Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Just one,” said Gordon McClennan, who taught Latin. “Can we opt out?”

  Noah shook his head slowly.

  Gordon looked around. “But why us?”

  Because you four are lazy and bored, he thought. Because I’d put money on the fact that none of you has ever tried anything like this before, because you’ve all been thorns in my side since I took this thankless job, and because you could use the exercise.

  Diplomatically he said, “Because you have better rapport with the students we’re taking than some of the others. You’re right; this is a difficult group. These kids aren’t used to roughing it. They aren’t used to exploring the great outdoors, or functioning as a group, and they sure aren’t skilled in survival techniques, which is why I have two hired hands to help teach. Not that we’ll be in any danger, assuming everyone pays attention and follows either their lead or mine, but Katahdin is no snap. The operative word is ‘challenge.’ That’s what this is about.”

  * * *

  Noah said as much to the students who gathered in the auditorium the following afternoon. They looked horrified and shot one excuse after another his way until, finally, losing patience, he said, “This trip is not optional.” He looked at his watch. “You have thirty minutes to get ready and meet at the bus.”

  “What if we don’t?” one of the boys asked. Noah knew him well. He had already broken enough rules to put him in extra study halls for a month.

  Now Noah smiled. “Funny you should ask that, Brian,” he said. “Your parents thought you would. They said that if you don’t go, you can spend next weekend with them,” which was the last thing Brian would want, given the friction between his parents and him. Noah’s gaze spread. “I have similar promises from others of your parents.” He rubbed his hands together. “Any other questions?”

  Thirty minutes later they were off. Noah sat alone behind the bus driver. The other front seats were empty, as were the four immediately behind. Beyond that, all the way to the back of the bus, were successive pairs of grim faces.

  They reached the base camp on schedule. There they met up with the hired hands, Jane and Steve, and not a moment too soon, as far as Noah was concerned. Not only were the faculty members as unwilling participants as the students, but not a one of them knew the first thing about cooking on a small camp stove, much less digging a latrine, much less raising a tarp.

  Working from a prepared list that separated friends and troublemakers, he divided the thirty students into groups of five plus one adult, then went from group to group detailing what had to be done. Jane and Steve backed him up, taking over with their own and adjacent groups while Noah circulated. Grunts, moans, and muffled oaths notwithstanding, the students cooperated. They seemed to understand that no one would eat until the cooking was done and that the more everyone chipped in, the sooner that would be.

  Dinner consisted of beef stew from a can, rolls from the Mount Court kitchen, and hot apple cider. Through it, Noah moved from one small circle to another, answering questions and fielding complaints. The girls were the worst of the complainers, protesting the food, the bugs, and the lack of bathroom facilities and talking wistfully about being back at school as though Mount Court were paradise. The boys weren’t into complaining as much as swaggering around as though they knew just what had to be done when and were bored with the entire show.

  Noah had assigned Sara to a group of what he considered to be the least troubled of the students, but he spent no more time with that group than he did with the others. He didn’t dare approach her, though he was dying to know what she was thinking and feeling. Favoritism would backfire for sure.

  When everyone had finished, he made a second round of the groups to make sure the clean-up was done properly and explain what would be happening the next day. Then he passed out tarps and demonstrated how to stretch them between trees to form a shelter for the night. He made a final round to make sure that the tarps were secure.

  The rain began at midnight and continued for several hours. Noah wasn’t sleeping so soundly that he didn’t hear the group that stole into one of the vans to sleep, but he didn’t force them back out. The others would be feeling that much more pleased with themselves come dawn, and, indeed, that was what happened. There was razzing galore of the van sleepers. He might have taken pleasure in the satisfaction of those who had remained outside if those hadn’t quickly joined the others in grumbling about the ungodliness of the hour.

