The Mountain Between Us

by Charles Martin

  She cradled it in her good hand, holding it just below her nose. The smile was genuine. It looked like for a brief moment she was able to push back on the world that was pushing down so hard on her. I was starting to learn that she used humor to ward off the pain. I’d seen other people do it. Usually something in their past had emotionally wounded them, and so they used humor or sarcasm to mask it. Take their mind off it.

  Her pain was growing. Ramping up. I only had a couple of Percoset, but she’d need one tonight. And probably the next several nights. It’d been six hours, so with numb fingers, I fumbled with the Advil top, poured four into my palm, and handed them to her. She swallowed and then hovered above her cup.

  She whispered, marking the moment. “It’s amazing the moment a cup of coffee will allow you.” She passed the cup to me. I sipped. And she was right. It was good.

  She nodded at her attaché. “If you reach in there, you’ll find a bag of snack mix I bought at the Natural Snack store in the terminal.”

  Filled with dried pineapple, apricots, and various types of nuts, it probably weighed a pound. I handed it to her. We both poured a handful and chewed slowly.

  I nodded. “I believe this is the best snack mix I’ve ever tasted.”

  I gave the dog a handful. He sniffed it, then inhaled it, wagging his tail and begging for more. He leaned against me and put his paws on my chest, sniffing the air.

  “How do you tell a dog that he’s not getting any more?”

  She laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  I gave him one more small handful, and when he returned a third time I pushed him off me and said, “No.” Dejected, he turned his back on me and curled up at the foot of Ashley’s sleeping bag.

  We sat in the silence for a long time, drinking the entire pot. When we finished, she said, “Save the grounds. We can use them twice and then, if we’re desperate, we can chew on them.”

  “You’re serious about your coffee.” I touched the power button, and the GPS flickered to life. “You got any kind of pad or paper in your briefcase?”

  She nodded. “Should be right in front.”

  I pulled out a yellow legal pad and a pencil, found the screen that showed our location, and tried to copy the map as best I could. Including the coordinates down to the minute. Once I had a relatively detailed drawing on par with a kindergartner, I said, “Be right back.”

  I climbed up and out of our hole and compared the picture on the screen with that before my eyes, marking mountains and making mental notes of mountain crests and where they landed on the compass. That way, I knew north from south. Being lost is one thing. Staying lost is another. I might not have known where we were, but I could pick a direction and stick with it. I also knew the batteries wouldn’t last forever, and whatever I could copy now would pay dividends in the days ahead. The more time passed, and the more our predicament sank in, the more concerned I became. Things were bad all around.

  “YOU WANT THE GOOD news or the bad?”

  “Good.”

  “I know where we are.”

  “And the bad?”

  “Our elevation is 11,652 feet, give or take three feet, the nearest logging road is over thirty miles and something like five mountain passes”—I pointed—“that way. We’re nearly fifty miles from the nearest thing that looks like civilization or a hard road. And to top it off, most of the snow out there is higher than I am tall.”

  She bit her lip, and her eyes wandered the white-walled cave. She crossed her arms. “You’re going to have to leave me.”

  “I’m not leaving anybody.”

  “I can see the writing on the wall here. You can’t get me out. You have a better chance alone. Give me the coffee, put those legs to work, and take my coordinates with you. Bring a helicopter on your way back.”

  “Ashley…drink your coffee.”

  “Okay, but you’ve got to recognize that it is a distinct possibility.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you?”

  “Look, we need a fire, we need some food, and we need to lose a few thousand feet in elevation, then we’ll talk about what’s next. One crisis at a time.”

  “But…” She was strong. She had toughness that matters. The kind you can’t get in school. Her tone changed. “Let’s keep the truth on the table, where it belongs. It is a possibility.”

  “I’m not leaving anybody.”

  The dog noticed my change in tone. He stood, walked up next to Ashley, and dug his head beneath her hand. He still hadn’t forgiven me since the trail mix episode. She scratched his ears, and his stomach growled. He looked over his shoulder at me, then slowly laid his head back down.

  “I heard you. I know you’re hungry.”

  We sat, listening to the wind pick up and rattle my tarp. I lay back into my sleeping bag, getting warm. I looked at her. “Do you do that with all your friends?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Prepare them for the worst.”

  She nodded. “If the worst is a possibility, then you keep it on the table. Don’t hide from it. Don’t run. It can happen. And if and when it does, you need to have thought about it ahead of time. That way you’re not crushed when your worst thought becomes your reality.”

  I Jetboiled more snow and made us both sip to keep our fluids up. If nothing else, it would help keep the hunger at bay. We napped on and off through the afternoon. The trail mix had taken the edge off our hunger, but food was a real problem and I knew it. I couldn’t function without it, and I needed energy to trudge through waist-deep snow to find it. Tomorrow would not be easy. Maybe the toughest day yet. The pain in my chest was spreading.

  Night fell, as did the cold. With dusk leaving I crawled out, shimmied beneath the snow and the lower limbs of a pudgy evergreen, gathered several handfuls of dead pine needles, twigs, and branches, and piled them up beneath the wing. Doing this took three trips and left me gasping and clutching my rib cage for support. Ashley watched me with narrowed eyes.

