Two Zero day
Two
Zero day
Emmett McCall came into my life like a storm wind, changing the temperature of everything I thought I knew. I was twelve years old, that first time I saw him, and painting my toenails a shade of sumac red I’d associate with Emmett forever after.
“Lot heavier than a compass,” Dad was saying. I had my feet propped on the wooden stool behind him at reception, tongue between my teeth as I coated the sliver of nail on my little toe. “Lot more complicated, too. Be happy to give you a trail map if you want to leave that contraption here.”
I glanced up at the hiker he was talking to. Classic example of what my dad called a digi-dummy: someone who’d brought far too much technology into the woods.
“Begs the question,” he continued, “of whether you’re out here to experience nature or not.”
“Of course I am,” the man said. He reached protectively for the sleek GPS he’d put on the reception desk; the first thing he’d asked my father when he arrived was whether we could charge it up for him. Huge mistake. “It’s a safety precaution.”
“You think you’re going to get lost out there?” Dad asked. I bit down on my smile and turned back to my toes. “Every other tree along the High Rocky’s got a white triangle painted on it. It’s one trail going in one line. What’s that thing weigh? Got to be eight ounces, at least.”
“About,” the man said, reluctantly. “Which isn’t so much, compared—”
“Ounces make pounds,” Dad said. A favorite mantra of his. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a solar-powered television on you, too. What’s your pack weigh, son?”
The man hesitated long enough that I looked up at him. He was in his twenties, I’d guess: his long face dirt-flecked and bearded, the same unshaven scraggle everyone had by the time they got to us. He glanced at me like I might be able to free him from my father’s scrutiny. “Fifty-four pounds.”
“Fifty—” Dad didn’t even get all the words out before he was clanging the bell. The man jumped so cartoonishly that I started to laugh. “IT’S A SHAKEDOWN!”
Mom and Cooper appeared within seconds. From the long hallway toward the bunk rooms, a few hikers stuck their heads out to watch.
“We got a shakedown?” Mom asked. She was wearing her baking apron, and wiped her floured hands on its skirt as she smiled at me.
“Critical case,” Dad confirmed. “Help this young man get his pack off, Cooper.”
My brother reached for the hiker’s pack straps. At fourteen he was already six feet tall, skinny as kernmantle rope but just as strong.
“What are you doing?” the man asked. He looked startled but altogether too tired to stop us; if the Fariday family was anything, we were a force. He’d only been at the Bunkhouse three minutes and his backpack was on the floor of our entryway, my mother and brother dissecting it for expendables.
“My wife and son are going to help you get that weight down,” Dad said. “Your body’ll be glad for it.”
“Anything we pull out will go in the Coop,” Mom added. She handed Cooper a set of three metal spoons. “Where someone with a lighter pack can take it.”
“ ‘The Coop’?” the hiker echoed, bewildered. He watched my family sort his belongings into piles.
“Coop,” Dad emphasized, pointing to the directory nailed to the wall. The Co-Op was there above Bunk Rooms, Mess Hall, Showers. “Pronounced as such on account of my son, here. Cooper.”
My brother lifted one hand in a wave before returning to the offending backpack.
“You can find a lightweight compass there before you leave,” Dad said. He handed the man a trail map and gestured him aside. “Stay with your things, my friend, we’ve got more folks on the stairs.”
And that was the first time I saw Emmett. Through the screen door, trailing his grandfather up our porch steps with an expression on his face so dire it stopped me stiff. Nail polish dripped onto the top of my foot as the man I’d soon know to be Abel McCall opened our door.
“You made it!” Dad said. He often welcomed hikers this way: like we’d been waiting for them, which we always were. My parents, seasoned thru-hikers themselves, knew what it meant to reach civilization after so long on the trail. “Come on in here.”
“Thank you,” Abel said, beaming so widely the words were halfway to laughter. This was typical, too: people often arrived at the Bunkhouse on the edge of euphoria. “Emmett, step inside.”
I watched him. Emmett. My age, nearly if not exactly, with a pack that rose high enough over his shoulders to brush the dark hair at his nape.
His matchstick arms were bug-bitten and speckled with welts like he’d been scratching.
His tortured face was sunburned. When his pale eyes met mine, they were already glossed with tears.
“Hey, kiddo,” my dad said. He leaned over the desk toward Emmett. Without realizing it, I’d leaned closer, too. “You have a hard day getting here?”
Emmett’s bottom lip wobbled. Instead of answering my father, he looked straight at me and said, “I hate backpacking.” It was like there was no one else in the room, like this boy I didn’t know was continuing a conversation with me that we’d started long ago.
“I’m hungry all the time,” he told me, swiping one bony wrist under his running nose.
He drew breath in a hiccup. “I’m scared of the bugs, and the animals.
I’m really scared of the woods at night. ”
Everything had gone still in the wake of him. My mom and Cooper crouched above the oversized backpack, the hiker standing over them with his hands on his hips, my father at reception. Everyone was looking at Emmett, but it was Abel who spoke first.
“City boy,” he said, dropping a hand onto Emmett’s stooped shoulder. It sent him off-kilter, and he stumbled under the weight of his pack before righting himself again. “My grandson. But that’s why we’re out here, right, Em? Toughen you up a bit?”
Emmett only kept looking at me, sniffling.
“Well,” Dad said, “the High Rocky’s hard work for certain.” He took a cookie from the plate by the phone and held it out to Emmett. Brown sugar with flaked coconut, my mother’s beloved recipe. “But you look pretty tough to me already.”
