Bad Call

by Stephen Wallenfels

  Ceo’s sweater under my jacket makes a huge difference. I know he’s giving up an important part of his layering system, but he insisted. He’s worried about my feet, and so am I. My rain-soaked sneakers were frozen stiff when I put them on. Steam rises off them now with my toes four inches from the flames. I keep remembering that old guy in the navy cap we met on the way up, the way he stared at my sneakers a little too long. Now I know why.

  My gloves were frozen, too, but they have thawed and are starting to dry. Ellie is standing beside me, gloved hands out like mine over the flames. She’s keeping her words to a minimum, just like the rest of us. I have no idea what went on in their tent last night. Maybe Ceo told her about what he’s done. If he did, I can’t tell by looking at her. Anyway, I don’t have the energy to think about it. The reality of our situation is too dire to deal with anything else.

  Ceo drops another snowy log on the fire. He says over the hissing flames, “Anyone want to try hiking out?”

  I say, “We can’t risk getting lost in this.”

  “I agree,” Ellie says.

  “So we’re waiting out the storm here,” Ceo says. “Are we all on that page?”

  Grim nods.

  Ceo says, “The wind has shredded one of the tents and—”

  “And a bear ate all our food; we’re almost out of water. So in other words, we’re fucked,” Grahame says. “What’s your point?”

  “We need to build a shelter.”

  “Build a shelter? What’s wrong with your tent?”

  “It’s a one-person ultralight.”

  “We’ll cram inside.”

  “It’s not designed for this weather. Or that many bodies. It won’t hold up.”

  “So what?” Grahame says. “You want to build a freaking igloo?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the wrong kind of snow for an igloo,” I say. “I used to build them with my father when we went ice fishing. This snow isn’t deep enough or hard enough to cut blocks.”

  “What about a snow cave?” Ellie says.

  “Same problem,” Ceo says. “Not enough snow.”

  “So, like I said,” Grahame says. “We’re fu—”

  “We heard you the first time,” Ceo says. “We’ll get through this. But we all—”

  “We all wouldn’t have to get through this,” Grahame says, spitting his words, “if it weren’t for you insisting that we had to climb that mountain.”

  “I didn’t insist.”

  “You saw all the clouds. You knew the weather was turning to shit. But then you lied to us just like you always do, and here we are. Freezing to death in a blizzard in the middle of freaking nowhere!”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “Every word, mon. Every fucking word.”

  I know where that’s coming from, and it chills me deeper than the wind. I keep hoping for a chance to warn Ceo. It needs to happen soon, but I don’t see how.

  Ceo kicks at the fire. The logs shift and fall, sending a column of sparks up and away. Across the fire is the boulder where we had our food. I’ve been looking at the two trees framing it on either side. They’re about six feet apart.

  I say, “Did anyone see the movie The Edge?”

  “Anthony Hopkins and Alex Baldwin, 1997,” she says, picturing the scene he’s probably thinking about. Three men huddled under a small structure made of branches, twigs, and rope. Rain in sheets coming down, water leaking in, soaked to the bone.

  Grahame says, “I did. A dude gets eaten by a bear.”

  “Mauled,” Colin says. “Not eaten.”

  “He died from it, right?”

  “Eventually. But that’s not the point.”

  “The point is,” Grahame says, “your idea sucked before you said it.”

  Ellie tenses at the force behind Grahame’s words. She thinks: Am I the only one seeing this?

  “What about the movie?” Ceo asks.

  “Three guys survive a plane crash in a remote lake in Alaska. They build a lean-to and the only tools they have are a knife and some rope.”

  “And a paper clip and a silk handkerchief,” she says, wondering if Colin will smile at this. He does, for a moment. And despite everything, her mind is gripped with the impact of what Ceo said about Colin last night.

  “How do we build it?” Ceo asks.

  Colin points across the flames. “We could use those two trees over there. Wedge a log horizontally between them and the boulder.”

  “What do we use for the roof and sides?”

  “Lots of branches. Maybe dig for pine needles under the snow.”

