“I don’t want to invade your privacy, love, but if there’s any chance this will help you, I need to try.”
The first entry was from the fall of 1970. Mitch had just started college and, like all eighteen-year-old boys, had been worried about the draft. He’d kept his grades up and had gotten deferments that carried him through to his senior year, when the US signed a peace accord and started bringing troops home.
“You got lucky, didn’t you?”
She thumbed through the pages, his cursive neat and easy to read. She found herself skimming through passages, the pages bringing back the voice of the young man she’d met, the young man who had distracted her in the best possible way. She nodded as she read about his opposition to the war and laughed at his less-than-flattering description of his history professor’s combover. When she read his entry about the death of his beloved grandfather, she got a lump in her throat.
I hope one day to be as good a man as he was.
Megs touched his hand, squeezed it. “Youarea good man, Mitch. Your grandfather would be proud of you.”
She continued skimming the pages, trying to find where she’d come into the narrative. It must have been the spring of 1973. She’d dropped out of high school on her sixteenth birthday and had spent the next month prepping for her GED. When her certificate had arrived, she’d packed up and had driven west.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. Looking back, Megs could see she’d been a scared kid running away. Well, no one could blame her for that.
Then she found it—the entry for May 28, 1973.
“Youdidwrite about me.” She took another drink of coffee and got the recorder ready. If she could operate a radio, she could do this. “Damned electronic gadgets.”
Then she pressed the button and began to read aloud.
Yosemite Valley
May 28, 1973
Mitch Ahearn satin his battered lawn chair in the shade of a ponderosa pine, reading Hunter S. Thompson’sFear and Loathing in Las Vegas,his shirt off to enjoy the warm spring breeze. The other guys sat shirtless around the picnic table smoking grass and shooting the shit, the Beatles’Let It Beplaying on Jim Gridwall’s cassette recorder.
“Too bad this was their last album, man.”
“They might get back together. You never know.”
“No way. It’s over, man. Yoko messed with John’s head.”
“What do you know about it, Yoder? Were you there?”
Their conversation and the music drifted around him, Mitch’s attention riveted to the page by Raoul’s brilliant insanity. Had Hunter actually done all of this shit?
He glanced up as a rust-red VW Beetle with Colorado plates pulled up to the campground, Janis Joplin coming through its rolled-down windows. His gaze lingered as a young blonde climbed out. She was small, not much taller than the vehicle. She stood there, looking into the distance at El Capitan, a smile on her face.
Rick Accardo looked over his shoulder. “Who’s that?”
“Fresh fish.” Gridwall whistled.
Mitch couldn’t understand why some of the guys treated women like this. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have a sister, man?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to screw my sister.”
The others laughed, stoned off their asses.
Mitch glanced down at the page—or tried to. The woman shut her car door, walked around to the passenger side, and reached into her glove box to pop the trunk. She wore denim shorts and a yellow halter top, her long blond hair streaked by the sun, her body slim, her skin tanned, her legs slender.
“Check out that foxy mama.”
“Hey, need some help?” Gridwall called out, the greasy tone in his voice revealing precisely the kind ofhelphe was imagining.
“Hot chick, man.”
She ignored them all, walked to the front of her car, and lifted the trunk lid, disappearing from view. When she closed the trunk, she had a large frame pack on her shoulders, climbing ropes hanging from one arm, a bag of climbing gear from the other.
