The Ascent

'Twenty,'she said.'Almost.'

'You know, I can wait some more,' Abe offered. 'I don't mind.' Until he spoke it out

loud, the thought hadn't occurred to him. He could spend an hour here, then race

down to catch the others who would be moving slow with the bulky litter. And if he

could spend an hour, why not two?

Diana didn't give him a chance. 'Is that wind bringing a storm?' she asked.

'The storm's here,' Abe said.

'Then get out of here.' There was courage in her voice, but hysteria, too. Then she

screamed his name. She invoked it. 'Abe,' she cried.

She needed him to stay. At least until they freed her, this woman wanted Abe with

her whole heart. That was more than he'd ever known with a woman.

'I'm here,' he replied. 'I'm not leaving.'

By staying Abe would make himself hostage to his own promise. By staying he

would force the rescue team to return and acknowledge the life in this pit of ice. Elated

by his decision, Abe clambered to his feet. He caught up with the leader as the litter

team trudged downslope.

'I'm staying with her,' Abe announced.

The leader wasted no words. His broad face darkened. He took one step closer and

shoved Abe hard in the chest, knocking him to the snow. 'You damn cowboy,' he said.

'I don't take threats.'

Abe wasn't hurt by the blow, only surprised.

'It's no threat,' Abe said. But it was, clearly. And now he saw that he threatened

their tranquility. They had already reconciled themselves to their forsaking the

woman. The rescuers were good and decent men, that went without saying. But by

staying, Abe seemed to expose them as something less or different or just more

complicated.

'Get your pack. Or leave it, I don't care. But get your ass down this mountain. I don't

want you on this mountain. I don't want you on this team,' the leader yelled over the

wind. 'You don't know anything.'

Without that last insult, Abe might have obeyed.

One of the rescuers, an older man with bad knees, came gimping up to see what the

disturbance was about. 'The cherry think he's staying,' the leader said to the older

man. 'He thinks he's going to save the day.'

Now Abe was angry. 'You didn't leave her food or water. You didn't even talk to her.'

'That's because she's already dead.'

'But she's not.'

The older man took a minute to study Abe's earnest face. There was no friendliness

in his look, but no hostility either. He was measuring Abe the way he would a

mountainside or an approaching storm or any other obstacle. 'Leave that poor girl

alone,' he counseled Abe. 'There's not a thing we can do now except let her go. Have

some mercy.'

Abe heard the logic there, but he had decided. 'No, sir,' he said.

'Listen to me. All you'll do is torment her. With food and water, she could drag on for

days. Don't do that to her.'

'That's not the point,' Abe said. 'If it was me...'

'If it was you, you'd pray to God I had a gun to finish you quick.'

Abe shrugged. He was afraid to argue because he knew they were probably right.

But he was staying.

'I admire your chivalry,' the older man said, and Abe blushed because the man was

talking about naïveté'. 'Just the same, you'll put everybody at risk all over again, and

all to rescue you. Not her. She's gone. Now come on with us.'

'No sir.'

'Damn it,' the leader blew. 'You see?'

'I don't want to leave her either,' the older man said. 'If you ask me, it ought to be

that one over there' – he jerked a thumb at the litter – 'who's stuck in the hole. As far

as I'm concerned, he as good as killed that girl. All the same, it's her who stays and

him that gets saved.'

'There's no right or wrong in the mountains,' the leader added. 'There's just

whatever happens.'

'What's your name?' the older man asked.

'Abe Burns.'

'Well, Abe, if we were down in the World, I'd have you tied up. But we don't have the

manpower to carry you out. So that's no good. All we can do is rely on you to do what's

right.'

'Yes sir,' Abe said. 'I'm trying.'

'Quit your jacking off,' the leader shouted. 'We got an avalanche overhead and a

storm and a hurt man. And no time for you to get a hard-on for a dead woman.'

Abe didn't hesitate. He knocked the leader backward onto his pack and would have

kicked him, too, except he had on crampons and the teeth would have cut the man.

'Jesus,' the older man hissed at the leader, 'Jesus.' Then he turned to Abe. 'You

know, you can't save her.'

'I don't care,' Abe admitted.

'Then why?'

Abe didn't answer. He couldn't.

The older man looked around at the peaks. 'Have it your way,' he said. 'I just wish

you wouldn't do this to yourself.'

'It's your funeral,' the leader cursed Abe, struggling to his feet. He pointed at the

hole. 'She's already had hers.'

The older man shouted the litter crew to a halt two hundred yards down the glacier

and Abe trailed him down. The team set down the wounded man, who was delirious

with the morphine and warmth. The rescuers all went through their packs, donating

food and an extra sleeping bag and a bivouac tent and a little kerosene stove for

melting water. They did it quickly, with little respect for Abe but no discourtesy. They

thought him a fool, that was plain, but no one said it out loud. They simply left him

their surplus. To a man, the rescuers were sullen. Clearly they did not relish carrying

Daniel down at the expense of the woman in the crevasse. But the decision had been

made. One went so far as to wish Abe well. Then they were gone.

Abe trudged back up the slope with the supplies. In all, their charity weighed about

twenty pounds, and suddenly that seemed very little against the dark mass of storm

and twilight.

Abe lay the things beside the crevasse and assembled the bivouac tent as best he

could before the wind blew everything away or the snow buried it or he got too cold.

He set the tent door inches from the mouth of the crevasse, which made for an

awkward entrance. But it would facilitate communication, and that was the whole

point. Once inside the tiny tent and burrowed into the sleeping bag, Abe felt like he

was the one trapped. Only then did he call down into the hole and tell Diana what he'd

done.

The woman didn't answer. Not a whisper issued up from the crevasse.

'Diana?' he called. Abe had prepared himself for resistance, which was why he'd

waited to set camp before announcing his presence. Her silence confused him.

'Well, I'm here,' Abe said.

Hours passed. The storm swallowed them alive. What light remained was scooped

away by the wind.

Abe fell asleep and began dreaming he'd fallen into the crevasse. He couldn't move

his arms or legs and it was hard to breathe except in shallow birdlike bursts. He woke

from the dream to find himself smothering in complete darkness. The tent had

collapsed beneath a heavy mantle of snow and his limbs were lodged tight inside the

cocoon of the sleeping bag.

It took all Abe's strength to jackknife his body up and down and punch the tent and

himself free of the snow. Frenzied with claustrophobia, he managed to claw open the

door. There he lay with his bare head extending into the blizzard, gulping huge,

searing lungfuls of air and snowflakes, overjoyed to find himself free of the dream

even if not the mountain.