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By the time she'd arrived, she was a basket case. Three hours of freeway driving had given her heart palpitations and a tension headache. The other motorists didn't approve of her apparently; they crowded her in the slow lane, then made a big, arrogant show of speeding ahead to cut her off. Whatever standards existed for the road, she didn't measure up.
At least the number of cars had dropped off, which allowed her to slow to a crawl in the breakdown lane as she looked for a trail marker. Finally she stopped at a roadside diner to ask for help.
Inside, an elderly male patron said, "If you're looking for that guy Pike, he's about a mile south of the Kancamagus Pass. You cant get to it by a trail. You've gotta wish for it."
A waitress, who was pouring his coffee, laughed. "He's pulling your leg, dear. Nathaniel Pike's the big joke around here." She set her coffee carafe down on a hot plate, then took Marlene's map and spread it across the breakfast counter. "You're going to park here, at White Ledge, then follow the blue blazes for about two-and-a-quarter-miles until you come to a riverbed with a footbridge running across it. Go over to the bridge, walk another ten, twenty paces, then head due east off the trail for another eighth of a mile. Don't worry if you get lost. Just give a shout and someone'll come looking for you."
Marlene took the map back and folded it up. "Have you seen it? I mean — "
"No, but my son's been up there six times already. He just started working for Pike last week." She smiled aggressively. "Pays pretty
By the time she'd arrived, she was a basketcase. |
good, too. Pays better than this dump."
Marlene thanked both the waitress and her customer and hurried back to her car. The afternoon was waning, and it soon would be too late to start up the trail. But she knew she had to do this today, while she still had it in her.
After another ten minutes of driving, she spotted the trailhead and turned into a dirt lot just off the road, parking under the trees near a pickup with a camper on the back. At the rear of the lot was a picnic table, a cast-iron cooking grill and a rusted-out garbage drum filled with to the brim with beer cans and paper plates. Other than these few signs of life, the place looked abandoned.
Do it/don't make me.
Like a woman undressing at home, she took off her shoes and socks, rolled the socks into a ball and stuffed them into the heel of one of her shoes, which she left in the car.
Do it/don't make me.
Everything else followed — her bra, her jeans, her faded yellow panties. As a final casting-off, she threw the bundle of clothes into the backseat, left the keys in the ignition, locked the door and slammed it shut. She felt as though a quantity in the world she
Everything else followed — her bra, her jeans, her faded yellow panties. |
hadn't noticed before — a sound, perhaps — had suddenly increased, and she could hear it all around her. Leaving her car, she tiptoed across the lot and started up the trail.
Within a quarter-hour, her feet were cut and dirty, so she stopped to rest on a flat, shelflike outcropping of rock. The forest was still except for the shiver of wind filling the Kancamagus. With her knees tucked, she picked the black mud from her feet. To her amazement, she found that the keen, hyper-real sense of being naked hadn't worn off yet.
Farther up the trail, she heard voices and turned her head to listen. Through the trees she could see three men and three women proceeding in single file. Despite her own instincts she remained in plain view, waiting for the group to pass.
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