by Jeff Long
Move by move, he had chased her image up the stone and through the smoke, and finally caught her. For the moment, asleep and in his care, this barbarian princess belonged to him.
He had grown up schooled in Samaritan acts. There had been the Boy Scouts, and church projects, and the widow lady’s sidewalk next door to shovel and her lawn to mow. Once a month, Hugh’s mother had bundled him off to the soup kitchen on Larimer Street to feed the drunks and whores. He had learned to give to beggars, to pull over for hitchhikers, to stop at accidents.
It had taken him years to purge the impulse. It was Annie’s descent into Alzheimer’s that had really taught him the limits of giving yourself away. The world was a famished place. Beyond a point, you simply starved yourself for the suffering that never ended. The best you could do was snatch what shelter you found, like this bottomless cave, and then climb on.
His tiredness hit him all at once. He needed warmth and sleep and a respite, just a few moments of peace, from fighting gravity. The wind was driving harder. Night was on. The rescue seemed less likely by the minute. Sliding his legs into the sleeping bag, he folded Cuba against him, and turned off his headlamp.
It was only to keep her warm, he told himself. But it was more than that. The smoke was like musk in her hair, and the even rise of her rib cage against his chest was practically a forbidden fruit. Finally he’d outrun his gauntlet of nightmare women. He could rest. All he wanted was to lie still, and hold her, and ride out the wind. He pulled her tighter.
His eyes closed.
When the radio squawked, he woke confused, in a black cage under assault. He flipped on the light, driving thoughts into place. The platform was shuddering in the wind. The tent walls were sucking in and out like a lung. Cuba lay in his arms.
A second squelch stung him to action. A voice said, “Talk to me.”
Hugh wrestled from the sleeping bag and reached for the radio. “I’m here,” he said. “We’re here. Do you read?”
“…thought we’d lost you.” Hugh could barely hear the voice over the hurricane roar up top. He strained to hear the update. The team had mustered again at the summit rim.
“Say again,” he said, “say again.”
“We have our mark,” the chief yelled. “…still assembling the system…Cuba’s condition?”
“Unchanged,” Hugh said. “She’s still unconscious.”
“…stabilized. Prepare to…” The radio drowned out.
“Say again.”
“…throw line.”
They were coming. They needed him to catch their throw line.
“Affirmative,” Hugh said. “We’re ready. How long before the litter comes?”
The radio went static. Then it came alive again with another voice. “Hang tight, Harp,” it boomed. “The cavalry’s on the way.”
“Lewis?” His voice made no sense. Then Hugh understood, or thought he did. Lewis must have gone to ranger headquarters to catch the latest, and they’d tapped him for communication.
“You picked some fine fucking weather,” Lewis said.
“It’s almost over,” Hugh assured him.
“Not until the fat lady sings it ain’t. Listen for me, brother. Be ready…buy me a steak.”
The reality hit Hugh. “You’re the volunteer?”
Wind roar snarled the radio. “…you poor, sorry stick people. Somebody’s got to.”
Hugh couldn’t fathom it. “What are you doing, Lewis?”
Lewis must have crouched against the wind. His voice suddenly came through clearly. “Rachel was waiting for me, Hugh. She changed her mind, don’t ask me why. Something you did, or something I didn’t do, I don’t know. We’re going to make it work. I get my happy ending.”
“Tonight?” Hugh was trying to catch up with it all, the little circles spinning into bigger circles. He’d jilted Rachel, and now she’d taken Lewis back, and here was Lewis preparing to descend.
“We laid pipe for hours,” Lewis crowed. “She’s back. You saved my life, man.”
This changed everything. It was Lewis casting himself into the maw, not some nameless stranger. Hugh scanned around him, suddenly alarmed. Cuba was traumatized, and hungry and dehydrated. But they had water and food for her, and Hugh could nurse her. Dying? Hardly. She was young. Already she looked stronger.
“Don’t do this, Lewis.” He had lied to get the rescuers off the dime. Now he heard the force of the storm and understood their fear, and it was Lewis at risk.
“I’ve got no choice, mate. Rachel said it, too. This one’s for Annie.”
