Ascent

by Roland Smith

  They were right. I couldn’t carry a backpack. My shirt felt like too much weight. I stuffed my pack with gear while Nick collapsed my tent and rolled it up—​something I would have had a hard time doing with one arm. When we were finished, Nick slipped the heavy pack over his shoulders and adjusted the straps.

  “Just follow the hoof prints and look for our campfire. We’ll keep it burning until you arrive.”

  “Thanks for carrying my load.”

  “No worries.”

  I watched him until he was hidden by the trees. The only things I had kept back were my water bottle, my headlamp, and my journal. I walked over to the ravine to give Alessia and Ethan a hand. Of course they wouldn’t let me and even barred me from going out onto the bridge because I couldn’t use both arms to balance myself. Except for Alessia and Ethan, everyone was gone. Once the ropes were unknotted and coiled, we returned to camp. I watched Alessia and Ethan pack until my guilt over doing nothing to help took me to the trail to look for donkey hoof prints, which turned out to be easy to find. The trail was clear, but boggy from the foot traffic leading down to the bridge from the north. It would be a difficult uphill slog. I returned to camp, where Alessia informed me that she was going to tape my arm to my side so I didn’t swing it while I walked. I got out of the mummy treatment by promising to keep my right hand in my pocket.

  “But if I see you wince one time,” Alessia said, “I will pin your arm, or wing, as Ethan calls it.”

  “Deal.”

  Ethan led the way. A half mile out, we came to a steep hillside with slippery switchbacks that did not seem to have an end. Alessia and Ethan stopped and pulled out their trekking poles. My poles were in my pack somewhere ahead. Not surprisingly, Ethan had a spare set and offered them to me.

  “He is only allowed to use one of the sticks,” Nurse Alessia said.

  Reluctantly, I handed one of the poles back to Ethan. “Are you still hauling those heavy come-alongs?”

  Ethan grinned. “I wish I was. We might need them to get up this hillside. I traded them for a donkey to replace the one Nick lost. It wasn’t the best deal I’ve ever made. The donkey was ancient, but Nick was grateful to have it.”

  The sun set behind the hill, and the forest went dark. Unburdened, I easily took the lead. A few yards ahead of them, I took my right hand out of my pocket, fully expecting Alessia to shout at me or, worse, wrap me up, but she said nothing. She either hadn’t noticed or she was too exhausted to care. My shoulder felt a little better now that I was moving it. The constant throbbing faded to a dull ache, interrupted by sharp stabs of pain every hundred steps, which I could live with.

  The trail was three feet wide, with a sheer drop off on the right or the left, depending on the direction of the switchback. I concentrated on the ten-foot swatch of headlamp light and muddy tracks in front of me. Rain dripped through the canopy, frogs jumped across the trail, insects dined on me—​which I ignored because I couldn’t swat them with my right hand and I had a pole in my left. There was no way that Nick could set up camp along here. He had either pitched his tent on top of the hill or at the bottom on the other side. I had looked at Nick’s topo map a couple of nights earlier. We had to traverse several giant hills like this before we reached Hkakabo Razi. From the top of one of the hills, we would get our first glimpse of the snow-covered peak.

  I glanced back to check for Alessia’s and Ethan’s headlamps. They had fallen way behind. In fact, they were on the switchback below me. I stopped so they could catch up. I knew I had been walking fast because I was a little out of breath. I unhooked my water bottle from my gear belt. As I put it to my lips, I had the distinct feeling that someone, or something, was watching me. I recapped the bottle without taking a sip. I wondered if it was one of those feelings Zopa was always talking about. The unseeable that lurks on the fringe of our perception. Like tiny spiders on our back. You can see it if you quiet your mind.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then looked again. Alessia and Ethan had rounded the corner and were headed directly toward me, maybe a hundred yards away, their headlamps bright in the darkness. I made a slow turn in place and stopped halfway around. It wasn’t a tiny spider. It was a tiger. The big cat was standing fifty feet away, its yellow eyes locked on me. He was carrying what looked like a small muntjac, or barking deer, in his mouth. We had seen several of the little deer during our trek. I willed myself to stand completely still. I was more stunned than I was afraid. The tiger’s fur was damp with rain. Ethan’s and Alessia’s lights were getting brighter, dancing on the trees. I didn’t warn them. The tiger was not a threat, and even if he was a threat, there was nothing we could do to stop it.

