The Distance from Me to You (15 page)

“I have an ice pack,” she said. “It might help.”

“Thanks.”

She dug into her first-aid kit for one of her instant ice packs, and cracked it. Sam sat on the ground. When the cold spread over the plastic, she pressed it to his knee.

“I'm sorry,” he said, as if there'd been no break in their conversation. “I don't know why I left.”

“You don't know why.”

“I woke up and you were still sleeping. I could smell your hair. My first thought was that I never wanted to let you go. And then my second thought was, I had to get out of there.”

She stared at him, still squatting where she'd knelt to press the ice pack to his knee. In her whole life, nobody had ever said anything so romantic, or so confusing, to her.

“Hold this,” she said. “Don't let go. Otherwise you'll just waste it.”

As long as she had her first-aid kid right there, she might as well take care of his legs. She cleaned the scrapes with antiseptic pads, then put Neosporin on them, pasting Band-Aids on the two widest cuts. Sam just sat there through her ministrations. She could feel him looking at her. Another clap of thunder sounded, this one more distinct.

“Are you hungry?” McKenna asked, not looking at him.

“What I really am,” Sam said, his voice hoarse, “is tired. Extremely tired.”

She stood and headed over to her tent, setting it back up, this time adding the rain guard, too. Sam stumbled into the tent's opening. McKenna picked up his pack and put it in behind him. As he lay down on her sleeping bag, she laid his out right next to him. It was a nice bag, a Kelty, that would work until freezing or maybe even below. Sam sat up a little and pulled off his T-shirt, then lay back down. Thunder clapped again, closer now, and with it came a burst of rain, pelting against the top of the tent. It created moving shadows inside the small space that quickly filled with their combined breath. Sam didn't look at McKenna but at the rain, and it took her a couple seconds to realize that his taking off his shirt was a kind of confession, too.

The other night had been dark, and it had been McKenna who'd taken off her clothes—the whole thing had started with her nakedness, not his—so she hadn't seen them, the scars below his collarbone, and on his chest and upper arms. Small and round and deep.

She reached out and ran her finger from one to the other, until she rested it on his collarbone, the one scar that would be visible if he were wearing a shirt.

“I should have noticed this,” she said, her voice barely audible above the pattering of the rain.

He kept his eyes focused on the ceiling of the tent as he closed his hand around hers and brought it to his lips. Then he lowered it onto his chest, gripping gently.

“That was the last one,” he said. “My dad. Cigarettes. You know?”

A chill went through her, so distinct that she wanted to reach for her pack and pull on her fleece jacket. All the petty complaints about her own parents—like her dad not having time to hike with her anymore—evaporated into the dense air.

“You were right,” Sam said. “I didn't get on the trail in Georgia. I hiked from West Virginia. One day, I just had enough with my dad. It was the last straw, and I had to leave. I hit the trail and started walking north, to my brother's house in Maine. But when I got there . . . I couldn't stay. The scene there . . . it was so much like at home . . .”

“You don't have to tell me,” McKenna said.

Sam nodded. He looked like he appreciated it, this break in the narrative. But then he said, “Do you know what I want to tell you?”

She shook her head. Sam still wasn't looking at her. But he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb to let her know he'd detected the motion through her shadow, rain running in rivulets behind it.

“I want to tell you that I was gone for months. I walked out of my dad's house with no phone, and I never sent a postcard. Never sent any kind of word at all. I never showed up at school again. I had a girlfriend, her name's Starla. And I was on the
football team, Mack, you were right about that. I had, I mean I thought I had, a life. You know?”

Again, she nodded.

“But when I got to my brother's house, he didn't even know I was lost. He hadn't heard a word about it. Nobody was looking for me.”

Outside, a gust of wind joined in the tumult. The walls of the tent rippled. McKenna leaned forward and kissed Sam's forehead.

“I would look for you,” she said.

