“But he survived?”
“Clearly.”
“Who rescued him?”
“No one rescued him,” Archie said. “That’s just it. He saved himself.”
“How?”
He gave a sick grin. “By letting her go.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Growing up with him, with someone who could do something like that. It’s been . . .” His voice trailed off.
“It’s been what?”
“Fuck it. Never mind. Let’s keep moving.” He turned and started walking again.
I dragged after him. My pants grew stiff with ice, making them even heavier than before. The temperature was plummeting, and if I was cold, Archie had to be miserable. Stuck in a freak snowstorm, he didn’t even have a jacket, just a dumpy hooded sweatshirt and some ugly beanie cap he’d pulled from his backpack. It had a walrus stitched on the front. “Archie, come on. This is stupid. We’re gonna die out here.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Is it worth it if we do?”
“Is it worth it?” Archie stumbled at that point and nearly went down. The flask in his hand went flying into a snowbank. I scrambled to retrieve it. “Look around us, Gibby. I already have nothing! My life, everything about it, is nothing!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means, at this point, anything would be worth it.”
The desperation in his voice was painful to hear, but before I could respond, Archie regained his footing. His sense of purpose, too. Shoulders square, his head held high, he marched forward, leaving bold depressions in the snow. The prints were his, large and unmistakable.
I did my best to keep up.
—
My best was far from enough. The snow fell faster, thicker, and I was continually smacked back by the storm sweeping over the mountain’s peak. It barreled straight for us, and I was no match for its building force, the pelting rush of ice and more. If climbing the Scramble in the rain had been Sisyphean, this struggle made me feel more like Icarus—a journey flawed more by delusion than difficulty, and not only was it clear we were destined to fail, failure was quickly becoming a matter of life and death.
It wasn’t anything I’d planned for, obviously, but I knew a lot about hypothermia—all the survival guides I’d read covered it, complete with gruesome examples throughout history: the Donner Party, who’d been stuck not far from where we were; the Antarctic Terra Nova expedition, in which the heroic Captain Lawrence Oates had sacrificed himself to the elements, only to have everyone else freeze to death anyway; and Oregon’s horrific Mount Hood disaster, which was almost too awful to contemplate. I’d also learned how in the throes of dying, people often tore off their clothes or sought to bury themselves in snow. Once your body started to fail, it seemed, there wasn’t much to be done about it. Prevention was key. Good decision-making, too.
But Archie was as stubborn as ever. He kept going, the colder it got, toiling like an ox, and at some point, I pulled on his arm. As hard as I could.
“We’ll come back,” I shouted over the roar of the storm. “We’ve got to get back to the others. Otherwise we’re going to die of exposure!”
He shook his head. “We’re almost there!”
“You don’t know that! We can’t even see the trail anymore! We’ll never make it!”
“Then go! I’ll find my own way back.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Why not? You said it yourself. You’re going to die out here. You don’t want that. So you should go. Here.” Archie reached into his backpack and pulled out both sets of car keys. He handed them to me, his fingers dark with frostnip. “Now you don’t have any reason to stay.”
“Arch . . . ,” I said.
“Go! Leave. I don’t need you.”
I stood firm. “I won’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m not your dad!”
Archie’s eyes flared hot, mean. “You know, Gibby, I’d respect you a hell of a lot more if you were.”
I threw the map at him.
The compass, too.
After that, there’s a part of me that wishes I’d done what he told me to do. That I’d possessed enough instinct or will for survival to abandon Archie on that mountain for my own self-preservation. That I’d somehow been able to make the right choice at the right time. But you know me—not only do I not make the right choices, I so rarely make any.
So what’s true is that he stayed on that mountaintop without me. That just as Captain Oates had stepped from tent to ice in one final act of self-determination, Archie turned and headed up that snow-covered trail, straight into the blustering storm. It was a death wish—no one could’ve survived those conditions, not dressed the way he was—and though I would’ve if I could’ve, I wasn’t physically able to follow him. Instead, I watched him go, disappearing into the wind and the whiteness, to be swallowed up by his conviction—which was something he had in excess and which I had never found.
What’s also true is that in the end, I didn’t choose to leave Archie.
What’s true is that he left me.
38.
IT’S SAID THAT the definition of insanity is attempting to do the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. But if that’s the case, then my attempt to get down that mountain safely in whiteout conditions during a freak blizzard wearing nothing but frozen track pants, a bloodstained T-shirt, and a leather jacket I’d stolen from a dead man must’ve been something far worse because I expected to die.
And I did it anyway.
I set myself to the task the way I approached every difficult or distasteful thing I’d ever done in my life—that is to say with a touch of avoidance and a whole hell of a lot of guilt. Clearly those were qualities I possessed in part from how I’d grown up, but I also think I was born that way. If my mother was flame, I’d always been ice, endowed not with a zest for expression or action but with a tendency toward stillness.
