The Ascent

Chapter 11

1

THE ONES THAT WERE FOUND WERE PRACTlCALLY

unidentifiable. Hardly human, they were fragile, blue-skinned husks whose eyes had frozen to custard smears in their sockets, whose mouths were textured with colorless sores and frozen in a grimace of torment and pain.

Typically they were wrapped in layers of clothes, tattered and faded and solid as planks of wood. Others were found nude, fooled by the onset of hypothermia where their skin burned and sweat dimpled their flesh even in the freezing temperatures. There was one story about a man frozen solid to the wall of an ice cave, glazed like a donut by a two-inch sheen of ice. His hands were sheared clear of the wrists as rescuers attempted to hammer the corpse from the ice, the blood within frozen to a dark purple slush.

Others returned defeated. Frostbitten, starving, anemic, and delirious from high altitudes and snow blindness, they staggered back into base camp like petrified zombies, their tendons hardened to broomsticks, their hands hooked into claws or molded into flippers. These were the lucky ones.

Lastly there were the ones who were never seen again. Thedisappeared. Separated from their groups or foolish soloists with no perception of mortality, these poor bastards were fated to slip down mile-deep crevasses, tumble off a shaky precipice, or become swallowed up by a sudden avalanche. Occasionally search parties would locate articles of their clothing or uncover evidence of what had presumably befallen them—a broken anchor halfway up the face of a cliff or a length of rope with a frayed end swaying in the cool wind over an abyss—but their bodies were never found.

What gear that was eventually recovered told a tale of frantic last moments: utensils scattered about rocky formations; pots and pans half filled with glacier water purified with iodine tablets; boots tossed in snowdrifts; vinyl flags staked in erratic patterns in the mountainside. Some left behind claw marks in the ice.

These were the stories that fueled the myth of the Godesh Ridge. I did not doubt them—I had heard similar ones about much of the Himalayas that I knew to be true—but I did not pay them much mind, either. I’d done my fair share of research in Annapolis while I was still debating whether or not to join Andrew and his crew in Nepal. These stories circulated the Internet like high school rumors. Despite the myth that surrounded the Godesh Ridge—the fact that it was a Nepalese hidden land or John Petras’s beyul and quite possibly haunted—the stories were no different than any other mountaineering story found in a book or in a copy of National Geographic. I paid them little mind.

However, as we began the ascent up the southern face of the mountain, the stories returned to me in all their gory detail. In my mind’s eye, I could see the frozen bodies with white, rubbery skin coated in a slick mat of ice, the scattered assortment of hiking gear melting impressions in the snow, the random boot jutting footless from a bank of powder.

It wasn’t fear that brought these thoughts back to me. It was the bourbon from last night finally filtering out of my system. I’ddowned half the canteen before screwing the cap back on and rolling over, my stomach burning with the calming roil of booze. My hands had stopped shaking, and my vision, even in the darkness of the tent, seemed to clear. Outside, I could hear the powerful wind barrel down the chasms and stir the trees along the edge of our camp.

Now in the light of a new day, I was going through withdrawal all over again.

The brown earth and whitish reeds graduated to snow midway through the afternoon. An hour after that, the snow was already several inches deep. I paused at one point and cupped a handful of snow, which I brought up to my face, wiping away the sweat and dampening my hair. Our group had paired off in twos, except for Petras and me who’d taken up the rear of the line to keep Shotsky company; in the lead, Andrew and Curtis appeared to be about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. They looked like small, colorless stones poking out from the snow.

“Good idea.” Shotsky dropped to his knees and massaged handfuls of snow against his face. “God, that feels good!”

“You hanging in there?”

“Yeah,” he said, planting both hands into the snow and resting on all fours. I could see vapor billowing from his mouth with each exhalation.

“Don’t leave your hands in the snow too long,” I cautioned him. “Or your knees.”

He was in shorts, as were Petras and I. When he stood, which required some assistance, I could see his thick knees were fire engine red and dripping with melted snow.

“Jesus,” Shotsky said, running the back of one hand along his forehead. “I’m sweatin’ like a whore on Judgment Day.”

“Come on,” I urged him and was immediately tossed a glare from Petras.

We continued up the incline. To our right, huge black rocks rose out of the snow like smokestacks of a sunken ship on the floor of theocean. By late afternoon, the sky had opened. The winding, serpentine backbone of the Himalayas was visible straight through to the horizon, great blue vestiges whose arrangement appeared to be preordained.

“Look there,” Petras said at one point. He shook my arm lightly, while Shotsky staggered close behind us. “That’s Everest.”

Even from this distance it was tremendous, dwarfing the other mountains that surrounded it. Clouds encircled its midsection like the frozen rings of Saturn.

“You trying to beat some record, Tim?” Petras said.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Huh?”

“You’re walking too fast. You’re going to burn yourself out before nightfall.”

“No way.”

“It’s not a race.”

It was the shakes—I could feel them coming on again sooner than last time. The past half a mile the only thing I could think about was the canteen half filled with bourbon stowed inside my pack. Even looking across the reach to the haunting stretch of Mount Everest, it was all I could think about. Movement was the only thing that kept the shaking at bay.

