Angels of Light

by Jeff Long

  Outside, snowflakes flashed diagonally like sword cuts. There were more flakes than yesterday, though none were landing. The wind seemed, if anything, stronger and louder.

  "I knew you'd split, man," said Kresinski. "Do your famous fast fade."

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light

  John ducked his head out the cave. There was Kresinski's yellow rope. And far below, barely visible through the light snowfall, lay the lake. John felt strangely light. It was an ecstatic feeling.

  All the gross, vulgar reaching was behind. One step, the sensation told him, and he would fly.

  The lake would sink below. The mountains would fall away. The sun would grow warm. He stepped back into the cave.

  "I'm going to rap down your rope," John said. "You mind?" He hefted his pack and slugged it onto his back. This was easy.

  "You're not going to make it," Kresinski hectored him. He sat up, fully clothed, half out of his bag. "He's down there. He's waiting for us. We got to go two-on-one on him, John. It's the only way."

  John didn't answer. He was ready. "You mind?" he said.

  Kresinski was scowling at him. Fatigue had hollowed out his face. "Nah, I don't mind," he decided. "Do me a favor, though. Leave me your rope." John understood.

  With John's rope and his own tied together, Kresinski could double the length of his rappels when he finally descended. He'd be needing to rappel, what with all that weight to carry. The longer the rappels, the fewer anchors he'd need to set on the way down. The fewer the anchors, Page 172

  the quicker he could get down and away. "I'll buy your damn rope," Kresinski growled. "Take one of those keys with you."

  John didn't take any of the cargo. "Just bring my rope back," he said, knowing that was the end of the rope. He tossed the red coil down by the entrance.

  There was nothing else left to say, not even good luck, so he left the cave. The wind broke against his body and tore at his hair. Quickly now, he stepped into position and arranged the rope over his body.

  Kresinski came to the cave's entrance. "You're gonna lose, John," he shouted.

  John tugged on the rope, testing the anchor. A rappel is only as safe as its anchor. It wasn't much of an anchor, two nuts in parallel fissures, but he didn't need much. He leaned out against the rope and fed some slack over his shoulder. He edged across the snowy cornice and entered the col. Smooth and gentle, he continued down. The feeling of lightness magnified. Part of it was the act of rappeling, which is basically an act of zero-gravity motion. But part of it was descent itself.

  "You lose, man," Kresinski yelled down at him. John looked up the gully walls, and there was Kreski's savage head jutting over the cornice. "I knew you would." Then his head was gone.

  Twisting to look over his shoulder, John continued tiptoeing down the col. The wind was freaky and unnerving, but twenty feet lower and the angle would diminish. From there on down, he could climb. Once his hands and feet were firmly attached to the mountain again, he'd feel less exposed. Some people enjoy rappeling precisely because it frees them from holding on to the world. John hated rappeling. During the time you hang on the rope, you're essentially out of control. Your life depends on the anchor, the rope, and the friction of a braking device. If any one of those elements

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light fails, you die.

  He was still lowering himself when the rope suddenly quivered. Then it quivered again. He could feel the vibrations in his hands. His first reaction was that the wind was playing against the taut line between him and the anchor. His second reaction—

  too late—was that Kresinski was pulling the rope. John poised one toe on a ledge and darted a glance upward. But it was too late.

  The rope suddenly collapsed in his hands. For an instant he managed to balance over his toe.

  Then his pack tipped him backward and he pitched down the col. He'd fallen before and always come out okay. But this was different. There was no chance for survival this time. This time there was no rope to catch him. This time the advantages of free space were null and void.

  He hit the gully wall and bounced and hit the opposite wall. Like a pinball, he ricocheted from wall to wall. Here and there he was intercepted by a rock poking out from the mountain and flung into the air. He was tossed and beaten on the long descent that was neither air nor rock, just the physics of an angel stripped of its wings. Even if the brutal fall didn't kill him on the way down, the lake would. There was no escaping the lake. Once he hit the snowy ledge below and launched out into space toward the lake, nothing more needed doing except impact, and that was guaranteed.

  He had no time to think. No time to feel. Each blunt, wracking blow from the mountain registered as a change in direction. That was about it. After the first hundred feet or so, he quit trying to ward off the blows with his hands and feet. He belonged to the mountain now. He belonged to the lake. All the same, he kept his eyes open. This was the big ride and he was paying admission, and there was no sense closing his eyes for the finale. It seemed to take a long time. Fast and slow, the assault on his flesh was nearly over. He bounced a final time.

  Then it was all air. He was riding the wind. He was the wind. All that was present was the vast gray sky. It went on forever, the cold, the roar, the gray. He lay in the palm of air, astonished by Page 173

  the never-ending journey. This was how terminal velocity felt. There was no reason not to accept it. This was how it had been for Tucker. Zeno was right. The arrow never reaches its mark. In order to go all the way you have to go halfway, and in order to go halfway you have to get halfway to halfway, ad infinitum.

  No wonder they'd never found Tuck. He'd simply never hit the ground. That was okay with John. He savored the chill air.

