The Ascent

  still full of her own history and future. She had probably eaten a breakfast yesterday

  much like they had last night, had probably walked on the same river ice and spooked

  the same herd of starving deer and crossed this same glacier. And now they were

  condemning her to infinite darkness.

  'Look,' said the leader. The icy tails of his gray moustache waggled. 'Sometimes this

  is how it goes. You do a triage. You figure the odds. You save the ones you can save.

  And you leave the ones you can't. Now it's going to be a long carry out of here. We're

  leaving. I want you to go saddle up. I'll go tell that girl the news.'

  'No,' said Abe. 'I'll tell her.' He had the right to the last word. He had touched this

  blue rope. He had given this woman light and whatever terrible sights that attended.

  The leader made a few thoughtful stabs at the hard snow with his ice axe, then he

  walked off without saying more. The rescuers at the litter had turned their backs to

  Abe and the hole.

  Abe checked his watch, then shook it. Only twenty-five minutes had elapsed since

  their arrival. Surely hours had passed. He couldn't fathom what was unfolding all

  around him. They hoisted the litter like a coffin, three men to a side, one standing

  back and feeding out a safety rope in case they slipped.

  The wind sucked at Abe's face, then slapped him. The first snowflakes rattled

  against the shell of his new white windjacket. The storm was cracking wide open.

  Their little motions and hopes could do nothing to hold the sky together any longer.

  The rescue was over, at least for the woman inside this mountain. Abe lay down by

  the hole to tell her so.

  'Hello?' Abe called down.

  There was no reply. Abe could feel the blackness down there surrounding that

  solitary light.

  'We have to carry Daniel down,' he called into the hole. 'We're shorthanded, so all of

  us have to go. But we'll come back.' He added, 'I promise.' Immediately Abe wished

  the words away. They had already broken one promise. They had come to save the

  survivors or carry bodies out, and they were only doing half the job. More promises

  could only mean more betrayal to this trapped woman.

  There was still no answer, and Abe started to push away from the crevasse. Then

  Diana spoke.

  'You're not leaving me?'

  Abe shook his head no, but the word wouldn't come.

  'You promised,' she screamed. Then, quickly, as if chiding herself, she said, 'no,' and

  again, more firmly, 'no.'

  'They're shorthanded...' Abe started again.

  'It was my fault,' she said. Her words came to Abe low and awkward with the

  cadence of a last testament. In her weariness or delirium, Abe heard something far

  worse than acceptance. It was a tone of surrender similar to what her rescuers were

  using. 'Tell Daniel that. Can you hear me, Abe?'

  Abe lowered his head deeper into the hole. 'Yes.'

  Now her voice gained strength. 'It was me that fell and pulled us down. It was me.

  Tell him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what happened to him. I'm sorry for what happened

  to me. I know Daniel and he'll take this on. Tell him not to.'

  Abe wanted to protest that the fall had been bad luck and was not a matter for

  contrition. But maybe that was how Diana had decided to make her peace with it.

  'Okay,' Abe said. 'I'll tell him that.'

  'Now I want you to tell me something, Abe.'

  'Yes.'

  'How old are you?'

  'Eighteen.' For some reason, Abe felt compelled to add the full truth of it. 'Almost.'

  She took a long minute. 'I thought something like that,' she said. And now Abe saw

  how they'd used him with this woman. They'd used him to buffer the horror to

  interrogate her. And they'd used him for this death sentence.

  'Well, Abe,' she started, then fell silent. After a moment, she finished. 'There's no

  blame on you either. Remember that.'

  Abe's throat clenched at that. She was forgiving him, too. He searched for something

  to say. At last he thought to ask her age.

  'Twenty,'she said.'Almost.'

  'You know, I can wait some more,' Abe offered. 'I don't mind.' Until he spoke it out

  loud, the thought hadn't occurred to him. He could spend an hour here, then race

  down to catch the others who would be moving slow with the bulky litter. And if he

  could spend an hour, why not two?

  Diana didn't give him a chance. 'Is that wind bringing a storm?' she asked.

  'The storm's here,' Abe said.

  'Then get out of here.' There was courage in her voice, but hysteria, too. Then she

  screamed his name. She invoked it. 'Abe,' she cried.

  She needed him to stay. At least until they freed her, this woman wanted Abe with

  her whole heart. That was more than he'd ever known with a woman.

  'I'm here,' he replied. 'I'm not leaving.'

  By staying Abe would make himself hostage to his own promise. By staying he

  would force the rescue team to return and acknowledge the life in this pit of ice. Elated

  by his decision, Abe clambered to his feet. He caught up with the leader as the litter

  team trudged downslope.

  'I'm staying with her,' Abe announced.

  The leader wasted no words. His broad face darkened. He took one step closer and

  shoved Abe hard in the chest, knocking him to the snow. 'You damn cowboy,' he said.

  'I don't take threats.'

  Abe wasn't hurt by the blow, only surprised.

  'It's no threat,' Abe said. But it was, clearly. And now he saw that he threatened

  their tranquility. They had already reconciled themselves to their forsaking the

  woman. The rescuers were good and decent men, that went without saying. But by

  staying, Abe seemed to expose them as something less or different or just more

  complicated.