“Man’s like a bullet,” I heard Shotsky wheeze behind me. I didn’t bother to turn and look at him.

You have to kick this, I told myself. There’s no way you’ll finish with your mind on a flask of booze. Dump it out in the snow. Do it now. Do it.

I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.

“You better keep a good pace, Tim, unless you want to reopen that scar on your left leg,” Petras said. He was keeping stride with me now.

“I’ll be fine.”

“How’d you do it?”

I hocked a wad of yellowish phlegm into the snow and said, “Caving. Fell through a ravine in the dark. Bone came through the leg. I was stupid. Careless.”

“Falls happen.”

“I was alone.”

“How come?”

“Hey, hey—” I stopped and looked at him, my eyes hard. “This an inquisition, man?”

“I just want to know what’s weighing you down.”

“Look,” I said, “I like you. I really do. But my ghosts are mine. Okay?”

John Petras seemed to mull things over. Finally he raised both his hands and said, “Sorry. I surrender.”

We continued walking. I suddenly felt like a heel. Petras hadn’t deserved my response and I knew it—even as I said it I knew it—but I had been right: my ghosts were mine, after all …

I glanced over my shoulder. Donald Shotsky had fallen behind, far enough to be out of earshot. “Andrew’s playing the savior,” I said, anxious to bring up something other than old ghosts. “He’s always been eccentric, but this time his ego’s riding him bareback.”

“The heck are you getting at?”

I told him about Shotsky and how he owed some bookies in Las Vegas twenty thousand dollars. “Andrew thinks this trip will … I don’t know … build character or kick his gambling habit or some shit. Like a goddamn twelve-step program, he brought Shotsky here to fix him.”

“How do you know this?”

“Shotsky told me. And when I confronted Andrew, he told me, too. He’s paying Shotsky the twenty grand to take this trip.”

If the news surprised Petras, it didn’t register on his face. He continued to trudge through the deepening snow, the incline growing increasingly steep.

“So,” I went on, “it seems we’re all apparently here for a reason …”

“What’s yours? Or is that too personal?” He smiled warmly to show he was ribbing me.

I offered a resigned grin back. I’d already mentioned the deathof my wife to Petras the first night we met when he drilled me about my reasons for coming here. I reminded him of it now, though I kept the details vague. “She left because I wasn’t the husband I should have been. I was an up-and-coming artist whose sole focus was on getting beyond the up-and-coming status. She always came second. Always. Until she left.”

“The moment they leave,” said Petras, “is the moment we realize their true worth.”

“After she left, I tried hard to get her back. And after she died, I found I couldn’t sculpt anymore. I tried but couldn’t do it. Haven’t done it since.”

“Ah, she was your muse.”

“I guess.” The notion made me smile. “Regardless, I gave up sculpting for a life on the edge.”

Raising one eyebrow and glancing over the ridge, Petras said, “Pun intended?”

I laughed.

“So Andrew believes you coming out here will help you get over your wife’s death? Maybe you’ll learn to sculpt again?”

I snorted and said, “He mailed me a giant slab of granite; did I tell you that? Had it shipped right to my apartment.”

“Did you sculpt anything from it?”

“I tried. But it didn’t work out. It wouldn’t take.”

Petras snickered. “You sound like a surgeon attempting an organ transplant. Operation was a success, but the patient died. Wouldn’t take.”

“Sometimes I feel that way.”

“Like a surgeon?”

“No, like the patient.” I reached out and touched his giant shoulder. “We’re cool, right? I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t sweat it.” He winked. “Never been cooler.”

Shotsky’s voice rang out, startling me with how far away he sounded. I turned to find that he had indeed lagged quite far behind us. Heraised one hand and stumbled forward. I anticipated his fall before it actually happened: a stiffening of his limbs followed by a keeling over to one side. He thumped down in a plume of powdered snow.

“Shit,” I said. Petras and I dropped our packs and sprinted toward him. I expected to find him unconscious, but as we approached I could see his legs moving back and forth along the ground, carving arcs in the snow. As our shadows fell over him, he moaned.

“What happened?” Petras asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Cramped … up …” He looked like someone in pain attempting to smile.

“Where?”

“Left … leg …”

Petras bent and felt his calf muscle. “It’s tightening up,” he said, glancing at me. He then looked back down at Shotsky and told him to straighten his leg while he massaged his calf muscle.

“Jesus!” Shotsky hissed.

I grappled with the walkie-talkie on Shotsky’s pack, wiping water off it with the sleeve of my anorak and bringing it to my face. “Andrew, this is Tim. Over.”

“I’m okay,” Shotsky said. “Tim—”

“You got your talkie on, Trumbauer?” I said into the handheld.

Andrew’s voice returned, full of static: “Go. Over.”

“Shotsky’s down. Leg’s cramped up. Over.”

“You want help? Over.”

“How’s he feel?” I asked Petras.

“Guys, I’m … I’m fine …” But he was still wincing.

Petras nodded. “He’s coming along.”

I keyed the handheld and said, “You go on ahead. We’re gonna sit out with him for a bit.”