  After a while he tentatively tried moving his arms, but they wouldn't. His legs were locked down, too. It wasn't what he'd expected. He felt encumbered. Heavy. And all at once the adrenaline high flushed out and there was a rush of pain that had no center because it was everywhere at the same time. He needed oxygen to scream with and he drew at the air, but his ribs ignited with a sharp fire. Like that, his pain brought him back to reality. He wasn't in perpetual flight, not even remotely so. His

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light infinity of halfways hadn't even spanned a single respiration. The second breath was no better than the first. The sense of peace was a lie, as was the sense of being airborne.

  Lifting his head, John saw that he'd lodged head up in the snow on the ledge crowning the cirque. The lake was spread beneath his feet, and he was half sitting, half lying on the precipitous rim. Kresinski's yellow rope lay in tangles all around him. He saw these things, but not really.

  Not well. His focus was shot and his head hurt badly. What he saw was a gray hollow overhead and a gray hollow underfoot. As for the rope, he identified that with his hands. He was nearly blind.

  John nested his head back on the pillow of snow. The sky had quit calling to him. The languid sense of grace was gone. He kept his breathing shallow. Ribs were broken.

  He allowed himself to be lazy. His body terrified him. It was an injured animal, and there was going to be pain, a whole lot of pain, when he finally got around to exploring himself. For a minute he thought about how much easier it would be just to give his mind to other matters. The sky was wonderfully blank and the wind was so elaborate. Rest up. Close your eyes.

  Hypothermia wouldn't be far off, not with this wind. It would replace the adrenaline. He considered how he'd always loved the cold.

  There was an interior beauty to the cold. A sexuality. Like a queen in a legend. She'd come hump him slow. No need to move for h
er. Didn't even have to strip the way that pilot had. Together they'd manage it fine just the way he was, flat on his butt.

  She could take her time. Take his pain. Give him grace.

  He forgot all about Kresinski. For a while he catnapped, though that, too, might have been something imagined. Time was evasive. The rapid snowflakes were hard and nipped at his face like tiny piranhas, so maybe he didn't sleep at all. His eyes opened and closed and opened, always to the same dull, soupy sky. Here was how limbo would look: a bleak monochrome, no focus, no color, no light. He heard a whispering. It was his own.

  "Padre nuestro,"

  it went.

  "Que estás en los cielos

  ..." He was surprised by the beautiful prayer. Years had sunk since he'd last prayed. It was so beautiful that he started it all over again, louder, to hear its music.

  "Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos

  ..." God he didn't need. Nor heaven. Didn't need shit so long as he had his hands and eyesight and mind. But those weren't always enough. Right now a little color, a little focus, a little light Page 174

  would go a long long way. Anything to contradict this blank, vaulting sky.

  Then there was a motion. Above and behind him, a shape slowly rounded the corner of rock.

  John didn't exactly hear it. And he couldn't have seen it because his eyes were closed. But suddenly he was aware of that second presence. The literature of Himalayan mountaineering is checkered with accounts of a nonexistent man who joins hypoxic climbers near their summits. There was something similarly phantom about this other presence, but also something different. Tangible.

  Like a yeti, it shifted across the snow, stealing toward the base of the col. John tilted file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (207

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light his head backward in the snow, trying to see above him. Upon his movement, the shape halted, as if John were a surprise. All John could discern was more mountain.

  When the shape moved again, a leg appeared in the corner of his vision. Holding his ribs and grunting for air, he craned further for a view above. He dug the heel of one foot into the snow and pressed upward and sideways, but the pocket holding him onto the steep ledge complained with a peculiar ripping noise. He froze. He looked into the wild maw between his knees and took several shallow breaths. The wind stripped the frost from his lips.

  "Kreski?" he said, but the wind drowned his word.

  The shape moved closer toward the mouth of the col, but slowly and cautiously. It hugged the rock wall and stamped its feet over and over with each step as if the snow might collapse or the ledge might avalanche. Just might, too, thought John. Man, animal, or phantom, it seemed horrified by the height. The thought of Kresinski lurking behind and overhead caused John to chance another twist in place. He had damn little to lose. Plowing both heels into the crust, he folded his arms across his ribs and lurched upward and to his left. The pain sucked him empty for a moment, and when he could breathe again, the shape was gone.

  Now sideways to the face, one leg stretched long, the other bent, John could at least appreciate the miracle of his survival. Half from memory, he assembled from the hazy blur how the col's throat reared in a steep complex of outcrops and bends. The chute should have propelled him far out onto the lake. Rearranged now, he could also better survey his landing spot. The col had bucked him high in the air and, with the weird mercy of a mountain, deposited him square upon the only bit of ledge that could have saved him. The snow was pink with blood where his head had rested, and that helped explain the throbbing in the back of his skull and his virtual blindness.

  Besides that and his ribs, he seemed to have beaten the odds, at least for the moment.

