Read Backwater for Free Online Page B

up to the door. The sign read:
    YOU ARE ABOUT TO EMBARK ON THE
ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME.
DON’T JUST STAND THERE—COME ON IN.
    I pushed the door open.
    A large woman sat at a desk in front of a computer. She wore a green Mountain Mama, Inc. sweatshirt and was chewinggum. Brochures were stacked by the door. She was drinking orange juice from a half gallon carton. Six backpacks were hanging from hooks, photos of the large woman on various mountain peaks hung on the walls. She had long, crazy gray hair that seemed to go in a dozen directions.
    I cleared my throat. “Uh … Ms. Mountain, I presume?”
    The woman grinned broadly. “Guilty.”
    “I’m Ivy Breedlove. I’m looking for a wilderness guide.”
    She hit her thigh, headed toward us. “You got the best one in the state. I can change your life in seventy-two hours—give me a week, and you’ll be changing others.”
    She slapped down five brochures.
    “We offer several wilderness trips here. We’ve got your general wilderness experience for the first-time adventurer—hiking, rock climbing, basic survival skills, outdoor cooking …” She picked up a guitar and strummed a cord. “… bluegrass singing ’round the campfire. If you’re trying to bond with your family or co-workers, we’ve got three- to seven-day Trust Trips. I’ve personally seen people who could not stand each other work their way up a mountain and become best friends—makes you weep. For an extra fee we can drop you solo to survive by your wits in any wilderness area of your choosing from here to Manitoba. We’ve got snow-shoeing expeditions, all terrain cross-country skiing junkets, trout fishing,
and
my personal favorite,
spelunking.”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Cave exploration. Nothing like crawling around a tight, dark cave to give a person inner perspective.”
    “I’m not looking for a trip. I’m trying to find my Aunt Josephine. She lives in the mountains somewhere. No one in my family has seen her for years. I’m trying to write a family history. I’ve been working on it so hard and it would mean everything if I could talk to her!”
    Mountain Mama looked at me. “I’ve heard of her.”
    “You’ve heard of Josephine Breedlove?”
    “I wouldn’t be much of a guide if I hadn’t heard of a woman hermit living way up past the ridge, now would I?”
    “You know how to get there?”
    “Honey, I know how to get anywhere.” She flipped open an appointment book, looked at her schedule. “We can leave on Saturday. Get back right after New Year’s.”
    “We’re not rich,” Egan said guardedly.
    “How old are you?” she asked me.
    “Eighteen,” I lied.
    “Bull.”
    “Sixteen.”
    She ran her finger across a map of the mountains to a high peak. “It’d take us a day and a half to get up there because it’s winter and you look pretty green. We’d take the easy way around the ridge. Add on to that how much time you want to spend with her.”
    “I hadn’t thought that far … I mean, this is all very unusual.”
    Mountain Mama picked up a New York Times Book Review section, waved it in the air. “You know what book publishers are looking for these days?”
    “Ah … no.”
    “They’re looking for the next best seller. They’re looking for a bold new voice that can capture the struggles of humanity in three-hundred and fifty pages. I’m going to write that book. The haunting memoir of a woman who can climb up rock face with a nine-inch knife in her teeth.” She opened the Times Book Review to the list of current how-to best sellers. “Personal finance, personal nutrition, personal sacredness. That’s what’s selling today. My book’s going to have it all—how to lose weight, how to get sexy, how to find your authentic self, how to save money, how to connect with your higher power—all from a woman who has dedicated her life to bringing wilderness experiences to plain, common people like yourself.”
    She looked out the window to the mountains in