The Signal by Ron Carlson Page B

life.”
    There was a new noise now, a squeal and then another. “What the hell?” They listened. “It sounds like wild turkeys.” Then there was a bass whoop and the unmistakable cadence of voices. “Sit still,” Mack said.
    It was periodic but ascending and two minutes later the clear words could be heard: “See, see, see!” A person climbed into view at the spearpoint, and then another and two more, young people in sweatshirts and hiking shorts. Two girls and two boys.
    “See! My god,” a female voice said. “What a weird place!” One of the young men lay down flat on his back on the rocks there, and the three others stood with their hands on their knees catching their breath. “Is that snow?”
    “What do you want to do?” Mack said.
    “Nothing,” Vonnie said. “Wait. Hope they turn around. Finish this tea. They won’t see us if we don’t move.”
    “No way!” one of the girls cried.
    “Way way,” the other said, pulling her shirt off. They were throwing their clothing onto the boy on the ground who was lying inert in the laundry.
    “Now what do you want to do?” Mack said. “Drink up. We can hide and watch this carnival or we can make ourselves known.”
    “That was never your way,” Vonnie said to him. She slowly lifted her cup to her mouth in two long sips.
    “Or we can quietly slip up over this hill and deadhead back.”
    Now one of the naked girls had picked her way barefoot to the edge and she jumped in the lake and came up sputtering and swearing and scrambling for her footing. “Oh my god! It’s ice!”
    Mack had packed the stove and gathered his gear.
    “One’s a redhead, if you want to know,” Vonnie said. She had her binoculars on the group. “Or do you need this provocation?” The boy had jumped in now and then the other girl, grabbing him, and one said, “It’s not cold like this.” The boy on the ground was lying there, his hands behind his head.
    “You’re all nuts.”
    “Come on, James. We’re swimming.”
    Mack and Vonnie moved low over the hill, carrying their fish, and descended; they could still hear the voices, distorted and amplified by the water. “That’s too bad,” Mack said. “You caught a beautiful fish.”
    “It’s okay. These two are giants. We don’t want another. What are four college kids doing in the Winds in September? Don’t they have class?”
    “They’re after their merit badges.”
    She looked down the slope to where the trees began. “Which way is it?”
    They descended steeply down rock to rock, their knees working and warming. “Is it easier to climb up than go down?” Vonnie asked.
    “I’ve heard people say it.”
    “I’m saying it.” The forest was thick here, undergrowth, and Mack led them through the brush, holding branches, going wide around the deadfall. The trees grew bigger as they dropped down and the brush more sparse, and the walking became walking as he followed the drainage, ridge to ridge. They walked an hour as the shade gathered. They were out of the wind, but it was cooling, and they moved without talking. They stopped above a meadow full of elk, all cows, the bulls out of sight, and ate an apple.
    “You hungry?” he asked her.
    “Not really.”
    “We’ll eat these fish tonight, if we find our camp.” They rose and walked around and then across a marshy wood through a rockfall, boulders big as rooms, the ground patterned with elk track.
    “You know where we are, don’t you?” she asked him.
    “I do,” he said.
    “You’ve got direction in the woods like no one I know,” she said. “I’ve always loved that about you.”
    “Thank you very much,” he said, “but let’s go down here first.” They stepped carefully down a broad screefall and into a vale of short pines walking among the trees, no trail. They ascended the far side and out into the scrub meadow, the last clumps of lupine and high mountain sage. Mack looked at where the sun now met the mountain and he checked his watch.
    “It