by Sonja Yoerg
She retraced her steps to the campsite, keeping watch for movement in the direction of the trail. She wondered whether Dante had seen the sunbeams and the patch of blue sky, too. Then she remembered such shared moments were probably a thing of the past, and felt anew the ache that had taken up residence in her chest. This was their last campsite, probably forever. Even in this stony wilderness, twelve thousand feet above the sea, unchanged for millennia, forever was a heartbreakingly long time. She found the campsite and said nothing to Dante about the taste of the water or the beauty of the sky.
They wolfed down the pasta and discussed the next day’s plan. Dante set his watch alarm for five o’clock. They’d have coffee, maybe two servings each, and break camp, stashing energy bars and trail mix in the top of their packs to eat on the way up, or at the top. Despite their acclimation, the extreme altitude was a concern. Liz had read it was better to face the ascent on an empty stomach. They could eat as much as they wished on the way down and that evening in Lone Pine. There was no point in discussing what they’d do if the Roots confronted them, as it would depend on where they were. If by some miracle they were left unmolested, they’d arrive at Whitney Portal in the early afternoon.
“For a burger,” Dante said.
“And fries.”
“And maybe a second burger.”
“And more fries.”
They were silent a moment, lost in a reverie less about food and more about normality, and safety. Dante turned to her. Exhaustion had left fine wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, but his gaze was level. She waited for him to speak. He had said so little since she’d confessed to him, but knew he must be thinking about her, and about them. He rubbed his fingers across his chin and pursed his lips, as if moving his thoughts around into spaces where they might fit. She would not press him.
He pushed his hands against his knees and stood. “Ready for bed?”
The sun faded into the clouds at the horizon, blurring the sky with wash upon wash of pastel. Liz crawled into the tent and shed her outer layer, folding her fleece jacket into a square pillow. Dante followed suit. They lay there for a long time, alone with their thoughts, watching the fabric of the tent change from yellow to amber to brown. A breeze luffed the fly from time to time, reminding them of the outside world, huge and empty all around them.
The last ember of twilight lingered. Liz could just make out the half circle of the screen door.
Dante said, “I’ve been wondering about something since you told me.” She held her breath. He went on. “When you knew you were pregnant and were deciding what to do, did you think about me at all?”
“Yes. I felt awful for you right away. And ever since.”
“Because you knew you wanted an abortion.”
“I didn’t want it at all. And I didn’t think in a logical way.” She searched for the right words. The true ones. “I panicked.”
He exhaled sharply in disbelief. “I was around you, Liz. Almost the whole time, except for that short trip. I didn’t see you panicking.”
“No. You wouldn’t have. I don’t realize it myself sometimes.”
“You could have told me that. Exactly that. ‘I’m pregnant and I’m panicking.’ It would have been a start.”
“Followed closely by the end.” She rolled on her side to face him in the darkness. “If I had managed to say that, it wouldn’t have changed what you wanted to do.”
“But it was my decision, too.” His voice was hushed. “It was also my child.”
“I know. You deserved to know. But can you honestly say we would have discussed anything other than my impending motherhood?”
He lay very still. “Probably not. I would have done everything I could to have that child with you.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. She let them fall. “Can’t you see, Dante? You’re entrenched in your beliefs. And I’m entrenched, too. In, I don’t know—my fear. There’s no place for us to work it out. There’s no middle ground.”
“Fear? It seems more like independence to me. You do things your way and do them alone. Keeping things to yourself. You were brought up that way and nothing’s changed. All those secrets in your marriage, then having an abortion and not telling me, or anyone.” He paused. “Did you tell anyone, Liz?”
“No.”
“Not even Valerie?”
“No.”
“Because you were ashamed?”
“Because I couldn’t tell you first. Because I knew it would come to this.” She turned away and chewed her lip. Each breath snagged in her throat. She strove to calm her breathing, to clear her mind. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m trying to do the right thing now, Dante. I realize it will never be enough, but I’m trying.”
“I wish you had come to me. Or that you felt you could.” His voice grew hoarse. “I don’t want to become my father, who stands with his beliefs like a king with his army.”
Liz reached across to stroke his cheek. His beard was so much softer than it looked. “Maybe the world is simpler for him.”
He took her hand in his. “He’s skilled at trimming the pieces that don’t fit without bothering about the reason.”
She knew he was thinking of his sister, Emilia, and himself. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
Dante held her hand against his chest and tucked the sleeping bag around it. “We should sleep. Good night, Liz.”
“Goodnight, Dante.” She wanted to say “Te amo” but could not. What if he said nothing in response? In that moment, she could have poured herself into him. But a splinter of doubt, hard and sharp as glass, remained. He might not want her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know.”
She closed her eyes, having said everything her heart knew to say, and wandered along the border of consciousness. She pictured their tent as viewed from far above, the regularity of the dome the only hint it did not belong to the jumble of granite chunks and slabs surrounding it. Somewhere, perhaps near Guitar Lake, was the wedge of the Roots’ tarp. The brothers were under it, like cockroaches. She willed them to remain.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Liz lay awake, expecting the alarm at any moment or, rather, dreading it. The exposed part of her face was numb. It had to be the coldest morning so far. She burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag.
