Leaving Jeanne's Ashes
By Merle Drown
“I don’t want to be sitting in some urn,” my late wife Jeanne told me in her final days. “You hike my ashes to the top of Mount Washington, and you find some snappy broad to summit that mountain at least once a year, like we used to.”
A year later, Jeanne still sits on the mantle, and there’s no woman, snappy or otherwise, in my life. I don’t sleep well. Wake and walk downstairs to talk to that urn. Stupid, because it just makes me feel worse. My hiking boots and poles stand by the outside door, accusing the hell out of me.
I tried a hilly path in the woods, alone and no urn, and quit when my heart thumped a military drum roll. I googled angina, but it wasn’t that kind of heartache.
One night I drank myself to sleep and woke with a hangover I hadn’t felt since my twenties. It struck me that facing that mountain couldn’t be worse than this cowardly life.
I packed light: urn, water, cheese, windbreaker. and picked the Jewel trail, the one Jeanne and I usually took. It starts at the Cog Railway station, and I thought about taking the train up, but Jeanne had specified hike. As if she’d know. Minutes pressed on my heart.
The trail seemed steeper than I remembered. Then a bridge lay in pieces with an arrow pointing to a muddy trail that detoured to the roaring brook. Halfway across, I missed a step and went ankle deep into the freezing water. On the other side, I sat, head in hands, wanting to return to dry socks and sneakers.
A young couple hopped across the brook and asked how difficult this trail was. “It’s the easiest.”
The woman said, “That sounds perfect.”
“See you at the top,” the man said.
It didn’t seem likely. The urn grew heavier with each step. At tree line, I took the short side trail to a valley view . The elevated tracks of the cog railway cut a swath through the green-leafed trees. Each fall, they went red or yellow and then rusty brown. I watched the locomotive push the blue passenger car up the ravine. Thick smoke blackened the air. Jeanne prided herself on never riding the Cog.
The trail turned steeper, and my heart sounded its drum roll. I slowed and nibbled some cheese. It was where we’d turned back the last time we’d hiked. “I’m not going to cry,” she’d said.
I wanted to go back and spill her ashes back at the view, but I couldn’t fool myself. I could as well left them on the mantle.
I laughed. We’d hiked the Grand Canyon twice. Jeanne loved to tell about the couple, in their fifties, who’d said, “We’re only walking down until we get tired, and then we’ll turn back.”
I reached a pack of tall, young dudes, packs still on their backs, yacking in loud voices as if the world needed to hear them. Head down, I stepped around them and enjoyed a nearly flat trail for a bit, but I dreaded the rise I knew was coming. When it didn’t, I knew I’d missed a turn.
I could still see the base station and parking lot. I was tempted to give up and just walk down to my car. I felt my heart go easy on me. Soon I reached the place where the tall dudes had clustered and realized they had blocked the sign that pointed right for the summit. I cursed them silently and felt better. The dirt trail ended at a steep field of hard to negotiate rock chunks that would lead to the even tougher boulder field.
I took the urn out of my pack and held it with both hands but couldn’t bring myself to empty it. I stepped forward once, twice, and then, my foot jammed between two rocks.
The urn clutched to my chest, I fell, knees bent, into the rocks. The urn was safe, but my knees stabbed me with pain, blood ran down my shins. I felt like puking and shitting at the same time.
I rested the intact urn between two rocks and loosened my belt. Cold sweat enveloped me. I would explode from mouth and ass. Thirty feet from me, Cog passengers had ringside seats to my naked butt. I scootched down, shaking and hoping I wouldn’t fill my boots.
The nausea ebbed, the sweats faded, but my guts still rumbled. I stopped clenching, rose to hands and knees like a monkey and blew a tremendous dry fart. My bowels relaxed. I waited a few minutes before pulling up my shorts. Surprisingly, my legs didn’t hurt. My body told me I was fit to finish my journey. As for the Cog passengers, I hoped my ass had entertained them.
In the summit cafeteria, I bought a bowl of hiker’s chili that Jeanne and I traditionally ate and chose an empty table by the big windows. I took the urn out of my pack.
“Ashes?”
She was tall with dark hair pulled back, somewhere my side of fifty. I nodded. She offered her hand. “Anne,” she said.
How long since I had touched warm woman flesh. Jeanne’s funeral?
“I left my late husband’s cremains here two years ago.”
“Was it difficult to--?”
“It was part of the mourning.”
I patted the chair next to me, and she sat.
“I’ve put it off for over a year,” I said.
“It’s less difficult if you’re not alone.”
I smiled. “Would you—”
Outside, she parted the crowd to give me room. The wind blew and in seconds Jeanne was part of the mountain.
“Did you come up the Jewel Trail?’ Anne asked.
“As usual,” I said.
“Then I’ll have company on the way down,” she said.
THE END
Author Bio: Merle Drown is a freelance writer and editor. He has published three novels, “Plowing Up a Snake” (The Dial Press), “The Suburbs of Heaven” (Soho Press), which was chosen by Barnes and Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” series, and “Lighting the World” (Whitepoint Press). He has also published over 40 short pieces of fiction and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council. He is working on a collection titled “Shrunken Heads: Miniature Portraits of the Famous Among Us.”