  “Are you insane?” Grahame says. “That’ll take forever. We’ll freeze to death digging around in this snow looking for pine needles.”

  Ellie sees Colin struggle for an answer. As if he has to choose between thinking and fighting off the wind. She says, “How about the tents and rain flies? We can use the poles for support, then we put snow on top of it.”

  Ceo looks at Colin.

  Colin nods and shivers. “I like it.” He sends a fleeting smile her way.

  “I vote we go with Q’s plan.” Ceo turns to face Grahame. “Are you on that page?”

  “I’m on any page,” Grahame says, his eyes blazing back at Ceo, “as long as you didn’t write it.”

  Ceo, after a good hard look at Grahame, says to me and Ellie, “You guys transfer all the gear from the wet tent into the dry one. Then break it down and put it someplace that won’t blow away. After that, start hauling in branches. But don’t go too far and don’t get lost.”

  “What about the fire?” I ask, thinking about my sneakers plowing through that snow, and worried about the only hope I have to relieve the pain in my feet.

  “Let it go. We’ll build another one as soon as the shelter is done.”

  “What are you and I doing?” Grahame asks.

  Ceo shoulders the ax.

  “Your favorite thing. We’re gonna chop some shit.”

  Grahame follows him into the white.

  The wind already filling in the footsteps behind them.

  I crawl into the tent, hand our soggy gear out to Ellie. She makes the twenty-foot trudge to Ceo’s tent, dumps the gear inside, and returns for another load. It takes four trips, during which the fire turns into a snow-covered heap. We dig out the stakes for the rain fly while the storm, as if sensing that we intend to fight it, intensifies around us. Visibility shrinks from a hundred feet to fifty feet. Just as we’re breaking down the poles and tent and wrapping it all inside the rain fly, Ceo and Grahame return with three logs. They are hunched over and covered with snow. Grahame’s thick black eyebrows are crusted with ice.

  Ceo asks, “Are these big enough?”

  They’re about eight to ten feet long, one with fresh branches that Ceo knocks off with the ax. The other two look like they’ve been dead for years. None of them are straight, but they’ll work.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “How many more?”

  “Two.”

  Grahame looks at the dead fire and groans.

  Ceo says to Ellie, “How’re you holding up?”

  “Better than Colin.”

  “Ha. This is a shorts and T-shirt day in Vermont.” Then he says to Grahame, “Your pick this time.”

  “Let me go with you,” I say, thinking this may be the best chance I get to warn him about Grahame.

  Ceo says, “Not with those shoes. You stay here and build us a home.”

  Grahame walks up to me, says in my ear, “Kittens in a blender.”

  He walks away.

  Ceo follows him into the woods.

  She works with Colin to build the frame for their shelter. They use the shortest log for the horizontal support that rests on the boulder and spans between the two trees. They lift the other two logs and lean them diagonally at opposite ends, creating a wedge-shaped frame. One of the logs is bent and keeps slipping off. They use a piece of rope to tie it down. Colin has to remove his gloves to fasten the knot.
His fingers are too stiff. He asks Ellie to do it for him. She notices that his movements are becoming increasingly slow and methodical. His speech is down to a minimum, and when he does talk, the sentences are short.

  He says, “Branches now.”

  She says, “You need to be out of this wind. Get into one of the sleeping bags. I’ll get the branches.”

  “Can’t separate. Too dangerous. You go first.”

  “Which way?”

  “Wind to our backs. In case we can’t find our prints. We’ll know which way to go.”

  They walk for maybe five minutes, stopping to tear off any branches within reach. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. With their arms nearly full and their tracks beginning to fill in, she looks at him and wonders how he’s still standing. She says, “Let’s head back.”

  “Okay.”

  They walk for a while. The flat light is turning gray. It’s happening too fast. She asks him if he brought his headlamp. He says, No, you? She tells him no.

  He attempts a smile, tells her they’ll make it.

