Angels of Light

by Jeff Long

  Vicarious flight. Every handshake measured your grip. John wove stoned through the crowd, buffeted by the language, noise, elbows, excitement.

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light

  "Yeah, man, forty feet out on 5.12. No pro. I mean. High, dry, and thirsty." It mattered not at all who was speaking. Words. Sparks off the fire. Arching for the moon.

  "...like glass. Friction city for the last ninety feet. Then mantle off this bashie. I was way gripped.

  In-

  con

  -tinent."

  "No way." Elsewhere, faceless. "What I heard, he clipped and grabbed, man. Partied on his pieces. That's what I heard."

  "That's serious, you know. I yo-yoed once, man, but I never like blew it up for a rep or nothin'."

  "I seen it on the Hummingbird, I did..."

  "The Brooks Range? For sure God made 'em. You'll see. You'll see."

  It was a broth of climbing and dreams, talk of Uli Biaho in Pakistan and the North Face of Kwangde up the Khumbu tumbling over Psycho talk and talk of Kresinski's latest or Tucker's newest and the Shield talk and talk of tomorrow's climbs. It had the feel of immortality and would go on until the drugs or liquor put them out or the sun came up, and then they'd be spiders on the walls again. Every syllable made sense to

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  John, nothing was not freighted with obsession. All he wanted was to float in the tide and avoid the undertow. Keep on, keep on. Time and again when someone said hey John, he was deaf and kept on. What made their abandon different and more heedless tonight was the sense of stupendous chance. One week ago they'd been paupers, and here they were millionaires. Evidence of the wealth had flowered everywhere. They wore it on their bodies, in their camp, in their braggadocio. There were new ropes and shiny hardware. A carnival of New Wave-colored tents—neon peach, citrus orange, baby blue—stood fresh and spanking clean among the trees.

  Many had taken to dining at the exclusive Ahwahnee Hotel with its Edwardian appointments and orange juice in crystal champagne glasses. Thriftier folk could be found in Camp Four cooking up expensive freeze-dried gourmet entrees over brand-new super-lightweight European gas stoves. Even Tucker was affected, having switched to exorbitantly priced Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. Wherever you ate, at the picnic tables, on a rock, or under the Ahwahnee's chandeliers, there was Dom Perignon and Chivas Regal, and toasts to their own foothold in yuppiedom. And never far away were the other condiments, copious, pungent clouds of Lightning and lines of toot and crystals of crack. Had you told them that Messrs. Gorbachev and Reagan had decided to erase both hemispheres at nine next morning with a push of the button, they wouldn't have escalated their hedonism one bit because they couldn't have. The money was flowing from their fingertips as fast as they could find a target. They had leaped from rags to riches in a week, and were leaping back to rags with a curious, quaint ferocity. One or two had invested in CDs, and someone or other had hied off with his share of the loot as a grubstake for an experimental hydroponic poppy farm in the forests around Bishop. Otherwise their pockets were file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (95 of 216)19-1-2007 22:42:52

  Jeff Long - Angels of Light nearly empty. The Valley had provided. When everything was gone, it would provide again. As John meandered through the crowd, he saw many faces strange to Camp

  Four. Most fell neatly into the Hungry, Curious, or Awed categories. The climbers had scored a coup, stolen two tons of pot from under the breathing nostrils of the DEA, Park Service, FBI, and Lord knew what other bureaus, snatched it with the finesse of Larry Bird. Or, hell, Geronimo. Or Mangus Coloradas, John's namesake, lied to by feds of another century, shot, beheaded, displayed. Fuck it, he thought. He detested the politics of being an aborigine, all proper rage and false direction. It was enough that he carried the name and cheekbones. And now revenge. This one's for you, Mangus, and he spit and looked around.

  Inevitably the noisy celebration had drawn groupies, tourists, bikers, and dopers too late for the Gold Rush, and for this one night they weren't unwelcome. The xenophobia normally reserved for new faces had been relaxed for the occasion, for having an audience confirmed the tribe's cunning and wiles. A general goodwill prevailed, even after one of the bikers chain-whipped a climber and the climber whipped him back with a piece of climbing hardware that opened the man's face and eventually produced a handshake of peace.

  The bikers were outnumbered and far beyond their own territory, practically timid within this vast natural sanctuary the climbers had colonized. Even liquored up and high, they knew better than to press a retaliation, and so there was lots of hey brother, this and that, you guys are cool, radical. The goodwill held even after the feds showed up to observe and Bullseye cornered one of them against a pitchy ponderosa.

  There were an even four of them, and they were with the FBI and Treasury Department. Four days had passed since Snake Lake had been abandoned. No secret, especially one this monumental, could be kept forever, and three days before, "on a hunch," a Park Service Page 81

  helicopter had revisited the chopped, littered, empty lake freshly dusted over from a snow squall in the high country. Ever since, Park HQ had been suffering a flurry of federal agents coming and going, and the Valley walls had been echoing with the popping of helicopter blades, which infuriated more environmental-minded rangers on behalf of their client-wildlife. But their concerns counted for nothing in the high-tech hue and cry. Five thousand pounds of marijuana had crashed at Snake Lake; four thousand of that had vanished in the course of nine days, street value well over a million and a half dollars. The worst part was that in this day and age of drug enforcement, with agents finally gaining an edge in public relations, the theft had gored their pride. This was no curbside rip-off.

