The Fall Line

by Mark T Sullivan

  “Farrell was believed inside the garage when his wife opened the door to their BMW, triggering …”

  Inez pressed a button again, freezing the reporter’s face, distorted now on the screen.

  “But you do not die, do you, Jack Farrell?” she asked. The triumph on Inez’s face was palpable and depressing.

  Farrell sank onto his haunches. He stared at the screen and the black plume of smoke that seemed to rise out of the back of the reporter’s head like a question mark. He knew what Inez wanted, a meltdown, a primal outpouring of all that he’d survived. But all he felt was the prick of ice on his skin, as if he’d just leapt into three feet of fresh powder.

  “No, Inez, he’s quite dead,” Farrell said numbly. “It was just as they said, he and his wife died in the explosion.”

  Inez clapped her hands and crowed, “Such courage, Mr. Farrell. You are everything I hoped you would be. But I’m afraid it is all true. Everything I find points to you.”

  “Tell them to look again,” Farrell said. “Check the coroner’s records. The bodies were ripped in half. Neither of them ever knew what hit them.”

  “No!” Inez insisted, and she stepped out from behind the camera to stand above Farrell. “You are him. But I ask myself, these men, Cordova and Cortez—they kill your wife. You have your chance at revenge and you run. Why?”

  Farrell shook his head. Instinctively he reached for the lie. “Your detectives weren’t that good. Dig some more in Texas, and you might find I had a different name—a name like Timmons—that appeared in Utah in the late 1970s when Jack Farrell was on the ski patrol. It’s the same name that appears on some papers of a shaky real estate deal he was involved in outside of Dallas in the mid-1980s. But me, Jack Farrell? No.”

  “Fingerprints,” Inez said, pointing to the glass.

  “Never printed,” Farrell said. “Never arrested for anything.”

  “Photographs,” she said, growing anxious.

  “Do I look like him?” Farrell asked.

  “This is nothing,” she said. “The scars: surgery plastique. There are records.”

  “Where?” Farrell asked.

  “I prove this!” Inez cried.

  “What will you prove?” Farrell asked. “You can point to a person and say you’ve discovered certain facts. You may try to draw conclusions about them, about their motives, their strengths and weaknesses. But they never add up to any single explanation. You know why? Because in each person there’s an ambiguity, an unexplainable sum of the parts, the humanness, the emotions, at work.

  “So for the sake of an argument, you might well say I’m Jack Farrell,” he went on. “But I know now he’s dead, Inez. As dead as you.”

  “Me? I am as living as I can be,” Inez snarled. “Do you know why? Because I am the expert in exploring the little gap where emotions caress cold facts and turn them into something so, so powerful that one cannot capture them with words, only with film. Tomorrow you and I will explore that gap. I climb the mountain with you, Jack, right behind me.”

  “A participant at last,” Farrell said.

  “Watch me!” She cried. She tried to slap him. Farrell caught one hand and then the other.

  He stood, still gripping them. “I told you I’m not going and neither are the rest.”

  “Non, non, you climb and you ski tomorrow,” Inez said. “Because you are scared now, exposed like that little boy who soils his pants in his garage, afraid of what he has done.”

  Farrell strengthened his grip.

  “I know your gap. You fear now the responsibility, the prison, the dark place with no sunlight,” Inez said, squirming with the pain. “The place of boredom where life is the same every day. Every day in the darkness you would think of her and the Latin men. And how someday they find you, how someday they send their guns!”

  Farrell wrenched her fingers so violently she squatted and squealed in agony. She panted, “Mais, there is an exit! Climb tomorrow and I do not show the police what I find. And when we finish, I let you run.”

  Farrell wanted to break her with his bare hands. But the thought nauseated him. He wanted it to be January again, he wanted the snow like white ether to drift him away. He relaxed his grip. Inez hung her head and groaned and rubbed her wrists.

  Farrell said dully, “What makes you so sure I won’t—”

  “You say it yourself,” Inez said. “You are not the killer.”

  “Why should you let me run?”

