Appalachian Trail
Jacob Dimpsey | Fiction, Fall 2024
The Trail has a quality to it, is what Ian said. There’s you and there’s the land. Soft mud underfoot composed of last year’s detritus and wind-eroded sediment. The creeks forging deep into the spaces between mountains. Oak and beech old enough to have shaded the Susquehannock when they warred with the Iroquois before trading land for disease with Englishmen. You can find flint arrowheads in the slurry of Rattling Run Creek after a heavy rain and trilobite fossils in the tailings left by road crews carving highways into the mountainside. The long coal seam on top of which everything in Appalachia rests, the reason your neighbors cough black, is three hundred million years old. You’re on geologic time when you walk the Trail, and you can feel it. The way the land buckles under your feet. The way it folds over itself to push old things to the surface.
Ian could hike along the Appalachian Trail for weeks. With his tent, his Coleman gas burner, and all his other Bass Pro Shop shit. He fished where he could and ate what the creeks provided. Early on, Sylvie asked if he hunted. In Lykens, if you were the outdoors type you hunted, as you were surrounded on all sides by state game lands. But he said he didn’t like guns. I don’t like trapping either, if I can help it, he said. It’s like offering up a prayer to the land, and I don’t like to pray.
Fishing, on the other hand, is a sort of dance, a seduction. That’s how he put it. A push and pull with the current. You figure where the fish are and you work your line with the movement of the water to entice them, draw them in.
This time Ian had been gone for going on three weeks. When he returned all rough-worn by rain and steep climbs and cold nights, Sylvie got a call, “Can you pick something up for me?”
He didn’t ask, How are you? He didn’t say, I missed you. That wasn’t Ian. And Sylvie didn’t mind. She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d slept together. The last time they’d gone on a proper date. But there were few other romantic prospects in a town like Lykens. Either you end up with someone you grew up with, who has lost all air of mystery and whose entire history is already known across the valley, or you end up with someone old enough to be your dad. Sylvie liked Ian because he was neither. The thing about out-of-towners, though, is they tend to see you as part of the landscape. A future fossil of this region in this epoch.
“What do you need? Sylvie replied.
Ian told her.
Sylvie hesitated.
“I’ll be over in a bit.”
Sylvie knocked on the door of a large Victorian house and was greeted by a long-haired man wearing jeans and no shirt. Sylvie remembered James Matter from school. His parents owned a gas station one town over and in high school he worked there and sold cigarettes to all his friends. James squinted at her.
“Ian asked me to stop by,” Sylvie said.
He nodded, said, “Oh.”
Sylvie waited a moment.
“So, can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
James moved aside for Sylvie to step into the foyer of the large house. Sylvie had never been inside before. Sylvie’s roommate would come over for parties sometimes, but James’s parties were never of interest to Sylvie. The foyer was unfurnished and the walls bare but for whitewashed wainscotting and flower print wallpaper. A large staircase wound itself over the hallway, which led to the kitchen. James let gravity pull the door shut and he started up the stairs, calling over the railing, “His usual?”
Sylvie shrugged, “Yeah, I guess.”
James disappeared upstairs and Sylvie stood, waiting. There were two closed doors on opposite sides of the foyer. Behind the door to Sylvie’s right, came the muffled noise of a cartoon. Sylvie tried the doorknob and the door opened. She stepped into a room with a TV on a stand that had wires spilling out of it opposite a leather sofa. Sitting on the carpet, slumped against the sofa, was Laura Cunningham.
The TV was playing Looney Tunes. Laura looked away from Wile E. Coyote, who was frozen in the air over a cliff suspended before he dropped, and her eyes slowly lit up when she recognized Sylvie.
“Sylvie!” she exclaimed in a sleepy voice. “It’s been so long.”
Laura reached out as if to hug Sylvie even though Sylvie had made no move to come closer. A plunged syringe sat discarded on the floor beside Laura. Sylvie walked over to her and crouched down to hug her as best she could. Laura rested her chin on Sylvie’s shoulder and breathed.
“Your hair smells so good,” Laura said.