“Stay in the passage along the black rocks,” Andrew returned. I could see him at the crest of the precipice far in the distance. “We’ll set up camp at the top. Don’t leave the passage, Tim. Over.”

“No problem. Over.”

I waited for something more—perhaps for him to keep his part of the bargain—but he did not respond.

“Spread your toes and bend your ankle,” Petras told Shotsky. “Bring your toes toward your head.”

“I can’t spread … my toes …”

“Try.”

“Boot’s too tight.” Shotsky sucked in a deep breath, then blurted, “Fucking boot’s been too tight the whole fucking trip!”

Without missing a beat, Petras popped the laces and yanked the boot off Shotsky’s foot. Shotsky winced and sucked air in through his clenched teeth. Petras clamped one hand against the bottom of Shotsky’s foot and bent it upward. Shotsky’s toes spread, expanding the tip of his sock like webbing.

“Get bigger boots,” Petras told him after he was done.

Only ten minutes had passed, but Andrew and Curtis had already disappeared over the crest of the passage. Hollinger and Chad were close behind them.

“We lose much time?” Shotsky asked, lacing his boot.

“Not much,” I said.

“Goddamn boots. Goddamn cramping leg muscle. Is it getting late?”

“We still have a few hours of daylight left.”

“Lousy goddamn boots. I’m sorry, guys.”

I waved a hand at him, yet I was anxious to start moving again. My hands were shaking. When I looked up, I noticed Petras watching me. His face held no expression.

Shotsky managed to gather his feet beneath him. He dusted the snow off his clothes, his face red and flushed. I could easily picture him as a bloated Popsicle frozen to the wall of an ice cave, his eyes hardened pebbles recessed into the black sockets of his skull.

By the time we crested the passage, Shotsky was behind again. Petras caught my arm and told me to wait. My heart rate wasthrumming; I wanted to keep going and to get my mind off the remaining alcohol in my pack.

“I’m okay,” Shotsky called from farther down the slope.

“Asshole’s going to break his neck,” I commented to Petras.

“Or kill one of us in the process. Listen,” Petras continued, lowering his voice. “About what you said before—Shotsky and the twenty grand and all. Let’s keep that between us, yeah? No need to let any of the others find out.”

“You think they’d be pissed?”

“What I think is we’ve got a crew of alpha males, each of them like to think they’re the one in charge. They find out this is some kind of mind game on Andrew’s part, and we may have an all-out mutiny on our hands. And seven headstrong individuals going their separate ways on this mountain is a bad idea. So if it’s all the same to you, I think we should keep up the façade. Whatever you’ve learned doesn’t need to leave this passageway.”

“Fine by me.”

“Guys …,” Shotsky called. He leaned against one of the large black stones, breathing hard. The skyline was bruising toward dusk. “Wait up …”

Petras sighed and rubbed the side of his face, covering his mouth from Shotsky’s view. “Anyway, we got bigger problems, I think.”

Petras and I grabbed Shotsky by the arms and hoisted him off the rock. He groaned and said he needed just a few minutes to rest.

“It’s getting dark,” I said, “and we need to catch up to the others before it gets too late. Wind will come funneling through here from the top of the ridge, freezing the place. It’ll be twice as hard to climb to the top.”

Shotsky groaned. “You two are a couple of downers—you know that?”

It was dark when we crested the incline and continued down the other side of the passage. The stars were countless and dazzling, the line of mountains a blackened series of waves against an inky backdrop of sky.

The flicker of a campfire trembled in the narrow, cupped valley below.

Two hours ago, Shotsky might have sighed with relief and commented in some quasi-humorous fashion about how glad he was to see the campsite. But that was two hours ago. Now all his strength was reserved for propelling one foot in front of the other. The night had cooled the atmosphere considerably, yet Shotsky’s round face was glistening with sweat, his cheeks flushed and quivering, his exaggerated breaths volleying his lower lip back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It would have been comical had I not been concerned about his heart giving out.

The rest of the crew was uncharacteristically quiet upon our arrival. Instinct told me they were thinking the same thing I was—namely, that there was no way in hell Shotsky was going to be able to complete this journey. Wordlessly, Hollinger handed a cup of hot cocoa to Shotsky, who accepted the cup equally as silent.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Chad commented under his breath, coming up beside me. “What’d you do, carry the son of a bitch on your shoulders the whole way?”

There was nothing I could say.

“Seriously,” Chad went on, his voice rising, “where’s the hidden fucking cameras? Because this has got to be a joke—”

“Cool it. I don’t need a goddamn recap.” I glanced around. “Where’s Andrew?”

“Where do you think? He’s praying like a goddamn monk up there.” He pointed to a silhouetted outline of jagged rock.

I could just barely make out Andrew’s form crouched atop one of the peaks, his face in profile.

“Is it just me,” Chad said, “or is everyone losing their fucking minds?”

An hour later, Andrew came down from the peaks. Shotsky was snoring against a stone outcropping, while Curtis, Chad, and Hollinger played cards. Petras had taken my book on George Mallory closer to the fire to read by the light. I’d spent the past hour thinking aboutthe situation with Shotsky but mostly thinking about the bourbon in my canteen. I’d come to the decision that I’d take another swig—just one more—after everyone had gone to bed. Either that, or do push-ups till morning.

