She was gone. Farrell sighed. He would have to content himself with climbing the steep icy wall. He reached the turn in the stem of the Y at ten minutes past eight. The ridge cast a shadow into the junction and Farrell shivered. He wedged the pack into a pocket along the wall, released the collapsible plastic shovel and changed the radio back to the A channel.
“Collins?” The voice was familiar, but not one of the party. “Collins, it’s Frank Portsteiner here with your buddy the rope head.”
“Frank?” Farrell said, turning around toward the opposite ridge where he supposed The Wave’s camera was positioned.
“This is some crazy shit you’re into this time,” Portsteiner said.
“What’s E.R. going to say to this one?” Farrell responded. He fought to keep his voice from betraying how befuddled he was.
“I don’t need to quote,” Portsteiner said. “It’s easy. You’re out of your mind. The kid says you were almost off it once today.”
“Frank, you must be six hundred feet off the canyon floor,” Farrell said. “I didn’t think you climbed anywhere you didn’t have to.”
“Avoiding the issue as usual.”
“That’s my specialty.”
“Not on my mountain, you don’t.”
“It’s not your mountain, Franko. It’s not anyone’s. We are out of bounds, solo and responsible for our actions in free terrain.”
“Fool,” Portsteiner said. “You’ve had a strong warm wind churning up that chute for three days now. Did you forget everything I taught you?”
“No, I haven’t. In fact, I was about to dig a pit to see if it’s safe to go higher when you so rudely interrupted.”
There was pause, then Frank said: “What’s gotten into you, boy?”
“Just an opportunity for a little fun.”
“I don’t think you’d know truth if it smacked you upside the head.”
“What’s truth, Frank?” Farrell asked, knowing full well it would tick Portsteiner off.
Porsteiner groaned and was silent. They’d had this argument before and the examples seemed to change all the time; in general, Farrell had found, truth can be bent for a price or a cause. Just ask Gabriel.
Farrell unstrapped a length of nylon climbing cord from the side of the pack. He slung a loop around his shoulders, clambered into the feeder channel, and tied himself to a young spruce. He dug an eighteen-inch-square pit with the shovel. Two inches of corn snow lay atop a consistent sublayer. When he’d finished, he flipped the shovel over so the blade faced the back wall. He sliced chunks of dense snow the width of the shovel and ten inches deep on each side, which left him with a column of snow ten inches by ten inches that jutted from the rear of the pit. The idea was this: If the column of snow broke away easy or crumbled, Farrell would know the snow pack was unstable. He held the shovel over the rear of the little pillar, sliced down, then cocked the handle toward himself. After two or three tugs, it broke away in an even, solid block. Farrell thumbed the radio. “You still there, Frank?”
“Against my better judgment.”
“We’re okay,” Farrell said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I had a hard failure on the shear plane test. The snow in the pit looks in equitemperature metamorphosis: a series of firm, bonded layers. I noticed some percolation coming up the chute, but no evidence of depth hoar that could break away. About the only problem we might have is powder above us.”
“You’re still in danger of a hard-slab failure,” Frank said.
“That’s always a danger. But I’m not going to call the climb on that account. I think we’re clear. Talk to you at the bottom.”
“Hey!”
“What’s that?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Now that’s an easy question, as old as the hills,” Farrell said. “Because it’s there.”
By nine-thirty, the rest of the crew were at the junction and Page, the last climber, had rested enough to begin the next phase of the ascent. Again Farrell took the lead, climbing without the security of ropes and anchors. The granite in the dog-leg channel rose almost thirty feet over their heads and curved inward, which created the illusion that they were hiking through a tunnel that had had the top ripped off. Red lichen coursed by deep purple veins covered the gray walls. Farrell stripped his glove from his left hand and touched it, amazed at its elasticity.
