Within minutes she is shaking. It’s no more than forty degrees and the rain is harder here; there are no trees diverting its impact. And there are no tents assembled, because they have beaten the porters to the camp. Even Grant seems to see the poor reasoning involved in their strategy. The one thing Grant doesn’t have is a tarp, and without it there is no point in pitching his tent on earth this wet. They will have to wait, alone in the rain, until the porters arrive.
“It’ll be at least an hour,” Grant says.
“Maybe sooner for the porters?” Rita suggests.
“We sure didn’t think this one through,” he says, then spits a brown stream onto a clean green banana leaf.
Under a shrub no more than four feet tall, offering little protection, they sit together on a horizontal and wet log and let the rain come down on them. Rita tries not to shiver, because shivering is the first step, she remembers, to hypothermia. She slows her breathing, stills her body, and brings her arms from her sleeves and onto her naked skin.
Frank is furious. His eyes are wild. He feels compromised. The paying hikers are all in a cold canvas tent, sitting around a table no bigger than one meant for poker, and they are eating dinner — rice, plain noodles, potatoes, tea, orange slices.
“I know a few of you think you’re hotshots,” Frank says, blowing into his tea to cool it, “but this is no cakewalk up here. Today you’re a speed demon, tomorrow you’re sore and sick, full of blisters and malaria and God knows what.”
Grant is looking straight at him, very serious, neither mocking nor confronting. He is staring at Frank as if Frank were explaining something on the menu.
“Or you get an aneurysm. There’s a reason you have a guide, people. I’ve been up and down this mountain twelve times, and there’s a reason for that.” He blows into his tea again. “There’s a reason for that.”
He shakes his head as if suddenly chilled. “I need to know you’re gonna act like adults, not like… yahoos!” And with that he burrows his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets, a man with too much on his mind.
The food before the group has ostensibly been cooked, by the porters, but within the time it took to carry it from the tent where it was heated to this, their makeshift dining tent, the food has gone cold. Everyone eats what they can, though without cheer. The day was long and each hiker has an injury or an issue. Mike’s stomach is already feeling wrong, and at some point Shelly slipped and cut her hand open on a jagged tree stump. Jerry is having the first twinges of an altitude headache. Only Rita and Grant are, for the time being, problem-free. Rita makes the mistake of announcing this, and it seems only to get Frank angrier.
“Well, it’ll happen sooner or later, ma’am. Something will. You’re probably better off being sick now, because in a few days, it’ll hit you harder and deeper. So pray to get sick tonight, you two.”
“You sit over there, you’ll get dead,” Jerry says, pointing to a corner of the tent where a hole is allowing a drizzle to pour onto the floor. “What kinda equipment you providing here anyway, Frank?” Jerry’s tone is gregarious, but the message is plain.
“Are you dry?” Frank asks. Jerry nods. “Then you’re fine.”
They’re sitting on small canvas folding stools, and the paying hikers have to hunch over to eat; there is no room for elbows. When they first sat down they had passed around and used the clear hand-sanitizing fluid provided — like Softsoap but cool and stinging lightly. Rita had rubbed her hands and tried to clear the dirt from her palms, but afterward found her hands no cleaner. She looks at her palms now, after two applications of the sanitizer, and though they’re dry their every line and crevice is brown.
The man who brought the platters of rice and potatoes— named Steven — pokes his head into the tent again, his smile preceding him. He’s in a purple fleece pullover with a matching stocking cap. He announces the coming of soup and everyone cheers. Soon there is soup finally and everyone devours it. The heat of the bodies of the paying hikers slowly warms the canvas tent and the candles on the table create the appearance of comfort. But they know that outside this tent the air is approaching freezing, and in the arc of night will dip below.
“Why are there no campfires?”
It’s the first thing Mike has said at dinner.
“Honey collectors,” Frank says. “Burned half the mountain.”
Mike looks confused.
“They try to smoke out the bees to get the honey,” Frank explains, “but it gets out of control. That’s the theory anyway. Might have been a lot of things, but the mountain burned and now they won’t allow fires.”
“Also the firewood,” Patrick says.
“Right, right,” Frank says, nodding into his soup. “The porters were cutting down the trees for firewood. They were supposed to bring the firewood from below, but then they’d run out and start cutting whatever was handy. You’re right, Patrick. I forgot about that. Now they’re not even allowed to have firewood on the mountain. Illegal.”
“So how do clothes get dry?” This from Jerry, who in the candlelight looks younger, and, Rita suddenly thinks, like a man who would be cast in a soap opera, as the patriarch of a powerful family. His hair is white and full, straight and smooth, riding away from his forehead like the back of a cresting wave.
“If there’s sun tomorrow, they get dry,” Frank says. “If there’s no sun, they stay wet,” he says, then sits back and waits for someone to complain. No one does, so he softens. “Put the wet clothes in your sleeping bag. Somewhere where you don’t have to feel ’em. The heat in there will dry ’em out, usually. Otherwise work around the wet clothes till we get some sun.”
“This is why those porters dropped out,” Jerry says, with certainty.
“Listen,” Frank says, “porters drop out all the time. Some of them are superstitious. Some just don’t like rain. Doesn’t mean a thing.”
Rita cannot grip how this will work. She doesn’t see how they can continue up the mountain, facing more rain, as it also becomes colder, the air thinner, and without their having any chance of drying the clothes that are surely too wet to wear. Is this not how people get sick or die? By getting wet and cold and staying wet and cold? Her concern, though, is a dull and almost distant one, because almost immediately after the plates are taken away, she feels exhausted beyond all measure. Her vision is blurry and her limbs tingle.
“I guess we’re bunking together,” Shelly says, suddenly behind her, above her. Everyone is standing up. Rita rises and follows Shelly outside, where it is still drizzling the coldest rain. The hikers all say goodnight, Mike and Jerry heading toward the toilet tent, just assembled — a triangular structure, three poles with a tarp wrapped around, a zipper for entry, and a three-foot hole dug below. Father and son are each carrying a small roll of toilet paper, protecting it from the rain with their plastic baggies containing their toothbrushes and paste. Their silhouettes are smudges scratched by the gray lines of the cold rain.
Shelly and Rita’s tent is small and quickly becomes warm. Inside they crawl around, arranging their things, using their headlamps — a pair of miners looking for a lost contact lens.
“One day down,” Shelly says.
Rita grunts her assent.
“Not much fun so far,” Shelly says.
“No, not yet.”
“But it’s not supposed to be, I suppose. The point is getting up, right?”