by Jan Redford
I woke up when the van stopped in front of our house. Cars everywhere, as usual. I grabbed my pack and slid the van door open, and there, double-parked behind the rusted-out green Subaru I’d just bought to replace my Dart, was Dan’s almost-new tan Subaru. The boys had survived another mountain.
* * *
—
“It was too warm. There was crap crashing down the couloir. Way too dangerous.”
The guys described their brief outing while I perched on Dan’s knee on the couch, still wearing my red ski-patrol jacket. The living room was once again full of climbers, but I didn’t care. Dan was alive.
“You guys are amazingly cheerful,” I said. “You just drove for hours and didn’t even get a route in. I thought you’d be bummed.”
“Well, get this. On the drive back, we got to talking and we decided to go for it. A big mountain. This May.” Dan rubbed his hands together.
Zac, one of our roommates, turned down the volume on the TV and sat back into the plush brown sofa. He, Tim, Joe, Grant and Mark looked at Dan and Ian, avoiding eye contact with me.
Dan and Ian looked at me, then exchanged looks with each other.
“What are you two up to?” I asked.
“Alaska!” They said in unison.
I stiffened and removed my arm from around Dan’s neck. My stomach suddenly felt like I’d done too many sit-ups. Dan put his arm around my waist so I couldn’t stand up.
“Don’t freak out, Jan. We’re just thinking of doing the regular route on McKinley.”
“Fuck McKinley,” Grant said from the swinging wicker chair in the corner. “Go big or go home. This community is too fucking apathetic if you ask me.” He took a swig of beer, oblivious to the warning daggers I was hurling at him with my eyes. Shut up and go back to your grungy little basement.
“So what should we do?” Ian asked.
“The Infinite Spur. On Foraker.” Grant’s answer was immediate, as though he wished he were going there himself, but he was about to go logging. His unemployment insurance had dried up.
I felt betrayed. Grant was the only guy who bothered to venture upstairs to see why I was always holed up in my room. He’d seemed impressed when I showed him the four-inch binder of coursework for English 12. He’d said sometimes he regretted dropping out of McGill to be a ski bum in Whistler. Now he seemed to have conveniently forgotten that Dan staying alive was an important part of my big plan. Four years to get my teaching degree, then a job, then married, then babies.
“It’s committing. It’d take about eight days, and after the first day, there’s no backing off,” Grant warned.
Dan sat up straighter, looked at Ian. “We could do it. We’re climbing some of the hardest shit in the Rockies.”
As the conversation got more and more animated and more beer caps popped off, Dan loosened his grip on me. I climbed the stairs to our room and sat at the desk, staring at my next assigned reading: Wuthering Heights. A burst of laughter wafted up from the living room, seeped under the door. I picked up a pen, put it down, closed my book.
May. Only two months away.
* * *
—
When Dan came upstairs, I was sitting on the edge of the bed in my pajamas. Our bed was just a hand-me-down mattress with no frame. He took off his clothes, sat down beside me in his boxers.
“Hey. Don’t be mad.”
I didn’t answer.
“Remember the rules. Never go to sleep pissed off at each other.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed and rolled on top of me, squishing me into the bed. I was pinned. It was as if a tank had landed on me.
“Get off me, you jerk.”
“Thought you were tough.”
“Get off!”
He finally rolled off and I punched him in the chest. “Asshole.”
“PMS again? I thought that was only supposed to be once a month.”
I elbowed him in the gut.
We lay on our backs, side by side, the soles of our feet flat on the floor.
“Don’t go to Alaska.”
“Hey, we’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I have a really bad feeling about this.”
“You always say that.”
“Don’t go. Please. Or do something else up there. You can’t back off the Spur, even if you get altitude sickness.”
“Come on. You freak me out talking like this all the time.”
He sat up and grabbed a book off the desk, handed it to me. “Look what Joe lent me.”
Surviving Denali. On the cover, two climbers scaled the knife-edge ridge of McKinley, high above blue-white crevasse-riddled glaciers that flowed like massive rivers around the bases of massive mountains. Everything massive. An alpine climber’s paradise.
I handed the book back without opening it. “I mailed my university application yesterday,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.
When he didn’t say anything I rolled over and leaned on my elbow so I could look down at him.
“I’ll be home on weekends.”
“You’ll fall in love with some professor with a bunch of degrees.”
So that was what he was worried about.
“No, I won’t. I love you.” I rolled on top of him, my head on his smooth chest. He had almost no chest hair. He draped his arm across my back, pressing me into him. His strong heartbeat thumped against my cheek.
14
THE MEMO
Dan and Ian stood side by side against the lush, green Washington backdrop while I focused my camera. They grinned, blue eyes squinting into the sun as I pressed the shutter.
As they moved toward Scottie’s VW van I got a sudden premonition—me, standing at a counter at the photo shop in Banff, staring at these last pictures, wishing I’d taken more. The image almost winded me.
“Wait! One more!”