  'Get your pack. Or leave it, I don't care. But get your ass down this mountain. I don't

  want you on this mountain. I don't want you on this team,' the leader yelled over the

  wind. 'You don't know anything.'

  Without that last insult, Abe might have obeyed.

  One of the rescuers, an older man with bad knees, came gimping up to see what the

  disturbance was about. 'The cherry think he's staying,' the leader said to the older

  man. 'He thinks he's going to save the day.'

  Now Abe was angry. 'You didn't leave her food or water. You didn't even talk to her.'

  'That's because she's already dead.'

  'But she's not.'

  The older man took a minute to study Abe's earnest face. There was no friendliness

  in his look, but no hostility either. He was measuring Abe the way he would a

  mountainside or an approaching storm or any other obstacle. 'Leave that poor girl

  alone,' he counseled Abe. 'There's not a thing we can do now except let her go. Have

  some mercy.'

  Abe heard the logic there, but he had decided. 'No, sir,' he said.

  'Listen to me. All you'll do is torment her. With food and water, she could drag on for

  days. Don't do that to her.'

  'That's not the point,' Abe said. 'If it was me...'

  'If it was you, you'd pray to God I had a gun to finish you quick.'

  Abe shrugged. He was afraid to argue because he knew they were probably right.

  But he was staying.

  'I admire your chivalry,' the older man said, and Abe blushed because the man was

&nbs
p; talking about naïveté'. 'Just the same, you'll put everybody at risk all over again, and

  all to rescue you. Not her. She's gone. Now come on with us.'

  'No sir.'

  'Damn it,' the leader blew. 'You see?'

  'I don't want to leave her either,' the older man said. 'If you ask me, it ought to be

  that one over there' – he jerked a thumb at the litter – 'who's stuck in the hole. As far

  as I'm concerned, he as good as killed that girl. All the same, it's her who stays and

  him that gets saved.'

  'There's no right or wrong in the mountains,' the leader added. 'There's just

  whatever happens.'

  'What's your name?' the older man asked.

  'Abe Burns.'

  'Well, Abe, if we were down in the World, I'd have you tied up. But we don't have the

  manpower to carry you out. So that's no good. All we can do is rely on you to do what's

  right.'

  'Yes sir,' Abe said. 'I'm trying.'

  'Quit your jacking off,' the leader shouted. 'We got an avalanche overhead and a

  storm and a hurt man. And no time for you to get a hard-on for a dead woman.'

  Abe didn't hesitate. He knocked the leader backward onto his pack and would have

  kicked him, too, except he had on crampons and the teeth would have cut the man.

  'Jesus,' the older man hissed at the leader, 'Jesus.' Then he turned to Abe. 'You

  know, you can't save her.'

  'I don't care,' Abe admitted.

  'Then why?'

  Abe didn't answer. He couldn't.

  The older man looked around at the peaks. 'Have it your way,' he said. 'I just wish

  you wouldn't do this to yourself.'

  'It's your funeral,' the leader cursed Abe, struggling to his feet. He pointed at the

  hole. 'She's already had hers.'

  The older man shouted the litter crew to a halt two hundred yards down the glacier

  and Abe trailed him down. The team set down the wounded man, who was delirious

  with the morphine and warmth. The rescuers all went through their packs, donating

  food and an extra sleeping bag and a bivouac tent and a little kerosene stove for

  melting water. They did it quickly, with little respect for Abe but no discourtesy. They

  thought him a fool, that was plain, but no one said it out loud. They simply left him

  their surplus. To a man, the rescuers were sullen. Clearly they did not relish carrying

  Daniel down at the expense of the woman in the crevasse. But the decision had been

  made. One went so far as to wish Abe well. Then they were gone.

  Abe trudged back up the slope with the supplies. In all, their charity weighed about

  twenty pounds, and suddenly that seemed very little against the dark mass of storm

  and twilight.

  Abe lay the things beside the crevasse and assembled the bivouac tent as best he

  could before the wind blew everything away or the snow buried it or he got too cold.

  He set the tent door inches from the mouth of the crevasse, which made for an

  awkward entrance. But it would facilitate communication, and that was the whole

  point. Once inside the tiny tent and burrowed into the sleeping bag, Abe felt like he

  was the one trapped. Only then did he call down into the hole and tell Diana what he'd

  done.

  The woman didn't answer. Not a whisper issued up from the crevasse.

  'Diana?' he called. Abe had prepared himself for resistance, which was why he'd

  waited to set camp before announcing his presence. Her silence confused him.

  'Well, I'm here,' Abe said.

  Hours passed. The storm swallowed them alive. What light remained was scooped

  away by the wind.

  Abe fell asleep and began dreaming he'd fallen into the crevasse. He couldn't move

  his arms or legs and it was hard to breathe except in shallow birdlike bursts. He woke

  from the dream to find himself smothering in complete darkness. The tent had

  collapsed beneath a heavy mantle of snow and his limbs were lodged tight inside the

  cocoon of the sleeping bag.

