The Ascent(23)

I felt some semblance of camaraderie with Petras, so I didn’t lie to him. “I’ve just recently quit being an alcoholic, you might say.”

One of his carved-in-stone eyebrows raised. “How recent?”

“Fairly recent.” I forced a grin and felt like an imbecile. “Since I arrived in Nepal, actually.”

Petras gulped down a mouthful of the oily drink, his gaze leaving mine for a second to scale the opposite wall, which was laden with stuffed animal heads. Without looking at me, he said, “Normally I’d say I’m not your father and whatever you choose to do is your own business. As a rule, I stand by that type of thinking. But as I said, come the end of this week, my life—if you’ll permit me an overstatement—will be in your hands. I thought I was clear on this the night we met.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to worry about me. I swear to God I’m good to go.”

Petras stuck out his lower lip and nodded with the lethargy and commitment of someone acknowledging his guilt to a jury of his peers.

“Please,” I said, immediately disliking the whininess of my voice. “Please don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“No, I won’t.” His steely eyes shifted back in my direction, and I thought I felt them sear my soul with one glance. “You’ve got a good heart and a healthy spirit. And I believe you may need this journey more than me.” He cocked his head toward the doorway and added, “More than any of those guys, really.”

“Thanks.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some food.”

4



WE ATE UNTIL WE WERE FULL. AND THEN WE ATE

just a little more. There were six of us in all, excluding Andrew who hadn’t shown up yet: Petras and me, of course; Michael Hollinger, the quiet Australian; the loudmouthed Chad Nando from Miami, whose voice carried a bit louder and a bit edgier than the rest; a gray-eyed, muscular black man from Ohio named Curtis Booker, who’d been in the Marines but needed to be prodded for a long time before he’d talk about it; and lastly a surprisingly flabby guy named Donald Shotsky who looked to be in his late forties and whose craggy face, replete with acne scars, resembled a tic-tac-toe board. Shotsky had the perpetually rheumy eyes of a career alcoholic, and the calculating little man inside me assumed the chunky little bastard had a bottle or two stashed in his cabin. A good friend to have, no doubt.

“First molehill I ever climbed was the Mount of the Holy Cross in Colorado,” said Chad, who had been dominating the conversation for most of the evening. “I’d just turned nineteen and was with my older brother, Alex, and some of his friends. Me being a novice, the plan was to scramble up the North Ridge—fifty-six hundred feet in over eleven miles.”

Curtis nodded. “I know it. Marked by a white cross of snow you can see for miles. Ideal for extreme skiing.”

Chad snickered and shook his head. “Yeah, well, I had no idea. Wasn’t about to punk out, you know, so after some arguing, it’s decided we’ll climb up that vertical part of the cross, the Cross Couloir route, and then ski straight down the way we came. So we get geared up—man, there must have been six of us that day—and we weren’t even an hour into the climb when I lose my footing and drop straight over a sheer face. Course, I was tied in, but that didn’t prevent me from swinging out over a ravine like a human yo-yo or some shit, the world blurring in front of my eyes. I squeezed that goddamn line so tight it cut through my gloves and caused stress fractures on the palms of my hands.”

Hollinger whistled.

“I swing out,” Chad went on, “and sure as shit, as if in slow motion, I see a fist-sized blade of rock coming right for my face. I brace my feet in front of me to catch the wall, but I’m swinging with too much force now, and I’ve got to keep some spring in my knees, not locking ‘em, otherwise I’d break my legs on impact—”

“Or push the buggers up into your rib cage,” suggested Hollinger.

“No shit. And, see, all this is going through my mind as I’m swinging toward it, which is why I say it was like in slow motion. Probably could’ve sang the whole goddamn theme song to Gilligan’s Island, seemed to be so much time.” Chad snorted and ran a hand across the top of his head. Then he pointed to a vague indentation below his left eye. “Rock struck me here, shattering my cheekbone. My eye was like jelly in the socket and filled up with blood. The force of it knocked me unconscious, too, but overall I guess I was lucky. Less than an inch higher and I’d be sporting one fancy little eye patch.”

“Jesus,” Donald Shotsky said in a breathy whisper.

“Split my pretty face like a Halloween pumpkin.” Chad shrugged. “Somehow they get me down and bring me to Alex’s truck. But Alex, who’s panicking like a son of a bitch right about now—I know this ‘cause it’s just about the time I come to, sprawled in the backseat with a blood-soaked towel holding my face together—he gets lost on the trails going back to the interstate. First town we come to is Holy Cross City itself, which is nothing more than a ghost town, an old mining town with a few dilapidated cabins and mining boilers scattered around. Not a soul in sight and certainly no hospital. Then, because God tends to f*ck with the hopelessly panicked, one of the truck’s tires blows out.”

Everyone groaned, myself included.