“Come on. We’ve got to get to the airport.” Ian crawled into the van to join Julie, who was already crammed in the back seat behind the mound of packs and duffle bags. She and I had been climbing together for three weeks in Oregon and Washington, then two days ago we’d met up with Dan and Ian in Squamish. We were about to drop them off at the Seattle airport and head to Burns Lake to tree plant, where I planned to work myself into the ground to keep my mind off the boys on the Infinite Spur.
Scottie, an old Ontario high-school friend of Dan’s, started up the van. Last night he’d given us the “Presidential Suite”—his one bedroom—and joined the others in sleeping bags on the living-room floor just outside our door. Dan had bounced up and down rhythmically on the bed, making the springs squeak, laughing at my mortification, then he’d lain awake, too nervous to snuggle, too nervous to sleep.
I raised my camera to my eye. “Please, Dan. Just one more.” I could hear the hysteria in my voice. Dan must have too. He turned toward me and posed in front of the van. His pale blond hair lit up in the sun as he stared into the viewfinder with a tolerant smile.
* * *
—
At the airport, I sat on Dan’s lap with my arms around him while he tried to have a conversation with our friends, killing time before he could board the plane. He strained to look at his watch but couldn’t see it with me cramming my face into his chest. Being near him wasn’t enough—I needed to be on top of him. I would have wormed my way right inside him if I could.
“Flight 207 for Anchorage is now boarding.”
I put my hands over my ears. Dan stood and I slid off his disappearing lap. I was sobbing now, and people stared as they milled past. Dan grabbed his bag and he and Ian hugged Scottie and Julie. When Ian hugged me, he whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.”
Dan let me cling longer than he wanted to, his muscles wound up tight, then peeled me off like a second skin. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I love you.”
“Me too. I love you too.” I love you so much. I need you. Don’t die on me.
As we walked away, Scottie put his arm around my shaking shoulders
and said, “He’ll be fine. I promise you he’ll come home.”
Like Lot’s wife, I peered around Scottie to get another glimpse of the boys, wishing I hadn’t, knowing it was bad luck. Dan was showing the flight attendant his boarding pass. He was too far away for me to see his face but I could see the energy ripple through his body as he shifted from foot to foot, clutching his paper bag, his version of carry-on. He was probably telling the attendant they were off to climb a big mountain.
They disappeared through the gate without looking back.
* * *
—
The boys are falling, their two bodies twisting around each other, ice axes flailing, legs and arms groping at nothing. Just thousands of feet of air. I’m clutching at the air myself, like it’s me who’s falling. I can taste their terror. I’m inside their bodies. Then I’m on my hands and knees on our kitchen floor in Banff, cleaning up a big pool of blood. I scrub and scrub, but the blood won’t go away. I keep scrubbing and crying. No one tells me but I know someone has just removed their bodies.
* * *
—
I woke up sobbing and choking, twisted up in my sleeping bag in a dark room, not knowing where I was. Then I heard Julie breathing in the bed next to mine, and I was back in my cabin at Burns Lake. I wanted to wake her but I knew she was tiring of telling me Dan was going to be fine, so I lay there, the certainty smothering me like a ton of wet snow, muffling my sobs in my pillow until dawn crept through the windows and it was time to get up and plant another couple thousand trees.
* * *
—
The cut block was mercifully flat, but covered in waist-high bright purple fireweed that gobbled up each tiny spruce plug I put into the ground.
Pesticide-drenched water trickled down my pant leg from the hole in my planting bags, right through my duct tape patches. Plodding along, exhausted, my head in a fog, I counted out my steps, scraped the ground with my boot, speared it with my shovel, dropped in a tree, kicked the hole closed with my heel. Julie trudged along off to my left, her bright blond ponytail stuck through the back of her baseball cap.
The image of the boys falling clung to me but I plodded on. I had to make money. I’d been accepted by the University of Calgary pending the completion of my English course. Just the poetry unit was left to do, but it was hard to focus on iambic pentameter while Dan and Ian were hanging off Mount Foraker in Alaska.
Dan. Fear cinched my ribs, cut off my breathing. I stopped, leaned against my shovel. Julie had said the dream meant nothing, like I knew she would. I pulled my bandana over my face to wipe up the sweat, watched as Julie pulled ahead of me on her line. It’d be hard to space my trees properly from hers in this fireweed if we got too far apart. I counted out my steps, scraped down to good soil, speared the ground with my shovel. Planting was supposed to shut down my brain, but it seemed to be doing the opposite.
* * *
—
Julie, Wendy and I were squeezed into our cabin’s tiny kitchen, chopping vegetables. Wendy was staying at camp but we’d invited her for supper. It was good to have her around. She had a calming effect on me. After our early days of climbing, she’d gone on to be a park warden, ski patroller and paramedic, so she knew the mountains well. When she said the boys would be fine, I almost believed her.
There was a light tap on the door. A woman’s wide face blurred behind the screen—Betty, who owned the cabin we were renting.
“Message for Jan.”
My knife clattered to the counter. Wendy looked at me strangely, nudged me toward the door. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to know. I wanted my life to stay like this for a while longer. Normal.
Betty pulled on the screen door handle and the mosquitoes floated in through the opening. She extended a small square of white paper.
