To the Last Breath

by Francis Slakey

  He grinned back at us, beaming; he was in his element.

  He was the worst driver I have ever known; that was undeniable. But I couldn’t help but like him. The radio blaring, his voice once again shouting out over the music, we were back on our journey over the mountain.

  On our return to the United States, we learned something remarkable.

  Against all odds, Patsy Spier had persuaded key senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, to sponsor an amendment to suspend the U.S. government support for International Military Education and Training funds to the Indonesian military until the ambush had been investigated and the shooters apprehended.

  She had walked the halls of Congress, and successfully pressed her case with President Bush’s administration. In time, and as more evidence came in, the Bush administration recognized the value of suspending funding.

  As I caught up on the events when we returned from Morocco, I found newspapers that followed Patsy’s story and described whom she was meeting with. They read like a who’s who of politics: she had met with the deputy secretary of defense, the director of the FBI, the president of Indonesia, and senator after senator after senator.

  When the full impact of Patsy’s success finally settled into my thinking, I again did something I never thought I would do. I dug through my sock drawer.

  I was searching for the amulet the Lama had given me on my way up Mount Everest.

  I didn’t dig through the drawer out of a sense of nostalgia. I wasn’t trying to recall the challenges I had faced. Instead, I was digging to get some perspective.

  There, sitting in the back of the drawer, untouched since I had tossed it in, was the amulet. Beside the amulet was the scrap of paper that I had written the words on before the Sherpa had sewn the amulet up tight in the threads from a silk scarf that the Lama had blessed.

  I unfolded the scrap and stared down at the letters for the first time in four years:

  Why did I go back to that sock drawer?

  I was no longer on the journey I had intended. Sure, I would finish my list of mountains and oceans, I wasn’t about to give up on the record, but this had become about so much more than surfing and climbing. In fact, my plan had become unexpectedly complicated.

  What was the likelihood that I would meet Gina on my expedition to Everest? And what was the likelihood that my life would get entwined with Patsy Spier’s?

  I didn’t expect that the amulet would explain why these unlikely events occurred. I didn’t expect the amulet to explain why my life, my attitude, was changing.

  But what I knew was this: if I traced back the timeline of my surfing and climbing record to just before these improbable things started to happen, it would be that moment in the Lama’s prayer room.

  That’s not to say he was the cause of it all. But perhaps something relevant did happen at that moment. Maybe he saw me for who I was. Perhaps he looked into my eyes, saw my character, and knew that the journey I was on would deepen me far more than I expected. The mountain would not be under my control, he knew that, and perhaps he knew I didn’t fully appreciate that fact.

  If the Lama did size me up at that moment, then I wanted to know what he concluded. Somehow, that insight was contained in the amulet.

  I pulled the amulet out of the drawer and hung it on our mantel over the fireplace alongside an old pair of battered crampons that had been my contact with the snow on all the peaks on my journey.

  That wasn’t the only change I made.

  A pillar, one of those parts of my foundation that I thought I would never change, was about to fall.

  One thing that made Gina completely unlike a typical Brooklyn Italian is that she had suffered frostbite. Willingly.

  At the age of sixteen, Gina’s mother divorced and moved her three daughters to Denver. A few times every winter, with fresh snow piling up in the mountains, Gina would skip school and go to the slopes and ski until her legs were limp and her fingers were chilled to the bone, hardened numb.

  The first time we went to a slope together, in Jackson, Wyoming, she decided to be accommodating and agreed to go snowboarding with me, her first time.

  After an hour of slamming down backward on the snow, deep bruises thickening on her tailbone, she pointed at the snowboard and stared back at me:

  “I don’t need to learn how to ride that thing. I’m here to have some fun, not bruise my ass.”

  There was no discussion. She had been gracious, given it a shot, but kindness has its limits. Her mind was made up. “I’m switching to skis, I’ll see you in a minute.”

