I climbed out of my bag, grabbed the bow, nocked an arrow, and crouched between Ashley and the door. Her hand rested on the back of my neck. My smoke blew white misting clouds that filtered up. The cold had returned. Goose bumps crawled up and down my skin. Less than five feet away, the thing circled around behind us, sniffing, grunting, and then I heard the knock of something hard on something else.
Antlers.
I heard antlers rubbing against the tree limbs. I took a deep breath and relaxed. Ashley picked up on it and took her hand off my neck. The thing snorted, snorted again, then grunted loudly, scaring us both, and took off running.
I laid down the bow and climbed back into my bag.
Ashley broke the silence. “Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“You mind sleeping over here?”
“Sure.” I picked up my bag and slid it over next to her right side. She slid down in her bag, only her eyes and lips exposed, and drifted off. I lay awake listening, watching my breath rise like smoke signals. It reminded me of Disney’s Peter Pan and the song “What Makes a Red Man Red?” I guess I sang it a little while, making myself laugh. It must have been the altitude mixed with the hunger.
Sometime later, I woke again. There was hair in my face. Human hair. And it smelled of woman. Single hairs were tickling my nose. Others felt silky on my face. My first tendency was to move. Slide over. Respect her space.
But I did not.
I lay there, breathing in. Stealing the aroma. Slow inhales followed by long, quiet exhales. Remembering what a woman smelled like.
And I liked it.
Ashley turned her head, pressing her forehead to mine. Her breath on my face. I pressed in and slowly filled my lungs. Then, careful not to wake her, I did it again. I did that a long time.
Somewhere in there I drifted off, feeling guilty and filled with longing.
IT WAS DARK WHEN I WOKE. The moon was high and bright because it filtered through the evergreen limbs above me and cast a needled shadow across the snow. The fire had died, but coals remained. I blew on them, turning them red, added tinder, and had a flame in seconds.
Ashley stirred. The firelight threw finger-shadows across her face. She was thin and had lost a lot of weight. Maybe twenty pounds. Her eyes were sunken, circled in black, the whites of her eyes were red road maps, and her breath was bad—meaning, her body was eating itself from the inside out.
Mine wasn’t any better.
I dressed, helped her do the same and, once I had her bundled, slid her out the entrance. I could only pull the sled about a hundred yards before the angle grew too steep and I had to lift her to a standing position. She wrapped an arm around my neck. I put her on my right side, so her bad leg was between us.
She winced as the weight of her foot pulled on the break. “That does not feel good.”
“You want to sit down, go back?”
She shook her head. “No. Let’s keep going.”
We took our time. One step, then another. Napoleon trailed behind, hopping in our footsteps. Happy to be out.
Ashley wrapped her right arm around my neck and clung to my right hand with hers, locking us stride for stride. What had taken me twenty minutes took us nearly an hour, but we made it without incident. I sat her on the ledge, the view spread out before us, and she scanned the sixty or seventy square miles looking back at us. She nodded. “Under different circumstances, this would be beautiful.”
I leveled the compass on my leg, let the needle settle, then pointed across the carpet of evergreens toward a distant mountain ridge. “See that brown-looking thing? Sort of flat, stretched left to right, sitting on top of the trees, just left of that white-capped ridgeline.”
Napoleon hopped up into my lap, staring down in the valley.
She cupped her hands around her eyes. “They’re all white-capped.”
I waited while she studied the horizon. We were looking at a speck some eight to ten miles distant. The proverbial needle.
“See it?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She was quiet a minute. “How in the world did you see that in the first place?”
“Don’t know.”
“It’s hard to make out.”
“Give it about ten minutes. When direct sunlight starts coming over the ridges, it’ll light on whatever that is. If it’s man-made, we’ll get some sort of reflection that’s unnatural.”
So we waited. Trying not to look at it so much that it lost all meaning. Like a word you say over and over until you’re only hearing what it sounds like and you’ve forgotten what it means. Sunlight crawled down the mountain summit and into the valley, pushing a dim shadow before it.
As it did, it uncovered what lay before us. An immense valley, hemmed on three sides by steep and jagged mountains. In the middle floated an evergreen sea crisscrossed by streams and small frozen lakes and ponds. Many of the trees were dead. Thousands, naked of bark and whitened by the sun, stood as silent sentinels. Those that had fallen spread across the forest in an angled, twisted maze of biblical proportions.
“What’s the name of that game where you take a handful of straws, stack them up straight, then just let them fall in a messy pile?”
“Pick-up sticks.”
“That’s it.” I waved my hand across the green sea before me. “Looks like God was playing a giant game of pick-up sticks and got called away right as it started.”
She laughed.
Just before the sun grew too bright and the reflection off the snow obscured the image we were looking at, the brown thing glimmered. Or shimmered. With, maybe, a sparkling reflection below it.
I asked without turning my head. “You see that?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure whether it was a reflection off ice and snow or something else.”
“Okay…look right. You see that clearing?”
“Yep.”
