by Alex Morel
“Will and I lived in the same room together for sixteen years,” he starts. “He’d write all kinds of crazy stuff. He was a writer, like my dad. When he died, I think my dad hated me for living. That’s crazy-sounding, but I think it’s true.”
“Yes, they can hate you for living. I know that’s true,” I say, and I feel the overwhelming truth of it even though I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. As much as my mother loves me, she resents that I am here and he is gone. I’ve never allowed that thought to surface in my consciousness before, but there it is, as plain as any truth I know.
He closes his eyes and lays his head down on my lap.
“Will died of cancer, right?”
Paul looks up at me. I see some tears well in his eyes.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fucking leukemia. I’m sitting around sometimes, waiting for it to grow inside me.” He pauses. “It was fast, like six months. One moment we were reading on the beach—well, he was reading, I was probably surfing. And then by winter he was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “The faster they go, the harder it is, I think. At least when it takes a long time, you have time to prepare.”
Paul reaches out and takes my hand in his. I put my other hand on top of his and then lay my head down gently in his lap.
A cold wind picks up and cuts into us.
“Fuck, that’s cold,” Paul says.
I look up to the mountain before us. It is short, but a steep peak, and I wonder if Paul can even climb it. Snow begins to fall again, and I see that we are in for more rough weather by the clouds that are amassing.
“Can you climb?” I ask.
“Yes. I could climb with no legs and no arms.”
“Good.”
He sits up all the way and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pack of cigarettes he took off the captain.
“Nothing like a smoke after dinner, right?”
“They cause cancer,” I say. I’m smiling because I know it’s irrelevant—given our situation—but I couldn’t help myself.
“My mother would rise from the dead if she saw one of these in my mouth.”
“I think we get a survivor’s pass at this point, don’t you?”
“Yes. ‘You can indulge at death’s door’ is our motto.”
We light up and smoke. I inhale deeply and cough a little. Paul just sucks his down.
“I started smoking after she died. I know it makes no sense, but I wanted to say fuck you to everyone and everything. It drove my brother crazy, and my father would take my packs and throw them away if he found them.”
“You do crazy things when people die. It’s true.”
“Yeah, crazy is the only thing that feels real.”
I nod and then inhale. I look up at Paul and then throw the cigarette filter into the fire and lean my head against his shoulder.
After he finishes his smoke, he stands up for the first time since his fall. He winces. He holds the side of his chest and the pain momentarily overwhelms him. He bows and falls to one knee.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He puts his hand up. He pauses with one knee on the ground for a few moments, gathering his strength. The wind picks up, and it blows frozen snow off the top of drifts. Suddenly, Paul lifts himself and he lets out a loud grunt, his face red and radiating with the effort he’s expending to perform this normally simple maneuver.
I hand him the bottle of Tylenol and one of the water bottles. He takes out a handful and drinks the remaining water.
“I’m ready,” he says.
We walk to the mountain pass that connects the two peaks. I can see that animal tracks have already made their way to and fro across the pass. It’s a good sign. I realize what we were looking at from a distance—what Paul described as a natural bridge—is simply the highest point where the landmasses have remained connected. The animals already knew what we had discovered: to avoid a deadly climb down to the basin of the valley, this was the only place to cross. There’s a sheer wall on either side and it’s only about ten feet wide, thinner in some places. On top, the pass sits like a thin saddle with very steep drops on either side.
Ice and snow cover it, so Paul and I rope up.
“I’ll go first,” I say.
He gives me a funny look and says, “World’s funny that way.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense, but I think I’m in charge now, right?”
“I think that’s right,” he says, nodding for me to go.
I walk out and even though there’s ample space on either side, my heart jumps up and down. The ground is slippery and bumpy, and more than once I almost lose my footing. I decide to lie down and crawl across. After about ten feet of crawling, I reach the midpoint, and the trail narrows to only a few feet wide for about a distance of ten feet or so.
I decide to flatten out like a pancake, my arms and legs straddling around either side of the pass. If I try to crawl across that narrow strip of ice, I fear I’ll slip right over the edge.
I slowly shimmy across, careful to move as slowly as I can. I look back a few times at Paul, who is crawling on his hands and knees. I hear him grunting the whole way, and I can only imagine how painful it is when his body slips or slides. Keeping oneself steady on top of the trail requires a constant tightening of the upper-body muscles, the muscle group my gym teacher in middle school called “your core.” Paul’s core is bruised and perhaps broken. Even a simple trek like what lies before us will be brutally painful for him.
“You have to pancake that part,” I yell. I see Paul nod and he tries to lie down in a flat position, but it is too painful. He shakes his head to tell me he can’t do it. I put up a hand, telling him to wait.
I shimmy beyond the narrow section of the pass, and then I stand up. I dig my heels into the snow to get as much leverage as I can. Then I triple wrap the rope around my forearms, readying myself. Doubt creeps into my mind for a second, but I push it away. I know I could never hold Paul if he really slipped over the edge, but I can’t abandon him.
