by Jeff Long
His face blazed with exertion and sunburn. He hadn’t shaved for days, nor slept probably.
“She’s alive,” he gasped to them.
They didn’t have to ask who. His lover, he meant.
Suddenly Lewis was full of good fellowship. He thumped the younger man on the back. “Ah, that’s great, man, great. Here, drink.”
Augustine had the lungs of a horse. With each breath, his big rib cage pushed at Hugh on one side and Lewis on the other. The three of them sat on the portaledge, packed together. Far below, Augustine’s partner was jugging the long line.
Hugh was confused. “You got her?” he said.
Augustine shook his head no. He swallowed another mouthful of water. “Couldn’t get in under the roof. I tried everything. But the wall’s overhanging, and then there’s the Eye. It’s like a crater under a roof. I was hanging forty feet out from her.”
“What about a helicopter?”
“Same deal, only the rotors would keep you that much farther out from the wall. A waste of time.”
“She couldn’t catch your throw line?”
“She’s injured.” He was terse. Stoic. Dealing with it. He bent forward over the ledge. “You’re almost here,” he shouted down to his partner.
“How bad is she?” Hugh asked.
“She’ll be all right once I get to her.” Nothing about broken bones or wounds. Just a statement of faith.
Augustine wouldn’t meet his eyes. He kept peering up toward the ledges and across to where, somewhere among the shadows and stains, Trojan Women rose. Cyclops Eye remained invisible.
“And the other woman?” said Lewis.
“Dead.”
“That’s tough,” said Hugh.
“She sure looked dead,” Lewis said.
Augustine seized on that. “You mean you’ve seen her?”
“From the meadow,” said Lewis. “The morning we started up, they had a big spotlight. She was hanging at the end of a rope.”
Augustine shook his mane of hair. “No, no. You got it backward. Andie’s the one on the rope.”
Andie, thought Hugh. That was the name of the one who belonged to Augustine. “She’s the one we saw?”
“That’s what I said.”
Hugh and Lewis looked at each other. Judging by the way she was hanging, Andie had seemed as dead as it got. And if she wasn’t dead three days ago, she surely was by now. Unless by some miracle…
“She looked right at me,” Augustine said. “She smiled. I told her the plan. She knows I’m coming for her.”
“And what about the other one?”
“Cuba? She’s still tied in at their camp, way in the back of the Eye, all tangled in ropes. She must have taken the full shock of the fall. I called to her, but didn’t get a word or a motion. Like I said, dead.” He didn’t seem especially torn up about that.
“Did they ever find that girl’s body in the woods?” Hugh asked.
“Cass? Still missing.”
Cass, Cuba, and Andie. Hugh liked their names. He was glad they hadn’t been Sally, Jane, or Britney, not for a wall called Trojan Women. “And the caveman?”
“Joshua’s gone to ground.”
“He attacked us,” Lewis said. “We were sleeping at the base. He almost gutted Hugh with a stone shiv. The guy’s armed and dangerous. Do you have a radio? You should report that.”
“They’ll find him,” Augustine said. The assault didn’t seem to surprise or concern him. They were in a different universe up here, with potential violence all around them.
“He’s an evil bastard,” said Lewis. “I’ve never seen pure evil.”
“You call that evil?” Hugh scoffed.
“He’s a necrophiliac, a homicidal, Satanic son of a bitch. He tried to kill you.”
“He’s out of his tree, that’s all,” Hugh said. “I’ve been thinking about him. You know what’s scariest? We could be him.”
“You better rehydrate, Hugh. Your brain’s shrinking.”
“Joshua’s what happens when the serpent poisons you.”
“The serpent being the devil,” said Lewis. “Unless I misread my Genesis.”
“The serpent being the serpent. Nature. The wilderness.” Hugh slapped the stone. “This.”
Augustine spoke. He put a stop to them. “They’re bringing in dogs. They’ll get him.”
After a minute, Hugh said, “I just want them to find the girl.”
Augustine looked at him. “Did Joshua do that to your face?”
Hugh dabbed at his nostrils. The blood still hadn’t quit. Next would come black eyes. He pointed at Lewis. “He’s still learning how to climb.”
