An End to Forever

Cheri wakes from a dream of Beacon Rock. The epic gash of basalt jabs through her chest from behind, forcing the air from her lungs and pinioning her, face up to the sun. Arms flailing, she churns upright, gasping screams. 

"Again?" mutters Sue-Nic. 

Cheri can't get back to sleep, so she is early—shoulder-pumping her chair down the sidewalk, wheeling over the smooth curb cuts the city is always bragging about—for the TriMet to the courthouse. While she waits at the stop, she grins at the sympathy faces people give her; she has found grinning the best way to stop them. She jokes around with people who ask what happened or how fast that thing goes, or say they wouldn't mind always having a seat on the bus. But for an instant she closes her eyes, and despite the smells of forsythia and donuts which define springtime in Portland, she immediately sees again Beacon Rock's wicked switchbacks, the clever cantilevered steel railings put up by the parks department, the final turn west with its sudden surge of faintly salt breeze, and then the summit's view of the Columbia River: a long arm—silvered cobalt, shimmering—reaching towards forever. 

"Hike it for me," says Cheri that evening. 

"Because of a dream?" 

As usual Sue-Nic picked her up after work—Cheri taking the bus alone in the morning is something Sue-Nic has just recently agreed to, but she still insists on driving downtown in the van every evening to get her—and they stopped for Thai on the way home. Cheri is back full-time as a court stenographer, while Sue-Nic keeps house and does all the shopping, because it's hard to survive on only the foods from the lower shelves of the supermarket. On Tuesday nights they have takeout. Usually Phad Thai, even though Thai food in Portland tends to be soggy and under-spiced. 

"You miss it," Cheri challenges. Not saying, "And I miss you." Seven years ago, at a Yosemite trailhead, she met Sue-Nic—a half-Muckleshoot former NYC model who lived off her investments and could be anywhere in the world, doing anything—excited out of her mind by the steep prospect ahead. Cheri remembers understanding for the first time why love was something people said they fell into. 

Although it had not seemed to be the same for Sue-Nic; they became lovers, but hiking was the only thing that allowed her to set down whatever it was that weighed her. "I left it," she said once, about the place she grew up—the fireworks shacks, jumbles of mobile home parks, the rush of the White River and chill cement shade of the casino, the burning of the first salmon in spring—and even though by then Cheri had guessed how hard it had been not to fit in either on or off the reserve, she heard the guilt in Sue-Nic's voice, and the fear of having to leave something again. 

After the accident Sue-Nic moved, without hesitation or discussion, into Cheri's condo, and for two years has lived with her in the flat downtown of a soggy, under-spiced, barely-city, devoting herself to rehab, not just of Cheri but of the condo, and sometimes, the city itself: every time they encounter something inaccessible she sends off a flurry of irate communications, and has landed herself on two committees. The only inclines Sue-Nic goes up now are the 8.3% grade max trails Cheri's chair can handle; she never hikes on her own.

Later, in bed, Sue-Nic lays on her side and Cheri, although her shoulders ache as usual and she is irritated, reaches out to trace with two fingers the valley of her partner's waist, the rise of brown hip. The world—or at least her only possible understanding of it—is female and horizontal, and she has made her peace with the one and then the other. Why she spent the first twenty-some years of her life vertically, climbing to the tops of things in order to look down, is as unknown to her as the reason catastrophes happen. 

Nevertheless, the dream has been visiting her sleep off and on for the past year. She is at the top of Beacon Rock, and suddenly she can't breathe, her arms flail, she falls, back first—always back first—and the rock skewers her. 

"Beacon Rock isn't its real name," Cheri whispers into the darkness. She has been researching in order to figure out why, of all the trails, outcroppings and monoliths she hiked before being struck by a speeding car in a crosswalk, it is this particular summit—a very simple one, twenty minutes up, a volcano's core now partially paved—that haunts her dreams. 

"Lewis and Clark, when they found it, called it 'the Beaten rock'." She knows as soon as she says it that invoking the names of the explorers, scouts of colonizers, will irritate Sue-Nic, and wonders if that is what she wants. "The native name is Che-Che-op-tin," she hurries on, "which means the navel of the world." Her fingers trace Sue-Nic's belly. 

