Creature Discomforts

boulder where I’d regained consciousness. Now that I stood on the spot from which I must have fallen, I wondered what, besides discarded bags of rice, I’d expected to gain from returning to the scene of my injuries. Had I nourished some secret hope that the sights, sounds, and scents of the place would magically restore me? I took a deep breath and looked around. Below, Route 3 carved a swath through the woods in the valley s between Dorr and what the guidebook and maps had informed me was Huguenot Head, directly opposite, and Champlain Mountain, to the right.
    With no warning, a voice sounded from what felt like no distance at all. “Charlie!” a woman demanded. “Would you mind waiting for Tucker? He is doing his best to keep up, but his legs are simply not as long as yours, and as I have had to tell you more times than I care to remember, this is a family expedition! And furthermore, we need to I wait for your father. You stop right where you are and wait I for the rest of us!”
    “Tucker always spoils everything,” a boy whined.
    “I do not! Mommy, I don’t, do I? Charlie does.”
    An adult male, sounding dangerously out of breath, « snarled, “Tucker, enough of that! Charlie, you wait for the rest of us, or you stay in the car when we get to Sand Beach, and that’s that.”
    Reflecting on the superiority of big dogs to small children—absence of whining, presence of strength and motivation to carry heavy packs—I waited mutely until the family expedition had made its way up what was obviously the nearby Ladder Trail. The ledge on which the dogs and I I now stood and, below it, my Rock of Ages were far closer to the trail than I’d imagined. I’d heard every word spoken by young Charlie and Tucker, and their parents. Looking up, I had an unimpeded view of the high cliff above the trail. The cliché about New England weather? It changes from hour to hour, minute to minute. If there’d been thick fog, I’d have seen nothing from here. If the fog hadn’t arrived when I stood here yesterday, or if it had cleared: even briefly, I’d surely have been able to see Norman Axelrod at the edge of that cliff. What’s more, he and anyone with him would have had a clear view of me.
    The grimness of my situation hit me. On his own, Axelrod, the notorious tree-hater, would never have left the beaten path. He wouldn’t even have known that the abandoned section of the Ladder Trail existed. Something or someone had lured him upward. And sent him on a lethal plunge. I toyed with the fantasy that by weird coincidence, Stephen King had been hiking in Acadia and that Axelrod, the celebrity seeker, had spotted the novelist and trailed after him. We ’II leave your name out of it, Malcolm Fairley had promised. Anonymity is anonymity. Fairley had known of the abandoned Homans Path. Had he also known of this abandoned trail? I had a clear vision of the lone hiker vanishing upward; he certainly knew that trail. Just as clearly, I saw him skillfully baiting my dogs; he’d done it like a pro. Oh, Jesus! Like a pro? Or because he was one? Because my lone hiker was Horace Livermore?
    I didn’t bother to retrieve the rice, but I did return to the clearing for the dogpacks. Spurred by panic, I set a speed record for the canine-accompanied descent of Dorr. Miraculously, Rowdy, Kimi, and I somehow managed to avoid colliding with the families, couples, and solitary hikers trekking up and down the little mountain. In a manner entirely uncharacteristic of me, I brushed off all admiring comments about the dogs, refused requests to pat them, and answered not a single question about their ever-so-cute packs. Then, having avoided smashing into anyone on the way down, I got all the way to my car only to run into Anita Fairley.
    The dogs and I were on the blacktop next to my old Bronco. They were slurping up water from their folding fabric bowls, and I was swigging spring water from a bottle, when Anita appeared out of nowhere and said, “Ah, the ghoulish impulse to witness the scene of a death! Have a nice hike?”
    I said nothing to her, but right now I feel an uncontrollable compulsion to comment that no one has the right to be that beautiful. The previous night, in the flattering illumination of the campfire and of the floodlights, I’d assumed that Anita’s hair was artificially blond and hoped that daylight would reveal its roots. With luck, it would look brassy, dry, and cheap. Now, in sunlight, her tresses looked