Lewis raised his chin proudly. “Somebody’s got to keep you on your toes. You let your guard down. You deserved it.”
The big-wall repartee seemed ready to carry them off again. Augustine leaned forward. “What’s taking that kid?”
Hugh glanced down at the approaching figure. “What’s your plan?” he asked.
“Going down to her didn’t work, so we’re going up. I hired a gun.” A rope gun, Hugh knew. “He’s a wall rat, really young, but really fast.”
“Why use Anasazi, though? North America Wall travels right under Cyclops Eye. Or you could have followed them up Trojan Women.”
“Except nobody knows where exactly their route goes, only where it ended. And this is our quickest access. Anasazi’s a milk run.” Augustine paused. “No offense.”
Hugh shrugged. Every route had a life cycle. Repeated climbing almost always moderated the dangers. Each time climbers hammered a piton in and out, the crack eroded. The obstacles got rehearsed. Bolts got placed. New hardware, new shoes, new techniques, all these things tamed once fierce challenges. Still, it stung. Anasazi, a milk run?
Augustine went on. “Once we hit the Archipelago, we’ll pendulum across to Trojan Women, then climb to Cyclops Eye. With a little gusto, we’ll reach Andie by dark. I’ve got a summit team waiting to lower a litter. All I have to do is radio them. We’ll catch the throw line, and they’ll haul us up, and that’s that.”
Hugh looked across the valley at Middle Cathedral Rock. The sun line was moving up the buttress. He couldn’t believe how fast the day was going by. Lewis’s pills, and then his fall, had eaten it up. There were probably four more hours before sunset, and then another hour of alpenglow after that. It wasn’t like on the sea where the light just suddenly switched off.
But even squeezing every minute of light out of the day, even pushing his partner, Augustine was going to be lucky just to tag Trojan Women. First they had to reach the ledges, and the pendulums would take time.
Augustine looked down, and said, “About time.”
The kid arrived. “Joe,” Augustine introduced him.
Joe was thin, almost anorexic. No more than seventeen, he seemed full of self-certainty. He had a pianist’s long, thin fingers. His eyes burned a little too bright. Thirty years ago, Hugh might have been him.
“Have some water,” Hugh said.
Joe took only a little.
“The whole thing,” Hugh told him.
The boy looked at Augustine, who nodded okay. He drank deeply. Then Augustine said, “Are you ready?”
Joe handed back the water. He spent maybe three seconds judging the rock, then took off like a shot, hooking the flakes as if they were rungs on a ladder.
For the next few minutes, while Augustine belayed his young partner, Lewis hauled up their bag. It weighed hardly anything. He towed it in, hand over hand. “You guys travel light,” he said.
“A little water, some sleeping bags, a med pack,” Augustine said. He was paying out rope in big lobs, practically throwing it up the wall. The boy scampered like a spider. He grew smaller on Fritos of Fear.
“We brought extra water,” Hugh said. “Take a couple gallons. And food. Whatever you need.”
“We’re all set,” Augustine said to Hugh. “Speed is everything. She’s waiting.”
“Have you thought about a
night on the ledges?” asked Lewis. “Rest up. Get a fresh start. You know, ‘Preserve Thyself.’ ” It was the number one rule in rescue work. He was letting Augustine know that he, too, had served among the saviors. For years, he’d been a member of Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue. He saw it as an obligation. One day that could be me out there.
“We’re under control,” Augustine said.
“That’s not what I meant. I’d have the pedal to the metal, too. I’m just saying, you’ve been hitting it hard. And the ledges are large.”
“We’ve got it covered,” Augustine snapped.
Lewis shut up.
Augustine jutted his chin at the heights, sorry for his tone. “We were going to get married,” he said. “You know that little stone chapel?”
“I’ve seen it,” said Hugh.
“Yeah,” said Augustine. “That was two years ago. We kind of postponed things.” He tossed another hank of rope up the wall. The kid was streaking the flakes.
Hugh didn’t pry. This was personal. Something had gone wrong. Now Augustine was trying to make it right.