  “Thanks for waiting!” Ethan shouted from behind.

  I glanced at them. When I turned back, the tiger was gone.

  “Tiger,” I said.

  “No way!” Ethan said. “Where?”

  I pointed up the trail.

  “That’s why I don’t like being the caboose. By the time you come along, all the good stuff in front has been scared off. How big was it?”

  “Big. An adult.”

  “How long was it there?”

  “A few seconds, but felt like an hour. He was carrying a dead muntjac in his mouth.”

  “Aw, man! Are you serious?” Ethan went ahead to check for pugmarks.

  “That must have been remarkable to see,” Alessia said.

  “It was. I wish you had seen it.”

  “I too wish.” She touched my right arm. “It is not in your pocket.”

  “I know. It was too hard to balance on the slippery trail.” I gently rotated my shoulder. It stung, but it wasn’t bad.

  “Perhaps you should use two poles now.”

  “I think I’ll stick with one. It seems to be working.”

  “Pugmarks!” Ethan said.

  We joined him. He was crouching over several very large tiger prints in the soft mud. He held his index finger up. It was bloody.

  “Muntjac blood,” I said.

  “I still can’t believe I missed the cat. The pugmarks went up the bank, so there’s a chance we might see the tiger again on a higher switchback.”

  In the dark, it was impossible to tell how far up the hillside we had traveled. We’d been walking for hours. The next switchback might be our last.

  “I’ll take the lead,” Ethan said, and started off.

  Alessia and I followed at a much slower pace. I asked her if she had ever seen a tiger in the wild. She had been interested in the pugmarks, but not overly excited.

  “Yes. When I was a little girl in India with my father. He tranquilized three from elephant back and put radio collars around their necks to study their movements.”

  “So, riding Nagathan was not your first time on elephant back?”

  “No. And it was not nearly as comfortable as the elephants we rode in India. It is good to know there is at least one tiger left in Burma. I will write to my father’s colleagues when we return home.”

  Ethan had already started walking up the next switchback. His headlamp was moving toward us now.

  “It seems he is, how do you say it? Ditching us. Not leading.”

  “He’ll stop if he sees the tiger or pugmarks.”

  “But he will not continue working at the embassy,” Alessia said sadly. “He told me he was going away with you when we return to Yangon, regardless of whether my mother fires him or not. Which my mother would never do. She trusts him. She knows I will climb with or without him. She would prefer that he climbs with me. I was wondering . . .” She hesitated.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I was wondering, if it is agreeable to my mother, and I am certain it will be. I was thinking that I would like to accompany you and Ethan when you visit your father. I have always wanted to meet him.”

  Everyone wants to meet Joshua Wood until after they’ve actually met him. He is great-looking, smart, charming, a world-class climber, and a flake. Don’t get me wrong. I love my dad, but h
e has never really been there for me. Even when he bailed me out of the jam I’d gotten myself into in New York, he was helping me to help himself. It hadn’t worked out for him, because I hadn’t taken the final few steps to the summit of Everest. I still wasn’t sure why I hadn’t taken those steps. Was it for Sun-jo and his sisters? Was it for Sun-jo’s father, who had died saving Josh’s life on K2? Was I punishing Josh for not being there for me and for using me? It was complicated.

  “So, you do not think it is a good idea,” Alessia said.

  “No, no.” I took her hand. “It’s a great idea. I was just thinking about my dad. He’ll really like you.”

  She gave me a bright smile.

  “But first we have to run him to ground.”

  “Run him to ground?”

  “Find out where he is.”

  “And we have to climb Hkakabo Razi.”

  “It won’t be long now. I already feel the chill in the air.”

  “Really?”

  I laughed. “No, not really.”

