The Precipice by Paul Doiron Read Free Book Online Page A

lodge?”
    “No problem.”
    Despite being almost as young as most of the people in the room—and younger than a couple of them—I felt uncomfortably old as I directed myself to the group again. “If you do come across these women, you need to call nine-one-one or contact the Appalachian Mountain Club. Did any of you spend the night at the Chairback Gap lean-to?”
    “We did. Night before last.” A tan young man with a patchy beard pointed at the strawberry blonde. “I’m El Chupacabra and she’s Hetty-Mae. We came down here for a shower and a real meal.”
    “Are we in trouble?” asked the young woman.
    “We’re just trying to make sure we don’t waste our time chasing down the wrong people. Can I see some identification, please?”
    The man and the woman took out their wallets. They were made of hemp.
    Caleb loomed over my shoulder. “Wait a minute. Where’s McDonut?”
    I glanced up from photographing the couple’s driver’s licenses.
    “He’s taking a shower,” someone said.
    “Again?” said Caleb. “We practice water conservation here.”
    I recognized the trail name from the Chairback logbook. “Who’s this McDonut?”
    Maxwell rolled his eyes. “A kid from Massachusetts. He sprained his knee coming down Chairback and hobbled in with an Ace bandage wrapped around it. He’s been in no hurry to leave. I think he likes it here too much.”
    “How long ago did he show up at the lodge?” I had a feeling I knew the answer.
    “Eight days ago,” Caleb said.
    It was the day after Samantha’s and Missy’s last logbook entry.

 
    6
    Hudson’s Lodge was an impressive building made of unweathered logs, new cedar shingles, and lots of glass. Lemon light streamed through the windows, attracting swirling clouds of moths and caddis flies. Nissen and I followed Caleb Maxwell up a rough-hewn series of steps—immense flagstones embedded in the earth—to the double doors.
    “He’s got all the fucking lights on, too,” Caleb said under his breath.
    I wiped the mud from my boots on a steel grate before stepping inside the lodge. Nissen did not.
    “This is quite a place,” I said.
    “It’s a state-of-the-art green building,” Maxwell said, as if it were a rehearsed speech he gave to new guests. “You can’t see them in the dark, but there are solar panels on the roof. And all the toilets are composting. The lodge is heated by groundwater from a six-hundred-foot-deep well. We try to conserve as much energy and water as possible, and we recycle everything we can.” He paused in an entry decorated with trail maps and informational posters. “Hey, McDonut!”
    “In here!”
    The room to the left had several comfortable chairs, arranged around a fieldstone fireplace and a J ø tul wood stove so hot the air above it rippled with heat. Low coffee tables were littered with magazines: Orion, Backpacker, AMC Outdoors. There was no wall between the sitting area and the brightly lighted dining hall, where a wet-haired man was eating GORP from a glass container and reading one of the magazines he’d picked up in the lounge. He looked young, somewhere in his early twenties, and the bottom half of his face was covered with light brown scruff that was almost but not quite a beard. On the table beside him rested a sweat-stained and sun-faded sombrero.
    “Do you remember what I told you about energy conservation, Chad?” Caleb said in his camp counselor tone.
    The young man rose stiffly to his feet, and I saw that he had a blue brace on his right knee. He brushed the crumbs off a faded T-shirt with the slogan DON’T SMOKE (SHITTY) WEED . If he was a thru-hiker, he was one of the pudgiest I’d ever seen. The miles had done little to melt the fat from his stomach, chest, and back.
    “Oh, shit, bro. I came up here to take a shower and lost track of time.” His big head wobbled back and forth on his neck when he spoke, as if his neck muscles were weak. “Hey, I know you!”
    I realized that he was looking