Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  Tumbling and twisting, my head comes up one last time. This time instead of screaming I have the presence of mind to inhale as deeply as I can. What I draw in is mostly cold spray. Snow is porous, I'd once learned in an avalanche-safety class during my guiding days. You can breathe for a few minutes at least. If you don't get it packed down your gorge. I manage to put one glove over my mouth as I'm again yanked down deep for the finale.

  Abruptly everything stops. The blows stop coming. The noise is gone. So is the light. The only thing that doesn't stop is my panic. It's increasing in speed with every beat of my heart. Someone's lit the Rat on fire; he's shrieking and clawing and biting in my chest. And the pressure is immense—thousands, maybe millions, of pounds of force-compacted water-weight is pressing in on me.

  I sense that I'm upside down. My left hand is still over my mouth, wedged there now like a gag, but my right arm has been torn away somewhere to the side. Neither will move even an inch. The pain coming from the compressed disks in my back and the screaming tension in the muscles of my quadriceps and stomach alert me to the fact that my feet have been pulled around behind my head, bending me into an inverted U. I make a conscious effort to open my eyes. I see nothing but black. I know I'm in deep.

  But there's no telling how deep. With the amount of snow that had come down and the length of the ride, it could be ten feet or more. Twenty. Even thirty or forty. Another recollection comes back from avalanche-safety classes—how often victims are buried so deep that it isn't until late in the summer before bodies can be retrieved. Sometimes it takes a couple of warm summers to melt their graves away and pry their frozen carcasses from the snow.

  My first instinct is to howl in fear. To rant and babble. To pray. Worse than the pain is the pressure, the unbelievable weight of all the snow. And worse still is the way it's squeezing my ribs. I can't breathe. I try to move my glove away from my mouth but the snow holding it there won't budge. Not even a millimeter. Cement.

  A fresh spasm of terror writhes through me. What breath I can draw is in tiny, shallow pants that become shallower still with each weak exhalation. I can feel the snow around my face turning to ice from the heat and moisture. Forming itself into what's known as an alpine death mask. God God God God runs through my brain like a high-speed chant.

  A scream builds in my chest even though I don't have the breath to let it out. My mouth opens wide involuntarily, in a jaw-tearing rictus, but no sound emerges. I can taste the leather palm of my glove. Tears begin to melt through the snow that's pressing against my eye sockets. The drops of salt water crawl up and over my forehead, proof that I'm upside down. God God God God is now going ten times faster than the raging beat of my pulse.

  It's still repeating, but growing fainter, when I think I hear a soft crunch. It's hard to tell what's real and what's not. The mantra has been blessedly slowing, growing quieter in my head and becoming almost soothing. The wetness that's been running from my eyes up to my forehead and under my ski cap is so warm that it burns. For some reason I welcome the sensation. The pain of my hot tears is so gentle compared to everything else I'm experiencing.

  Crunch.

  The awful ache that's been racking through my spine and limbs is going, too. I'm not as much trapped by the weight of the snow anymore so much as I'm embraced by it. It's becoming womblike, a swaddling hug.

  Crunch! The sound is a little closer now.

  It's so easy to let go. So much easier than holding on. So much easier than staying and fighting. It's a little sad, giving up like this, but not too bad. More wistful. Sort of like when I left home at sixteen—against my parents' strident wishes—and took off on a climbing tour of Patagonia. “Let him go,” Dad said. Mom just cried. It feels like I'm pulling away from the curb in a slow wreck of a car that's overloaded with packs and gear and old, long-dead friends. Even my old beast Oso is in the car, hanging his massive black head out a backseat window and letting the sticky ropes of his drool start to swing onto the rear fender. My hand is raised out a front window but I'm not really looking back. Not wanting to see any sad faces getting smaller behind us. Just moving my hand in the air. There's excitement ahead. Mountains to climb. Later, Rebecca. 'Berto. Mom and Dad. Ross. I'll catch you later. I know I will.

  CRUNCH!

