by James Salter
“Poor Lane,” she would often say, “he’s not going to amount to much.”
He was failing at school. The teachers liked him, he had lots of friends, but he was slow, vague, as if living in a dream.
There were nights they returned from somewhere in the city, weary from dancing, and weaved down the hallway past his door. She was making an attempt to be quiet, talking in whispers.
Her shoe dropped with the sharpness of a shot onto the floor.
“Oh, Christ,” she said.
She was too tired to make love. It had been left on the dance floor. Or else she did, halfheartedly, and like two bodies from an undiscovered crime they lay, half-covered in the early light, in absolute silence except for the first, scattered sound of birds.
On Sundays they drove to the sea. In the whiteness of spring the sky was a gentle blue, a blue that has not yet felt the furnace. Small houses, lumberyards, flyblown markets. The final desolation of the coast. The streets of Los Angeles were behind them, the silver automobiles, men in expensive suits.
Seen picking their way down the slope from the highway to the beach, half-naked, towels in their hands, they seemed to be a family. As they drew closer it was even more interesting. She already had a stiffness and hesitation that are part of middle age. Her attention was entirely on her feet. Only the humorous, graceful movements of her hands and the kerchief around her head made her seem youthful. The man was following her, tall and resigned. He hadn’t learned that something always comes to save you.
She was a woman who would one day turn to drink or probably cocaine. She was high-strung, uncertain. She often talked about how she looked or what she would wear. Brushing the sand from her face, she wondered, “What would you think of—white? Pure white, the way they dress at Theodore’s?”
“For what?”
“White pants with nothing underneath, white T-shirts.” She was imagining herself at parties. “Just the red of lipstick and some blue around the eyes. Everything else is white. Some guy comes up to me, some smart guy, and says, ‘You know, I like the color of your nipples. You here with anyone?’ I just look at him very calmly and say, ‘Get lost.’ ”
She invented these fantasies and acted them out. One minute she would accept kisses, the next her mind would be elsewhere. She was never really sure of him. She never dared commit herself to the idea that he would stay. Afraid of what might happen, she was frivolous, oblique, chattering to herself like a bird in a forest so as not to be aware of the approach of danger.
Early one morning he rose before five. It was barely light. The floor was cool beneath his feet. Louise was sleeping. He picked up his clothes and went down the hall. On top of rumpled sheets Lane was sleeping in his underwear. His arms were like his mother’s, tubular and smooth. Rand shook him lightly. The eyes glinted open.
“You awake?” Rand asked.
There was no reply.
“Come on,” he said.
3
ON THE CAR WINDOWS, mist had formed. Newspapers lay on the lawns. The streets were empty. Buses were driving with their lights.
The freeways were already full, a ghostly procession. Over the city lay a layer of clouds. To the east the sky was brighter, almost yellow. The bottom was spilling light. Then suddenly, breaking free from earth, the molten sun.
The buildings of downtown appeared, tall and featureless. They seemed to turn slowly and reveal an unknown face of greater detail, a planetlike face lit by the sun.
A river of cars was pouring inward out of a brilliance that obscured the road signs. Some twenty miles farther, among the last apartment buildings and motels, were the first open hills. There was less traffic now, nurses driving homeward, Japanese, bearded blacks, their faces bathed by dawn like true believers. It was seven o’clock.
Near Pomona the land began to open. There were orchards, farms, vacant fields, the fields that once made up America. A countryside more calm and pure lay all about, covered by soothing clouds. The blue air of rain hung beneath. A group of white objects tilted like gravestones drifted by on the right.
“What are those?”
Rand looked out at them.
“Beehives,” he said.
The sky was breaking into bright fragments.
At Banning they turned off. They were far from the city now, a generation away at least. The houses were ordinary. There were trailers, limping dogs. The road had begun to climb into barren hills. At each curve was a view of wide, patterned farmland falling away below. Ahead was emptiness, land that had no owner.
“It’s nice from here on,” Rand said.
The mountains were the color of slate, the sun behind them. The valley, wide with a silver highway, was seen for the last time. Beyond it a great range of mountains had appeared, peaks still white with snow. The road was silent, smooth.
“How high are we?”
“Two, three thousand feet.”
The scrub trees vanished. They were speeding through forests of pine. Along the roadside lay banks of snow.
“Look, a dog.”
“That’s a coyote.”
It turned before they reached it and disappeared into the trees.
They dropped down into a valley and small town. Gas stations, a triangular park. It was all familiar. He knew the way as if it had been yesterday. A wooded road past houses with names like Nirvana and Last Mile, then some green water tanks, and there it was, a great dome of rock, its shoulders gleaming in the sun. A tremor of excitement went through him. The sky was clear. It was nearly nine o’clock.
