Lone Wolf Trail

Randall sits alone in the den. It was the basement when he was still married. Now it has wood paneling and a little bar with neon beer signs and the big TV that used to be in the guest room, so it’s become The Den. Fight Club plays on the wide screen with the volume turned down. His laptop hums hot on his thighs while he waits for chesster6669, whoever and wherever he might be, to get on with it and make the next move. A little bell chimes. Knight to c3. Randall captures the piece with his queen, smiles, then watches as she is immediately taken by a bishop that has been hiding in the far corner of the board.

“Fuck.”

He slams the computer shut in disgust.

After a moment, he picks up the yearbook he dug from a pile earlier in the evening and lets it fall open. Varsity football. His smooth face looks small, barely poking out of the oversized shoulder pads. He passes a fingertip over nine other black and white faces, saying the names like incantations. The Rough Riders. Friends since Lincoln Elementary. Tee ball. Summer camp. Even into their college years, each would travel for hours just to hit the casino boat together or to catch a hockey game.

Somehow, twenty years had slipped by.

Randall opens the laptop again and pulls up the draft of an email he started last week after two glasses of pinot. Nine addresses. Subject: Been Too Long. He reads it through one more time and then hits send.

•

Four of the guys respond. Two say they can make it.

•

The next weekend, Washburn and Kegg are sitting in their individual pickup trucks in the parking lot at Sugarbush Park. Both step out when Randall pulls up beside them.

“How’s it hanging, boys?” Kegg appears to have doubled in size since college, looking not so much fat as simply swollen. His bright eyes, still mischievous, are now shaded by the puffy flesh that surrounds them.

“What up, dogs,” Washburn barks at them both. He turns, his clothes dirty and paint-streaked, yellow skin shrink wrapped over wiry muscle. “Rando. Put her there.” He pushes his palms together, paired fingers splayed like a starfish, and holds them out parallel to the ground. Randall smiles and shakes his head, then reluctantly puts his own hands together and inserts the cleft between his middle and ring fingers into the corresponding space on Washburn’s who then separates the heels of his palms, peers inside, and says, “Oh yeah! Still sexy as hell, Rando.”

He allows himself to laugh at the juvenilia, reminded of their boyhood antics.

“Let me get a taste,” Kegg says, but Randall has retrieved his hands and offers just one to the disappointed man for shaking purposes only. He takes in their outfits. Their lack of gear.

“Did you guys bring anything?” Randall asks. “Supplies or water or whatever? This trail is like seven miles long.” He came prepared wearing a slim new hiking pack with a built-in water bladder and shoulder tube, Gortex boots over light-weight sweat-wicking socks, and a greasy layer of sunscreen mixed with bug spray.

“Shit yeah,” Wash says and produces a full-sized bottle of Knob Creek whiskey from behind his driver’s seat, a quarter of the liquid already unaccounted for. His hiking equipment consists of a hoodie, basketball shorts, and old tennis shoes, stained grass green around the soles. He sloshes the booze inside the glass. “This should get us through the thick stuff.”

•

They gather their things and set off toward the wooden sign, an arrow with the words ‘Lone Wolf Trail’ carved into the surface. Randall spent the previous few days picturing the three of them strolling and talking, each describing the last two decades of their lives, deep conversations about triumphs and losses, hopes and dreams, but right from the start the path inclines steeply upward. The crunching of fall leaves and their labored breathing are the only sounds for the first couple of miles.

Eventually, the top of a structure becomes visible through rusty foliage. Six columns of stacked stone hold up the peaked and shingled roof, railing and benches lining each of the long sides.

“Oh, thank Christ,” Wash says, veering off the path and down the slight slope to the concrete slab that serves as the floor. He finishes the last swallow of warm water from a plastic bottle he fished from his truck, tosses it into the woods, then stretches out on a bench with his rolled-up hoodie as a pillow.

Kegg is rosy-cheeked and shining with sweat, but despite his obesity, somehow appears the least winded of the three. Taking up most of the bench opposite Washburn, he digs around in his backpack for a comically long time, then suddenly produces a water-proof pill container made of army-green plastic. He twists off the tiny cap with fingers like sausage links and tips out a thin joint with a slight bend in the middle.

“Bingo,” he sings. “Brought a little after dinner pinner, just like the old days.”

“And what about the dinner?” Randall asks, picturing charbroiled burgers and dogs.

Kegg shakes his bowling ball head. “Don’t have meat. Just the herbs.”

Randall feels a tightening in his chest, unsure if it is anxiety about the idea of smoking pot for the first time in a dozen years or just an impending heart attack from the exertion.

“Now we’re talking.” Wash is back up in a sitting position, the Knob Creek in his hand. He pulls the cork which makes a wet kissing sound. “Ladies first,” he says, extending the bottle out toward Randall.

“Funny,” he says as he takes the bottle, giving the mouth a sniff. “That’s what I said to your mom at her bedroom door last night.” The whiskey is warm and sulfuric. He can trace every inch of its passage through his esophagus and into the empty pit of his stomach. With effort, he keeps his face fairly straight while suppressing the urge to retch.

“Dude,” Kegg says curtly, “you know his mom died.” Despite this unexpected announcement, Kegg still proceeds to flick the wheel on his pink disposable lighter and holds the flame to the tip of the joint.

Randall’s head swivels back. “Fuck. Serious?”

