by Dave Eggers
Rita remembers Grant going down the trail. What happened to Grant?
"I'm honestly not sure why he left," Shelly says, applying a strip of white sunblock to her nose. "He's not the most normal guy, though, is he?"
The sky is clear and though the air is still cold, maybe 45 or so, the sun is warm to Rita's face. She is standing now, and almost can't believe she is standing. She steps over the shale to the meal tent, the thin shards of rock clinking like the closing of iron gates.
Mike is at breakfast. It's eight A.M., and they are two hours behind schedule. They quickly eat a breakfast of porridge and hard-boiled eggs and tea. Everyone is exhausted and quiet. Grant has gone down the mountain and Mike is not going up. She smiles to Mike as he bites into an egg.
The remaining paying hikers—Rita, Jerry, Shelly—and Frank and Patrick say goodbye. They will see him again in about twelve hours, they say, and he'll feel better. They'll bring him some snow from Kibo, they say. They want to go and drag their bodies to the top, from which they can look down to him.
From the peak Rita can see a hundred miles of Tanzania, green and extending until a low line of clouds intercepts and swallows the land. She can see Moshi, tiny windows reflecting the sun, like flecks of gold seen beneath a shallow stream. Everyone is taking pictures in front of a sign boasting the altitude at the top, and its status as the highest peak in Africa, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. Behind the signs is the cavity of Kibo, a great volcanic crater, flat, paisleyed with snow.
On the Moshi side of the mountain, the glaciers are low and wide, white at the top and striped from her viewpoint, above. She sees the great teeth of a white whale. Icicles twenty feet tall extend down and drip onto the bare rock below.
"They're disappearing," Jerry says. He is standing behind Rita, looking through binoculars. "They melt every year a few feet. Coming down slowly but steadily. They'll be gone in twenty years."
Rita shields her eyes and looks where Jerry is looking.
"No more snows of Kilimanjaro, eh?" he says, and sighs in a theatrical way.
There are others at the top of Kibo, a large group of Chinese hikers, all in their fifties, and a dozen Italians in light packs and with sleek black gear. The hikers who have made it here nod as they pass each other. They hand their cameras to strangers to take their pictures. The wind comes over the mountain in gusts, like ghosts.
The hike up had been slow and steep and savagely cold. They rested ten minutes every hour and while sitting or standing, eating granola and drinking water, their bodies cooled and the wind whipped them. After four hours Shelly was faltering and said she would turn back. "Get that pack off!" Frank yelled, tearing it off her as if it were aflame. "Don't be a hero," he'd said, giving the pack to one of the porters. Shelly had continued, refreshed without the weight. The last five hundred yards, when they could see the crest of the mountain just above, had taken almost two hours. They'd reached the summit as the sun crested through a band of violet clouds.
Now Rita is breathing as fast and as deeply as she can—her headache is fighting for dominion over her skull, and she is panting to keep it at bay. But she is happy that she walked up this mountain, and cannot believe she almost stopped before the peak. Now, she thinks, seeing these views in every direction, and knowing the communion with the others who have made it here, she would not have let anything stop her ascent. She knows now why a young man would continue up until crippled with edema, why his feet would have carried him while his head drained of blood and reason. Rita is proud of herself, and loves her companions, and now feels more connected to Shelly, and Jerry, Patrick, and even Frank, than to Mike, or even Grant. Especially not to Grant, who chose to go down, though he was strong enough to make it. Grant is already blurry to her, someone she never really knew, a friend she knew as a child but who moved away before they could grow up together.
Rita finds Shelly, who is sitting on a small metal box chained to one of the signs.
"Well, I'm happy anyway," Shelly says. "I know I shouldn't be, but I am."
Rita sits next to her, panting to keep her head clear.
"Why shouldn't you be happy?" Rita asks.
"I feel guilty, I guess. Everyone does. But I just don't know how our quitting would have brought those three porters back to life."
Last night, Shelly says. Or the night before last. The last night we slept, when you were sick, Rita. Remember? The rain? It was so cold, and they were sleeping in the mess tent, and there was the hole, and the tent was so wet. They just didn't wake up, Rita. You didn't know? I know you were asleep but really, you didn't know? I think part of you knew. Who do you think they were carrying down? Oh lord, look at the way the glaciers sort of radiate under the sun. They are so huge and still but they seem to pulse, don't they, honey? Where are you going?
All the way down Rita expects to fall. The mountain is steep for the first hour, the rock everywhere loose. None of this was her idea. She was put here, in this place, by her sister, who was keeping score. Rita had never wanted this. She dislikes mountains and peaks meant nothing to her. She's a boat person; she likes to sit on boats in the sun, or in the sun with her feet in the powdery sand! As the mountain is still steep she runs and then jumps and runs and then jumps, flying for twenty feet with each leap, and when she lands, hundreds of stones are unleashed and go rolling down, gathering more as they descend. She never would have come this far had she known it would be like this, all wrong, so cold and with the rain coming through the tents on those men. She makes it down to the high camp, where the porters made her dinner and went to sleep and did not wake up. This cannot be her fault. Patrick is responsible first, and Frank after him, and then Jerry and Shelly, both of whom are older, who have experience and should have known something was wrong. Rita is the last one who could be blamed; but then there is Grant, who had gone down and hadn't told her. Grant knew everything, didn't he? How could she be responsible for this kind of thing? Maybe she is not here now, running down this mountain, and was never here. This is something she can forget. She can be not here-she was never here. Yesterday she found herself wanting something she never wanted, and she became something else and why go up when everything is wrong? Every day the porters walked ahead, helping them to get to some frigid place with a view and a savage wind, carrying watermelons and coffee for Christ's sake, and it felt wrong and she was hollow and shamed. She wanted to be able to tell Gwen that she'd done it, and she wanted to bring J.J. and Frederick a rock or something from up there, because then they'd think she was capable of anything finally and someday they would come back to her and—oh God, it was a mess and she keeps running, sending scree down in front of her, throwing rocks down the mountain, because she cannot stop running and she cannot stop bringing the mountain down with her.
At the bottom, ten hours later, she is newly barefoot. The young boy who now has her boots, whom she gave them to after he offered to wash them, directed her into a round hut of corrugated steel, and she ducked into its cool darkness. Behind a desk, flanked by maps, is a Tanzanian forest ranger. He is very serious.
"Did you make it to the top?" he asks.
She nods.
"Sign here."
He opens a log. He is turning the pages, looking for the last names entered. There are thousands of names in the book, with each name's nationality, age, and a place for comments. He finds a spot for her, on one of the last pages, at the bottom, and after all the names before her she adds her own.
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