McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

by Michael Chabon

  Rita’s face is wide and almost square, her jaw just short of masculine. People have said she looks like a Kennedy, one of the female Kennedys. But she is not beautiful like that woman; she is instead almost plain, with or without makeup, plain in any light. This she knows, though her friends and Gwen tell her otherwise. She is unmarried and was for a time a foster parent to siblings, a girl of nine and boy of seven, beaten by their birth mother, and Rita had contemplated adopting them herself—had thought her life through, every year she imagined and planned with those kids, she could definitely do it—but then Rita’s mother and father had beaten her to it. Her parents loved those kids, too, and had oceans of time and plenty of room in their home, and there were discussions and it had quickly been settled. There was a long weekend they all spent together in the house where Rita and Gwen were raised, Rita and her parents there with J.J. and Frederick, the kids arranging their trophies in their new rooms, and on Sunday evening, Rita said goodbye, and the kids stayed there. It was easy and painless for everyone, and Rita spent a week of vacation time in bed shaking.

  Now, when she works two Saturdays a month and can’t see them as often, Rita misses the two of them in a way that’s too visceral. She misses having them both in her bed, the two little people, seven and nine years old, when the crickets were too loud and they were scared of them growing, the crickets, and of them together carrying away the house to devour it and everyone inside. This is a story they had heard, about the giant crickets carrying away the house, from their birth mother.

  Rita is asleep on the bus but wakes up when the road inclines. The vehicle, white and square with rounded edges—it reminds her vaguely of something that would descend, backward, from a rocket ship and onto the moon—whinnies and shakes over the pot-holes of the muddy road and good Christ it’s raining!—raining steadily on the way to the gate of Kilimanjaro. Godwill is driving, and this gives her some peace, even though he’s driving much too fast, and is not slowing down around tight curves, or for pedestrians carrying possessions on their heads, or for schoolchildren, who seem to be everywhere, in uniforms of white above and blue below. Disaster at every moment seems probable, but Rita is so tired she can’t imagine raising an objection if the bus were sailing over a cliff.

  “She’s awake!” a man says. She looks to find Frank smiling at her, cheerful in an almost insane way. Maybe he is insane. Frank is the American guide, a sturdy and energetic man, from Oregon, medium-sized in every way, with a short-shorn blond beard that wraps his face as a bandage would a man, decades ago, suffering from a toothache. “We thought we’d have to carry you up. You’re one of those people who can sleep through anything, I bet.” Then he laughs a shrill, girlish laugh, forced and mirthless.

  They pass a large school, its sign posted along the road. The top half: DRIVE REFRESHED: COCA-COLA; below: MARANGU SEC. SCHOOL. A group of women are walking on the roadside, babies in slings. They pass the Samange Social Club, which looks like a construction company trailer. Farther up the road, a small pink building, the K&J Hot Fashion Shop, bearing an enormous spray-painted rendering of Angela Bassett. A boy of six is leading a donkey. Two tiny girls in school uniforms are carrying a bag of potatoes. A driveway leads to the Tropical Pesticides Research Institute. The rain intensifies as they pass another school—COCA-COLA: DRIVE REFRESHED; ST. MAR-GARET’S CATHOLIC SEC. SCHOOL.

  That morning, at the hotel, Rita had overheard a conversation between a British woman and the hotel concierge.

  “There are so many Catholic schools!” the tourist had said. She’d just gotten back from a trip to a local waterfall.

  “Are you Catholic?” the concierge had said. She was stout, with a clear nasal voice, a kind of clarinet.

  “I am,” the tourist said. “And you?”

  “Yes please. Did you see my town? Marangu?”

  “I did. On the hill?”

  “Yes please.”

  “It was very beautiful.”

  And the concierge had smiled.

  The van passes a FEMA dispensary, a YMCA, another social club called Millennium, a line of teenage girls in uniforms, plum-purple sweaters and skirts of sports-coat blue. They all wave. The rain is now real rain. The people they pass are soaked.