  “Do you know what I feel?” She leaned toward me. Our lips touched. Just for a second, then she leaned back. “What I feel is your hand gripping mine as if there is no problem whatsoever.”

  She was right. I didn’t feel any pain whatsoever.

  “Do you want me to carry your pack?”

  “No,” she said firmly.

  “Pugmarks!” Ethan shouted from the switchback above.

  Thirteen

  There were three more switchbacks. Pugmarks across all of them. The tiger had taken a shortcut, bounding straight uphill carrying its kill. Even though the cat was long gone, I still had the spidery feeling we were being watched. When we reached the top, the rain really started coming down, along with lightning, crashing thunder, and wild wind. We walked, or slid, our way down the other side in ankle-deep water and oozing sludge, getting to Nick’s camp just shy of midnight.

  Nick was sitting next to the fire in a rain poncho, keeping the fire alive. The porters had built a rope corral at the edge of camp and were all asleep on the ground, wrapped in tarps, while the donkeys huddled near a tree, ears pinned to their heads, trying to stay out of the rain.

  “Wasn’t sure if you would make it tonight or not,” Nick said. “Nasty weather, but it will blow out soon. We corralled the donkeys so they wouldn’t get smashed by windfalls. Lucky we did, because we had a visitor a couple hours ago.”

  “A tiger?” Ethan asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Was it carrying a muntjac?” I asked.

  “It was carrying something when it streaked through, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”

  I told him about my brief encounter on the trail.

  “My guess is that it was a male tiger carrying dinner home to his mate and cubs. That is fabulous, but we need to keep this sighting among ourselves. Don’t even tell the porters. Luckily they were tucked in for the night when the tiger passed through here. Word will get out soon enough, bringing in poachers from hundreds of miles away to kill and part the cat out. We were lucky to see it. I’m concerned that it had no fear of us. Someday it will stop on a trail to gaze at a hunter with a rifle, and that will be the last human the tiger sees.”

  With that pretty image, I pitched my tent, crawled inside, and fell asleep to the sound of heavy rain.

  I woke at dawn to the call of birds, the buzz of insects, and the rustle of donkeys in the makeshift corral. I crawled out of my tent. The wet ground was misty from the cool rain. It looked like I was the first one up. Even the porters were still wrapped in their tarps, looking like colorful giant grubs. I stretched and found I could lift my right arm above my head with only a small jolt of pain.

  “Shoulder’s better,” Ethan said.

  I turned around and looked at his yellow tent. The flap was zipped closed. I didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Up here,” he said.

  I looked up. I still didn’t see him.

  “Here.”

  His head was sticking out of a camouflaged tent made out of mosquito netting perched in a tree ten feet above the ground.

  “You spent the night up there?”

  “Yeah, couldn’t sleep. I’ve been wanting to try this thing, but didn’t find the right tree until last night. The top is water‑proof, and I have a sweet little hammock. The sway from the wind took some getting used to. It wasn’t much different from sleeping in a portaledge on a wall, but the fall is a lot shorter and the ground is a lot softer if you get unhooked in the night.”

  “What else do you have in your magic backpack?”

  He put his head back into the tent, then poked it out wearing a pair of goggles that made him look like a big insect emerging from a knothole.

  “What are those things?”

  “Night vision goggles.”

  He rolled out of the tent, dangled from the branch for a moment, then dropped to the ground like a gymnast sticking a perfect landing. He took the goggles off and handed them to me.

  “I really wanted to see that tiger. I thought he might drop the muntjac off and pass through here again on his way back to the grocery store.”

  “Did he?”

  “I’m not sure. Batteries went dead after a couple of hours, but I did see something.”

  “What?”

  “A ghost.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said.

  “Yeah, me either. Let’s take a look.”

  I followed him over to the edge of the clearing, where he squatted down and started examining the ground.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Footprints.”

  “I don’t think ghosts leave footprints.”

  “Exactly. There!” He pointed at a shallow depression in the mud. It didn’t look like a footprint to me. It could have been anything. “One over here.”