They parked, the doors on both sides open, and changed their shoes. Rand got a small rucksack and coil of rope, red as flannel, from the trunk. He led the way, down off the road to a half-hidden path. They followed this for a while and then turned upward and began to climb. The pines were tall and silent. The sun trickled through them to the forest floor. Rand moved steadily, unhurriedly, almost with a pause between his steps. There was no point in wasting strength here. Even so, it burned the legs; sweat began to glisten on their faces. Once or twice they paused to rest.
“This is the hardest part. It’s not much farther,” Rand said.
“I’m okay.”
A large boulder which only an ice age could have borne was up ahead, close to the base of the main rock which seemed to have lost its size. The great slabs that almost plunged into the forest had vanished. Only a few of them, the lowest, could be seen.
Rand uncoiled the rope. He wrapped it twice around the boy’s waist and watched as the knot was tied. The other end he tied to himself.
“You want to go first?” he said.
It was easy at the start. With the unschooled agility of a squirrel, Lane moved upward. After a while he heard a call,
“That’s a good place to stop.”
Rand began to climb. The rock felt warm, unfamiliar, not yet giving itself over. Lane was waiting in a niche forty feet above the ground.
“I’ll just go on,” Rand said.
Now he went first, the boy belaying. As he climbed he put in an occasional piton. He hammered them into cracks. A metal link, a carabiner, was snapped to the piton and the rope run through it.
Far below was a small upturned face. Rand climbed easily, assured in his movements. He looked, felt, tried, then without effort, moved up.
The rock is like the surface of the sea, constant yet never the same. Two climbers going over the identical route will each manage in a different way. Their reach is not the same, their confidence, their desire. Sometimes the way narrows, the holds are few, there are no choices—the mountain is inflexible in its demands—but usually one is free to climb as one will. There are principles, of course. The first concerns the rope—it is for safety but one should always climb as if the rope were not there.
“Off belay!” Rand called. He had reached a good stance, the top of an upright slab. There was a well-defined outcrop behind him. He placed a loop of nylon webbing over it and clipped to that. He pulled up what free rope there was,
passing it around his waist to provide friction if necessary.
“On belay!” he called.
“Climbing,” came the reply.
Lane had watched him carefully, but from below he could not tell much after a while. It seemed, in places, there must have been some trick—there was no way to climb—but with the rope tugging gently at him, he managed. It was steeper than it looked. He was slight, flylike. He should have been able to cling to the merest flaws. His foot slipped off a tiny hold. He somehow caught himself. He put his toe back where it had been, with less confidence. This part was very hard. He stared up, his legs trembling. The slabs above were sheer, gleaming like the side of a ship. Beyond them, a burning blue.
He was forgetting what he should do, struggling blindly, in desperation. His fingers ached. There was resignation heavy in his chest.
“Put your right foot where your left is!”
“What?” he cried miserably.
“Put your right foot where your left is and reach out with your left.”
His fingers were losing their grip.
“I can’t!”
“Try.”
He did as he was told, clumsy, despairing. His foot found a hold, his hand another. Suddenly he was saved. He began to move again and in a few minutes had forgotten his fear. Reaching Rand, he grinned. He had made mistakes. He’d been leaning too close to the rock, reaching too far. His moves had not been planned. Still he was there. A feeling of pride filled him. The ground was far below.
To the left, on a more difficult route, smooth, exposed, were two other climbers. Rand was watching them as he straightened out the rope. They were on an almost blank wall. The leader, hair pale in the sunlight, was flat against it, arms to either side, legs apart. Even in extremity he emitted a kind of power, as if he were supporting the rock. There was no one else on all of Tahquitz.
Rand turned from watching them. With a movement of his arm, he commented, “There it is.”
The forest was falling beneath them, the valley. Though still far from the top, they had entered a realm of silence. There was a different kind of light, a different air.
“The next part is easier,” Rand said.
The mountain had accepted them; it was prepared to reveal its secrets. The uncertainty was gone, fear of poor holds, of places where a toe stays only because of the angle at which it is placed, indecision—one move achieves nothing, there must immediately be another, perhaps a third. Hesitate and the holds vanish, draw back.
The top was level and dusty, like an untended corner of a park. Sitting on a rock in the sun were the two other climbers. They were in worn shirts and climbing pants, their rope and equipment lay near their feet. The leader, who was wearing tennis shoes, glanced up as Rand approached.
“I thought that was you,” Rand said. “How’ve you been, Jack?”
Cabot merely extended a leisurely hand. He had a broad smile and teeth with faintly jagged edges, of a lusterless white. His hair was rumpled, soiled, as if he had slept all night on a porch. He was amiable, assured. His voice had a certain warmth.
“The lost brother,” he said. “At last. Sit down. Want a sandwich?” He held one out, a graceful lack of deliberation in his movement. The sun glinted on his hair. His shoulders were strong beneath the faded shirt.
“I saw you struggling down there.”
“Have you ever been on that?” Cabot asked.
“The Step?”
