Karmic repetitions
«Fiction is the other non-fiction.»
—Lennon Tucker
lLet’s do a thought experiment. It has two parts. First, imagine that you can perfectly remember every moment of your life. Every conversation, everything you did, felt and thought. Second, imagine if you knew you would live to be one hundred years old. When would you like to go back and revisit your memories? Every minute you spent remembering would be a dead minute, because the only thing it adds to your life is a memory of you remembering, not living. Theoretically and technically, you could stop living at fifty if you decided to do nothing but remember until you died at one hundred, when the second half of your life is now a series of reruns of a canceled show. Something similar would happen if you decided to relive your best moments over and over again.
Now, it is a metaphysical position to say that this is the reason we forget: that forgetting keeps us moving forward. But every metaphysical position is a leap from the data we have to a meaning we cannot prove. That is faith. It doesn’t matter if you’re a carbon copy of Dawkins or Hitchens. You will never escape faith, because there is an unprovable fiction into which you pour all your faith. Yourself. And most of your life is gone. The first years of memory are blank. Any given Tuesday five years ago he disappeared. The conversation you had last night? You may remember the gist; what you talked about, that great phrase, joke or quote. The rest is, as they say, history.
The past crystallizes from the hazy Swiss cheese of our minds and coalesces into a story, and because of the way memory works, it all has as much in common with fiction as it does with reality. This is half the reason I think fiction is the other nonfiction. I won’t tell you the other half, because I have a story to tell and statistically I’m not likely to live to be a hundred.
***
The first thing I remember after Buena Vista is Toolman waiting for us at a road junction. Dij had split up to hike another mountain that the rest of us had no interest in. Toolman walked down the road with Ice Cream and me. Frito relaxed in Toolman’s truck, taking a nap and waiting for us to hit the road, at which time he would come pick us up. Along the way we saw little except quaint Colorado farmhouses and a bull moose that had been munching on the grass in someone’s yard until we scared it off. The imposing animal ran around the back of the house after noticing us, and as it turned the corner, I noticed its head was almost in line with the gutters.
“Damn,” Toolman said.
«Dang’s right,» Ice Cream agreed.
“Ice Age Monsters,” I said as the moose slipped out of sight and out of mind. Instead, I looked at the house. A cozy, cabin-like, single-story house with a large window in the front that looked out onto a small, beautifully decorated porch.
Toolman looked around as we walked down the winding two-lane paved road through aspen trees and past another nice house. «Can you imagine living here? Look at these aspen trees! It would be amazing!»
I said, «Toolman, you’re a builder. What would your perfect house look like?»
«It depends on where it is.»
“Where is it then?”
«Here? Colorado?» Ice Cream asked.
Toolman shook his head. «No. The winters would be too harsh. I’m not sure where I’d like to live; I haven’t seen enough places.»
«Say you had to pick somewhere you’ve been,» I tried to corner him.
«I’m not sure».
I tried another tactic. «Okay, let’s say you’re building the basic structure, and it’ll just fall down somewhere you decide later. What’s the location like?»
He pointed to a house with a skylight. «It wouldn’t have skylights, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen a skylight that didn’t leak at some point. It’s not a question of YeahIt’s a question of when.”
Ice Cream and I share a look. We had a detail. She went further. «So there’s no sunroof. Two stories or one?»
«One. And it better not be one of those cut-off ceilings. It’s just a way for architects to get paid more money.»
«So, a single-story rectangular house with a simple roof, no skylights, located somewhere in the United States?» I said. «It seems pretty achievable.»
«I guess. But land is expensive. Materials are expensive. Everything is expensive. You can’t have anything nowadays without some kind of greed getting in the way. Just a bunch of rich people trying to keep everyone else down and keep everything.»
«The rich have a lot of money to spend on fancy carpenters like you,» I said. «Maybe it’s a win-win situation. Find rich people to work for and take their money for doing what they can’t do. You’d practically be Robin Hood.»
«I don’t know if I want to work for people like that. They’ll be a pain in the ass.»
«You’ll never get your house with an attitude like that.»
«I’m not sure I want a house.»
«What do you want?»
Toolman shrugged. «I’m not sure. It depends, I guess.»
“About what?”
«I don’t know».
Ice Cream looked at me with a half smile.
«I think we can have anything we want,» I said, «but we have to know what it is before we can have it. If you want a house in Colorado, I think you could get one.»
“Maybe,” Toolman said. «But I don’t know if I want a house in Colorado. There’s too much snow in the winter.»
«Good.»
We arrive at the crossroads of the road. Ice Cream sent Frito a Garmin message and he soon came with Toolman’s truck, picked us up and we headed towards Salida with a quick stop to pick up Dij. He had just reached the trailhead at the base of his mountain.
***
Salida has a hostel famous for hikers. We didn’t stay there. Ice Cream had been reading the comments on FarOut and had seen a place called Hayduke’s Hideout. We called the guy, asked if we could check it out, and headed there after we got the go-ahead. The place seemed like nowhere, a clone of the countless American properties that line the back roads from Maine to California. One or two broken down cars, rusting away while they waited for that part to arrive, or for common sense to trump procrastination, or for just enough time. The tarps flapped in the wind, covering who knows what. A dog barked from the backyard and, beyond, a field with a horse and a handful of brown sheep.
Dij and I jumped out of the back of the truck, the rest got out. Someone went to talk to the owner of the place and the rest of us went exploring. The main house was off-limits, but there was a large outbuilding across the driveway and a small one behind it, both available. The large building had a door covered in dust, cobwebs and dirty glass. On the door was a laminated sign with a dog’s face that said: Hayduke’s hideout. Ice Cream led the way, pushing the door so slowly it was almost cautious.
Inside was a vaulted barn-style ceiling with a huge dining table in the center of the dusty cement floor. The whole place was full of things. Not garbage, just things so random and so varied that there was no other way to call them. Kayaks hanging from the ceiling, old backpacks, glasses in cardboard boxes, two old refrigerators, both on, a sink, empty except for cobwebs and lint. There was another room through an open door to the left. Inside were two armchairs with a small coffee table between them, and nearby, a wood stove that probably hadn’t seen a fire since Mount St. Helens exploded. A large flat-screen TV hung neat and strange on the wall, its remote controls propped up on the coffee table. He was slowly walking around the room, across the bare carpet that covered the floor, counting the ratio of mouse droppings to lint and discovering that it wasn’t that bad, all things considered. I stuck my head into the bathroom. The toilet and sink worked and were extraordinarily clean. I was reminded of both The Yellow House at Delaware Water Gap on the AT and Dij’s own house. Now, both places are much cleaner and more inhabited than Hayduke’s, but they all had that feeling of being in the process of repair: the idea was struggling to come to fruition, although perhaps Hayduke’s had run its course a long time ago and had decided to deteriorate rather than develop.
Dij entered the room. He still had his backpack on. «I’m not sure I want to stay here.» He shrugged under his backpack. «I haven’t even taken off my backpack because I don’t know if this is the place.»
“Based on donations,” I said. «Good?» I called louder for Ice Cream in the next room.
«Yeah!» I was checking the kitchen, testing the sink and finding that both refrigerators were working properly.
The four of us met again in the large room with the table. «Thoughts?» I said.
Ice Cream shrugged. «I don’t care. It’s getting late, and if we can stay here for free, or just for a small donation, then I say why not.»
Frito shrugged. There were two votes, three if mine is inferred. Three were enough to tip Toolman over. He’s a wolf of the pack, and if we were down, he was down.
«The enemy?»
He still had his backpack on. He unbuckled one shoulder and turned, looking around with a resigned expression. «For tonight. Why not?»
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