Mike said, “Let’s give it time to start.”
“How long?”
Mike agonized. “Fifteen minutes?”
Eric looked to me. I scanned the terrain, getting my bearings. We were suspended over East Bowl, two-thirds of the way to the summit. To my left, I could just make out the Red Mountain vent. We were stopped cold. No hum of machinery. I thought, this is Mike’s show. Mike does know his stuff, he’s devoured the manual, he did lend a hand with repairs when he used to work the gondola, and if I hadn’t interfered with his repair that long-ago day in the station he may well have fixed that problem. I said, “Let’s wait and see if it starts.”
“No.” Eric dug in his pack.
“Ten minutes?” Mike said. “How about that, man?”
Eric said, “We go now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but really I didn’t know if it was better to stay or to go, and so I let the moment pass. Walter was helping Eric with his pack. Mike tucked his hand into his armpit and kept his mouth shut.
“Go where?” Krom asked.
“Up,” I said, “still up,” and I crawled over Mike to sit on the sliver of bench beside Krom, to allow Mike and Eric access to the door.
Krom began to laugh.
Eric had the gear out and he helped Mike into the harness and roped him and tied the rope to the crossbar inside, and Mike went out the door and with a thump spread-eagled over the roof. Through the window we saw him reach down to unlash the sled. Eric hauled Mike inside and the sled came after him, screeching across the roof. With ropes and carabiners they secured the sled outside the door. Mike put his weight on it and raised a thumb. There it held, a step into nowhere.
“No,” Krom said.
“It’s o-kigh.” Mike went over the side. I stretched to the window and watched him rappel down.
Eric turned to Krom. “Now you. Just try not to stiffen and don’t go limp.”
For a dark moment I wondered if Eric would just toss Krom over and let him free-fall, if I asked. I moved to Krom’s legs. Walter prepared to get him around the middle. Eric had the head. Krom watched us in surprise, as though we had not heard him decline the invitation. Contrary to instructions, he stiffened.
I said, “Ease up. We’re wasting time.”
“Wrong way,” he said. He gritted his teeth as we moved him, biting off the pain. We worked him out the door and Eric strapped him in.
“Ready below?” Eric yelled.
Mike shouted.
We slipped the carabiners and began to let the sled down. Krom’s eyes locked on me, and he slipped me back to that day in the lab when he’d told me where the wrong way led, where the driver who made the wrong call during the eruption took them. And then the sled descended out of my sight. Nothing for him to do now but descend to the mercy of the volcano, take the pain, and survive.
Below, Mike caught the sled.
Eric hauled up the ropes and harness. “Sir.” He helped Walter strap in and belayed Walter as he worked himself into position. I watched Walter rappel down, holding my breath for an eternity, thinking Walter’s getting too old for this.
Eric hauled up the gear. “Cassie.” He checked the hardware and webbing and then held the harness open for me, like an evening coat. I buckled in.
Eric shouldered into the radio pack. “I’ll toss the other packs when you’re down but I’m going to carry this baby mys…”
There was a bump, and we looked at each other in instant knowledge. Eric cursed. He spun to the door and then back to me and for a moment I thought he was going to toss me over anyway since I was already roped.
“Throw them packs,” I screamed.
We lunged, grabbing packs, taking time only to aim wide, and Eric shouted “wait there” and Mike was waving his arms and shouting too but we couldn’t make it out because the gondola car yanked us forward out of earshot.
Ash consumed their faces, their shapes, and then there was just the yellow tinge of their survival suits and then ash assimilated that, as well.
Eric swung the door shut.
We rose, helpless. I got out of the climbing harness, watching through pitted glass for explosion craters or crevassing, and when at last we topped the final hump of cable track and funneled into the gloom of the summit station, Eric shoved open the door and we jumped. I hit the floor hard and scrambled for the switch. It had been fifteen years but the simple skills of my first paid job were intact. I shut down the gondola.
Eric sprinted to the other car and unstrapped a pair of skis. I was on his heels. I reached for a second pair.
“Whoa,” he said. “Not you.”
“It’s steep. We’ve got to haul that sled up.”
“Three can do it. Stupid to risk a fourth. I’m bigger and stronger. I go.” He put on ski boots.
The concrete bumped beneath our feet, like heartbeats. Quakes picking up.
I said, “Walter’s down there. I’m going.”
“The hell you are. This one’s mine. My responsibility. My fucking fault. Mike thought it would start and I pushed us to go.”
I grabbed a pair of skis.
Eric yanked them from me, rough. “We don’t have time for this, Cass. You’re not going. You try to go, I’ll have to stop you. You follow me, I’ll have to tie you up and drag you back up here — and you damn well know I will.”
“You are so royally stubborn, Eric — Walter’s an old man and Mike’s a runt and they’re both crapped out by now and the sled weighs a ton and you’re saying you can’t use a fourth? Yes you can. You need me.”
We stared at each other, staring each other down. There were a thousand things to say. We’d only got started that night in the cottage. There were a thousand things to say but what Eric said now was, “I need you to stay up here.”
I began to panic.
He said, “We need a fourth up here with the radio who can tell Bridgeport where we are if something goes wrong down there.”
My heart turned over.
He tossed my skis. They hit the concrete, hard. “Cassie?”
I said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“Come up the knoll.” He opened the big door and we tramped outside and up the knoll to the vista point above the gondola station. He pointed. “Here’s the route. They’re down in East Bowl. From there we’re gonna traverse to Saddle Bowl and loop over the saddle and switchback up Dave’s Run past Huevos Grande and then around up to here. Got your watch? It’s twelve-ten. Three hours go by and you don’t see us, notify Bridgeport. We get close enough you do see us, come down and lend a hand. Otherwise, I don’t want to see you.” He stepped into his skis and set his goggles and poles. He hesitated, then raised his dust mask and brushed me a kiss. His mouth was ice cold.
I met him, held him. We tasted of ash.
Eric broke away first. “Sizzling sendoff, Oldfield.”
“Dynamite, Catlin.”
He set the mask. “Adios.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
I watched Eric push off, double-poling, and then he lunged into a skate like he was starting a sprint. He caught speed and paralleled his skis and dropped into a tuck. His skis cut a long lovely track down the ash of Dave’s Run.
I wiped my eyes and lifted my gaze, scanning from the mountaintop along the Sierra Crest to the Lakes Basin, and met the sight of the eruptive column on Red Mountain.
I turned and headed back to the station. I had no stomach for the view.
For a moment I thought of setting up our shelter in the interpretive center that sits atop the mountain with a roundabout view, but it’s mostly glass-walled and I had no faith in glass walls right now. The gondola station is built to withstand blizzard conditions and protect what’s inside. A whole lot safer than down in East Bowl.