by Various Orca
The phone pinged again.
Don’t be sorry. Go through the tired. Go through the pain. Believe you can do it. Try and you can’t fail. You’re as good as Grandfather. I believe in you. KUTGW bro. Grandfather’s waiting at the top. KIT.
“And I believe in you,” I said. One more message to send.
I’ll try little—I backspaced out the last word. I’ll try, for Grandpa and for you, bro. T4BU.
I sent the message and put away the phone. I walked over to where Doris and Sarah stood, watching the little dots of light making their way up the mountain.
“It’s mesmerizing,” Doris said.
“Beautiful,” Sarah added. “It’s just so sad that—”
“I’m going to climb it,” I said.
They both looked at me in shock.
“I’m not asking either of you to go with me,” I said. “But I have to try.”
“I’m going with you,” Doris said.
“And neither of you are going,” Sarah said. “At least not without me.”
“You don’t have to come with us,” I said. “We’ll just follow the lights of other people and use their guides.”
“Besides, we don’t want you to break your promise to your father,” Doris added.
“That is why I must go with you, to keep my promise,” she said.
“How do you think that climbing with us will do that?” I questioned.
“I promised him I’d stay right with you. If you two leave and I remain here, I am breaking my promise. Besides, he cannot stop us; we will be up and back down, waiting for him when he arrives.”
“So you’re not going to tell him we did it?” I asked.
“Oh, no, I will tell him.”
“And he won’t be mad?”
“Oh, he will be very mad, but I will accept my punishment. Sometimes you simply must act and then take the punishment. Besides, being disobedient is one thing, but being a liar is another. I am often disobedient, but I am never dishonest.”
“I guess that might mean something when it comes time for him to punish you,” I said.
She shrugged. “No matter what he says or does, it will not take away what I have done. I, a Chagga woman, will have stood on the roof of Africa.”
The roof of Africa. That sounded almost magical. No, more than magical, almost mythical.
“Let us put on our clothing, gather water, strap on our packs and begin,” Sarah said.
TWENTY-TWO
Sarah led, Doris tucked in right behind her, and I was at the end, where I could reach up and support Doris if she slipped. There was nobody to support me if I fell backward, but it was better if they were in front of me—uphill of me. It wasn’t like either of them—or the two of them together—could do anything more than cushion me. If I fell from the top of the line, I’d simply knock the three of us over.
The path was narrow and steep with many hairpin turns across the face of the slope. Sarah was in charge of finding the cutbacks, discovering the best footholds as we climbed. Every time the path became more vertical, I felt it in my chest and lungs and I just wanted a flatter section to cross the face. Every time we hit one of those flatter spots, I thought how we needed to climb more steeply. We had 1,200 meters to gain, and the only way to do that was to go up.
While Sarah was leading us, we were merely a small part of a wave of lights going up the slope. All the climbers on the seven different trails came together on this section, the only way to the summit. Little groups of lights, three or four or five people to a group, flickered ahead of us or behind us. Each time we stopped, we were passed by a group of climbers, and as we continued to climb, we would pass others who had slumped over to rest. It felt good to pass anybody, although it was more like a game of leapfrog; those we passed would pass us at our next rest, and those who had gone before us would be reeled back in as they rested and we continued.
Often a few words of encouragement would be passed back and forth, sometimes in languages I couldn’t understand, but the smiles, thumbs-up and pats on the back were universal. We were all in this together, traveling separately, not knowing each other’s names, but going to the same place. Well, at least we hoped we were going to the same place. With some, I wasn’t so certain.
We’d passed more than one group where a member was hunched over, throwing up. Others were sobbing. Some were simply staring into space, their expressions blank and hopeless. Their bodies were still on the hill, but their minds were elsewhere. I knew how all of them felt. My stomach was moving more quickly than my feet, and my head continued to throb, the pain moving from the back to the sides to the front. I couldn’t help but wonder what would come first, the end of the climb or the end of my ability to climb.
“I need to stop,” Doris gasped.
“Just up ahead is a place to sit,” Sarah said. “Can you make it?”
“Yes…yes.”
Our already slow pace slowed down even more. Little steps became baby steps as I focused on Doris in front of me. Her stride—which I matched—was so small that the back of one step was barely in front of the toe of the other.
“Right here,” Sarah said.
We slumped down onto some rocks at a place where the path had widened slightly. I pulled off my pack and helped Doris with hers.
“I’m so sorry for slowing us down,” Doris said.
“You’re not slowing anybody down,” I replied. “I was just getting ready to ask if we could stop.”
“You are a very sweet liar.”
“I’m not lying. Well, not much. You asked to break just before I was going to. This is hard.”
“Very hard,” Sarah said. “Very hard. Everyone must take water.”
I pulled off my gloves and fumbled with my stiff fingers to pull out my insulated water bottle. Without the insulation, the water would have frozen. Unscrewing the top, I poured the cold water into my parched mouth. It felt good, tracing a line down to my upset stomach.
