Savage Mountain

by John Smelcer

  “If you say so,” said James, choking down another sporkful. “Yuck!”

  “I’m sorry your sophisticated palate disapproves,” remarked Sebastian snidely. “I’ll have the bellhop send up something more to your liking, escargot or caviar, perhaps. Or maybe we could just get a Big Mac at that McDonald’s I saw halfway down the last cliff?”

  “Hilarious,” replied James. “Don’t count on a tip. The service here sucks.”

  After dinner, the brothers played poker with a deck of cards that James had brought along in his pack.

  “Gimme two,” he said, laying two cards face down.

  Sebastian handed him two cards off the top of the deck.

  James grinned as he laid out his hand.

  “Three Jacks. Read ’em and weep, Loser,” he gloated.

  Sebastian revealed his cards.

  “A pair of fours. You win.”

  James sniffed the air and cringed.

  “No! Not again!” he groaned, closing his eyes as if they were stinging.

  A smile grew across Sebastian’s face.

  “I can’t help it,” he apologized. “It’s that damn chicken.”

  James wrinkled his nose and winced. “Gross!”

  “He who smelt it dealt it,” replied Sebastian with a dark chuckle.

  James opened the tent fly and fanned the air, as if trying to blow the odor out the door.

  “Oh, man that’s gnarly!” he said. “Sick! What crawled up your butt and died?”

  Covering his mouth and nose with his sweater, James spoke through the makeshift gas mask.

  “Seriously! You need to see a doctor! Oh! That’s just wrong!”

  As a crisp breeze refreshed their tent, the boys resumed their card game. A little later, while watching his brother intently scrutinizing his hand, Sebastian chose the cozy moment to bring up something he wanted to talk about.

  “Hey, James?”

  “Hmm?” James murmured without looking up.

  “I’m sorry about what I said the other day . . . about you being a loser.”

  James looked up from his cards.

  “I wasn’t really mad at you,” Sebastian continued. “I’m . . . I am mad at Dad, at the whole friggin’ situation. What you said really got to me. I just couldn’t take another word.”

  James pulled a card from his hand and set it face down.

  “One,” he said.

  Sebastian handed his brother a new card. James picked it up and frowned looking at it.

  “I’m sorry about what I said about Dad hating you most, about you ruining his life,” he said. “I was wrong.”

  “No . . . the more I think about it the more I think you’re right.”

  “I know it must have been hard for you to hear,” James said.

  Sebastian discarded one card and drew a new one. He smiled.

  “Full house,” he bragged, laying down his fanned-out cards. “Queens over nines. Let’s see ya beat that.”

  “I got nothing,” replied James, showing his losing hand.

  Sebastian set the deck aside. His expression turned serious.

  “I heard you crying after I walked out,” he said, followed by a brief silence. “You must be as screwed up inside as I am.”

  James stayed almost perfectly still, furrowing his brow while staring straight ahead at nothing, turning inside himself the way he often did. Blank.

  Sebastian sensed his brother’s apprehension.

  “It’s okay, ya know. It’s okay to not be okay. I’m all screwed up inside, too.”

  James didn’t respond at first. He wasn’t as talkative as his brother.

  “Did you ever talk to Mom about the way he treats us?” he finally said.

  “I tried to talk to her about it once,” said Sebastian. “She didn’t wanna hear it. She took Dad’s side, saying what a good provider he is and how he’s really a good father and how we just don’t appreciate him or respect him.”

  “I tried to talk her, too,” James replied. “I was ten. Pretty much the same thing . . . how great Dad is and crap like that.”

  “I hate that!” Sebastian blurted. “I hate whenever someone comes up and tells me how great Dad is. ‘Your father is such a great guy,’” he said in a sarcastic, nasally voice.

  Both boys laughed, but then neither said anything for a few minutes, each glimpsing the other’s eyes, acknowledging the magnitude of their conversation. Sebastian was recalling all the times someone told him what a great man their father is, like Mr. McCready at the picnic. James was remembering his conversation with Mr. King, the assistant principal, how he thought so much of their father.

  “You know Mr. King at school?” James asked.

  Sebastian nodded.

  “He told me that he admires Dad . . . even said I should be more like him.”

  Sebastian shook his head in disbelief.

  “What a dillhole,” he said. “They’re all dillholes.”

  “Our family’s pretty screwed up, huh?” said James.

  “You know, I started lifting weights to impress Dad,” said Sebastian.” I was sick and tired of being called a wussy or a wimp all the time. That’s what drove me to work out so much. I pushed myself hard.”

  “Yeah, I remember you were really into it,” said James. “You worked out at school, in the garage. You used to arm wrestle every guy at school.”

  “Yeah, I was into it for sure.”

  “Heck, I even remember how you used to drink a glass of raw eggs for breakfast like Rocky, and you’d ask Mom to cook liver for dinner to get more protein.”

  “I just really, really wanted to be strong,” replied Sebastian. “But for the record, I hated those raw eggs and liver. Thank God for powdered protein.”

  James laughed. He always thought it was disgusting when Sebastian swallowed a glass of raw eggs, the yellow yolks sliding down his throat like a slimy loogie.