Sylvie sat on the carpet beside Laura and let Laura play with her hair. She twirled it around her fingers and held it up to her face. Sylvie crossed her arms and slouched down to rest her head on Laura’s shoulder. On the TV, the Roadrunner ate birdseed set out by Wile E. Coyote as bait for a trap. Wile E. Coyote pulled a rope and a boulder fell on him instead of on the Roadrunner like it was supposed to. Laura giggled.
Laura’s small body felt hollow as birds’ bones the way she sat pressed up against Sylvie. She was even smaller than she had been when Sylvie knew her. A ratty Megadeath t-shirt hung from her narrow shoulders, a stick and poke lotus tattooed on the soft of her wrist. In school, Laura was a grade above Sylvie, so she had classes with Sylvie’s brother, Sam. She always went to the parties at the popular kids’ houses, the ones Sam would be invited to but not Sylvie. When Laura graduated, she went to college for a semester but came back home to be with her mother and younger sister when her father died in a coal mining accident. She never went back to school and fell in with Sam and his group of friends. In her senior year of high school, Sylvie would wake up in the middle of the night to Sam and usually someone else rooting through the house, looking for money. Sylvie’s parents never stopped them. One night, Laura was with him, and they made more noise than usual. They were moving furniture, emptying drawers. Sylvie went downstairs and watched Sam unplug the DVD player from the TV and Laura fill a backpack with silverware.
Sylvie stood at the foot of the stairs with her arms crossed.
Dad got laid off, she said.
Sam glanced up at her, returned to what he was doing.
That’s why you can’t find any money.
Sylvie, not now.
Laura slung her backpack over her shoulder, went over to Sam, and said, Let’s just fucking split.
Sam wrapped the power cable around the DVD player to make it easier to carry and he and Laura shoved past Sylvie and out the door without saying another word.
Looney Tunes went to a commercial. Laura dropped Sylvie’s hair and scratched the track marks on her left arm.
In a small voice, Laura said, “You know, Sylvie, I’m really sorry about what happened to—”
Laura suddenly stopped as James walked into the room.
James set his hands on his hips and half closed one eye.
“You two friends?”
Laura looked down. Sylvie lifted her head from Laura’s shoulder and said, “Not really.”
Sylvie stood and James tossed her a small plastic bag of weed.
“How much?”
James shook his head.
“Just take it. I know Ian’s good for it.”
Laura picked at a stain in the cream-colored carpet.
“Bye, Sylvie,” Laura said without looking up.
“Bye, Laura,” Sylvie said without looking down as she made for the door.
____________
On her way to Ian’s house, Sylvie watched an excavator rumble across a bare patch in the mountain overhead. A logging company had been steadily making its way through the valley leaving lesions of empty space in the landscape. Ian had his thoughts on logging. He would talk about mudslides and displaced wildlife. Sylvie just missed the way the mountain used to look.
As she approached the town’s only traffic light, still looking at the mountain, Sylvie tripped over an uneven sidewalk square. She caught herself, but skinned her palms.
“You should be more careful,” a voice called out from behind.
Sylvie turned. An old lady sat in a rocking chair on the porch of a large townhouse. The house was missing sections of siding. Shingles had fallen from the roof and now covered the sidewalk. Sylvie got up and dusted herself off. She nudged a piece of shingle with the toe of her shoe and regarded the old lady. The old lady’s eyes were focused on nothing in particular, not the mountain, not Sylvie, not the cars passing on the street. She brought a cigarette to her lips with a tremoring, liver-spotted hand.
“You should be more careful,” the old lady repeated.
“It’s just gravity,” Sylvie said.
The old lady’s eyes focused on Sylvie and narrowed.
“Stupid kid.”
“Fuck you, lady,” Sylvie spat and kept walking.
____________
Sylvie sat on Ian’s Formica countertop, resting her head against the side of the refrigerator. She watched him at the kitchen table, carefully grinding buds and rolling them into a joint. Ian pinched the skinny roach between his thumb and forefinger and fucked with his small butane torch. On the stove, a chicken and vegetable stir fry simmered in teriyaki sauce. Sylvie took the wooden spoon from where it rested on the countertop and nudged the chicken and vegetables around the skillet.
