Devin explodes in a sneeze.
“Forget it,” Wilder says. “Blow your nose. Just don’t do it in plain air or you’ll be scolded.” He and Reddy exchange looks. Wilder gets up from his chair, says, “I’m going back. I’m finding a new route up Mysterium.”
* * *
DEVIN AND Sara had crossed a rockfall and were walking across a cone of old snow when Sara came to a standstill. She thrust an arm out to stop Devin, and crouched down to take a closer look at the print.
“Looks like a dog paw,” Devin said. “But what dog would be way up here?”
Sara looked at him to answer the question, thinking wolf, when right behind him she saw something move at the top of a bulge of rock. Like that—it was quick—the rock, but not a rock, softer than a rock; a frosty head of fur is what it was—she saw it, so clear it instantly was—the piercing viridescent eyes staring back at her. The creature blinked. Sara felt it like the shutter of a camera, the animal capturing her image in the instant, just as she seized a lasting picture of it. Then the leopard flicked its ears, and in a lavish wave of ample tail it vanished. A shrill cry rang through the cold air, like the wail of a baby. Devin jumped to his feet.
“A cat,” Sara said.
“Another cat?” he said.
“Not just another cat.”
Devin looked at the ground for pugmarks and scrapes.
“No,” she said. “It won’t be back to make a second appearance. Not with us here. A snow leopard rarely approaches a human so closely.”
* * *
WILDER SETS out alone the next day to reconnoiter the upper slopes. He carries in his backpack two bottles of water, a package of beef jerky, a hunk of cheese, a flashlight, an altimeter, a pair of socks, a bivvy sack, his brother’s ashes. He is rarely on this trip without his brother’s ashes. Wilder has shouldered them most days, will shoulder them every day in safekeeping, until he gets to the top of Mysterium. He sees his own enormity up there standing at the summit. He imagines a feeling of expansiveness and release, a freedom from the bondage of this purgatory, the anguished hold he is stuck in.
He walks on into the silence. The turf of the downs has been colored by summer sun and is scattered with rocks the size and color of headstones. The sky is overcast, and morning fog creeps out of the Gorge far below. He crosses the Sage’s river via an avalanche bridge, the water sounding a ghostly sound as it bores its way through the packed snow. He feels the violent tremor of the river beneath his feet. The wind intones an odd song of solitude. Sentinel peaks stand lonely and cold.
He reaches the end of the snowfield and hops back onto the rocks, crossing a slope of limestone boulders. On a patch of blown earth tufted with stiff grass he comes upon a scatter of bones, skeletal shards picked clean by their attacker and the winds. Horns dropped from the skull. A rib cage pursed whole about a hoary forb. Hollowed sockets, a roman nose, a jaw ossified in smile. Long yellowed incisors. Bharal, has to be, probably strayed from the herd and pounced on by a cat. Either that or eaten by a yeti, he thinks. He chuckles, and toes the bones.
He moves straight through the boulder garden of a wide couloir, climbing up and over the broken rocks. A massive wall shoots up into low-hanging clouds, and here Wilder is stopped. No other choice, nowhere else he can see to go. He crawls up through the stony debris, moving onto loose talus that tests his balance, having to sidehill gouge in the slipperiest of places. He moves up and into the snag of clouds, laddering his way through the cobble with blocky holds, until he breaks through the mist and finds himself standing along a dolomite spine, a spur he sees is linked to a farther ravine. He prances along the backbone, boots chinking in the stone, arriving to another slope of boulders. The pitch is steep, but with good cling, and an easy enough traverse takes him up the middle of the corridor. At the top of the coulee he sees little ahead but routine scrambling. He builds cairns along the way, and once he is high enough he spots it; a narrow catwalk of talus through a breach in the cliff: the approach to the upper face. It has to be. He continues up to the catwalk and moves through the rock’s chops, breathless, elated, and now he is past the narrow defile and the route seems too obliging to be believed. He crosses a piece of snowfield and mounts the tip of a spur and there it is right in front of him: vertical walls of rock that shoot straight up for miles, the mountain’s upper ramparts lobed with snow and streaked with blue ice. From here he sees a way to get onto the rocks on the far side of the ice cliff beneath the upper glacier, and from there up onto the snowy east shoulder, a skyline ridge. Easy enough. Yes, but then the buttress. The buttress, for the toughest. But we have found it, we have found the way. “We’ll see,” he hears Lucas say.
