Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  “Where haven’t you looked, Cass?”

  I met Eric’s eyes. “Nowhere.”

  “What’s that mean?” Mike said. “Does that mean she’s looked everywhere, because if she has then I don’t see how she can ask us to look there again. And if she means she hasn’t looked anywhere then why should we be the ones running around looking where she should have already looked?”

  I felt the pulse in my throat. “Give me an hour.”

  Eric said, “It’s already three-fifteen.”

  I wanted to burrow into his yellow-slick chest and plead. Instead, I studied his face. Grimed, eyes red-veined. Like Mike’s. They’d risked their lives coming into town—it didn’t matter that Mike hadn’t risked his for me, that he’d come for Krom—they’d volunteered to come get us out and now I was asking them to stick around and hunt for someone I couldn’t prove was here. In truth, I couldn’t answer Eric’s question. Where to look?

  I said, “I won’t hold us up.”

  “Good call,” Eric said.

  We were pressed around a lantern on the garage floor, like it was a campfire. Wherever Walter was, I hoped he was warm.

  “All right people, Bridgeport says we assess the situation, make the decision on site, and report in.” Eric nodded at the squat field radio that sat on the tailgate. “It’s our ass, so let’s look at the options. The Bypass is out for obvious reasons.”

  Part of me, a mulish grieving part, wanted to protest. That’s Lindsay’s route. That’s her option. Inyo hasn’t erupted, and if her road had been finished and we’d gone out that way, everybody would have made it. But now, of course, Red Mountain is venting. And she, of course, had given up on the Bypass the moment she realized what the fissure meant—she’d publicly capitulated the day Krom called in the chopper to show the path of a pyroclastic flow from Red Mountain.

  “That leaves two options,” Eric said. “Pika, and 203. Let’s look at option one, Pika. I was up there night before last. Canyon’s choked with vehicles—wall to wall. It’s impassable. We didn’t even consider trying to clear it. Take days.”

  Mike said, “We can climb over the obstructions.”

  Eric shook his head. “Goes for damn near a mile.”

  “We can carry Mr. Krom.”

  “He’s got a double fracture of the tibia. He barely withstood being carried here.”

  We glanced at Krom. Even recessed in the jeep, he drew attention. His face was worn from pain. He’d refused the morphine.

  “We’ll go slow,” Mike said. “We’ll be careful.”

  Eric said, even, “There’ve already been explosions. And everybody had a full tank of gas. We gonna go on tiptoe? It’s fucking unstable, man.”

  Mike’s mouth opened, then closed.

  “Let’s look at option two. Mike and I came in that way. Truck died on 395 before we got to the deep ash zone. We snowmobiled it from there, almost to 203. That’s where the snowmobile died. From there, it took us over three hours to walk to town. Assuming this jeep gets us as far as the crater in 203, we walk from there until we get far enough out of the deep ash that another truck can reach us. Gonna take a good five-six hours. Maybe seven.” Eric gestured at the sled. “Depending on how this thing pulls loaded through deep ash, and how fast a ride Mr. Krom can withstand.”

  We glanced, again, at Krom.

  “Long haul,” Eric continued. “Time’s my biggest concern. That, and the likelihood that the moat will start up again. In fact, we thought about that on the way in.”

  I bet they had. I bet when they saw Red Mountain starting to vent, they’d thought real hard about it. The moat was quiet when they came in but it had vented intermittently last night, so they said. I hadn’t known. Tucked into Dad’s corduroy chair at home by the fireplace, I’d slept through it all.

  We listened a moment. Listening for the thunder, for the reawakening of the moat.

  Krom spoke, then. “How deep is the ash? At its worst.”

  Mike answered. “Above the knees, sir.” He pointed to the spot.

  “And you pulled the sled through that?”

  “Oh yah.”

  “I weigh two hundred and seventeen pounds.” Krom stared at Mike’s stringy frame. Mike’s no more than a hundred and forty, dripping wet.

  “We can pull you,” Mike said.

  “Eric,” Krom said, “how deep is the ash on Pika?”

  “Don’t know. My guess is it’s gonna be shallower. It’s farther from the vent.”

  “That’s right,” Krom said. “Pika was built with that in mind.”

  I felt the change. It was swift as water hitting rock and diverting its course. Eric had adjusted his stance to directly face Krom. Mike already faced him. Command shifted. It was just that easy.