"You get that from Wikipedia?" Sue-Nic's whisper has a hard edge; she hates it when non-Native people attempt to show knowledge of Native culture. Cheri pulls her body closer, adjusting her legs with her hands, and finds herself giving arguments, as if she were one of the navy-suited lawyers who pace in front of her every day as her fingers move soundlessly on the stenotype. "It's not a mountain. It's a simple path around a vertical outcropping. I did it when I was a kid. Children do it in Tennie runners. Fashionistas probably do it in heels." 

"I've said this before. If you can't then I won't." Sue-Nic flings the sheets back, swings her legs over the side of the bed. "We could do Powell Butte. Bridal Veils. I read the trail at Banks-Verona is good. Hard-pack, not gravel." Sue-Nic hunches forward, weight shifting to her feet and lower legs, but doesn't stand. 

Cheri watches the rise and curve of her spine, imagines walking along the vertebrae ridge, the terrain sloping off on both sides, the view and vertigo necessitating concentration, balance. 

Sue-Nic continues. "You flew through the air and smashed on rocks and half died, God damn it, and all I did was arrive afterwards and sit there in that hospital room, doing nothing, watching the white sheets not moving." She finally pushes herself off the bed. "I should have." 

"What? Should have what?" Cheri calls, but Sue-Nic's long, slim legs are beautiful, so beautiful as she stalks away. 

*** 

In 1805, after months of slogging through muck, starving, portaging, and wondering which was closer, death or the Pacific, the Lewis and Clark Expedition tied up their bulky canoes near a “remarkable high detached rock” jutting out into the Columbia.  Against this jagged monolith they noticed, for the very first time, the river's rise and fall with the tide. 

Cheri, after reading about this moment, likes to imagine it. How exhausted and dispirited they must have been, those explorers, trudging over a thousand miles, encountering an unexpected mountain range called the Rockies, eating their own horses, and fearing that the Pacific Ocean they sought might not even exist. Dependent on the lone woman of their party to communicate with the Native Americans they encountered, dependent even more on those with whom she communicated and whom they would—without intent, yet with the malice of incomprehension—nearly destroy. It is not clear to Cheri whether or not any of the Lewis and Clark party actually climbed Beacon Rock, and her feeling towards those colonizing scouts is just as ambiguous. But still, that moment captures her imagination: just from the smell of the rock, their palms against its roughness, their blistered feet in the water lapping higher and higher at its base, they must have come to understand that salvation was near. That there was an end to forever. 

*** 

As she always does when it rains and the sidewalks are wet and slick, Sue-Nic drives to the courthouse and meets Cheri for lunch. "Can't you just stay in the building?" Sue-Nic sometimes asks. But Cheri can't; the work needs concentration, and everyone in the courthouse is very serious, always; she needs to get out into the fresh air, even if it is wet and dangerous for those who travel with wheels. A year ago, when she was still new to the chair, she went out in the rain on her own at lunchtime. Navigating down a ramp, she rolled into a storm drain and got stuck. Water rushed over her ankles. Yanked out by horrified passers-by, she was drenched but laughing. When she got back to the courthouse she phoned Sue-Nic, who brought dry clothes and outrage, and who now comes downtown at lunchtime every day when it rains. Which is often in Portland. 

They navigate the splattered walkways, Sue-Nic beside her, her hand hovering protectively behind the chair. 

"It's fine," says Cheri. 

All through that first year of physiotherapy, Sue-Nic was beside her. Doing the stretches and movements that kept her muscles from atrophy, learning to use the chair: how to adjust her weight in it, how to keep from toppling over when reaching for things, how to propel herself forward while doing the minimum damage to her shoulders, how to plan ahead for even the simplest of actions. For each wheel turn towards self-sufficiency, Cheri had to fight, and Sue-Nic was there. But as Cheri learned to navigate life as a paraplegic, there was a gradual change in Sue-Nic as well; she became overprotective and unwilling to do things without her partner, and consequently was easily annoyed, sometimes seeming almost resentful. Cheri realizes now that she is no longer fighting solely for her own independence but also for Sue-Nic's, and for that she must battle something very strong: her own gratitude. 

They go to a restaurant on 6th Street. It is one they've been to before, with wide aisles, tables not booths, and mountains of pasta and Parmesan. 

