by Cary Groner
They stood, precariously, on the ledge. Ramesh, the thinnest of the three, pulled himself up and wiggled through the hole. Devi went next. She got her hands inside and was kicking her way up the rock when there was another rifle shot, this time from directly below. Peter ducked as a flake of granite spun out from the wall by his head. There was another shot, then a short burst, and suddenly Devi was screaming and blood spattered the wall.
She fell onto the ledge and was just about to go over the side when Peter grabbed her and pulled her back close to him. He pulled up her pants leg. The bullet had entered her calf just above the ankle and exited halfway around to the side and below the knee. She was bleeding, but the blood was dark and steady, venous rather than arterial. Peter took off his shirt and tore it in two. One half he wrapped around the exit wound, the other around the entrance. Devi kept screaming, and bursts of fire shattered the rock to the sides of the ledge and in the overhead roof.
Ramesh peered briefly out of the hole in the rock, then pulled his head back in when the next explosion of bullets came. Peter called him and signaled that he would have to grab his sister’s hands and pull her up. Ramesh nodded. Devi stopped screaming and turned white; she was going into shock. Peter put his face right in front of hers.
“Don’t go away,” he said. “You’ve got to stay right here with me.”
She looked at him, her face pale, her eyes out of focus, as if she couldn’t quite make out who or what he was.
“Devi!” he shouted, and her eyes seemed to clear a little. “We’re going to get your weight on your good leg, and I’m going to help you stand. Okay?”
She nodded. The blood had already soaked the two pieces of shirt. Peter got his arms around her waist and lifted her. She put her right leg down.
“Now, to the wall,” he said. There was another burst of gunfire and she crumpled into a ball, but she was scared, not hit. Peter got her to her feet again and put her hands on the wall.
“We’re going to do this fast,” he said. “Ramesh?”
Ramesh put his face to the opening and nodded. Peter lifted Devi up. She raised her arms, and Ramesh reached down and grabbed her by the wrists. He pulled and Peter pushed, and in a couple of seconds she was through the hole.
A long eruption of automatic fire chipped away at the rock around the ledge, so Peter sat down against the wall and waited for it to end. As soon as it did, another burst started up.
There was a pause, a clink, then a ka-chunk, then another spurt of fire. Peter listened. He was pretty sure the first sound was the expended clip being pulled out. The second, heavier sound would be a new one being slammed in. The pattern repeated itself twice.
He could hear Devi crying in the chimney and Ramesh talking to her. There wasn’t enough time to be sure he had it right. He gathered himself into a crouch below the hole and signaled for Ramesh to move Devi out of the way.
Three long bursts, bits of granite flying everywhere, then the lighter, clinking sounds. Peter sprang for the hole, got his hands in, and levered himself up. Just as he got inside, the next fusillade came from below. A rock chip caught him on the ankle and cut him, but it wasn’t serious. He heard shouting, and he and Ramesh peered out. The guerrillas were running back down the trail toward the river.
“Another way knowing, I think,” said Ramesh.
Peter showed him how to stem the chimney, placing a hand and a foot on each side and using friction to work his way to the top. “You go first,” he said. “If we fall I don’t want you under us.”
Ramesh nodded and spread out his hands and feet, then started up. Peter turned to Devi. “Get up on my back,” he said. She nodded, a little too dreamily for his liking. She didn’t look good. Blood had filled her shoe. As soon as they were on top he’d be able to get pressure on the wounds.
“You’ve got to hang on tight,” he said. “I need to use my hands to climb. If you let go, you’ll fall, and you don’t want to land on that leg.”
She nodded again. Peter got down on all fours, and she climbed on his back. He showed her how to grip each of her forearms with the opposite hand so she had a lock around his neck without choking him.
“Stay with it,” he said. Blood was dribbling out of her shoe and splashing to the ground. Ramesh had already stemmed his way to the top. He climbed out of the opening, then Peter started up. Right foot on the right side, left foot on the left side, braced by the hands. Devi was hard to carry, and he was quickly shaking again and drenched with sweat. At about ten feet, her grip loosened and she almost fell. She began to sob. Peter’s legs shook from the stress and the weight, and his crappy soles wouldn’t stick to the rock. He had to keep moving or he’d start to slide, and if he slid, the shoes would come off the rock and that would be the end.
