The Hollow Man

EYES

Jeremy and Gail celebrate their honeymoon on a canoe-and-backpacking trip.

Neither has canoed or backpacked before, but they do not have enough money for their first choice, Maui. Or for their second choice, Paris. Or even for their eighth choice, a motel in Boston. So, on a bright day in August, hours after their wedding in the garden of a favorite country inn, Jeremy and Gail wave good-bye to their friends and drive west and north to the Adirondacks.

There are closer camping spots: they have to drive through the Blue Mountains on the way to the Adirondacks, passing half a dozen state parks and state forests on their way, but Jeremy has read an article about the Adirondacks and wants to go there.

The VW has engine problems … it always has engine problems … and by the time the car is fixed in Binghamton, New York, they are eighty-five dollars behind their budget and four hours behind schedule. They spend that night at Gilbert Lake State Park, halfway between Binghamton and Utica.

It rains. The campground is small and crowded, the only spot left is next to the outhouse. Jeremy sets the twenty-four-dollar nylon tent up in the rain, and then goes over to the grill to see how Gail is doing with dinner. She is using her poncho as a tarp to keep the rain from dousing the few sticks they’ve scrounged for firewood, but the “fire” is little better than burning newspaper and the smoldering of wet wood.

“We should’ve eaten in Oneonta,” says Jeremy, squinting into the drizzle. It is not yet eight P.M. but the daylight has bled away through the gray clouds. The rain does not seem to discourage the mosquitoes, who whine under the tarp at them. Jeremy fans the fire while Gail fans the mosquitoes away.

They feast on half-heated hot dogs on soggy buns, kneeling inside the entrance to the tent rather than admit defeat by retreating to the comparative luxury of the car.

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” lies Gail. Bremen sees through mindtouch that she is lying, and Gail sees that he sees.

He also sees that she wants to make love.

They are in their zipped-together sleeping bags by nine P.M., although the rain chooses to let up then and the campers on either side of them roll out of their Winnebagos and Silverstreams, cranking radios up high while they cook late dinners. The smell of charcoal-grilling steak comes to Jeremy and Gail through the inward-turning spiral of foreplay, and they both giggle as they sense the other’s distraction.

Jeremy lays his cheek on Gail’s stomach and whispers, “Think they’d give us some if we tell them we’re newlyweds?”

Hungry newlyweds. Gail runs her fingers through his hair.

Jeremy kisses the gentle curve of her lower belly. Ah, well … a little starvation never hurt anybody.

Gail giggles, then stops giggling and takes a deep breath. The rain starts again, gentle but insistent on the nylon above, driving away the insects, the noise, and the smells of cooking. For a while there is nothing in the universe but Gail’s body, Jeremy’s body … and then a single body owned totally by neither.

They have made love before … made love that first night after Chuck Gilpen’s party … but it is never less wonderful or strange, and this night, in the tent in the rain, Jeremy truly loses himself, and Gail loses herself, and their flow of thoughts becomes as joined and intermingled as the flow of their bodies. Eventually, after aeons of being lost in one another, Jeremy feels Gail’s enfolding orgasm and celebrates it as his own, even while Gail rises on the growing wave of his impending climax, so different from the seismic inward intensity of her own, yet hers now, too. They come together, Gail feeling, for a moment, the sensation of her body cradling itself in his body as he relaxes in her mind while her arms and legs hold him in place.

When they roll apart on the flattened sleeping bags, the air in the nylon tent is almost foggy with the moisture of their exhalations and exertions. It is full dark out now as Gail undoes the tent flaps and they slide their upper bodies out into the soft drizzle, feeling the gentle spray on their faces and chests, breathing the cooling air, and opening their mouths to drink from the sky.

They are not reading each other’s minds now, not visiting the other’s mind. Each is the other, aware of each thought and sensation as soon as he or she feels it. No, that is not accurate: there is no he or she for a moment, and that gender consciousness returns only gradually, like a morning tide receding slowly to leave artifacts on a fresh-washed beach.

Cooled and refreshed by the rain, they slip back inside, dry themselves with thick towels, and curl between the layers of goosedown. Jeremy’s hand finds a resting place on the small inward curve of Gail’s back as she rests her head on his shoulder. It is as if his hand has always known this place.

They fit perfectly.

The next day they have lunch in Utica and head north again, into the mountains. In Old Forge they rent a canoe and paddle up through the Chain of Lakes that Jeremy has read about. The lakes are more built up than he had imagined, the hiss and crackle of neurobabble is just audible from houses along the shores, but they find isolated islands and sandbars to camp on for the three days they are canoeing and portaging, until a two-day rainstorm and a two-and-a-half-mile portage drives them in from Long Lake on their fifth day.

