Volcano Watch

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.

Mike said, “Let’s give it time to start.”

“How long?”

Mike agonized. “Fifteen minutes?”

Eric looked to me. I scanned the terrain, getting my bearings. We were suspended over East Bowl, two-thirds of the way to the summit. To my left, I could just make out the Red Mountain vent. We were stopped cold. No hum of machinery. I thought, this is Mike’s show. Mike does know his stuff, he’s devoured the manual, he did lend a hand with repairs when he used to work the gondola, and if I hadn’t interfered with his repair that long-ago day in the station he may well have fixed that problem. I said, “Let’s wait and see if it starts.”

“No.” Eric dug in his pack.

“Ten minutes?” Mike said. “How about that, man?”

Eric said, “We go now.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but really I didn’t know if it was better to stay or to go, and so I let the moment pass. Walter was helping Eric with his pack. Mike tucked his hand into his armpit and kept his mouth shut.

“Go where?” Krom asked.

“Up,” I said, “still up,” and I crawled over Mike to sit on the sliver of bench beside Krom, to allow Mike and Eric access to the door.

Krom began to laugh.

Eric had the gear out and he helped Mike into the harness and roped him and tied the rope to the crossbar inside, and Mike went out the door and with a thump spread-eagled over the roof. Through the window we saw him reach down to unlash the sled. Eric hauled Mike inside and the sled came after him, screeching across the roof. With ropes and carabiners they secured the sled outside the door. Mike put his weight on it and raised a thumb. There it held, a step into nowhere.

“No,” Krom said.

“It’s o-kigh.” Mike went over the side. I stretched to the window and watched him rappel down.

Eric turned to Krom. “Now you. Just try not to stiffen and don’t go limp.”

For a dark moment I wondered if Eric would just toss Krom over and let him free-fall, if I asked. I moved to Krom’s legs. Walter prepared to get him around the middle. Eric had the head. Krom watched us in surprise, as though we had not heard him decline the invitation. Contrary to instructions, he stiffened.

I said, “Ease up. We’re wasting time.”

“Wrong way,” he said. He gritted his teeth as we moved him, biting off the pain. We worked him out the door and Eric strapped him in.

“Ready below?” Eric yelled.

Mike shouted.

We slipped the carabiners and began to let the sled down. Krom’s eyes locked on me, and he slipped me back to that day in the lab when he’d told me where the wrong way led, where the driver who made the wrong call during the eruption took them. And then the sled descended out of my sight. Nothing for him to do now but descend to the mercy of the volcano, take the pain, and survive.

Below, Mike caught the sled.

Eric hauled up the ropes and harness. “Sir.” He helped Walter strap in and belayed Walter as he worked himself into position. I watched Walter rappel down, holding my breath for an eternity, thinking Walter’s getting too old for this.

Eric hauled up the gear. “Cassie.” He checked the hardware and webbing and then held the harness open for me, like an evening coat. I buckled in.

Eric shouldered into the radio pack. “I’ll toss the other packs when you’re down but I’m going to carry this baby mys…”

There was a bump, and we looked at each other in instant knowledge. Eric cursed. He spun to the door and then back to me and for a moment I thought he was going to toss me over anyway since I was already roped.

“Throw them packs,” I screamed.

We lunged, grabbing packs, taking time only to aim wide, and Eric shouted “wait there” and Mike was waving his arms and shouting too but we couldn’t make it out because the gondola car yanked us forward out of earshot.

Ash consumed their faces, their shapes, and then there was just the yellow tinge of their survival suits and then ash assimilated that, as well.

Eric swung the door shut.

We rose, helpless. I got out of the climbing harness, watching through pitted glass for explosion craters or crevassing, and when at last we topped the final hump of cable track and funneled into the gloom of the summit station, Eric shoved open the door and we jumped. I hit the floor hard and scrambled for the switch. It had been fifteen years but the simple skills of my first paid job were intact. I shut down the gondola.

Eric sprinted to the other car and unstrapped a pair of skis. I was on his heels. I reached for a second pair.

“Whoa,” he said. “Not you.”

“It’s steep. We’ve got to haul that sled up.”

“Three can do it. Stupid to risk a fourth. I’m bigger and stronger. I go.” He put on ski boots.

The concrete bumped beneath our feet, like heartbeats. Quakes picking up.

I said, “Walter’s down there. I’m going.”

“The hell you are. This one’s mine. My responsibility. My fucking fault. Mike thought it would start and I pushed us to go.”

I grabbed a pair of skis.

Eric yanked them from me, rough. “We don’t have time for this, Cass. You’re not going. You try to go, I’ll have to stop you. You follow me, I’ll have to tie you up and drag you back up here — and you damn well know I will.”

“You are so royally stubborn, Eric — Walter’s an old man and Mike’s a runt and they’re both crapped out by now and the sled weighs a ton and you’re saying you can’t use a fourth? Yes you can. You need me.”

We stared at each other, staring each other down. There were a thousand things to say. We’d only got started that night in the cottage. There were a thousand things to say but what Eric said now was, “I need you to stay up here.”

I began to panic.

He said, “We need a fourth up here with the radio who can tell Bridgeport where we are if something goes wrong down there.”

My heart turned over.

He tossed my skis. They hit the concrete, hard. “Cassie?”

I said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Come up the knoll.” He opened the big door and we tramped outside and up the knoll to the vista point above the gondola station. He pointed. “Here’s the route. They’re down in East Bowl. From there we’re gonna traverse to Saddle Bowl and loop over the saddle and switchback up Dave’s Run past Huevos Grande and then around up to here. Got your watch? It’s twelve-ten. Three hours go by and you don’t see us, notify Bridgeport. We get close enough you do see us, come down and lend a hand. Otherwise, I don’t want to see you.” He stepped into his skis and set his goggles and poles. He hesitated, then raised his dust mask and brushed me a kiss. His mouth was ice cold.

I met him, held him. We tasted of ash.

Eric broke away first. “Sizzling sendoff, Oldfield.”

“Dynamite, Catlin.”

He set the mask. “Adios.”