know. Too ordinary to be a girlfriend, one of the androgynous crew. But she has an alert, pleasant look, and I think maybe she is more than a friend. She greets my mother and uncle, and proceeds to the casket. I am struck by the fact that she is only fifteen--how can she do this? These kids, these Darwin babies, they are much stronger, much more resilient. She kneels and, oh golly, will she be surprised: this Kell is not Kell. But she reaches in and takes his hand, and suddenly I love this girl. She is a little heavy, yes, but she is true. They could have been together, it's clear to me now. She would have loved him: so tortured and weary, his durable Latin frame. She with her flowery prints and wide shoes; she is pure, reliable, organized. He needed someone sensible like this.

I want to cry for her. How can he look like that? Surely there must be alternatives? Mr. Sundun, you are the expert. Give us an opinion, let us noodle it around. Lay our options out for us, and we'll make the decision. But this, this is a sideshow. Step right up and see the bearded lady, Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and the mysterious Pumpkinhead. Our eternal memory of him is being assaulted, and you, Mr. Sundun, you are responsible. This is not my brother. Do you see these pictures? Here, with the fish and the funny hat. Here, at my aunt's wedding, in the suit he borrowed from cousin Gary. Here, at his tenth birthday, his first year in double digits he said, jutting out his chin, and we laughed like kings. Look at him, Mr. Sundun, look at him and tell me if this is your best work.

I kneel and speak to him. Kell, my little brother, do you remember that day? The view from the top of Big Mountain was wonderful: the Salish Mountains were to the west, and the towering peaks of the Whitefish, Swan, and Mission ranges to the east, exploding out of the lush farmland and rising steadily to the Continental Divide. Due south was the cold expanse of the Flathead, and directly below was Whitefish, the town and the lake. Whitefish Lake, the lake you died in. Our hike took two-and-a-half hours, a vertical of twenty-five hundred feet, through Flower Point to the Summit House. The trail cut in among pine and white birch at the lower altitudes and the narrow, sparse firs higher up. You had your camera: you were hoping for some wildlife, a red tail hawk, kinglets or a pine marten. I had factored in time for picking huckleberries. I was ready for you.

Remember how the LeSabre hummed through the Whitefish grid? You were bent over fiddling around in the backseat looking for your sunglasses. It had been several minutes, and the glasses thing was a potential problem.

"Don't point that thing at me," I joked.

"What?" you said.

At the trailhead was a parking lot. I pulled in. It was cool for a hike, low fifties, but it was early, and the sun was still playing in the trees. I popped the trunk and grabbed our small pack with the two water bottles. I was prepared. I closed the trunk, and there you were, straight-backed and smiling. You were wearing your sunglasses.

"Ready, Elton?" I said.

"Roger that," you said.

We crossed the parking lot and our boots clunked against the blacktop, providing superhuman stability. We were connected to the earth by powerful magnets. The trail mouth was slick with pine needles and wide and inviting, but we had done this before, individually; we knew better. The trail grew narrow as we disappeared into the dark, yawning woods and began the slow ascent. Higher up, we looped back and forth across a field of wildflowers. Oh, Kell, remember how the sun exploded across the sky? We hiked single file, you in the lead. The pace was good, steady, and sustainable.