“We need to talk,” I said to Andrew as he took off his shirt and sniffed his armpits.

“I’m ripe,” he said, pulling a face. He tossed the shirt atop his pack and bent to rifle for a fresh one. “What’s up?”

“I think you know.”

“Do I? Because there are so many things going on at the moment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well,” he began, his voice level, “for one thing, I noticed how collected you were this morning and well into the afternoon. Up until early evening, really, when you started lagging behind. And your hands started shaking again.”

I wasn’t going to mention the liquor to Andrew—though he’d supplied it, I didn’t have to let him know that I’d discovered it—but he was already onto me. This angered me. I guess Andrew could see that it angered me because he looked me up and down and asked if I was going to punch him in the face again.

“Thinking about it,” I said.

He selected a fresh T-shirt and pulled it over his head, tucking it into the waistband of his camouflage pants.

“He’s going to drop dead out here,” I said. “And I’m sure as hell not going to be his babysitter for the rest of the trip.”

“You didn’t have to be his babysitter today, either.”

“We had a deal,” I reminded him.

“The deal was if he feels like he can’t finish. Not you.”

“He won’t quit because he needs the money.”

“He’ll quit,” Andrew said. His eyes were like twin orbs of obsidian reflecting the nearby firelight. “That’s the problem with him. He’s a quitter. I wish it were different, but that’s not the case. You’ll see—

you’ll come out on top, and you’ll get your way.”

“I just hope it’s not too late. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Andrew said, squatting down with his back against his pack and lacing his hands behind his head, “we do. Good night.”

Speechless, I climbed into fresh socks and had Chad deal me in for a few hands of poker.

“You suck, Shakes,” Chad said after I’d lost my tenth hand in a row.

“Just deal,” I told him. Truth was, I couldn’t concentrate on the game; I was too busy watching Andrew sleep. Whether it had been subconscious or not, he’d removed himself from the rest of us, setting up his sleeping bag on the other side of the bonfire where, in the flicker of the flames, he was nothing but a dance of alternating shadows.

“You got it,” said Chad. “Money on the wood makes the game go good. Ante up, boys.”

After everyone had gone to sleep, I crawled over to where Shotsky lay, half petrified against the side of the stone outcropping. His snores were like the buzz of a chain saw. I poked his chest lightly and whispered his name into his ear over and over until his snoring broke up and his eyelids fluttered.

“Wha—?”

“Quiet,” I told him. Thankfully Petras’s thundering snoring compensated for Shotsky’s.

“Tim, wha—?”

“Listen. I spoke with Andrew. He’s going to give you the money whether you finish this thing or not. He doesn’t want you to know because he wants you to finish, but we need to be honest here, Donald.” I used his first name, hoping to appeal to the soul of the man. “This trip is going to get one hundred times worse than today. You’re going to kill yourself.”

His eyes were large and beseeching. I couldn’t tell if he was fully awake.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Sure.” His voice was calm, relaxed. His breath was warm in my face, smelling of onions and cigarettes. “Thing is, maybe I do need to prove this to myself. Maybe Andrew’s right. Maybe I need this.”

“Andrew’s out of his mind. He’s playing a game with you. You don’t need to prove a goddamn thing.”

“But I do.” His voice was oddly serene; just hearing it caused goose bumps to break out along my arms. “I do.”

“Then you might die proving it,” I whispered and crawled back to my sleeping bag.

Shotsky was snoring again before my eyes closed.

2

IN THE SCANT MOMENTS BEFORE DAWN. I AWOKE

to find Andrew and Shotsky standing above me with their packs on. For a second, I thought I was dreaming. I turned over and saw Curtis’s slumbering form wrapped in a flannel sleeping bag. I could hear Petras’s snores echoing off the stone walls of the valley.

“What’s this?” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “I’m taking Shotsky back to base camp,” Andrew said, his voice flat and emotionless.

“That’s a full day’s hike,” I said.

“And another day coming back,” he added. “We can do it quickly.” I stared at Shotsky, but he refused to meet my eyes. “You want me to go with you?” “It’s not necessary.”

But I was already lacing up my boots. “I’ll come.” “Tim—”

“Remember what you said to me when I told you I’d gone caving on my own? That I was a fool and I could have died down there?”

Andrew looked away, rubbing his jaw. He seemed to chew on my words.

“Well, you were right. I’m coming with you.” I gazed at the camp, which was still dark in the predawn. “Besides, what the hell am I gonna do? Sit here and lose all my money playing poker with Chad?”

“Quiet,” Chad groaned a few yards away. “Still sleeping.”

Again my gaze shifted to Shotsky, but he still refused to look at me.

Finally Andrew said, “Hurry up and get dressed.”

While I dressed, Andrew spoke with Petras and told him to wait here until he and I returned which, with luck, would be in less than two days. Petras accepted his duty as next-in-charge in Andrew’s absence without protest; however, when he peered over at me, there was a dubious glimmer in his eyes. I could only roll my shoulders in response.