  Krom said, “We go with option one. Pika.”

  There was silence around the campfire. Eric appeared uncertain. Mike wore a tight little smile.

  I saw Krom’s point. Ash’ll be shallower. Pika was built with a whole lot in mind, hunkered down deep, safe as anything around here can be safe from lava bombs and pyroclastic flows. But it wasn’t built with spooked bears in mind. As Lindsay pointed out at the Inn, it’s a bobsled run. No room for accidents. He hadn’t foreseen that. But he surely saw it now. We’ve got a problem there. Ash’ll be shallower there, sure, only it’s not ash that’s the problem. It’s the wall of tangled steel, the leaking gas tanks. It’s a manmade problem. But it’s his route.

  I spoke. “How about option three?”

  They turned. Eric said, “What’s that, Cassie?”

  “We go up the mountain.”

  Mike gasped.

  Krom slowly formed a smile. “That doesn’t get us out.”

  I said, “Let’s look at it. I’ve skied Minaret as far as the Bypass turnoff. Ash is pretty shallow. Assume we can drive Minaret all the way up to the lifts. We hole up there if need be. At the Inn.” Back to where we started, over two months ago, debating how to get out. “We’ll be well out of reach of the moat. Mammoth Mountain will be between us and the Red Mountain vent. From there, if we can, we continue over Minaret Summit.”

  Mike said, “Oh yah, and maybe you forgot the road over the summit is closed for winter? It’s not plowed.”

  “I didn’t forget. We walk it, ski it, snowmobile it if we can.”

  Eric was nodding. “Gets us out, all right. Gets us down to the backcountry, and then we’ve got the whole Sierra crest between us and the eruption. Only thing is, Cass, that’s a long way, real tough haul. And it gets us into a wilderness camping situation.” Eric regarded Krom.

  Still, Krom smiled. “You’re forgetting something else, Cassie. Mammoth Mountain is a volcano too.”

  “I didn’t forget that.”

  “And you want to risk it?”

  “Yeah, it’s risky.” My mouth was dry. “But so far the activity’s elsewhere. Shall we weigh risks? Let’s start with option two—203 to 395. What happens if we’re in the middle of that seven-hour journey and the moat starts up? How about if it’s a magmatic eruption and it goes pyro? How about a race with a hot cloud going six hundred miles an hour?”

  “I agree,” Krom said, smiling. “Option two is out.”

  “So,” I said, “option one. Pika. Let’s say we can climb the pileup. Let’s say it doesn’t collapse and explode on us. Let’s say we’re carrying your two hundred seventeen pounds plus the sled plus our packs plus our skis and making, oh, three or four yards an hour? Let’s add quakes. Let’s add rockslides. And avalanches. And just for the hell of it, let’s add a little fallout from a pyroclastic flow. Just a smidge of burning ash, carried by the wind. I’m sure your computer sims factored that in. You didn’t factor the bears or a fifty-car pileup—who could know? But there we are. There’s option one.”

  Krom said, soft, “Tell me, Cassie, does your plan hinge on the fact that you don’t want to leave the area? You planning on doing a search for Walter on the way up the mountain? Because if that’s what you plan, you’d better make it cl
ear exactly what kind of sacrifice you’re asking of us.”

  I stared at Eric and Mike. They stared back. Is that what I planned?

  Krom said, unsmiling, “Option three is out. We go with option one.”

  Eric leaned against the tailgate. “I’d like to hear if Cassie has anything more to say.”

  “Hey, man,” Mike said to Eric, “she’s not authorized. Mr. Krom’s authorized, and you are, and I think we should…”

  “Can it, Mike.”

  Mike went silent and tucked his hand into his armpit.

  Eric smiled at me. “So, Cass, why do you want to go up?”

  I found my voice. “Going up puts us above the moat. Going up puts Mammoth Mountain between us and the Red Mountain eruption. Plus, wind’s in our favor if we go up.”

  “That it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You planning on taking off to look for Walter? Because if you do, I’ll have to go after you, sacrifice or no sacrifice.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not planning on running off.”

  “So you believe this is the best choice?” He wore the comradely grin. Old times. The two of us needling each other over the merits of the burgers at Grumpy’s or the chili at the Tip. A chick flick or a car-chase movie. New times, in the cottage, the merits of a kiss. He grinned but the scarred skin beneath his glass eye was taut.