“Could be a frozen lake.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well…if it was me, and I was to build a mountain house or camp or something, and I really wanted to get away, I’d come up here to this plateau, preferably near a lake, and build.”
“I can see that.”
The sun rose, grew bright, and the glare painful, obscuring our view. I prompted her. “What do you think?”
I pointed down our original line, which would take us to lower elevation and out of the valley we were looking into. “Going that way is lower elevation. Probably warmer. Certainly breathe easier. I just don’t know where it leads or how long it will take us to get there.”
I swung a wide arc left, across the valley toward the image in the distance. “Across the valley of pick-up sticks is a lot of deep snow, trees, frozen creeks hidden beneath the surface that could swallow me. If that thing over there is nothing, then it is going to cost us the distance of going over, then trudging a vector back across the other side of this thing to the break in the mountains where it looks like we can get down to a lower elevation.”
“This is called a dilemma,” she said.
I nodded.
“How much food do we have?”
“If we stretch it?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe a day’s worth. Day and a half if we don’t mind being hungry.”
“How long can you make it after that runs out?”
“I can keep breathing for maybe a week, but my energy level will be fading. If I’m pulling the sled…” I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Sounds to me like, absent another sudden influx of food, we’ve got enough energy to get into the valley and then across it on what’s stored up inside you right now. And if we make it to the other side without finding food, then it might be a good place to curl up and go to sleep for a long time.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“You got a better way?”
“Not really.”
“What if you left me here and scouted it out on your own?”
“I’ve thought about that. Granted, I could
get there a lot quicker, but there’s no guarantee that I can do it safely or that I can get back to you. If I fall, get hurt, get eaten by a mountain lion, then you’ll never know, and we’ll both die alone with a lot of unanswered questions. I’m not willing to risk that.”
“What if I am?”
“It’s not your choice.”
“How do you figure?”
“’Cause I’m the one who has to walk across that. Then walk back. Not you.”
“What if I asked you to?”
“I’d refuse.”
“Why?”
“Let’s say I get over there, stand on top of that ridgeline, and see a house or a road or something, anything, on the other side. Then I’ve got to make the decision to head for that. Taking me several more days from you. By the time I found help and returned, you’d never know it because you’d be dead.”
“But you would have made it.”
I shook my head. “I won’t risk that.”
“I thought we were in this together.”
“We are, which is why I’m not leaving here without you.” I stared at her. “Ashley, this is no game we’re playing. We…both of us, are either going this way or that way. It’s either-or, not maybe-and-what-if.”
She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears, then she spoke without looking at me. “We’ve been at this for fifteen days. At some point, we’re just prolonging the inevitable. If that’s the case, and you can go a lot further without me, then you’ve got to try it. One of us making it is better than both of us dying.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I won’t do it.”
“What if I won’t go with you? What if I fight you?”
“Then I’ll thump you on the head, strap you to the sled, and haul you out under objection. Now, that’s enough. I’m not leaving you.”
We sat side by side. Staring out over a painful future. She hooked her arm inside mine and laid her head on my shoulder. “Why are you doing this?”
“I have my reasons.”
“One of these days you’ve got to help me understand them, because they don’t make any sense.”
I stood and pulled her up on two feet. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re looking at this through my eyes or yours.”
We began walking back down. Gingerly she set one foot in front of the other, clinging to me. Halfway back, I let her rest while I dug out my arrow.
“We look like two people in a potato sack race,” she said through a running nose.
I nodded, watching where she put her foot. If she slipped, her reflexes would kick in and she’d attempt to brace herself with the broken leg. If she did, she’d pass out from the pain. I was hoping to prevent that.
She clung to me, breathing deeply. Two weeks on her back had caught up to her. “I’ve got to stop,” she said. She turned and faced me. Two kids dancing.
She laughed. “Are you going to slide your hands into my jean pockets?”
“No, but we do make a good team.”
She nodded. “If Vince and I had tried walking from here to that ledge, we’d have ended up on our backs with me in a lot of pain, trying to choke him by shoving snow down his throat for letting me fall.”
“Not to pry, but every time you talk about him, you tell me how you two are different, not alike. Not compatible. What’s up with that?”
“We’re different, all right. But I enjoy him. He makes me laugh. And we have a lot in common.”
“People go to the rescue shelter and choose dogs for similar reasons. Not seventy-year soul mates.”
“Okay, Dr. Phil, what reason would you choose?”
“Love.”
She shook her head. “That kind only happens to the select few. The rest of us better get what we can while we can. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise we end up waiting on a fairy tale that never comes true.”
“But…what if you could have the fairy tale…but getting it meant waiting for it?”
“What, like Pretty Woman? Somebody has been trying to sell me that my whole life. I’ve looked for him, waited, tried to be selective, not hopping on the first train that came through the station. But I’m just not buying. All the good ones are taken. Guys like Grover, and you…I’ve never had much luck finding one of them.”
“I’m just saying, I think you’re…”
“I’m what?”
“Selling yourself short if you settle for a marriage that is less than what you’d hoped for. You deserve more. Better.”