He closed his eyes. McKenna touched his face, then lay down beside him, resting her head on his chest, forgetting her vow never to camp twice at the same site, forgetting the miles she needed to cover, forgetting everything in the world except these few cubic feet swarming with shadows, and the sound of the rain, and Sam's arms around her.

I never wanted to let you go.

Inside her chest, something blossomed. The way some moments stay with you forever: McKenna knew that for the rest of her life, rain on a tent flap would be the sound of falling in love. The new breadth of feeling rose like adrenaline. The person she became inside that shadow-filled tent was somebody that nobody else on earth—nobody but Sam—had ever seen.

They stayed like that
for most of the day, hunkered in out of the rain. At one point, McKenna opened her pack and they ate what dry food she had left—PowerBars and dried apricots. They didn't kiss, they barely even talked, just clung to each other and listened to the rain.

The next morning when McKenna woke up alone, her heart seized up.

“Morning, Mack,” Sam said when she crawled out of the tent.

The rain had cleared but the world around them dripped with leftover rainwater and dew. The air felt sodden when she breathed it in, and everything smelled rife with mulch. Sam had built a fire; it crackled cozily against the autumnal chill that had snuck into the air. A skillet was balanced in the flames, and Sam moved something in it around with a stick.

“What's that?” McKenna asked.

“Breakfast.”

He pulled the pan out of the fire. It was filled with mushrooms and brook trout fried in the fat of the fish skin. McKenna sat down next to him and he leaned over and kissed her.
Then they ate the mushrooms and fish with their fingers. For a second McKenna thought about asking him where he learned to identify mushrooms, if he was sure they were safe. But she decided to just trust him.

They sat close enough that their elbows bumped every time they moved. There was a particular feeling she had in Sam's presence, something she couldn't exactly name. It was part happiness, part excitement—as if despite the dampness hanging over the day, everything was clearer, sharper. She felt alive, so much so that no toadstool on earth could kill her.

It was the best meal she'd eaten since she started hiking; it may have been the best meal she'd eaten in her life.

“Want to see how the other half lives out here?” Sam asked her.

• • •

On the way off the trail and down the road, McKenna smiled as she walked. She had been so curious about how Sam had managed to survive, it was exciting to finally be getting the inside scoop.

Along the trail, McKenna was constantly amazed by the way you could be in total wilderness one moment, nothing but dirt and trees, and then suddenly there would be a tunnel under a busy road, and you'd find yourself on a farm that seemed like it came from a different country or century—old stone walls, and cattle grazing.

Sam led McKenna across a field of sheep and down a country side road until they came to an orchard. There was a little
shop out front that sold cheddar cheese and slices of fresh-baked apple pie that smelled amazing, but Sam told her she wasn't allowed to buy anything.

The woman at the desk remembered Sam right away. “Sure,” she said, handing them each a deep bucket. “The ladders are out there. You remember the drill.”

They left their packs at the back of the store and spent the day picking, climbing up into the trees and filling bucket after bucket, which they emptied into a large container.

“You okay over there?” Sam kept yelling when McKenna was hidden in the leaves.

“I'm fine,” she'd yell back every time. “I'm good.”

At the end of the day, the woman paid them each twenty bucks, plus a bucket of apples, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and a steaming slice of pie.

“How are we going to carry these apples on the trail?” McKenna asked as they pulled their packs back on.

Sam handed her a few. “Pack these,” he said, zipping some into his own pack. They carried the bucket back to the trail and hiked a short way to a shelter where hikers were settling down for the night, making dinner, setting up tents. They sold the apples for fifty cents each.

“Now we've got enough money for food, showers, and laundry,” Sam said when they'd set up her tent. The campsite was too crowded to consider a fire; they cooked instant noodles on McKenna's stove and ate them at a picnic table. She was bone tired, a different kind of tired from walking.

“I would never have thought to do that,” she said. “It's impressive, the way you manage out here.”

“You're impressive, too,” Sam told her.

