Katz and I bought two egg salad sandwiches each, some potato chips, chocolate bars, and soft drinks and went to a picnic table in back, where we ate with greedy smackings and expressions of rapture, then returned to the refrigerator to stare in wonder some more. The Walasi-Yi, we discovered, provided other services to bona fide hikers for a small fee-laundry center, showers, towel rental-and we greedily availed ourselves of all those. The shower was a dribbly, antiquated affair, but the water was hot and I have never, and I mean never, enjoyed a grooming experience more. I watched with the profoundest satisfaction as five days of grime ran down my legs and out the drainhole, and noticed with astonished gratitude that my body had taken on a noticeably svelter profile. We did two loads of laundry, washed out our cups and food bowls and pots and pans, bought and sent postcards, phoned home, and stocked up liberally on fresh and packaged foods in the shop.

The Walasi-Yi was run by an Englishman named Justin and his American wife, Peggy, and we fell into a running conversation with them as we drifted in and out through the afternoon. Peggy told me that already they had had a thousand hikers through since January 1, with the real start of the hiking season still to come. They were a kindly couple, and I got the sense that Peggy in particular spends a Jot of her time talking people into not quitting. Only the day before, a young man from Surrey had asked them to call him a cab to take him to Atlanta. Peggy had almost persuaded him to persevere, to try for just another week, but in the end he had broken down and wept quietly and asked from the heart to be let go home.

My own feeling was that for the first time I really wanted to keep going. The sun was shining. I was clean and refreshed. There was ample food in our packs. I had spoken to my wife by phone and knew that all was well. Above all, I was starting to feel fit. I was sure I had lost nearly ten pounds already. I was ready to go. Katz, too, was aglow with cleanness and looking chipper. We packed our purchases on the porch and realized, together in the same instant, with joy and amazement, that Mary Ellen was no longer part of our retinue. I put my head in the door and asked if they had seen her.

“Oh, I think she left about an hour ago,” Peggy said.

Things were getting better and better.

It was after four o’clock by the time we set off again. Justin had said there was a natural meadow ideal for camping about an hour’s walk farther on. The trail was warmly inviting in late afternoon sunlight-there were long shadows from the trees and expansive views across a river valley to stout, charcoal-colored mountains-and the meadow was indeed a perfect place to camp. We pitched our tents and had the sandwiches, chips, and soft drinks we had bought for dinner.

Then, with as much pride as if I had baked them myself, I brought out a little surprise-two packets of Hostess cupcakes.

Katz’s face lit up like the birthday boy in a Norman Rockwell painting.

“Oh, wow!”

“They didn’t have any Little Debbies,” I apologized.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He was lost for greater eloquence. Katz loved cakes.

We ate three of the cupcakes between us and left the last one on the log, where we could admire it, for later. We were lying there, propped against logs, burping, smoking, feeling rested and content, talking for once-in short, acting much as I had envisioned it in my more optimistic moments back home-when Katz let out a low groan. I followed his gaze to find Mary Ellen striding briskly down the trail towards us from the wrong direction.

“I wondered where you guys had got to,” she scolded. “You know, you are like really slow. We could’ve done another four miles by now easy. I can see I’m going to have to keep my eyes on you from now-say, is that a Hostess cupcake?” Before I could speak or Katz could seize a log with which to smite her dead, she said, “Well, I don’t mind if I do,” and ate it in two bites. It would be some days before Katz smiled again.

“So what’s your star sign?” said Mary Ellen.

“Cunnilingus,” Katz answered and looked profoundly unhappy.

She looked at him. “I don’t know that one.” She made an I’ll-be-darned frown and said, “I thought I knew them all. Mine’s Libra.” She turned to me. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to think of something. “Necrophilia.”

“I don’t know that one either. Say, are you guys putting me on?”

“Yeah.”

It was two nights later. We were camped at a lofty spot called Indian Grave Gap, between two brooding summits-the one tiring to recollect, the other dispiriting to behold. We had hiked twenty-two miles in two days-a highly respectable distance for us-but a distinct listlessness and sense of anticlimax, a kind of midmountain lassitude, had set in. We spent our days doing precisely what we had done on previous days and would continue to do on future days, over the same sorts of hills, along the same wandering track, through the same endless woods. The trees were so thick that we hardly ever got views, and when we did get views it was of infinite hills covered in more trees. I was discouraged to note that I was grubby again already and barking for white bread. And then of course there was the constant, prattling, awesomely brainless presence of Mary Ellen.

“When’s your birthday?” she said to me.

“December 8.”

“That’s Virgo.”

“No, actually it’s Sagittarius.”

“Whatever.” And then abruptly: “Jeez, you guys stink.”

“Well, uh, we’ve been walking.”

“Me, I don’t sweat. Never have. Don’t dream either.”

“Everybody dreams,” Katz said.

“Well, I don’t.”

“Except people of extremely low intelligence. It’s a scientific fact.”

Mary Ellen regarded him expressionlessly for a moment, then said abruptly, to neither of us in particular: “Do you ever have that dream where you’re like at school and you look down and like you haven’t got any clothes on?” She shuddered. “I hate that one.”

“I thought you didn’t dream,” said Katz.

She stared at him for a very long moment, as if trying to remember where she had encountered him before. “And falling,” she went on, unperturbed. “I hate that one, too. Like when you fall into a hole and just fall and fall.” She gave a brief shiver and then noisily unblocked her ears.

Katz watched her with idle interest. “I know a guy who did that once,” he said, “and one of his eyes popped out.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“It rolled right across the living room floor and his dog ate it. Isn’t that right, Bryson?”

I nodded.

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m not. It rolled right across the floor and before anybody could do anything, the dog gobbled it down in one bite.”

I confirmed it for her with another nod.

She considered this for a minute. “So what’d your friend do about his eye hole? Did he have to get a glass eye or something?”

“Well, he wanted to, but his family was kind of poor, you know, so what he did was he got a Ping-Pong ball and painted an eye on it and he used that.”

“Ugh,” said Mary Ellen softly.

“So I wouldn’t go blowing out your ear holes any more.”

She considered again. “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” she said at length, and blew out her ear holes.

In our few private moments, when Mary Ellen went off to tinkle in distant shrubs, Katz and I had formed a secret pact that we would hike fourteen miles on the morrow to a place called Dicks Creek Gap, where there was a highway to the town of Hiawassee, eleven miles to the north. We would hike to the gap if it killed us, and then try to hitchhike into Hiawassee for dinner and a night in a motel. Plan B was that we would kill Mary Ellen and take her Pop Tarts.

And so the next day we hiked, really hiked, startling Mary Ellen with our thrusting strides. There was a motel in Hiawassee-clean sheets! shower! color TV!-and a reputed choice of restaurants. We needed no more incentive than that to perk our step. Katz flagged in the first hour, and I felt tired too by afternoon, but we pushed determinedly on. Mary Ellen fell farther and farther off the pace, until she was behind even Katz. It was a kind of miracle in the hills.