by Hunt, Jack
“What about me? My life is pretty simple, Kara. At my age, climbing the corporate ladder is just a vague memory, now a good day is if I can climb out of bed without a sore back.”
She laughed. “I mean it must have gotten complicated with the business on a downward spiral, and my father refusing to sign.”
He didn’t look at her but set his face into the wind. “It hasn’t been easy, that’s for sure. But what can you do? If your father lost the business it wouldn’t have been any skin off his nose. He would have gone back to his research, searching for gold and...”
He trailed off, shaking his head as if he couldn’t understand her father’s hobby. The truth was she wasn’t sure she did. All that time and energy spent searching, for what? To find themselves in the back end of nothingness trying to get home? She recalled her father telling her about the different people who had ventured out searching for gold only to go missing, never to be seen again. The thought that they might become those people only added to her worry.
“And for you?”
“It would cost me a lot more,” he said.
“Is that what Callaway meant?”
He stopped walking and looked at her. “Callaway talked too much,” he gave her a blank stare, “and so do you.” His tone changed from warm to cold in an instant. Like she’d rubbed salt into an open wound, except she wasn’t sure what that wound was. They pressed on in silence, conserving energy. She looked up the valley toward a small gap in the snow-brushed mountains, nothing more than a thread of white. Kara hoped the weather improved soon or they could find themselves knee deep and that could lead to getting their feet wet, and exposure to frostbite.
Losing her extremities was not happening.
Not this way. Loss came with old age, and usually, it was limited to hair, eyesight, and memory, she thought looking at her father again.
Hours of walking turned into another night huddled together under the cover of an overhanging rock. The goal of making it through the narrow pass in the same day was lofty, unrealistic. What looked close from high up was miles and miles away at the base of the slope. It would have been faster without her father as the weight of him meant they had to keep stopping to take breaks. Frank’s back was in agony, her legs exhausted. The valley just seemed to go on forever, an endless array of beauty and unseen terror.
They had depleted their cache of food and were down to the last of the water. Although streams were abundant and plentiful, there were areas where there was nothing but rock. That was the risk of venturing out. It presented its own form of challenges. Had they all been healthy, they would have remained, stayed put, but her father’s life hung in the balance and with each passing hour, so did theirs.
By the third day, it wasn’t long before they had to don their emergency snowshoes. Overnight the weather had refused to improve, dropping into the high twenties, low thirties Fahrenheit. Thick, low-hanging clouds and fog had descended, giving the world an ominous appearance. A savage wind had blown in, turning the world to a white wall of nothingness. A dumping of powdery snow had been added for good measure, making the way forward even harder and slower than the day before. They trudged up through the valley, leaving the spruce-filled forest behind. Now the way before them was nothing but hard jutting rock, boulders, layers of thick snow, and stubbly grass where there were thinner patches. The snowshoes came in handy. They were useable but awkward, leaving little room for error but at least their boots remained dry and above the snow.
The wind lashed them, punishing them at every turn for the foolish mistake of believing they could escape or continue. At some point, they had no choice but to seek shelter as the brutal wind churned up so much snow they could barely see a hand in front of them.
Cowering behind huge boulders from the onslaught of Mother Nature, they waited for it to pass, but only hours receded, one after the other, with the weather showing no sign of relenting. Unable to protect themselves from the icy swirl making its way in, Kara buried her head like a turtle inside her jacket, pressing against the rock, praying for it to end.
It was early afternoon by the time blue appeared in the sky and the snowflakes stopped falling. After they shook themselves free from their white cocoons, the first thing she did was check on her father. She’d used the piled wood attached on either side of the stretcher and had laid it across the top to protect him from the elements. She tipped off the snow and tied the wood back on the sides before checking him.
“Dad. Hey,” she said. For a second he was unresponsive and she was filled with dread. Her finger touched the pulse on his neck and that made him gasp. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not yet,” he muttered, managing to summon a strained smile.
She clutched his hand and glanced over to Frank.
He was already up, jumping up and down, shaking his arms to try and get warm. They might have attempted to start a fire but there were no patches of exposed rock in the immediate area and getting moving would be the quickest way to get the blood flowing.
“Keep moving your fingers and toes,” she said to her father.
She looked ahead as the valley narrowed in the distance and climbed. There was nothing but snow and ice, everything was covered, one big blanket of white. The terrain varied between dips and rising stone but to them, it was just mounds of snow. They had to be careful so they didn’t plummet into a space between rocks.
They used their walking sticks, prodding, and testing the ground ahead before taking each step. It was frustrating to have lost so many hours to the storm but at least it wasn’t all day. Their shadows stretched away from them as a dull sun tried hard to push through the cloud cover.
Rising in elevation, the air was thinner, their breathing more labored with each step. They stopped several times, trying to pinpoint which way to go. It wasn’t that they were unsure about what was southwest; it was that they were uncertain if they should climb or go down. Plateaus were known to have small bodies of water, bright aquamarine when seen from the air, but now they would be hidden, nothing more than fields of white.