McKenna stared at him, the light around them beginning to fade. “It's easy to be impressive when you've got people to catch you if something goes wrong. You know?”

He cocked his head. “Well, I guess it's easy to be impressive when you've got no choice. And nothing to lose.”

She nodded as if she agreed, but said, “I don't know if
easy
is the word I'd use.”

“Have you ever worked before?” Sam asked.

“Ahem. I've worked my whole life. Well, the past few years anyway. I wait tables. That's how I paid for all my gear.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Don't look so surprised. Have you ever waited tables?”

“Nope.”

“You should think about it. It's a great way to make money. Especially for you.”

“Why especially for me?”

He looked annoyed and McKenna braced herself as his walls came up. She hesitated, trying to anticipate what he thought she meant, which was only that he was so gorgeous. He would kill in tips. But she felt so vulnerable saying anything like that to him.

“It's just, it seems like . . . women. They like you? And you know. Tips.”

The wall came down. Sam laughed. “Come here,” he said.

Unlike last night when they had a campground to themselves, this place bustled. In the gathering darkness conversations rumbled, laughter from one site, a mother scolding her children from another. McKenna moved closer to him on the bench, and he put his arms around her, kissing her for the first time since that morning. She could taste the cinnamon on his lips, smell the campfire on his sweater. It was a thick fisherman's sweater, oily with lanolin.

“Is this the warmest thing you have?” she asked, touching his collar.

“Don't worry about it,” he told her. “I've got you to keep me warm now. Right?”

She kissed him, putting her arms around his waist, not caring that any of their fellow campers could see them. After a few minutes, darkness settled in, providing cover, and she nestled in closer, closer, closer. Until Sam put his hands on her shoulders and firmly moved her away. She hadn't realized she'd been gasping until she breathed in a lungful of cold air.

“Ready to call it a night?” he said.

She went into the tent first while he gathered up their gear. In the distance, coyotes yipped and howled. When Sam crawled in she was lying on top of her sleeping bag, still wearing her fleece jacket and sweatpants. For some reason she'd expected Sam to move slowly, shyly. But he didn't. He zipped the tent flap shut, then crawled directly on top of her, the weight of him pushing the air out of her. Before she could exhale, his lips were on hers.

For a fleeting moment she thought of the other girls who'd been in this position—under Sam, his lips on theirs. There was something expert about the way he held her. At the same time, McKenna felt sure that there was something else about the way he moved and the way he held her that belonged solely to her.

Outside the tent, the sounds of their fellow campers were dying down, nothing left but a few muffled conversations. Sam and McKenna kissed, fully clothed, until every last noise died. There weren't even any crickets left.

And then the clothes started coming off. There was no discussion. It seemed to her that ever since he'd reappeared yesterday morning, time had done a strange sort of rearranging, making itself impossible to measure. So she couldn't say how much had passed before both their T-shirts and her bra had come off. Sam pressed his bare chest against hers, both of them aware of not making too much noise, catching each other's breath as they kissed and kissed.

It was McKenna who finally pulled her sweats off, then reached for the waistband of Sam's jeans. He sat up on one elbow and grabbed her hand, slowing her down.

“Hey,” he said. It was dark in the tent but McKenna felt like her naked body glowed, too visible, and she fought back a flutter of panic. Sam ran one finger from her shoulder down to her belly button and said, “Have you done this before?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Not obvious. Sweet. It's sweet.” He kissed her forehead.
“Listen. You don't have to. Anything more than this. This is fine. This is good.”

“What if I want to?”

He was quiet for a second, then moved his hand along the same course it had just taken, back up toward her shoulder, this time stopping for a moment at her breasts.

“Then we will,” he said. “If you want to.”

She lay quiet for a moment as he stopped and moved away from her, unzipping his pack and digging inside. She heard the crinkly sound of a wrapper and then ripping. Amazing, McKenna thought, protection hadn't even occurred to her.