Devi almost lost her grip again. “Come on!” Peter said. “Hang on another couple of minutes.”
He had ten feet to go, then five, then three. Finally they were at the top. Ramesh reached down, grabbed Devi again, and pulled her out. Peter climbed out after. They were on a cold ridge at probably eighteen thousand feet. The moon shone, and a freezing wind was blowing. Ramesh and Devi were in T-shirts, and Peter was now shirtless. They were all soaked.
Peter got pressure on Devi’s wounds, and in a few minutes the bleeding had slowed enough that he thought they could move her. He had started to shiver violently. Down the hill they found a little rock shelter where some boulders had piled up. They crawled in under it, all of them now shaking with cold. Peter wasn’t sure they’d get through the night. He and Ramesh pulled more rocks in around the opening so they were almost completely walled in, with a little gap for air. The space was just big enough for them to lie in a pile together, and after a few minutes it began to warm up a bit. Peter hoped Devi would still be alive when dawn came.
TWENTY-SIX
He awakened to sun shafts penetrating the rock cave. He tried to say Devi’s name, but he was so cold and dehydrated he could barely speak; his voice emerged with a gravelly asthmatic whine. He nudged her gently with his hand. She was pale and still, but finally her eyes blinked open. Ramesh awakened, then he and Peter removed the rocks from the front of the shelter. They crawled out, and Devi followed, dragging her bad leg behind her. Once in the sun, Peter gently removed the blood-stiffened rags and examined her wounds. They were dirty, and the leg was starting to swell.
“We’ve got to get you somewhere.…” he said, but then his voice gave out and he started to cough. There was frost in the shadows, and he couldn’t stop shivering. Neither he nor Devi had eaten in nearly three days. Luckily, the sun was bright and the wind had died. He thought he’d warm up if they got moving.
It looked as if they could head down a relatively gentle slope toward the southeast, the direction of Pokhara, without crossing more than one or two more ridges. The goat trail seemed wider, better used, so it was possible someone lived up here. Peter helped hoist Devi onto Ramesh’s back, and they set out, switching her between them every ten minutes or so. She was nearly deadweight.
Peter was reduced to flat, animal endurance. His brain seemed to have shut down, but he was no longer particularly afraid. He mainly thought of finding food, warmth, and rest. Devi’s lower wound started bleeding again from all the jostling, so they took a break, and he put pressure on it until it stopped.
He wasn’t afraid of the guerrillas anymore either. Getting shot sounded like a relatively quick and painless way to end this ordeal. He supposed he should feel sorry for Devi and Ramesh, but he no longer seemed capable of emotion. He only wanted relief, whether by escape or by death, and he didn’t care all that much which it was. He was vaguely aware that his mind wasn’t working well, that he was dazed from cold and the lack of food and water, that he was in danger of making more bad decisions to add to his long legacy of them. Even so, it was hard to convince himself to care, and anyway, how much worse could his decisions get?
Ramesh stumbled on, his eyes hollow and his movements stiff. Whenever they shifted Devi betw
een them she gave a little cry of pain. Each time Peter heard it, it stabbed at him. Still, her cries began to anger him, and once he almost told her to shut up, though he knew this was mainly from guilt. They had to find water and a way to get warm or they wouldn’t survive until nightfall.
They descended to ten or twelve thousand feet by mid-morning, and the air lost some of its chill. Trees and stunted rhododendron bushes covered part of the rocky hillside. Peter’s legs shook so much when he carried Devi that he had to stop every dozen steps and rest. Ramesh could haul her for a few minutes without stopping, but he was fading quickly. If their pursuers found the same trail, Peter knew, they would catch up before day’s end.
Around noon they smelled wood smoke; it was sweet, better than the scent of any flower. They came to a sloping open meadow, and at the high end of it, up against the trees, stood a shack with a crooked stovepipe guyed out at the top. A thin blue curl of smoke emerged and dissipated in the breeze.