  When she returned, with skis on, we hit the black diamond runs and I spent the rest of the day going down the slope beside her. She was on skis, I was on a snowboard—we were in sync on the path, but we each chose a different method to navigate the terrain. She was self-assured, a solid partner beside me, but working it her own way. I didn’t need her there, but I wanted her there.

  It may have been at that moment that I had this dramatic realization: there was no reason for me to want to be apart from her.

  Gina had a similar realization about me. But it wasn’t that day, and the circumstances were of an entirely different sort.

  A pool of saliva is forming on the hardwood of our living room floor. The dog is spread flat, the drool falling off the tongue in thick pea-sized droplets. The smell of boiled shoes hovers over its patchy mottled hair, the skin hangs on the bones like a swaddled X-ray. There is nothing appealing about this dog.

  “If no one adopts her this afternoon, they’ll put her down tomorrow,” Gina explains.

  Clearly, the dog didn’t understand that her clock was counting down. If she knew that today was her last day, she’d be putting on a better show. Fetching, shaking my hand, balancing on back paws, anything to raise her prospects. Instead, she’s drooling on the floor, panting, immobile, and sniffing for food, hoping, I suppose, that a slab of bacon will suddenly appear under her nose.

  “Why is she drooling so much?” I knew nothing about dogs, so it seemed like a reasonable question.

  “Slake, it’s a hundred degrees outside and she’s got a thick coat on her. She’s hot.”

  We’d walked the dog over to our house from the Humane Society van that was parked down the street for an animal adoption event. What should have been a five-minute walk took nearly fifteen with the dog stopping every few steps to sit and pant, then lift up and struggle for a few more paces only to pause again, pee, and wheeze.

  Gina knew how I felt about this. I’d been asked by a reporter once whether I had a pet and I said: “No. I don’t let any living thing in my house that can’t open a bottle of scotch.” Gina had read that quote; she knew what she was up against.

  I was unimpressed. “She can’t seem to do anything but lie there.”

  If Gina had wanted me to take an interest in a dog, I would have expected something with more life, a bit of teeth, an occasional snarl.

  “It’s your decision,” Gina said. “We should take her back to the van in a few minutes.” Then she walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the dog.

  I got down on the ground beside it and looked into its eyes.

  That dog needed me if it was going to survive one more day, but that didn’t matter to either of us—me or the dog. I didn’t see pleading in her eyes, and I didn’t feel any pity for her.

  Instead, I felt something else.

  This wasn’t who the dog really was. The exterior—the patchy skin, the tongue draping over the teeth, the stench—was just a dismal cover. All that was the result of a hard past. There was a different dog underneath all that smear and waste.

  So why not give her a chance, I thought. I could pull her back from the edge and find out who she is. I could care; I did care.

  The dog stared back at me, unblinking.

  I stood back up as Gina came into the room.

  “Let’s call her Pemba,” I said.

  “Why Pemba?” Gina asked.

  “It’s the Sherpa w
ord for Saturday, today, the day I decided to keep her.”

  Within a few weeks the dog started to thicken, eventually bulking to a muscled eighty-five pounds. The patches filled in, the stench subsided, the pools of drool dried up. All of that was replaced by a steady companion that trotted by my side down the street or trail, alert for squirrels and a crumb. Eager, enthused, always ready to charge at the day the moment the door swung open, those were the genuine qualities; that is what lay underneath the weathered coat.

  Gina knew the same was true of me, that something solid lay underneath my gnarled exterior. She had seen indications of something deeper in me. I had written the piece for the Post, I had talked to congressional staff; I could care about something outside myself. My decision to keep that ragged old dog was the last confirmation she needed. It hadn’t surprised her. She told me that when she walked out of the room, she knew I was capable of accepting that dog. Pemba sealed it.

  I proposed to Gina, and she accepted. Pillar #1, that determination I had to never get married, fell away. It didn’t collapse with a dramatic crash of blocks and ash; it didn’t leave a heap of rubble. Instead, that pillar, that certainty I thought I had, faded away without a sound, as if it had never really been there in the first place.

