He jerked open his eyes and saw Doug’s face hovering above him, his expression one of tried patience.
“What?” he asked.
“Rise and shine, boy,” Doug told him, “time to get going.”
Bob stared up groggily at him. “What time is it?” he mumbled.
“After seven,” Doug answered. “I knew you were tired so I let you sleep late.”
This is late? Bob thought, almost saying it aloud before deciding against it. “Okay,” he muttered.
Doug started to back out of the tent.
“How long you been up?” Bob asked.
“About an hour,” Doug told him.
Oh, Jesus, Bob thought. I’m gonna love this hike. He sighed and tried to sit up, wincing and making a hissing noise at the pain in his right side. He reached up and out of the sleeping bag to unzip it, wincing again at the tenderness of his right palm. He looked at it, grimacing. Blood was crusted on it and it looked discolored in spots. He blew out breath. Oh, what a beautiful morning, his brain sang, off-key.
“Come on, Bob, up ’n at ’em,” Doug said.
“Yessir.” Bob unzipped the bag and got out of it, wincing once more at the pain that lifting his legs caused. And he took offense at Marian’s comment that he wasn’t “in tune.” I am completely out of tune, he thought.
He started dressing slowly, almost infirmly it seemed.
“You getting dressed?” Doug asked.
“Getting dressed,” he answered.
“Early bird gets the worm, Bobby,” Doug said.
Don’t want a worm, he thought. “How about some coffee?” he asked.
“Later,” Doug told him. “We have to get going.”
Bob rubbed some water on his face and dried it with a paper napkin.
When he crawled out of the tent, he saw that Doug had dissembled the fire pit, taken down the food bags, and reloaded both their backpacks. “Thanks for putting my food away,” he said.
“Just today,” Doug told him. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll do it yourself.”
“You didn’t have any coffee?” Bob asked.
“Sure I did, an hour ago,” Doug said.
“Well…” Bob didn’t know what to say. Finally, he asked, “You have breakfast too?”
“Yep,” Doug nodded.
“Well…” Bob looked disturbed.
“We can’t start cooking again,” Doug told him. “We have to get going. Eat an energy bar while we’re walking. When we stop to let you rest, you can make some coffee for yourself.”
Bob frowned but didn’t speak.
“Tomorrow I’ll wake you up when I get up,” Doug told him. “Then you can have a nice warm breakfast before we take off.”
“Yeah,” Bob said quietly. What’s the goddamn hurry? he thought. Doug was acting as though this were a military operation.
“We need to make some mileage before we stop for coffee,” Doug said.
Stop where? Bob thought. Is there a Starbucks run by bears out there?
“I’m kind of hungry, Doug,” he said. “Isn’t there something I can have before we leave?”
Doug’s sigh was one of strained acceptance, his expression put upon.
“So… put some instant cereal in a plastic bag, add powdered milk and water and shake it up, eat it while we’re walking.”
Sounds really wonderful, Bob thought. He felt compelled to say something. Was it really necessary for Doug to be so rigid about all this?
“Doug, why do we have to rush off?” he asked, watching Doug take down the tent. “Why can’t I have that nice warm breakfast before we go?”
“We will—tomorrow,” Doug said, his movements brusque as he folded up the tent. “This is a backpacking hike, Bob, not a gourmet tour.”
A gourmet tour? Bob thought. Just something warm for breakfast?
“You can have a nice lunch,” Doug told him. “Make yourself some hot soup or something.”
Bob sighed. “Okay.” He scratched his right cheek, wincing as he touched the scrape; he’d forgotten about it.
“I put the refuse in your pack,” Doug said.
“Refuse?”
“The apple cores, the aluminum foil from your chicken à la king dinner,” Doug said. “The cardboard we burned, the foil has to be packed out.”
“How come?” Bob asked.
“You want some animal to eat it and die?” Doug said; it wasn’t a question. “We take out anything that can’t be burned. Tomorrow you’ll collect and pack the refuse. Don’t just stand there, get your sleeping bag ready.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Bob made a face as he moved to where Doug had left the sleeping bag. I hope to God that blister doesn’t make walking a pain, he thought.
“I’ll let you pack out all the refuse,” Doug told him. “Since I’m handling the extra weight.”
“Right.” No point in arguing, Bob thought. It was only fair. Yet, for some reason, he wondered if Doug was really the dedicated environmentalist he seemed to be presenting. He certainly wasn’t going to make an issue of it, but he felt that Doug probably hadn’t packed out every single scrap of refuse when he had backpacked in the past. It just didn’t seem like Doug, and he wondered if Doug was doing it now to impress him with his concern for Mother Nature.
Oh, well, he thought. Let it go.
“Don’t roll up your sleeping bag,” Doug told him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t roll it up,” Doug said. “You stuff it, not roll it. Rolling compresses the fibers in the same place over and over and eventually breaks them apart.”
In three days? Bob felt like saying. He remained quiet and did what Doug told him to do.
As he stood up, groaning, Doug said, “I’ll carry your sleeping bag too.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Bob told him.
“I think I do,” Doug said, “you’re as stiff as a board. I’d better have you do a few stretching exercises before we take off.”
I’d rather have a pancake and a cup of coffee, Bob thought.
He tried to copy Doug’s stretching exercises for the arms, the shoulders, the back, and the legs. He kept hissing at the effort. “You are in some rotten shape, buddy,” Doug told him.
“I know, I know,” Bob muttered. What next? he thought. A lecture on my general failures as a human being?
“That help any?” Doug asked when they were through.
“Yeah,” Bob lied. It helped make the areas of pain more specific, he thought. He swallowed a multivitamin with a sip of water.
They got their packs on, Bob trying not to grunt in discomfort at the weight; it would only give Doug more ammunition for his criticisms.
“From here on in, we leave the trail,” Doug told him.
“How come?” Bob asked.
“You want experience at backpacking for your novel, don’t you?” Doug said. “If we follow trails all the way, it’s not a hike, it’s a stroll.”
Yeah, right, Bob thought. He wondered worriedly if he was really going to make it through the hike. Not that he had any choice in the matter. The ship was launched. Either it sailed to its port or it sank.
Very reassuring, Hansen, he told himself. He pressed his lips together. I am going to make it, he vowed. Let Doug lace at him, he wasn’t going to let it break his spirit. He made an amused sound. That novel is going to be pretty grim, he thought.
8:21 AM
Is it my imagination, Bob thought, or is Doug taking me on the hardest route he can possibly find? Or already knows about? They had been moving on sloping ground almost since they’d started out, through meadows thick with dry grass and woods so dense that Doug had to use his golak to hack an opening through the underbrush. Already, he felt tired and aching but didn’t want to mention it to Doug, knowing the look he’d get and likely the sarcastic comment.