We set out before the sun had time to rise. Conversation was nonexistent. The only sounds were of our boots crunching in the snow, the top layer having frozen in the night, and the collective sighs of our respiration. The descent was easier than the initial climb, and Shotsky had to stop only a handful of times to catch his breath. Each time, Andrew did not wait for him; he continued descending the passage, tromping through our footprints from the day before, until he was once again a dark speck at the opposite end of the passage.

I remained with Shotsky, but we did not speak to each other. There was nothing to be said, and we both knew it. I could tell he was uncomfortable around me, and I could tell by the distance Andrew created between us that he was upset, too.

“I’ve gotta take a leak,” I told Shotsky during one of his breaks and climbed farther down the passage where I urinated into the snow.

When Shotsky caught up five minutes later, somewhat refreshed and ready to continue, I sighed and said nothing. We continued down the slope until my nagging thoughts got the better of me and I said, “What was all that talk last night about needing to finish? You seemed determined.”

“Guess I had time to think about it,” he said, his voice small. “You’re right. Who am I kidding?”

I said no more about it. We stopped for a late, freeze-dried lunch, and none of us spoke. I found my mind wandering, occupying itself with things other than the descent and the coldness between the three of us. I thought of Hannah and how she—

3

—STUCK HER HEAD UP THROUGH THE FLOOR HATCH

of our loft. Soft, tallow light framed her face. She smiled as I set down my hammer and chisel and wiped my hands on my pants, leaving white smears of powder on them.

“You need to see this,” she said.

“I need to finish this.”

She climbed out of the floor hatch. My studio was actually the attic, accessible only through the small hatch at the center of the floor. Brushing dust off her clothes, she stepped around the sculpture and behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I thought you weren’t going to do the memorial.”

“I’m not.” I traced a thumb along the base of the sculpture. It was far from being finished, the bottom half still an unrefined cube of marble. Three faceless soldiers, their rifles drawn and their helmets covering their heads, rose out of the cube of marble, each of them facing in a slightly different direction. “I just couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing this in my head … and I knew this chunk of marble was up here, growing cold and ugly.”

Hannah reached out and stroked the cold, white stone. “It’s beautiful.”

“What’s so important that I need to see?”

“Outside. They’re shooting fireworks over the water from the Naval Academy.”

I examined the blank oval heads of the three soldiers beneath their helmets. “I should finish,” I said, picking up one of my carving tools.

“You should leave their faces blank,” she suggested.

“You think so?”

“Seems to make a bigger statement. Like they could be anyone and everyone. All the young men who died over there.”

“I need to finish,” I told her. “Please, Hannah …”

She kissed my cheek, and I felt her hand slide off my shoulder. The floorboards creaked as she made her way to the floor hatch. “I love you,” she called to me.

“Love you, too,” I said and watched as she descended through the hatch, under-lit by the shaft of yellow light.

I finished the sculpture, but it wasn’t good enough. I sat and stared at it for an undefined time, my stomach cramping with hunger and my bladder swollen with piss. Sometime during the night, I’d decided to submit it to the memorial commission after all. Leaning closer to it on my stool, I scrutinized every detail, every nuance. There was anguish and fear in the soldiers’ blank faces, creases and tears in their uniforms, and I could almost convince myself that I could see the grease on their hands from their weapons.

And it occurred to me like a burst of fire in a darkened cave: there was too much detail. It was too much.

Like they could be anyone and everyone.

One week later, I presented the sculpture to the memorial commission—a donation from an up-and-coming artist who’d done only a meager number of commissioned works. Reviews of the sculpture proclaimed it to be powerful, all-encompassing, otherworldly, yet somehow completely unassuming. It graced the covers of several design and art magazines. I started receiving work from more elite clients.

One man in particular, the publisher of a national newspaper, desired a personalized sculpture for his office, something he could set on the mantel above his fireplace. Upon our first meeting, he pumped my hand vigorously and said, “I fell in love with what you did for the memorial, Tim—can I call you Tim? So simple yet so

complex. That’s how I live my life, really.” He winked conspiratorially and added, “How did you ever think to keep the soldiers’ faces blank?” “Guess I was inspired,” was my response.

That night in bed, I kissed Hannah on the shoulder and told her what the newspaperman had said. I felt her smile in the dark. “So we make a good team, you and me, huh?” she said. “Marry me,” I said.

4

WE WERE NO MORE THAN RN HOUR AWAY FROM

base camp when Donald Shotsky died.

It happened just as twilight deepened the sky to a blend of cool purples and pinks, the moon visible in the eastern sky. For the past half hour, I had been conscious of Shotsky’s breathing—the rasping, closed-throated labor of it—so when it stopped, I was keenly aware of it.

I snapped my head around and saw him ten feet behind me. His eyes were bugging out of their sockets, his mouth working like a fish out of water. One of his pudgy, white hands fluttered in midair. I could almost hear his heartbeat closing the distance between us. I watched as his eyes filmed over, going blind. That fluttering hand clutched his chest. A small, froglike croak issued from his gaping mouth, and a moment after that, he pitched forward face-first into the snow.

I ran to him and dropped to my knees. It took some effort to roll him over on his side, and I knew it wasn’t a good sign that his eyes were still open.

