Back in the tent, I was careful to not wake the others as I changed into my day clothes. My hands and feet would not get warm, and there was a painful, needling ball of ice in the center of my stomach, as if all my digestive juices had turned to icy slush. I cleaned my bloody nose with my wet socks, my exhalations stuttering while my inhalations were equally as hesitant. Fumbling in the dark, I located the canteen with the remaining bourbon and took two healthy swallows. I clenched the canteen against my chest and felt the alcohol burn a magma path down my gullet and into the saddle of my guts. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“I was wondering what happened to you.”
The voice jarred me, freezing my insides all over again. It was Hollinger, propped up in the dark beside me.
“Christ,” I whispered. “Trying to give me a goddamn heart attack?”
“Can’t sleep.” His tone was noncommittal.
A million responses ran through my head at that moment. In the end, however, I said nothing. I tucked the canteen of bourbon in mypack and slipped beneath the warmth of my sleeping bag. My limbs hadn’t fully thawed, and my stomach still felt tied in a not, but I forced myself to close my eyes and hunt down an hour of sleep before morning.
3
ANDREW STOOD AT THE BASE OF THE GIANT STONE
arch, a look of deep concentration on his face. His normally pale skin had been burned by the sun and was beginning to flake away by the dry wind. Over the past couple of weeks, a fine coppery beard had fallen into place, somehow making him look younger.
In fact, the only things that hadn’t changed throughout the course of our journey were Andrew’s eyes. They remained alert, startling, clear, and blue as Caribbean waters. He still had that way of looking at someone and captivating him, holding him prisoner in his stare … until he laughed his loud, obnoxious laugh, and all prior sins were instantly forgiven.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, addressing the rest of us as we packed our gear. “We’ve all played on playgrounds when we were kids, right? Well, we’re gonna re-create the monkey bars using this arch.”
He slapped the underside of the arch as if testing its solidity. “We’ll start off with a rope-and-pulley system. I’ll climb out and insert cams every two and a half feet along the underside of the arch. We’ll use the cams as handholds, one hand over the other, just like the monkey bars. Of course, I want everyone harnessed with a fixed line. And I’ll run a second empty line with me so we can slide our gear across on it. This way we won’t have to carry our packs.” He clapped. “Sound good?”
In truth, it sounded insane. Even if he was able to insert the spring-loaded camming devices, it was still quite a distance to the other side. Hand over hand was a slow, tedious process, and my body wasstill run-down from the night before. God only knew how long I’d been out in the snow, but it was long enough for me to develop a slight fever that was currently working its way through my system.
Earlier this morning, I’d gone down the pass and climbed the ridge where I’d woken, expecting to find my footprints. But there were no prints in the snow atop the rocks just like there hadn’t been prints in the pass. It was as if I’d been dropped there from the sky.
“Hey,” Petras said, “you look like shit.”
“That explains why I feel like shit,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke. It only managed to come across bitter.
“You ready to do this?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“It’s crazy,” Petras went on. “You know that, right? Andrew’s plan, I mean.”
“Andrew’s out of his mind,” I said and nearly added, And I think I’m beginning to follow.
“It’s a good idea, though,” Petras said. “Sliding the packs down to him on a second line so we don’t have to carry them.”
“I just want to get this all over with.”
“This climb?”
“The whole trip.”
Petras nodded. That nod said, I know the feeling. “I’m worried about Hollinger.”
“He’ll be okay,” I said, not quite sure why I said it. I recalled the way he’d been sitting in the tent across from me last night, his disembodied voice calling to me in the darkness. I was wondering what happened to you. It suddenly occurred to me that Hollinger had probably been awake when I’d left the tent. I would ask him about it, but I’d wait until we were safely on the other side of the icefall. The last thing I wanted to do was spook him before the climb.
Twenty minutes later, Andrew had rigged a pretty decent rope-and-pulley system at the base of the arch and was prepared to begin his climbalong the belly of the arch. While his plan had sounded ridiculous, watching him execute it only reconfirmed it. Several times he nearly lost his grip, flailing one-handed by a single cam, suspended from the bottom of the arch as his legs dangled over the abyss. A fall from this height would ensure death, and it didn’t matter if it was the icefall beneath us or a cushion of mattresses; the sudden stop upon landing would be enough to reconfigure someone’s internal organs.
Andrew had also clipped the second safety line to his belt, and Curtis tied it to an anchor on our side of the arch. This would be the line we’d use to send our gear so we wouldn’t have to cross with any extra weight on our shoulders.
“Holy shit,” Chad commented as Andrew finally touched down on the other side of the canyon. The entire commute had taken him three full minutes. “I can’t believe the dickhead pulled it off.” He cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted, “You’re a fucking nutcase—you know that, Trumbauer? A fucking nutcase!”
“He’s also the first person to ever set foot on that side of the canyon,” Curtis said, not without some awe in his voice.
Petras began applauding, and we all quickly followed suit. Only Hollinger didn’t join in. He remained perched at the base of one of the stone towers, a haunted look in his eyes. The wound at his temple had scabbed over but looked stark and severe against the sudden paleness of his face. His own beard—like mine—had materialized in mangy patches, like miniature crop circles. The frigid Himalayan wind had chapped and split his lips. They were the lips of a leper.
Yet Andrew’s success had reinvigorated the rest of us. Petras and Curtis rigged our gear to the second line and shoved the packs over the abyss. On Andrew’s end, he’d angled the line so that it stood at a gradual decline. The packs rolled across the line toward Andrew as if on a zip line. After he’d finished collecting our gear, he waved both arms as if signaling an aircraft to land.
Chad was anxious to climb next. He popped in the earbuds tohis iPod and allowed Curtis to boost him up using Andrew’s rope-and-pulley system until he was able to grasp the first of the cams. Curtis secured the safety line and fed it out to him as Chad loped like an ape, hand over hand, going twice as fast as Andrew had.
“Let’s keep the train moving,” Curtis said.
Petras motioned to Hollinger. “Come on, bro. You and me. We’re up.”
Like a zombie, Hollinger stood and strapped on his helmet. With the enthusiasm of someone walking to the electric chair, he unzipped his parka and stomped his feet in the snow. Petras secured himself to Hollinger with a tertiary line and told Hollinger to go ahead. Without a word, Hollinger mounted the stone parapet that preceded the arch. Curtis clapped his back and told him everything would be cool, man.
“Yeah,” Hollinger said, offering Curtis a half smile. “Cool, man.” He swung out and gripped the camming device on the first try.