When they had covered most of the distance to the shack, they smelled water. Peter had never known how strong the smell could be; dehydration and the dry air brought the scent to him as powerfully as if it had been blood, and it surpassed even the smoke in loveliness. They found the spring twenty or thirty feet from the house. He set Devi down gently by the little pool, and she immediately began cupping the water into her mouth. Ramesh didn’t even bother to use his hands; he just buried his face and started swallowing. Peter did the same. The water was cold and sweet, with a metallic mineral tang. After a few minutes of this—drinking, then stopping for air, then drinking again—Peter felt some of the fatigue and nausea begin to lift. They lay back in the sun, and after fifteen or twenty minutes he finally stopped shivering for the first time since the previous afternoon. His muscles ached so much from all the contractions it was as if he’d spent the time hooked up to electrodes.
A dog barked. The door to the hut swung open, and out shuffled a withered crone, bent over and crippled from arthritis, bracing herself on a crooked stick. She scolded the dog, a huge mastiff. It whined, put its tail between its legs, and sat down at her feet. The woman peered at them, then called out some sort of question.
Ramesh, surprised, said to Peter, “She Tibetan.” Then he pointed to Devi and spoke to the old woman. The woman dropped her stick and scuttled forward. She helped Devi sit, then Ramesh and Peter picked Devi up and carried her inside, with the old woman close behind. The mastiff stayed out, on a long chain beside the cabin.
The woman pointed them to a tiny straw mattress in the corner, where they laid Devi down. The woman was barely five feet tall, her bed not much longer than she was, and Devi’s feet hung over the end. It was blessedly warm inside, though, and the woman brought Peter a rough cotton shirt. He donned it gratefully and started unwrapping Devi’s wounds. The woman put two pots onto her woodstove. She poured water into both of them, then cut up potatoes and put them in one of the pots.
Devi had a fever, and now that she was hydrated she began to sweat. Peter asked Ramesh to find out if the woman had any clean cloth. The woman nodded and brought out a large white T-shirt. It was one of those nonsensical Indian or Chinese knockoffs: It read “GG Comet” and had a picture of a smiling kitten flying through space, with a crescent moon and stars in the background. Peter gestured that he wanted to rip it, and the woman nodded. When the second pot had boiled and cooled a bit, she brought it over and set it down on the floor by the bed. Peter took part of the shirt and dipped it in the hot water.
“This is going to hurt,” he said, and Devi nodded dreamily. He began cleaning the wounds. Devi cried out, and the old woman sat down and held her hand.
As he worked, Peter grew more concerned; the wounds weren’t gangrenous yet, but they were starting to smell, and the leg grew more swollen by the hour. Ramesh held Devi’s other hand, and together the three of them got her through the debridement. When Peter had done the best job he could, he tore the rest of the T-shirt in half, soaked it in the water, and wrapped the wounds. As soon as he was done, Devi fell asleep. They covered her with a blanket.
Peter turned to Ramesh. “Village, how far?” he asked.
Ramesh spoke to the woman. From what Peter understood of Ramesh’s broken English, there was a road about a six-hour walk down the mountain, and a town a few miles down the road.
“We need to eat and rest first, if she doesn’t mind us staying a little while,” Peter said. Ramesh nodded and spoke to the woman. She got some dried meat from her cupboard and added it to the water where the potatoes were boiling, then started heating more water in the second pot. When it was hot, she took roasted barley flour and a tin of butter from the cupboard and made tsampa. They started with that, then a half hour later, when the potato-and-meat soup was done, they ate again. Devi awakened briefly, and Peter fed her a little soup, but she soon fell back asleep.
The old woman pulled five earthenware jars out of her cupboard and picked dried roots and leaves out of them, then spread them out on the wooden counter. She directed Peter to chop up several tough, white roots that looked like human fingers. She broke up a couple of different kinds of leaves into a mortar and began grinding them with a pestle, then added something flat and chalky. Peter chopped some thin roots that resembled ramen noodles. The woman went out to the meadow to gather a couple of flowers she wanted, and when everything was assembled to her satisfaction she put it all into a terra-cotta pot, then ladled in enough water to cover the herbs. She put the pot on the stove, gave it a stir with a wooden spoon, and sat down, cross-legged, on a cushion by the bed.
