“She’s awake!” a man says. She looks to find Frank smiling at her, cheerful in an almost insane way. Maybe he is insane. Frank is the American guide, a sturdy and energetic man, from Oregon, medium-sized in every way, with a short-shorn blond beard that wraps his face as a bandage would a man, decades ago, suffering from a toothache. “We thought we’d have to carry you up. You’re one of those people who can sleep through anything I bet.” Then he laughs a shrill, girlish laugh, forced and mirthless.
They pass a large school, its sign posted along the road. The top half: Drive Refreshed: Coca-Cola; below: Marangu Sec. School. A group of women are walking on the roadside, babies in slings. The bus passes the Samange Social Club, which looks like a construction company trailer. Farther up the road, a small pink building, the K&J Hot Fashion Shop, bearing an enormous spray-painted rendering of Angela Bassett. A boy of six is leading a donkey. Two tiny girls in school uniforms are carrying a bag of potatoes. A driveway leads to the Tropical Pesticides Research Institute. The rain intensifies as they pass another school — Coca-Cola: Drive Refreshed; St Margaret’s Catholic Sec School.
That morning, at the hotel, Rita had overheard a conversation between a British woman and the hotel concierge.
“There are so many Catholic schools!” the tourist had said. She’d just gotten back from a trip to a local waterfall.
“Are you Catholic?” the concierge had asked. The concierge was stout, with a clear nasal voice like a clarinet.
“I am,” the tourist said. “And you?”
“Yes please. Did you see my town? Marangu?”
“I did. On the hill?”
“Yes please.”
“It was very beautiful.”
And the concierge had smiled.
The van passes a FEMA dispensary, a YMCA, another social club, called Millennium, a line of teenage girls in uniforms, plum-purple sweaters and skirts of sportcoat blue. They all wave. The rain is now real rain. The people they pass are soaked.
“Look at Patrick,” Frank says, pointing at a handsome Tanzanian man on the bus, sitting across the aisle from him. “He’s just sitting there smiling, wondering why the hell anyone would pay to be subjected to this.”
Patrick smiles and nods and says nothing.
There are five paying hikers on the trip and they are introducing themselves. There are Mike and Jerry, a son and father in matching jackets. Mike is in his late twenties and his father is maybe sixty. Jerry has an accent that sounds British but possesses the round vowels of an Australian. Jerry owns a chain of restaurants, while the son is an automotive engineer, specializing in ambulances. They are tall men, barrel-chested and thin-legged, though Mike is heavier, with a loose paunch he carries with some effort. They wear matching red jackets, scarred everywhere with zippers, their initials embroidered on the left breast pockets. Mike is quiet and seems to be getting sick from the bus’s jerking movements and constant turns. Jerry is smiling broadly, as if to make up for his son’s reticence — a grin meant to introduce them both as happy and ready men, as gamers.
The rain continues, the cold unseasonable. There is a low fog that rises between the trees, giving the green a dead, faded look, as if most of the forest’s color had drained into the soil.
“The rain should clear away in an hour or so,” Frank announces, as the bus continues up the hills, bouncing through the mud. The foliage everywhere around is tangled and sloppy. “What do you think, Patrick?” Frank says. “This rain gonna burn off?”
Patrick hasn’t spoken yet and now just shrugs and smiles. There is something in his eyes, Rita thinks, that is assessing. Assessing Frank, and the paying hikers, guessing at the possibility that he will make it up and down this mountain, this time, without losing his mind.
Grant is at the back of the bus, watching the land pass through the windows, sitting in the middle of the bus’s backseat, like some kind of human rudder. He is shorter than the other two men but his legs are enormous, like a power lifter’s, his calves thick and hairy. He is wearing cutoff jean shorts, though the temperature has everyone else adding layers. His hair is black and short-shorn, his eyes are small and water-cooler blue. He is watching the land pass through the window near his right cheek, and the wind waters his small calm eyes.
Shelly is in her late forties and looks precisely her age. She is slim, fit, almost wiry. Her hair, long, ponytailed, once blond, is fading to gray and she is not fighting it. She has the air of a lion, Rita thinks, though she doesn’t know why she thinks of this animal, a lion, when she sees this small woman sitting two seats before her, in an anorak of the most lucid and expectant yellow. She watches Shelly tie a bandanna around her neck, quickly and with a certain offhand ferocity. Shelly’s features are the features Rita would like for herself: a small thin nose with a flawless upward curve, her lips with the correct and voluptuous lines, lips that must have been effortlessly sexual and life-giving as a younger woman.
“It’s really miserable out there,” Shelly says.
Rita nods.
“I’m finding myself annoyed by this,” Shelly says.
Rita smiles.
The bus stops in front of a clapboard building, crooked, frowning, like a general store in a Western. There are signs and farm instruments attached to its side, and on the porch, out of the rain, there are two middle-aged women feeding fabric through sewing machines, side by side. Their eyes briefly sweep over the bus and its passengers, and then return to their work as the bus begins again.
Frank is talking about the porters. Porters, he says, will be accompanying the group, carrying the duffel bags, and the tents, and the tables to eat upon, and the food, and propane tanks, and coolers, and silverware, and water, among other things. Their group is five hikers and two guides, and there will be thirty-two porters coming along.
“I had no idea,” Rita says to Grant, behind her. “I pictured a few guides and maybe two porters.” She has a sudden vision of servants carrying kings aboard gilt thrones, elephants following, trumpets announcing their progress.
“That’s nothing,” Frank says. Frank has been listening to everyone’s conversations and inserting himself when he sees fit. “Last time I did Everest, there were six of us and we had eighty Sherpas.” He holds his hand horizontally, demonstrating the height of the Sherpas, which seems to be about four feet. “Little guys,” he says, “but badasses. Tougher than these guys down here. No offense, Patrick.”
Patrick isn’t listening. The primary Tanzanian guide, he’s in his early thirties and is dressed in new gear — a blueberry anorak, snowboarding pants, wraparound sunglasses. He’s watching the side of the road, where a group of boys is keeping pace with the bus, each in a school uniform and each carrying what looks to be a small sickle. They run alongside, four of them, waving their sickles, yelling things Rita can’t hear through the windows and over the whinnies of the van going up and up through the wet dirt. Their mouths are going, their eyes angry and their teeth are so small, but by the time Rita gets her window open to hear what they’re saying the van is far beyond them, and they have run off the road with their sickles. They’ve dropped down the hillside, following some narrow path of their own making.
There is a wide black parking lot. MACHAME GATE reads a sign over the entrance. In the parking lot, about a hundred Tanzanian men are standing. They watch the bus enter the lot and park and immediately twenty of them converge upon it, unloading the backpacks and duffel bags from the bus. Before Rita and the rest of the hikers are off, all of the bags are stacked in a pile nearby, and the rain is falling upon them.
Rita is last off the bus, and when she arrives at the door, Godwill has closed it, not realizing she is still aboard.