  They'd blown a big one. They knew precisely which group of scofflaws had stolen their contraband, and furthermore knew the names of individuals and which campsites those individuals nonchalantly continued to inhabit. But ice carries no fingerprints and trees don't talk, and what identifying refuse had been left on the lake was entirely circumstantial evidence. From the bottom of the lake, divers had

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light recovered the stolen chain saw, a baker's dozen Park Service axes, a lever-action

  Remington, and even a lawn chair. The brightly painted smuggler's body with "meat"

  written across its chest had been dragged from the water by its Perlon noose, providing great front-page savagery for national newspapers and magazines, "

  GANGLAND FUNERAL IN SIERRAS. END OF ROPE FOR SMUGGLER.

  " That climbers had been here was obvious from such signs as runner-slings and carabiners hanging from tree branches and other dead-give-away climbing-related refuse in the snow such as

  Mountain and

  Climbing magazines. But short of some participant turning state's evidence, no one could be prosecuted for anything. Every agency involved was in shock. To date, no one had even bothered to interview any of the climbers. Their silence was presumed.

  The agents attending this evening's blowout had apparently agreed beforehand that disguises would only make them more conspicuous among boys who carried crack scars on their hands and knew one another by butts-out reputation. And so, opting for a modicum of dignity, the agents had come dressed as if for a chilly barbecue, the most daring in faded Levi's and an equally faded jeans jacket bearing an old Grateful

  Dead logo on the back, a relic of his college days. Singly and in pairs, they worked the crowd.

  For the most part they seemed like pleasant, bemused family men, aware but not too discomfited by their incongruity in this lawless group. There was a sense in which they even seemed to be on the climbers' side, a clever illusion that appealed to everyon
e involved because no one wanted the FBI on their ass. Besides, guilt is relative, and all the climbers had done was find—and keep—the detritus of a criminal act, what was so wrong with that? Throughout the evening the agents stayed in attendance, chatting, joshing, laughing, but to a man declining repeated offers of beer and liquor. Whether it was the size of the gathering or the size of their higher priority, the agents had also done a heroic job of ignoring the Havana-size reefers passing back and forth everywhere.

  "We take care of our own, by God," Bullseye was impressing upon the federal agent he had collared by a ponderosa sticky with resin. For tonight's activities, the ice climber had imported a kiwi-color T-shirt, pleated white pants, and matching white deck shoes with no socks. He was wearing a lemon-yellow linen sports jacket and a pair of Vuarnet sunglasses perched on top of his head. He'd never watched

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  Miami

  Vice but had seen enough tabloids and magazine covers in the grocery store to understand the look. One hand clenched a bottle of white tequila.

  "I'm certain you do," said the agent. He smiled, patrician among these crude outlanders who knew no better. Bullseye knew better and stood his ground.

  "So forget your concentration camps," he said. His ship was adrift, rudderless, but he was willing to sample the winds. His remark provoked no retort. "But don't forget Chicago," he threw in with secondary heat. "And don't forget Madison either, bub. Or Huey Newton, yeah. Or Kent State. Or Angela, yeah, Angela..." It took another file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (97

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light minute for his litany to run low.

  The agent waited patiently. "None of that matters now," he finally said.

  "Wrong," said Bullseye. "It all counts. Every bit of it." Abruptly he disengaged and went searching for, simply as a destination, the three hookers Kresinski had transplanted from a Carson City cathouse. Renting them had been a masterstroke, putting a high-gloss shine on Kresinski's three-hundred-horsepower legend. They were a dubious gift to his tribe, for so far the three ladies had spent the evening flirting audaciously, getting courted, and otherwise shamelessly exploiting their vestal pretense at being just three more girls at the sock hop.

  Hookers who would not hook, more illusions in a valley of illusions. For all its raucous, weird, loud texture, the party was innocent. Everyone was savoring the innocence: the whores, the agents, the climbers, the camp followers. They were savoring themselves on a spring night that seemed like it would never end.

  "You guys seen Ernie?" Bullseye asked of a knot of climbers. Their faces were drug-struck, totaled by the lake pot. Two of them looked at Bullseye without a word, the other two were stock-still, eyes wide at the bonfire. Zombies. Finally one summoned up recognition. "You mean your dog

  ?" He passed a joint across to Bullseye, who in turn passed his tequila. One of the climbers collapsed to the earth. Bullseye retrieved his bottle and headed on, again thinking to find the hookers. A large, densely packed crowd of humanity off to one side of the fire promised the most likely results, so he beelined for that sector. Suddenly Connie, the Four Seasons waitress, burst from the crowd and bumped into him, tears streaking her face. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Bullseye decided she'd probably looked much better much earlier in the evening. He gently arrested her flight with one hand.