The tent walls snapped in and out, faster. The platform shook. It was getting mean out there.
Hugh hit the transmit trigger. “I was wrong,” he said. “She’s not injured. She’s asleep. We drugged her. Everything’s under control. We can make it through. Do not come down at this time. Repeat, do not come. Abort the rescue. Do you read me?”
They did not.
Lewis, being Lewis, had gone right on speaking over him. “…so, Hugh, you holy bastard, what do you say, will we be better men after…”
“Abort,” Hugh repeated.
But at that instant, just as Augustine had feared all along, the battery died. Hugh clapped the trigger and stared at the radio in disbelief. Whatever he had set in motion was coming to be.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Their little raft chopped up and down on the surge of wind. Crouched against the stone, with one arm looped through the anchor ropes, Hugh pried open the radio and tucked the battery against his stomach to warm it. In the Himalayas, they slept with their radios to keep them from freezing. This battery was shot, though.
He shook the radio and banged it on the rock like a monkey. Too late, he thought. Too late. Lewis was sinking through the maelstrom, and there was nothing Hugh could do about it.
He fumbled with the tent lacing and thrust his head out to alert Augustine. The sight below stopped him cold. In the beam of Hugh’s headlamp, Augustine seemed to be sailing off into the blackness with his dead lover.
Bundled in a parka and wearing a Peruvian wool cap, with clean white socks on each hand, he had pulled the empty haul bag over his legs, and woven himself sidelong into the ropes with the body. The hammocks were apparently useless to him. But with the waste-not mentality of a climber, he’d clipped them to his anchor, and now the hammocks bulged and whipped about like spinnakers in a tempest.
Hugh wagged his headlamp from side to side, shouting, but Augustine never noticed. He went on riding his skiff of ropes, running with the storm, going nowhere. Maybe in his mind they were heading for day, or he was simply charting a course through the pitch-black valley.
Hugh pulled his head back inside, exhausted by the madness. He sagged against the rock, with Cuba under his knees, and tried to assess his own welfare. He was sleep deprived and hungry and thirsty. His hands ached, and his throat felt skinned from coughing up the smoke in his lungs. The wind was deafening.
He had climbed high and fought hard, and overcome every trial and tribulation El Cap had thrown at him. He had found reasons for things that defied reason. He had justified the disembodied whispers and midnight banshees and the unraveling knots, and escaped Joshua’s murder attempt and outlived the fire. He had placed each odd egg in its own box, and stored it away as accidental or imaginary, and then gone on pretending the walls were just offering their normal fare.
But there was no denying the obvious anymore. At last he had to admit the climb really was cursed. No one had this much bad luck. Something—some outer purpose—was hunting them. Each event, large and small, from the women’s disaster to the pitons creeping out of their sockets, from whiffs of breeze to the fire and this storm, all were part of some deep, violent design. He could not fathom why it was happening, unless Lewis was right and it was punishment for the hubris of Trojan Women, or Cuba was right and it was an eye for an eye for whatever Augustine had committed on Cerro Torre.
Even as he thought these things, Hugh worried about his own s
anity. A conspiracy of nature? A feral consciousness? It wasn’t rational. Suddenly he was thankful Lewis was braving the night. Because Hugh’s only hope was to flee before he got swallowed whole.
Abruptly the red tent burst into light.
One minute, Hugh was crouched with his headlamp in the nylon lean-to, dissecting the arabesque of misfortunes. The next he was blinded and groping for slings. His first thought was that something had exploded, or that he’d fallen into a deep sleep and the storm and the night had magically passed.
But this sun was too bright. Lit from below, it was as if he and Cuba were suspended on a membrane of pure color. White beams stabbed through every gap in the platform.
Then a gigantic bird—or an angel, or a devil—cast its shadow on the tent wall. Just as quickly it swept away. It tore off into the maelstrom. Or he’d imagined it, which was entirely possible. He was trying so hard to keep the reins tight on the Captain. But when you mess with gravity, things get loose.
He faced the brilliant red screen, wondering what other phantoms El Cap would throw at him. It was as if the girl’s fall had cracked open the earth and unleashed a flood of spirits. One after another, the climbers around him had fallen prey to a quiet mass hysteria. Now was his turn, so it seemed.