Ian lived in an old house on the edge of town. At night, if Ian left the window open, Sylvie could hear the creek that ran along the edge of his backyard and the cicadas in the woods. Ian inherited the house from his grandparents when they died. At the time, he was just a kid, living with his sister in Texas.
The house sat empty for a few years while Ian gave college a try, then he moved to Lykens when he dropped out. While sitting empty, mice moved into the walls, the basement flooded multiple times causing the boxes and spare furniture stored there to mildew, and one particularly snowy winter put several leaks in the roof. When Ian moved in, he made a few repairs. He rented a dumpster and bought an N95 mask, threw away everything in the basement, scrubbed the concrete floor and walls with bleach. He set out some mouse traps and bought a can of pitch for the roof.
But everything in the house was preserved exactly the way his grandparents left it. He only brought with him a few things from Texas—clothes, a computer, and a couple boxes of books, most of them having belonged to his mom. He kept the boxes sitting in the corner of his bedroom.
There were plenty of bookcases in the house. Filled with dry, old books Ian had hardly glanced at. He could’ve thrown out those books and replaced them with his mom’s. But he didn’t. He never even touched the photos on the walls—the thrift store artwork, the crucifix engraved with a Bible verse in nearly every room. There was hardly a trace of Ian in the house. Just a few boxes that were still packed after three years and some hiking equipment by the door. I don’t mean to settle, Ian said.
Sylvie put the wooden spoon down. Ian took a hard hit from the joint.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said.
Sylvie looked at him. He had shaved and showered since coming off the Trail. But there was still something wild and withdrawn about him. Animal-like.
“Have you ever heard of Pacific Crest Trail?”
“No.”
“It’s like the Appalachian Trail but out west.”
“Oh.”
“I bought a cabin in California near the Oregon border and I’m flying out next week.”
Sylvie took the food off the heat and began dishing it out into bowls.
“How long will you be gone?”
Ian shrugged. Took another hit from the joint.
“How long have I been here?”
He meant to leave for good, Sylvie realized. Frankly, she was surprised he had stayed in Lykens as long as he had. They met three years ago at the American Legion. He tended bar on weekends, and that night she was out with a group of friends. Nora Snyder’s boyfriend had proposed to her last weekend and so Sylvie and some other girls were celebrating. Sylvie pretended to be interested in all the details of the proposal. She laughed when she was supposed to, admired the ring. When everyone else went home, Sylvie stayed. She ordered a jack and coke, sipped it, and watched Ian work.
She asked him what everyone asks someone they don’t know in their hometown, “What school did you go to?”
“Galveston High,” Ian replied.
Sylvie put down her drink.
“Texas?”
Ian nodded.
“How the hell’d you end up in this shit town?”
“It’s not so bad if you’re just passing through, Ian said.”
They talked well into the night after his shift ended. Ian told her about his parents dying in a car accident when he was young. How his sister had raised him in a small apartment outside of Houston. How she had saved his portion of the life insurance money so he could do whatever he wanted after school. She probably expected me to go to Europe or start a company or at least finish college, Ian said. But I just wanted to fish.
Sylvie told him about her brother, about the valley, about Lykens. It felt good to tell someone who didn’t already know. But there’s only so much you can explain about the valley to someone who hasn’t grown up there.
“I hate it here,” she told him, her voice drifting. “And yet… Fuck, I don’t know.”
A few weeks after they started going steady, Sylvie took Ian to Centralia. In the sixties a fire broke out in the mine under the town and it’s still burning today, she told him. They say it will keep burning for another two hundred fifty years. She showed him the smoking vents along Big Mine Run Road and the vents in the cemeteries. Coal smoke snaked out among the headstones like phantoms escaping hell.
The town wasn’t just abandoned, it was torn down. As they walked through the empty streets, Sylvie counted three houses still standing among the empty plots. They belonged to the last holdouts who refused to move even as the earth burned beneath them. When the holdouts die, their houses will be seized under eminent domain and meet the fate of their neighbors. Above the town, a blue, white, and gold Eastern Orthodox church stood like a sentry on the ridge.