  Grover’s door was a single piece of some sort of sheet metal hanging by a single hinge. Probably didn’t weigh ten pounds. I pried it up using my foot, laid it flat beneath the wing, and then piled pine needles and twigs atop it. The problem with a fire in our current location was melting the more or less protective wall around us—not to mention the supportive base below it. The door would keep it out of the melting snow it created, and the cold air outside would keep our cave intact overnight. The temperature had dropped drastically the moment the sun started going down.

  I needed a light. I could have used the Jetboil, but I needed to save as much of its butane as I could. Then I remembered Grover’s lighter.

  I brushed away the snow, slid my hand into his jeans pocket, and fingered out the brass Zippo lighter. I clicked it open, making a sound that reminded me of Dean Martin and John Wayne, and thumbed the wheel. It lit.

  “Thank you, Grover.”

  I turned it in my hand. Years in his pocket had scratched and worn it smooth. I held it up and on one side I saw an engraving. It read: A LAMP UNTO MY PATH.

  I lit the end of a twig, let the twig flame grow and climb toward my finger, and then fed it beneath the pine needles. Dead and dry, they caught quickly. Using the empty trail mix bag, I fed the fire, adding larger sticks as the fire popped and crackled and grew in size.

  She watched the paper bag turn to ash. “That was good trail mix.”

  The dog sensed the warmth, walked down to the end of Ashley’s sleeping bag, and curled up in a puffy spot some four feet from the flame. The fire was a welcome addition. It improved our general disposition, which had darkened given the absence of food and the slim hope of finding it.

  I figured I could go a week and still function without food, provided we had water, but after that I’d be so weak I’d be no good to anyone. Years ago, when I saw that movie Alive, it grossed me out. Sitting there staring at Grover, it grossed me out more. I wasn’t eating him. Having said that, if all options were honestly on the table, and it meant our living versus
our dying, there was always the dog. Problem was, he’d only feed us once. Maybe the first time his size was ever an advantage to him. Had he been a Lab or a Rottweiler, I’d have thought more seriously about it.

  WE STARED AT THE FIRE, letting our eyes grow lazy. Ashley broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking about what to get Vince for a wedding gift. I’m coming up blank. Got any ideas?”

  I fed tinder into the fire. “First anniversary. A cabin in the Colorado Rockies. Snowed in.” I forced a laugh. “A little like this. We were paying off school loans, didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and, like our honeymoon, had agreed on a no-present anniversary.”

  She laughed. “What’d you get her?”

  “A purple orchid.”

  She nodded. “Ah…hence, the orchid and greenhouse thing.”

  I nodded.

  “I like the way you talk about your wife. Sounds like you ‘do’ life together.” She laid her head back. “In the course of my job, I work with or meet a lot of people who don’t. Who treat their spouse like a roommate. Somebody they cross paths with, split the mortgage with, maybe have kids with. Two people bent on individuality. It’s refreshing to hear you talk about her. How’d you two meet?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Tomorrow. We need to try and get some sleep.” I extended my hand. “Here, take this.”

  She held out her palm. “What is it?”

  “Percocet.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “A combination of Oxycotin and Tylenol.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Three.”

  “Why don’t you take one?”

  “I’m not in that much pain, and you will be come tomorrow and the next day. Go ahead. It’ll help you sleep. And up here—where the air is half as thin—taking one is like taking two.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ll feel the effects more.”

  “Will it help my headache?”

  “Probably not. That’s the altitude…mixed with the impact of the crash. But give that a day or so.”

  “Do you have a headache?”

  “Yes.”

  She rubbed her shoulders and the back of her neck. “I’m starting to feel really stiff.”

  I nodded. “Whiplash.”

  She swallowed, and her eyes fell to Grover. He sat, frozen, about five feet from the end of her bag, mostly covered in snow. “Can we do anything about him?”

  “I need to bury him, but I can’t move him. Moving me is tough enough right now.”

  “When you breathe, you sound like you’re in a lot of pain.”

  “Get some rest. I’ll be right outside.”

  “One favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I need to go again.”

  “No worries.”

  This time was faster, still no red tint, and there was a good bit of fluid—all good signs. I repacked snow around her leg, and she said, “You know, you can stop doing that anytime you want. I’m freezing.”

  I felt her toes and the pulse in her ankle. “Hang in there. If I let your leg warm up too much, we’ll fall behind the pain curve and…” I shook my head. “You don’t want that. Not out here.” I dug out some snow on her good side, creating a flat spot long enough for me, and laid my bag down alongside hers. “The temperature is dropping, and if we can share body heat, we’ll both sleep better and live longer.”

  She nodded. “What time is it?”

  “A little after six.”

  She lay back down, staring up. “I should be walking down the aisle.”

  I knelt next to her. Our breath was making smoke. “Ever been married before?”

  She shook her head, her eyes tearing up.

  I held out my sleeve, and she leaned forward, wiping her tears on it. I checked the stitches on her head and eye and then pulled her cap gently back over her ears. Her eyes were sunken, not quite as swollen, and her face had lost some of its puffiness.