“Shannon called.” Shannon was an eighteen-year-old lift operator who’d worked at Nakiska when I ski-patrolled. She was looking after the house till we all got back.
Betty shook the paper at me till I walked over and took it.
Big block letters, WHILE YOU WERE OUT. A list of possible messages with a little check mark in the box beside Telephoned. Not beside Rush. Our phone number in Banff was written in the message section.
“She didn’t leave a message, or say it was urgent?”
“No, just that you should phone her tonight.”
Some of the tension eased out of my shoulders. If it was about the boys, if anything had happened, the box for Urgent or Rush would have been ticked. Betty turned and headed back up the hill to her trailer while I put the memo in my pocket. Back at the counter I picked up my knife and a carrot.
“Don’t you think you should call her?” Julie asked.
“Shannon’s just a kid. She probably can’t figure out if she’s supposed to water the plants once or twice a week.”
“Just call her and see what she wants. We’ll get supper ready.” Wendy took the knife out of my hand.
* * *
—
At the trailer, Betty gave me a quick lesson on how to use the radio phone, then I dialled the familiar number to my house. After five rings, Shannon answered. She sounded breathless.
I pushed the button and talked into the receiver.
“I got a message to call you. Is everything okay?” I let go of the button to let Shannon talk.
“…to call them right away.” I just caught the tail end. It was obvious she didn’t know this was a radio phone.
I pushed the button. “Shannon, this is a radio phone. You have to wait till I’m finished. Call who?”
But again, she was talking. “…phone the wardens in Alaska right away and…”
Wardens. Alaska.
I wanted to go back to my cabin. Crawl into bed. Put the pillow over my head. I pushed down the button, started talking. Now I must have been talking right over her voice.
“Shannon! What are you talking about?” I released the button.
I caught one word.
Avalanche.
A loud roar filled my ears as blood pumped through the veins in my temples.
I pounded the button down and yelled, “What the fuck are you talking about? What avalanche?” But again, only a few garbled words came back to me. I turned toward the doorway. “Someone, help me!” Was that me screaming? I’d meant to say, “Could you help me with the radio, please,” but I kept screaming, “Someone, help me!” over and over.
Footsteps rumbled down the narrow hall toward me.
“My boyfriend. Something’s happened.” I couldn’t talk properly. My mouth felt as though it were no longer attached to my face. Like it was full of cotton balls.
Betty looked at her husband. “I’ll go get her friends.” Larry sat beside me, pried the receiver out of my fist.
“This is Larry. This is a radio phone and we can only talk one at a time. Could you please repeat the message?”
With my head between my knees, I willed her not to say it.
“A warden called from Alaska and left a number and you have to phone him right away.” She stopped talking, waiting for Larry to speak. I still didn’t know what was happening.
“What the fuck is she talking about?” I was crying now.
Larry didn’t say anything, just waited until Shannon figured out she should keep going.
“There was an avalanche on Mount Foraker. They need Jan to tell them what kind of equipment the guys were carrying.”
“Why?” I ran my hands through my hair, pulled till the roots threatened to pop out of my scalp. It didn’t make any sense. Why would they need to know that?
Larry asked for more details.
“There was a yellow climbing suit in the avalanche debris.”
I stopped rocking back and forth on the stool. Ian’s climbing suit was bright yellow.
Shannon didn’t know anything else but gave Larry the number for the warden’s office and said they’d be there all night. They were doing a search.
Wendy and Julie rushe
d in while I was pacing around the little room. Wendy would know what to do. She had handled countless disasters in the mountains. “It might not even be them,” she said.
She dialled the warden’s office in Talkeetna. Introduced herself.
“Is the girlfriend in the room?” the warden asked.
“Yes, she’s right beside me.”
Silence. After several seconds the warden spoke again. “There’s been an avalanche on the SE Ridge of Mount Foraker.” The route they’d been planning to climb before their attempt on the Infinite Spur. A warm-up climb. To adjust to the altitude.
I hopped off the stool, relief flooding through me. “Tell him it can’t be them then. Tell him they’re on the Spur. They did the SE Ridge when they first got up there.” Wendy knew this. Repeated it into the phone.
Another long pause.
“We think the avalanche occurred on May 5,” the warden said.
Two weeks ago! Four days after we dropped them off at the airport. Right when they were supposed to be on the SE Ridge.
The boys falling, twisting around each other.
I looked at Julie, then Wendy. Julie tried to put a glass of water in my hand, tried to get me to sit back down but I couldn’t move.
“We’re pretty sure it was them, plus two Americans from Anchorage. The tracks lead into the avalanche starting zone, and they don’t come out. We got a report from other climbers going up the route, and we did a flyover, saw the avalanche site but we can’t get in there on foot. It’s too dangerous.”
“How do they know they’re dead? What if they’re still alive? Are they just abandoning them?”
The warden had heard me. “I’m sorry. They fell three thousand feet.”
I sank back onto the stool. I wanted to scream but a scream would have made this real. Three thousand feet. Was that like falling off the top of El Capitan? How long did it take to fall three thousand feet? I didn’t want to be in my body anymore. I started to float. The voice of the warden sounded like it was coming through a tunnel.