“How far have we gone?” Doris asked.
I looked at my watch. It glowed under my headlamp. “It’s just after two, so we’ve been climbing for almost two hours.”
“But how far have we gone?” she asked.
We both looked at Sarah. She shook her head. “I do not know. Maybe a third…maybe a quarter of the way. Remember, I have never climbed this mountain before either.”
As we sat there, another group shuffled up the path. Sarah said something to the guide in the lead, and he responded. They exchanged another burst of words and then she got to her feet.
“He said that we are almost one third of the way,” she said. “And he said he hopes I make it.”
“That was very sweet of him,” Doris said.
Sweet and reassuring and disturbing all at once. Could I go twice the distance I’d already gone? Could Doris?
“He also said that the mountain is not coming to us. He said I should get you up and start forward.”
Slowly I got to my feet and then offered Doris a hand, which she took, and I pulled her up.
“One step at a time,” I said to her. “And we’ll stop and smell any flowers that we find.”
She laughed. “Promises, promises.”
Sarah started up the path, Doris behind and me tight behind her. One step at a time, each step one closer to the top and one farther from the bottom.
We’d fallen into a pattern. We’d move upward for somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes and then stop, drink some water, catch our breath, let our hearts settle and then start up again. We leaned against the rock face but never sat down. Standing back up was too hard. The cold was getting worse. It seemed to insinuate itself between the layers of clothing, and my toes and fingertips were numb and tingly. I would have complained if I hadn’t noticed that Sarah didn’t have gloves. She tucked her hands into the pockets of a coat that wasn’t nearly as warm as the one I was wearing over top layers of clothing. I suspected she didn’t have as many layers. If this was cold for me, it had to be frigid for he
r. She didn’t complain. Which meant I couldn’t complain. I wanted to complain. I wanted to stop moving forward. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and be carried back down to my tent. No—back to my bed in my house.
At least I didn’t feel like throwing up anymore. My stomach had finally realized that there was no point in trying to eject something that wasn’t there. Instead, all the blood seemed to be rushing to my head. I could feel it circulating, moving from lobe to lobe. There was so much pressure on my brain that I would occasionally reach up to touch my head, to confirm that it wasn’t actually physically bigger.
“Would it be all right if we stopped again?” Doris asked.
She slumped slightly backward as she spoke, and I lifted up my hands and placed them against her back to give her a little bit of a cushion. We shuffled forward another two dozen steps—baby steps—until Sarah found a spot suitable for stopping. Instantly I slumped against a rock, half leaning, half sitting. Sarah remained standing, but Doris was on the ground! I got back to my feet and shuffled over to her.
“Are you all right?”
“Just lost my balance a little. Luckily I’m so short, the ground wasn’t far away.” She gave a weak little smile.
“Water, take some water,” I said. I pulled out my thermos.
“That’s your water,” she replied. “You’ll need all of it to get to the top.”
“It’s our water and we’ll need it to get all of us to the top.”
She didn’t answer.
I undid the top of the thermos and handed it to her. “Doris, I wouldn’t be here without you. I wouldn’t have made it this far. We’re doing this together.” I never thought I’d say these words, let alone mean them, but they were true. We were in this together.
“I just don’t think I can,” she whispered.
“I don’t know if I can either, but either we head up together or we head back down together.”
“You can’t do that!” she protested. “What about your grandfather?”
“My grandpa wouldn’t have left you behind.”
“I’m just slowing you down.”
“We’ll go at whatever pace we need to go. We’re a team. We aren’t slowing each other down, we’re moving each other forward. Together. When you’re ready, we’ll start to move again.”
She smiled. “I’m ready.”
“Well, I’m not,” I said. “I need some water… and so do you.”
She took a big swig from the bottle and then handed it to me.
“How’s your head?” she asked.
“It could be worse.” That wasn’t a lie. It could have exploded.
I took a second pull from my bottle and then did something I was trying to avoid. I looked up. I could see a few lights bobbing up the slope above us—well above us—and then…nothing. I knew better than to think that was the top. It was just another place where the slope changed angles, preventing us from seeing farther. Then I looked below. There were more lights—two more parties visible—still below us, still moving up. We still had people below pushing us forward and people above pulling us up. We weren’t alone, not when the three of us were together. I remembered Grandpa’s words from the letter: If you want to travel far, travel together.
“We must go,” Sarah said.
I offered Doris a hand, and for a brief second I thought her weight was going to tumble me over. How weak was I? I slipped the thermos into the opening on the side of my bag and pulled my gloves back on.
There was a nightmare quality to our climb now. The exhaustion, the sleep deprivation, the cold, the strange shuffling of strangers with lights on their heads. It was a zombie movie. Zombies climbing a mountain, and I was one of the zombies.
Sarah turned around. “Turn off your lights.”
“What?”
“Your lights. Turn them off.”
