Abandon

SEVENTY-SEVEN

F

our nylon bags lay spread out on the ground, containing the footprint, poles, pegs, and the tent itself—a bright red Hilleberg. They unrolled the footprint in a cleared area between the chokecherry shrubs, and Scott unfolded the tent while Abigail took out the poles and locked them together. In the deepening darkness, as the rain set in, they slipped the three poles into the tent sleeves and staked out the guylines, Scott’s hands shaking so badly that he could barely grip the pegs to jam them into the softened ground.

With the tent pitched, they threw their packs into the roomy vestibule, climbed in, and zipped themselves inside. Scott shivered uncontrollably, and he slurred his words.

Abigail said, “You have spare clothes in here?” He nodded. “Why don’t you get in the tent and take off your wet ones.” Scott unzipped the inner tent and crawled inside. While he stripped, Abigail pulled everything out of his pack, realized she didn’t feel right, either—her motor coordination was disrupted and she had trouble focusing on the task at hand.

“I can’t find your sleeping bag,” she said.

“Bottom compartment.” She dragged out the Marmot compression bag, tossed it in with the Therm-a-Rest and his bag of extra clothes. Then she unlaced her boots, pulled off her socks, all her soaked clothing, and climbed in.

Scott twisted shut the air valve on the Therm-a-Rest, laid his sleeping bag on top of it. He wriggled inside, said, “Get in with me. We both have hypothermia.”

Abigail climbed into the down mummy bag and zipped them up. Scott spooned her. She could feel him shaking against her, their legs so cold, like malleable ice.

“I should really get us something to eat and drink,” she said.

“Just stay here with me for a minute, get some body heat going.”

They lay shivering together, listening to the rain patter on the tent. The sky detonated. Thunder shook the ground and decayed like a shotgun blast, Abigail thinking it sounded so different from East Coast thunder. In the West, it was deeper, right on top of you, and seemed to fade forever.

“Think we’re safe in this thicket?” Abigail asked.

“As long as we stay quiet and don’t turn on any lights. Fuck, I can’t get warm.”

Abigail turned and faced him. She ran her hand along the right side of his abdomen. It felt hot, swollen, and sticky. “Your wound’s leaking,” she said.

“My boot was full of blood. I’m hurting pretty bad again.”

“I saw the first-aid kit in your pack. I’m gonna get it out, and you’re gonna tell—”

“You think I’m dying?” he asked.

“No,” she said, though she didn’t know. “I think once we get some food and medicine in you, you’ll feel a lot better.”

She started to sit up, but Scott stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “Just stay with me. This is the worst shit I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in some real shit. You believe in karma?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I think it’s fucking me over at the moment.”

“How so?”

“This trip isn’t the first time I’ve gotten someone killed in the backcountry.

I was involved in an accident on Rainier a couple years ago.”

“What’s Rainier?”

“Mount Rainier. The fourteen-thousand-foot volcano in Washington.”

“What happened? Or if you don’t want to talk about it, I—”

“Two years ago, me and a friend drove out from Boulder to do a mid-May ascent. It was stupid. Too early in the season to be on that mountain. Maria was a tall, gorgeous redhead. Strong. A solid rock climber, badass telemarking goddess. But she’d never done any serious mountaineering or glacier travel. She was inexperienced. I was cocky. Thought I could get her up the thing. And I did. We reached the summit cone, Columbia Crest. Had the time of our lives. But on a mountain like Rainier, all it takes is one mistake. A momentary lapse of judgment. And I made it. On the way down, Maria was jonesing to break out her skis. I knew it was a bad idea. Spring conditions. Variable snow. Everything from crust to corn. But I was feeling a little invincible after a perfect ascent.

“We were telemarking the upper edge of Ingraham Glacier. She was a much better skier, got out ahead. I’d told her to stay with me, that it was only safe to ski the top. Thing about Maria, she was always pushing it. She was fifty yards ahead of me when she disappeared. I think she never even saw it. I stopped at the edge of the crevasse. Thing was huge, and it dropped down at an angle, so I couldn’t see to the bottom. I didn’t see Maria, but I could hear her screaming down there in the dark. There was just no way to descend into that crevasse. I mean, some of these ice fissures go down hundreds of feet. I got off the mountain fast as I could, flew back with search-and-rescue in a big Chinook heli copter. But it had snowed, covered our ski tracks. I couldn’t even lead them back to the crevasse she’d gone into. Now all this shit’s happening to us out here. I figure it’s payback karma, and I guess I deserve it.”

Abigail used Scott’s Krill glow stick for illumination, since it put out a soft blue light, which would be almost impossible to see beyond the thicket. Scott talked her through firing up the tiny propane stove out in the vestibule, and as the water heated for their freeze-dried dinners in a slug-punctured pot, Abigail broke out the first-aid kit. She used a syringe filled with filtered water to irrigate the wound, then wiped it with iodine, applied the antibiotic cream, resealed it with several closure strips, and taped on a gauze bandage. Scott took three tablets of extra-strength Tylenol with his supper, and by the time they’d finished eating, Abigail could see in his eyes that the pain had begun to ease.

The glow stick lay on the floor of the tent, casting their faces in a weak blue light, which made them look cold and cadaverous.

They talked—about Maria, about Abigail’s father—their painful memories a diversion from the fear. Abigail could feel sleep stalking her, waiting to pounce. She lifted a Nalgene bottle, took a long drink, the water excellent—pure and ice cold, tasting faintly of iron.

“Knowing what happened to you on Rainier,” she said, “I’m surprised you ever went back into the mountains after that. Doesn’t it feel like returning to the scene of a tragedy?”

“I never thought of it that way. These mountains, the West, they’re my first love. See, I was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. A flatlander. Until I was fifteen, I’d never been west of Dallas. I’d seen the Smokies, the Adirondacks. But those are just big hills. Most exciting time of my life was the summer after my freshman year of high school, July of ’93, when my dad rented an RV and took our family west.

“God. The day we drove across Kansas into Colorado. Interstate Seventy. The plains. The vastness of the sky. That high, dry air. Sinatra’s The Very Good Years playing on the tape deck. Always think of that summer when I hear Frank’s voice. He was our sound track for that trip.” Scott’s smile contained a measure of wistfulness.

“Never forget, I’m sitting up front with my dad and we’re barreling west, an hour or so from Denver, when, way off on the horizon, I see what looks like a bank of clouds. I ask him what it is and he tells me that’s the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and what looks like clouds is actually snow. Snow in July. I couldn’t even imagine it. I’d only seen snow twice in Jacksonville. I wanted to be up in those mountains. On top of them. Needed to know every ridge, every crag. Next day, we drove up Mount Evans, one of the fourteeners. Me and my little sis had a snowball fight on the summit, and that was it. I was a mountain boy thereafter.” Scott leaned forward and zipped up the mesh door of the inner tent. They climbed into his sleeping bag, turned off the glow stick.

“Tomorrow scares me,” Abigail whispered.

“We’re gonna head out early, while it’s still dark. Just leave the tent here. We did good today. It’s only another six or seven miles to the trailhead.”

“You’ve got the keys to your truck, right?”

“Top of my pack.”

They were quiet for a while, the sound of rain working on them like a tranquilizer.

“There’s this part of me,” Abigail whispered, “just wants to leave him in that cave.”

Scott pulled her in close, their eyes shutting, both surrendering to the steady hiss of rain and far-off thunder.