  “Look at Patrick,” Frank says, pointing at a handsome Tanzanian man on the bus, sitting across the aisle from him. “He’s just sitting there smiling, wondering why the hell anyone would pay to be subjected to this.”

  Patrick smiles and nods and says nothing.

  There are five paying hikers on the trip and they are introducing themselves. There are Mike and Jerry, a son and father in matching jackets. Mike is in his late twenties and his father is maybe sixty. Jerry has an accent that sounds British but possesses the round vowels of an Australian. Jerry owns a chain of restaurants, while the son is an automotive engineer, specializing in ambulances. They are tall men, barrel-chested and thin-legged, though Mike is heavier, with a loose paunch he carries with some effort. They wear matching red jackets, scarred everywhere with zippers, their initials embroidered on the left breast pockets. Mike is quiet and seems to be getting sick from the bus’s jerking movements and constant turns. Jerry is smiling broadly, as if to make up for his son’s reticence—a grin meant to introduce them both as happy and ready men, as gamers.

  The rain continues, the cold unseasonable. There is a low fog that rises between the trees, giving the green a dead, faded look, like most of the forest’s color had leaked into the soil.

  “The rain should clear away in an hour or so,” Frank announces, as the bus continues up the hills, bouncing through the mud. The foliage everywhere around is tangled and sloppy. “What do you think, Patrick?” Frank says. “This rain gonna burn off?”

  Patrick hasn’t spoken yet and now just shrugs and smiles. There is something in his eyes, Rita thinks, that is assessing. Assessing Frank, and the paying hikers, guessing at the possibility that he will make it up and down this mountain, this time, without losing his mind.

  Grant is at the back of the bus, watching the land pass through the windows, sitting in the middle of the bus’s backseat, like some kind of human rudder. He is shorter than the other two men but his legs are enormous, like a power lifter’s, his calves thick and hairy. He is wearing cutoff jean shorts, though the temperature has everyone else adding layers. His hair is black and short-shorn, his eyes are small and water-cooler blue.

  He is watching the land pass through the window near his right cheek, and the air of outside waters his small blue eyes.

  Shelly is in her late forties and looks precisely her age. She is slim, fit, almost wiry. Her hair, long, ponytailed, once blond, is fading to gray and she is not fighting it. She has the air of a lion, Rita thinks, though she doesn’t know why she thinks of this animal, a lion, when she sees this small woman sitting two seats before her, in an anorak of the most lucid and expectant yellow. She watches Shelly tie a bandanna around her neck, quickly and with a certain offhand ferocity. Shelly’s features are the features Rita would like for herself: a small thin nose with a flawless upward curve, her lips with the correct and voluptuous lines, lips that must have been effortlessly sexual and life-giving as a younger woman.

  “It’s really miserable out there,” Shelly says.

  Rita nods.

  The bus stops in front of a clapboard building, crooked, frowning, like a general store in a Western. There are signs and farm instruments attached to its side, and on the porch, out of the rain, there are two middle-aged women feeding fabric through sewing machines, side by side. Their eyes briefly sweep over the bus and its passengers, and then return to their work as the bus begins again.

  Frank is talking about the porters. Porters, he says, will be accompanying the group, carrying the duffel bags, and the tents, and the tables to eat upon, and the food, and propane tanks, and coolers, and silverware, and water, among other things. Their group is five hikers and two guides, and there will be thirty-two porters coming along.

  “I had no
idea,” Rita says to Grant, behind her. “I pictured a few guides and maybe two porters.” She has a sudden vision of servants carrying kings aboard gilt thrones, elephants following, trumpets announcing their progress.

  “That’s nothing,” Frank says. Frank has been listening to everyone’s conversations and inserting himself when he sees fit. “Last time I did Everest, there were six of us and we had eighty sherpas.” He holds his hand horizontally, demonstrating the height of the sherpas, which seems to be about four feet or so. “Little guys,” he says, “but badasses. Tougher than these guys down here. No offense, Patrick.”

