Creature Discomforts

said he needed to rest, and he looked around for a rock or log to sit on, but everything was wet. It seemed like he was going to stand there for a while, so I, uh, went off into the woods to answer a call of nature. And when I got back, he wasn’t there. I couldn’t’ve been gone more than... I don’t know. Two minutes? Three minutes? Of course, now I’m hollering for him. The first thing that occurs to me is that he’s gone off looking for a dry place to sit down, not that there was one. But I couldn’t figure why else he would’ve left except to look for a place to park himself. Or maybe, like me, he’s answered a call of nature. I look around, keep calling for him, go a little way back down Emery, take a few steps down the Ladder Trail, and there’s not a trace of him. Sound does funny things in that thick fog, and I keep stopping and calling for him and listening. Then, finally, it occurs to me that he’s decided to get a head start on me, beat me to the top, so instead of just going in all directions around that fork, I head up Dorr. By now, I’m worried. I’m moving right along. If he’d gone that way, I’d’ve caught up with him in a few minutes. But I kept thinking that if he got above tree line, before the summit, he’d get lost and end up God knows where. I’m up there in, say, ten minutes. Twenty maybe. It’s not far. And he’s not there. I retrace my route, back down to where the trail forks. And then I come to my senses and I think, this guy isn’t going up a mountain or down some ladders. He’s going to turn around and follow the steps back down to my car.”
    And where was I all this time? I wondered. Lying comatose on the slope below? Had I seen Norman Axelrod, Malcolm Fairley, or both? Had I been seen? What about my dogs? We’d all been wearing red.
    “So at that point,” Malcolm Fairley continued, “I beat it back down to the Nature Center, where we’d left the car, and as I’m going down, I’m still hollering for Norman and trying to scan all around, because you know how slippery those steps are when they’re wet. And the fog’s as thick as ever, thicker, and no one’s hiking up that I can ask. And I’m telling myself Norman’s inside the Nature Center, or he’s pacing around in circles by my car, sorry he ever got out of it.”
    What about the other person? I wanted to ask. / heard you! I heard you talking with someone!
    “You must have been terribly worried by this time,” Gabrielle said.
    “Well, yes, I was! But I expected to hear some kind of explanation. That some hikers had been going down and Axelrod had decided to go with them. Something. It crossed my mind that maybe he twisted his ankle. Maybe he was hurt. Never occurred to me he was dead. I still can’t understand it.”
    “So how did you find out?” Gabrielle asked.
    “Soon as I got to the Nature Center, I saw three or four park rangers. And you could tell something was up from the look on their faces. So I asked them. His body had already been found. Hikers, a young couple, husband and wife, were going up the Ladder Trail. Experienced hikers. Didn’t care about the fog. They were trying to hike every trail in the park. They found him. He was lying right on the Ladder Trail, on that long flight of steps near the top. He hadn’t even made it down to the top ladder. From what I heard, he must’ve fallen and rolled, smashed his skull.”
    “Probably a blessing he didn’t survive,” Opal commented.
    “A lot of people don’t realize it,” Fairley said, as if agreeing with her, “but Dorr’s the steepest mountain on the island. Not the highest. The steepest. A guy like Norman had no business on God’s earth wandering around there alone. I can’t for the life of me figure out what he thought he was doing.”
    Yes, I had been in the vicinity at the time of Axelrod’s fatal fall. But only in the vicinity. If I’d been hiking alone, I might have done the Ladder Trail. But Rowdy and Kimi had been with me. Scraps of memory remained: Dogs were banned from Acadia’s ladder trails. Even if they’d stupidly been allowed! There was no way I would’ve started down any ladder trail with two big dogs.
    “Most common accident in the park,” Fairley said. “Falling on rocks. There’s a sign at the Nature Center that says so. Thank God, most of the time the worst that happens is a skinned knee. What happened to Norman was a freak accident.” He paused. “Tragic,” he murmured. “A tragic