  We’re almost there. The first thing I see is the tent, a bubble of orange and yellow. Then a dark shape hunched over, pacing back and forth. This shape is too big to be Ceo. A haunting sound reaches them, like a lone wolf howling into the wind.

  I say, “Something’s wrong.”

  Grahame stops and turns.

  Ellie says, “What happened to his jacket?”

  I try to run. The snow is too deep. I fall facedown. Try to stand, fall again. Ellie helps me up. Then we’re both running. We make it to camp, stop and stare at Grahame, our eyes wide in shock and horror.

  His coat is stained dark. His pants, his gloves, his face.

  I know it’s blood. Everywhere.

  Ellie screams.

  I yell at Grahame, “What happened?”

  “It…it was an accident. I didn’t mean…”

  “Didn’t mean what? What accident? What are you talking about?”

  He stands there, a block of ice in the wind.

  “Say something!” I grab his shoulders and shake him. Clumps of red fall off his jacket to the ground. “What the hell did you do?”

  “I hit him.”

  “Hit him with what?”

  He looks to his left.

  My arms fall. I back away. The ax is leaning against a rock. I stare at the handle, see the blood. “Oh shit. Where did you hit him?”

  He stares at me, black eyes rimmed with red.

  “Where did you hit him?”

  “In the face, Q. I hit Ceo in the fucking face. He’s dead.”

  Ellie moans, Oh God oh God oh God, as my head spins.

  Grahame drops to his knees and sobs.

  He won’t get up no matter what I do or say.

  I have to find something that works. Kick him, drag him, whatever it takes. The wind is erasing his tracks. Without his help, I’ll never find Ceo. Not in time anyway.

  Ellie says, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Ceo.”

  “How?”

  “Grahame.”

  “But he’s worthless!”

  I look at him, still on his knees, still facedown in the snow. He mutters accident over and over between shuddering moans. “Then I’ll find him myself.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I have to. While there’s still tracks left.”

  “Colin. Listen to me. You can’t go.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “What about the shelter?”

  “Use the tent.”

  “What if you get lost?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Look around you, Colin! It’s a whiteout. You can hardly walk. You’re probably hypothermic. We need to get out of this wind.”

  “Ellie! This isn’t a choice!”

  “Then you’ll die looking for someone that’s already dead.”

  Her words sting worse than the driving snow. It takes a moment to recover.

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  “He hit him in the head, Colin. You know how strong he is. You saw all the blood.”

  “Not the head. He said the face. Face wounds bleed a lot.” I shove Grahame hard with the heel of my foot. “Get up!”

  He moans but doesn’t stand.

  I crouch down next to him and yell, “Get up, asshole! We need to find Ceo.” Nothing changes. I stand, face Ellie. “You’re right. He’s worthless. I’m going.”

  I start to turn.

  She grabs my arm, spins me around. Her eyes find mine. They’re jittery, swimming with fear. I’m scared, too. But my fear comes from confusion, shock. My best friend is lost and bleeding in the storm. By the way she looks at me, by the rigid set to her jaw, I know her fear comes from a different place.

  Ellie yanks me back and back, away from Grahame.

  “What about me?” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if you go off with him? And…”

  “And what?”

  “And he comes back. But you don’t.”

  My mind is too numb to follow her down this path. Or maybe it just doesn’t want to.

  Her eyes drill into mine. She moves closer and lowers her voice. “Think about it. How do you hit someone in the face with an ax? By mistake?”

  “I don’t know. He said that’s what happened.”

  “And you believe it?”

  “Yes.” Then finally her fear breaks through and starts chipping away at mine.

  “Are you saying—”

  She raises a finger to her lips.

  I stop, listen. All I hear is the wind. Grahame isn’t moaning. I turn around.

  He’s risen up out of the snow, facing us. The stain on his jacket and pants has turned to black. He says in a voice as flat and empty as a frozen lake, “I’m tired. I’ll show you the body in the morning.”

  Grahame starts to walk toward the tent, then stops and returns for the ax.

  “Hey!” I yell. “We need that!”

