The Honest Truth

by Dan Gemeinhart

  I stood and wrestled with the air for breath. I’d been walking in a haze. My thoughts wouldn’t string themselves together. Shivers wracked my whole body. I had no idea how long I’d been walking without watching where I was going.

  I remembered the other climbers, the ones heading back down.

  They weren’t off the path.

  I was.

  What direction had they been in?

  I looked all around and saw only white. I couldn’t see the ridge they’d been on, or the valley between. I couldn’t even remember exactly which way I’d been looking when I’d seen them. I was all in circles.

  I kept turning and squinting and shaking my head. At my feet, Beau shook himself and whined. No matter where I looked, there was nothing but white. But it was a darker kind of white than it had been before.

  Night was coming.

  And I was lost.

  Waiting gets heavy.

  Wondering is like drowning.

  Questions haunt and hide.

  Jessie waited at the table while Mark’s mom finished making dinner. She always ate dinner with Mark and his family on weeknights, when her mom worked late. Only now there was no Mark. “I’m there, Jess.” The words ached in her heart. They were like an open scab. She tried not to, but she picked at them. “I was just feeling kind of lonely.”

  The whole house hung like broken dishes just before they hit the floor.

  The TV was on in the kitchen. It was the news again. She could hear the anchorman’s calm, careful voice.

  There were only two big stories. Mark and the storm. To the people on the news, it was two different stories. Not to Jessie.

  She wondered why his mom had it on. Just for the noise? Just to know the rest of the world hadn’t forgotten about her lost boy?

  Mark’s dad was sitting across from Jess at the table. He had the newspaper out in front of him, but she could tell he wasn’t reading it. He was just staring. His face looked lost.

  Mark’s mom brought out two plates piled high with spaghetti and meatballs. It smelled warm and familiar. Jessie wondered if she’d made it because it was Mark’s favorite. Like he was just hiding in the backyard and he’d smell it and come right in out of the dark. Or maybe just because it was the only thing she could try and do for him: make his favorite dinner. It’s what moms do.

  Mark’s dad didn’t even look up from the paper he wasn’t reading.

  “You need to eat something,” Mark’s mom said quietly, squeezing his dad’s shoulder with one hand.

  “I’m just not hungry,” he answered, shaking his head. “I told you that.”

  “I know, honey. But you need to eat.”

  He shook his head again and blew out his breath. “I just can’t. Not yet.”

  She cocked her hip and lowered her chin.

  “I’m not leaving till you eat a meatball.”

  His dad glared up at her, but he stabbed a meatball with a fork and popped it in his mouth. His eyebrows kept glaring but the corners of his mouth smiled as he chewed. Mark’s mom patted him on his shoulder and walked back into the kitchen.

  His dad saw Jessie watching across the table, and he rolled his eyes and winked at her. She smiled back, and they both took a mouthful of spaghetti.

  She chewed and she thought, and it all came together with the taste of her lost friend’s favorite dinner in her mouth. She saw the four of them, all connected. Her and Mark and his parents. And Beau, too, out there somewhere by his boy’s side. And her own mom, even, getting home from work about now to a dark and empty house.

  The windows shook with the storm outside, and all they showed was darkness. And in here, there was family. There were friends. There was light and warmth and hot spaghetti and people helping each other. She saw how his mom helped his dad by making him eat. And how he helped her by eating. She saw people, lost and looking. How they help each other.

  Even when they don’t want to.

  Even when help isn’t wanted.

  On the news she could hear the end of the weatherman’s report: “… and it’s a Winter Storm Warning for most of the state now, folks. Record low temperatures and snowfall in the mountains. This is one for the books. Stay inside with your families; it’s where you belong in a storm like this. Back to you, Rebecca.”

  Warm tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them back. It was time to be strong.

  She jumped to her feet.

  “Thanks for the dinner,” she said.

  “I need to go home.”

  All the world was wind.

  Snow and cold were all around.

  Darkness was coming.

  My shivering was so violent now that it hurt. I stumbled forward, my feet numb. The wind blew right through my clothes, even though I was wearing them all now: my coat over my jacket over my sweater over my shirt. It still wasn’t enough. The wind was a monster with icy claws that sunk deep into me and wouldn’t let go.

