Abandon

FIVE

A

bigail opened her eyes. A film of ice had formed on her sleeping bag where her breath had misted and frozen during the night. She could hear some of the others stirring in their tents and, farther away, the crackling of what she hoped was a fire.

She laced her boots and climbed outside—8:23 A.M. by her watch, which meant 6:23 here. A heavy frost had blanched the tents and meadow grasses. The llamas grazed nearby. The air tickled her throat going down.

She relieved herself behind her favorite blue spruce, then made her way through the trees to the fire. Only Jerrod was up. He handed her a mug steaming with coffee.

“Take it with anything?”

“Black is bliss.”

The coffee tasted strong and rich. She stood close to the flames, watching Jerrod light another camp stove. His long hair was down. While the water heated, he poured packets of oatmeal into plastic bowls and mixed in dried fruit and chocolate chips.

“Where’s Scott?” Abigail asked.

“Helping Emmett. He started throwing up around three this morning. Probably altitude sickness. Scott’s giving him some more Diamox right now. Making sure he stays hydrated. Emmett’ll be okay. This kind of thing usually clears up pretty quick.”

“Can I help with anything?”

He glanced up at her, their eyes connecting.

“No, I’ve got it. Thanks, though.” Jerrod peeled two bananas and began to slice them into the oatmeal with a Swiss army knife. As Abigail watched him prepare their breakfast, she noticed the dog tags dangling from a chain around his neck.

. . .

Within the hour, they broke camp, Emmett weak but on the mend, the guides having distributed the weight of his pack between them. As they climbed, the firs grew scrawnier, these dwarfed banner trees limbless on the wind-ward side.

The forest dwindled into alpine tundra—shrubs, grass, and rock crusted with black and yellow lichen.

They proceeded in a tight line, Scott and the llamas leading, Jerrod bringing up the rear.

Now well above timberline, rock walls ramped up steeply on either side.

They climbed a boulder field toward the pass. No grass, only large broken rocks that shifted under their weight, filling the upper regions of the cirque with a strange tinkling. Some had been gouged with potholes, filled with standing water. Black spiders scampered under their boots.

Abigail was thinking how these mountains reminded her of Gothic cathedrals, with their towers and chimneys, when somewhere high above, a boulder dislodged, dividing into pieces as it plunged toward them.

Scott yelled, “Everybody down! Shield your heads with your packs!”

They all crouched as the rocks hurtled toward them, bouncing and breaking and multiplying. Abigail shut her eyes and she whispered, “Please, please, please.”

Most of the rocks shattered against a bus-size boulder just fifteen feet away.

Silence returned. The air smelled of cordite.

Scott called out, “Everybody in one piece?”

Abigail looked up, Jerrod beside her, his eyes still closed, teeth gritted, body quaking.

The boulder field steepened near the pass. Abigail used her hands to climb now, the weight of the pack disrupting her balance, feeling envious of the llamas’ surefootedness.

They came to a series of ledges.

“Take your time!” Scott yelled. “This section is very sketchy, and the rock’s rotten. If you start to freak out, let us know. We’ll talk you through it. Focus on what’s above you, and don’t look in the direction you don’t want to go. Namely, down.”

The ledges ranged in width from four to six feet, contouring up the rock face. Abigail focused on putting one foot in front of the other and dragging her left hand along the rock to maintain her balance. The others had gotten ahead of her.

At the third switchback, she made the mistake of glancing down, had no idea they’d climbed so high above the boulder field, the exposure overwhelming, waves of dizziness engulfing her, filling her stomach with razor-winged butterflies.

Her knees weakened. The world tilted. She stumbled toward the edge. Jerrod grabbed her arm, pulled her back.

She crumpled down on the ledge.

“Abigail.”

“I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

Jerrod knelt in front of her. “You’re okay. You’re just hyperventilating. Close your eyes and take deep breaths.”

She did what he said. Soon, the dizziness had passed and she could open her eyes without the world spinning.

“You saved my ass,” she said as Jerrod pulled a climbing rope out of his pack. “What’s that for?”

“I’m gonna short-rope us together until we reach the top. Can you stand up now?”

Abigail got to her feet and Jerrod reached around her from behind and began to wrap the rope around her thighs into a makeshift harness.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Sure.” He cinched the rope around her waist.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Were you in Iraq?”

He stopped midway through his knot, turned her around so they faced each other.

“Yeah, actually. How’d you know?” His voice had tightened.

Abigail looked back over the boulder field at the glint of the lake where they’d stopped the previous afternoon. “Your dog tags,” she said.

“Oh, right.”

Other things, too. Especially the way you reacted when the rock fell. A couple years back, she’d written a piece for the Times about soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, interviewed dozens of vets with PTSD. No question, he had it. She saw the damage in his eyes.

At noon they crested Sawblade Pass, just a wind-ravaged thirteen-thousand-foot notch in a cirque of spires, ridden with old snow, sun-cupped and brittle as salt crystals.

They dropped their gear, took shelter from the wind.

From Abigail’s vantage point, she could see down the other side of the pass—a two-thousand-foot drop into a box canyon. At the close end, she thought she saw the ruins of a mine. Farther on, perhaps a mile away, rows of dark specks peppered the timberline forest.

Emmett yelled, “Dr. Kendall!”

Lawrence had been exploring a recess in the rock at the end of a nearby ledge. He poked his head out. Emmett waved him over and Lawrence came and squatted beside him.

“What are those specks down there?” he asked.

“That’s Abandon.”

Abigail took out her cell phone. It roamed for a moment, got a signal.

She called her mother to tell her how beautiful it all was.