“Andrew!” I could see him about to climb down the far end of the snowy passage to the path below. “Andrew!”

I pushed Shotsky over on his back. He didn’t blink. “Come on, Shotsky,” I pleaded. “Don’t do this.” Pressing two fingers to his carotid, I couldn’t make out a pulse. I quickly commenced with chest compressions, but he was wearing

too much restrictive gear. I unbuckled his pack and opened his coat, then proceeded with more compressions. My breath whistled in my throat, and my pulse drummed in my ears.

“Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on—”

“What happened?” Andrew barked, running toward us.

“Heart attack!”

Like a runner stealing second, Andrew slid in the snow and slammed against one of my thighs. He braced Shotsky’s head and positioned it back on his neck, creating a clearer passageway for air. With one hand, he administered quick little slaps to the side of Shotsky’s face, which was quickly turning a mottled shade of purple.

My arms were getting sore. I counted under my breath and continued with the chest compressions. A trail of snot descended from one of my nostrils and lengthened until it pattered on my balled, pumping fists.

“He’s not breathing,” Andrew said, sitting up. He released Shotsky’s head, but it did not recoil back on its neck. “There’s no pulse.”

“ … seven … eight … nine …”

“There’s no pulse. He’s dead.”

“Come on …”

“Overleigh. Tim.” Andrew put one hand over both my fists and steadied them on Shotsky’s chest. My breath was burning my throat. “He’s dead. It’s over. It’s over.”

Not moving, I sat there for several minutes. Andrew’s hand remained on top of mine. Once I felt my heartbeat begin to slow and regain its normal cadence, I lifted my hands off Shotsky’s chest and dropped onto my buttocks in the snow. I was still breathing heavily, but the cold night air was beginning to freeze the sweat on my face and neck.

“Fuck,” I uttered and eased back against my pack. Unbuckling the straps, I worked my shoulders out of them and pitched to my side in the freezing snow. “Jesus Christ, Andrew.”

Andrew sat forward on his shins and stared at Shotsky’s body.

“Did he have kids?” I asked. “Was he married?”

“No.” Andrew’s voice was small.

“No family?”

“He spent half the year alone in a tiny apartment in Reno, the other half as a greenhorn on crabbing boats in the Bering Sea. He was a pickup man.”

I didn’t know what a pickup man was; all I knew was Donald Shotsky, his face no more than three feet from my own, was dead.

“What do we do?” I said, sitting up. The cold was beginning to get to me.

“We leave him here.”

“Right here?”

“It’s no different than dragging him to base camp. And we certainly can’t carry him all the way down to the valley.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Get out your flags—the ones I left in your cabin. The blue ones.”

I unzipped my gear and produced the set of vinyl flags attached to wire rods. Andrew took off his own gear and stripped Shotsky’s pack off his body. He dragged the bag aside, then searched through Shotsky’s pockets.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Making sure we’re not leaving anything important behind,” said Andrew.

“Like what? His fucking wallet? Let him be.”

Andrew slammed a fist into the snow, mere inches from Shotsky’s head. “Fuck, Tim—you wanna play Pope, go to the fucking Vatican.” He continued searching through Shotsky’s pockets.

My eyes locked with Shotsky’s. They were already beginning to glaze over. His mouth was frozen in an O, as if he were freeze-framed singing an opera. Again I thought of the stories I’d read on the Internet about the bodies found on the Godesh Ridge and all through the Himalayan mountains. I thought of George Mallory, dead

somewhere on Everest.

Inevitably I thought of Hannah and David, burning to death in their car after it drove off a cliff. David, Hannah’s lover, died on impact in the crash, but the coroner’s report identified smoke inhalation as Hannah’s cause of death. I imagined her, bloodied and disoriented, slamming a single hand against a window as the car filled with smoke.

“Stay with me, Overleigh.”

I snapped out of my daze. Andrew bundled Shotsky’s body in his clothes, buttoning his coat and positioning his head at a more lifelike angle.

“The flags,” I said, holding them up.

“Find peaks, high places. Plant them in the center, where someone can see from a considerable distance. Somewhere they won’t get buried if it snows too hard.”

Without a word, I stood and meandered around the snowy passageway, driving flags into mounds of snow and atop stone precipices. When I turned a curve in the slope, hidden behind a mass of white rocks, I removed my canteen and took two healthy chugs. The bourbon seared my throat, which was already abraded from dry, heavy breathing. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and slipped the canteen back into my pack.

I shook feeling back into my hands, then went through my gear, fishing out a titanium anchor and sliding my pickax from its harness. It took me longer than I expected to carve Shotsky’s name into the rock. By the time I finished, I was wiped out.

“We’ll sleep here tonight,” Andrew said, surveying the vast incline. It was already dark, and we hadn’t moved from the spot where Shotsky had died. The snow was illuminated in the moonlight. It would take at least an hour to continue down the passage for base camp and probably longer in the cold and the dark. “There’s very little shelter. Let’s look around for an open niche in the rocks.”

We lit our electric lanterns and searched the crevices for an opening wide enough to accommodate both of us. As if by design, a light snow

began to fall, causing Andrew and me to exchange a serendipitous glance.