  I looked. It was another nondescript depression.

  “Ah, here we go. Pugmark.”

  It wasn’t a tiger print unless the tiger was wearing sandals, and none of us were wearing sandals. We were all wearing waterproof hiking boots so our feet wouldn’t rot off our ankles.

  “I had this weird feeling that we were being followed or watched last night,” I said.

  “Me too. I didn’t say anything because I thought I was being paranoid. An occupational hazard from being in the corps. When you spotted the tiger, I thought that maybe that was what was giving me the jitters.”

  “Maybe this print belongs to one of the porters.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I don’t think so. They were all wrapped up for the night. They’re all wearing tennis shoes. And I recognized the peeping Tom.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Lwin.”

  “Lwin is dead.”

  “Apparently not.”

  I stared down at the footprint, remembering Lwin’s tattered sandals. I hadn’t paid any attention to the tread. Why would I? I hadn’t paid any attention to what the porters’ footwear was either.

  “They found Lwin’s body,” I said.

  “They found a couple of small pieces of a body and what looked like Lwin’s longyi.”

  “If the pieces weren’t Lwin’s, whose were they?”

  “I don’t know. So, your shoulder’s better?”

  “I think it’s fine.”

  “You’re lucky Lwin didn’t hit you in the face or neck.”

  “Come on! Lwin is . . .” I thought about it for a moment. “Your helmet?”

  Ethan nodded. “That rock hit pretty hard. Too hard for a falling rock, or someone hurling it at me from the top of the ravine. When you got bulleted in the shoulder, it was too big of a coincidence. And the donkey that died? It was the same one that bolted on the bridge. The same one that Lwin tried to panga to death after it kicked him. I started thinking about Lwin’s so-called death and the fact that he popped his girlfriend with a slingshot. When they found Lwin, they didn’t find his bag. One of the soldiers might have found our cash inside and swiped it, but why no
t just take the cash and bring the bag in as evidence? Lwin carried his panga and slingshot strapped around his waist within easy reach. I’m sure it was a mess, but they should have found something besides Lwin’s gaudy longyi. A soldier wouldn’t have stolen the slingshot or the panga. They’d have no interest in those primitive weapons. If Lwin set up his own death, he would need the slingshot and the panga so he wouldn’t actually die in the forest after he’d allegedly died.”

  In a weird way, Ethan’s scenario made sense. What didn’t make sense was Lwin sticking around to take potshots at us with the major on his trail, which he had to know about. If he was alive, he must be the runner who had cut the bridge. And why was he harassing us? We had done Lwin a favor by paying him full price for half the trip.

  “Why would he risk getting caught by following us around?” I asked.

  Ethan shrugged. “No idea. And consider this. There’s a possibility that he didn’t have anything to do with the guy’s murder in the forest. The victim might have simply gotten too close to Nagathan. I think that Nagathan would have killed us too if we had strayed within reach. Lwin might have seen the carnage and decided to exploit the guy’s death.”

  “So you’re sure it was Lwin.”

  “Not one hundred percent. The goggles aren’t that good. They’re a little fuzzy, and of course you don’t see things in color. But the pattern of the longyi matched Lwin’s. Those little snake things. I haven’t seen another like it out here, and Lwin had at least two other longyis just like it in his kit.”

  That didn’t mean that someone else wasn’t wearing the same pattern longyi, but it was an odd coincidence.

  “He was squatted out here for a half hour or so,” Ethan continued. “I thought about grabbing him, but I knew he’d be long gone before I could get to him. Nick came out of his tent with a flashlight to take a pee. Lwin knew enough to stay in place. He got up as soon as Nick was zipped back into his tent. He stood there for a couple of minutes, listening, I guess, then turned and walked into the trees.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but Lwin had a strange gait. It wasn’t exactly a limp, but his right foot kind of swung out a little every time he took a step. I meant to ask him about it, but I didn’t get a chance. My guess is that he broke the leg when he was young and it didn’t heal right. He didn’t exactly favor it, but whatever happened changed his natural stride.”