  “I remember when you set that world record,” he said. “How much did you lift again?”

  “Two hundred and five kilos.”

  “How much is that in pounds?” James asked.

  “Four hundred and fifty-one pounds,” Sebastian boasted.

  “Damn, that’s a lot! My gonads hurt just thinking about it. I remember when you came home and told Dad. He didn’t even look up from the newspaper. He just said . . . “

  “. . . You think you’re better than me?” Sebastian interrupted, imitating his father’s stern tone.

  “That’s exactly the way he said it,” James said, laughing so hard he snorted. “It’s not funny, but it is in a way. I wasn’t as strong as you or nothing, but I just started fighting back every time he’d call me a candy-ass or put me down. We had some pretty big blow outs. He almost killed me a couple times, but I got in some good punches myself, even gave him a bloody nose once. Now it seems like we fight all the time . . . Seems like I’m always fighting,” said James, his voice trailing off. “I’m so tired, Sebastian . . . tired of everything.”

  Sebastian said nothing.

  James cleared his throat before continuing.

  “When I was lying there . . . buried in the snow . . . in the avalanche . . . I thought I was going to die, and I was scared at first, ya know, but there was this other part of me that wanted to die. I remember thinking it was the only way I could . . . escape. Escape this . . . escape me,” he said, his eyes turning red and filling with tears.

  Sebastian looked away from his brother’s pain.

  “Come on, let’s play some more cards,” he said, shuffling the deck and trying to sound cheerful. “How about something simple like Go Fish?”

  DAY SIX

  Sunday, July 6, 1980

  THE TENT WALLS WERE BUCKLED almost on top of them when Sebastian awoke in the morning. It was surprisingly dark inside the tent for
midsummer.

  “What the heck?” he said aloud, trying to push away the sagging orange ceiling only inches from his face. Any lower and they might have been smothered in their sleep.

  The tent walls were covered with a thin, brittle crust of hoarfrost from their breathing throughout the night. As Sebastian’s hands pressed against the ceiling, a sheet of frost fell onto his face.

  “What the heck?” he said again, louder, brushing ice from his face.

  He looked over at his brother.

  “Hey! Wake up!” he said shaking James’ sleeping lump. “Rise and shine.”

  “Wha . . . what is it?” James replied groggily, half asleep.

  “Look.”

  “Whoa,” replied James, looking at the nearly flattened tent ceiling above him.

  “Must’ve snowed last night,” said Sebastian. “Help me get the snow off the tent.”

  Still inside their sleeping bags, the boys managed to get on their knees and used their shoulders to raise the ceiling, slapping the sides of the tent at the same time. As snow slid off the outside of the tent, they could see more daylight through the orange nylon. The mantle of rime on the inside broke off the ceiling and side walls, covering everything inside the tent like a delicate, crystalline dust.

  “We better take a look outside,” said Sebastian, lacing up his bunny boots. “Damn, it’s cold this morning.”

  A heavy snowfall poured out of the leaden sky. The boys could barely see five feet in front of them when they scrambled out of the tent. The snow was almost waist-deep, and the sideways wind piled drifts against the cliff face. The temperature had fallen to maybe 20 degrees, not cold on a winter day, but unexpected in July. Of course, the boys were more than two miles into the atmosphere. The wind chill factor drove the apparent temperature down to 10 or 15 degrees below zero.

  The tent looked as if it stood in a hole.

  They worked carefully on the narrow ledge to clear snow from around the tent, and then crawled back inside to make breakfast—oatmeal again with powdered milk and a handful of raisins and nuts, washed down with cups of instant coffee. With the weight of the snow removed, the tent shook violently in the wind.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” James asked, finishing the last sip of coffee in his stainless steel mug.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Sebastian. “I don’t think we should risk it in this blizzard. We could hardly see the ground in front of us. We might walk right off a ledge. Imagine what it would be like trying to cross the glacier right now?”

  James looked as if he were imagining the crevasses with their gaping mouths obscured in the flurry.

  “That could be rough,” he said.

  “I think our best option is to hunker down here and wait out the storm . . . hope it blows itself out, or the wind shifts and pushes it elsewhere.”

  James agreed.

  For the rest of the day they lay inside their sleeping bags, trying to stay warm, getting up only to go outside and take care of nature’s business as quickly as possible. The growling wind was so cold that their eyes would water and freeze shut when they blinked. Sebastian melted snow for hot tea or chicken or beef bouillon to warm their insides and keep them hydrated. Through gloved hands, Sebastian read Hamlet while James played his harmonica.

  Sebastian recognized that his brother was playing “Me and Bobby McGee,” one of his favorite songs with its message of freedom.

  James stopped playing and knocked the harmonica against his open palm, draining the saliva before it froze solid.

  “Why does she take a harpoon out of her bandana?” asked James.

  “What?” asked Sebastian, looking up from his book.

  “Janis . . . in her song . . . she says she took her harpoon out from her dirty, red bandana. I mean, what’s . . . ?”

  “It’s another word for a harmonica, moron. Besides, Kris Kristofferson wrote the song, not Janis Joplin.”

  “Oh.”

