Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

  The first raindrops fell on their sprinting forms as they found the shelter of the trees. They passed the tree that had been struck, smelling its charred wood, the scent strangely clean, and continued until the forest thickened, dark with low boughs. Josie stopped and Paul and Ana gathered around her, and the three of them, out of breath, sat down against the wide trunk of an ancient pine.

  “Can’t we just stay here?” Ana asked, and Josie thought it very possible they could stay there, at least for a spell, in hopes the storm might pass. As she was contemplating this, though, the rain came heavier and a gust of cold wind shot through the trees. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, and the rain drenched them in seconds. She looked down at Ana, who was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Her eyes were wide and her teeth began chattering. No, Josie thought. No. Only one option. She took off her own shirt. “Let me put this on you,” she told Ana, and Ana gave her a horrified look.

  “Put it on,” Josie said firmly.

  Ana threw the shirt over her head and it draped awkwardly over her torso and rested across her knees.

  “You’re going in just that?” Paul asked, nodding toward Josie’s white bra, a utilitarian style with a tiny fringe of lace.

  “I’m fine,” Josie said, mistaking his statement for one of concern. He was embarrassed for her, she realized. He didn’t want his mother running across a mountain trail in a bra.

  “Let me see that map,” Josie said, asking Paul for the hand-drawn rendering he’d made when they’d begun. Josie wasn’t sure what she expected to find on it, but she had begun to think their forward push was ill-advised. They were heading further into the storm, into territory they knew nothing about, but if they turned back, no matter how long it took or how wet and cold they got, they could be sure to find the town. Paul hesitated for a moment, then a grave look overtook his face. He pulled the paper from his pocket, unfolded it and hovered over it, protecting it from the rain.

  Above, two jets collided. There could be no other explanation. Josie had never heard thunder so loud. The raindrops grew still bigger. Her children, already soaked, somehow grew wetter, colder. Josie estimated the temperature was in the high fifties and would drop ten degrees in the next hour.

  Now she looked at the map, and though it was as rudimentary as the one he’d copied it from, showing only a meandering trail leading to an oval lake, there was that tidy rectangle next to the oval. It had to be some kind of structure, she thought. Even an outhouse would be life-saving.

  “You’re sure about this?” she asked, pointing to his drawing.

  “What?” Paul said. “That? It was on the original map.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  She knew her son would have taken the task of map-drawing with the utmost seriousness, and now, if he was right, the box on the hand-drawn map might save them. It was far closer than going back to the trailhead—miles closer. It was just around a wide bend in the trail.

  “You guys rested?” she asked.

  Neither child answered.

  “We have to run again,” she said. “We have to run until we get to the lake and the shelter. Do you understand? We’ll go in stages. We’ll run from point to point and we’ll rest when you need to rest. Okay?”

  Above, a planet popped like a balloon.

  “Can you guys be brave?” Josie asked.

  Paul and Ana did not hesitate. They nodded vigorously, wanting to be brave, knowing there was no choice but to be brave, that there was nothing greater than being brave. Josie knew, then, that better than searching for a person of courage—she’d been on this search for years, dear god—better and possibly easier than searching for such people in the extant world was to create them. She didn’t need to find humans of integrity and courage. She needed to make them.

  A private smile had overtaken Ana’s face.

  “What?” Josie asked.

  “I can’t say it,” Ana said.

  “Say it. Doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s a bad word I think,” Ana said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Shitstorm,” Ana said, and Paul laughed, his ice-priest eyes smiling, lit from within.

  “It is a shitstorm,” Josie said. “This is a shitstorm. Are you ready to run through this shitstorm?”

  They grinned and took off again. They ran through the stand of trees and when the trees ended and the trail was exposed for another hundred yards, they saw another yellow marker and scrambled to it. The rocks on the path were wet now, and Ana slipped on one, and went down, gashing her leg against the scree. Lightning lit the world in slashing blue light but Josie didn’t pause. She picked up Ana in mid-stride and carried her chest to chest until they reached the next small forest.