  It took all Abe's strength to jackknife his body up and down and punch the tent and

  himself free of the snow. Frenzied with claustrophobia, he managed to claw open the

  door. There he lay with his bare head extending into the blizzard, gulping huge,

  searing lungfuls of air and snowflakes, overjoyed to find himself free of the dream

  even if not the mountain.

  It was only then that he heard singing. The song was eerie and distant and sounded

  like nothing human, and Abe guessed the wind was playing through the high towers.

  That or some animal had been driven up from the forest. Or spirits were on the loose.

  Abe listened harder. Between the howl of wind and the hiss of corn snow guttering

  off his tent wall, he found a rhythm and a tune and a sunniness to it. It was a Beach

  Boys song.

  Even as he listened, Abe felt the storm layering him with snow all over again. He

  shook the tent hard but carefully, for after all his shaking around there was no telling

  where the crevasse lay now. Rooting through the folds of the tent, Abe found a

  flashlight and shined it outside. He was horrified and at the same time enchanted by

  how the falling snow actually devoured his light. The beam reached a few feet beyond

  his little nylon cave, then vanished.

  It took him several minutes to locate the crevasse. The hole had closed to a small

  circle, as if stealing its catch away from the world for good. Still lying inside his

  sleeping bag and tent, Abe edged closer. The singing became more distinct, but that

  only made it more alien because Diana wasn't singing real words, only jibberish.

  Now Abe found the ice axe they had left him. In thrashing around, he'd landed on

  top of the axe. The pick had slashed his sleeping bag and down feathers had spilled

  everywhere. There was blood on the metal head, and for a bad moment Abe thought

  he'd cut himself and was too cold to feel the wound. Then he realized this was Daniel's

  axe and Daniel's blood.

  Reaching his arm outside, Abe poked at the edges of the hole to widen it. He began

  chopping, methodically cutting away at the snow even though the debris poured down

  the crevasse, adding to Diana's misery. 'I'm sorry,' he shouted to her, 'I'm sorry.' It

  was for himself that Abe cut at the snow. He needed to keep open this doorway to the

  underworld. He was afraid to lose contact, quite certain that without Diana's company,

  he would never make it through this ordeal.

  When Abe had finally cut down to the blue rope and gained proof of his companion,

  he rested. He slept. When his eyes opened again, it was day, but it might as well have

  been night still. The storm was raging more fiercely than before. Abe couldn't see

  anything outside the tent and he couldn't see anything inside it, either, without the

  flashlight.

  Abe turned to rebuilding his tent. Section by section, he propped the walls up with

  the broken poles and taught himself to rustle the fabric every few minutes to shed the

  snow. And all the while, he listened to Diana's mindless singing.

  'You're going to make it,' Abe shouted down the crevasse. He found some cheese and

  a chunk of wet bread and a plastic bottle of mostly frozen water. 'You want some

  food?' he yelled.

  Diana made no answer. She just sang on and on.

  While Abe ate and drank, he listened. It was essentially the same tune over and
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br />   over. The words weren't real words. They were sounds to mark a path. Locked in

  place, Diana was circling around and around. Soon the vortex would suck her into its

  deepest part. Abe knew he was listening to the sound of death.

  Finally Abe joined in the singing. He'd heard this song many times before, but he

  couldn't remember what the words were either. With the woman's same abandon,

  Abe threw his voice out into the void all around them.

  After a while Diana seemed to notice the extra voice. Somewhere in her benighted

  skull, Abe's singing freed Diana to depart from the song and actually talk. She began to

  emit bursts of story. Abe labored to hear what she had to say. It was a freewheeling

  autobiography, woven together from memories and fictions and pleas for her mother's

  comfort. It made Abe weep sometimes, and other times just bored him.

  The stormy day passed. Night moved in again.

  As the darkness stretched out and Abe drifted into delirious catnaps, it was hard to

  tell what was real anymore. He grew colder and a little crazy himself, and it was hard

  to know what was even spoken. Much of what Abe heard he may have imagined.

  Diana may or may not have been a college student with a bad job and a drafty

  trailer-home and allegiance to some crazy woman. She seemed to have three brothers

  named John and Wes and Blake, which Abe began to suspect because those were his

  own uncles' names. Her talk about mountains was probably real, because she

  described spring wildflowers Abe had never heard of. She wanted to climb Everest

  someday, though that might as easily have been Abe's overlay. Abe gave up trying to

  keep the woman – or himself – lucid with questions or dialogue.

  Abe finally concluded that the name of her dogged savior was completely lost to her,

  for she'd quit saying his name altogether. He accepted that she had ceased to

  understand he was lying on the surface above or even that she was caged inside the

  mountain. Abe's presence had not loaned one ounce of dignity to her long and ugly

  dying, and he resigned himself to anonymity. It was then, during a lull in the gale, that

  she cried out.

  'I love you,' she yelled.

  Abe knew she meant someone else, yet all he could think to reply was the same. 'I

  love you,' he shouted into the crevasse, and so she wouldn't think it was just her own