The black shadow dived at his wall again. It was huge. And then it was small, and then huge again. It bounded in the wind, reaching for him, then swimming away, a crazy concoction of outstretched wings, dangling legs, and arms with hands and fingers. Its head was a rounded bullet. No little horns, at least, Hugh thought. No spiked tail.
Then he saw the marionette strings from above. It was Lewis out there. They had placed their big SAR spotlight down in the meadow.
Hugh shoved his head through the opening. Instantly the wind and naked light mugged him. He shielded his eyes and peered through his fingers. The scene was unearthly.
What had been a murky crater in the wall was now a scoop of light. The band of diorite stood starkly black against the white granite. Every spur and spike cast a razor shadow. Every freckle of mica sparkled. The prayer flags, lit from behind, flailed in a blur of colors. A good night for wind horses and prayers, Hugh thought.
Thirty feet out, beyond the crest of the overhanging roof, Lewis and the litter—his metal wings—dangled by threads. He was next to helpless, tethered upright to the edge of a long, narrow craft made of metal ribs and chicken wire. Tossed every which way, he looked battered and disheveled, like a man in need of rescue himself.
Hugh crawled from the tent and wrestled his feet into stirrups that were blowing sideways. He inched his jumars down the rope to where Lewis could better see him, and Hugh could catch the throw line.
Lewis started to wave to Hugh, but the wind twisted him face out to the void, then back to the wall, then off to the east. Looking over one shoulder, then the other, he spun like a moth crazed by the light. At each edge of the spotlight beam, he vanished into blackness. It made Hugh sick just watching.
For all the abuse he was taking, Lewis looked gloriously happy. When he could be seen, he was luminous, like a Greek god or a Hollywood hero. His shoulders were a mile wide. Someone had loaned him a helmet with a bulls-eye painted on top. He was daring the heavens. Here was his arena.
Lewis shouted something to Hugh, but the storm ripped his words away. He lifted his radio and held it to his ear. Hugh signaled back with a slash at his throat. His radio was dead. Lewis understood.
Pumping his legs and shoving at the litter, Lewis struggled to correct for the wind. Finally, realizing there was no controlling the hurly-burly tide, he quit swimming and went with the flow. He got down to business.
The throw line was as simple as it got. A beanbag weighted one end of a long, thin cord. All you needed was a good arm, and a good catcher.
Lewis’s very first cast was nearly perfect. Just as the wind thrust at the Eye, he hurled the beanbag and it struck Hugh square on the foot. Hugh dove head down, but the beanbag was already gone. Off to one side in his cradle of ropes, Augustine did not even reach for it. The throw line arced off into the darkness.
On his next throw, the beanbag snarled in its own rat’s nest of cord and fell short. The next ten minutes went to Lewis untangling the mess.
Hugh used the time to descend to a better position. He paused by Augustine. In the hard light, his face looked boiled blue by the smoke and cold and wind.
“Help me,” Hugh shouted. “It’s almost over. Just this little bit more.”
“We made a mistake,” Augustine said. The wind was poisoning him. He’d returned to Cerro Torre all over again. He was trapped with the dead and dying.
Hugh tried to rally him. “We’re going home. Together. No one gets left behind.”
Augustine shook his head no. Hugh had to bend close to hear. “Too late.”
Hugh pulled at him. “Get up.”
“She sucked us in. It’s part of her plan. An eye for an eye.” Echoes of Cuba.
Hugh’s eyes darted to the roped shroud dangling from the anchor. Augustine wasn’t talking about Cuba. Andie was his ghost. For hours, he’d been lying by her body, haunting himself, listening to her voice in the wind. Which made it all the more urgent to escape.
“Clear your head,” Hugh shouted. “She’s gone.”
“She’s here. You can’t hear her?”
“Listen to me.” Hugh held to his rope. “The lost souls are lost. Put her behind you, no looking back.”
Augustine kept lying in his spiderweb.
“Look at Lewis out there,” Hugh said. “He’s fighting for us. Get up. Fight for yourself.”