  At least the rain had stopped. The air was damp and chilly, though the chill eased with the coming of light. Breakfast consisted of apples, oatmeal, and hot chocolate and was eaten to the tune of intermittent squabbles, which Noah deliberately ignored. When everything had been cleaned up, the vans took them another forty-five minutes to their starting point. After Noah described the trails they would be taking to the top of the mountain, the pace they should keep, the difficulties they might expect to find, and the rules they were to follow, they set off.

  Those who had been wearing sweatshirts and sweatpants soon peeled them off and either wrapped them around their waists or stuffed them into backpacks as the air warmed. They walked in a long line that snaked through the trees, six clusters of five students and one adult each. Noah led; one of the experienced climbers and his group took the midpoint; the other and her group brought up the rear.

  Noah listened both to the mountain sounds and to those of the climbers immediately behind him. He could hear their hiking boots on the dirt path enough to know that they were keeping up with him. He wanted to think that they were getting into the spirit of the thing, though he suspected that their silence was defiance.

  Two hours of easy hiking up the mountain, they reached Chimney Pond, where fresh water and a ranger awaited. The air had begun to cool; sweatshirts and sweatpants went back on. They snacked on gorp and water and, after refilling their bottles, moved on.

  They followed Cathedral Trail until the trees thinned and grew stunted. Noah put on a wool sweater and waited while the others did the same.

  “This was where Thoreau turned back,” he called down in an attempt to goad the kids on. “He was tired. Thought he’d never make it to the top.”

  There were grunts and mutterings. He caught the words wimp, smart, and nuts, a mixed review that left him in the dark as to the success of his ploy.

  They passed the treeline. Earth gave way to open expanses of rock. The clouds thickened. “What if it rains?” one of the girls behind him asked, less complaining than apprehensive.

  “We have rain gear,” he answered gently. “It’ll keep us dry.”

  “Won’t the rocks be slippery?” another asked.

  “Not terribly.”

  “The more slippery the better,” one of the boys called. “We could use some excitement. This is pretty boring.”

  “You call that boring?” Noah said. He turned to study the view, which was spectacular even in spite of the clouds. Growing up in the Southwest, he had adored climbing the desert hills and imagining himself two hundred years back in history. The hills were higher here, greener, and the sense of history every bit as rich.

  “When will we be able to see the top of the mountain?” a girl asked from close by his side.

  He waited for a small group to gather around him. “It’s right there.” He pointed. “Wait. The clouds are moving…. There. See?”

  “That’s so far!”

  “It must be freezing up there.”

  “We can’t make it.”

  “Sure we can,” he said. “It looks farther than it is.” He slid off his backpack and took out a windbreaker.

  “But it’s in the clouds. We can’t go there.”

  “Sure we can,” he repeated. By this time the lower climbers had caught up. He saw Sara in their midst and called, “Add another layer,” in her general direction. “It’ll get colder before it gets warmer.”

  “This is nothing compared to what we ski in,” one of the boys said. He was the captain of the soccer team and on
e of the few who hadn’t yet put anything on over his shorts.

  The others were busy pulling sweaters from their packs and hurrying into them. Noah, who had taken a wool hat from his pack, gestured the boy aside. In a voice that wouldn’t carry beyond them, he said, “I’m sure you’ve seen worse, Ryan, but the fact is that it could be damn cold up a little farther. Once you get chilled, you’ll have a hard time warming up.”

  “I’m fine,” Ryan said, and returned to his friends.

  Noah pulled on the hat along with a pair of wool mittens. He looked down the line, relieved to see that many of the others had done the same, including Sara. When the backpacks were in place again, he led them on.

  They scrambled over the rocks for an hour before stopping for peanut-butter crackers and more clothes. When an argument broke out in one of the groups, he started toward it, then stopped. Ryan was saying that it wasn’t cold; his group was telling him that it was, and that he’d slow down the others if he got cold later on, and that that wasn’t fair. In the end he put on a sweatshirt and sweatpants. Noah was pleased, in part because he didn’t want the kid to freeze for the sake of his pride, in part because group dynamics were finally kicking in.

