The Ascent(32)

“You gotta step it up a notch, man,” I called to him.

“This pace feels about right,” he said. I did not like the quakingin his voice.

“Shotsky, the slower you move, the longer you’ll be on this bridge. Do you understand?” I turned to look at him.

He nodded but did not increase his speed.

“Shotsky,” I said again, and that was when the plank beneath my foot snapped.

The world blurred as I rushed downward, feeling the jagged edge of the busted plank tear my cargo pants. Reflex caused my hands to spear out; I grabbed one of the vertical ropes, which briefly arrested my fall yet caused the bridge to pitch on its side. I heard Shotsky moan and saw John Petras bound toward me. The busted plank was at eye level. What looked like blood seeped into the wood. My blood? I had no idea.

“Hang on!” Petras shouted.

The rope was slick with moss; I lost my grip and felt the world pull me toward its center.

With all this gear on my back, I’m going to drown, I thought. A second later, I felt the concussion of striking the surface of the water. My bones rattled in my skin. For a moment, I thought I had somehow missed the river completely and hit the embankment, and I was now splayed out and broken on the jagged white rocks covered by a mat of fronds.

But then I felt the icy waters claim me, seeping into my clothes and attacking my flesh, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was f*cking blind, and I was drowning, blind and drowning.

2



I AWOKE BESIDE THE RIVER. PETRA’S FACE IN MY

own. He had one thumb holding up my eyelid. I blinked, and he let go and took a step back.

Behind him, Donald Shotsky stood with his hands fumblingover one another, his eyes bugging out. “On his neck.” His voice sounded like it was issuing from the far end of a long, corrugated tunnel. “See it? What is it?”

“Leech. Big sucker, too.” Petras peeled it from my neck and briefly examined it between his fingers. It was the size of a man’s index finger. He chucked it into the underbrush.

Then the shakes started—the cold had permeated my clothes, freezing them to my body, the water causing them to cling like flesh.

“Can you hear me?” Petras asked.

I nodded.

To Shotsky, Petras said, “We need to get him out of these clothes.”

I passed out.

3



LATER. THE SKY A MISTY GARY AND THE SUN

veiled by long streamers of clouds, I sat before a blazing fire. I was dressed in Michael Hollinger’s clothes, which weren’t exactly a perfect fit, and my teeth chattered in my skull. We still had several hours of daylight left, and Andrew had wanted to put them to good use. He was irritated and anxious at the mishap on the bridge, and I watched him pace back and forth along the brush, oblivious to the rest of us.

Petras brought me some tsampa—roasted barley ground to sticky flecks—and hot tea.

“The hell happened, anyway?” I said, grasping the tin cup of hot tea in both hands, savoring its warmth.

“You must have hit a weak board in just the right way.”

“And I didn’t pull you two down?”

“I reached the other side and secured the line around a post just before you fell.”

“And Shotsky?”

Petras grinned wearily. “Lucky bastard got his foot tangled inone of the bridge’s suspension cables. Just like that story he told about the crabbing boat when Andrew saved his life.”

“Pudgy bastard’s got a flare for that,” I commented but with no disdain. “He’s okay?”

“He’s fine. How about you?”

“Never better.”

“Your head still hurt?”

I frowned. “My head?”

“Gashed it pretty good.”

I suddenly became aware of a dull throb at the center of my forehead. When I touched the spot, I felt the split in the flesh and the sting of my fingers upon it. “Nice,” I muttered.

Petras shrugged. “You were an ugly bastard before. Doesn’t change much.”

I nodded in Andrew’s direction. “He pissed?”

“Says we’re close to the Valley of Walls. If we don’t lose too much time here, we can reach it by nightfall.”

I rose with some difficulty. My body was sore and unsure of itself. “Then let’s go.”

“You should give yourself some more time. Fuck Andrew Trumbauer.”

“He’s not my type.”

Petras didn’t protest further.

I carried empty bottles down to the river with Hollinger and Curtis and filled them with water, adding drops of iodine for purification. Back at the fire, someone had opened my gear and laid out my belongings to dry. I repacked it all and was ready to set off again in under an hour. The guides killed the fire, and we climbed a ravine to the next plateau in silence.

At the crest of the plateau, the land far below was dotted with tiny pagodas. Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily from huts pressed against the foothills. Yak herders watched us as we descended the other side.

In oncoming dusk, we dipped through a stone channel and foundourselves staring at the Himalayas, ghostly and blue and seeming to hover off the ground, in the distance. The range was spectacular in its grandness, its solidity, forcing even the most atheistic of mankind to pause and contemplate the existence of the divine.