The wind picks up and wails like a succubus. He turns and rushes down the steep ravine, glissading the slope in the scree, setting off rockfalls and a cloud of spiraling dust in his wake.
* * *
WILDER TRUDGES back into camp, announcing his entry with an ear-piercing whistle. Porters and shepherds reposed around their cookfires perk in his direction. The goat herd scatters like a cued break of racked balls. He enters the mess tent, finds Karma and the sahibs solemnly seated about the table like counselors of war, the tent casting a devilish light on their faces.
“Cheer up,” Wilder says. He works for his breath. “Guess what? I found it! No kidding. I found the approach for us. Found a place for Advanced Camp too. A place to launch the assault. There’s a doable way up the face. You’ll see. Whoo-hoo!” he says, coughing.
“There is no break in Mysterium’s defense from the north or the east,” says Adams. “From reports reported heretofore.”
Troy and Reddy nod their heads; give their assessment. They had taken off early in the day, had walked around the prow as Wilder was headed off in his own direction. The two carried with them a rope, hardware, signaling devices, bivvy sacks, food, a stove. They were intent on finding a new line to the summit, even if it should take them several days, determined as they were not to have Wilder prove them unwilling or incapable. After plenty of rough going they finally got around the prow. But at the top of the rise they found themselves standing in front of a bergschrund, where the glacier had spilled dramatically away from the headwall. The deep crevasse was a yawning chasm of wobbly boulders and rubbled-over avalanche debris, with uncertain bridges of old cones of snow spanning the gaps. Above the glacier, glassy towers rose straight up into the clouds. Highly unlikely, technically. Walls terrifying. All of it terrifying. Who knows when those cornices of ice would again break loose and come booming down?
“It would be your life,” Reddy said.
Thwarted once more, they had returned to the camp.
“For many in the party it would be impossible climbing,” Troy says.
“A death trap, really,” Reddy says.
Wilder covers his mouth with a fist, works to stifle the grating in his chest. “Go the other way and have a look. You’ll see all anybody’ll need is the ability to negotiate some steep terrain. We can skirt to the far left side of the glacier. Though the upper buttress will be tough, I’ll admit it. But it’s something I know you can do or what are you even doing here?” He looks at Reddy and Troy. They stare back at him, not believing, or not wishing to believe that he has found a new route.
“Things may not always be seen correctly when looking head-on,” says Adams.
“We walked around the prow, got up high as one could see and from the best vantage point,” Reddy says. “Finding nothing any of us could manage without putting our lives at stake.”
“Yeah, and I went up and around the other way,” Wilder says.
“We shall all make the west route easily enough,” Adams says.
“This we know,” Wilder says.
“As leader I am responsible for our party. I must be prudent.”
After a long pause, Troy speaks. “I suppose we really ought to have a look and decide if Wilder’s route is realizable for everyone here.”
“Hey, you’ve got at least to do
that,” Wilder says. “Then you’ll see.”
“Why’s it matter so much which way we go?” Sara says, tucking a strand of hair around her ear. “We just want to get to the summit.”
“It absolutely does matter,” Wilder says. “Who cares if we do what’s already been done? Who the hell even wants to do what’s been done?”
“I don’t need my picture in the newspapers,” Sara says.
Vida chuckles. “You don’t?”
“I don’t need my picture in the newspapers,” Wilder says, imitating Sara in a shrill silly voice.
Sara’s face turns red as a hard slap on the flesh.
* * *
THE MONK will take a vertiginous path away from the party’s intended destination, his head aglint in the sun, stave in hand, a robe filled with the party’s bestowals. He will ramble the bristly grass to the spur and round the whaleback down to the river, crossing over splinters of bridges, waterfalls spewing along the way. He will move through sun and hail and snow and rain, through swarms of insects and billows of mist, from thin alpine air into thick humidity, traveling pasture into village onto temple, until he comes face-to-face with a brakeless transport truck freighted with melons, never to have the chance, as chance would have it, to stand in this lifetime before the head lama, the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the great holy man himself, the monk’s life having abruptly reached its grand conclusion and come to an end.