  Beau floundered in the snow. His paws broke through in places, and he had to jump and bound to keep moving.

  The world was getting smaller and louder. It had frozen down to a shadowy circle of snow. Sometimes there would be a gust of wind and the clouds around me would lift and for a moment I could see out, to snow ridges and cloud banks farther away. But mostly I could only see the ground in front of me, my own feet, and the dog who stayed by my side through the storm.

  Yeah. I kept going. I don’t know why. I wanted to reach the top. The top of a mountain I hadn’t even seen yet. I was so weak, just lifting my feet for the next step was almost more than I could do. But I kept going.

  There was no trail in front of me. I was lost, completely. But it didn’t bother me that much. Trails are for people who are coming back down. The only place I needed to go was up.

  “I’m not giving up!” I shouted into the wind. But my words came out as a wheeze, a cough. They were weak and breathless, and the wind snatched them away before the world could hear them. It was only me, and I was freezing to death.

  I lurched forward, all strength gone from my muscles. I tried to take another step and found that I couldn’t. I struggled to move my leg forward, but it wouldn’t budge. I thought I was stuck.

  Then I heard Beau whining, and he wasn’t beside me. He was behind me. I looked down and saw him, dug into my footprints, his teeth clenched around my pant leg.

  “Lemme go,” I said, and was scared at how blurry my words sounded. I tried again to move my leg, but he gripped harder. I stumbled and fell down to one knee. “Whatsa matter, Beau?” I gasped. He whined again, and then let go of my pant leg long enough for one high bark.

  I knew that bark. It was the one he used when someone he didn’t know was coming to the door. The one he used in the dark of night when he heard a sound he didn’t like. It was his warning bark.

  He barked his warning bark and then grabbed back on to my pants.

  I knelt in the snow and tried to breathe and think, but I couldn’t do a good job of either.

  I turned to peer through the blowing snow up ahead. And that’s when I saw the crevasse.

  A crevasse is maybe the biggest danger that lurks for mountain climbers. It is, basically, a giant crack in the snow and ice. A long, skinny, jagged canyon that cuts across the mountain. They can be incredibly deep. A crevasse could be only three or four feet across at the top but hundreds of deadly feet deep. Sometimes their tops get covered by snow, like the mountain’s laid a trap. If a climber falls in one, it’s almost always the end of their story. You plunge down into the darkness, down until the space gets narrower and narrower and you’re finally stuck, pinched between two ice walls, far from any rescue. You die of cold or hunger or suffocation, trapped in a dark coffin made of ice. They are a climber’s greatest fear.

  Mount Rainier is covered with them.

  There was a crevasse stretching right in front of me. It was a five- or six-foot gap across the top. I couldn’t see the bottom. I was only a step from tumbling down into it. My heart, already racing,
hammered in my chest. Between the snow and the near-darkness and my own sick stumbling, I hadn’t seen it. I would’ve walked right into it. If Beau hadn’t stopped me.

  I sat in the snow and gasped heavy breaths and felt my heart pounding and peered down into what death looked like. It was black and cold and close. I couldn’t see the bottom.

  I reached back and patted Beau with a cold-clumsy hand.

  “Good dog,” I puffed, and he let go of my pants. I leaned down and hugged him, pulled his shivering body tight against mine. “Good dog, buddy.” He licked at my chin. His tongue was cold and dry.

  I fumbled with my coat and my jacket, opened them up and let the icy air inside so I could pull my camera out. My fingers were dead and distant from the cold, but I managed to hold the camera up and out over the yawning mouth of the crevasse. It was death, waiting. It was what I was running from and what I was walking toward. My throat was a hard, cold lump. I pressed the camera button and snapped a picture of death.

  My sweater rode up, and the wind bit like a hungry white wolf into my exposed stomach. I let the camera drop back to my chest and pulled my sweater down and zipped my coat back up. Even though I’d been kneeling there for a few minutes, I was still out of breath. My lungs couldn’t find enough air up there to hold on to.