  Something hard and sharp bites my knee, which is stretched over my head and feels about a million miles away. The pain jerks me half the distance back. Then there's a strange scrabbling on my thighs, moving down toward my groin. Like claws tearing at numb flesh. Ripping at what's now nothing more than refrigerated meat. The scrabbling stops as I hear a high-pitched yelp and a heavily muffled voice yell, “Mungo! Get back!”

  Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

  The shovel blade starts biting around my legs. Then I feel hands tug hard at my knee. More bites. I can picture a blonde girl in a deep hole in the snow digging frantically. All around her is a broken moonscape of crushed white debris. A wolf is pacing the hole's edge, trying to jump in with the girl but being pushed back with elbows, the shovel's handle, and curses. The girl's crying and swearing and scraping at the bottom of the pit. And I'm being pulled back against my will, drawn in, but the snow holds me with a very determined grip. More warm water is rolling from eyes to forehead and up onto my scalp. Let go. Let go. C'mon. That's enough.

  More bites. One hard between the legs but I'm beyond caring, beyond feeling it hurt. I sense the blade chopping at my stomach and, a moment later, my chest. It seems to be going on for hours. Enough, Cali. Don't bother. Let go. I will be gone anyway by the time she gets down to my head. Too deep. Too far. But I find myself almost caring, almost wanting her to reach me, if for nothing else than because she's working so hard. There's a spark of hope, a brief desire to stop the rattletrap car, but it would take too much effort to blow it into a flame. Once again I'm struck by how much easier it is to let go than to hang on.

  But the best things are hard. That's what climbing is all about. Kicking Death in the face when he grabs at your ankles, bony fingers clutching from billowing sleeves. The best things are worth fighting for.

  The realization makes my teeth grind together before a new attempt at a scream opens my jaw. And I wish I hadn't come back. All the panic returns. Fight, Ant! Fight, you weak-willed son of a bitch! With an effort greater than anything I've ever exerted on a cliff face, I struggle to control my breathing. Try to stop the rapid, useless pants and the racing of my heart.

  The blade chops at my exposed throat. Then somewhere just underneath my chin. So close, but I can't move a muscle. My forehead and cheeks are gripped by the mask of ice caused by my exhalations. Suddenly the chopping stops and gloved fingers are tearing away the ice from my face.

  The light sears my eyes. I'm not sure if this is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, but it seems too bright to be the cloud-wrapped daylight I'd left so long ago. I blink but nothing will clear the liquid of mingled tears and melted slush that films my face. My lungs, though, fill with sweet, dry air.

  It takes a long, long time for Cali to clear enough snow so that I can move even my head. My right arm is buried deeper, outstretched beneath me, and my legs are still locked almost behind me and uphill in the frozen cement. But finally I can see and hear and breathe.

  The pit is a jagged hole more than six feet deep with more snow sloughing down from above. My wolf's face peers down at me as she circles the rim. Her ears are all the way forward and her tongue droops halfway out of her mouth.

  Cali is sobbing as she digs, with sweat running down her cheeks and dripping from her hair. Mungo's whining is a constant hum and she keeps jumping into the pit to lick at my face and throat. Cali has to force her back several times with gloved cuffs to the wolf's shoulders and head.

  “Thank you,” I say, spitting snow and lifting my head. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” I can't seem to stop. I'm ashamed of the tears that now roll to make stinging tracks over my temples and toward my ears but I'm as helpless to control them as I am to control m
y gratitude.

  “Shh,” Cali whispers as she works, the sound coming out as almost a grunt. “Shh, Anton. Be quiet.”

  A little later she tries to lift me up. My arms are both free now, back-paddling against the pit's walls, and she's standing astride my arched chest and lifting at my shoulders. She manages to raise me to a sitting position. I'm clawing weakly at the snow above my still-encased legs for some sort of purchase when she lets go. My torso flops back down, sending a new shriek of pain running up my spine—my vertebrae clacking like a dropped stack of dominos—and ripping through the muscles of my stomach. For the first time I wonder if I'm paralyzed.