Now the mendicant leaves camp accompanied by Adams and Reddy and Troy, the three expeditionists setting out with rations and equipage, this time to have a look at Wilder’s gully and the ridge above it. At the base of the moraine the men part ways with their guest.
“I like to give you something for top of sacred mountain,” the monk says. His hands are fanned over the gather and spread of his robe, paunched as he is with his provender, his rudiments, and his optionals. “Only best, I believe, to leave there only nothing.” He bows and takes his leave.
“Hey,” Troy says, giving a holler. “Thanks for the story, by the way.”
The monk waves in accord, and walks on. After a few minutes he stops and turns to regard the mountaineers, watching as they scrabble over a sidehill of boulders until they are soon disappeared into the moraine. The monk nods his head. Then he turns toward the path diverging, his toga’d form a darkened cameo in the gloriole of the sun.
Adams and Reddy and Troy hew to the course Wilder has described. They climb the steep gully, following his cairns until they spot the catwalk, moving carefully along the defile through the jaws of the rock, stopping briefly before proceeding up onto a broad ridge of limestone and schist, a level site that provides a clear view of the mountain’s north face. A long tumulus of snow lies between the tablet of the highest summit and the lesser peak, Mysterium East. They tip their heads back and gape up at the massive white tabernacle rayed with blue ice, and at the quartzite stanchion that tops it, below the lower east summit.
Adams scans the escarpment with the binoculars. “An easy enough traverse over the rampart there, then under the ice cliff.”
“I agree, we can skirt the bottom of the glacier and then move along its far left bank to get up onto the higher rib,” Troy says. “That might be the place for Advanced Camp.”
“The upper buttress is what will test us,” says Reddy.
“But might be doable,” Troy says, nodding his head.
“The ridge between the east and the true summit will be no modest romp to the top,” says Adams. He regards the mountain as if trying to tame it.
Troy and Reddy look at him, and wait for him to speak, knowing as leader he has to agree.
After a spell of quiet, Adams concedes. “All right,” he says, not altering his gaze. “Without further ado, what the hell.”
They find a level spot on the soft schist of the broadened crest to stake the tent, safe enough from any rockfall or avalanche debris spilling down the steeply glaciered gully on either side of their new camp. The ridge fish-bones to a needled point that drops off to the river miles below, and above them its spear broadens to meet with a pitch of rock, an abutment hulled in ice rising to sheer cliff.
“Hallelujah,” Troy says.
Adams radios down to Karma, advising him to talk to the porters about transporting higher. “This appears to be it,” Adams says. “We camp here on the ridge tonight, then make preparations for Advanced Camp. Tell Wilder he was right. Give him the pat on the back he is so in need of.” Adams thumbs a button, and Karma’s response emits through a scratchy static. He hits another button. “Yes, fixed lines.” A voice crackles back. “No, I descend in the morning. Troy and Reddy will move on ahead.” A broken-up over-and-out is twice repeated.
They unpack the food bag and the water bottles, the cookstove and the kerosene. Troy hauls out tarpaulin, shovel, tent and poles as Reddy levels a swathe in the broken schist, kicking up thin plates of it with his boots. The spall chimes dully, reminding him of the strings of scallop shells his wife had hanging on the eaves, the sound of them clapping in the wind. Reddy takes hold of the shovel and extends the handle, using the tool to plane out a platform. The sun breaks through a cloud, spilling light on the ground in a spread of paling stain. The blade chinks into loose earth. Maggie’s ashes were the texture and weight of ground oyster shell. Heavier than expected, and more like tuff than cinder, is what they were. He and his son had stood on the dock and together hefted the receptacle and emptied the contents into the riffled currents of Puget Sound. The calcined remains took on the shape of a body as soon as the particles met the water, a buoyant form that resisted sinking. He and Devin stood and watched the white figure float and drift. They stood for a long time. Then the sky darkened and the rain came down to pock the water over and the tide carried the apparition out to the sway of the sea.
