The Ascent(34)

“You doing all right?” I asked him.

“Sure. How about you? You almost bought the farm today. Good thing you thought about tying us all together like that.”

I winced, working a particularly painful knot out of the bottom of my foot. “Good thing you were nervous about crossing.”

Donald Shotsky smiled and nodded, his eyes reflecting the bonfire.

“You said something about needing this job,” I said after a few moments of silence. Around us, the stone walls laden with scripture cast rectangular shadows on the valley floor. “Back at the bridge. Remember?”

“I guess.”

“What did you mean?”

“I mean, I needed the money.” He tore at another piece of bread and washed it down with tea. “You think I’d be here otherwise?”

“Hold on. You’re getting paid to be here?”

Shotsky sensed my change in tone. He shot me a sideways glance. “Of course. Isn’t he paying you?”

“Andrew?”

“Who else?”

“How much?”

Shotsky seemed to consider whether or not this information should be shared. After too many drawn-out seconds, it looked like he was ready to self-combust. He said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

“Motherf*cker,” I whispered.

“Why else would I come? For the goddamn scenery?” Shotsky said. Then added, “Why would you come?”

“Probably because I’m a f*cking idiot,” I groaned and pulled my socks back on.

Chad, Hollinger, and Curtis were playing cards beside a couple of lanterns when I walked past them twenty minutes later. Petras wastaking care of personal business in the nearby woods. The Sherpas had cautioned him to carry a knife in case a bear or wild cat came sniffing around. Petras only nodded. I noticed his pearl-handled hunting knife jutting from his belt.

The Sherpas huddled together in one tent, inking long swaths of parchment and murmuring to themselves. Their tent smelled of incense and burning grape leaves and exuded an intense heat, as if the under-the-breath praying generated physical energy.

Andrew was off in the distance by himself, secluded in shadows, meditating. As I approached, my boots crunched the stones to dust beneath my weight, but Andrew did not turn around. I stood there for several minutes, staring at the back of his head, watching the slow, dilatory rise and fall of his respiration, before I felt like a fool.

“Is this something new?” I said.

“What’s that?” he said, not turning to face me.

“This meditation thing. This praying. I thought you were agnostic.”

He dropped his head. After a moment, he stood and rolled his sleeves up his arms. His face looked almost see-through in the moonlight. The square cut of his jaw was dressed in three days’ beard growth.

“Did you pay Shotsky twenty thousand dollars to come on this trip?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation, no emotion.

“Why?”

“Because he wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

“And why was it so important that he come?”

“Because,” he said casually, “that’s the point of this whole thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not necessary that you understand.”

“Did you pay anyone else?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“No one else. Just Donald.”

“So why is everyone else here?”

“The same reason you are.”

The thing was, I could no longer remember what my reason had been.

“Do you think this is a game, Tim?”

“I don’t know.”

Andrew smiled. “Neither do I.”

“Shotsky shouldn’t be here. He’s a f*cking novice. He’s scared of heights for Christ’s sake.”

“Donald Shotsky nearly died on a crabbing boat in the Bering Sea,” Andrew said, his voice turned up a notch. “Since then he’s been living in a one-bedroom shithole apartment in Reno. Last I spoke with him, there were men looking for him because he owed them money. Bad men. So I offered him this job. He comes out here; he gets twenty thousand dollars. Enough to keep those bad men at bay for a bit longer.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Why are you suddenly so accusatory?”

“Because something doesn’t feel right. Something doesn’t make sense.”

“I think maybe you hit your head hard on that fall from the bridge.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Andrew. I asked you a question. Shotsky gets the money; what do you get?”

“I,” he said, “get Shotsky.”

I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

Andrew sighed. He bent and gathered up the mat on which he’d been meditating and rolled it into a tube. “I didn’t save that man’s life on that boat so he could have it taken from him by a bunch of Vegas thugs. After that accident on the boat, if he was too much of a coward to go back to work, to work like a man, then I’m going to help him overcome that fear.” He grinned, and it was the old devilish Trumbauer grin. “I’m going to save his life again.” He tucked the mat under one