Twisted Trail

Currently seeking representation

What's the story?

JP, in his thirties and freshly escaped from Walla Walla State Penitentiary, starts out by hitching a ride to Seattle, but at Snoqualmie Pass, he smells danger and bails. He sees backpackers on the Pacific Crest Trail and thinks, Canada is north. Freedom is north. Maybe the trail can take him there. With scavenged gear that includes a buck knife—the same blade that landed him behind bars, he steps on the trail to disappear.

Unbeknownst to JP, an Army vet named Marcus is right behind him on the trail. Marcus is wrestling with PTSD after killing an innocent boy in Afghanistan, and he's banking on the trail's steady rhythm to quiet his mind. Marcus meets Firefly, a solo hiker whose glow hides her own grief, and Wolverine, a teenager who wants to prove to his family he’s a man. But when JP slides back into his criminal ways to survive, the ripple hits everyone on the trail, with life-altering and life-ending outcomes.

Excerpts

River Crossing

Marcus, an Afghan war vet, has just had a PTSD episode that was triggered by some innocent comments made by a teenager he met on the trail.

Marcus rammed the knife into his pocket. “Sorry. I get a little weird sometimes. Don’t take it personally.”

The kid didn’t answer, only stared in bewilderment. Marcus stuffed the remains of his lunch into his pack and hastily swung it onto his back. “See you around, maybe.”

“Bye.” The boy’s single word rose like a tiny bubble that instantly burst between them.

Marcus grabbed his poles, walked to the edge of the creek. The river looked knee deep, mean, and eager to shove a backpacker onto his side. Marcus felt the boy’s eyes on his back; he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself in front of the kid. He pressed his lips into a tight grimace, placed his right foot onto the closest boulder, watched the current swirl around the seam of his boot. The next rock was three feet away and sloping, but he had to use it. He lunged, paused to catch his balance. Found another stepping stone, then another that wobbled. He jabbed into the creek with his hiking pole, felt the current try to snatch it from him. The crossing demanded intense focus, enough to wash away his craziness. On the last step, his right foot splashed into shallow water, but then he stood steady on the far shore, the storm in his chest diminished. If he'd felt half normal, he would have turned around and waved at the boy, maybe even called out that the crossing wasn’t too bad, just watch out for that big rock in the middle—it’s tippy. Instead, all he wanted to do was put miles under his feet and never see the kid again.

JP

JP is a prison inmate who has escaped the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He has just hopped out of a car that gave him a ride from Walla Walla to Snoqualmie Pass.

JP strolled back to the gas station where the couple had dropped him off and slipped into the men’s room. He found a mirror, brushed his palm down the front of his T-shirt, and smiled. Man, it was good to be back in street clothes. He looked fucking respectable. Then, he eyed his tattoo and frowned at what the fugitive alert would say: White male, 28 years old, 5 ft 11 in tall, medium build, sandy-red hair, possibly a short-trimmed beard. Hawk tattoo on left bicep. With sudden urgency, he ducked into a stall and unzipped the pack. Found the nylon windbreaker, pulled it on. It was fucking ninety degrees out there, but at least the tattoo was hid.

He stepped warily out of the restroom and saw a young couple walking past the gas station, holding hands. He frowned. They probably never thought about their freedom. Never thought about the smallness and tightness and uptightness that comes from being stuck where you don’t wanna be and eating what you don’t wanna eat and hanging out with guys who wanna badmouth you or use you. In there, they called a piece of your day “free time” but you were in the Walls, for Christ’s sake, so free is one thing it was not.

He dropped his head and shook it back and forth to knock out the negativity. Everything was going to be fine when he got to Canada. He’d been there once, and it struck him as an open place, a free place, with lots of trees, and maybe he could get a lumber job, like he used to have on the Olympic Peninsula. As soon as he found a job—any job—he'd pay for Nora to come up and see him. She was a good woman, that Nora, and a smart one, too.

Trail Names

Marcus has just met a twenty-something woman who is hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail solo, from the Mexican border to Canada. In this excerpt, they are camping together for the first time.

Firefly—that was her trail name. After they’d boiled up some of their Sheep Lake water and made separate dinners—hers was rice and tuna and his was mac and cheese—they compared notes on what they liked to eat on epic hikes and laughed about the freeze-dried dinners that either gave you a bad case of the farts or were so tasteless, you might as well have chewed on bark.

Marcus scraped the last bite of dinner from the sides of his bowl. “Tell me about your trail name. Do you have a backstory about fireflies?”

“Firefly isn’t the insect, it’s a yoga pose. I teach yoga in Lynnwood, just north of Seattle.”

Marcus looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I’m from Kirkland—we’re practically neighbors."

Firefly laughed. “Seriously? I’ve met people on this trail from all over the world, but never anyone from Kirkland.” She smiled, and Jim noticed she had a little dimple at the top of her left cheek, right below her eye. “What do you do there?”

Marcus thought about his recent departure from BadDog. “Computer stuff. Not all that interesting, really.” He coughed and looked at Mount Rainier, blushing pink in the twilight. “So how did you pick that particular yoga pose as your name?” Anything to keep the conversation away from him.

“To be honest, I didn’t pick it. I met another yoga buff way back in southern California, and she came up with it. After a couple days, I decided I liked it. What name do you use?”

He scratched his beard. “Oh, I just go by Marcus.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s no fun. You need a trail name, something that expresses your outdoor persona.”

He felt his cheeks turn hot. “Nah. I'm good with Marcus.”