With a hunger that startled him, Abe wanted to get up close to the blood. It was
imperative that nothing keep him from that fallen climber. Something profound was
awaiting them up there. He could tell by the way these hardened men had turned
somber and frightened. Whatever it was, Abe wanted to see the sight raw, not after
they had packaged it and brought it down in a litter. It was an old hunger, a simple
one. Abe wanted to lose his innocence.
They set off up the glacier, three to a rope, alert for crevasses. Abe was alive to the
new sensation. They stepped across a two-foot-wide crack in the field. It cut left and
right across the glacier. As he straddled the crevasse, Abe filled his lungs, trying to
taste the mountain's deep, ancient breath.
One of the rescuers pointed at skid tracks leading up the glacier. It reminded Abe of
an animal's blood trail. 'There's his fall line,' the man said. 'How'd he live through that?'
Abe stared at the rearing stone and ice, but it was a cipher to him. Standing here in
the pit of this basin, it struck him that ascent was less an escape from the abyss than
the creation of it. He peered at the heights. A girdle of hanging snow ringed the upper
rim. It was an avalanche about to happen. The thought gave new urgency to his step.
As they drew near, Abe heard more distinctly the climber yelling and calling to
himself. Closer still, and the climber heard them and he turned his shaggy head. Abe
was surprised. The climber was a boy, no older than himself.
But even from twenty yards away, the young climber's eyes were too bright and his
clothes were rags, what was left of them, and on his knees in that limbo of gray light
Abe thought he looked more like the Lazarus of his grandmother's worn leather King
James than a mere teenager in the wilderness.
The rescuers slowed their mechanical pace, intimidated by the strange sight. His
jacket was gone and his sweater half off. Now Abe saw that the boy had pulled the
clothing away himself. He had started to bare himself to the wilderness.
'You're okay now,' someone offered to the climber. But there was no trust in the
climber's look, no welcome, certainly no relief. He didn't speak.
Abe saw that his white T-shirt was soaked in blood and that his left shoulder bulged
with a dislocation. His left hand clutched a short ice axe, and with the blood on its
silver pick, the axe looked like a medieval weapon.
The rescuers formed a wide circle around the young climber as if they had brought
something dangerous to bay. His black hair hung clotted with snow and he had wolf
eyes, blue and timid, and he'd been weeping.
'Hey there.' Someone's cold voice.'We got you now.'
'You want to lay down that axe there?' another rescuer tried. His voice was too loud,
and it struck Abe, they were afraid of this boy.
The way the climber stared through them, Abe felt like a ghost. The boy didn't lay
down his axe. Its handle lay loose in his gloved hand, a green wrist strap in place. Abe
guessed the axe was responsible for the long, seeping gash in his opposite arm.
While the climber knelt in their center – mute now, seeming deaf, too – they
discussed him, diagnosing his wounds and trying to understand what had made him so
empty and menacing. But to Abe's ear, they were simply diagnosing their own fear.
'What do you think?' one of the rescuers asked another. 'Hypothermia?'
'Maybe concussed. Probably. I don't see a helmet.'
'One way or the other, he's about as gone as they get.'
'Well what we need's his second,' the leader got on with it. 'Where's your second at,
boy?'
Getting no answer, the leader turned away. 'Joe,' he said, 'take some men and hunt
around. There's got to be a body somewhere. Maybe it hung up higher on a rock or
what have you.' The one named Joe patted three men on their helmets and they
started up.
The two men by Abe's side continued their evaluation. 'I don't see frostbite. A
puncture wound on the right thigh, though. And look at the inside of his hand. It's cut
to the bone.'
At last they noticed the rope tied to his waist harness. It was a beautiful blue rope
with red hatching and it led directly into the hole. Abe saw the pink blood marks in the
snow and recognized that the climber had stripped his hand raw pulling on the rope.
'Now we'll just take it from here, son,' said a man with brushy sideburns. He edged
close and gently reached for the blue rope. With a howl, the boy reacted, swinging his
axe in a wild arc. He missed goring the rescuer by an inch.
And then they heard a voice.
Dreamlike, it called from far away. It could have come from another valley or from
the top of the mountains. Or the bottom of a crevasse. 'Daniel?' it said.
'Oh dear God,' one of the rescuers breathed.
The leader whistled loud and sharp, and uphill Joe and the others came to a halt.
'Down here,' the leader shouted. 'We found the other one.'
'Daniel?' someone said. 'Is that your name, Daniel?'
The boy looked at them with a mask of pure horror.
'Daniel,' the rescuer pressed him. 'Is that your buddy down there?'
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and tipped back his head. His lips curled back from his
teeth and he opened his throat to the sky. What came out was a terrible wrenching
groan, something from a nightmare. Then his rib cage spasmed with huge, hoarse
sobs.
Abe's mouth fell open at the climber's pain.
While the climber did his weeping, two of the rescuers rushed him from behind and
took away his axe. They were gentle, but he was strong and they ended up jostling his
disjointed shoulder and he screamed.
'Daniel,' the tiny voice called out from the crevasse.
This time they heard it more distinctly and it nearly caved in Abe's heart. Someone
among the rescuers whispered 'no.' Except for that there was silence for a minute.
Even the mourning climber fell mute.
'Are you all right?' asked the voice.
It was a woman down there.
'What the hell?' someone demanded. Now their pity hardened. Abe saw them grow
blunt. Astounded. Their gentleness was gone.
'You brought a girl up here?'
The climber turned his eyes away from them and stared blankly at the hole in the
snow.
'All right, boys.' The leader finally rallied them. 'That storm's not going away. Let's
do our job.'
It was one thing to disarm the boy, they discovered, something else to separate him
from his blue rope. He didn't want to relinquish that bond with the voice from below.
He held on to the rope with his good hand, the one with the mutilated palm. But once
they had tied it off to an ice screw and cut the blue knot, Daniel gave up and seemed
to go somewhere else in his mind.
He knelt there, unbudging, as if his legs were bound to the very mountain. In a
sense, they were. They learned this for themselves when they lifted Daniel and laid
him flat on the snow and ran their hands up and down his body. Both of his knees
were shattered, both femurs fractured. Daniel seemed not to care. He seemed dead
within his own body.
Abe stood back as the team frantically raced against the storm. Over where they'd
laid the boy, two men labored at piecing the halves of the litter together and several
arranged ropes for the carry out. Two more knelt over Daniel, fitting his legs with air
splints from the Vietnam War and taping his arm across his chest. They weren't