  Patrick isn’t listening. The primary Tanzanian guide, he’s in his early thirties and is dressed in new gear—a blueberry anorak, snow-boarding pants, wraparound sunglasses. He’s watching the side of the road, where a group of boys is keeping pace with the bus, each in a school uniform and each carrying what looks to be a small sickle. They run alongside, four of them, waving their sickles, yelling things Rita can’t hear through the windows and over the whinnies of the van going up and up through the wet dirt. Their mouths are going, their eyes angry, and their teeth are so small, but by the time Rita gets her window open to hear what they’re saying the van is far beyond them, and they have run off the road with their sickles. They’ve dropped down the hillside, following some narrow path of their own making.

  There is a wide black parking lot. MACHAME GATE reads a sign over the entrance. In the parking lot, about a hundred Tanzanian men are standing. They watch the bus enter the lot and park and immediately twenty of them converge upon it, unloading the backpacks and duffel bags from the bus. Before Rita and the rest of the hikers are off, all of the bags are stacked in a pile nearby, and the rain is falling upon them.

  Rita is last off the bus, and when she arrives at the door, Godwill has closed it, not realizing she is still aboard.

  “Sorry please,” he says, yanking the lever, trying to get the door open again.

  “Don’t worry, I’m in no hurry,” she says, giving him a little laugh.

  She sees a man between the parking lot and the gate to the park, a man like the man at her hotel, in a plain green uniform, automatic rifle on his back.

  “Is the gun for the animals, or the people?” she asks.

  “People,” Godwill says, with a small laugh. “People much more dangerous than animals!” Then he laughs and laughs and laughs.

  It’s about forty-five degrees, Rita guesses, though it could be fifty. And the rain. It’s raining steadily, and the rain is cold. Rita hadn’t thought about rain. When she had pictured the hike she had not thought about cold, cold, steady rain.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves some rain,” Frank says.

  The paying hikers look at him.

  “No two ways about it,” he says.

  Everything is moving rapidly. Bags are being grabbed, duffels hoisted. There are so many porters! Everyone is already wet. Patrick is talking with a group of the porters. They are dressed in bright colors, like the paying hikers, but their clothes—simple pants and sweatshirts—are already dirty, and their shoes are not large and complicated boots, as Rita is wearing, but instead sneakers, or track shoes, or loafers. None wear rain gear, but all wear hats.

  Now there is animated discussion, and some pointing and shrugging. One porter jumps to the ground and then lies still, as if pretending to be dead. The men around him roar.

  Rita ducks into her poncho and pulls it over her torso and backpack. The poncho was a piece of equipment the organizers listed as optional; no one, it seems, expected this rain. Now she is thrilled she bought it—$4.99 at Target on the way to the airport. She sees a few of the porters poking holes in garbage bags and fitting themselves within. Grant is doing the same. He catches Rita looking at him.

  “Forgot the poncho,” he says. “Can’t believe I forgot the poncho.”

  “Sorry,” she says. There is nothing else to say. He’s going to get soaked.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Good enough for them, good enough for me.”

  Rita tightens the laces on her boots and readjusts her gaiters. She helps Shelly with her poncho, spreading it over her backpack, and arranges her hood around her leonine hair, frayed and thick, blond and white. As she pulls the plastic close to Shelly’s face, they stare into each other’s eyes and Rita has a sharp pain in her stomach, or her head, somewhere. She wants them here. They are her children and she allowed them to be taken. People were always quietly taking things from her, always with the understanding that everyone would be better off if Rita’s life were kept simplified. But she was ready for complication, wasn’t she? For a certain period of time, she was, she knows. It was the condominium that concerned everyone; she had almost bought one, in anticipation of adopting the kids, and she had backed out—but why?— just before closing. The place wasn’t right; it wasn’t big enough. She wanted it to be more right; she wanted to be more ready. It wasn’t right, and they would know it, and they would think she would always be insolvent, and they would always have to share a room. Gwen had offered to cosign on the other place, the place they looked at with the yard and the three bedrooms, but that wouldn’t be right, having Gwen on the mortgage. So she had given up and the kids were now in her old room, with her parents. She wants them walking next to her asking her advice. She wants to arrange their hoods around their faces, wants to pull the drawstrings so their faces shrink from view and stay dry. Shelly’s face is old and lined and she grins at Rita and clears her throat.

