“Difficult. I don’t know if that one’s worth it.”
I glanced at him. “She had a couple of funky notes for that one. Maybe I’ll put that one at the bottom of the list if I get bored.”
“Didn’t we take a UTV up that one when you first moved back here?” Amos asked.
When you first moved back here. Who the hell had Amos lived with? His mom and stepdad?
“Yes. We got the flat tire,” Mr. Rhodes confirmed.
“Oh,” the boy said.
I rattled off more names of trails off the top of my head, and fortunately, he said those were intermediate hikes so those seemed more doable. “Have you done any of those?” I asked Amos just to include him.
“No. We don’t do anything since Dad works all the time.”
At my side, the man seemed to tense.
I was blowing it.
“My aunt and uncle, who raised me, worked all the time. I pretty much only slept at their house. We were always at the restaurant they owned,” I tried to soothe, thinking back on all the things that had driven me crazy when I’d been his age. Then again, it didn’t help that I’d been so heartbroken over my mom at the same time.
But looking back on it now, I think they had kept me occupied on purpose. Otherwise, I probably would have just stayed in the room I’d shared with my cousin and moped the whole time. And by moped, I really meant cried like a baby.
Okay, I’d still cried like a baby but in bathrooms, in the back seat of whatever car I was in… pretty much anytime I had a second and could get away with it.
“Do you go hiking a lot for work?” I asked Mr. Rhodes.
“For searches and during hunting season.”
“When is that?”
“Starting in September. Bow hunting.”
Since everyone was asking questions… “How long have you officially been a game warden?” I asked.
“Only a year,” Amos offered up from the back seat.
“And you were in the Navy before that?” Like I didn’t already know.
“He retired from it,” the boy answered again.
I acted surprised like I hadn’t put it together. “Wow. That’s impressive.”
“Not really,” the teenager mumbled.
I laughed.
Teenagers. Seriously. My nephews roasted me all the time.
“It’s not. He was always gone,” the kid went on. He was looking out the window with another funny expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher that time.
Had his mom tagged along with them? Is that why she wasn’t around? She got tired of him being gone and left?
“So you moved back here to be with Amos?”
It was Mr. Rhodes that simply said, “Yes.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say without asking a million questions that I would more than likely not have answered. “Do you have more family here, Amos?”
“Just Grandpa, Dad, and Johnny. Everybody else is spread out.”
Everyone else.
Hmm.
*
I’d like to think that the ride to the trailhead wasn’t the most awkward trip of my life, what with no one saying a word for the majority of the trip.
Well, with the exception of me pretty much “ahhing” over just about everything.
I had no shame. I didn’t care. I’d done the same thing on the other hikes I’d done, except I hadn’t seen all that many animals on those occasions.
A cow!
A baby calf!
A deer!
Look at that huge tree!
Look at all the trees!
Look at that mountain! （It wasn’t a mountain, it was a hill, Amos had said with a look that was almost amused.） The only comment I’d gotten other than Amos’s correction was Mr. Rhodes asking, “Do you always talk this much?”
Rude. But I didn’t care. So I told him the truth. “Yeah.” Sorry not sorry.
The drive alone was beautiful. Everything got bigger and greener, and I couldn’t find it in me to mind or even notice too much that my passengers weren’t saying anything. They didn’t even complain when I had to stop to pee twice.
After parking, Amos led us over the deceptive looking trail that started from a decent parking lot, giving you the illusion that it would be easy.
Then I saw the name on the sign and my insides paused.
Fourmile Trail.
Some people said there wasn’t such a thing as a stupid question, but I knew that wasn’t correct because I asked stupid questions all the time. And asking Mr. Rhodes if Fourmile Trail was actually four miles, I knew was a stupid question.
And part of me honestly didn’t want to actually know I was going to hike four times the amount I was used to. I didn’t exactly look out of shape, but looks were deceiving. My cardio endurance had gotten better over the last month of jump roping but not enough.