  By the time she was able to put Ana down, Josie’s back had shifted. Something was very wrong. She couldn’t breathe. She set Ana down and lay on her side, trying to find a workable way to bring air into her body. A slipped disc. A punctured lung. Broken rib. Anything was possible.

  “What happened?” Paul asked.

  Josie couldn’t speak. She raised a finger to ask for time. Now both children were staring at her, Ana with her mother’s wet shirt draped over her like a smock. Josie looked up into the treetops, the black fir silhouettes against the sky, angry and grey like an ocean storm.

  Josie slowly regained her breath and when she was able to sit up again, she found that Paul had torn a strip from the bottom of her shirt, the shirt now worn by Ana, and had used the strip to tie Ana’s leg with a makeshift bandage. It looked like something you’d find on a WWI battlefield, but Ana was caressing it, humbled by its grandeur. An oval of blood emerged from within and Ana’s eyes widened.

  Josie looked up the trail and thought she could see, just beyond one more stripe of trees and over a low ridge, the clearing where the lake and shelter might be. She stood, very much afraid she might not have the strength, or that the act of standing would make whatever had happened to her far worse. Though she was wrecked, and now noticed that her legs were bleeding in a dozen places, she could breathe and was reasonably sure she could run again.

  “She can’t run,” Paul said, indicating Ana.

  “Is that true?” Josie asked her. Ana’s eyes welled up and her chin quivered. Josie looked down to see that Ana couldn’t put weight on her right foot. Josie examined the leg up and down and felt no fracture, but when she put the lightest pressure on the bandage Ana wailed. “You twisted it. Nothing broken,” Josie said, and now Ana’s eyes flooded. “Okay. Wrap yourself around me,” Josie told her, “like a monkey.”

  Ana threw her arms around her, burying her tiny shoulder in Josie’s neck. When Josie stood again, now carrying forty extra pounds, her back roared in protest.

  “Ready, Paul?” she said.

  “Just to the next trees?” he asked.

  Ahead lay a few hundred yards of dirt and scree cutting across open valley, utterly vulnerable.

  “Exactly,” she said. “You run and I’ll be right behind you. Don’t stop until you get there.”

  “Now?” Paul asked.

  “Now,” Josie said.

  They ran, and Josie ran with one arm draped around Ana’s bottom, her other arm feeling her way forward, ready to break their fall. She expected to fall. She’d never run carrying Ana like this, on a wet path strewn with loose rocks like this, with pain like this. Every step sent a sharp stab of steely light through Josie’s spine and down her leg. Ana’s weight was exacerbating whatever it was Josie had done to her back, but she couldn’t slow down on the open ground. She had to catch up with Paul, who was suddenly moving with effortless speed and agility. Josie watched him leap and land, thrilling in his agility and courage.

  As if to punish her for her moment of pride, the sky ripped open, end to end. Paul fell to the ground, and Josie dropped to her knee. No earthquake, no tornado could be that loud. Josie had lived almost four decades and had never heard a storm like this, had n
ever known a sky this punitive.

  They rose and ran again and made it to the next forest. Josie followed Paul to a spot against a dead pine trunk. They sat side by side like soldiers in a foxhole, heaving. Ana was still attached to Josie’s torso, her matted head in Josie’s neck.

  “You cold?” Paul asked her, nodding at Josie’s bra, her mottled skin.

  “I’m fine,” Josie said. She was soaked with cold rain, and the cold wind was cutting through her as they rested, but she had felt warm while running. The pain, though, overwhelmed her senses.

  “We’re beating this,” Josie said. “You see that, right?”

  Paul nodded, serious in his acknowledgment, as if his mother was confirming something he’d begun to suspect and had hoped was true. They were moving, fully inhabiting the beautiful machinery of their physical selves, and they were outwitting the unthinking brute power of the storm.

  “We just have to get around that bend, I think,” Josie said, pointing ahead. Paul took out his map, and pointed to a wide arc his pen-drawn path made just before it reached the lake.

  “I think we’re close,” he said.