“You own it, right? You bastard.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you.” There followed some scraps of song, Cabot singing as if to himself. “Some say that he is sinking down to mediocrity. He even climbs with useless types like Daddy Craig and me … Say,” he called to Lane who was ten feet off, not daring to join them, “how did he do? Did he manage all right?”
Rand was dividing the flattened sandwich.
“I asked everyone about you,” Cabot said. “Jesus. Not a clue. You know, I thought of you so many times. Really.”
He had been in Europe, in villages where the only telephone is in a bar and the walls of the houses are two feet thick. He’d spent the summer and fall there. The names of mountains every climber knows were now his own, the Cima Grande, the Blaitière, the Walker Spur.
“The Walker?”
“Well, we didn’t make it to the top,” Cabot admitted. He was hunched forward a bit as if in thought. “Next time. Of course, it only comes in shape every two years, if that. You want to do it?”
“Me?”
“You’ve been to France, haven’t you?”
“Sure. Who hasn’t?” Rand asked.
“You have to go. You’ve got to get to Chamonix. It’s more than you even dreamed. You go up the glaciers for five or six hours, you can hear the water running underneath. And the climbs!”
Rand felt his heart beating slowly, enviously. He felt unhappy, weighed down with regret. He turned to the second man,
“Did you go?” he asked.
“No,” Banning said, “I’m not that lucky.” He was in medical school, his climbing days were numbered.
Lane could not hear what they said, their voices were carried away by the wind. He could see them sprawled at their ease, the blond man leaning back and smiling, a piece of waxed paper waving near his foot. He was reminded of his mother and father talking when he had been younger, discussing things he was not meant to hear. There are conversations we are barred from, not one word of which can be imagined. He sat quietly, content to be near them, to have come this far.
Banning would become a doctor and disappear from climbing before he’d had his fill of it. Jack Cabot, it was hard to say. He was the kind of man who mapped out continents—climbing might not release him, might make him one of its myths. As for Rand, he had had a brilliant start and then defected. Something had weakened in him. That was long ago. He was like an animal that has wintered somewhere, in the shadow of a hedgerow or barn, and one morning mud-stained and dazed, shakes itself and comes to life. Sitting there, he remembered past days, their glory. He remembered the thrill of height.
“Who was that?” Lane asked.
“Back there? Oh, a friend of mine.”
They made their way in silence.
“Did you used to climb with him?”
Rand nodded.
“Is he good?”
“Pretty good.”
“He looked terrific.”
“Watch your step here,” Rand warned. He was moving more slowly. The slope of the rock had steepened. “I knew someone who fell right here.”
“Here? It’s easy,” Lane protested. “How could he fall?”
“He was running and he slipped.”
There were boulders far below.
“That’s the hard way down,” Rand said.
In Chamonix the aiguilles, the tall pinnacles, were covered with snow. The glaciers descended slowly, half an inch an hour, centuries deep.
4
BEHIND THE HOUSE WERE sections of piñon that had lain there so long the earth had taken their shape. The wood had hardened, fragments of a column shielding a world of ants.
Swinging the hammer in heavy, rhythmic blows, Rand was splitting logs. A forgelike ringing echoed as the wedge went deep and a clear, final sound as the wood came apart. The morning surrounded him, the sun spilled down. He was shirtless. He looked like a figure in medieval battle, lost in the din, in glinting planes of sunshine, dust that rose like smoke.
From the house, Louise was watching. Occasional glances, impatient, half-resigned, like a woman whose husband is intent on some ruinous, quixotic labor. Lane was in his room. He could hear the blows.
The car was gone, sold that morning. The sound of the wedge being driven was steady and unvarying. She went to the door.
“Hey, Rand.”
His head came up.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
“I’ll be finished in a while,” he said.
&nb
sp; At last it stopped. She heard the logs being piled against the house. He came in and began to wash his hands.
“Well, I always said I’d do that. You’ve got enough for the winter, anyway.”
“Wonderful,” she commented.
“You might need it.”
“I can’t even make a fire,” she said. He was drying his hands, brushing bits of bark from his waist. Suddenly she realized she had no way to remember this image. He was going to put on a shirt, button the buttons. All this simply would disappear. She felt a shameful urge to reach out, put her arms around him, fall to her knees.
They had been in a bar the night before. It was noisy, crowded. There was something he had to tell her. He was leaving, he said. She could hardly hear him.
“What?”
He repeated it. He was going away.
“When?” she asked foolishly. It was all she could manage to say.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Going where?” She wanted to think of something incisive that would hurt him, make him stay. Instead she murmured, “You know, I really liked you.”
“I’ll be back.”
“You mean it?”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. In a year. Maybe two.”
“What are you going to do, go back to climbing? Lane told me you met your old friends.”
“Friend.”
“Is he going with you?”
“No.”
“Well …” She was looking at her glass. She tried to force a smile and suddenly turned away.
“Are you all right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Louise …”
She was weeping.
“Come on …”
“Oh, forget it,” she said. Her nose was running.
“ …I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
Someone at the next table asked, “Is anything wrong?”