  We made our wedding plans. As a result, in just a few months’ time, I would find out exactly what the Lama had in mind when he gave me that amulet. There would be no need for speculation, no need to hunt down ancient scrolls or consult master linguists to decipher the amulet’s meaning. I was going back to the source. Gina and I were heading to Nepal to get married in the Thyangboche monastery, the very spot where I had received the amulet.

  I planned to have another audience with the Lama. This time when I asked him a question, I would make sure to get the answer in a language that I could understand.

  Chapter 8

  INTERCONNECTED

  The owner of the teahouse speaks only broken English, but if I understand her correctly, then the hat she is trying to jam into Gina’s backpack is at least one hundred years old. Gina is standing beside her, protesting the offer. But the owner is determined; jaw clenched tight, she throws her shoulder into Gina and continues to force the muffin-shaped cap into the depths of the backpack.

  We stopped here just a few minutes ago and while waiting for some tea the owner asked us what we were doing in Namche Bazaar.

  “We’re on our way to the Thyangboche monastery to get married.”

  Her squeal required no translation. It was evident that she was delighted for us. Then she got inquisitive.

  “Where are wedding clothes?”

  “We’re wearing them,” Gina explained.

  Personally, I thought our wedding attire was stunning. I had on a pair of lightweight gray Asolo GTX hiking boots that had just a touch of marsh-green shading, complemented by a deep-black North Face zip-up all-weather Gore-Tex jacket. Gina’s mauve Marmot PreCip jacket added a touch of color to the occasion without being overstated. In the event of a chill, she had a pair of Outdoor Research mitts with removable fleece liners—a beautiful accessory piece.

  Evidently, the teahouse owner saw things differently. She snorted.

  “You will wear my wedding clothes.” She turned and left the room.

  This woman was a complete stranger; we had known her for all of two minutes.

  She returned moments later with several pieces of clothing, neatly folded, stacked in her arms. On the top of that stack was a dead squirrel.

  “I married in this. Mother married in this. Her mother married in this. You will marry in this.”

  She walks over to Gina’s backpack, unclips the top, and starts shoving in pieces from the stack.

  “No, please, no. That is too generous. Too kind. I can’t accept.” Gina leaps up to stop the woman from mashing her family tradition into the backpack.

  Several things are going through my mind at that moment. First is this: when will the tea be ready? Second, I realize that this moment typifies a difference between our two countries, Nepal and the United States.

  Imagine driving to your wedding and you pass through a small town and stop at the local diner for a cup of coffee. You don’t know the owner, but when you tell her you’re on your way to get married she hands you her one-hundred-year-old wedding gown. That would be shocking in the United States, but it is entirely unsurprising here in this Buddhist village of a few hundred shacks dotting a foothill of the Himalayas.

  There is one thing that does surprise me: that dead squirrel on top of the stack of clothes. I get up off my stool to get a closer look. I have no intention of inserting myself into the shoving match; the teahouse owner has the instincts of an NBA forward, shouldering back against the defender, pressing in to get the score. If I get too close she might elbow me in the teeth.

  I look past her arm at the hide in her right hand. It’s not a squirrel. It’s a yak skin hat, the hair thick, long, and tangled. If Gina were wearing this in Wyoming during hunting season, she’d be shot on sight, mistaken as a wandering buffalo.

  Despite Gina’s protests, we all know that there is only one way this can end. Gina accepts the clothes. “Thank you so much. This is just amazing.”

  “Drop off on your way back,” is the woman’s final instruction before pouring our tea.

  Namche Bazaar is the doorway to the Himalayas, the last village before the terrain begins its sharp rise up into the mountains. Every Saturday merchants from across the Khumbu Valley in Nepal come here to trade their goods. Those market days are a centuries-old tradition and they still draw traders from Tibet, who cross over the high mountain passes. As a result of this being a trading post, the villagers are used to seeing people pass through with packs to be emptied or filled with goods.

