“You may be right,” Paula said. She took a few paces in silence and added, “When you think about everything a person has to learn from birth to adulthood, it’s a miracle if the kid has any good days at all.”

“That and the days are so long,” I agreed. “It’s enough to make me distrust all recollection, any history reports. I want to think more on it.” But Paula changed the subject. She said:

“I can’t believe Peg got the contract with the county.”

“You mean, after the reference you wrote?”

“Yeah.” Paula even kicked a little trail dust as she exhaled that syllable. Peg is a therapist, and she listed Paula as a reference when she applied to the county for a position in mental health. Paula had referred several patients to Peg in the past, and the referrals didn’t work. The patients had let Peg go gently – so gently that Peg managed to interpret the experience in a light quite favorable to herself. She hadn’t learned that it wasn’t okay to take sudden vacations from her practice. She didn’t get it that she shouldn’t argue with her patients about their feelings. “It wasn’t an easy letter to write,” Paula continued, “but I was very clear. I told them that she’s impatient and rigid. That she tends not to let her patients have their feelings. I even said I thought she could be dangerous in the position. I can’t believe they gave her the job.”

“Maybe they didn’t have many applicants? Maybe, even though she isn’t great, she was the best they got?”

“I don’t know…” Paula said with uncertainty. It had been very difficult for her to write those things about Peg. And then to have her hard words ignored…

Peg didn’t do any walking that day. We saw her at lunch (I underate again, with consequent overconsumption of chocolate later), but she felt that at least on her first day of recovery, she shouldn’t be walking at all. She’d enjoyed getting to know Jack during the morning; she was disappointed to learn the guys switched off, and Kurt would drive the afternoon leg. But then Paula discovered that lunch disagreed with her (so maybe it was lucky I underate after all), and opted to ride with Peg, and I ended up chatting all afternoon with Jack who led us hikers.

The first half hour the trail was too narrow for two abreast, and I hiked behind Jack’s long legs and high butt. I liked the look of his wavy gray hair and his natural good posture. His stride was quite sexy. So I was disposed to enjoy his conversation by the time the trail widened and we spoke.

“Isn’t that redwood sorrel?” I asked him and pointed at the big clover-like stuff under the trailside ferns.

“It is,” he replied in a pleasant deep voice, and he slowed his pace a little.

“Then why isn’t is purple underneath?” I knew the plant. I first met it on a visit to Redwoods National Park, and I liked it. Its underside is usually purple, and it turns the underside up when it’s had enough sun for the day. But this stuff wasn’t purple anywhere.

“Wow,” Jack said as he stopped and examined a dozen or so sprouts of sorrel. “You’re right. I’m sure it’s redwood sorrel but I’ve never seen it before without purple. Hmmm….maybe it’s too early in the season? Maybe it purples later, like in August, when the sun is stronger…” He looked directly at me then, blue-eyed and smiling. Our glances connected.

Dinner that night was weird. Peg wanted to talk first about her new contract with the county, which made Paula uncomfortable, and then about her attraction to Jack, which wasn’t fun for me. She went on at length about their morning flirtation. She kept tossing her hair around and looking vivaciously for him in the dining room, but he hadn’t arrived yet. I told her I’d enjoyed the afternoon with him and she asked me if he’d mentioned her. I said no: that mostly we’d talked about past camping experiences and bike vacations.

“Yeah, he mentioned he likes to travel by bike. Well, that’ll have to go if we get together. That’s one mode of travel I won’t do.” That’s just like Peg, already unconsidering his words. I watched her scrape her french bread across the top of the butter tub, and I felt superior for eating my bread dry.

We got Peg off the Jack subject by talking about Paula’s son. David had been a challenge to his mother since he hit adolescence, and that was 15 years ago. Lately, on top of everything else, he’d taken to verbally abusing her over the telephone. Usually she would initiate the call, and most of the time the conversation would quickly degenerate into an epithet-filled tirade from him. The night before we all left on the tour, Paula called David to say goodbye, and he didn’t even wish her a good trip. He was too busy telling her what a bad mother she’d been, how because she didn’t make him study piano from the age of three he couldn’t be a music phenomenon now, how if she hadn’t been so busy working (to support him! after his flaky father disappeared and before husband three came along) he would have grown up strong and right.

“Stop!” Peg put her hand up as she issued the order. “I can’t stand this. Do you realize what you were doing? Do you realize you were voluntarily holding the telephone headset to your ear so that your son could deliver these pearls of poison into you? Hello?”
I looked at Paula at that moment and saw that she was getting it. We all were. Realizing how often we do the equivalent of willingly holding the phone to the ear, the hand to the fire…

“I guess we always have the option of refusing to play,” Paula said quietly.

“A quiet refusal, a gentle goodbye,” I added. Right then, I was proud of all three of us.

The next moment, Jack walked into the room. Peg was still shining-eyed with wisdom, and she greeted him eagerly. In a way it hurt to watch him watch me instead. A very small way. Paula and Peg are both blonde and slim, and Peg has big breasts. But everybody’s got a sissymaker.