Gail and Jeremy find a pay phone and ride back to Old Forge with a bearded young man from the canoe-rental place. Back in the sputtering VW, they head deeper into the mountains, making the seventy-some-mile loop up through Saranac Lake and down into the village of Keene Valley. There Jeremy buys a trail guide, they hitch up their backpacks for the first time, and head off into the boonies toward something called Big Slide.

The guidebook insists that the trip is only 3.85 miles via a moderate trail called the Brothers, but the word “moderate” is an obvious misnomer as the trail leads straight up rocks, past waterfalls, across ridges, and over minor peaks, while Jeremy is soon cursing that the “3.85 miles” was obviously measured by an aircraft, not a biped. Also he acknowledges that he may have overpacked. Gail suggests taking out the bag of charcoal or the second six-pack of beer, but Jeremy discards several bags of gorp and insists on keeping the essentials for a civilized trip.

At 2.20 miles they pass through a beautiful stand of white birch and scramble onto the summit of the Third Brother, a low peak that just manages to get its rocky snout above the undulating ocean of leaves. From there they get a glimpse of their destination—Big Slide Mountain—and between gasps for air, Jeremy and Gail grin at each other.

Big Slide Mountain is a smaller and much more secret version of Yosemite’s El Capitan. While one side rises in a gentle, wooded arc, the other drops off in a sheer rock wall to culminate in a tumble of house-sized boulders.

“That’s our destination?” pants Gail.

Jeremy nods, too winded to speak.

“Can’t we just take a picture of it and say we were there?”

Jeremy shakes his head and lifts his pack on with a groan. For half a mile they drop down into a col, the trail occasionally cutting back and forth in a gentle switchback, more frequently dropping straight down rock formations or steep slopes. Just below the Big Slide summit cliffs they hit the last section of trail, and the last three-tenths of a mile seems to be straight up.

Jeremy realizes that they have made the summit only when his downcast eyes see no rock in front of him, only air. He falls backward and sprawls on the pack with arms and legs askew. Gail politely removes her own pack before collapsing on his stomach.

They stay sprawled for almost fifteen minutes, commenting on cloud formations and the occasional hawk as they get enough breath back to whisper. Then a rising breeze makes Gail sit up, and as Jeremy watches the wind ruffle her short hair, he thinks, I’m always going to remember this, and Gail turns to smile at him, seeing her reflection in his thoughts.

They set up their tent back away from the south ledge, in among the weather-stunted trees along a rock overhang, but they lay their foam pads and sleeping bags along the edge of the drop-off itself. They prepare the charcoal in a natural hollow in the rocks along the tree line; the grill fits perfectly. Gail takes the steaks out of the small ice chest and Jeremy pulls one of the three cold beers out and pops the tab. Gail has already set the foil-wrapped corn on the cob in the embers, and now Jeremy oversees the cooking while Gail sets fresh radishes, salad, and potato chips on the two plates. She produces a pack-within-a-pack wrapped in towels and filled with paper, and carefully removes the two wineglasses and bottle of BV cabernet sauvignon from within. She sets the bottle to chill with the remaining beer.

They eat as the summer evening settles toward sunset, both perching along the sheer ledge, boots hanging out over space. There are just enough clouds to ignite the sky to the west in a blaze of pinks and deep purples. The ledge lies along the south face of the mountain, and they watch in that direction as true twilight deepens into night. There is much steak, and they eat it slowly, refilling the wineglasses often. Gail has brought two large slices of chocolate cake for dessert.

A night wind comes up as they are cleaning the cooking area and stowing the paper plates in their garbage bags. Jeremy does not want a campfire and he scatters the dead coals in among the crevices in the rock, leaving as little sign as possible that they had cooked there. They pull on fleece jackets while they are brushing their teeth and attending to private business back among the trees along the north ledges, but they are in their sleeping bags along the south ledge again by the time the stars come out.

This is right comes the image, and for a moment neither one of them knows who thought it first. To the south there is only forest and mountains and darkening sky as far as they can see. No highways or houselights mar the purple length of the valley, although now a very few campfires are visible. In ten minutes the sky is lighter than the valley as stars fill the dome above them. The stars’ brightness is undiminished by city lights.

The two bags have been zipped together, but there is little extra space as Jeremy and Gail shrug out of their clothes. They stack things in neat piles under the foot of their bags so underthings will not blow away if the breeze grows stronger in the night, and then they duck their heads in and huddle together, all smooth flesh and warm breath, defying the cold gale beyond their sleeping bags. Their lovemaking tonight is slow in the starting, gentle in the extreme, and promising more violent ecstasy than they have known before.

Always. Jeremy can tell it was Gail who sent the thought this time.

Always, he whispers back, or does not whisper.

They settle lower, intertwined, warm and out of the wind, while, overhead, the stars seem to blaze with the intensity of the universe’s affirmation.