  Inez smiled knowingly. “Because I know that on the mountain tomorrow, you will let me be … compassionate.”

  Chapter 27

  DEFEAT HAD DIZZIED FARRELL. He splashed unaware through the puddles of muddy water in the parking lot and walked in front of a car. The driver blared his horn and yelled at him. He didn’t notice. He considered making a run for Canada, but Inez was sure to be watching. There were only a few roads out of Jackson. He’d be caught before Montana. She’d boxed him in perfectly.

  In his room, Farrell held the diary for almost an hour, tracing his fingers over the embossed leather until in an act of desperation he opened it to the last entry. He wanted to hear her tell him what she wanted to do after he testified.

  August 6

  Today is my last day at work. I’ve told Maddy. She knows it all and this is the hardest part. It will be hard to say good-bye. She’s helped in more ways than I probably understand.

  I wonder how Jack will take what I have to tell him. Almost three years now. And still I shook with joy and tears when Maddy called last night to tell me the blood test came back. I’m two months pregnant.

  So the decision is made for me. I cannot leave a cripple behind or a baby without its father. Life begins again. I wonder how Jack will take the news?

  Farrell slumped to his side, his mind the blank screen he’d so long sought. Only the sensation he’d always anticipated, a chill perfection, the gleaming ice of an ancient glacier, didn’t come. Farrell’s head burned with a brilliant, searing heat.

  A half hour before dawn, a groggy Portsteiner opened the door to his hotel room to find Farrell standing there with Ruby’s leash in one hand, two letters, and Lena’s diary in the other. Farrell said in a listless monotone, “Going for a climb, Frank. Need you to take care of a couple of things.”

  “Climb?” Portsteiner responded. He snapped awake. “Jesus Christ, Jack. Have you lost your mind? You said it yourself: Tetons are as unstable now as I’ve ever seen them.”

  Farrell shrugged and held out the letters and the diary. “Doesn’t matter anymore, Frank. Take care of the dog. Mail these for me. Keep the book safe.”

  The older man took them. “What are they?”

  “The letters are confessions, I guess,” Farrell said. “Spent all night writing them. One to my mother. The other to my wife’s parents.”

  “Your wife?” Portsteiner cried.

  Farrell nodded sadly. “I couldn’t tell you about her because I didn’t know how. She’s dead, Frank. I had more than something to do with it.”

  Portsteiner studied him, then spit. “You a killer, Jack?”

  “I might as well be,” Farrell said. “I finished reading her point of view late last night. Learned things were worse than I thought. Read it if you want. Doesn’t matter now.”

  Portsteiner put the diary and the letters under his arm. He rested his hand on Farrell’s shoulder. “Don’t go up there with that woman, Jack.”

  “I’m sorry, old friend,” Farrell said. “I got no choice.”

  Portsteiner said, “Always choice, always hope. The victim of extreme exposure is at risk of shock and coma. But the body can be saved by a gradual warming.”

  Farrell smiled wanly. “E. R. LaChapelle?”

  He shook his head, “Frank Portsteiner.”

  Ruby whined and tugged at her leash as Farrell trudged away.

  “Everyone check their sensors,” Page said at the trail head three hours later. They had just signed out at the ranger station.

  Farrell reach
ed down to the yellow box the size of a paperback book that hung by thick straps inside his jacket. Each box contained a miniature electronic receiver and transmitter to be used to find each other if they ever became separated. Farrell, The Wave, and Inez carried soft-frame packs to the side of which were strapped skis and poles. Ann, Tony, Page, and the porters were outfitted with heavier, aluminum frame packs laden with food and camera and camping equipment.

  “Let’s go then,” Page said when the check was completed. He led, followed by Inez, Ann, Tony, and the two husky young men in their twenties Inez had hired to carry the extra equipment back to the valley floor; and then The Wave and Farrell. The Wave glanced back at Farrell, who wandered up the trail as if it were all a bad dream.

  The Wave slowed and whispered, “She get to you, mon?”

  Farrell looked at The Wave as if he should recognize the kid but didn’t. “I got to myself,” Farrell said. “Story of my life.”