  A different kind of thunder overtook the air. It was as loud as the sky-cracking they’d heard before but this was coming from up the trail. It was more gradual, a growing roar, sounding like rocks, a thousand rocks moving together.

  Josie stood and looked up the bend of the trail. She saw nothing. Then a wave of dust came from behind a bulge in the cliffside. She had never heard or seen an avalanche but she knew this was an avalanche, not a thousand feet ahead. After the strangely orderly roar of it ended, the valley was quiet, as if resting after its exertion. Josie had no idea what to do. To retreat was impossible for all the reasons she’d arrived at earlier—the kids would suffer, it was too cold, they’d be soaked and frozen. But to go toward the avalanche?

  “Was it, Mom?” Paul asked.

  “What?” Josie asked.

  Paul gave Josie a wide-eyed look, indicating that he didn’t want to say the word “avalanche” in front of Ana.

  “I think so,” Josie said.

  In a rush, the rain seemed to double in volume. Each drop was heavy, distinct. Josie knew they had to move. She made a plan to make their way to the blind bend of the trail and at least peer around the corner, to see what had happened, if there was still a path to follow. Again she picked up Ana, whose grip around her neck was somehow tighter than before, painful but necessary, and she set off. She led this time, with Paul just behind.

  Far before the bend, they could see the evidence of the avalanche. A rough grey diagonal of rocks and scree obliterated the trail and had settled onto the valley floor hundreds of feet below. Josie looked up to the cliff face, looking for some clue about its intentions. Beyond the fallen rocks she could see the path as it continued to what seemed like a clearing. Somehow she and Paul and Ana would have to climb over the fallen rock for fifty yards or so and join the trail again, all the while facing the possibility that the rock would move again, that their traversing it would send it all downhill.

  Some impulse in her told her to do this quickly, to avoid rumination. “Let’s go,” she said. Her back wailed again, but she crawled up on the settled rocks, finding it almost impossible to gain traction. She raised a foot, put her body’s weight over it, and immediately her foot slipped, and she went down. Ana flew off and onto the dusty stones. Josie’s hands braced her fall but her forehead had struck a high-standing stone. The pain was quick and severe but Josie knew the injury was not great.

  “You okay?” Paul asked. He had appeared next to Josie and Ana, and given his light weight, he was able to move quickly atop the scree without sinking into it.

  Ana nodded and Josie said she was fine.

  “There’s some blood on your face,” Paul said to Josie. “Not that much.”

  Josie had no hands free to wipe it. And she knew that to make it across Ana would have to crawl on her own.

  “Follow Paul,” she said, and Ana made no protest.

  Favoring her unbandaged leg, Ana moved nimbly over the mass of loose rock, and Josie did her best to follow. She tried to make herself lighter, more agile.

  “Wait!” she yelled. The children were far ahead of her, finding this too easy.

  Josie was crawling, slipping, her limbs dropping through the surface as they would through newly fallen snow.

  An idea occurred to her and she acted on it, knowing she had no choice but to try anything. She turned onto her back and pushed herself with her feet, like a mechanic under a car. The scree scraped her back, her exposed neck and the back of her head, but it worked. Her hands and legs had been concentrating too much weight on the loose rock and causing her to fall through it. But her back, acting like a snowshoe, was spreading her weight, and she moved this way across the expanse of fallen rock, as her children watched and eventually encouraged her.

  “Almost there,” Paul said.

  “Almost there,” Ana repeated.

  Josie had a strong sense that this image would stay with them, the picture of their mother backstroking across an avalanche in the middle of an Alaskan electrical storm. Josie snorted, and she laughed a loud laugh as the rain fell heavily upon her.

  When she was across, her children were waiting, Ana standing on one leg, holding her brother’s shoulder for support. Paul’s legs were raw and bleeding, his hands white with torn skin and the dust of the stones he’d crawled across. Ana’s legs and hands were similarly aggrieved, and at some point she’d acquired a cut on her temple, a finger-sized red slash. Above, the thunder cracked again, as loud as any thunder had ever been since the birth of creation, and Josie laughed out loud again. “It never ends, right?” she said. “One thing after another.” Ana and Paul smiled but seemed unsure exactly what their mother was talking about, and Josie was happy that the subtext of her statement had been lost on them.