With numb, gloved fingers I reached up and attempted to push the switch to turn it off. Doris turned off her light and then I managed to turn mine off too. It was darker, but not dark. In fact, as my eyes adjusted, it was almost bright. The whole scene was bathed in a soft white light. Rather than seeing less, we could see more. Not limited by the bright little pool of light directly in front of us, we could see even into the distance and up the slope.
“The moon is so bright,” Doris said.
I looked around until I could locate it. It was bright…but that bright?
“Not just the moon. The sun is starting to glow over the horizon,” Sarah said.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost five, I believe,” she said.
I looked at my watch—something I’d been avoiding—turning it so that the dial received enough light. It was a quarter to five.
“We’ve been climbing for almost five hours,” Doris said. “Well…climbing and resting.”
“You cannot do the first without the second,” Sarah said. “To climb straight would be almost impossible.”
“Completely impossible, at least for us,” I said. “You’d have to be Chagga to do that.”
“Most Chagga could not,” Sarah said. “We are doing well.”
“How much longer do we have to keep doing well?” I asked.
“Look up. You see where the top disappears, just beyond those climbers?”
“That’s the top?”
“Not the top. Stella’s Point. Beyond that no more than an hour.”
Reassured and crushed at the same time.
“We must move again. The hill will not come to us.”
I nodded my head. I pushed myself up and to my feet and tumbled over! I was wearing so many clothes and so much of my body was numb, that there was no pain. I felt embarrassed and confused more than anything. I struggled to get back to my feet and again I collapsed, my legs not able to support me.
“Just stay down,” Sarah said.
“I have to get—”
“Just for a few seconds. Just rest lying down.”
“Do what she says,” Doris added. “There’s no energy left for arguing.”
She was right. I had no energy, not to argue, not to talk, and certainly not to get up.
Sarah reached underneath me. Was she trying to lift me? She snapped the clips on my pack and pulled it off me.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“Lightening your load. Now let us help you roll over.”
Together, Doris and Sarah took my hands and helped spin me around so I was in a sitting position.
“Now take some water,” Sarah said. Doris handed me the water bottle.
I took a long sip. As the water settled in, I could almost feel the energy returning. At least enough to get to my feet, I hoped.
“I’m ready.” I stood up. Shaky but working. “Let me put on my pack and—”
“I am carrying your pack,” Sarah said.
“I can take it.”
“You must listen to your guide. I will give it back to you at Stella’s Point.”
“No arguing,” Doris said. “Didn’t you offer to take my bag when I wasn’t able?”
“Of course.” I paused. “I just thought that… that—”
“That you’d be the one carrying somebody else’s extra bag? Perhaps that of an old woman?” Doris asked.
“Perhaps an older woman,” I said.
“You’ve been carrying a lot of weight around on those shoulders,” she said. “It’s a sign of strength to know when you need help. We’re all here to help each other.”
I brushed away a tear. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. We’re a team, remember? Just climb. All the way to the top.”
“All the way to the top,” I said.
TWENTY-THREE
I heard noise coming from above and looked past Doris and Sarah. It was hikers coming down the mountain. Had they given up this close to the top? No, that wasn’t it. They had reached the summit and were coming back down!
I’d seen the three men and two women b
efore at the base camp and on one of the other days’ hikes. They were all in their twenties and fit.
“It’s not much farther!” one of them yelled out. He had a strong Australian accent.
“You’re doing great!” one of the women said.
“What’s it like?” Doris asked.
The woman smiled. “You’re going to find out for yourself soon enough.”
One of the men moved in close, wrapping an arm around me and putting his mouth right by my ear. “What you’re doing for your grand-mum is pretty special, mate.”
I needed to correct him about one of those things. “What she’s doing for me is even more special.”
He slapped me on the back. “No more talking. Get climbing.”
The hikers slipped past us and down the slope, kicking up a cloud of volcanic dust as they braced themselves, fighting gravity in a different way.
“Sarah,” I called out. “Can I have my pack…please.”
She didn’t answer.
“I need to carry Grandpa. I have to keep my word.”
She hesitated.
“I’m all right. I can do it.”
She took the pack off her back and handed it to me. I put it on. Strangely the added weight seemed to make me feel lighter.
Sarah turned up the slope and began shuffling forward. We fell into line behind her.
It was becoming lighter. The sun was still not up, but the rays were bouncing above the horizon. I could almost feel them and the warmth that they were bringing. It gave me renewed energy.
With the light came the opportunity to see farther. The slope had become wider, opening up so there seemed to be multiple paths rather than one path. Turning back, I saw there were other hikers lower down, still struggling over the parts that we’d completed. I wanted to yell back encouragement to them. They were strangers, but we were all in this together.
There was no longer solid rock underneath our feet. There was loose ash, shifting down as we pushed up, and loose rocks, some rolling back as I pushed against them to gain my footing. Another party—two women—slid down the hill off to the side on another path. Another group had made it. It didn’t matter that they’d gotten there first. It just mattered that we were going to get there. I was almost certain.