As he climbed, the sun filtered in and cast a strange warm glow in the passage. He never could explain it, whether it was altitude or lack of sleep or lack of food, but during the next phase of the climb a tingling sensation took hold where his spinal cord met the base of his skull; a distant murmur at first, with every step, higher, closer, clearer, and more demanding. It was like the tinkling of a small, yet distinct bell in the first minutes, spreading from the nape around his ears until it enveloped and hung about his frontal lobe, ringing when he reached the split in the Y.
Farrell stopped to wait for the others to catch up. He thought he might be sick to his stomach, so he sat and hung his head and swallowed at the bile which crept up the back of his throat. Farrell ate snow. He realized he was not afraid of the Y Couloir. That made him very nervous because he’d always managed to get through difficult situations by using fear to fine-tune his senses. Now his mind raced in many directions. He wished he’d never opened the diary. He wished he’d never met Gabriel or Cordova or Maria Robles. He wished Inez would return.
Ann reached the intersection and flopped down beside him, her breath strong and hard. “Damn, I’m not in shape for this,” she gasped. “Next time you guys plan something like this, I want road camera duty.”
Farrell nodded. “Me, too.”
“She’s spooky, you know? I think it’s her father gets her doing this stuff,” Ann said.
“How’s that?” Farrell asked.
“Back in school I read about him, came across his book in a photography course,” Ann said, struggling from the pack. “I forgot all about it until I saw it in her room the other night sticking out of a bag.
“It’s been a long time, but I remember he had this theory that his pictures were better … no truer … when they were of life close to death. The book’s called The Dividing Line.”
Farrell nodded. “It makes sense, I guess. I feel more alive when I’m out here like this, even though, you know …”
Ann nodded. “Great pictures.”
“So she’s after the same stuff?”
“That’s my theory,” Ann said. “But what do I know? I’m just a slave this trip.”
“How’d she find you and Tony?”
“That’s funny,” Ann said. “I mean it was kind of known around Seattle we were having trouble making ends meet. Then one day in January, she shows up talking a lot of money.”
“Seen her movies?”
“No,” Ann said. “But I’ve heard about them and her. People said she’s tough to work for—they weren’t kidding—but the stuff she comes out with is brilliant. We figured we could learn something and make the money we need. You?”
“Right now, I honestly don’t know.”
Farrell stood and studied the left arm of the Y. A reddish-yellow ledge protruded from the snow across the better part of the channel. The more he looked at it, the more he became convinced that, if his pace allowed it, he would try to traverse just above the ledge and slip over the rocks on a tiny passage of frozen snow. He admitted, however, that the odds of finding that line at high speed were slim. So he puzzled and solved the angle he’d have to achieve in the air to leap the ledge and still land in the main channel of the Y with his shoulders pointing down the hill.
Page puffed up behind him. “Better you than me,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Farrell said. “I’d rather be slicing down on the victim than looking up to see skis coming at my head at thirty miles an hour.”
“I’ll be long gone by the time you get here,” said Page, his jaw punching each word.
“I think I already am long gone,” Farrell said.
Page gave him a strange look and walked away.
Ann and Tony took light meter readings for their cameras, then climbed to their positions. Farrell put together the poles he’d constructed the day before from two ice axes. In the butt of each axe handle, he’d drilled a hole and threaded them so the ski pole tubes would screw in tight. Now, he thought as he hefted one in each hand, I’ve got a self-rescue system; if I fall back and hit the slope and slide, I have a chance of striking one of the axe heads into the hill to stop myself.
Page looked at the contraptions. “Who are you? Roboskier?”
“Kind of heavy, but effective.”
“I’ll stick with something simple,” Page said, and he clacked two lightweight aluminum poles together. The two men looked at each other, aware that each wanted to win the race, but also aware of the perilous situation that now bonded them together.
The chunka-chunka of the helicopter came to them at the same time. As one, they peered down the canyon. Page stiffened. “Here she comes.”
Farrell searched the sky, found the white dot roaring along the far ridge line, and felt the muscles in the back of his leg twitch. He told himself he should feel terrible that she had returned. At gut level, he did. Riding over the nausea, however, was the liquid cocaine of anticipation—he was numbed and jittered by the knowledge he didn’t know what she’d do next. It was nine-fifty. Farrell turned, grabbed his gear, and climbed through the woods next to the channel. He did not want to talk, even after Page had called after him to wish him luck.