  This time when they moved on, those at the front stuck closer to Noah than before. They were frightened, which was fine, as far as he was concerned. Without fear there would be no sense of achievement, which was what he wanted most for them.

  The rain started slowly, in random drops that came and went and caused more apprehension than damage. Though wearing rain suits now, they were exposed and vulnerable, a ragged cord of climbers moving six by six through the lowering mist toward a point they couldn’t see.

  Noah felt the anticipation building, both in himself and in those around him. “Tired?” he asked, and was gratified to receive head shakes instead of complaints. Yes, there was fear, but they had come too far to turn back. Stubbornness had set in, and determination. The troop huffed and puffed but climbed on.

  When the skies opened and the rain came in earnest, there were some complaints and open epithets from the faculty members, but the voices were quickly drowned out. Leaning into the deluge and the shifting fog, the group closed in and climbed more slowly, moving higher and higher until finally, on what looked like little more than another of the plateaus they had reached so many times before, Noah stopped.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Knife Edge.”

  There was utter silence behind him. He dared a glance back to find those who had been closest to him staring in horror at the path ahead. As lower climbers joined them, all, save the young couple who had done the climb many times before, looked similarly horrified.

  Knife Edge was a span of rock barely ten feet wide that undulated along the top of the mountain. They would be following it single file for a mile until they reached their trail of descent.

  Noah could feel their terror, even shared some of it, and in that instance wondered if he had made a mistake. Even with two experienced climbers along, as the Head of Mount Court Academy, he was the one ultimately responsible for the group. Knife Edge had thrown better climbers than he into a tailspin.

  “We can’t go on that,” came one cry.

  Then another: “There’s nothing on either side but clouds.”

  And another: “There’s nothing to keep us from falling off.”

  “No one’s falling off,” Noah said. “I’ve been here in the snow, and no one fell off then. Jane, Steve,” he called to his backup, “are you planning on losing anyone here?”

  “Nope!”

  “No way!”

  “The path is perfectly safe,” Noah told the group. “We’ll just take it slow.”

  “I’m not crossing that.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Let’s go back the way we came.”

  Noah had wanted a challenge, and a challenge he had. He shook the rain from his glasses. “We can’t go back the way we came. The vans will be waiting for us here.” He put the glasses back on. “Look,” he said calmly, but loud enough to be heard above the rain, “the path is safe. We’ll go single file and stay close. Anyone who is uncomfortable walking alone can hold on. Okay?”

  Knowing that the longer they stayed there, the more frightened they would be, he called Abby Cooke to the front. His voice brooked no dissent. “You lead the way with your group. Steve and his group will be right behind you.”

  Abby stared doubtfully at the path, which at that moment looked like the thinnest ribbon of rock in a swirling cauldron of fog. Noah was acutely aware that more than one climber had died falling off its edge in a panic. He put a hand on her shoulder. “The rock looks wider when you’re actually on it. It just rolls across the top of the mountain. Go slowly, but keep it steady. The day is wearing on.”

  He hated to pressure her, but the fact was that if they didn’t traverse Knife Edge and start down, they would be engulfed in darkness long before they reached the bottom. That would be a challenge in and of itself.

  Pale and quiet, Abby started off. Noah sent each member of her group off after her with the squeeze of an arm and quiet words of encouragement. “Just keep to the center of the path and relax. One after the other…. That’s right. Good…. That’s it. Hold on to the jacket of the person in front of you if you’re frightened.”

  This was Sara’s group. He figured it would be more able to handle Knife Edge than some of the others and would set a good example. If someone freaked out, he preferred that it happen in Jane’s group or Steve’s, better still at the back of the pack, where few would see and catch on.

  Steve set off with his five, then, cautiously, Gordon and his.

  “In the center, Sherri,” Noah coaxed. “That’s it. Good, Morgan. Hold on. That’s fine.”