She pulled out her mala and began reciting a mantra that Peter had heard before, when he was treating the monks and nuns. It was for the Medicine Buddha, a deity who appeared dark blue in thangkas. “Om Bekhaze Bekhaze Maha Bekhaze Ratza Samu Gate Soha,” she mumbled, over and over. In a few minutes the pot had risen to a gentle boil and a wisp of steam emerged.
Peter, exhausted, lay down on the floor by the mattress. From this viewpoint the hut looked a little bigger but not much. Most of the things in it appeared to have been hand-cut from the woods or made of clay most likely dug from some nearby riverbank. The small woodstove, a kerosene lamp, and a few cooking utensils were from the outside world, but the sink was carved from a hollowed-out section of log, and water drained from it through a bamboo pipe. A rough-hewn table with a chair stood against one wall. There was a small shrine made of wood against the other wall. It held butter lamps, water bowls, a couple of deity statues, and photographs of both the Dalai Lama and Lama Padma as a younger man.
“Ask her, does she know Lama Padma?” Peter asked. He was so exhausted that even lying down it took effort to form the words.
Ramesh spoke to the woman. “They friends, young times,” he said. “Same teacher.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tsering Wangmo,” said Ramesh.
“Tell her I said thank you.”
Ramesh spoke to her, and Tsering Wangmo smiled and nodded. Soon she got up and took the herbal decoction off the stove. When the herbs had cooled she gestured to Peter, and he got up. He unwrapped the cotton cloths from Devi’s wounds, soaked them in the herbal mixture, and rewrapped the leg. Tsering Wangmo inspected the bandages, appeared satisfied, and sat to continue her mantra. Peter lay down again. He wondered how the old woman had ended up here. He had many questions, but they would have to wait.
He awakened to sunlight streaming in, to birdsong and an open door. It was just after dawn; he had slept all afternoon and straight through the night, right there on the floor. Tsering Wangmo was outside, feeding the dog.
Devi was awake, and her fever was down. The leg was still swollen but hadn’t gotten any worse.
Peter raised himself on an elbow. “How are you?”
“A little better, I think,” she said groggily. “She changed the dressing every few hours all night long. This morning I crawled out and peed. My leg hurt, but I could do it, and it isn’t bleeding anymore.”
“She staye
d up all night?” Peter asked.
Devi nodded.
Tsering Wangmo made breakfast with tsampa, then fried potatoes and wild onions together. They were all ravenous and devoured everything quickly. Peter had lost three belt holes since the guerrillas took them, and now that he’d slept and eaten, he felt stiff and sore but surprisingly light. Devi’s cheeks had lost their baby fat and hollowed out. Ramesh was, well, Ramesh—he was tough and matter-of-fact.
A little while later the old woman sat on her porch in the sun, meditating, while Peter and Ramesh washed the dishes. After a few minutes, though, Tsering Wangmo came back inside looking troubled, and spoke to Devi.
“Peter, you’d better listen to this,” Devi said.
He put down the dishrag and leaned against the sink. Ramesh stopped what he was doing and sat on the floor.
“Tsering Wangmo says something may happen soon, and she wants us all to do exactly as she says,” Devi said.
Peter and Ramesh exchanged a look. The old woman spoke for a little while, then Devi translated again. “She wants us to lie down perfectly still where we are, and to stay there with our eyes open, without moving,” Devi said. “She says that no matter what happens, we are not to respond in any way. She wants you to say out loud that you will do as she says.”
“Okay,” said Peter, a little warily. Ramesh nodded and responded in Tibetan.
Tsering Wangmo gestured at the floor then, and they all lay down. Peter felt a little foolish, but at this point he was glad for any excuse to rest. Tsering Wangmo sat on her meditation cushion and took out her two-sided drum, her bell, and her kangling, a small horn made from a human femur. She began to play the drum and ring the bell while chanting a low-pitched song of some kind.
“She is doing chöd,” Devi explained quietly. “One offers one’s body to pacify demons.”
Demons, thought Peter. The whole thing was out of his realm, but then he was out of his realm.