"If you won't go alone, I've figured out how we can do it together," says Cheri. She thinks she has understood why Beacon Rock is perfect.

People often ask her how she is so self-sufficient. How she busses to work, works all day, goes to the park or out to do errands. People don't realize she knows the blocks around the courthouse, and those around her condo, like the tread under her hands. She knows where tree roots heave the sidewalk, where puddles tend to form, which doors swing outwards, where access ramps hide. And she knows many of these things because Sue-Nic has scoped every new street, researched restaurants and businesses and the height of their thresholds. Research and planning are necessary to going anywhere or doing anything new. And that is OK, even familiar to Cheri, because it's what she enjoyed about hiking and climbing, it's the same basic skill: figuring out how to get a body from one place to a seemingly impossible, remote other place. 

"There are a few switchbacks, too narrow to turn a chair on," she says. She omits saying there are 52. "We rent two lightweight collapsible chairs, set the one I'm not sitting in on the further side of a turn, and then if I lean on you I can get from the first chair to the next. And then we fold up the first chair, and go on to the next switchback." 

"Absolutely not," says Sue-Nic. She sets down her fork and pushes her chair back from the table. "There are so many accessible hikes. What is wrong with you? Is this some kind of crisis? Shall we go back to the counselor?" 

Cheri smiles. It is the perfect place. One that seems almost plausible, but that will turn out, when encountered, to be as impossible as it is enticing. It is its ridiculous unfeasibility for a wheelchair user, but its simplicity and reward for an able-bodied hiker, that makes Beacon Rock ideal. The rock helped Lewis and Clark understand what waited in their future; it will help Cheri choose hers.

She remembers hiking with the woman across the table from her, up Maple Pass Loop, The Enchantments Traverse, and the incredible Angel's Landing in Zion. Stuffing backpacks with jackets, water and snacks, heading off. It was often Sue-Nic who led, peering around curves in anticipation, pebbles cascading behind her. Who couldn't wait for the rush of cresting the last hill after a long slow hike; who anticipated with shaking glee the summit view made sweet by the beauty along the way and by the tingling rise of power and accomplishment. Traversing the earth, literally mounting it, was a sexual act. And like sex, when it vanished a relationship suffered. 

"Or perhaps you could go alone first, to check it out," says Cheri. Because this tactic has worked before. She jabs her fork into her spaghetti mountain, cheese sprinkled on it like snow, and twirls. 

Sue-Nic's look is withering, furious. 

Cheri decides to try honesty one more time. "It's important." 

The waiter comes and sets the bill down next to Sue-Nic, who has often suffered from people's assumptions about her net worth. She yells. "What's the matter, just because she's in a chair you assume she can't pay?" 

"Shut it!" Cheri hisses, apologizes to the scared-shitless waiter, and concurrently decides there is no mercy left in her. There was only one car crash, she thinks, as she wheels towards the exit, and Sue-Nic wasn't in it. 

"Go or I'll go without you," she says over her shoulder. 

***

Sue-Nic walks behind on the meadow path, sulky. Beacon Rock looms. Some hikers come from the opposite direction, a few others pass them from behind. Cheri feels her partner grab the handles and heave as the chair bumps over dirt clumps and tree roots. The other rental chair, supposedly lightweight, is still too awkward to bring along unnecessarily: Sue-Nic has promised only to check out the trail, and if Cheri's idea looks doable, to go back and fetch it. 

Fir trees filter the early sunlight, the earth smells damp, ferns uncurl their tight infant fists. Cheri feels cruel. But recovering is cruel, and anyone who thinks otherwise probably hasn't seen or done it. 

They cross an undulating meadow. Weak sun bathes Cheri's shoulders, and the rock juts up just ahead, anachronistically, from soft curves of grass. They enter forest again, briefly, and as soon as they get to the base of the monolith Cheri laughs. The path spiraling around the rock is steep, steeper than she remembers—perhaps a ten percenter—and after it the first switchback beckons wickedly. There is no way. Cheri laughs because she again remembers, or realizes anew, that this is what she really loves: solving the problem of how to propel a body from one place to another. It's just no longer her own body she's trying to propel. 