“Here,” I called. We’d been searching for forty minutes without luck until I located a narrow crawl space in the face of the rock farther up the incline. We had to wedge ourselves in sideways and duck our heads to pass through the opening, leaving our packs out in the snow because they wouldn’t fit. Three or four feet into the mountainside, the passage opened into a circular cave no bigger than the interior of a Volkswagen Beetle. Both our lanterns were too bright so I shut mine off.

Andrew held his lantern up to the ceiling, which was very near the tops of our heads. “This’ll do. Nice work.”

I was exhausted. Setting my lantern down, I pitched myself against the wall and pulled off my boots. My toes felt like loose marbles rolling around in the tips of my socks.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Andrew said, setting his own lantern down, “but I’ve gotta take a massive shit.” He chuckled to himself. The lantern threw his enormous and hulking shadow against the wall, curling up and splaying it across the undulated ceiling.

I looked past him at the vertical sliver of darkness that defined the narrow passage through which we’d entered.

“What is it?” he said. “Shotsky?”

“I don’t feel good about leaving him out there.”

“Well, we’re certainly not dragging him in here.”

“And now it’s snowing.”

“It’s not a heavy snowfall. Besides, you put out the flags.”

“It just doesn’t seem right.”

Andrew crouched against the wall opposite me. Half his face burned bright yellow in the light of the electric lantern; the other half was masked in shadows. He looked like the embodiment of good and evil. “You blame me for this, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

Andrew sighed and shucked off his boots. The cave was so small

I could smell his feet as if they were propped right under my nose. “Funny,” he said and let the word hang in the air.

“What’s that?” My tone was dry, disinterested.

“Funny how he was so quick to throw in the towel. You know, he woke me up in the middle of the night and said he didn’t want to be a burden on the rest of you guys. That he knew he wouldn’t be able to cut it and he had to quit.”

I turned away from him, locking my stare on that vertical sliver of moonlight coming through the rock.

“He would have walked over hot coals to get that twenty grand,” Andrew went on, “and yet he surrendered out of nowhere, as if the money suddenly didn’t matter to him.” He shrugged. “Funny, that’s all.”

“Funny?” I said, still refusing to look at him.

“You don’t think it’s a bit strange?”

“If you’re accusing me of something, spit it out.”

Andrew leaned his head back against the cave, his whole face swallowed by shadows. “We used to be such good friends. Remember?”

“You were Hannah’s friend. I just found you interesting.”

“And now?”

“Now what?”

“You don’t find me interesting anymore?”

I paused to consider my thoughts. “I guess I find you tedious. Maybe it was that tedium I originally found interesting, but now—”

“Now it’s just tedious,” Andrew finished, and I didn’t have to see his face to know he was smiling. “Tell me again what you were doing alone in that cave. We’ve gone through this before, but I don’t think we’ve actually addressed the issue.”

“This,” I suggested, “is a perfect example of tedium.”

This time Andrew laughed—a low, resonant rumbling that played off the closed-in walls. “Come on. Give it up.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Sure there is.” Andrew began slowly and methodically cuffinghis pants up to his knees. “It’s no different than the guy who walks into a doctor’s office and is told he’s got one month of dehumanizing, agonizing life left in him, that some virulent disease is ravaging and liquefying his insides. He’ll be bedridden and lying in his own shit within the week.” He finished cuffing his pants. “No different from that guy leaving the doctor’s office and walking right out into traffic.”

This sent a cold shiver down my spine. Andrew’s words hit too close to home. “Go to hell.”

“I wonder how it would have played out,” Andrew said, “if you hadn’t told old Shotsky about our little behind-the-scenes pact.”

My face burned. My fingernails dug into the rock. “What the hell did Hannah ever see in you?”

“Who knows? Maybe she was a fan of tedium.” He jerked a thumb at the electric lantern. “Mind if I kill this? I wanna get some sleep.”

5

IN THE MORNING. SHOTSKY’S BODY WAS DUSTED

in snow. His eyes were hard, sightless pellets, and I silently cursed myself for not thinking to close his eyelids before the snow came. Andrew had folded his hands atop his chest; they had blued overnight, hardened with frost, their fingers like solid links of metal. Only the orange canvas of his pack, propped beside him like a grave marker, stood out against the earthen colors of his wet clothes and whitish skin. The blue flags I’d pegged at various points in proximity to his body flapped in the wind.

Andrew and I did not speak for most of the hike up the pass. We maintained a considerable distance between us, choosing to hike in solitude than in each other’s company. At one point midway through the climb, I passed Andrew as he sat on his pack in the snow, eating some Cheerios. He did not bother to look in my direction, and I moved past him as if he were invisible.

Come dusk, as I paused to eat my own freeze-dried meal, I couldsee Andrew coming up the pass in pursuit. He walked with the slow, dilatory ease of someone walking through a dream. The setting sun cast soft pastels across the hardened crust of snow, making it glow with patches of purples and pinks, oranges and yellows. Beyond Andrew and farther down the pass, I thought I saw a second figure.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the fading light. But as I watched, I could tell it was a man, moving alongside the walls of the pass as if to keep out of sight. I dropped my pack and scrounged for my binoculars, but by the time I located them and glassed the area, the man had disappeared. I decided it was a trick of the light after all.