  “You shouldn’t be climbing with that look, mon.”

  “Why not?” Farrell said. “When you had it, you went farther than you’ve ever gone before. I guess I’m ready to breach my limits.”

  He said it with such an air of finality, that The Wave shook his dreadlocks. “Suit yourself, mon. Just be sure you know where them ghosts are before you start down.”

  “I know exactly where they all are,” Farrell said more to himself than to The Wave.

  The weather was warm, in the low fifties, the sky was hazy and a moist breeze blew out of the west. They made Garnet Canyon by nine-thirty and continued through it to the Lower Saddle of the Grand Teton. This was the classic approach to skiing the Stettner and Tepee’s Glacier that Briggs had pioneered nearly two decades before. In the sunlight, they ran into the gooey snow Farrell had warned about. In the shade, the snow was crusty and the climbers broke through the surface, jerking forward and wincing at the way it cut at their shins. They all stripped to T-shirts, struggling their way upward. Inez had the worst time of it; she was out of shape and wheezed horribly in the thin air. But she never complained even when she slipped around noon and fell, floundering in the wet snow. When Page tried to help her, she pushed him away and struggled to her feet.

  They stopped for a break around 1 P.M., a good four hours by Page’s estimate from the climbing hut.

  “Tougher going than I thought,” Page said to Farrell. “Normal day, they say you reach the hut by two.”

  “It’s all your call now,” Farrell said. He sat apart from the rest of them and almost cried.

  They reached the saddle around five, found the hut in reasonable shape, and stowed their gear. In what light was left, Page, The Wave, and Farrell climbed as far as they could to see whether the snow route east toward the Stettner Couloir was passable. They climbed zigzag up the slope, careful and slow. Twice Page had to call out to Farrell, who veered off course as if he were following the footprints of someone else.

  When they returned to the hut, Page said, “I think we’ve got a go at least as far as the bottom of the Stettner. The climb will be tough, but doable.”

  Inez smeared Page’s cheek with a kiss. “In the morning, all are champions!”

  Farrell retired to a corner, arranged his gear for the next morning, and unfolded his sleeping bag. He ate the food offered him, but did not speak. In the darkness he prayed for the first time in years. This, too surprised him, for he had believed himself an agnostic. He found himself carrying on a conversation not with a white-bearded god, but with Lena. And he had the rather comforting thought that perhaps the animists he’d encountered in Africa were correct: We find the two faces of the deity in every object and every animal, in our friends, our lovers, birds, mule deer, elk, the streams, the mountains, and in the air.

  The praying made him feel better, as if abandoning himself to a benevolent force beyond his control was his only hope. He sat up in his sleeping bag to look at The Wave, who had ambled over.

  “Your quiet scares me, mon,” The Wave said.

  “Everything’s been said. All that’s left is to go.”

  “Then what, another? Ranier?”

  “I tend to doubt it,” Farrell said.

  “Me, too. It’s all getting too strange for me.”

  “I think it’s cyclical,” Farrell said philosophically. “For brief periods you get used to what has occurred and that’s what you call normal. Then it starts over and the sensation of standing outside a fish tank returns.”

  “Only you’re the fish too,” The Wave said, scratching at his chin.

  “Lake Trout,” they both said. They laughed weakly.

  “So she …” The Wave began.

  “Just accelerated the process,” Farrell said.

  The Wave squinted. “I thought you were stronger, mon.”

  “Than what?” Farrell asked.

  The Wave thought about it for a minute, tugging at his dread-lock. “I guess I don’t know.”

  Farrell patted The Wave on the back and told him he had to take a piss. As Farrell crossed through the room, he ignored Inez. Page offered him a drink of whiskey from a bottle he and Tony and the two porters were sharing.

  “No thanks,” Farrell said. “I want my head to be clear tomorrow.”

  “Go with the foggy feeling,” Page said.

  “Is that how you’re taking it?” Farrell asked.

  “You’ll find it’s really not that bad,” Page said, but he would not look Farrell in the eyes.