Augustine didn’t move. Hugh kneed him in the back. “You keep saving everyone else. Now save yourself.”
“It won’t work.”
“You’ve killed men before,” Hugh said. “Don’t you kill us.”
Augustine flinched. Hugh had struck the raw nerve.
“Join the living,” Hugh said. “We need your help. Help us.”
Augustine began struggling with the ropes. Hugh helped free his legs from the haul bag. Augustine planted his rump against the wall and faced out to the wind.
Hugh lowered farther and off to the side. He bared his hands to catch the throw line. It was better down here. He could look up at the litter instead of down into that spear of light.
Augustine leaned into the wind like an outfielder floating in space. Hugh’s fear eased. With two pairs of hands, they would surely snare the throw line. They were practically home. Don’t worry, I’m the kaiser. He felt almost giddy. The inmates were escaping from the asylum.
Lewis hefted the beanbag and pitched it again. It shot like a rocket…into the night. He reeled the line in, threw, and missed. He patiently coiled the cord. He tried again and again.
Hugh felt an insect sting, and another, then more. Silver tinsel suddenly streaked the light. The rain was arriving.
He’d been praying that when the storm finally unleashed, it would cut straight to snow. Snow you could beat from your jacket and legs and brush from your hair. With snow, you could hedge time and stretch the odds. Rain, though. On a night like this, with the cold still mounting, rain killed.
Hugh wiped at his eyes. No more giddy kaiser. The epic was in earnest now.
Lewis threw. He wound it in and threw again. Each miss gobbled up more minutes.
The silver streaks changed direction, like schools of fish, driving down, then sideways, then up. The roof of the Eye provided some slight shelter. But Lewis was naked to the storm. That didn’t stop him. He threw again.
Thunder cracked through the valley.
Body and mind, Hugh stopped. The wind had the tang of ozone. It was going to be that kind of storm. They were getting caught among the electric trees and voltage snakes. He searched for lightning, but the SAR light blew his night sky.
Lewis toiled away out there, fearless, willful, defiant. They must have called him, because he put down his beanbag and picked up the radio. He put it to the edge of his helmet and
listened, and then tossed it back into the litter. They called him again. He grabbed the radio and put it to his ear. Hugh had no question about what the chief was commanding him to do. Preserve thyself. Their summit rig was a lightning rod. They wanted to abort. It was over.
Somehow Lewis bought more time. With a pull, they could have drawn him up, and he would have had no choice. But the litter stayed. Lewis went back to coiling the line.
Hugh tried fashioning a throw line of his own with rope and a weight of carabiners. But pressed against the wall, he had no leeway to make the throw, and the rope was too heavy, and the wind too fierce.
Lewis missed again, missed by a mile. The Great Ape was wearing down. This was crazy. They were creating risks within risks.
Hugh’s head was soaked. Water ran down his neck. His fingers were slowing. He’d been fooling himself. Even if they managed to catch the throw line, they were fifty stories shy of the summit in the middle of a tempest. He had to release Lewis, who would otherwise fight until doomsday. Everyone needed to take shelter.
Hugh bellowed monosyllables. “Lou. Quit. Go.” The wind invaded his mouth. Howling, not words, came out.
Squall bursts began dimming the spotlight. The bright beam flickered. The Eye jumped time. It was night, it was day, night, day.
Hugh slashed at his throat again. He hand-signed a phone, thumb to his ear. He stabbed upward. Call up. Ride out.
Lewis shook his head no. He took aim and missed again.
The ozone smell built. It blossomed all around them, sharp and sweet. Hugh’s body tingled. His skin turned electric. There was current in his hair, in his spine. God. He started shedding every metal thing on him, extra carabiners, some leftover pennies in his jacket pocket.
He’d met lightning survivors. He’d seen their burn wounds and heard their slurred speech. Not another Joshua, he thought. He clenched his teeth.
The lightning struck like velvet. It painted the edge of the roof with blue-green light.
On all his mountains, in all his storms, he’d never seen real St. Elmo’s fire. There was that passage in Moby-Dick, and woodcuts showing alpinists kneeling before glowing crosses on their summits. Here it was.