  I inhaled, exhaled. Used his biathlete’s trick. “Let’s go up.”

  Eric switched on the radio, clapping Mike on the shoulder, and Mike’s swarthy face turned even darker but he ducked his head and tunneled a pissed look at me.

  “Sergeant.” Krom straightened, bracing himself. He withdrew his own radio from his parka pocket. “The decision rests with me.”

  “I’m afraid not, sir—you’re the victim. You’re in our charge.” Eric held out his hand. “And it’s best I take charge of all comm equipment. Keep the lines of authority straight.”

  Krom blinked. He shifted his weight, cautiously, as though testing the hold of the splints, the way an animal might try to extricate itself from a trap. Even now—leg mummified, corduroy pants ripped from cuff to pocket, parka stained red with my blood, ash graying the brown of his hair—even now he seemed as though he might snap his fingers and bring Eric to heel.

  But Eric kept his hand out and Krom finally relinquished his radio and then Eric called Bridgeport on the field radio to report our plan of action.

  Krom went still.

  His eyes, though, were alive on me. It was surely my overtaxed imagination but I thought he inclined his head and made me a little bow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  We headed in silence out of town.

  Eric drove. Mike rode shotgun. I sat in the back seat. Krom remained in the rear, in the baggage area, braced by our gear. He was, after all, cargo.

  I watched out the left window toward Red Mountain as Eric nursed the jeep along Minaret. Still not much in terms of pyrotechnics but it was a mighty consistent eruption. I swiveled to look behind, toward the caldera. No fresh plume from the moat. No discernible quakes. Winds continued in their normal direction, to the northeast. We got drifted ash.

  I watched the back of Krom’s head a moment, that thick brown pelt. No whimper of pain from him. I turned back to Red Mountain.

  We inched along, murderously slow. Even at this speed, the jeep stirred up clouds of ash. I had ample opportunity to brood on the topography of Minaret Road as we turtled along. Going up, just barely. The Red Mountain plume was visible above treetops. Don’t do anything yet, I prayed.

  No ghosts appeared, waving down the jeep. Nobody left in town, of that I was convinced. Nobody alive, anyway.

  I thought I’d feel at least a twinge of regret, leaving town. Thought I’d feel something but it’s not my town any more. Did feel something. Urgency. Floor it, Eric. Screw the ash. We’ve got spare parts.

  We passed the intersection of Minaret and the Lake Mary Road and got a dead-on view of the Lakes Basin peaks and the plume dirtying the dirty sky. Maybe it was our change in position but I could hear the eruption now. Boom boom boom, like a small war being fought on the ridge. Please don’t progress to the next stage. Please don’t go pyro now.

  We came, in moments, to the Bypass turnoff. Eric slowed, unnecessarily. Heads turned right. In the back, Krom made a sound, an exhalation. Far as I could see, it still looked navigable. Scuffed in ash, like Minaret. No volcanic bombs raining down, no sign that Inyo had awakened. Looked inviting, this Bypass, but for the fact that it dead-ended a good four miles short of 395, but for the Red Mountain plume, up and to our left. I felt a little dizzy. My ears buzzed, like a helicopter had just flown overhead.

  I scanned the Bypass for Walter. It was her route, after all.

  Minaret wound lazily toward the mountain. Still Jeffrey pine forest. Bad luck, Jeffrey, you’re too low—downhill from the Red Mountain plume—you’re never in the right place anymore, are you? And right now I wanted lodgepole, red fir, hemlock. I wanted elevation.

  Eric stopped the jeep.

  I sat forward. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking the filters, Cass. Just take a sec.”

  I died, as Eric got out and went under the hood. We all die as the Red Mountain vent goes pyro and sends hot rock at us but the incandescent cloud races ahead of the flow and we’re stopped in the road. I did not look back at Krom, Krom whose truck had stalled in ash, who had gotten out to check his engine and seen his driver killed, who’d been hit by a lava bomb, who’d returned to his truck for shelter, where he screamed in pain and forgot fear.

  Eric climbed back in and I breathed again. We accelerated to our snail’s pace, but our filters were clean and we were going up.

  Lodgepole pine. Red fir.