  Farrell went outside where the light of the full moon filtered down through the cloud cover. The moonglow was reflected and amplified by the snowpack, so everything—the trees, the rocks, and the mountain itself—appeared soft and inviting. The wet breeze still blew steady out of the south. He dropped into the woods smelling the spices of sap and pollen the balmy weather had goaded from the trees. Farrell pissed, then stood in the clearing for a long time smelling the forest and looking for stars. But the light from the moon had all but obliterated their sparkle. He felt terribly sad for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  He took a different route back to the hut, stepping quickly through the soft snow. A branch cracked. Farrell stopped and craned his neck, peering through the branches ahead of him. Inez squatted alone. He considered how easy it would be for her to meet with an accident alone in the darkness of the forest. After playing with it a moment, he discarded the thought; he would no longer hurt anyone. He watched Inez until she’d finished, stepping backward when she’d gone to take a roundabout route through the woods to the hut. As he walked, he thought of Maria Robles and Gabriel Cortez and the ways people chose to escape. And then, without understanding why, he said a prayer for all of those who would climb tomorrow, even Inez.

  When Farrell entered the hut, Page was sitting at a wooden table against the near wall finishing the rest of the whiskey with The Wave. Inez and the rest of the crew were already in their bags, asleep. Page whispered, “How’s the weather holding?”

  “Real warm.”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t rain,” The Wave said.

  “This country’s too high for rain,” Page slurred.

  “And too late in the season for powder,” The Wave said wistfully.

  “But wouldn’t it be something, though, to wake up to a two-foot dump of superlight?” Page asked.

  They all smiled uncertainly. For a moment Farrell believed each of them had the sensation that they were seeing each other from a great distance.

  They started out again long before dawn. Page hoped the temperature drop of the early morning hours would crystalize the snow enough to give them support to cross to the entrance to the Stettner without wading. The two porters remained behind to gather the extra equipment for their climb back down to the road. The plan called for them to pick the crew up at the bottom on the far side of the mountain at dusk.

  “This shit’s like oatmeal,” Tony grunted thirty-five minutes into the climb.

  “Like wet cement,” The Wave grumbled

  “The skier of the extrem
e deals with all conditions,” Inez said in a scornful tone.

  No one replied. They were working too hard. Soon the sun cast a rosy glow on the narrow traverses they crossed. They moved at different speeds, so that from a distance Farrell imagined they would seem like a caterpillar expanding and contracting as they made their way up the slopes. On one pitch of the climb, they became too bunched together, and Farrell yelled forward to Page, “Don’t you think you should have us spread out a bit more?”

  Page took his pole and stabbed it into the snow next to him. “Nah, it’s solid here. No problem.”

  At 11 A.M., they reached the bottom of the Stettner Couloir. They all looked up it, humbled and quiet. The right stone wall of the Stettner rose up twenty, thirty feet in places, then flared out toward the center of the shaft so that in some spots it resembled a half dome. Icicles like stalactites hung from the roof. Water dripped off them and splattered on the surface of the snow, all of it echoing, so it sounded like steady rain. Only the water didn’t carry the cleansing scent of April; this was the humid, fetid odor of August.

  “What a shot this is!” Inez crooned. “Almost like the snow cave!”

  “At last,” Farrell said sarcastically. “The primal run you’ve always looked for.”

  “And you are my caveman,” she said, giving him that heavy-lidded expression he’d come to know and fear. “Imagine how the audience in the theater, they take in air fast—whoosh!—as the skier with the criminal past, he weaves down the chute of darkness and light.”

  The rest of the crew stared at Farrell. The Wave shook his head. “Criminal?”

  “Everyone has the secret,” Inez gloated. “I have discovered his.”

  Farrell didn’t allow himself to shift his eyes from Inez. They stood that way, stone still, until Tony broke the tension by putting his hand on Farrell’s shoulder. “How far do we go until we reach the chockstone you told us about?”

  “Ask Page,” Farrell mumbled. “He’s the guide.”

  Page pointed up the center of the cavern. “The chute bears to the right at about one hundred yards and then there’s another long reach to the stone.”