I nod to Paul to say I’m ready. Paul looks at me and shakes his head.
“You’ll never hold me if I fall. It’s suicide,” he yells. “Sorry—you know what I mean.”
“I’m not letting go,” I shout back. “You didn’t let me go on the cliff.”
“That was different—we had a chance!”
Then Paul lowers himself onto his belly and he screams, “Fuck, this hurts.” I know he is doing this for me, so that my life isn’t at risk, or at least as much at risk. Sacrifice. The word dances in my head, and I can’t help but notice how similar sacrifice is to suicide, but to die for someone else seems so much nobler. Paul begins to shimmy, but it is slow going. I pull the rope gently and work my way backward, offering a little pull with each push he makes with his back legs. Paul screams and hollers with every slide, but he makes his way; and in fifteen minutes or so, he crosses the narrow strip.
We hug each other when he’s finally able to stand.
“Thank you,” he says.
“What did I do?” I ask, perplexed.
“You were willing to die for me,” he says. “Thank you.”
I pitch up on my toes and kiss his icy lips. I’m crying. I put a hand on his side as softly as I can and ask if he’s okay.
He nods, but his eyes betray the enormity of his pain.
I am filled with hope as I stand at the bottom of the peak.
We climb. It is steep and thickly lined with trees at the bottom, mostly pines. I lead us up the mountain.
It takes the whole morning to ascend the first hundred yards. Our faces are cut and bruised and our necks savaged by the razor-sharp branches. With nearly every step, Paul screams or grunts or swears with pain, mostly from his chest. I call back to him a few times, but he ignores me.
I push my way through a thick clump of trees and there is a break in the tree line.
I’m not sure if it’s from
the height of the mountain or the lack of water this high up. But I can see the top from where I stand. The climb to the top is clear, studded here and there with trees, rocks, and snow.
“Paul!” I shout.
His glove comes through the bushes first as he pulls himself up above the tree line. His face is white and dull, like the blood is being drained from his body. His legs wobble and he falls to the ground at my feet. I kneel down beside him quickly and, in a flutter of emotion and anxiety, find myself kissing his forehead and hair.
“Paul? Paul?”
He doesn’t respond, but his right hand comes around and squeezes me.
“I can’t make it, Solis. You should go on.”
“Never,” I say. “I know it hurts, but you can do it.”
He squeezes me again and I squeeze him back and kiss his head again.
“I remember now.”
“What?”
“I remember you wanted to die. On the plane.”
“Yes, I told you that. But it’s not true anymore.”
“I don’t want to die,” he whispers.
“I won’t let you. Besides, we have to climb this little mountain.”
But we don’t go back to climbing right away. He puts his head down in my lap and closes his eyes. Sleep comes quickly and I hold him, trying to be soothing and to provide whatever warmth I can. There’s a light snow falling, and the wind has picked up. It’s very cold without the trees to protect us. I tell myself I’ll let him have fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, but then I’ll wake him. We can’t get caught here on this mountain if a storm comes.
• • •
When I wake, I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. My heart jumps, and I shake Paul. He’s dead asleep, but I’m able to wake him quickly. He startles and then just stares at me, locking on my eyes in the way only he can.
“Did you think I was gone?”
“No,” I say quickly, but I look down. I don’t want to reveal my fears to him.
“I’ve got something for you,” he says. He opens his bag and pulls out a piece of the candy bar I had handed him the day before. “I saved it in case we needed something extra.” He breaks it in half and hands me a piece.
“I can’t.”
“You can. Open up,” he says.
I smile and then kneel down next to him and he slides the piece of chocolate between his teeth. I lean in and kiss him, and bite off half the candy bar.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shake my head no and smile. I can taste every atom of the chocolate. The salt, sugar, and milk all taste like the very ultimate version of themselves in my mouth.
“We’ll have this again, you know,” he says.
“Yes. I know we will, but much more.”
He stands with a new energy that surprises me.
We begin the ascent and it is clean and purposeful. Paul takes the lead this time, his strength returning like a droopy plant that finds its bloom again in the sun after a long cold night.
It feels like I am floating on the snow. I lean into the mountain, like Paul has told me, and I slam my sticks in at forty-five-degree angles so the snow can hold me. My boots are regular old boots, but the ground is hard, so I’m kicking into the snow trying to create leverage. There are rocks and small bushes to grab and hold. We make better time than I could have hoped and when we reach the top and crest, the whole of the valley is behind us.
I look back once at the darkening valley we just climbed out of. From this view I can see that the nooks and crevices, and the cliffs and overhangs, are flattened into a majestic, romantic vista. Its charms are seductive and had I not just climbed my way out, I would only see the beauty.
While I’m looking at where we’ve been, Paul looks ahead to where we need to go, and glances up at the heavy cloud cover above us. The snow falls more quickly and the wind up here is brutal and we are completely exposed to all the elements.