Emmett accepted the cookie without responding. When he bit into it, he sniffled again.
“You must be Peter Fariday,” Abel said. His hand pulled off Emmett’s shoulder to shake my father’s.
All of his gear looked new and expensive: the logo on his shirt hadn’t even started to chafe off under his pack strap.
“We’re only out here for a few weeks, but I knew we had to see the famous Bunkhouse.
Reserved under Abel and Emmett McCall. Got a zero day planned for tomorrow. ”
“Oh good, good.” Dad still had his eyes on Emmett as he shook Abel’s hand.
We didn’t get many kids on the High Rocky, and almost never any as young as me.
Zero day meant zero miles hiked tomorrow: they’d be at the Bunk all day long.
“Some rest will be good for you, kiddo. Get some food in that belly, too.”
Emmett nodded, his gaze sliding back to me. I’d never met a boy so unafraid to appear fearful. So unashamed of his softness. Already, his honesty was a disarming novelty that I wanted to be around as often as I could.
“Lilah,” my father said. “You done beautifying back there, baby girl?” He turned to me, and I knew the look in his eyes: he was telling me that this was something to be handled with care.
For all of Dad’s tough love—the derision of technology, the intrusive way he gave advice to strangers—he knew how to read people, and he knew when to be gentle.
“Why don’t you help these folks find their bunks? ”
I wasn’t done, but I capped my polish anyway. When I hopped off the stool, Dad’s hand brushed the back of my hair. “We’ve got space in three.
“Best room in the house,” he continued as he turned back to Emmett. “Fireplace and everything.”
Emmett, taking the final bite of his cookie, only nodded.
“Come with me,” I said. The first of so many times I’d ask it of him. “Do you want me to carry your pack?”
Emmett swallowed. He hooked both his thumbs into the straps and shifted its weight on his shoulders. “I’ve got it.”
Abel ruffled his hair. He looked too young, to me, to be a grandfather. With a full head of dark hair and broad, strong shoulders unstooped by age or anything he’d carried all this way down the trail.
“Dinner’s around six,” Dad said from reception. “Got about an hour if you want to shower or take some laundry down the hill before then.”
Abel nodded on a smile. When I started toward the hallway, Mom held out a hand to touch Emmett’s bug-bitten elbow.
“You’re safe here, sweetheart,” she told him. When his gaze landed on her, his wet eyes were clear, delicate blue. Like alpine forget-me-nots against the burnt flush of his cheeks. “Everything will be all right.”
Emmett looked at me, then. Like, already, he trusted me to confirm this for him. When I nodded, he did, too.
“And come back for more cookies anytime,” Mom called as we kept moving. “They’re always at the front desk.”
“Thanks very much!” Abel said, lifting a hand over his shoulder.
“That way’s the shower room,” I told Emmett, pointing to the left fork of the hall before we went right. “There’s soap and towels and everything.”
“A real towel,” Abel said from behind me. “What a luxury.”
“Just drop it in the black bin when you’re done.” I looked from Abel to Emmett, who was staring out the back door to the rockers on the porch.
“And that’s the best part of the whole place,” I told him.
The two of us stood shoulder to shoulder before the screen door.
There was only one hiker on the porch, reading a paperback with a foot tucked under her in a rocking chair.
Before her and us, the mountains spread down through the valley—a vista just going golden with the first signs of sunset.
“You can go out there anytime you want.”
“Maybe,” Emmett said. His thumbs were still tucked under his pack straps.
“Or you can stay inside.”
He looked over at me. He wasn’t crying anymore. “Maybe,” he said again.
In room three, there were two beds open close to the fireplace. It wasn’t burning, of course; it was August, and almost eighty degrees outside.
“It’ll cool off once the sun’s down,” I told them as Abel slid off his pack and then reached to help Emmett with his.
He lifted it clear off and Emmett rolled out his shoulders, so bony I could see the knobs of them through his sweat-darkened T-shirt.
“All the windows have screens and it’s really best to keep them open when you go to sleep. ”
“No bugs,” Abel said to Emmett. “It’s your lucky night.”
I didn’t mind bugs, or share with them how much the spotted orbweavers loved nesting in our bunk room windows.
Abel spoke again. “Where’s your bathroom, Miss Lilah?”
“Straight down the hall on the left,” I told him. He brushed a hand across Emmett’s shoulder as he stepped around us.
“Be right back, Em.”
Emmett watched him go. When he sank onto the rubber-wrapped mattress, both hands gripping the frame of the bed, I sat next to him. It felt like the right thing to do.
“You live here?” Emmett asked me, finally. He had long, dark eyelashes and a smudge of dirt on his left ear.
“Always have,” I told him. “It’s not so bad, I promise.”
“Not here,” he said, peering down at his feet. His hiking boots hit above the ankle—they looked heavy and stiff. “Out there.”
“I like it out there, too.”
Emmett worried his lips together. His hands were clamped so tightly around the bed frame. Finally, he said, “It looks like you’re bleeding.”
On the floorboards beneath us, my bare feet were planted next to his booted ones. Only seven of my toes were painted; along the arch of my right foot, a droplet of nail polish screamed red.
Emmett tipped forward and used his fingernail to scrape the dried polish off my skin. So gently, like he was unpeeling a postage stamp.
He straightened and looked over at me. I’d met so many strangers in my life at the Bunkhouse, and none of them had ever felt as familiar to me as Emmett did right then.
“All better,” he said.