Packback
3. Confrontation
The next two weeks were the happiest of my life. Megan and I hiked shorter days than I’d grown used to, with fewer side-trips. But every waking moment with Megan was like a giddy revelation, walking with her, touching her, kissing, seeing how her hips rolled so gracefully as she walked, her shapely smooth legs stepping one after the other. Walking behind her was better, not just because of the view but because if I didn’t have that kind of visual contact I tended to get excited and speed up, then turn around and wonder where she’d gone. We broke camp late and set up the next night’s camp early, and then her body would be sliding against mine and my mind would just go blank as we learned more about each other. She wanted to do strength exercises in the morning and evenings, lying on her back with her legs up and my torso on them, using me like a leg-lift machine. We did planks and lunges and push-ups together, sometimes with Megan hugging me tight from behind while lying on top of me, sometimes with one of her hands down my shorts, fondling me, which made everything crazier. She said Glyn told her she needed a strong core. I don’t know about Glyn, but I was deliriously happy every moment I had with Megan, strong core or not. She liked walking in front of me because she knew I couldn’t help but watch her and she liked what that did to me. I taught her what little aikido I’d learned, guiding her with my hands and hips into each pose until she knew it perfectly, then walking through each strike and throw, letting her striking edges linger against whatever part of my body she would’ve been harming at full speed. As it had for some women once they started smacking me around when I’d been the aikido punch dummy, it seemed to turn Megan on.
I loved holding her slim strong body against mine, feeling her loving self, appreciating everything about her. I’d never felt anything like it before. It became obvious to me that I was madly in love, and it seemed just as obvious that she loved me, but it was like a secret we pretended to keep from each other, like something one of us would say someday to make everything official, and being with her felt so good that I didn’t want anything to change. We spent a night in Tehachapi. One of the other hikers in the motel lobby had a guitar and I borrowed it to play Lowell George’s Willin’. It’d been a while but I got through it OK. Megan’s warm smile suggested she would make me extra happy later.
We made it to Kennedy Meadows, the gateway to the High Sierra, about 1/4 of the way to the Canadian border. We’d been on the trail for six weeks. There were several places to resupply, shower, and sleep in a bed with a private room. We did all three even though I loved her smell and taste when she hadn’t showered for more than a week. We rented a cabin for three nights, asking for the one farthest from the others since I knew we were going to be as loud as we’d ever been. We got kicked out after the first night. We got some glares, but also some very envious glances. I felt like the luckiest man in the world. The next night in our tent we had the best time we’d ever had together, and we still had all of summer to look forward to.
Mike and Jack showed up the following afternoon. They were tired. They hit the bar, too hard. Megan saw them and said Mike would probably get ugly. We stayed away but word gets around, and after dinner at the other “resort” in “town”, both of them showed up at our campsite.
“That’s my woman you’re with,” Mike said. His voice was unsteady. Actually, he was fucking drunk.
“Megan is her own woman, not any man’s,” I said.
“Bullshit. She’s mine, and she’s coming with me.”
“No, Mike, I’m not,” Megan said. “I don’t want to be with you, I don’t ever want to see you again. I ... love Scott and he loves me, and I’m staying right here.”
Mike’s face contorted. “Fuck you, bitch ... you’re coming with me.”
I rose to intercept him, but Megan gave me a subtle hand signal to keep away, though I stayed close. I saw her weight shift, finding her balance as she exhaled.
“Never again,” she said to him, and when he reached for her she slapped his hand away, got behind his arm and threw him over her hip, a picture-perfect throw, just the way I’d taught her. She was a natural.
Jack came at me. He was as impaired as Mike, and went down in a heap a few seconds later but Mike was back up and spitting mad.
“Fucking BITCH!” he yelled.
Megan gave me a look that said it was OK if I stepped in.
“Very disrespectful,” I said quietly. “You will apologize to Megan for that.”
“Fuck you, dickhead ... I knew you were a cunt at the border, and you’re an even bigger cunt now, you and your fucking NOTES!” but he wasn’t coming any closer. Mike’s body language told me he was gathering himself to come at me, but also that he had no idea how. So, a bum rush.
He came, I threw him, he went down like a second heap, but I hadn’t really hurt him so he was trying to get up again. I sat on his back, the point of my elbow pressing down between his shoulder blades, which hurt him too much to rise up against.
“FUCK YOUUUUU!” he screamed.
People began arriving from the cabins, then someone from the resort. He had handcuffs, a nightstick, and a holstered pistol.
“They attacked us,” Megan said.
“He needs to apologize to Megan,” I said.
“Good luck with that,” the guy from the resort said. He handcuffed Mike. There was no law enforcement and the county sheriff’s office was hours away and wouldn’t come tonight, but there was a lockup where Mike and Jack would sleep. The sheriff would send someone in the morning.
“I’m sorry about this,” the guy from the resort said. “We should’ve cut him off sooner. Or let him drink himself into a stupor.”
That night Megan fucked me harder than she ever had before. She seemed almost desperate.
“You said you loved me,” I said when I could catch my breath, after.
Megan looked deep into my eyes. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, Megan,” I said. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want anything about us to change, being with you has been like living the most wonderful dream, but it’s been true since Hikerville at least, and probably since the day I met you at the border.”
“Fuck me,” she whispered, but she was smiling. “I was afraid to tell you. I didn’t want anything to change, either.”
We both got arrested the next morning. Jack’s family has powerful friends. We ended up in a Visalia jail. Mike and Jack got sprung on bail immediately. It took Megan and me two hours. Mike and Jack were waiting outside.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Mike said. Charges against everyone but me were dropped the next day. Megan wanted to stay with me but her mother and sister flew in to collect her. They both saw the way Megan held me when we parted, and I like to think it melted their hearts, at least a little—they didn’t seem to like me much.
My trial was a week later. Greta was in the gallery and Megan was called as a witness. It was Jack and Mike’s word against Megan’s and mine—there were no other witnesses. The bump on Jack’s head was consistent with Megan’s and my testimony that I’d thrown him. I hadn’t meant for his head to bonk on a log, of course, which was why he’d been unconscious. Neither would admit to Megan throwing Mike, but Mike didn’t help his case by spewing choice expletives at her and almost everyone else.
The judge released everyone with a warning. No one had been seriously hurt, and she hoped we all learned something from what she called our drunken tussle. Not that Megan or I had even a single drink.
Fuck if I learned a damn thing.
They came at Megan and Greta and me in our motel room that night. The women got dragged away while I was left alone to fend off four men, all of whom had hammers or crowbars. I roundhouse’d Jack in the head and one of their buddies in the leg, breaking his femur, but that was all I would ever remember.