Before they left, Sylvie showed Ian a closed stretch of Route 61 between Centralia and Ashland that was completely covered in graffiti. She showed him the tags she left when she was a teenager. The obscene ones she spray-painted with her friends; and Sam’s name, which she painted by herself. About a year later, Sylvie saw on the news that the governor had the graffiti highway buried with the rest of the town.
“So, what, you’re just leaving?” Sylvie said, setting a bowl of stir fry down in front of Ian and taking the joint from him.
“The Klamath River makes for good fishing, I hear.”
Sylvie drew from the joint, letting it smolder and crackle.
“I was hoping you would take care of the house while I’m gone,” Ian continued. “I don’t want to sell it, but I don’t want it to sit empty while I’m gone either.”
Sylvie thought about the house she shared with her roommate and, lately, her roommate’s boyfriend. It would be nice to have a place of her own. Then again, how much would the place really be hers if she’s sharing it with Ian’s grandparents’ photos and furniture and books? Curating the museum of Ian’s dead forebears.
“I don’t know, Ian. I have to think about it.”
“All right.”
Sylvie sat next to Ian at the kitchen table with her food. They ate without speaking for a while. Sylvie drummed her fingernails on the tabletop. The joint burned down to nothing. `
“Fuck, Ian,” Sylvie said. “Would it have killed you to ask me to come with you?”
“You were never going to come with me, Sylv.”
____________
After smoking some more weed and playing some two-person board games with Ian because he doesn’t own a TV, Sylvie decided to go home. Outside, a cool, evening breeze drifted down the side of the mountain and through the valley. At the town’s only traffic light, the old woman was still sitting on her porch. A clear tube ran from her nose to an oxygen tank at her side. An empty pack of cigarettes beside it. Sylvie walked up to her, rested her arms on the metal railing of the porch. The old woman rocked in her chair and looked at Sylvie with dim, glassy eyes. Her chest heaved up and down heavily.
“Are you dying?” Sylvie asked, pointing with her chin at the oxygen tank.
“Yes,” the old woman replied.
“I’m sorry.”
The old woman shrugged.
“Got any more smokes?”
The old woman reached under her quilt and pulled out a red pack of Eagle 20’s and a lighter and handed them to Sylvie. Sylvie took one out and lightly tapped the end against the railing and lit it away from the oxygen tank. Savored the taste. She remembered buying cigarettes from James at the gas station. Stealing beer from her parents and sneaking up to Love Rock with her friends. They smoked and drank and talked about getting the hell out of the valley someday.
You know why it’s called Love Rock, right? her friend said one time while they watched the boys they were with toss rocks over the edge. Sylvie shook her head, no. Her friend leaned back on her elbows and told her, The story goes that in the 1600’s, there was an Iroquois settlement where Lykens is now. In the settlement, there was a beautiful girl who was promised to the Iroquois chieftain’s son. But on the night they were to be married, a white man came to the settlement and ran off with the girl. The chieftain’s son was so heartbroken that every day for months he scoured the valley searching for her. But when he couldn’t find her, he climbed up to an outcrop in the mountain. From there, he kept watch, hoping she would return. During this time, the chieftain died, and the tribe decided to settle in a different valley. They tried to persuade the chieftain’s son to come with them, but he refused to move. Ten years later, the white man and the girl, now his wife, passed through the valley on a hunting party. They looked up and saw a lone figure on the rock. When they went up to it, they found the body of the chieftain’s son there, still sitting upright, still waiting. But long dead. So they called it Love Rock. Good story, right? Probably bullshit though.
Sylvie handed the pack and lighter back to the old woman.
“Thanks,” Sylvie said, exhaling a long breath of smoke.
The old woman nodded.
“What’s your name?” Sylvie asked.
“Gwendolyn,” the old woman replied.
Sylvie pulled on her cigarette, turning the name over in her head.
The old woman breathed her oxygen and rocked in her rocking chair.
Sylvie asked, “Where you from, originally?”
“Right here,” Gwendolyn replied, pointing to the ground beneath her slippered feet.