By the time Farrell reached Tony, the cameraman had devised a traveling line of webbing and cords off two trees on the right side of the chute. Farrell helped him into his harness, then clipped him to the webbing. Like a spider on the outer rim of its web, Tony ran along the face of the mountain in a broad arc between the two trees. The rope strained, but held. Farrell handed him the camera and he tried it again.
“Give me another seven feet on the higher tree and five feet on the lower or I won’t be able to get you as you drop into that main chute,” Tony said. “Oh, yeah: I don’t want to tell you how to ski this thing. That’s your problem. But when you come through this section, if you could stay along that far wall, I won’t have to retreat so much to keep you in focus.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Farrell said, and he trudged upward again.
His head rambled with the sort of conflicting whispers he’d previously thought possible only in the chemically induced state he’d existed in after the doctors had performed the two operations on his face. One voice hissed that he’d probably never see his mother again; another said the intruder who’d broken into his camper was following his fresh tracks in the snow; the other told him that his wife had been like a river that had been dammed into a lake: the surface was barely rippled by wind, but unseen currents ripped along the bottom.
At 9,000 feet above sea level, facing due north, the upper cavity of the chute caught little sun in the early spring. The snow remained soft, deep, and unconsolidated four days after the storm. Farrell’s legs plunged deep into the snowpack and the wading motion he was forced to adopt cast off tiny rivulets of rolling powder. The lichen on the rocks there, fed by the new snow, was moist, almost blood red. Farrell moved to it, not caring what Inez, hovering behind him, might think. He pressed his nose into the rough sponge, inhaling the cutting, acrid pungency of old mushrooms. His head throbbed now as if every artery and corpuscle had been flayed open. His wrists and ankles pulsed with energy. He felt superhuman, truly believed at that moment that he could run a marathon and win or write sensual poetry. He was mainlining on adrenaline.
The rush continued, intensified, as he clambered higher. He bubbled internally, offering unseen audiences cogent testimony and then rebuttal on Latin American lending policy, solo rock-climbing handholds, and the deep power chutes of the American West. He stopped, buried to his knees forty yards from the summit in a cloverleaf of rock and ice and trees. The configuration struck him as funny. He giggled, chortled, then guffawed until the tears ran down his cheeks; it occurred to him that he was careening wildly toward a stinking crevice in the glacier of his mind. He liked that.
The radio broke the fever. Two hundred feet below and one hundred yards out from the mountain’s side, Inez’s Bell Ranger swung on the west wind.
“Okay Page, stop,” she said. “You and Collins are even in the chutes. We give you ten minutes to prepare.”
Page acknowledged, but Farrell still laughed too hard to respond. He waved with the back of his hand and dropped facedown in the snow. The sharp cold sobered him enough to attempt the tasks at hand. But every few moments, some hint of lunacy broke through the surface and he snickered. He checked his watch: half past ten. He changed into the ski boots, then unstrapped the skis, 204-centimeter slalom boards mounted with green-spring, non-release bindings from a sponsor Inez had cornered.
Farrell unzipped and urinated. “Now there’s truth,” Farrell said to himself. “No other interpretation possible. Just piss in the snow.”
With his skis on, Farrell reached into the pack and got the neon-yellow wind breaker Inez demanded he wear for clear identification during the race, then cinched the reserve pair of goggles to his head. He thrust his hands through the leather straps on his axe-poles and squeezed the handles. He placed his skis parallel to the steep slope. He drew in a deep breath, dropped the tension from the lower ski, and allowed himself to slip down the hill, shaping the snow like a sharp plane across soft pine. Satisfied, he sidestepped back up to his original position, slid down again, and returned.
The Wave’s voice came over the radio: “Ooooh, danger boys. Page up there, looking fine. And Collinsmon in neon. Never thought we’d see it. Cacophonous!”