  “Okay, ready?” she asked. She turned, expecting nothing, but now, on the other side of the avalanche she could see it, the bright blue lake, no bigger than a swimming pool. Josie laughed again. “Oh god,” she said, “look at it. It’s so small. All this way for that!”

  “But it’s so blue,” Paul said. “And look.”

  Josie had been searching for the shelter the map had promised but Paul had found it first. It was more than a shelter. It was a sturdy cabin made of logs and bricks, the straight line of its chimney standing like a beacon. On its door there was the same sagging trio of balloons they’d seen on the trailhead sign.

  Josie didn’t need to tell her children what to do. They had already begun running, Ana somehow strong again, and Paul sprinting ahead, knowing his sister would be fine, and Josie walked behind them, her shoulders shuddering with cold and a kind of tearless weeping.

  When she made it to the cabin she saw the sign over the porch. “Welcome Stromberg Family Reunion,” it said. She opened the door to find Paul and Ana, soaked by rain and streaked in blood, standing amid what seemed to be a surprise party. There were balloons, streamers, a table overflowing with juices and sodas, chips, fruit and a glorious chocolate cake under a plastic canopy. All around the cabin were framed photos from every era, most in black and white, all neatly labeled. The Strombergs through time. Josie could only assume that some intrepid member of the family had been to this cabin days ago, had set all this up for the family reunion, and then, for whatever reason, fire or unrelated tragedies, had canceled it all, leaving the cabin and all its bounty to another, smaller, family: Josie, Paul and Ana, so tired.

  “Who are the Strombergs?” Paul asked.

  “Today we are the Strombergs,” Josie said.

  There was enough firewood for three winters, and there was plenty of water, so Josie started a fire, and they took off their clothes and cleaned themselves and sat naked under a vast wool blanket as their filthy clothes dried before the fire. They ate and drank whatever they wanted in no particular order, and were soon sated and though their muscles ached and wounds roared for attention, they
would not sleep for many hours. Every part of their being was awake. Their minds were screaming in triumph, their arms and legs wanted more challenge, more conquest, more glory.

  “That was good, right?” Paul said.

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He stared into the fire, his face aglow and seeming far younger than it was—perhaps reborn. His ice-priest eyes had found a new and untroubled happiness. He knew it was good.

  Josie found herself smiling, knowing they had done what they could with what they had, and they had found joy and purpose in every footstep. They had made hysterical music and they had faced formidable obstacles in this world and had laughed and had triumphed and had bled freely but were now naked together and warm, and the fire before them would not die. Josie looked at the bright flaming faces of her children and knew this was exactly who and where they were supposed to be.

  XXIV.

  But then there is tomorrow.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you first to Jenny Jackson, calm soul, sensitive reader and blessedly relentless champion of this book. Thank you to Sonny Mehta, Andy Hughes, Paul Bogaards, Emma Dries and all at Knopf. Thank you Em-J Staples, constant friend, tenacious editor and proud Illinoisian. Thank you Andrew, Luke, Sarah and all the unwavering advocates at the Wylie Agency. Thank you to Cressida Leyshon and Deborah Treisman, for their faith in, and astute editing of, this book’s first excerpted incarnation. Thank you Alison and Katya, heroes and Homerites. Thank you careful readers Nyuol Tong, Peter Ferry, Christian Keifer, Curtis Sittenfeld, Sally Willcox, Clara Sankey, Tish Scola, Tom Barbash, Ayelet Waldman, Carrie Clements and Jesse Nathan. Thank you patient musicians Thao Nguyen, Alexi Glickman and Jon Walters. Thank you Terry Wit, Deb Klein and Kim Jaime. Thank you philosopher-dentists Tim Sheehan, Larry Blank and Raymond Katz. Thank you Alaska for persisting. Thank you V, A and B for existing.