The alarm sounded. The trumpeting of reveille, over and over. She sat up, her back stiff.
Dante silenced the trumpets. “You sleep well?”
“Yes, finally. You?”
“Yes. It was heaven.”
“It’s freezing. I’m hiking in my leggings until it warms up.”
“I’m hiking in everything.”
They turned on their flashlights, dressed, stuffed the sleeping bags in their sacks and deflated the mattresses.
Dante climbed out. “Dios mio! It’s cold!”
Liz handed him their belongings, then joined him. Except for the flashlight beams, the darkness was complete. Only the shimmering stars betrayed where the mountains became sky.
They’d left their wet rain jackets outside and now shook the frost off and put them on. Dante prepared coffee while Liz took down the tent, snapping the frozen condensation off the fly and stopping frequently to blow her hands warm. The bear cans held only a little leftover food and Ziploc bags stuffed with trash, so she added an empty fuel can, the stove, dirty socks, cups and bowls and whatever else they wouldn’t need again.
As they finished stowing the gear and clothing in their packs, dawn arrived. With Whitney standing over them, however, the sun wouldn’t find their campsite until long after they’d gone. Liz squinted at the enormous wall they would climb. Somewhere on it was the trail. She strained to see moving dots—hikers—creeping along a switchback, but saw nothing except rocks of every imaginable size.
They hoisted their packs and grabb
ed their poles.
“Let’s go find the sun,” Dante said.
They picked their way down to the gulley and bore right toward the wall. They were halfway to the trail when Dante stopped short and pointed ahead and to the right. Two hikers, about a quarter-mile away, ascending the trail.
A wave of panic shot through Liz. “Shit.”
Dante turned to her, eyes wide, “Is it them?”
In the dim light, she couldn’t make out the color of the hikers’ backpacks, but the one in the front was tall. Her mouth went dry. “I don’t know,” she whispered, conscious of sounds carrying in the still of the morning. She’d felt secure in their campsite, tucked away. Now it was as if a searchlight had been trained on them. Instinctively, she crouched down, her heart thudding in her chest. One of her poles bounced off a rock. She winced at the sharp ringing sound and glanced up at the hikers. They hadn’t paused, but that didn’t mean she and Dante hadn’t been spotted.
Dante squatted beside her, his agitation reverberating in the space between them. He nodded to the right, where a tall boulder stood. “How about over there?”
“Okay.” She fought against the impulse to dash for cover. She rose slowly, the muscles in her legs thick with adrenaline, and moved across the gulley, holding her poles in one hand. Dante followed. They reached the boulder and slipped behind it. Liz leaned against the granite, resting one hand on the stone, rough and night-cold.
Next to the boulder was a five-foot-high ledge. They removed their packs and rested them against it.
Dante peered over the edge. “They’re still walking. Maybe they didn’t see us.”
“They might when they get higher.”
He shook his head in frustration. “I wish we knew if it was them.”
“We haven’t seen anyone else for two days.”
“Perhaps we should stay where we are.”
“We can’t hole up here, Dante. We don’t have the food. Plus, if that really was Payton and Rodell, they might wait us out. And they’re happy to eat marmots.” She thought of the one crucified on the trail sign. Her stomach turned.
“So what do we do? Let them get ahead, keep our distance?”
“That’s all we’ve got. Plus, there’ll be day hikers up there.” It was less of a logical statement than a prayer. She looked west across the valley through which they’d come. A strip of clouds hung over the peaks of the Great Divide. “We don’t want to be up at Trail Crest too late.”
Dante nodded. “Weather. So, long enough for them to get to the junction? Because they could be waiting partway up.”
“True. We need to give them time to get to the junction or over Trail Crest. They won’t want to be up there late, either, especially if they’re going to the summit.” She glanced at her watch. Quarter to seven. “We might be able to see them going up. But why don’t we figure on two hours?”
“Two hours it is.”
They broke out the cooking gear, made a second cup of coffee and ate breakfast. The coffee warmed them for a time, but soon they were stamping their feet and rubbing their arms. Periodically, one of them peered over the ledge to monitor the progress of the hikers, who crept steadily up the hulking west face of Whitney. About an hour after Liz and Dante had first spotted them, they vanished, too far away to see.
Dante consulted the map. “I’m guessing in another half hour they’ll be at the junction.”
“Sounds about right.”
He proposed that, instead of sitting there freezing, they could start the ascent and hike slowly, leaving the same distance between themselves and the putative Roots. Liz agreed, and twenty minutes later they were on the trail.
She led the way and focused on her surroundings to quell her anxiety over a potential encounter with the Root brothers. She noticed the granite here was lighter than elsewhere and studded with pink rectangles of feldspar crystals. The terrain was austere and only a few low, stoic plants squeezed life from between the rocks.
The sun caught the tip of Mount Hitchcock, painting it orange. Liz and Dante climbed, the sun climbing with them. The shadow of Whitney slid down Hitchcock until the entire mountain was aglow, the changing pattern reflected in the lakes at its feet. How Guitar Lake had earned its name hadn’t been clear when they skirted its shore during yesterday’s downpour, but now it was obvious—as obvious as the increasing cloud cover. What had been an innocuous band of white over the Great Divide was now a mass of tall, cumulus formations. In the last ten minutes, several small puffs had materialized over Mount Hitchcock. She wasn’t worried, though. It wasn’t even ten.