  By the time the third group was making its faltering way along the rocks, Abby’s group was lost in the clouds ahead. The rain came steadily. The fog rose on either side of the path.

  The fourth group set off, a reluctant caterpillar making its slow and uneven way behind Jane. The fifth group gathered around Noah. Annie Miller was in tears.

  Noah put an arm around her and spoke by her temple. “You can do this, Annie. You’re as physically coordinated as they come.”

  “But I can’t see the path.”

  “Sure you can. It’s wider than you think, much wider than you. Remember that, and take it one step at a time.” He reached out for Ryan and brought him close. “Annie’s following you, Ryan. She’ll hold on to the back of your jacket. Just take it slow and steady. Got that?”

  Ryan nodded, though he looked none too steady himself.

  Noah gave Annie a squeeze. “We’ll be right behind you. You’ll do fine.”

  She started off gingerly, gripping Ryan’s jacket, hunching into herself, but moving.

  “Stay together,” Noah urged the others as one by one he sent them off, leaving only Tony Phillips and the final five students. He turned to find one of the latter sitting on the ground and knelt beside her. “Julie?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t budging.

  “Can’t stay here forever,” he coaxed, acutely aware of the passage of time, the rain, the chill.

  She nodded vigorously.

  The others in the group knelt around her, dripping wet and shivering. “We have to go, Julie.”

  “It’s too cold to stay here.”

  “You can do it.”

  “I never asked to go mountain climbing,” Julie cried.

  “Neither did we, but we’re here.”

  “We’ve come too far to turn back.”

  “We made it up the mountain. Now’s the easy part.”

  “That isn’t easy!” Julie screamed in a tone that suggested she was on the edge.

  Noah, who knew that things wouldn’t get better until she saw for herself that the path wasn’t made of thin ice, put an arm around her and pulled her to her feet. The others crowded in.

  “You can hang on to me, Julie,” said Mac, the only senior boy in her
group. He had been heavily disciplined for using sexually derogatory language to a female faculty member, but his chauvinism was welcome now. “I’ll go right in front of you.”

  “I can’t,” Julie wailed.

  “I’m scared, too,” one of the other girls cried, “but no one ahead of us has fallen off.”

  Julie backed up, right into Noah, who didn’t move an inch.

  “Come on, Jules,” Mac said, taking her hand. Between his gentle pull and Noah’s small nudge, they moved her to the start of the path. Tony Phillips set off, followed by Brian, then Hope, then Mac, then Julie, and Marney, who squeezed in between Julie and Noah and put her hands on Julie’s waist.

  “I won’t let you fall off,” she called over Julie’s wet shoulder, then shot a terrified glance over her own shoulder at Noah. “Don’t let me, either.”

  “I won’t,” Noah said. He stayed close behind her, talking to her so that she would know he was there. He called encouragement to Julie and those in front of her and peered through the clouds ahead for sight of the others, but the visibility was too poor to see much of anything.

  He pushed the thought of tragedy from mind, but it kept coming back, along with every sort of remorse imaginable. He cursed himself for thinking that he could successfully lead so large, untried, and reluctant a group, even with two experienced climbers along. He cursed the mountain, cursed the weather, cursed the Mount Court Board of Trustees for hiring him in the first place.

  Knife Edge should have been crossable in half an hour, but they spent three at it. The weather slowed them to an agonizing pace that was further delayed by panic stops. When the group worked together, the panic passed. That was some solace, what with the self-reproach Noah was feeling.

  The sky darkened. Dusk was fast approaching and so was foreboding. “Can we pick it up any?” Noah called, then quickly muttered, “Forget that. You’re doing just fine.”

  They stumbled along in the rain, crossing one stretch of rock to the next. “Center of the path,” Noah yelled from time to time when someone strayed perilously close to the edge. He was in a cold sweat by the time they finally reached the spot where Knife Edge ended and the rock flared out into a wider, safer plane.