A gun.
May 20—Lee Vining RV Park
We got it! The PERFECT trailer. Sandy negotiated the best deal in Bishop, and now we’ll have a REAL home, not some nasty pop-up where we’re always on top of each other. Not that I don’t love to be on top of Sandy. Ha! Can you believe Daddy asked me that when I told him I was leaving with her?? Fucking perv. Whatever. He can keep his Lord and his Fox News and his Sunday Night Football! I’m FREEEE.
Maybe if Mama were still around things would be different. I mean, being dropped off with Daddy wasn’t a picnic, not gonna lie, but she couldn’t take me to all those places she sent me postcards from, could she? Bali and Bengali. The Andes and the Rockies. The last one I got was from right here, Bishop, California, though I guess the closer address would be NAMELESS COMMUNITY NEXT TO LEE VINING. Ha! Sandy says I have a knack for sarcasm. I think that’s what she loves most about me.
But oh! I’m supposed to be using this to work on my writing. Journaling, that writer lady called it in that one class I took at the community college, right before I met Sandy. Write every day, she also said, though that seems like a lot. If I practice describing what I see as often as possible, eventually I’ll have the chops to write something worth a damn, apparently.
Here goes: Tonight at the Mobil—it was full of rednecks from out of state and this one couple who looked so in love, only they were in love with skiing. Mammoth THIS and Mammoth THAT I heard them saying in their rich East Coast accents. I tried to imagine what it was that they loved so much. Why they felt the need to ride a mechanical chair and strap on expensive plastic to enjoy the outdoors. Was it the fancy jackets they got to wear? The helmets? I saw the label on the woman’s jacket, and I recognized it from that Patagonia store Sandy and I window-shopped at in LA before we came up here a month ago. It was seven hundred dollars! I’ve never had that much money in my life, though Sandy handed over much more than that to the man at the RV place, so I guess we do have that much money. Sandy pulled that big wad of cash out of the mattress. Not under, but out of.
I asked Sandy about it, and she says there’s a lot more where that came from, only we shouldn’t talk about it, and sometimes I feel like she’s saying that because she’s testing me. Wondering if I’m with her for the money, even though I didn’t know she had it. Like I might’ve been able to smell it on her through the patchouli oil and vape. But I’m with her for love. If she hadn’t come along, I was leaving anyway. I was going to get my own life. Maybe I’d follow those postcards from Mama until I found her.
“She can’t replace your mother, you know.” That’s another thing Daddy had to say. Like he couldn’t understand why I’d be attracted to someone old enough to be his old lady, even though my “aunts” have been getting younger by the year, like some science experiment or that Dorian Gray portrait Mr. James made us read about in the eleventh grade before I dropped out.
Whatever.
I guess that isn’t very literary. People in the fancy books Sandy reads don’t say “whatever.” They speak in song lyrics, and go on about trees, or how a rosebush has all these white flowers except a few that are starting to rot. These books are so boring they make me want to SCREAM.
Sandy says they’re good for me. But I don’t want to write like that. I want to write FREE, like the feeling I had when we drove away from Daddy’s musty shack in Cape Cod, how the sand flew up under our wheels and we were AWAY, no looking back.
Like that other woman I saw in the Mobil tonight, the one with the hot guy who kept looking at her like she was a Christmas present.
“Cassie,” I heard him call her.
She had this look on her face like she’s scared someone might catch up to her. Like in those horror movies right before the bad man pops up right in front of you in the woods.
—Petal
CHAPTER 4 WELCOME, DIRTBAGS
Then
May
My radio crackles next to me. “This is Victor 1.” Eric Moser, the head law enforcement officer, is calling. His call sign is Victor 1. “We have a W call on Lembert Dome.”
I’ve spent the last two days in orientation and training, refamiliarizing myself with the park, going over rope protocols, learning call signs and strategies and passing my “pack” test, where each member of the team has to complete a three-mile course with forty-five pounds on their back. We’ve each been assigned a pager and a radio, and it takes a little getting used to, waiting for that crackling sound and the jolt at your waist. I’d forgotten how it sets my heart beating, how the adrenaline rushes through my bloodstream when a call comes in. It’s a thrill, but it’s exhausting, too—like a high, there’s a comedown afterwards that can leave you feeling strung out and weak.
Lembert Dome is nearby, just up the road from the campground. I pick up my radio. “Victor 1, this is SAR Peters. Responding to the W call on Lembert Dome.”
“Copy that, SAR Peters.”
I sigh as I stand up from the battered picnic table where I’ve just finished a late breakfast. I was up early to climb a nearby wall, my first day back on the rock. It felt good to be out there, but I kept it short so I didn’t tire myself out. It’s not even Memorial Day weekend yet, and already the distress calls are coming in fast and furious.
It’s been all minor calls so far—people who are found before I get there, someone who dropped their keys on the trail, an annoyed and entitled man who thought he could ask us to bring him water. And then there are the W calls—our code word for “wimp.” Out-of-shape people who hike themselves into the wilderness and can’t get out, clutching their chests, claiming heart attacks that turn out to be panic attacks. Depending on the nature of the injury and whether it’s real or imagined, they may get charged for their rescue by the Park Service.
Not that all the calls are unserious. There are real heart attacks and strokes, injuries where a climber has to be littered out or removed by airlift. Those are the truly stressful calls, where it’s your skill and speed that will mean the difference between life and death. Innocent mistakes can turn serious quickly in the wilderness. A tired hiker can die of exposure if they aren’t found fast enough, particularly in the spring. The park is alluring, but dangerous, and that’s why we’re here—to help visitors focus on the positive and not end up on the wrong side of their enthusiasm.
“You want company?” Ben asks, coming out of his tent. It’s a cool day, and he’s dressed for it in long pants, a fleece top, and a puffy jacket, the yellow of his Yosemite search and rescue shirt poking out at the collar. I’m wearing the same shirt over a long-sleeved thermal layer under my own red puffy.
“Sure.”
Ben grabs his rescue pack and puts his radio harness on, the radio diagonal across his chest so that it’s easy to access. Then we go to the SAR cache and take one of the park vehicles for the short drive up the road to the base of Lembert Dome. It’s around ten, and the morning mist has burned off the meadow, though the dew is still clinging to the grass. The sky is light blue and clear—by the afternoon, it might feel like summer is coming.
I turn the vehicle into the parking lot. It’s full of cars, and there’s a line for the bathroom.