Overhead, Joe reached the crack, jabbed in a piece of protection, a single piece, and stormed higher. The entire crack—a two-hour climb when Hugh had done it years ago—took the kid eight minutes flat.
Augustine got ready to go.
“How can we help?” Hugh asked him.
“You’ve done plenty. You saved us an hour at least by lowering your rope. You gave us water. How about I trail a rope for you guys?”
Lewis pretended to consider the offer. But Hugh could see his relief. This way they could bypass Fritos in one fell swoop. Within a half hour, they could be on the ledges.
“Sold,” said Hugh.
Joe’s tiny voice peeped. He’d set an anchor. It was Augustine’s turn. Augustine lifted his jumars, one in each hand like cardio-shock paddles, and fastened on to the rope.
“Bring her back,” said Lewis, and he meant it. He clapped Augustine on the back. Hugh looked on. In saving his lost love, Augustine was saving all their lost loves, or so Lewis would have it. But to accept that, you had to accept the converse, that to lose one love was to lose all loves.
Augustine vanished up the rope at a near vertical run.
THIRTEEN
Hugh climbed the rope after Lewis. Until the final few feet, there was no hint of a lost world waiting. Then abruptly he was there.
The Archipelago—or Ark—truly was a chain of islands in the sky. The ledges stair-stepped left and right in bunches, all interconnected, most of them flat or even slightly cupped on the outer rim, like rails along a bunk bed. One was wide enough to hold two people side by side. Hugh had heard that as many as eleven climbers at a time had slept here.
Even more magical was the Ark’s sand. The larger ledges held layers of soft, powdery white sand, a vestige of the Ice Ages when the walls were being carved. It seemed impossible the sand could have survived eons of wind and weather, but here it lay.
Lewis was rooting through the pigs for their night supplies. Clorox jugs stood in a neat row, and the stuff sacks with their sleeping bags were clipped to an anchor.
Augustine and the boy had already departed. Hugh saw them swinging in wild pendulums across the blank stone, arcing down and over to Trojan Women like ape men on vines. They disappeared around an immense column without a look back. Hugh raised one hand in a good-bye.
“Hey, amigo.” Lewis gave him a little can of peaches. “Eat up. Be glad we’re not them. They’ve got a night of misery ahead, and nothing but death at the end of it. We’re in the lap of God here. Two nights of five-star beachfront. It’s all downhill from here.” Meaning uphill. Up the wall.
There was no more talk about a bad knee. Lewis was back with the program. Augustine’s heroic purpose had gotten his blood moving again. It had been a crappy day. He’d slept late, fallen from his hooks, and lost his nerve. The ledges—and Augustine’s example—had given them a second life.
They had covered just two hundred feet today, a scant two pitches that they hadn’t even climbed themselves. But they were on schedule. Tomorrow got easier, with abundant cracks and stances at most of the anchors. They could take their time fixing ropes up the next six hundred feet, which would put them almost two-thirds of the way to the summit. And as a bonus they’d get to sleep on the Ark tomorrow night, too.
Hugh took off his shoes and socks and sank his toes into the sand. It held the day’s heat, and he let the softness mend him from the feet up. He padded around in the fading daylight like Robinson Crusoe.
There were all sorts of artifacts from other climbers, mostly ancient, frayed bits of webbing and tape, stuff that would eventually crumble to dust. The sand would outlast it all. He expected the same kind of sewage and garbage they’d found lower. But to his relief, the generations had largely respected the Ark. There was a clean granite smell.
Across the valley, the primal landmarks—Cathedral Spires and Sentinel Rock and unseen giants up valley, around El Cap’s eastern buttress—flushed orange and red with the last of the light. There are two stages to alpenglow, a first surge that waxes and wanes, fooling amateur photographers into stowing away their cameras, and then a sudden short-lived second rush of colors.
Hugh went on exploring. The Ark was like a castle with all its levels and hidden niches. Near the end of one shelf, out where it was too narrow to sleep, he shifted some rocks. The sand lay deep here. Careful not to spill any into the abyss, he began scooping a hole.
Lewis came over. “You don’t think it’s still here, do you?”
“I doubt it. I just thought I’d see.”