  I wiggled out of my backpack and dropped it on the snow in front of me. I couldn’t feel my fingers inside my gloves and I tried and tried and could not pinch the zipper to pull it open. Finally, I bit it in my teeth and tugged at the backpack with my hands until it pulled stiffly open.

  There wasn’t much left inside besides my notebook. A couple of bananas, almost frozen. A Snickers bar. A water bottle, nearly full, with a skin of ice on the top. A plastic baggie of dog treats.

  I tore the baggie open with my teeth and spilled the treats out onto the snow. Beau snapped them up and crunched them loudly in his mouth. I bit at the peel on the first banana and managed to get it off, and I scarfed down the banana in a few big hungry bites. My stomach was sick and wasted but it desperately wanted fuel and the banana stayed down. I did the same with the second banana. I chewed right through the wrapper of the Snickers and dug into the candy bar with my teeth. It was mostly frozen but still sweet and salty and delicious. I spit out the pieces of wrapper when I could. My dry mouth almost stuck closed with the chocolate and caramel, but I didn’t stop until the bar was gone. I almost smiled it tasted so good.

  I shook the water bottle to break up the ice on top and gulped it down. It burned my throat. I poured the rest in a shaky stream for Beau and he lapped at it as it fell. I hoped he got enough.

  I looked up, past the crevasse that Beau had saved me from. The storm swirled and seethed. The sun, wherever it was, was almost gone now. Night was sneaking in through the wind and the snow.

  When I stood up, though, my legs had new strength. I don’t know if it was from the rest or the food. But I was ready.

  “Here we go, Beau,” I panted, pulling the backpack back on. It weighed almost nothing. All it had left in it was a notebook and a pencil and some rope. I had almost nothing left.

  I turned and walked to the side, along the gaping crevasse. It was black, and the wind howled across its top. It looked hungry. It zigzagged diagonally up the slope, getting wider and skinnier as I went. I kept one eye on it all the time. Beau walked on the other side of me, away from the crevasse. He kept one eye on it, too.

  The world got darker and darker as we walked, like the blackness was leaking out of the crevasse and up through the swirling snow to fill the sky. Step by step, the dull light of the fading sun was replaced with the pale silver of moonlight. I fought my deep shivers and kept walking.

  Finally, I came to a place where the crevasse narrowed down to a thin gap only about two feet across. One big stretching step, or a jump. I looked farther up the slope and saw that the gap widened out again ahead. I was on the wrong side of it, and I didn’t know how long I’d have to go to find its end. Miles, maybe. And I knew my time was running out.

  “This is it,” I gasped, bending down to lean on my knees. “We gotta cross here.” Beau whined and shifted from foot to foot. He panted and licked his lips and tap-danced in the snow. “I’m sorry, buddy. I don’t want to, either. But we got to. That’s the truth.”

  I slid my backpack off and threw it across the gap. It didn’t look far.

  The crevasse was narrow, but it was still deep. I leaned out and looked down and saw only the blue crevasse walls disappearing down together into blackness. I tried to swallow but my spit was either all dried up or frozen.

  I inched one foot forward so my toes stuck out over the edge. I heard Beau grumble behind me in a growl that turned into a whine. I didn’t look back at him. My legs shook. Without thinking I pushed off with my lead foot with all the strength my muscles had left and stretched forward with my other leg. The open black mouth of the ice passed under me and I landed on the other side. My feet slipped on the snow-covered ice, but I made it across and I lay for a moment in a grateful, exhausted pile.

  “All right, come on, Beau!” I hollered across the crevasse. I turned around and got up on my knees. “Come on, buddy! You can do it! It’s not that far!”

  Beau kept tap-dancing. He yipped and whined and ran back and forth in the snow. His whole body was shaking.

  “This is nothing, buddy! Don’t look down! Just jump to me, Beau! Come on, Beau, come!”

  Beau tiptoed to the waiting edge. He yipped again, his ears back and his tail down. His front paws snuck up to the very rim. He gathered his hind legs underneath him and lowered his rump, ready to jump. He looked up at me with his trusting, mismatched eyes.

  Here’s what I don’t get: why that dog would trust me and follow me anywhere after I’d dragged him up the mountain in that storm. That’s the truth.