“Shut it off for once, Wave,” Farrell said. He was in no mood for idle chat. He tried to strip his mind clean, to see the slope and only the slope. He let himself go, trying to use his anxiety to retreat to that primitive level he needed to be in right now. But the tranquil state—his mind a cold pristine mirror, reflecting exactly what was around him—would not come.
“Quiet time, huh?” The Wave said. “Well, from here in the booth, I’m going to be giving a few observations. First, we seem to have different ideas about how to start off this alpine sprint show: Page has driven his tails into the snow, his body is pointing dead down the mountain, chin tucked into his left shoulder. Looks like he’s going for speed, Collins. Page, the old one is sideways to the hill, with a little smoothed-out pad all carved out to make a nice, whipping first turn.”
The helicopter roared over the crest of the ridge. Inez’s voice cut The Wave off. “We run late,” she said. “Are you ready?”
Farrell exhaled and shrugged to try to stop the tremors which now coursed through his shoulders and arms. He hit the transmit button. “Ready.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Page said.
“Très bien,” she said. “Switch off the radios and leave them in the snow next to your packs where Ann and Tony can find them. I check with the other cameras. We go on the drop of the orange tape from the side of the helicopter. Thirty seconds.”
Farrell reached for his earplug, but on an impulse he decided to keep the radio with him. He switched the transceiver to the B channel. He wanted to hear Inez call the race. He rotated his upper body down the hill and trained his eyes on the middle of the chute.
“Camera one?” Inez said.
“I’ve got Page,” Ann said.
“Two?”
“Collins is in my lens,” Tony said.
“Road?”
“Pulled back in full wide-angle. You’re in the top of the frame, Inez,” The Wave said.
“And Action!” A flutter of brilliant orange scrawled on the cornflower blue sky. Farrell grunted and threw his body over and down the hill, windmilling through the first packed turn, cut dense powder, shifted his weight to absorb the change, and drove his left hand off his hip out over the tip of the ski.
The
action slapped him into the center of the chute. He let the skis run—the crimson, scabrous walls streaking at the edge of his vision—until it all became a blur, and he slammed his heels sideways to slice into the snow. He arced and crested out of the powder, dodged a bush on the left side of the couloir, and wheeled about to let the boards under his feet gather speed: fifteen, twenty, twenty-five miles an hour.
“Way, way too fast,” Farrell screamed to himself. He hopped into the air, jamming on the edges of his skis just as he became aware of Tony sliding out on the harness system toward him.
Farrell flew straight at the camera. He braked right, threw a wave of brilliant snow toward Tony’s lens and let gravity take him. In the earpiece came Inez’s voice, quick and throaty. “Allez. Allez cours.” Farrell knew somewhere in the woods to his left, Page was also racing at the margin. Farrell shifted his weight, squared off, and plunged into the elevator shaft again, huffing with the effort.
His ski tips snagged on a submerged bush, and before he could compensate, he was off his feet, falling out over the front of the couloir like a cliff diver in Mexico. In that split second, he saw the fleeting smudge of the ledge above the intersection of the Y, some sixty yards below him, then his head dropped as gravity threw him over and he saw sky and trees and icy rock walls.
“Collins down! Collins down!” Inez screeched. “Bring me in!”
Farrell rolled with the momentum of the fall, instinctively kicking the skis forward when they crossed over his head. Which had the miraculous effect of popping him back on top of his skis again, but splayed back like a boxer drunk off the punch of a square jaw shot. He coursed very fast at the towering right wall of the ravine.
“Fuck it!” he howled. At the same time, he slammed both poles into the snow and righted himself. He whipped the tips around just in time and threw his padded forearm out to absorb the impact with the stone. The axe and the round of his helmet grated with the shrill keen of a speeding car’s bumper against a guard rail. He bounced off the wall, thrown like a lead weight on a fishing line out into the center of the couloir, not sure how he got there, twenty yards above the intersection of the Y’s arms.
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