“Once we get through this pass, it should be all downhill to the river.”
She gave a nod. “That upper valley will present a problem.”
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” Frank said.
He stopped and unscrewed the top of the water bottle and went to take a sip when he looked at Henry and handed it to Kara to give to her father. They figured there would be a stream further down where they could replenish the water supply.
“Can I ask you something?”
Frank nodded. “Go.”
“The night I got into that accident with my mother. I saw you talking with her outside. The conversation looked heated. What was that about?”
He chuckled. “I might be old, Kara, but do you expect me to remember that? That was how many years ago?”
“Fifteen,” she replied. “To be exact.”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Who knows.”
“I do,” her father muttered. It had been something niggling away in the back of her mind even back then but she didn’t think to ask, mostly because after the funeral her father avoided talking about anything related to Indi. It caused too much pain, and the last thing she wanted was to make things worse. Her father continued, “You were pissed because Indi stepped in and put a stop to the sale. I remember because I traveled back with you and that’s all you were harping about. How she was too involved in the day to day business operations.”
“Well she was,” he said. “I mean, c’mon, Henry, did you ever see Jacqueline tell us what to do?” Jacqueline was Frank’s wife. A good woman. A teacher and mother of two.
“But she was right,” Henry added.
“Right, and what was right for our company, they were two different things. We lost a lot of business because of what she felt… was right for us.”
“It’s my company.”
“And I’m a partner.”
“A limited partner and that was only put in place because the lawyers thought it was best so we could buy that property and…”
“And?” Frank cupped a hand to his ear, waiting. Frank laughed. “There you go again. I don’t think you will ever acknowledge me for what I’ve done. All the time you took off after Indi’s death. Who was running the business? Huh? That’s right. Me.”
“You said to take time off.”
“Yeah, I did because that’s what a friend and partner does. They step in. Carry the load. Make sure things are running smoothly. Had I not done that, we would have gone under years ago. I practically ran the entire business while you were out of the picture and what do I have to show for it?” He shook his head, lifting a hand in the air. “This!” He grabbed up his walking stick and turned to continue.
Kara chewed it over as she took hold of her father and called out to him. “Hey, Frank, aren’t you going to help?”
“Why, I’m just a limited partner. Certainly not…”
He took a few steps while looking back at them when suddenly his body plunged, disappearing below the surface of the snow. “FRANK!”
27
The urge to sprint was strong, however, her father cautioned her when Kara unshackled the rope and took several steps forward. “Stop! Check for ice,” he said, thinking they were standing on a small lake. The last thing Frank needed was to have her in the same predicament. It had to be a small body of water to have formed ice in a matter of a day and a half, but it wasn’t uncommon especially in October with temperatures dropping into the low thirties. Add to that the higher altitude, the savage winds, and the fact that some lakes freeze faster than others, and they had a recipe for disaster.
Kara dug her walking stick down and brushed away the snow to reveal nothing but solid dark rock. She heard gasping, and then Frank howling for help.
Where did the body of water begin?
Cautiously, Kara removed her snowshoes and approached using the stick to clear a path before her, a means of seeing what she was standing on before she moved.
“Help. I’m freezing!”
“Stay calm, I’m coming.” She figured she might be able to get close enough that she could extend the stick for him to hold onto and then drag him out. Frank was kicking his feet and trying to reach the edge of the ice so he could use his elbows to pull himself out onto the thicker portion. As he kicked she saw some of the snow drift away, revealing the parts of the lake that weren’t fully frozen. All lakes froze from the outer edges inward with the middle of the lake being thinner and the last part to solidify. There were a lot of factors that came into play, the overall size, the depth of a lake, its exposure.
The huge, steep slopes kept this area in constant shadow, allowing ice to form faster.
He had to have gone in on a section that was thin and hidden, as the closer she got and the more kicking he did, the more of the small body of water revealed itself.
“Be careful, Kara,” her father yelled.
They didn’t have much time. Hypothermia at this altitude would set in faster than it would have back at the river. The temperatures up here were extremely low, the wind unforgiving. His body may have already lost all sensation.
Moving forward, it didn’t take long to see and hear the ice crack, to feel it flex beneath her. Kara took a step back and got back down on her belly. This was as far as she could go. Around Frank, the ice cracked multiple times, loud like a gun going off as he clambered out of the dark hole, water sloshing around his waist. He was shivering like mad, his mouth wide, his fingers rigid.
He gasped, his breath exiting in hard pants.
Panic was overtaking him as he clawed his way out, stretching for her walking stick that she’d extended. The top of half of his body was now out. She could see the fear in his face, the thought that the ice below him would give out and he’d be fully engulfed in freezing water. “That’s it. You’re okay. You got this!”
