Our Souls at Night

27

At midweek they packed Louis’s pickup and drove west up out of the plains toward the mountains, watching the mountains rise up higher as they got closer to the Front Range, the dark forested lower foothills and farther back the white peaks above tree line still with patches of snow even in July, and drove onto U.S. Highway 50 and went on through the few towns. They stopped in one of the towns for hamburgers and then drove up the highway through the Arkansas River canyon, the beautiful fast water, steep red jagged cliffs on each side, there were Rocky Mountain sheep along the road, all ewes with short sharp horns, and went on and then turned off toward North Fork Campground on County Road 240 and entered the national forest. There were not many people or campers in the campground. They got out and began to unload the pickup at a site near the creek. They could hear it running and rushing. The clear icy water, with brook trout holed up in the hollows below the rocks. There were tall fir trees and big ponderosas and aspen along the creek and back in the hillside. Tent and camper sites were marked off by timbers and there were picnic tables and firepit rings nearby.

We’ll look around after we get camp set up, Louis said.

The boy helped set up the tent where Louis said was a good flat smooth place that wasn’t too close to the fire ring. Louis showed him how to position the tent poles and stretch the guide ropes tight and peg them in the ground and how to fold back the window coverings and the door flap. They put their blowup mattresses and sleeping bags inside, Jamie and Bonny to sleep on one side, Addie and Louis on the other. Addie unzipped one of the bags and spread it out for herself and Louis and unzipped the other and laid it over the first sleeping bag, so they could have a wide comfortable bed together, and spread out another bag for Jamie.

Then the camp was set up and they went over to the creek and waded in the icy waters.

It’s too cold, Grandma.

It comes straight out of a snowbank, honey.

By now it was getting dark, long past suppertime. Louis and the boy hauled wood from the pickup since cutting any limbs or trees wasn’t permitted in the national forest. Jamie gathered up twigs and little dry branches from the ground and they laid a small fire inside the circle of rocks and propped a grate over it and Addie and the boy cooked hot dogs and canned beans in an iron frying pan and got out some raw carrots and chips. When the food was hot they sat down at the picnic table and ate and watched the fire.

You want to get some more wood? Louis said.

Jamie and the dog went out of the firelight to the pickup and the boy brought an armload of wood back.

Go ahead and lay some of it on, Louis said.

He put a piece of the wood on the fire, his arm stretched out, his eyes watering and blinking in the smoke. Then he sat down again. The air was cool and fresh, a mountain breeze blowing up. They didn’t talk but looked at the fire and at the stars just above the mountains. They could see the bare peak of Mount Shavano shining in the night sky to the north.

Then Louis took Jamie down along the creek and cut three green willow shoots and sharpened the ends and went back to the campfire. Your grandma has a surprise for you.

What is it?

Addie got out a bag of marshmallows and poked one over the sharp end of eaem; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 2em; text-align: doinidbych of the sticks.

Hold it near the fire. Let it brown up and get soft.

He held it out and it flamed up at once.

Blow on it.

Addie showed him how to brown it slowly by turning the stick. They ate two or three each. Jamie’s mouth and hands got sticky with the sweet insides and blackened with marshmallow ash.

When they finished eating they put the food in the pickup cab for the night so it wouldn’t attract bears. Then Louis took Jamie to the campground toilet and went in with him with a flashlight.

Just do your business and come out, Louis said. We don’t have to linger in here. You want me to stay with you?

It stinks in here.

Louis pointed the flashlight down into the gaping dark hole of the tank.

Go ahead. I’m not leaving you.

Louis turned away and the boy pulled down his pants and sat on the seat with the open tank under him. He was afraid of it. When he was done Louis used the toilet and they went outside where the dog was waiting. They breathed again in the fresh air. They walked over and washed their hands and faces at the pump and went back to the tent.

It stinked in there, Grandma.

I know.

She got Jamie ready for bed in the sleeping bag with Bonny lying on the pillow beside him.

Where will you be?

We’ll be sleeping here, right next to you.

All night?

Yes.

He went to sleep and Louis and Addie came into the tent after an hour and got undressed and lay down and held hands and looked at the stars up through the mesh window of the tent. There was the sharp pine smell of the trees.

Isn’t it nice like this, Addie said.

In the morning they had pancakes and eggs and bacon and then tidied up the camp and put the food and cooking pans in the cooler in the back of the pickup and drove up farther in the mountains on the highway to Monarch Pass and stopped and got out at the Continental Divide and looked out over the western slope and if their eyes had been good enough and if they could have seen over the curvature of the earth they could have seen the Pacific Ocean a thousand miles away across the mountains. At noon they drove back to their camp and ate cheese sandwiches and apples and drank cold water from the old-fashioned well, pumping it out with the green pump handle, and then took a hike up to the waterfalls on North Fork Creek and sat and watched the water crash down into the clear green pool below. When they hiked down to the bottom, the air was cooler near the falls, the air misted on their faces.

They returned to camp and Addie and Louis set up folding camp chairs in the shade by the creek and read their books. The boy and the dog wandered around in the surrounding trees.

Can we take a walk somewhere, Jamie said.

You can follow the creek, Louis said. Which way do you think it’s running?

Down there.

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I don’t know.

Because it’s going downhill. Water always wants to flow to a lower place. Where do you want to go?

That way.

That’s downhill. Down-river. To get back here to camp what would you do?

Turn around.

Smart boy. Follow the creek up-river and come back to our tent. Your grandma and I’ll be waiting for you. Try it once. Go a little ways and then come back. Take Bonny with you. But don’t cross the creek anywhere. Stay on this side.

The boy and the dog went down away from the campground and came back and then went farther down and poked around in the rocks and examined the shining mica and climbed on the big boulders and lay looking down into the water. Then they moved back up the creek.

What did you see? Louis said.

We didn’t see any bears. But there was a deer.

What did Bonny do?

She barked at it. We just turned around. That’s all we did.

In the evening they made another small fire and Addie cut up onions and peppers and put them in butter in the iron skillet and put in the ground-up hamburger and tomato sauce and a spoonful of sugar and Worcestershire sauce and a quarter cup of ketchup and salt and pepper, a sauce she’d made before they left home, and now stirred it all together and laid a lid on the pan. Louis and Jamie got out the hamburger buns and the leftover chips from the day before and set everything ready on the table, all the plates and unbreakable cups. Jamie took the dog and the empty jug do the Bwrown Palace Ho