McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [113]
“She’s awake!” a man says. She looks to find Frank smiling at her, cheerful in an almost insane way. Maybe he is insane. Frank is the American guide, a sturdy and energetic man, from Oregon, medium-sized in every way, with a short-shorn blond beard that wraps his face as a bandage would a man, decades ago, suffering from a toothache. “We thought we’d have to carry you up. You’re one of those people who can sleep through anything, I bet.” Then he laughs a shrill, girlish laugh, forced and mirthless.
They pass a large school, its sign posted along the road. The top half: DRIVE REFRESHED: COCA-COLA; below: MARANGU SEC. SCHOOL. A group of women are walking on the roadside, babies in slings. They pass the Samange Social Club, which looks like a construction company trailer. Farther up the road, a small pink building, the K&J Hot Fashion Shop, bearing an enormous spray-painted rendering of Angela Bassett. A boy of six is leading a donkey. Two tiny girls in school uniforms are carrying a bag of potatoes. A driveway leads to the Tropical Pesticides Research Institute. The rain intensifies as they pass another school—COCA-COLA: DRIVE REFRESHED; ST. MAR-GARET’S CATHOLIC SEC. SCHOOL.
That morning, at the hotel, Rita had overheard a conversation between a British woman and the hotel concierge.
“There are so many Catholic schools!” the tourist had said. She’d just gotten back from a trip to a local waterfall.
“Are you Catholic?” the concierge had said. She was stout, with a clear nasal voice, a kind of clarinet.
“I am,” the tourist said. “And you?”
“Yes please. Did you see my town? Marangu?”
“I did. On the hill?”
“Yes please.”
“It was very beautiful.”
And the concierge had smiled.
The van passes a FEMA dispensary, a YMCA, another social club called Millennium, a line of teenage girls in uniforms, plum-purple sweaters and skirts of sports-coat blue. They all wave. The rain is now real rain. The people they pass are soaked.
“Look at Patrick,” Frank says, pointing at a handsome Tanzanian man on the bus, sitting across the aisle from him. “He’s just sitting there smiling, wondering why the hell anyone would pay to be subjected to this.”
Patrick smiles and nods and says nothing.
There are five paying hikers on the trip and they are introducing themselves. There are Mike and Jerry, a son and father in matching jackets. Mike is in his late twenties and his father is maybe sixty. Jerry has an accent that sounds British but possesses the round vowels of an Australian. Jerry owns a chain of restaurants, while the son is an automotive engineer, specializing in ambulances. They are tall men, barrel-chested and thin-legged, though Mike is heavier, with a loose paunch he carries with some effort. They wear matching red jackets, scarred everywhere with zippers, their initials embroidered on the left breast pockets. Mike is quiet and seems to be getting sick from the bus’s jerking movements and constant turns. Jerry is smiling broadly, as if to make up for his son’s reticence—a grin meant to introduce them both as happy and ready men, as gamers.
The rain continues, the cold unseasonable. There is a low fog that rises between the trees, giving the green a dead, faded look, like most of the forest’s color had leaked into the soil.
“The rain should clear away in an hour or so,” Frank announces, as the bus continues up the hills, bouncing through the mud. The foliage everywhere around is tangled and sloppy. “What do you think, Patrick?” Frank says. “This rain gonna burn off?”
Patrick hasn’t spoken yet and now just shrugs and smiles. There is something in his eyes, Rita thinks, that is assessing. Assessing Frank, and the paying hikers, guessing at the possibility that he will make it up and down this mountain, this time, without losing his mind.
Grant is at the back of the