  “Thank you, hon,” she says.

  They are both waterproof now and the rain tick-ticks onto the plastic covering them everywhere. The paying hikers are standing in the parking lot in the rain.

  “Porters have dropped out,” says Frank, speaking to the group. “They gotta replace the porters who won’t go up. It’ll take a few minutes.”

  “Are there replacements close by?” Grant asks.

  “Probably get some younger guys,” Frank says. “The younger guys are hungry.”

  “Like the B-team, right?” Jerry says. “We’re getting the B-TEAM!” He looks around for laughs but no one’s wet cold face will smile. “Minor leaguers, right?” he says, then gives up.

  It is much too late to go home now, Rita knows. Still, she can’t suppress the thought of running all the way, ten miles or so, mostly downhill, back to the hotel, at which point she would—no matter what the cost—fly to warm and flat Zanzibar, to drink and drink until half-blind in the sun.

  Nearby in the parking lot, Patrick seems to settle something with the man he’s speaking to, and approaches the group.

  “Very wet,” he says, with a grimace. “Long day.”

  The group is going to the peak, a four-day trip up, two down, along the Machame Route. There are at least five paths up the mountain, depending on what a hiker wants to see and how quickly he wants to reach the peak, and Gwen had promised that this route was within their abilities and by far the most scenic. The group’s members each signed up through a website, EcoHeaven Tours, dedicated to adventure travel. The site promised small group tours of a dozen places—the Scottish Highlands, the Indonesian lowlands, the rivers of upper Russia. The trip up this mountain was, oddly enough, the least exotic-sounding. Rita has never known anyone who had climbed Kilimanjaro, but she knew people who knew people who had, and this made it just that small bit less intriguing. Now, standing below the gate, this trip seems irrelevant, irrational, indefensible. She’s walking the same way thousands have before, and she will be cold and wet while doing so.

  “Okay, let’s saddle up,” Frank says, and begins to walk up a wide dirt path. Rita and the four others walk with him. They are all in ponchos, Grant in his garbage bag, all with backpacks beneath, resembling hunchbacks, or soldiers. She pictures the Korean War Memorial, all those young men, cast in bronze, eyes wide, waiting to be shot.

  Rita is glad, at least, to be moving, because moving will make her warm.

  But Frank is walking very slowly. Rita is behind
him; his pace is elephantine. Such measured movements, such lumbering effort. Frank is leading the five of them, with Patrick at the back of the group, and the porters are now distantly behind them, still in the parking lot, gathering the duffels and propane tanks and tents. They will catch up, Patrick said.

  Rita is sure that this pace will drive her mad. She is a racquetball player because racquetball involves movement, and scoring, and noise, and the possibility of getting struck in the head with a ball moving at the pace of an airplane. And so she had worried that this hike would drive her mad with boredom. And now it is boring; here in Tanzania, she is bored. She will die of a crushing monotony before she even has a chance at a high-altitude cerebral edema.

  After ten minutes, the group has traveled about two hundred yards, and it is time to stop. Mike is complaining of shoulder pain. His pack’s straps need to be adjusted. Frank stops to help Mike, and while Frank is doing that, and Jerry and Shelly are waiting with Patrick, Grant continues up the trail. He does not stop. He goes around a bend in the path and he is out of view. The rain and the jungle make possible quick disappearances and before she knows why, Rita follows him.

  Soon they are up two turns and can no longer see the group. Rita is elated. Grant walks quickly and she walks with him. They are almost running. They are moving at a pace she finds more fitting, an athletic pace, a pace appropriate for people who are not yet old. Rita is not yet old. She quit that 10k Fun Run last year but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do it if it wasn’t so boring. She had started biking to work but then had decided against it; at the end of the day, when she’d done as much as she could before 5:30, she was just too tired.