Sylvie ashed her cigarette and pushed off the porch railing for home.
“I’ll look for you in the obits,” she said.
____________
Sylvie lived in a half-double on the hill behind a small grocery store. Sometimes Sylvie liked to watch the large delivery trucks struggle to back into the narrow receiving dock from her window. Sylvie went inside and found her roommate, Bethany, making out with her boyfriend, Mike, on the couch. Bethany was on top, her bra straps off her shoulders. Neither were wearing a shirt. Bethany quickly slid off Mike, who rolled his eyes with a huff.
“Sylvie!” Bethany went. “I thought you were staying at Ian’s tonight.”
“I was,” Sylvie went. “But I changed my mind.”
“Well, text me next time or something. Jesus.”
Sylvie shrugged.
Once upon a time, she and Bethany had been friends. Maybe they still would be if they hadn’t signed a lease together. Sylvie considered going to her parents’ house, spending the night in Sam’s bed like she used to do sometimes. Even after all these years, his room looked the same as the day he died. Wrestling trophies, NFL posters on the walls, his CD collection, photos of him and his friends around the valley at football games, the river, the racetrack, the pines. But then Sylvie pictured her mother up in her craft room, converted from Sylvie’s old bedroom after she moved out. Pictured her making resin jewelry out of insects and flowers from her garden to sell at the local craft shop. Her father in the den reading the paper with cable news blaring through the flatscreen. Hollering upstairs to let her mother know who was selling what in the classifieds, who had died recently, what changes were happening in the world, and what he thought about that. Sylvie decided against it.
“Whatever,” Bethany said. “We’ll go upstairs.”
Bethany grabbed Mike’s hand and yanked him from the couch. Mike shot Sylvie a look as they shoved past her.
Sylvie kicked off her shoes and curled up in the big chair in the corner. The TV was muted on a National Geographic nature program. A snow leopard searched for prey on a gray mountainside in Nepal so she could feed her young. The snow leopard panted with exhaustion after it tried unsuccessfully to catch an ibex. Her two cubs came up behind her, crying. Sylvie watched until the program ended, and a show came on about how the universe formed from dense, hot dust amalgamating into stars, planets, and galaxies.
Sylvie turned the TV off and got up. Bethany’s bed creaked loudly through the ceiling. Bethany let out a loud, high-pitched moan. Outside, the sun was setting, casting dark shadows outlined in gold through the window. Sylvie went to the kitchen, her shadow passing among the others, and took a can of soda from the fridge. A picture of her and Sam taken while they were both in grade school was pinned to the fridge. Sylvie tapped the picture with the bottom of the can and murmured, “Cheers.” Then she cracked it open and stepped outside.
Bethany and Sylvie had a small, fenced backyard. They kept a grill they never used shoved against a cluster of rhododendrons to the right of the door and a hammock that Sylvie did use occasionally in the middle of the yard. She heaved herself into the hammock and took a long drink of soda.
The Trail belongs to no place, Sylvie said to Ian. It doesn’t settle in the land. It cuts through it without regard for the arrowheads or the oaks or the buried things. When you walk a trail, you’re just passing through. You don’t stop to rearrange the furniture or mourn what isn’t there anymore. You don’t know what it’s like to inhabit the place, to feel your guts coiling like a snake around the space between mountains where your history was written.
Sylvie hung a leg off the edge of the hammock and rocked gently from side to side. The heavy half-circle sun sank into the point where the mountains on either side of the valley appeared to meet. As if the valley had its own force of gravity pulling on it. The windows of the houses in town reflected the gold light, multiplying it. An exhaust trail left by a fighter jet performing combat exercises over Fort Indiantown Gap was tinged pink. A breath of wind gusted through the valley and Sylvie shuddered. The trees overhead swayed. A few leaves twisted about their stems and fell to the ground.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“This story is about my hometown. I wanted to write something that captured what it means to become part of the geology of a place. To feel yourself harden as it surrounds you.”
Jacob Dimpsey is a writer living in central Pennsylvania. His work has previously appeared in the SFWP Quarterly, The Blood Pudding, and Qu, among others.