She sneaks a look at Sue-Nic's expression. Hoping to see a shock of wonder and curiosity, to see the weight falling from her. "Let's go," she goads. 

Sue-Nic, who has barely been holding herself together, anger splinting fear, loses it. She swears like only a former model or a wilderness hiker can swear. She calls Cheri a dumbass, she shoves the chair with both hands. It juts forward, Cheri keeps laughing. Sue-Nic shoves the chair again, then grabs the handles and propels them towards the path chaotically, still swearing. Fury gives Sue-Nic strength, and they hurtle up the incline. Cheri, in surprise, tipping back with her useless feet high, thinks for an instant that perhaps she was wrong—perhaps it is possible for them to get, together, up this hunk of rock. But then they come to the switchback. Flanked by a steel railing, it is steep and too narrow, and turns much too sharply, and some kids are tumbling down the path towards them too fast. 

Sue-Nic has had it. "I have done everything for you," she hisses, "everything possible." She shoves the chair into the V of the switchback and doubles over, heaving. The chair clangs against the railing. Cheri jolts forward, then back, feels the jarring vibration all up her forearms. "That's just it," she thinks, unable to speak. The kids skid downwards toward them, the first one, with his arms out, trying to slow those behind. The chair begins to roll backwards. 

Cheri suddenly can't breathe. Backwards is the direction of her dream. She seems to watch her arms flail around her as they search for the brake on the unfamiliar chair. It is as if they belong to someone else—or, like her legs, to no one. She feels the vertigo of her back at an obtuse angle, sees more than she wants to of sky, feels the wheel treads' slow creep down the slope despite the brake lever her left hand finds and squeezes. Sue-Nic's yell sears the back of her head, she can feel Sue-Nic's body pushing against the chair, smell her sweat, fears she might not be strong, heavy or stubborn enough to halt wheels in motion. 

"You can do this," Cheri whispers, not sure if she's even said it aloud.

Sue-Nic turns, planting her feet—as Cheri reaches and twists to see what is happening—and the chair smashes against Sue-Nic's back. Sue-Nic is knocked to her knees, but the chair does stop. 

The kids' pink, scared faces rush into Cheri's. They grab on to the wheels from the front, rubbing skin off their small palms. There are three, scruffy and blonde, and they can't get much purchase because of the narrowness of the path's angle. One of them climbs over the railing, scrabbling perilously around the V of the switchback and then scrambling back over the railing behind the chair where Sue-Nic is. He manages to steady the chair while Sue-Nic gets up, holding her lower back, and between all of them pushing and pulling, they get Cheri, trembling, rolled slowly back down to level ground. The oldest kid says, "Nice try, lady," and they run off. 

The woods hush. Beacon Rock blocks the sun. Cheri twists around to see Sue-Nic torn, tear-stained, and panting in the clammy coolness. A straggle of hikers gathers around them, but Cheri, though still trembling, grins and jokes automatically and they wander away. There is more forest-silence, and she imagines a faint, long-distance scent of the sea. She turns her left wheel, feeling the strength in the live muscle, until she faces her partner. Finds out what Beacon Rock has been telling her. 

"Go on without me," she says. "I think we're done." 

*** 

At Beacon Rock the journey changed for the Lewis and Clark expedition: their goal, the Pacific, became not a hypothetical but a tangible; no longer merely a product of their minds but a measure of their surroundings. The dream—or nightmare—became reality right there, Cheri will think later as she reads about it, remembering the sound of dark water lapping against stone. 

*** 

"You ungrateful bitch," hisses Sue-Nic. 

Cheri agrees. But goes on nonetheless. "You'll see Hamilton Mountain and the river toward Bonneville Dam.” The old names are newly strange in her mouth. "After that, a few quite large stairs lead to the summit pinnacle." Staying and leaving, she thinks, like prescience and impossible longing, dream and waking, guilt and absolution, go together like the rise and fall of the tide. She is glad of Sue-Nic's fury; hopes its energy will take her where she needs to go. Cheri aches to stand on a far peak, exultant. "Climb to the navel of the world," she says. 

Blue jays call. Fir needles sift downwards. The river imperceptibly rises, the sun climbs. Cheri turns her chair and faces the rock. She looks up.