Andrew approached, and we crossed down the other side of the pass together, still in silence. However, as we climbed the next ridge and the bonfire became visible, Andrew grabbed one of the loops on my pack and brought me to a halt.

“We shouldn’t tell them about Shotsky,” he suggested. “It’ll crush their spirits. Let’s say we got him back to base camp and everything was fine.”

I hated to agree with him, but he had a point. There was no need to tell the others until after we’d finished. We could even hold a memorial service for Shotsky in the village, if anyone desired it. So I agreed with Andrew, then walked ahead of him toward camp.

I didn’t think it would be a big deal lying about Shotsky until Petras asked how things went.

“Fine,” I muttered, unable to look the bigger man in the eye. “He’s back at camp.” But all I could picture was the way his eyes had frozen open and the orange canvas of his pack standing up through the snowdrift.

“We’ve got a problem,” Hollinger said as Andrew approached camp and set his gear down. “It was either a miscalculation back in the village or we’ve mixed up our bluey with the Sherpas in the valley—”

“Wasn’t no goddamn mix-up,” Curtis chided.

“What happened?” Andrew asked.

“The food,” said Hollinger. “Half the lousy freeze-drieds, the foodstuffs. We’re missing half our tucker.”

I gaped at him. “The food?”

“Half of it’s gone missing, mate.”

“We must have left some behind in the valley without realizing it,” said Petras.

“Pig’s arse!” barked Hollinger.

“Then what else happened to it?” Curtis intervened, his gaze volleying between Michael Hollinger and John Petras. “It was a stupid mistake on our parts, not packing up more carefully in the valley.”

Hollinger threw his hands up. “Bah!”

“Is it really that bad?” Andrew asked, his voice steady.

“It’s roughly half the food, man,” said Curtis.

Chad appeared behind him, nodding.

“We’re still good,” Andrew said. “Half is plenty.” What he didn’t tell them was we’d pillaged the remaining food from Shotsky’s pack and carried it with us. It would be a morbid thing to explain, but we would if it needed to be done.

“Tell ‘im what you told us,” Hollinger said. He was looking straight at Petras. But before Petras could answer, Hollinger turned to Andrew and said, “He told us all about this sacred land we’re crossing. You can call me superstitious, but I don’t just leave behind half my food.”

“You’re making a bigger deal out of this than you need to,” Andrew said calmly. “Like I said, we’ve got enough food. We could survive up here for two months if we had to.”

“You’re wrong and you’re blind,” Hollinger said. “This is bad luck, and it’ll only get worse. You’ll see. You don’t fuck around with the spectral.”

“No such thing as luck.” Andrew dropped his pack off his shoulders, then knelt while he dug around inside. “We’re all responsible for our own achievements and our own mistakes. Luck is just a convenient ideology to place our own blame.”

Though I didn’t necessarily believe in luck, either, I couldn’t help but summon the image of Donald Shotsky, dead of a heart attack and frozen on the ground.

“We spent six months together in the outback, Mike, living off the land. Luck didn’t land our arrows into the chests of our prey so we could eat. That was our own patience and skill. Just like luck didn’t make that one chippie fall in love with you. It was your own confidence that did that—a confidence that’s curiously left you for the time being.”

Hollinger looked like he wanted to respond. In the end, however, he simply crawled over to his gear and reclined near the heat of the fire. Above us, the overhanging cliffs blotted out most of the sky and had kept much of the snow away from the campsite. The ground was fairly dry and warm and covered in small rocks. Hollinger gathered a handful of these rocks and began absently chucking them into the fire.

I looked over at Andrew. He was seated on the ground scrutinizing a map. He looked up and caught my eye. Surprising me, he winked.

I turned away and stretched my sore legs out by the fire. Chad brought me over a steaming cup of tea. “Thanks,” I said, surprised by the gesture.

“No sweat.” He sat beside me. “Everything went cool with old Donald?”

“Fine,” I muttered, covering my mouth with the rim of the cup.

“You think I can get a quick swig of whatever booze you’ve been hoarding?”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“Come on, man. I’ve been watching you, Shakes, been watching the peaks and valleys. I’m just asking for a drop.”

“I’ve got nothing,” I lied, taking a large gulp of the tea and burning the roof of my mouth in the process.

“Bullshit,” Chad said. There was no real anger to his tone. “Anyway, I’m just bitter because I can’t find my other joint.”

“You had two of those monsters?”

“Three.” He grinned like a fiend, his face red in the firelight. “We had a bit of a party last night while you three were gone.”

A bit of a party, I thought, while Donald Shotsky keeled over dead of a heart attack just one hour from base camp. A party while we looted his backpack and left him to freeze to the ground.

But it wasn’t Chad’s fault. I couldn’t be angry, and I didn’t want the disgust on my face to be too apparent. I finished the tea and handed him back the empty cup, thanking him under my breath. Ten minutes later, I curled up and went to sleep, while the bonfire popped and Chad blew sad notes on his harmonica.