  "What's the trouble?"

  "He's got whores in there," she wailed, and broke away to run off into the woods.

  Bullseye took a pull at his tequila, then began shouldering his way through the crowd. Lao-tzu, was it, who told a fable about the butcher who never needed to sharpen his knife because he could cut through the spaces between the meat and bone. Neat trick, thought Bullseye, struggling to find the spaces between one body and the next. Maybe it wasn't a Taoist after all, maybe some Zen dude, and he made a mental note to look it up in his van library tomorrow or the day after, whenever he could next focus. Finally he emerged at the inner edge of a ring of onlookers.

  Sitting on a thronelike rock, Kresinski dominated the firelit clearing. His powerful arms were draped over the shoulders of two women Bullseye had never seen. Both were dressed in bulky wool sweaters and caps advertising "I Lost Mine at Midnight (ranch)." A third woman sitting against Kresinski's legs was displaying long, lithe legs stemming from a pair of silk gym shorts. All were drunk and bedazzled. In the manner of court entertainers, four climbers were playing Hacky Sack in the center of the ring. With little hops and Page 83

  kicks, they kept the bean bag aloft with their feet, by

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light turns adept and completely barren of motor control. Limbs nailing, one after another lost balance and then gamely struggled back to reenter the competition.

  "Waugh!" came a shout. "Look at Bullseye!"

  Bullseye staggered forward one step and readjusted his sunglasses.

  "Man, is he sharp."

  "Oh, yeah," someone said. "Now we're goina see some real Hacky Sack." It was true that Bullseye had a keen toe when it came to Hacky Sack, but he wasn't about to play jester to Kresinski's barbarian conqueror. Very public, not giving a shit one way or the other, Kresinski hailed him over. "Threads! And a haircut, too! You trying to steal one of my ladies?"

  None too steadily, Bullseye approached. He leaned in toward one of the prostitutes and placed the Vuarnets on his nose and squinted at her. "Where are you from?" he said.

  The music was loud, but she heard him. "Minnesota," she said. "How about you, honey?"

  "Minnesota?" He cogitated a moment. "Hell, you're from Minnesota? Then tell me what a hooter is."

  She batted her eyelashes. "Honey, you want me to show you or tell you?"

  "From the rib of man," Kresinski approved. "Amazing, isn't it? You want to dance with her, Bullseye? She's nice and soft."

  "I'm looking for my dog."

  "Anybody seen Ernie?" Kresinski sarcastically trumpeted. When there was no response, he said,

  "Guess not. Maybe the bears got him."

  "There's bears?" said one of the prostitutes.

  "I saw him," said a voice.

  Bullseye looked over, and there was good old skinny Tucker. He was nearly engulfed in the smuggler's brown leather flight jacket. Instantly something about Kresinski shifted, the cock of his head, the attitude that all was said and done. Bullseye noticed the change. Suddenly it seemed Kresinski had something more to say and do.

  "Hey, Tuck, get your butt over here," he commanded.

  "Why the hell should he?" said Bullseye.

  "No trespassing," Kresinski snapped back.

  "He's not hurtin' anyone."

  "What's going on?" said one of the prostitutes. She was too drunk to just shut up.

  "See that boy, there?" asked Bullseye. "Well, he freed an A-four pitch, on sight, solo, no chalk, no yo-yoing, no bolts on rappel. And he did it static, by God!"

  "What?" She had no foothold on the lingo, no idea at all.

  "He showed me up," Kresinski translated with a nasty grin. "Once."

  Tucker made it over. Some of the strings in his arms and legs had been cut, you could tell.

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light drink he'd been offered tonight, the whole gamut. And yet somehow Tucker was still on his feet and standing before them. It was instances like this that had convinced

  Bullseye that Descartes was right. The mind and the body were separate, otherwise Tucker would be flat on his face out in the forest somewhere. His sole locomotion was Page 84

  willpower.

  "Tucker, buddy," said Kresinski. "I hear you're leaving us next fall. Going on a bit of a tour."

  "Yep,
" said Tucker.

  Kresinski was patient. "Where to?"

  "Nepal." Makalu. His secret. He'd already purchased a plane ticket.

  "That takes a lot of bucks. Where'd you get cash like that, Tuck?"

  Tucker knew what was coming but didn't care. "Same place everybody else did."

  "Funny," smiled Kresinski. "That's not what I heard." Much had to be left unsaid, of course.

  There was no telling who was listening.

  "So."

  Kresinski leaned forward and caught the boy by one arm and pulled him close.

  Quietly now, he muttered, "I thought we were partners, Tuck. You got any more money in there?" He quickly frisked the jacket pockets. Then, as if someone were reminding him, he located the arm pocket and unzipped it.

  "No way," Tucker said and strarted to pull away. But Kresinski was faster. He plucked the folded photo from the pocket. The look of amusement evaporated from his face. "What's this?"