His friend puts a hand on his shoulder, sparking Reddy back to the task at hand. “Altitude getting to you?” Troy says.
“Just moving slowly,” Reddy says. “Conserving whatever I’ve got.” He grabs the poles, and together they stake up their nylon dwelling, tossing in the down bags and the sleeping pads.
Adams hunkers over the stove, his nose red and dripping in the cold. He adds a spill of fluid into the spirit cup and pumps the brass tank, making the stove wheeze like a little animal. He takes a matchstick out of its canister, flicks the match with his thumb, touches the fire to the burner head, averting his face as the stove erupts in a whoosh of blue flame. He sets the pot of water onto the top ring for tea, and then again for instant soup, and again for more tea to follow.
The three sit cross-legged on a ground tarp as the water heats only nearly to a boil, watching Mysterium toss off a lenticular cloud she has piked on her platinum helmet. The saucer-like mass drifts out among the encircling mountains, the vapory rotor cloud below it portending turbulent air. They should put the rainfly over the top of the tent tonight, they agree, but for now they recline in the twilight and the whisper of the cookstove as they drink their hot drinks and dinner on rye crackers and smoked fish, on pemmican and sweet onion and dried figs. The peaks begin to fade out into thick dark cloud, and too soon it begins to sleet: a sudden pestering of ice pellets that smites their coats and their tent and spurs them into activity. They put hoods up, cram a few last bites into their mouths, stuff the rest of the food back into the stuff sack, and launch their packs and themselves into their small nylon abode. Boots come off, headlamps go on, sleeping pads and down bags are rolled out. Adams settles the cookstove in the tent’s vestibule, stokes it to heat water for more tea.
“Almost cozy,” Troy says.
“Thou shalt not spill,” Adams says.
“Nor eat raw onions again,” says Reddy. He takes his cap off and combs his fingers through his thick black hair, scoring it into greasy crevasses. His dark beard is trimmed and the whiskers sprinkled white, as opposed to Troy’s reddish beard wiry and grown full, as opposed to the ruts and gullies of Adams’s weathered face always daily shaved.
They empty their cups and slide deep into their sleeping bags. Adams takes the spot on the door side of the tent. He pillows his coat into his stuff sack, and curls onto his side and shuts his eyes to the outer dark. In the darkness within he imagines the bed in his house, the pliancy of the mattress, the softness and warmth of his wife, hot milk, cat purring, the furnace on. Wet snow falls softly upon the tent, reminding Adams of the pattering of Hillary’s delicate white feet. His breathing turns steady and even, and he falls quickly into a deep sleep. Soon his respiring changes, the pattern altered dramatically, becoming erratic, with a panting that increases in speed and intensity, followed abruptly by a protracted spell of dead quiet. A long pause before the breath finally resets, and the violent huffing begins all over again as the cycle repeats.
“Cheyne-Stoking,” Reddy says, his voice hushed.
“I know what it is,” Troy says. “Just didn’t know what it was called.”
“We won’t wake him.”
“Sleep’s too precious. If I have an attack of it do not wake me.”
Adams continues his oscillating ventilating, his breathing alternating between crescendo and diminuendo, as he dreams his altitudinous dreams.
“Speaking of sleepmates,” Troy whispers, “I wonder if my daughter and your son are behaving themselves in the tent tonight?”
“Please,” Reddy says. “I do not wish to picture certain things.” He pulls the wool cap down to cover his ears, and rolls onto his side to face the cold wall of the tent. He says his goodnights and closes his eyes, hoping sleep will be kind and overtake his fatigue. His body feels heavy as a magnet weighted to the ground, but his thoughts flurry about like flakes of snow. He thinks of his son, the youth and vitality that are lost on him; Devin not wise enough to really know what love is. As if I should know it myself, he thinks. Reddy heaves a breath of weariness. He has resigned himself to forgetting about romance and affairs past; what is any of it now but abandoned fancy and piddling story? But at times during the night he is helpless, as images and scents of what he had once so desired come to him unbidden. When yearnings would wake him he would touch himself. He would wonder, how many years before the hardness in me is gone? At the moment, he thinks, I long only for a decent night’s sleep.
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