My father, my real father, as much as I knew of him, was similar—moody, sensitive, prone to shutting down. He’d met my mother after college while in the midst of an existential crisis. Not his first, I’m sure, or his last. His parents begged him to return to Rhode Island to attend medical school, but twenty-one-year-old Gus Gibson rebelled against their wishes, traveling instead to California where he wandered Kerouac-style up and down the Pacific Northwest with all his belongings shoved in a duffel bag. After a sun-soaked weekend spent at Reggae on the River, where he smoked hash, dropped acid, and fell in love with a dancing, green-eyed girl from Teyber, Humboldt became his natural resting place. He moved in with my mother, took up surfing, and wrote a lot of bad poetry, surviving, I guess, on what he made selling his driftwood furniture.
My mother likes to tell me he was prone to ennui. Or melancholy. Or any of those words that are meant to sound as if a person’s more attuned to the world than the rest of us who don’t go around feeling as awful as they do. I’d always taken that to mean he’d grown unhappy being tied down to an emotionally unstable woman and the screaming brat they’d produced. I also took it to mean he didn’t want to settle, which I can sort of understand even if it’s hard to sympathize with when you’re the brat in question.
Either way, medical school must’ve started looking pretty good after a while. I was barely out of diapers by the time he took off, the prodigal son returning home to become an internist, leaving nothing behind but promises as empty as the way my mother must’ve felt, being stuck having to raise the son of the man she wasn’t good enough for.
But in that way, I guess, I was nothing like my father. Because he’d given up and left, and I knew I never would.
—
When it rains it pours, and when it snows, everything turns to shit, I guess. God knows how long it took me, but
I made it back down the waterfall somehow, only to slip on the icy steps at the very bottom and screw up my left shoulder. Something crumpled inside the joint, like a cardboard box that had been stepped on. Later I’d learn I’d blown out the cartilage, but at the time, it was just one more link of misery in a whole daisy chain of failure.
I waded back through the blizzard, the wind slashing my face hard enough to draw blood. After crossing the meadow, I searched for what I could find of our food and camping gear. There wasn’t much. The snow was nearly a foot deep and everything left outside was buried in white, great swirling smears of it. I gathered what little remained, shoving it all into my bag.
Next, I staggered to the tent Rose and I had shared. My goal was to dismantle it, to bring it back to the others, but the metal stakes slipped from my grasp, too slick to pull from the ground. Unhooking the poles from the outer shell was equally futile, and my shoulder wasn’t the only body part unwilling to do what was needed; my fingers had gone completely numb. I thought they might be dying and ended up wrapping socks around my hands for grip, but they were wet in seconds, and still, I couldn’t grab anything or do anything so I just gave up and lit one of the camping stoves I’d found—a small single butane burner—and hunkered down with it in Mr. Howe’s narrow tent. Thank God for boasting. Knowing he’d taken it up Denali made me feel a lot better about sheltering in there.
Once inside, I warmed my hands and boiled snow and gulped a packet of instant soup before realizing how badly I needed to lie down. I knew better than to take off my clothes, but made an exception for my wet shoes and socks. I also remembered to piss in a water bottle because the books I’d read told me that the effort to heat urine in one’s own body was a waste of precious energy. Then I burrowed deep into Mr. Howe’s sleeping bag and rolled onto my back. Stared at the roof of the tent.
The storm grabbed the structure on all sides and shook it, a howling roar. I lay stiff, my breath puffing above me, too terrified to move. I was Dorothy in her twister, waiting for liftoff. But as the tent walls rippled and pulsed like crashing waves, my mind drifted from Dorothy to another girl: Archie’s lost aunt, little Laney, just eight years old, playing with her brother on the California coast only to be stolen from shore. My lungs choked, imagining her fear. Had she died with hope, with the belief that Archie’s father would save her? Or had she known what was happening as he set her free in a world she couldn’t navigate, turning back only to save himself?
Neither option brought comfort, but I knew I’d rather drown than know I was the cause of someone else’s pain. That was noble, wasn’t it? To think of others first? I’d always told myself that, but doubt chewed at the edges of my certainty. Maybe the truth was that I preferred death to guilt. It was hard to see anything noble in that.
The air grew colder and my mind sleepier. I placed my face as close to the stove as I dared, not caring what fumes I might inhale, so long as they were warm. I breathed and shivered and nothing changed. Every part of me ached. I wanted Rose. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was for everything I’d ever done wrong. And then I wanted to save her.
But even in my struggle to survive, my will to death was the greater pull, and I closed my eyes. Told myself to stop dreaming. I’d saved her before, yes, but mostly from herself, her own pain. I had no way of saving Rose from up here. Hell, I couldn’t even save myself.
DAY FOUR
39.
SOMEONE SHOOK ME. Slapped my face.
I groaned. Opened my eyes to darkness and sucked in corpse-like air.
“Ben,” a voice whispered. “Ben, wake up!”
“Is he okay?” someone else asked. “Tell me he’s okay.”
Hands were on my body, and I was pulled up to sitting. I cried out, my shoulder in agony, but my heart lurched, believing maybe I was being rescued or already had been rescued and just didn’t realize it and wouldn’t that be something? But no, it was only Avery and Clay, and they were filthy and freezing and they were somehow squeezed in the tent with me, only I didn’t know how or why.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, then squeaked with pain.