But off into the distance, we can both clearly see a path down and off this mountain. We are a day away from the lowlands and, possibly, help.
We look at each other and he pulls me in and says, “Almost home, Solis.”
Chapter 30
We walk for a short distance on the top of the mountain. There’s a ridge that extends for a while. We find a massive formation of boulders not too far from its edge. They lie in a giant cluster, as if one wave carried them here and dropped them like so many pickup sticks. We walk around until we find a stony lean-to and slide between two of the rocks. It’s a natural cave.
Paul rests while I go out in search of any dry wood, but there’s nothing up here, plus the snow is wet. We have landed on the moon, I think, except it might be colder.
I find my way back in and Paul has laid out our bags. He has our water bottles out and we have enough melted snow for a few big gulps. My body sucks them in. I can feel the cold water wash down and into my chest and disappear. It’s as lovely a taste as anything I’ve ever had, even if it’s cold.
I slide into the bags, but this time Paul faces me. We look into each other’s eyes and there’s nothing said for what seems like an eternity. What is there to say, really? We have no food. We are alone and lying together at the precipice of what will almost surely be our death. But there is still a possibility for rescue and salvation. It could be a moment away, but then again, so could death.
His left hand is flat against the small of my back and he pulls me in tightly and kisses me on the lips. Both our lips are hard and chapped, but somehow, the kiss is softer than anything I’ve ever felt before. I kiss him back, first on the lips, then his cheek and neck.
His hand is cold and I can feel it on my body, moving and caressing along the lines, often touching and pushing beyond what I expect, but toward what I want.
I touch him too, and we explore each other as fully as we can with the cold and his damages. We softly whisper our hesitation and our approval, perfectly attuned to each other. He turns me to my back and presses his full body against mine. He kisses me, and I forget the world. The past. The future. Our pain and suffering. Everything disappears for what seems like forever in a kind of indescribable bliss.
• • •
We wake together to the sound of wind howling and flakes drifting into our lean-to: evidence of a storm rolling in.
“Hey,” he says, kissing my lips.
“Hey,” I say.
“Solis?”
“Yes,” I say.
“When the storm blows over, you have to leave me.”
I prop myself on one elbow in surprise.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You have to. I’m dying. If you don’t go, I’ll definitely die here and I’d rather not die here.”
The world giveth and the world taketh away. This is why I hate the world. I close my eyes and see my father putting tinsel on our Christmas tree. My stocking is hung beside his and Mom’s. There are candy canes everywhere. He’s doing a manic dance around the tree, singing, “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus.” He hands me a gift. “A little something early, darling.” And then he disappears into the kitchen and eventually into the bedroom, where later that night, he will blow his head off. I still have the gift. It was a portrait he did of me in a little white dress with yellow and pink hearts sewn on. My mother made that dress. I’ve kept the portrait, contrary to what I’ve told Old Doctor. And sometimes I pull it out and cry, like I am right now just thinking about it. But I’d be lying if I said the thought of it hasn’t brought me some joy, too.
He takes hold of my hand and moves it down to where his ribs are broken and I feel the swelling and the heat rising off his chest.
“I’m bleeding inside,” he says. “I feel it. My heart feels weak.”
A gasping sob comes from nowhere and I put my head on his chest. And I cry harder and harder, and he holds me, stroking my hair.
I kiss him on the neck a few times, then look into his eyes. Nobody has ever said those words to me before. I don’
t know how to speak for a moment, and then a huge lump lodges in my throat.
“What can I do?” I cry.
“Nothing right now. But when the storm stops, leave me.”
There’s a long pause, and I’m trying to process all the emotions I’m feeling. It’s overwhelming, but I decide on a simple idea.
“I’ll find help.”
He nods, but it doesn’t mean yes, find me help. It means say whatever you have to say in order to go away and feel okay about it. Lie if we must, but you can carry on for the two of us.
“Read to me,” he says, after a long silence. “The letter.” I can see the dark rings circling his eyes now. I look at his skin more closely and even in the darkness his pale skin glows yellow.
I pull the letter from my pocket and begin to read.
I feel a soft sob pulse through Paul’s body and I stop reading and listen.
“Are you okay? Is it too much?”
“No, it’s good. I miss him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He died a day or two before I was sixteen. It is sweet, somehow, to hear your voice layering over his.”
“Should I keep going? “
“Yes.”
I put my hand through his hair and kiss his cheek. I return to the beginning, and I read to him. And then I read it again, and tears stream down his face.
When I finish, Paul reaches up and pulls me into him and kisses me.
“Can you tear me a piece of paper from the diary and get me the pen from my backpack?”
I reach over and grab his backpack and find a pen. I tear a sheet and hand him the book. He scribbles down something quickly and folds it up.
“Give this to my father when you get down,” he tells me.
“You’ll give it to him, okay?” My voice is choked with tears.
He puts his hand on my face as tears roll down. Cold air swirls around us.
We kiss again and again. Then I open the paper and look at the note. It is so simple it breaks my heart into two:
