go west ( reddie )

chapter ten

They head back the way they came. Down the 190 to Dante's View and the cracked, salted flat of the Badwater Basin. Eddie glimpses other planets in the desert, cities in the rocks, and something about it is comforting, in a way. There are lonely places in the world just the same as there are lonely places in a person. He ignores Richie making gutteral Wookie noises next to him and focuses on the way everything seems the same colour, until you look at it closely and it dissolves into a thousand shades of sand and rust and salt.

Sequoia National Park is another planet again. Completely different. Not harsh or barren, but full of life and thick with growth. And most importantly, close to fifteen degrees cooler than Death Valley had been. It's welcome. Eddie has been melting for what feels like months and the glistening sweat that Richie seems to cultivate only at the most attractive points of his body, throat and collarbone, the bow of his lips, is distracting. In the shade of the largest trees in the world, the California summer is almost pleasant.

They take a four hour hike, a round trip that winds through the forest and then back to the gravel parking lot. The trees are like nothing Eddie's ever seen before. Thick red trunks that disappear into the sky, crowded together, throwing the whole world into shade. Bare trunks, up and up and up for a hundred feet, then feathered branches, bigger on their own than any of the twelve trillion trees in Maine. Red bark and thick, dark foliage underfoot that smells of rot and smoke.

Eddie hurts his neck, craning upwards to see everything he can, and when he veers off course Richie pushes him back into line with a hand at the small of his back. They see a black bear, trotting through the woods in the distance. There is the constant sound of birds and insects and the groan and creak of branches moving, growing, stretching higher still. Eddie keeps his eyes on just one tree and imagines he can see it growing, the branches pulling away from the bark, new growth, greenstick, and the earth falling away from the base of the trunk as it thickens.

"I thought it was Texas where everything was supposed to be bigger," says Richie, staring up at the same tree. "You think there's super squirrels up the top? Like... island gigantism or whatever?"

"California is not an island, Rich." He follows Richie as he steps up onto the wooden plank barrier that attempts to keep visitors from the vulnerable trunks of the trees.

"I've been developing a theory over the last few days," says Richie. He takes his cap off, shakes out his hair, puts it on again, brim turned to the back. Grand Camyon. "I think that ninety percent of California is like... some kind of government experiment, you know? Like these big trees and the fucking craters and like, Yosemite? That place is a freak of nature, you'll see."

"What's the other ten percent?" Eddie asks, resisting the urge to grab hold of the back of his t-shirt and pull, so he might laugh, might stumble closer.

"L.A. and San Francisco," says Richie, grinning at Eddie over his shoulder.

After their hike, they get a cabin at a lodge in nearby Kernville. It's all red wood and green paint, with flower boxes under the windows and a porch with a swing bench out the front. Richie is convinced the whole town is a front for something sinister. It's too quiet and too pretty, mountains on all sides and Lake Isabella and the forest, front and back. He thinks they're putting mind-altering chemicals in the water or they're genetically engineering bear-rattlesnake hybrids or they have a lottery every year, to pick someone to stone to death. Sure. Maybe. They lived in Derry, after all.

They drop their stuff in their room and then cross back over the street to the river that runs parallel, down past the town to the lake. It's half the size it might be in the spring, grey water splashing over grey stones, and there are a few kids in the shallows, playing jumping games and shrieking. There had been signs out on the road, advertising white water rafting, but it's quiet enough here. Richie sits in the grass and starts to unlace his shoes and Eddie hops from stone to stone, out into the water, until there's nowhere he can go. There's a rope swing on the other side, hanging over the only part of the river that looks deep enough for diving. Eddie crouches down over the water, balanced on the balls of his feet. He dips his hands in, lets the water run between his fingers, and it's cool and clear. Full of algae bloom, maybe, but refreshing.