  Cali apologizes and climbs back over me to dig around my legs. When she frees them I slide headfirst into an upside-down heap in the bottom of the pit. My toes and fingers are tingling as if a thousand fire ants are sinking in their teeth.

  It takes a long time, but she manages to right me. Slowly my limbs begin to work. I'm not paralyzed, I realize. My back's not broken. But something else seems to be. Not any bones or tendons but something in my head. Something in my soul. I can't believe I'd almost given up. I can't believe I'd been so weak.

  “You nearly chopped my head off,” I tell her after she helps boost me out of the pit.

  “Let me see.”

  I tilt back my head and she studies the wound on my throat. Her fingertips come away a little bloody but not streaked with too much red.

  “It's just a scratch,” she says, and begins laughing.

  We're sitting in the snow next to the pit that had been my prison and torture chamber. And very nearly my grave. It's almost at the bottom of the snowfield, meaning that the avalanche had run more than a thousand feet as it picked up speed and material. I can see the fracture point far above us. The slab that cut loose beneath my feet must have been fifteen feet thick. Cali is sitting so close to me that she's almost astride my ankles. Her green eyes are enormously wide and the smile on her red-streaked face is crooked.

  “Jesus, Anton. I didn't think I'd ever find you. You popped up a couple of times in the middle of the slide but I couldn't keep track, it was moving so fast. If it hadn't been for Mungo . . .”

  She'd already told me that it had been Mungo who started digging before Cali was even able to pick her way down the slope. Mungo was actually moving toward the slide before it even came to a complete stop. The rope leash I'd anchored her with had been bitten in half—not gnawed, but sheared with a single bite. She'd sniffed around for only ten or so seconds in the still-settling debris before she began pawing madly at the snow.

  I seize the ruff of the wolf's neck and gently shake her. “Thank you, girl. Good girl.”

  She lets out a low moan and sweeps the air with her tail.

  Without thinking I grab the back of Cali's neck, too, and pull her face into my chest. I almost pull her to my mouth. She leans forward willingly, turning her cheek to press it against me. “Thanks, Cali.”

  She'd come down the slope knowing someone was shooting. Knowing the shots had started a massive avalanche, and knowing she, too, could be caught in the slide, or trigger another. She'd risked her life for nothing but a meager hope of saving mine. But strangely no more shots had come her way. Whoever had been firing the gun had been swallowed by the mist as I'd been swallowed by the snow. He hadn't stuck around to finish the job. And that wasn't smart, because now that my strength's coming back, I know without a doubt that I'm going to finish him. Bury him. The humiliation I feel for having given up only pumps up the volume of my building rage.

  I'd been the target this time, not Cali. McGee's prophecy has come true. I don't know for sure who'd drawn the bead on me—at least I don't have any proof yet—but Myron Armalli, with his abortive experience as a ski patrolman, would sure as hell know a lot about triggering avalanches.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE LITTLE VICTORIAN HOUSE feels way too small inside. Like the walls are slowly moving in, the ceiling dropping down an inch each time I blink my eyes. I want to be outdoors, where I can sense the upward pull of the sky and gulp lungfuls of fresh air. But I endure it so that they'll think I'm all right. That everything's just fine.

  An entry hall the size of a walk-in closet leads either into a living room, into a cramped kitchen, or up a narrow flight of stairs to a second floor. The tiny living room is furnished with a pair of oversized slipcovered chairs and a matching couch. The three pieces are crowded with chunky pillows. McGee has sunk so deep into one of the chairs that I'll probably have to use my truck's winch to get him out. The other chair embraces Sheriff Buchanan's large backside. Cali and I sit side by side on the couch, with Lester getting stroked on Cali's lap. The cat glares up at me while wrinkling his nose disgustedly at the lupine scent on my clothes.

  “You should get checked out at the hospital,” the sheriff tells me.

  “I'm fine.”

  McGee is watching me with his wet, assessing eyes. In his gaze I sense something beyond the normal measuring of what's going on in his protégé's head and heart. Concern, I think. I'm not sure if it's for my well-being or for the office's.