  Gina’s pack is now stuffed with a traditional Sherpa wedding outfit. With that, we continue on up the trail toward the Thyangboche monastery.

  The monastery shows no sign of change from the way it looked years before, when we first passed through, me on my way to climb Everest, Gina on the trek. It remains remote and solitary. Those qualities carry both advantages and disadvantages.

  On the upside, there are no crowds to manage at the wedding, no parking headaches, no band to book, no dilemmas over who sits at which table. We invited friends and family to join us and a few have come. The rest are waiting back at home to throw us a party on our return.

  The downside is that the monks here have no idea that we are coming. There was no way to communicate with them; there are no phone lines here or electric grid to power a connection to the Internet. They wouldn’t have a wedding ceremony planned and ready, but I thought that was a manageable problem for a simple reason. The monks live in a daily cycle of prayer and fasting. With our arrival, they would have a welcome break from the routine. I assumed they could whip up a ceremony in short order. And so they did. So did the owner of the teahouse near the monastery. When I explained to him why we were here, he had an immediate question for us.

  “Where are you wedding clothes?”

  Gina explained what happened in Namche and he smiled, admiring the clothes as Gina pulled them out of her backpack. He nodded approvingly at the massive yak skin hat.

  “You?” he said staring at me.

  I explained that I planned to wear what I had on. Once again, a teahouse owner failed to see the flair in my wedding attire of boots and all-weather jacket.

  “You will wear my wedding clothes,” and he went into a back room.

  There is a rustic charm to the Sherpa’s wedding cloak. The hat, however, is an embarrassment. It’s at least three sizes too small for me. It looks like I’m balancing a teacup on my head; it would slide off if I made any quick movements. The owner beamed with pride, so I accepted his offer to wear his cloak. I respectfully clasped the hat in my hands behind my back for the duration.

  The monks went deep into their closets in arranging our ceremony. We could hear the drums and chimes as we walked up the steps of the monastery the ne
xt morning and passed, as we had done years earlier, that block of stone that they believe carries the impression of the Buddha’s feet.

  The assembly hall was packed full, monks sitting shoulder to shoulder, their chant a soft resonant murmur that filled the room. Along the side wall were several saffron-colored cushions, laid out spaciously for us. Beside them sat three monks, each with a seven-foot-long narrow horn, the mouthpiece in their hands, the neck stretching out far in front of them with the end flaring to a wide opening that rested on a wooden block.

  The chanting is rhythmic, seductive, and so alluring that some monks will never get outside its range. There are monks at the Thyangboche monastery who have never known a larger world. Dropped off by their parents when they were just a few years old, their days are spent walking only between the assembly hall and a wooden cot in their small stone shelter.

  The chant would occasionally crescendo and then all the instruments would break in at once, the horn blaring out over the sound of the drums and chime.

  Then, suddenly, all went silent.

  Two monks escorted us to the front of the hall, to a raised platform. There, his head respectfully bowed, sat the monk who was leading the ceremony. It was at that point that we literally tied the knot. We lowered our heads and the monk took two red strings out of the pocket in his cloak and tied one around each of our necks. Gina and I turned and faced each other, touched foreheads—that was all the contact that was allowed in the assembly hall—and the ceremony was complete.

  Up to this point, I had no opportunity to look the head monk in the eyes. As we were turning to leave the assembly hall I glanced back at him. Staring back at me was an entirely unfamiliar face. This was not the Lama who had given me the amulet.

  On occasion, a Lama will choose to withdraw for a period of seclusion. This can last a few weeks, or it can last for years. The Most Holy Rinpoche of the Khumbu, the Lama who had given me the amulet, was in seclusion and the monks expected that it might be months before he would emerge from his quarters and resume contact with the monastery. He had decided to go into seclusion just three days before our arrival. If I were superstitious, I would have thought he was avoiding me.