Using every last ounce of strength, his fingers finally latched onto the stick and she was able to drag him to the safety of the rocks. The agonizing pain was clear on his face. His eyes wide, lips blue, features twisted. His body shivered uncontrollably in the blustery wind that was getting colder by the second. His teeth chattered as she guided him away from the water toward boulders and overhanging rocks, and a small, thin tepee-shaped opening in the mountain. It was more of a vertical crevice than a deep cave. But it was protection from the high winds.
“I can’t feel my f-e-e-t!” he said, eyes glazed over, staring hard at her.
Although it seemed like madness to tell him to strip out of his clothes, if he didn’t they would freeze to his skin. Though getting him to do it was near impossible. His muscles were rigid, and his body shaking hard.
Kara removed snow from a boulder and assisted him, pulling off one item after the other until he crouched stark naked. “Keep moving,” she said. “Get the blood to your feet and toes.” Kara wrung out his jacket, his sweater, and the layers of T-shirts he’d been wearing and then spread the clothes over a rock. Fishing into her pack, she tossed a T-shirt at him and told him to use it to dry off while she started a fire. To keep their load light, and make it easier for travel, they’d only taken a few extra T-shirts, socks, and blankets in a pack, salvaged from the wreck. Most of it they had already used or burned when trying to protect the camp from the bear. He would have to wait for his clothes to dry, which probably wouldn’t be long in the high winds. They wouldn’t be warm but they could fix that after. “You were right,” she said as she undid the wire around the stack of branches that they’d collected before heading away from the trees. “We needed them.” Moving fast, knowing that she had only minutes, she created a fire using the multi-tool, and chunks of foam from the plane seats below her father as kindling. She surrounded the wood with smaller rocks, to block the wind that was battering them. She blew harder and suddenly flames licked around the wood.
The fire was good for starters but alone it wouldn’t be sufficient.
“Kara, take this blanket,” her father said.
“But you…”
“Take it.” She took it from her father and wrapped it around Frank’s legs and feet. Her father was fine as he had multiple layers. Kara came around the back of Frank, unzipped the front of her coat, and wrapped each section around him along with her body and legs like she was giving him a bear hug from behind. The awkwardness of the moment didn’t even register. This was about survival. Warming him up. Preventing hypothermia, frostbite. Keeping him alive.
Every few minutes Kara would reach for a few more sticks and toss them on the fire, breathing life into the blaze. She rested her head against his upper shoulder and breathed against the back of his neck and body and began to count the seconds.
Seconds turned to minutes. Slowly but surely Frank began to shake less until it was nothing more than small shudders every few minutes.
“Keep moving your fingers and toes,” she said. Frank nodded but didn’t talk. The hours passed, more time they didn’t have to waste but there was nothing that could be done. This was their entire journey boiled down, four steps forward, and two back.
As the blaze crackled and time passed, Frank said he was warm again so Kara peeled away the clothes from the rocks just outside the opening in the wall. They had frozen and looked unnatural like they had been covered in starch. “Try slipping into that,” she said with a chuckle, showing him his sweater that was flat, hard, and could have been used as a Frisbee. She set all his clothes close to the fire so they could thaw out.
They weren’t getting out of there that evening even as the winds died down, and the sky began to clear with a promise of better weather on the horizon.
Although they had food for sustenance in the past, they were now all out and facing a hungry night and empty stomachs the next morning. She could already feel her clothes beginning to get loose. Tiredness had set in, fatigue from a lack of food and hiking for hours. Kara checked in on her fathe
r, making sure he was warm enough and protected from the elements as best as she could. His coughing had gotten worse.
Placing her hands over his, she became aware of how fragile life was. How easily it could end. Although she’d done her best to remain in contact with him, they’d already lost so many years to grief, arguments, and time. Taking the empty water bottle, she refilled it at the lake, being careful not to repeat Frank’s mistake. For a while he’d berated himself, saying he should have known better.
The truth was it could have happened to anyone.
Bundled up under a blanket, tossing a few more branches on the fire, Frank looked at her as she returned. “Thanks.”
“I guess we are even,” she said referring to her earlier brush with death on the slope. She gave her father some water and then handed the bottle back. In many ways, Frank felt like an uncle. Her father’s brother had passed away a long time ago, a Chicago native she’d only met a couple of times when she was younger. Frank for years had been a pillar of their family, available whenever helping her father around the property and the business. Even having her at their home for months while her father coped with grief.
“You’re right — you know, about what you’ve done for the business. My father would have fallen to pieces if it hadn’t been for you and Jacqueline. I’m sorry that things aren’t working the way they should.”
Frank glanced over at Henry who had his eyes closed.
“No, it’s okay. Your father has the right to be picky, he built the company from the ground up. I wasn’t there in the early days. And, to be honest, he doesn’t have the pressure I do now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked me about what Callaway meant.” He stabbed the fire, the embers glowing bright and golden. “Selling the business would have helped me get out from under a mountain of debt.” He sighed, it sounded as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders in telling her.