  James chewed on the thought while Sebastian—hoping that was an end to the matter—returned peacefully to the slings and arrows of Hamlet’s outrageous fortune, when James interrupted again.

  “Why do they call it a harpoon?”

  “How the hell should I know? Do I look like an encyclopedia?” Sebastian grumbled.

  “No, but you look like the kind of nerd who reads encyclopedias. Harpoon . . . Har-POON. HAR-poon. That’s stupid,” James muttered.

  Sebastian returned to reading. James played his harmonica again, but he stopped a few minutes later.

  “Dad screwed us up royally, huh?” he said sadly. “I mean the way he treats us . . . the way he’s always treated us.”

  Sebastian set his book aside. His expression turned thoughtful as he chose the right words.

  “Yeah . . . but we aren’t bad. You know that, right, despite all the mean crap he says about us. There was nothing we could have done to stop it. We were kids. Just kids.”

  “I know. I do. I get it,” replied James. “But I don’t think I can forget about it.”

  “I didn’t say you have to forget about it. Who could? I just mean we need to . . . to deal with it.”

  It suddenly dawned on Sebastian why he it had been so important to bring Hamlet to read on this trip. Hamlet didn’t ask for his life to be turned upside down the way it was. He was also victim of a terrible situation in which he had either to act to change it or roll over and accept it. Like Hamlet, Sebastian and James had been alone with their anguish, with no one to talk to and unsure of what to do.

  “But I’m really messed up,” said James, his voice aggravated. “I just don’t care about anything. I hate everything and everyone.”

  Sebastian thought about James’s tough-guy persona and his self-destructive behavior, like drinking all the time and smoking pot. He thought about his rotten attitude at school.

  “You can’t escape from your feelings,” he said. “Trust me, I know. You have all these emotions bottled up . . . humiliation . . . helplessness . . . frustration, all locked up inside . . . but also rage. You’re mad at the whole damn world.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel!” James said.

  “I’m mad, too, you know. I even hate God.” Sebastian’s anger grew suddenly hot.

  James was taken aback by his brother’s scornful words.

  “Why didn’t he give us a father who didn’t screw up his kids and make them feel like crap all the time? Why couldn’t I have had a father who loves me?” Sebastian continued, his eyes welling up.

  “I don’t know,” James replied.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” Sebastian cried. “I try to be good. I work hard at school. I clean my room. I try to be a good person . . . a good son. I do everything everyone asks of me. But it’s never good enough for him,” he sobbed, wiping his eyes.

  James put a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “I know you do,” he said. “But I think that’s part of your problem. You always want everyone to like you. You’re always trying to impress everyone. I know it’s because Dad never takes notice of anything you do, ’cause of the way he treats you, but you can’t expect everyone to like you, Sebastian. It doesn’t work that way. Stop trying to impress people. Just do things for yourself . . . because you want to . . . because it’s what’s right for you. Stop caring what other people think all the time and you’ll be happier.”

  “Yeah. You’re probably right,” said Sebastian. “But what about you! You act like you’ve got something to prove, too. You think wearing a black leather jacket and carrying a switchblade makes you tough, like nothing can hurt you or your feelings. But all the crap you pull is only hurting yourself.”

  “What do you mean?” asked James, suddenly defensive.

  “Getting into fights all the time at school. Getting bad grades. Smoking pot and drinking. It doesn’t make what happened go
away. You’re at war with yourself. I can’t blame you. Keep it up and you’ll never graduate high school or go to college or get a decent job. You’ll probably end up in jail. You’ll be a loser, just like Dad says you are. You’re letting him win.”

  “You don’t think I think about that?” James snapped. “I think about that every single day. It’s not just anger that I feel but . . . but . . . rage. I have so much hate inside me.”

  “No duh!” Sebastian replied. “I think that’s part of the reason we fight each other so much—because we feel powerless to stop Dad or to fight back, so we strike out against each other instead. But you also fight the whole damned world. Remember last semester when you picked a fight with a gang at school? They kicked your ass.”

  James nodded, recalling the beating he took behind the gymnasium.

  “It’s like you have a death wish, or something.”

  “Like I haven’t heard that before,” James said, remembering what Mr. King had said.

  “It’s not funny. I mean it. Don’t let the past destroy your future.”

  “That’s really corny,” said James. “You sound like a fortune cookie. Dad’s right. You are a girl. I think I’m gonna puke.”

  They laughed.

  James suddenly got a strange look on his face.

  “Oh, damn!” he said, unzipping his sleeping bag and sitting upright.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I gotta take a leak.”

  The never-ending day slid by as slowly as a glacier. There’s not much to do during a blizzard inside a tiny tent strapped to a ledge 12,000 feet above sea level. To make matters worse, the storm wasn’t letting up as Sebastian had hoped. It raged on, the ferocious winds driving the temperature down to -20 and accelerating the ice crystals in spindrift to velocities fast enough to blast paint off a car. To stay warm, Sebastian and James huddled inside their sleeping bags wearing every bit of clothing they had brought along, regardless of how dirty and smelly. Several times the tent strings broke or the grommets ripped loose from the lashing nylon tent, and one of the boys had to go outside to repair the damage to their lifesaving shelter with bare hands.