  Either he didn’t hear me or chooses to ignore what I said. Grahame kicks through drifts all the way to Ceo’s tent. He unzips the fly, crawls inside. The flap zips shut.

  Ellie releases my arm.

  Snow stings my face.

  I can’t feel my feet.

  The storm howls in victory.

  Ellie works with Colin to finish the lean-to because Ceo’s tent is occupied and she refuses its shelter even if it means freezing to death. The wind is an impatient beast raging around them, whipping the rain fly from Colin’s tent so hard that it cuts his hand. Branches blow away before their numb fingers can tie them down with pieces of nearly frozen rope. A task that should take minutes takes an hour at least. She thinks about curling up in the snow, believing if she lets it pile up and around like a blanket, somehow warmth will find her, or at least the relentless pain in her hands and feet will recede into a dull ache. That has to be better than this. She tells her plan to Colin. He says he hasn’t felt his feet since they started building this shelter and that is not a good thing.

  He refuses to stop. He says the storm will not win. It’s hard to tell how much light is left, so let’s not waste it. At one point, when it looks like there will be no roof and therefore no shelter, he disappears into Ceo’s tent and returns with the bungee cords from Grahame’s pack. Combined with rope, compression straps from the packs, and tent poles woven between the branches, they build a roof that holds long enough to weight it with snow. They use a foam sleeping pad and the toilet shovel to pile snow against the sides until it is high enough to cover all the holes except for an opening on the leeward side. They crawl into the shelter, collapse in the snow. The sound of their heaving chests is all that penetrates the blessed calm.

  She eventually says, “I’m so tired. Can we stay like this?” Realizes she is shouting, quietly rephrases, “We don’t have to go outside again, right?”

  Colin answers, “We’re going to hunker down and wait out the storm. But I h
ave something to do first. I’ll be back. Don’t fall asleep.”

  “Get the ax. Please.”

  “I will.”

  She’s too tired to ask him what it is he has to do, or where he’s going, or why she can’t sleep. Sleeping is all she wants to do. “Come back,” is all she can say.

  Ellie reaches out to touch him.

  All she feels is snow.

  Grahame watches in silence from the comfort of Ceo’s down-filled sleeping bag while I stuff my pack with the gear Ellie and I need to survive this night. It won’t be easy. The bottom third of my bag is still soaked from the rain this morning, and Grahame’s is worse. I have to get back to Ellie, but this process is taking longer than it should. My fingers are too numb to perform simple tasks like closing zippers and tying knots. Plus I’m trying to avoid the stained jacket on the floor next to Grahame, and not look at the gloves in the mesh pocket above his head, frozen stiff with Ceo’s blood.

  When I’m finally done, Grahame says, “There were branches sticking up.”

  “What?”

  “On a log. Sticking up out of the snow.”

  This can’t be happening. “Not now, Grahame.”

  “She can wait a little. You have to hear this.”

  “Okay,” I say, desperate to leave, but knowing that he’s right. “You get one minute.”

  He closes his eyes, talks in a near-dead monotone. “We were cold and tired. Nothing looked familiar. Just snow and trees. Ceo kept saying, ‘It has to be around here somewhere, it has to be around here somewhere.’ I thought he was talking about the creek. Then we passed two trees that form a big V. The log was about forty feet from there.”

  “The one with the branches?”

  Grahame opens his eyes, nods.

  “Was he looking for that log?”

  “I don’t think so. That would be just too weird. Anyway, Ceo wants the branches gone so it will be easier to drag back to camp. He gives me the ax and says, ‘You like to chop stuff—be my guest.’” Grahame pauses, takes a breath. “So I walk up to the log, tell him to stand behind me, then I…then I…instead of chopping down, I try to take out all those branches with one big golf swing. My feet slip in the snow. I totally miss the branches, and my follow-through comes around…and…and the ax hits him square in the face.” Grahame’s eyes find mine again. This time they’re rimmed with tears. I want to tell him your minute’s up. But he’s ready to speak, and there’s no escaping now. I have to hear the rest.