  "That was a nasty spill," a deep voice observed from the other side of the col. In the wind it could have been Kresinski's voice. John jerked his head around, too violently as it was, and his vision blurred from the pain. Where was the bastard? He didn't dare move again. If only the rope were anchored to the wall, he could have pulled himself from the edge. The limp, tangled shanks of rope were useless. "Careful," said the man. There was a sympathetic fear in that voice, the gut reaction of one person watching another on the brink.

  Casting backward, John appealed to that fear. "Help," he said. Not that he expected help, not from Kresinski. It was the old college try, that's all. He wanted, very simply, to see Kresinski's face because now it would be his real face. There was no fight left in John. None at all. He was scared and hurt and blind. Also he was resigned. Even if he managed to get across the ledge and descend the ramp, there was no way he'd ever make it back all those miles to the trailhead alone. And he was very alone.

  "Is that my coke down there?" asked the voice.

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light

  The question made no sense. But it identified the shape. It wasn't Kresinski. It was the smuggler.

  The smuggler had followed them up.

  "What?" said John. He was not particularly shocked.

  "Down there. That pack, boy." John obligingly bent his head and looked into the abyss. He couldn't see a thing. Nevertheless, he was able to imagine his pack as a tiny blue dot flattened on the lake. It must have been plucked from his back during the fall.

  "Is that my coke?" the man repeated. There was no bullshit to the man. He was direct. It wasn't

  "goods," "merchandise," or "snow." It was "my coke." "Or is it still up there?" said the smuggler.

  "I can't see you," said John. This was it. He was dead fucked now. His one regret was that the finish couldn't have been on his own terms, sleepy, caressed by the cold.

  Another few hours and she would have had him stiff and blue, locked to the mountain. "Let me see you." He didn't have a plan. He just wanted to see the man's face, even though he couldn't.

  "It's still up there, isn't it?" said the smuggler. "With your friend."

  John gently rested his neck back on the snow. His black hair fanned out upon the white snow.

  "You know what you did?" he asked the smuggler. The smuggler couldn't hear him.

  "Call him. Call your buddy."

  Lifting his voice against the wind, John said. "He wouldn't come even if I did." He was indifferent.

  "Call him, damn it."

  "He pulled my anchor. He dumped me."

  Suddenly he felt his shoulder nudged by something hard. The toe of the man's boot.

  "Loud. Get him down here. Now." His shoulder dipped under another nudge of the boot.

  Holding his ribs, John attempted a yell. The bones actually grated under his hand, and he fought against vomiting in pain.

  "We'll wait then," said the smuggler. They listened to the wind for a minute. "So which one are you?" he asked conversationally. "John or Matthew?"

  John's eyes were closed tight against the stinging snow and the sear in his chest. One thing about the broken ribs, they kept his concentration in a nice tight tunnel. No room for anything but the next tiny breath. Hardly room to even hear what the man had to say. But then the implication of the man's words hit him, and John's eyes opened in alarm. There was only one person who had the kindness to call Kresinski by his full first name. Liz.

  The smuggler detected his alarm. He'd been waiting for it. "You thought this was all for free?"

  he said.

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light branchings of fate. Keep it simple, he told himself. The man had talked to Liz.

  "I took something that was yours."

  John tried again to look over one shoulder, then the other. The smuggler was just out of view and, most definitely, out of r
each. He was taking no chances, not that John was an adversary.

  Then John was tired again. He laid his head on the snow. "We didn't even know," he said.

  "Ignorance is a hell of a reason for dying," said the smuggler.

  "Goddamn you," John cursed. It was an old-style curse, sincere and final. But because he Page 176

  couldn't see his enemy, it was like hexing the wind.

  The smuggler was full of patience. "I know," he said. "I know." After a moment he added, "Hell of a place for a Mexican standoff, ain't it?" The man was terrified of the mountain. John could tell by the bonhomie in his voice. It was an artificial camaraderie.

  "What did you do with her?" John demanded.

  "With Elizabeth? The real question is what did you do to her? In a month some hiker will find her. Then they'll find you two boys. They'll wonder about it all."

  John squinted blindly into the wind. There was a sense in which the smuggler didn't even exist.

  He operated in their interstices, between their daily mechanisms. Their risks became his weapons. Their motives and dreams and jealousies and petty entanglements became his explanations—and he didn't even have to explain. All he had to do was tip their forward motion into terminal velocity.

  "She came in with you?"

  "She's down there, John-or-Matthew. Somewhere out in your wilderness there.

  Waiting for you."

  Still alive, John decided. How alive was another problem. And he couldn't even fight to save her, or see to track her.

  "It's time, friend. You going to jump? Or do you need some help?"

  His kindness was obscene and yet comforting. John went on sitting sideways in the snow, clutching his ribs. "Can you stand up?" the smuggler asked.

  John didn't even attempt to stand.

  "That's okay."

  The smuggler kicked him in the back. It wasn't much of a kick, too high, oblique, and tenuous.

  The man was too scared to descend for a really good swing. The second swipe caught John on the shoulder. He grunted. Then the smuggler had a better idea.