  On the wall facing me is the framed cover from an old issue of Life magazine. The ash-streaked face of a man is shown with a burning forest behind him. “The West on Fire!” the caption reads. The date of the issue is August 1974. I recognize the man pictured there from the cover photo of Smoke Jump. The father Cali never knew.

  Above the fireplace's mantel is a battered Pulaski—a sort of combination shovel and ax, used by smoke jumpers and Hot Shot crews for cutting fire lines—that could have belonged to either Cali or her dad. Law-school casebooks and novels teem on the full-length shelves running over two entire walls, along with trophies and plaques honoring Cali's achievements on slalom runs. There are candid pictures of her and her mother, photos her mother must hate. In each of them the actress is caught in a rare awkward moment. In one her mouth is open as if she's speaking to someone out of sight. In another her eyes are closed. In a third she's caught at an unflattering angle that shows lines of flesh beneath her chin.

  “I've talked to the rangers and they've come up with nothing,” the sheriff is saying. “It was probably too late by the time they got word. The tourists that go to the Taggert Lake parking lot usually just drive in, snap a few pictures, and leave. They couldn't find anyone who even remembered seeing your truck, Agent Burns. They say they'll keep asking around, though.”

  It had taken us a long time to stagger back to the Pig. Without skis—mine were buried somewhere beneath a thousand tons of snow and Cali had abandoned hers up on the ridge—we postholed through knee-deep snow like drunken cowboys for much of the way. When we finally made it down, the empty lot in which we'd left the truck in the predawn hours was half-full of cars and RVs. I used the cell phone to call the rangers and the sheriff and then started canvasing the crowd myself. People had shied away from me, not liking something they saw in my manner or in my eyes. In any event, I'd met with no better results. No one had noticed Armalli's Ford F-150 pickup. No one had seen a big Teton County Sheriff's SUV.

  Before I can formulate a civil way to put it, McGee bluntly asks for me, “Was Charles Wokowski on duty this morning?”

  Buchanan stiffens in her chair, a scowl sharpening her matronly features and tone. “He supervised the swing shift, Mr. McGee. Midnight to ten A.M. I saw him myself when I came in this morning at nine.”

  McGee looks at me with his shaggy eyebrows raised high as he rolls his cane back and forth between his spread legs. Wondering if I'm disappointed, I guess. And I am. Wokowski is undoubtedly in the clear now. For this, at least. The faint etch of his name on my suspect list has faded completely. There's no way he could have hiked two hours, fired either at me or the slope, and gotten down and back to town by nine o'clock without anyone taking note of his absence.

  “And I think you owe him an apology, Agent Burns,” the sheriff adds. Her voice is stiff with straightforward Western reprove.

  After meeting her gaze for a m
oment I nod slowly in agreement.

  I still don't like him. I'm still feeling the sting of his insults. And I still think he's pursuing Cali too hard even if it's not with criminal intent. What about the old man, Cali's defendant, falling down some stairs shortly after Jim lost track of Wook? But I don't allow myself to dwell on it. Now, more than anything, I want to find Armalli and make him pay for burying me beneath that slope.

  There's a tentative knock at the door. Cali starts to get up to answer it but both the sheriff and I simultaneously shake our heads at her. Being smaller and quicker, even when this stiff and sore, I beat the sheriff into the entry hall.

  Standing on the porch is Bill Laughlin, Cali's self-appointed uncle, dressed in jeans, boots, and a short-sleeved Western shirt. I open the door.

  “Heard about the avalanche,” he tells me in his laconic manner, staring down at me without smiling. “Came over here straightaway.”

  “Cali's fine. Me, too. But thanks for coming.”

  With more than expected gruffness he says, “You should've known better than to take her up to that aspect. Even in weather like this, it could slide till July. You should've known that.”

  Rebuffed, I back away from the door and motion him in. He's right. I should have known better. Especially after I dug that pit and saw the signs. And I sure as hell shouldn't have assumed it was only Roberto following us.