Eric came back. “That’s a bitch of a climb.” He indicated Krom.
“I wasn’t thinking of climbing. I was thinking of taking the gondola to the top.”
Eric’s mouth dropped open.
But Mike began to grin, like he’d just learned the secret of life. “You’re right.”
Mike thinks I’m right? Wrong becomes right, down becomes up, the world flips.
“She’s right.” Mike windmilled around us. “Oh yah, the machinery is housed inside the gondola stations and we’ll have to see if there’s any ash inside but I don’t think so because it’s solid workmanship from top to bottom. I didn’t just operate the gondola, you know, I also lent a hand with repairs and I’ve seen all the schematics.” He turned to Krom. “It’s gonna work, Mr. Krom. The gondola cars are made in Switzerland and you all know the Swiss reputation for excellence. O-kigh, and the cables are straightforward, simple mechanics, and I doubt if ash has clogged the cable housings but if it has, just running the machinery should be enough to free the cables. We’ll see. I have a lot of faith but I know we’ll have to see.” He halted, grinning at us all. “You realize we have a big generator? The power outtage doesn’t affect us. We’re self-sufficient there. I know where all the keys are. I can get us in. I can get things working and then I think I can guarantee us an event-free ride to the top. You’ll see, Mr. Krom. You’ve helped me and I know I owe you — so you just leave it to me.”
Krom said, “Mike…” but Mike was already on his way — too wired, too ready to flap his wings and go — to heed Krom.
I watched my new ally loping off toward the gondola, wondering if having Mike on my side should make me reconsider.
Eric said, “If you’re sure.”
Walter said, “We’re sure.”
Okay Lindsay, I thought, we’re going up. In the gondola. You believe that? Krom believes, Krom knows when he’s whipped. Walter’s signed on. I don’t think Eric quite buys it but we are going up. Last time. Once we get to the top, you know, there’s no place else to go.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
And now it became Mike’s show.
He cranked the generator and to everyone’s surprise but his own the gondola motor came promptly to life. He ran the lift and stopped it, ran and stopped it, ran and stopped it with the brio of a conductor running an orchestra through its paces.
Satisfied that the gondola ran, he supervised the loading of items into the cars, checking weights and distribution and balance. There was a lot of stuff; he’d finally gotten into the ransacking spirit. He bossed us until one car was filled with gear, and the rental ski equipment he’d appropriated was stowed on the carrier. He placed us in the car behind, Krom reclining on one bench, Eric and Walter and me crushed together on the other, packs on the floor. He handed the operating manual to me, his onetime assistant. He lashed Krom’s sled to the outside carrier, taking his sweet time.
Krom watched with a half-interested frown and I wondered if, against all evidence, he had accepted the need of going up.
I didn’t worry long about Krom. I worried about the volcano, the unpredictable chum. I could hear the distant cannonade and feel the quakes that ran from the ground up through the cable machinery and down to our car. Forget the pre-flight check, I wanted to tell Mike. You’re going to busybody us into oblivion. But Mike perversely fussed with the sled until it clung like a baby to the gondola’s back. In truth, I was afraid to interfere with Mike’s zeal and Swiss excellence.
Finally, his rough face beamed at the window. “I’m going to start her up. Cassie, you hold that door wide open. Eric, you be ready to take my hand when I say now.” Mike bustled over to the switch.
I held the door. I had a horror, in the dark and suddenly noisy gondola station, of Mike missing the car, running after us, screaming for us to wait, but he just loped easily across the floor and paced the car as it scuttled around the track. And then, slick as though he’d practiced the move on lunch breaks, he caught Eric’s hand and leapt inside and folded himself onto the floor amid the packs. Seconds later, the car gained lift and sailed out of the station into the ashy sky.
“Shut the door, Cassie,” Mike snapped.
We swung skyward. Mike went over the operating manual, patiently paging. Krom closed his eyes. Walter and Eric looked out the windows. I followed suit.
Always an incomparable view from the gondola. Lodge and Inn and gondola station fast dropping away below. Jagged peaks of the Minarets to the west, stubby domes of the Inyo chain to the north, caldera to the east just coming into sight. This is how I remembered the view: the most faraway features incised. Didn’t look that way now. In the perpetual twilight, landmarks were uncertain, distance was lost. The eye telescoped to the near view, to the gondola window where particles of ash already clung, themselves incised as snowflakes.
The thunder was louder but in motion we could no longer feel the quakes.
I looked east, down toward the caldera. The south moat did not appear to be currently in eruption. The caldera walls were identifiable but the floor lay in murk. If the ground down there were rotting it would look like this. Liquefaction. Soup.
No one spoke. It seemed we were going to rise stoic to the summit.
I scanned the mountain below as it dropped away. No fresh explosion pits, no evidence of activity. It was as it had always been, but for the ash. I knew these runs: St. Moritz, Bowling Alley. Skied them. In snow, not ash. Wouldn’t enjoy skiing this. Snowboarders the only ones crazy enough to ride this. Ash? Awesome, dude. I suddenly giggled.
Incredulous silence in the car.
We swooped toward the mid-station and as we passed through the dark lift building I wondered what degree of shelter this might afford.
We rose, and rose.
“There it is,” I said.
Mike came up on his knees, Krom braced to a sit, Eric and Walter turned. To the southeast, the folds of the mountains embracing the Lakes Basin came into view. Red Mountain was venting, a fat smokestack of ash. Boom boom. Boom.
Just like in my dreams.
“There’s town,” Mike said, and we turned our attention downward.
The higher we rose, the more the town came into view. Same ghost town we’d abandoned yesterday. Eons ago. Events now seemed to unfold in geologic time.
Although if the Red Mountain eruption went pyro now, events would unfold in a flash. A hot burning flash rolling down to envelope the town.
I craned to look for the summit of Mammoth Mountain. Eleven thousand feet and some change. Gain some altitude above the moat, above Red Mountain. Good. By God we were going up and there was the illusion we would climb right out of the ash, rise to the clean blue sky that must exist up there somewhere.
“What’s that?” Walter said.
There was a bump like we were passing through a cable tower, and then another bump and the car gently seesawed.
We stopped.
We stared up at the cable, waiting, and then I peered out the window and estimated the fall to the slope below. Probably not survivable.
Mike got to his knees to look. “We just need to wait until it starts again.”
Krom said, “Wait? You’ve got the manual.”
“I can’t fix it from here. That’s for when we get to the top, for maintaining the machinery so we’re not stranded. Mr. Krom, you have to realize….” Mike stopped.
Of course Krom did not realize because none of us had thought it useful to advise him of contingencies.
Eric opened his pack.