  “You will. We are going to get off this mountain, and you are going to have your wedding—just a little later than you planned.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes. It was little consolation.

  “You’ll look beautiful in white.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We had a small wedding….”

  “How small?”

  “Me, Rachel, and her folks.”

  “You’re right, that is small.”

  “But the moment that door opened…and she stood there, that white dress sweeping the ground…It’s a picture a groom never forgets.”

  She turned her head.

  “Sorry. Thought I was helping.”

  An hour later, when her breathing had slowed, I crawled out and pulled the recorder from my pocket. The sky had leaned down, fire and crimson to a sea of white etched with veins of silver, and was threatening to kiss the earth just as soon as the last rays of sun disappeared and tucked themselves behind the west. The dog followed and walked around me. He was light enough to walk on top of the frozen snow, but he didn’t like it. He walked a few circles, lifted his leg next to a small tree, kicked some snow behind him like a charging bull, and then stared off across the plateau and mountaintops. After two or three seconds he shook his head, sneezed, and disappeared back down the hole to curl up with Ashley.

  I pressed RECORD.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Long day here. End of day three, I think. We’re alive, but staying that way is another thing. Ashley is hanging in there, but I don’t know how or how long. If I had all the breaks and pains she had, I’d be curled up in the fetal position, begging somebody to thump me over the head or shoot me with enough morphine to numb a cow. She hasn’t complained once.

  Good news? I know where we are. Bad news? It’s a long way from anywhere in terrain that’s tough even with two good legs. Nearly improbable with one bad one. I haven’t told her that. I know…I will.

  I don’t really know how we’re going to get out of here. I can make some sort of stretcher out of pieces of the wing, but how far can I drag her on that? We need to find someplace lower where we can rest up either until help comes, which I know it’s not, or until I can walk us out of here. And we need food. It’s been forty-eight hours since I ate anything other than some snack mix.

  Not to mention the dog, whose name I still can’t remember. I know he’s hungry, ’cause he’s chewing on tree limbs. He spends all his time shivering. And he doesn’t like the snow. He walks around like it hurts his feet.

  I think I upset Ashley. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to cheer her up. Maybe I’m out of practice.

  Speaking of practice…you ever added up all the miles we ran together? Me neither.

  Seems like every time we ran, you’d ask me about your stride, and I’d act serious like I was really paying attention, but in truth, I couldn’t take my eyes off your legs. I figure you knew that too. I loved running behind you.

  When I look back on us, on our beginnings, I am reminded that we did something we loved and shared it. We never had to think of a reason to hang out. And nothing ever divided us.

  Once you got your driver’s license, you’d drive to the beach, tap on my window at 4:00 a.m., and we’d take off running down the beach. Long runs. Ten to twelve miles. What we called LSD. Long-slow-distance. Where time didn’t matter. No stopwatch. No measurement of our success or failure. If we didn’t run on the beach, I’d pick you up at the end of your drive and we’d run the bridges downtown. Over Main Street, through the Landing, back over the Acosta, around the fountain and do it all over again. If one of us was tired, maybe fighting shin splints or just needing a break, we’d drive through Dunkin’ Donuts, order two coffees, and tour the town with the top down.

  I think that’s when I taught you how to drive a clutch, and you gave me whiplash. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad, but you did wear out my clutch. And my neck was sore. But I’d gladly teach you all over again.

  There was that Saturday morning. We were coming back up the beach after a
long run. This kid on a surfboard out to our right caught a wave, the nose of his board dipped, and he started tumbling. He washed up onshore just in front of us. The two pieces of his board surfaced a few moments later. His forehead was cut, blood everywhere, shoulder out of socket, and he was disoriented and nauseous. I sat him down and put pressure on his head, he pointed to his house, and you ran to get his folks while I sat with him, helped him set his shoulder. When you returned, he was laughing, talking about what new board he was going to get. His folks thanked us, walked him home, and you turned to me, shading your eyes from the sun. You said it like you’d known it all your life. “You’re going to make a great doctor someday.”

  “What?”

  “You.” You tapped me in the chest. “You’re going to make a great doctor.”

  I’d never thought about it. To be honest, I’d never thought about doing anything other than getting out of my dad’s house. But the moment you said it, something in me clicked.

  “How do you know?”

  “The way you care for people. Your”—you made quotation notes with your fingers—“bedside manner.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  You pointed at the kid walking away. “Look at him. When I left, he was about to throw up. Now he’s laughing, about to buy a new board. Can’t wait to get back in the water. That’s you, Ben. Something about the way you talk…soothes people.”

  “It does?”

  A nod. “I should know.”

  That was the first time I clued into the fact that you saw potential in the mundane. The insignificant. The ordinary.

  The second time occurred when I came to see you at work. Volunteering after school as a candy striper at the children’s hospital. Bald, sickly kids strewn everywhere. Oxygen tanks. Wheelchairs. Messy sheets. Uncomfortable smells. Disconcerting sounds. When I found you, you were rubber-gloved, holding a bedpan, laughing with the little girl who moments before was sitting on top of it. You were all smiles. So was she.

  I saw sickness and misery tucked away in every room. Not you. You saw possibility and promise. Even in the improbable.