  Beau sprang. One of his front paws slipped on the ice. He only got half a sideways jump.

  His front paws made it across. But his back paws fell short.

  He clawed at the ice for a second with his front claws, but there was nothing to hold on to.

  Beau disappeared over the edge into the crevasse.

  Black rain on windows.

  Biting lips to quiet tears.

  Fear. And loneliness.

  Jessie paced in her room. From wall to wall.

  She circled.

  It was dark, inside and out. She hadn’t turned a light on. She was alone with too much. Her fear. Her aloneness. Her knowing what she had done. And what she hadn’t done. It all crowded in around her until there was no more space in the room for it all and she threw open the door and ran down the hall and out the front door and up the street through the sideways rain. She’d left his house an hour ago but now she was running back, against the wind.

  She opened the screen door on the front porch, but before she knocked the front door opened and Mark’s mom stood there.

  “Jess! I was coming to get you. You didn’t answer your phone. There was a call!”

  “What?”

  “Someone called the tip line. We know where Mark is.”

  Mark’s mom hesitated. There was no smile on her mouth, no shining in her eyes. Her face was painted with the dark colors of worry.

  “What? That’s good, right? It’s good, isn’t it?”

  His mom looked past her at the darkness, the pelting rain, the whipping wind. She bit at her bottom lip.

  “No, honey. It isn’t.”

  Rain dripped down her neck.

  Her lungs caught at fearful breaths.

  Hopeful heart broken.

  I leaped forward while Beau was still clawing at the ice with his paws. When my stomach hit the ground, his nose was just vanishing over the edge. I slid on my belly, my arms stretched out, my fingers reaching. My cheek scraped on ice like asphalt.

  There was no time to scream.

  My hands were dead numb, and inside thick gloves. I felt his body dimly, rushing past my clumsy fingers. With every little thing left living inside me
I closed my fingers into iron claws and prayed they would find something to hold.

  My fingers were too numb to tell me anything. But one arm burned. It burned with a heavy, wiggling weight. Caught.

  I lifted my cheek from the ice. The burning arm was lost over the edge, up to the shoulder. I raised my head to see Beau, dangling down over darkness and death. Three of my lifeless fingers were caught in his collar. But barely.

  He shook and wrestled, terrified and strangling. His body jerked and twisted. Any more and he would shake himself loose and fall, forever.

  I pulled and grunted. The camera still strapped around my neck pressed like a rock-knuckled fist against my chest. My fingers would give way at any moment.

  “I can do it, Beau!” I moaned. “I can hold on! I’m not giving up!” Beau still twisted and shook. “I’m strong enough!” I started to pull him up, inch by tortured inch. My arm muscles screamed. A gust of wind bowled into me like a charging bull.

  My three fingers, weak and numb, gave out.

  “No!” I screamed as Beau slipped from my grasp. He plunged down into the killing darkness of the crevasse.

  For a moment our eyes locked. I looked into Beau’s eyes, one brown and one green, as his face plummeted down away from me.

  Time stopped. Beau hung frozen, motionless, my empty hand still stretched toward him. All the world stopped moving. I was trapped in the moment that I lost my dog forever.

  Then, I took a breath. And let it out. Beau still hung there, in midair, looking up at me. A bluster of wind blew a swirl of snow down into the crevasse. And Beau remained, frozen above the endless blackness.

  Time wasn’t standing still. Only Beau was. I blinked and squinted into the shadows.

  Beau was stuck.

  The walls of the crevasse narrowed down to a thin gap, a few feet from the top, and then widened out again below. Beau was squeezed between the sides.

  My heart froze.

  I’d read about this. Climbers have fallen into crevasses and gotten stuck like that before, pinched between the walls of ice. At first they’re relieved: They didn’t fall all the way down. But then their body heat melts the ice walls, and they slide down a little farther. And they melt the walls again, and slide down farther. As the crack gets skinnier and skinnier and they keep sliding down, the ice begins to squeeze them. To crush them. They slide down until they’re wedged so tight they can’t breathe. And then they die, slowly crushed between two walls of ice.