  We climbed. I kept an eye on the Red Mountain plume until the solid hip of Mammoth Mountain came between us and the eruption. Finally, topography was beginning to be in our favor.

  The road steepened. I peered down gullies for a wrecked snowmobile. For a body. For a waving ghost.

  No ghosts. Skeleton trees, though. No more than last time. Okay, then.

  Minaret snaked, and climbed, and at last leveled and delivered us onto the broad flat shoulder of Mammoth Mountain. Eric stopped in the roundabout beside the statue of the woolly mammoth, woolled in ash.

  We all peered up at the Tyrolean Lodge, the gabled gondola stations, the venerable Inn. It wasn’t the ash that so transformed the place, for ash had become the benchmark. Sky’s blue, grass is green, snow’s white? Not anymore. What made this place so eerie, so wrong, was the emptiness. On the lousiest ski day of winter, on the most blistering day of summer, there are people here. This is Mammoth Mountain. There’s always somebody here to ski it or board it or bike it or hike it or sit by the fireplace at the Inn and admire it. Not now. Not a car in the lot. Nor a snowmobile. Nor even a pair of skis staked in the snow.

  We’re here.

  “Gives me the creeps,” Mike said.

  Eric shut off the engine. “End of the line.” At the far end of the lot was a wall of snow, beneath which Minaret Road continued unplowed. Too late to go any farther because the dark sky was already grading into night.

  Well lady, I thought, you won. You picked the movie. Now sit through it.

  Krom said, “I could use a john.”

  Mike snapped out of his seat belt. “We’ll get you right into the Lodge, sir.”

  “No,” I said, “the Inn.”

  “But there’s emergency keys to the Lodge in the box around back of the gondola station, or at least there used to be and I don’t see why anybody would have put them in a different place since I was working here.”

  “The Inn’s safer,” I said.

  “Why is it safer, I don’t see…” Mike, despite himself, leaned on the dash to get a look up the mountain, up the two thousand feet of vertical world-class drop. The Lodge snuggled at its base. The Inn was across the parking lot, that much farther from an avalanche of Mammoth’s fabled snow. “Oh,�
�� Mike said. “O-kigh, the Inn. Only how do we get inside?”

  “Break a window,” I said.

  Mike’s street-bum face bloomed in wonder.

  Eric and Mike took Krom in a four-handed carry and I found a window. Inside, I followed my flashlight beam through the murk, skirting a fallen housekeeping cart and toppled tables, and let them in the big main doors. As they bore Krom across the colonnaded great room toward the public restrooms I recalled that meeting, that night, when the only question was how we get out. Not whether.

  I went back outside and crossed the roundabout to the gondola station and got the keys—Mike was right. I toured the ski barns and the Lodge and then returned to the Inn. They were coming out of the Men’s; I raised a hand in passing, and Eric gave a weary nod. I wandered up and down hallways, keeping an eye out for other lights, listening, shouting now and again.

  When I returned they were assembled around the cold mouth of the fireplace, Mike standing before it, Krom laid out on a chaise, Eric straddling a chair with his arms crossed over the back and his forehead on his hands. I collapsed onto an ottoman.

  Mike shifted from foot to foot. “It’s cold. Shouldn’t we go find blankets? What about lanterns? Won’t they have propane lanterns around for power outtages? I’m referring to regular outtages. I’ll do blankets and lanterns. What about food? They could have left food. Cassie should go find some food, shouldn’t she? We should bring our packs in, anyway, since we’ve got rations. Oh man, shouldn’t we contact Bridgeport?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. His forehead remained on his hands.

  What, I thought, the female gets the food? I didn’t want to go find food. We sat, beat. I didn’t want to leave this ottoman. I gazed past Mike into the fireplace, conjuring a merry blaze. The eruption still sounded, muffled, but it could have been the cannonade of avalanche-clearing guns after a heavy snowfall. There were no quakes. There was damage done from earlier quakes, lamps and such knocked over. Worse done at a party. It was dark but cozy-dark, like when the power goes out in a storm. Candlelight dinners, huddling for warmth, romance. Mike had returned a fallen wooden candelabra to its stone shelf on the fireplace flank. He lit the fat beeswax candles. They cast a buttery glow upon us all. I didn’t want to get up off this cushy ottoman. I didn’t want to go on another futile hunt for Walter. I didn’t want to ever leave this hospitable place.