The Golden State

“You suffering won’t ease anyone else’s suffering,” she says drily and then she doesn’t say anything else and I don’t either.

The drive is much longer than I thought and after a very long stretch of silence during which Honey is mostly sitting glassy-eyed we finally pass the sign for the camp, a regular state highway sign as you’d see for a town, and I make the turn. We travel a nicely maintained dirt road for ten minutes and then we turn onto a very bad dirt road and I have a pang like what if I can’t get the car back up what if we slide off the road and then we come to a small clearing in the trees with a ramshackle cabin and a very faded interpretive sign. “I think… this must be it.”

I pull the car over near the sign and cut the engine and Honey is immediately squirming squelchily and cooing to be let free of her seat. There are no other cars to be seen. I can’t tell what kind of land we’re on. It doesn’t seem to be parkland but there were no Private or No Trespassing signs, but it also lacks the assiduously nicely kept signage of a national forest or state park or county forest or state point of interest or whatever they call the lesser administrative entities. I unbuckle and get out of the car and stretch and peer into the back seat where Honey is trying very hard to wake up and has a look on her face like it’s the worst thing she’s ever done. I leave my door open and walk over to the cabin, which is flaked and cobwebbed with a padlock on the door. I walk to the interpretive panel which is peeling up at the corner and faded all to hell, a mottled beige surface crisscrossed with scratches. I can make out “many original structures are no longer extant,” and I trot to the car to report back. She says, “I expected as much.” Unease is gathering in the trees and the gray clouds above. Honey cries in the back seat. “Hi buddy,” I poke my head in and say. “You just sit tight.” “This isn’t the camp,” Alice says. “It was down a hill,” and motions at the dirt road ahead and I marvel at her memory. She smooths her hair behind her ear and I’m stuck for a moment admiring the elegance of the gesture. “Okay,” I say. “Here we go.”

I start the Buick and edge its nose down the road, which declines down past the cabin and is furrowed and rutted but dry. The shocks of the car absorb the bumps beautifully but I’m perturbed by how much the hood rises and falls with the changes in terrain. “Bumpy,” I say. I look at Honey in the rearview mirror. “Bumpy,” I say in a singsong for her benefit. It takes us a long time to wind our way down this dirt road, guessing on some unmarked forks, always choosing down, down, down. We inch our way down for probably twenty minutes, trees crowding us on either side, and then we are in a large clearing—a small valley, with tree-covered hills gallumphing up on all sides. Some collapsed wooden structures dot the clearing. I drive out into the middle of the field. “Wow,” I say. “Looks like this is it.”

“Yes,” says Alice. She looks at me. “This is it.” She looks sad. “Now I’d like to get out and have some time by myself.”

“Sure thing,” I say. “We’ll just hang back by the car and have a snack.”

“No,” she shakes her head vigorously, hands in her lap. “I want to be alone. I don’t want anyone hovering around.” Shit.

“Alice, I’m sorry, there could be all kinds of holes and uneven ground and I just don’t think you should be walking around here by yourself.” She looks at me and puts her hand on my hand, which is still on the steering wheel.