“Ben Payne…are you flirting with me?”
“No, I’m just saying I think you’re quite remarkable, and if Vince isn’t, if he’s not remarkable and he doesn’t light you up, then, with all due respect to him, don’t marry him.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve been married fifteen years and don’t have to look at the prospect of shopping in a market where demand is high and supply is low. And it’s not that Vince doesn’t light me up…”
“I never said it was easy. I just think you deserve…something, or someone, stellar.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I’ll remember that.” She reached up and scratched my beard. “You’ve got some gray in there.”
“Time does that. Along with…”
“With what?”
“Hard miles on the chassis.”
We reached the shelter, and I replayed our conversation. My words hit me like a brick. The tables had turned. Time and mileage had done that, too.
I packed the sled, got her settled back in her bag and strapped in.
Ashley stopped me. “You okay? You look pale.”
I nodded, but didn’t look at her. My face would have betrayed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
We left the shelter and set out. The snow was frozen, hard on top, making my pulling easy. Ashley was quiet. Tired. She didn’t look good. Gaunt. Hollow. She needed nutrients. Her body was working double time trying to survive and feed the wounds inside her.
In the light I studied the tracks outside, and they confirmed what I’d thought. Moose. I cursed myself for not slipping out and trying a shot with the bow. Even a small moose could have fed us for weeks.
Ashley heard me and said, “You didn’t know what it was. What if it had been a grizzly bear?”
“I’d probably be dead.”
“Then you were right in your decision.”
“Yeah, but we could be eating right now.”
She nodded. “Yep, and that grizzly could be licking his claws after he had you for dinner and me for dessert.”
I stared at her. “Do you watch horror movies?”
“No, why?”
“You’re kind of morbid in your thinking.”
“I started out as a writer for a local rag covering the crime beat. Guess I’ve seen too many pictures of what happened to people who suspected it was not what it was. Sometimes it’s better not to go investigate the noise down the hall.”
I set Napoleon on her chest, and he kissed me on the face. I adjusted the little bootie things around his feet and scratched his head. He turned, dug himself into the bag, and disappeared. I turned, fastened my harness, and began pulling. Of all the days we’d had thus far, this promised to be the longest.
Toward lunchtime we’d made maybe two miles. A good distance but it had taken its toll on me.
Ashley broke the silence. “Hey, why don’t you rest awhile?”
I stopped, hands on my knees, breathing down into my belly, and nodded. “Sounds good.” I unbuckled myself and then pushed the sled over toward a small flat area beneath two trees.
I stepped, and had no time to react.
The false top gave way, bent both snowshoes nearly in two, and swallowed me to my neck. The impact knocked the wind out of me, jolting my ribs. Water rushed over my feet, shins, even my knees. My lungs felt full even though I was out of breath.
Reflexively, I turned and grabbed for anything to
stop my falling. I caught the sled. Doing so turned it on its side and threw Ashley and Napoleon out of it, screaming and whimpering.
I pulled, dragging myself from the sucking hole and the stream beneath. Every foothold gave way, and whenever I pulled with my right side, the pain in my chest peaked and sent spasms through me. I paused, gathered myself, and pulled once. Then again. Then again. Slowly inching myself from the hole. The wet snow acted like quicksand.
I pulled my body up on top of the snow, beaching myself. Ashley lay several feet away, breathing deeply, tense, hands fisted, knuckles white, lips taut. I crawled to her, studying her pupils. Shock would show up there first.
She darted a glance, then returned her attention to some speck in the sky she had focused on. Something she learned in tae kwon do.
I was drenched from the waist down. We were hurt, had no fire, I couldn’t get dry, and we couldn’t get across this valley of hell for at least another day. I could walk in wet clothes. They’d freeze, which was better than clinging to me wet. But wet boots were another thing. I turned, looked at the sled. There was a hole in it. When I’d grabbed it, flipped it over, and thrown Ashley out, it had caught on something that tore a large hole in the area just beneath Ashley’s shoulders.
I propped her head up, unzipped her bag, and carefully studied her leg. The throw had not rebroken it, the angle of her foot had not changed, but it had torqued all the tender attachments and tacky bones that had slowly been resettling and regrowing. It was swelling right before my eyes.
Our options were few.
I could dig a snow cave and we could get in, crawl into our bags, and hole up, but that only delayed the problem. When we crawled out, my clothes and, more important, my boots would still be wet or frozen, we’d be no further along and that much hungrier. My core was okay, my jacket was wadded up nicely inside Ashley’s bag, but I had no spare pair of socks because both of mine were currently on my feet, keeping me warm. Or were. And the bottom, most critical part of the sled now had a hole in it. If I tried to pull her, the sled would dig in, becoming a plow.
If I could get dry feet, get them warm and keep them dry, I could walk through the cold in my legs. The only other pair of dry socks was currently on Ashley’s feet. The question then was how to keep them dry and, more important, how to fix the sled.
The Mountain Between Us Page 17