Washburn laughs and takes a double gulp of the bourbon. “No, don’t listen to his fat ass. They’re just divorced. My dad is in Reno now and mom’s on the apps trying to find me a step daddy.”

“Oh, thank God,” Randall says. “I mean, gross and I’m sorry, but I’m glad she’s not in the ground.”

“It’s cool.” Wash takes the joint from Kegg whose cheeks are absurdly distended, lips tight against the smoke trapped inside them.

The men drop the conversation for a moment as they pass around both whiskey and weed. When it reaches Randall for a third time, he waves the joint away, head spinning but not unpleasantly. He takes a few drinks of water from his shoulder tube, swishing the last mouthful and spitting it into the dirt. The air carries the dry spice of autumn, like cumin and nutmeg in his nostrils. Colors and sounds seem closer, sharper. He smiles at the sense of communion with earth and woods and his brothers in time.

“Man,” Kegg says, dropping the little ember of a roach back into the pill bottle and replacing the cap, “you should have invited K.B. and Scurlock and fucking Arlo and those guys.”

Randall puffs air from his nose. “I did, bro. I sent emails to every Rough Rider and only heard from you guys—plus Petey, and Johnny Wu—but Pete had a thing in Decatur and Johnny is on probation or some shit.”

“Guess you’ll need to plan ahead better next time,” Wash says and walks to the edge of the shelter to piss on the dead leaves.

“At least I tried. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you fuckers in forever.”

Kegg nods. “You’re right. We all let it happen. Crazy that the easier technology makes it to stay in touch, the less we actually do it.” He turns his head away, eyes red from either tears or the pot.

“You cool?” Randall asks and catches Wash looking his way, still holding his junk with one hand and waving the other beneath his chin in the universal sign for ‘I wouldn’t go there.’

The big man sniffs and blinks, composing himself. “Of course. Yeah. It’s just my dad, you know.”

“No. What about him?”

“Oh, he shot himself last year. At the house.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry for laying that shit on you, Rando. I thought you knew.”

“Jesus, Kegg. Don’t apologize to me, brother. I had no idea. I am so sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t sweat it. It’s no big deal.”

Randall feels like yelling at him and isn’t sure why. He takes another drink of water instead and listens to the painful drumbeat building inside his skull.

“What about you, Rando,” Wash asks. “Your parents still kicking?”

“Yeah,” he replies, feeling dazed. “Yeah, they’re still in Dayton. Never left. I just don’t talk to them very much these days. They turned into the crotchety old people we used to make fun of.”

Wash laughs. “The ‘get off my lawn’ folks, huh?”

“Exactly. It’s all Fox News and complaining about immigrants and shit with them now.”

Kegg takes a sip of the remaining booze and watches the woods like he’s expecting someone. It’s Washburn who finally responds.

“Well,” he says, “sounds like they still have some sense. I mean, it’s getting harder for me to find construction work with all the illegals coming up here and snagging jobs outside of Home Depot for half the price it takes me to feed my kids and make alimony.”

Kegg grunts and nods, though it is difficult to tell if in response to Wash’s complaints of injustice or something entirely within his own wandering mind.

Randall’s instinct is to hit them with the same arguments that he has leveled at his parents for the last few years, hoping that someone his own age might be more open to reason, but decides against it.

“So, you’re divorced too, huh? Mine was five years back.”

“Oh yeah,” Wash says. “Whore took me for everything she could, too. I mean, I go out and bust my ass to give her a house and fancy clothes and shit and then when I’m not sweet and sensitive and gay enough for her, she just splits on me? And I have to finance the whole thing?” An angular bit of muscle in Wash’s jaw rises and falls as he seethes. “What about you, Rando. Did you stick it to the bitch?”

“Hey, man,” Randall says, trying to strike a balance between unfazed and offended, “Kelly and I are still cool, ya know? I mean, I still want to have a relationship with my daughter at least.”

“Better watch,” Kegg says, finally joining the conversation. “The big bitches teach bitching to the little bitches.”

“They’re all crazy,” Wash adds. “You think you know a chick, next thing she’s at the Clock Grill trying to hook up with some blue-haired millennial.”

Kegg stands, his massive body shifting in an attempt at stability as he lists to his right. “This country’s going to shit.”

“Yup,” Wash agrees.

“And I’ll tell you why.”

Washburn’s head bobs in anticipation of agreement. Randall waits, bile rising up his dry throat.

“The fucking libtards.” He spits on the concrete. “Up to me, I’d shoot every last one of the traitors.”

While Wash hoots and congratulates Kegg on his insight and bravery, Randall leans over the rail behind the bench and vomits hot whiskey and snot onto the curled husks of dead leaves. For a moment, he imagines that his sudden helplessness will give them pause, will draw them close in sympathy, but they just laugh and call him a pussy.

He starts back down the trail by himself, swishing and spitting, a burning ember of pain glowing behind his eyes. Eventually they catch up to him, making the half-hearted noises of a child who has behaved badly and apologizes by blaming the aggrieved for their sensitivity. He plays it off, chalks it up to the weed and booze on an empty stomach.

He gets into the car without giving them another look.

•

Back home in the den, Randall opens a beer and turns on Stand By Me. The neon signs buzz from the walls. He taps the screen of his phone. No notifications. On the laptop, he selects two of the emails in his contact list and deletes them.

In a different tab, he clicks NEW GAME.

After a few seconds, breastfriends711 plays pawn to e4, from his own couch, alone, somewhere on the far side of the world.

•