“Hey,” she said. She put a hand on each side of Sam's face. “I think this is the first time you're more prepared than I am.”

He smiled. McKenna drew in her breath and closed her eyes. Everyone had told her this moment would be painful. But it wasn't painful, not at all. It was a gathering of all her senses, the effort to stay quiet as Sam's breath filled her ears. The flat scent settling in around them, the building emotion and sensation of the way they moved, together. Of all the things she might've imagined she'd feel, nothing could have prepared her for this kind of happiness.

• • •

The following days brought a stretch of perfect weather, the kind there can only be in the fall. Even though they were walking south, away from the cool weather, the days were dry and lovely. McKenna was aware that they never discussed how far they would walk together, or what they would do afterward.

During the day, they had trail rhythm, hitting their stride together, splitting their resources—sometimes resupplying with McKenna's credit card, sometimes foraging or working for a day. Once, at an unexpectedly slammed restaurant, they jumped in to wait tables in exchange for tips and a shift meal.

“See?” McKenna said, counting out their tips afterward. A lunch crowd, mostly women, had made Sam almost twice as much as McKenna, even though he'd flubbed nearly every order.

At night, they huddled in the closeness of her tent. Thinking about that proximity would fuel McKenna's footsteps during the day. The two of them covered fifteen and then twenty miles a day. In just over three weeks they took down four states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland. They competed over who could identify birdsongs faster (at first McKenna won every time, but by the time they hit Maryland Sam was getting good enough to win more regularly). At night, they'd curl up in each other's arms. Sam would tell ghost stories, or McKenna would read aloud, her headlamp beaming onto the page of an old book or a new one.

In a free box in Pennsylvania, she'd traded one of her novels for a collection of short stories called
The Ice at the Bottom of the World
. They were strange, language-driven stories, but after they'd finished the book she knew she'd carry it the whole rest of the trip. There was one called “Her Favorite Story” about a man who canoed his dying lover out of the wilderness, trying to get to a doctor, all the while telling her her favorite story
about Captain John Smith, who'd had a grave dug for him when he was stung by a stingray, “but never the man let them fill it.” John Smith surprised everyone by surviving. But the woman in the story died. The first time McKenna read it, her voice shook with tears as she reached the end.

“That's what I would do,” Sam said, his arms tightening around her. “I would paddle you to safety. Carry you across the river. But I wouldn't let you die.”

McKenna put the book down and kissed him, her headlamp making him squint. He pulled it off and kissed her again.

She had never felt so cut off from the world, her real world. The only time she ever regretted smashing her phone was when she wanted to take a picture. As they crossed the footbridge over the Potomac into West Virginia—coming up on the halfway point of her journey—another couple about their age was walking in the opposite direction.

“Will you take our picture?” the girl asked, holding her phone out to McKenna, the river wide and beautiful behind them. The girl's face was glossy with love and McKenna felt an instant kinship with her.

“Do you think you could take a picture of us and e-mail it?” McKenna asked, handing the phone back. “I don't have my phone with me.”

Sam put his arm around her. A breeze came by at the right moment, ruffling McKenna's hair, which she happened to be wearing down for almost the first time on the trail. The other night they'd camped at Greenbrier State Park and showered,
then stopped in Boonsboro, where McKenna had bought new T-shirts for both of them at Turn the Page Bookstore. Possibly the corniest thing she'd ever done: hers was pink, Sam's was blue, and on the back they said,
A HOUSE WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A R
OOM WITHOUT WINDOWS.
She'd left behind her old Johnny Cash T-shirt, its color faded beyond recognition, permanent sweat stains covering the back. She hadn't even bothered putting it in the free box, just shoved it into the garbage outside the bookstore. The Patagonia skort was hanging in admirably, though, and she felt pretty—though she knew Sam would be the star of the photograph, blue eyes vivid against his tan skin, hair streaked to a gold that rivaled the leaves quaking in the trees behind them.