“Where’s Archie?” Avery asked. “We can’t find him.”
“Here.” Clay shoved something into my good hand. A tin mug, filled with something hot. It burned my fingers but I didn’t care. I inhaled deeply, letting the steam wet my face. The tent’s opening flapped and fluttered, and I caught a glimpse of dwindling daylight among the snow and wind.
I wheezed and sipped from the mug: instant cocoa mixed with instant coffee. Bitter, but necessary. I sipped more. Clay and Avery were sorting through the supplies I’d packed before falling asleep, gathering what else they wanted to take. Avery smiled when she saw the camera I’d kept for her, then crawled from the tent to check the others.
“Can you walk?” Clay asked me.
My head felt grainy, but I nodded. “I think so.”
“Good,” he said. “The storm’s eased off for now. It might start up again but the wind’s not as crazy at the moment, so we should get going as soon as we can. We’re sorry for leaving you here so long, man. It’s just, there was no warning, and with the snow and the cold—”
“I get it,” I said.
“—we weren’t able to get out until sunrise. Ave and I left when we could, though. I swear.”
I blinked. “What did you say?”
“I said we couldn’t get up here any earlier. I’m sorry. This whole thing, it’s so fucking shitty. The other three still have the fire going, but it’s pretty—”
“Did you say you left at sunrise?”
“Yeah.”
“What day is it?”
Clay cocked his head. “It’s Monday. What day did you think it was?”
“Monday? I thought it was Sunday still. Maybe early evening.” My hands shook, sloshing the drink on my lap. I’d slept all night apparently. “Holy shit.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“Don’t be. It’s just . . . shit.”
Avery ducked back in. She looked from me to Clay.
“Where’s Archie?” she asked again.
“Gone,” I said.
“What do you mean gone?”
The fear was already there, in her eyes. Avery knew, I think, before I said anything, but I told them what happened. How it had happened. That Archie was lost to us. That he’d lost himself because I sure as hell hadn’t chosen to give up on him. Because he wouldn’t stop looking for the money didn’t feel like the right explanation, but in the end, it was all I had.
“He’s Archie,” I said weakly. “He knows how to take care of himself. If anyone can survive up there . . .”
“It’s not him,” finished Avery. “We all know that.”
She was right, of course. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I knew she cared for him, but I couldn’t do it. I finished the drink Clay gave me and ate a protein bar, before scavenging Mr. Howe’s belongings for dry clothes, including his hiking boots and a pair of dry socks. He’d apparently run all the way down the mountain to save us in his water shoes. Clay had to help me change, which I didn’t bother to be embarrassed about. The boots were too big, but in truth, they felt amazing—warm and sturdy. I slid my jacket back on, and we crawled from the tent to help Avery.
Daylight or not, stepping into the open air nearly knocked me on my ass. The wind might have died down, but the air was sharp enough to water my eyes and frost my lungs. I followed the lead of the other two, although with one arm I was only half as useful. We wrapped sleeping bags around our bodies for warmth, hauling what supplies we could on our backs before tethering ourselves together with rope.
“It can be hard to see where you’re going,” Clay told me. Ice already dotted his brows, the tip of his nose. “But just follow me.”
I nodded. I was at the end of the rope, and the realization that Archie wasn’t there to make some sort o
f Human Centipede joke at my expense hurt worse than anything.
We shuffled off. I had a moment of flustered panic, believing I’d somehow forgotten the keys. Or the map. Or something else I’d meant to bring back. Something that mattered.
But I hadn’t.
“Hey,” I called out to the other two, as we resumed our shuffling, heading toward the main trail that would lead us down the mountain. “Hey!”
They both turned to look at me.
“How’s Rose?” I asked, and the strange thing was, I didn’t know why I hadn’t asked about her earlier. I hadn’t even thought to ask. I couldn’t explain it. My head was in a fog.
Clay glanced at Avery.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She’s with her brother,” Avery said.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“That’s all I know.”
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Then let’s keep walking.”
So that’s what we did.
—
Ours was a slow, mostly silent descent. I gazed at the landscape in awe—icicles dangling from tree branches, the deathly stillness of the white. The mountain was perhaps more wondrous than ever, now that I knew its full power. In less than twenty-four hours, more than two feet of wet snow had fallen, casting the Trinity Alps straight from fire season into the frigid depths of winter—a remarkable display no matter how you looked at it. And I had more than enough time to look—the hike down the icy mountain was endless. My admiration for the others swelled the steeper the snowy trail angled downward; I couldn’t imagine climbing up it.
Avery and Clay talked more as we neared the gorge, entering into the now-white canyon. They told me how they’d been able to keep the fire going overnight, but that we were stuck on the mountain for the time being. The earlier rain had caused a landslide, a massive wave of fallen trees and earth, effectively cutting off the access trail we’d come in on, and Tomás had said we couldn’t walk out from the south yet, because the drifts were too deep and he was worried about an avalanche. But now that the storm had stopped, Clay told me eagerly, there was hope that people would be looking for us.
When I Am Through with You Page 20