Hugh sifted deeper. After another few minutes, he gave up. “I guess not,” he said.
“Wasn’t it a little farther out?”
Hugh edged out. This time his fingers struck a metal cylinder just inches below the surface. He lifted an old thermos from the sand. “Can you believe it?” he said.
The corrugated stainless steel was coppery from weathering, and rust had eaten through the base. Cradling it in one arm, he backed on his knees to the larger ledge, and they sat with it between their crossed legs.
“Did you ever in a million years think we’d be coming back to it?”
“Pretty amazing.”
“Are you going to open it or not?”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Hugh said. He twisted the plastic cap off. Lewis turned on his headlamp.
“Look at that, would you?”
The inner lining had withstood the elements. Their time capsule was intact. Hugh carefully removed the mementoes and spread them on the sand.
There was his old Hohner’s harmonica with the reeds split from dryness, and a Marine Corps belt buckle that had belonged to Lewis’s father, and a sheaf of poems, and toys from the two boxes of Cracker Jacks they’d brought along, a plastic magnifying glass, and a dime-sized compass. The real prize came last, snapshots, curled from their decades inside the thermos.
Lewis placed his headlamp on a rock. They were quiet for a few minutes, each examining his own picture. Hugh held the snapshot delicately, with grazed, cuticle-split fingers and his knuckles and hands taped with mummy wraps.
The Kodak colors were as fresh as the day they’d buried the thermos. Annie hadn’t aged a day. Strawberry blond curls burst loose from the blue bandanna on her head, cascading down her shoulders. He could almost taste those thick, red lips. He remembered. You didn’t just kiss Annie. She had been like a feast.
Lewis cleared his throat. “Wait till she sees this,” he said, staring at the other picture.
Hugh didn’t tell him that Rachel would not be waiting to see anything. By now, she had surely left the Valley. She was probably boxing up Lewis’s things in a house that would not open to his key. Hugh found it hard to believe she hadn’t broken the news to him. Then again, Lewis had a tremendous capacity for deafness.
Hugh traded him pictures. Rachel was a Venus rising out of the sea, her blouse plastered tight as skin, her arms hi
gh, as if she were coiling up into the world of man. “Where did they go?” Lewis said. His eyes were wet. He returned Annie to Hugh. “This was all for them, remember?” He wanted Hugh to weep, too.
But Hugh was past that. You walked away from the lost ones, or risked joining them. “What about before we met them?” he said. “We were climbers first. We had the mountains in our heads and hearts before they ever came along.”
“Yeah, but then they did come along. It didn’t make sense before them. We were up fighting the good fight, and we couldn’t figure out the big why. We were wandering, and they saved us.”
“Lewis, we buried them in a thermos. Nothing stays the same.”
Lewis held his picture by the light. “What did they see in us?” he said.
“What did we see in them?” Desire, it was all about desire. And the end of desire.
Lewis wasn’t hearing him. “We gave them everything.”
“That’s over,” Hugh said.
Lewis mistook Hugh’s resignation for melancholy. He laid down the Rachel photo and gave Hugh’s thigh a bracing squeeze. Poor, good, simple Lewis.
“What do we do with all this stuff?” Lewis asked. He lifted a page of his old poems, and frowned at it as if aliens had been revising it.
“We’ve unearthed ourselves now,” Hugh said.
“I guess we can take whatever we want.”
“I think I’ll leave my half of it.” In truth, most of it didn’t matter to him anymore. He tried the harmonica, but it sounded like Lewis’s fifths, untrained and just wrong.
He slid the harmonica and toys back into the thermos. Lewis donated his Marine Corps belt buckle, and carefully selected his best poem for the ages. The rest, along with his photo, he kept. Hugh almost kept Annie, then slipped her back into the glass liner, out of sight, out of mind.
They made their camp, going around from ledge to ledge and trying out the best beds of sand. Lewis threw open his sleeping bag in the center of the largest island, well away from the precipices. Hugh chose a ledge with a grand view.
The wall plummeted just inches from where he would lay his head. A lip of stone contained the sand, and someone had thoughtfully drilled a bolt here for night lodgers like himself to clip into.