They stopped to remove a layer of clothing and drink water. They could still see their breath in the frosty air, but the effort of the climb had warmed them.
A low buzz came from the valley. Liz tried to pinpoint it, but failed.
“There.” Dante pointed beyond Guitar Lake. “A helicopter.”
Liz spotted it, flying low. It banked above the lake and flew southwest toward Crabtree Meadow. The buzz faded and the helicopter disappeared. “I wonder what that’s about? They use them for supplying ranger stations, but why would one be up here? Because of Brensen?”
He shrugged. “I thought they would have picked him up a couple days ago.” He looked across to Hitchcock, judging their elevation relative to the peak. “Shouldn’t be much farther, right?”
“No, we’ve done most of it.”
The final approach to the Whitney Trail junction was a long traverse. Liz felt sure they should be able to see hikers above them heading toward the summit, or returning from it, but there was only talus. She could make out sections of the trail now and all of it was empty. A knot formed in her stomach. Dante was leading and she asked him to stop, then traced with her trekking pole where she believed the Whitney Trail led. Frowning, he searched the slope and shook his head. Not a soul.
The air was noticeably thinner and they took small deliberate steps. Ahead and to the left was a tall spire with a trail cut into its side. To the right the trail disappeared around a corner. Liz saw a sign. The junction. Where all the packs should be. She sped up, her heart beating in her ears. Dante was right behind her.
They were a dozen yards away. The knot in her stomach tightened. Where were the packs? Sixty through-hikers and not one on the summit trail right now? Divide it in half—it was late in the season—and still someone would be going to Whitney midmorning. And what about the day hikers? A quota of a hundred and no one in sight.
She reached the junction, an open area of broken shale fifteen feet across, bordered by the spire on one side and a shoulder-high slab on the other. Beyond the slab was a two-thousand-foot sheer drop. Liz halted in the middle of the junction. Dante came up next to her, his mouth tight. “No packs? Why aren’t there any packs?”
“I don’t know.” She looked past him along the Whitney Trail, which wound around rock formations and towering pinnacles of granite. She could see only pieces of it, but every strip was empty. “There’s no one here.” She swallowed, her mouth parched. She stared at Dante. “Why is no one here?”
“Let’s rest a moment and think it through.”
Liz unclasped her hip belt and a shadow passed over her. Startled, she jerked her head up. A cloud. She lowered her pack and stood it against the wall next to Dante’s. A stiff breeze funneled up from the valley. They dug out their jackets and put them on, then crossed to the slab and found places to sit. Dante scanned the slope they’d ascended. “No one coming up behind us.”
Liz’s attention was on the sky. The clouds above the Kaweahs and the surrounding peaks to the west had formed a solid shroud, slate-colored at the bottom. Mount Hitchcock, too, was almost entirely in shadow, the lakes below iron gray. She twisted to see the sky above them. A few innocent puffs.
Dante followed her gaze. “Are you worried about a storm?”
“The clouds over Hitchcock moved in re
ally quickly.”
“Maybe the weather is keeping people away.”
“It might discourage a few, but honestly, it’s so unpredictable that most people with a permit would go for it anyway.”
“Trail Crest is only a little farther. We could see if anyone’s coming up.”
“Good idea.”
They set off for the pass, a half mile farther. The narrow trail followed the jagged contours of the mountain, making it impossible to see more than a dozen yards ahead. Liz held her breath as they approached each corner, hoping to see a friendly hiker and expecting Payton Root. Fear coupled with the altitude soured her stomach, and she stopped twice thinking she might vomit.
They came around a tight bend. Ahead was a sign indicating the pass. The wind rushed through the gap, blowing tears from the corners of Liz’s eyes. They paused for a moment, then Dante led them down the other side a short distance to where they could see the trail coming up from Trail Camp and Whitney Portal. From where they stood, the trail veered to the right across a stretch of ice and snow. Steel cables had been installed on the downhill side to prevent hikers from tumbling fifteen hundred feet to their deaths. Past the cable section were the famous ninety-nine switchbacks, winding back and forth across the precipitous face.
Liz stared in disbelief. No one. A chill ran up her spine. “I don’t like this, Dante.”
“Neither do I. Do you think they closed the trail?”
“They must have. But there’s no fire. Maybe some other emergency—”
Dante clamped a hand on her arm. She glanced at him and followed his stare. She gasped. Rodell Root, standing on a slab above them, a stone’s throw away. He waved, grinning.
Dante said, “Come on, Liz!” and stepped forward, making a break for the switchbacks. They had a chance to get there before Rodell could intercept them. Liz dashed after him, slipping her poles off as she went, ready to grab the cables. Every tendon in her body felt spring-loaded and alarms were sounding in her head. The drop-off to her left was too steep to be nearly running. Dante stopped abruptly and she braked just in time, bracing her arm against his pack to avoid a collision.
