Mountain time, p.25
Mountain Time, page 25
The instant he stopped, Mariah launched again:
“Your father didn’t know me from a can of paint when I showed up and asked him to do one of the hardest things you can ask of a person—let me stick my camera in his dying face. Whatever else you think about him, that took guts for him to say, ‘Sure, shoot away.’ Why is it so tough for you to go through with what he wanted as his last shot?”
“His last wish,” Lexa put in, her tone equally exasperated.
“His last fast one,” Mitch insisted, “that he was trying to pull with this. I don’t know why, I don’t know straight-up about half the cockeyed deals he cooked up. But this is another Lyle special—I can feel it. Something for nothing, if he can just punch our buttons right.”
Mariah bit her lip, her eyes snapping around at the dissipating light and her foot tapping the platform floor with the sound of an impatient woodpecker. “I’ll tell you what let’s do: how about we take a vote?”
“We are not going to goddamn vote!” Mitch moved farther away from the railing. “He put this on me. And I’m not going to let him get away with it—going out of the world in some phony fancy way.”
“Never mind his sake, then,” Lexa’s turn came. “I think,” she said in a voice struggling to stay even, “you ought to throw those ashes and get him out of your craw.”
“No can do. I—”
“Which? Which?” Lexa blazed. “Toss those into the wind, or get over your father? Mitch, which can’t you do?”
“Lexa, will you just let me handle my own family matter?”
She gestured angrily to what he had in his hands. “You don’t seem to want to handle it.”
“Want to, no. But I’m trying.” He gave her a beseeching look, to no apparent avail. “He’s the one who dumped all this on us.” Mitch shook the box as if to demonstrate his father’s shifty nature. “Turn what little we’ve got into a gravel pit, sell every yuppie a brand for his llama and oh, by the way, ‘Sprinkle my ashes on the Continental Divide, the country of my heart although I never gave any least indication of that in my previous seventy-five years.’ Lexa, it’s one whole hell of a lot to get over. It’s too much.”
He looked from her to Mariah and back again. “He’s going back down with us.”
• • •
Supper was snappy in more ways than one.
Lexa, giving off about as much heat as the camp stove she fired up, whipped together a pot of Uwajimaya noodles with carrots sliced in and flung in flecks of basil for flavor. (Mitch tentatively: “Can I help?” Lexa: “No. Yes—stay out of the way.”) Mariah had stormed down the tower stairs at breakneck pace and stood out on the rock brow fuming at the graying light until the food was ready, when she charged back up the stairs. The three of them ate in silence except for the angry clatter of utensils. Then found themselves in another furious go-around.
“You can’t get back at him—”
“I am not getting back at him.”
“—after he’s dead. What good does that do?” Lexa showed no intention of waiting for an answer to her hotly put question. “Why can’t you blow off the past stuff?”
“For the same goddamn reason you still won’t gas up at an Exxon station. Do things back somewhere count, or don’t they? It turns out this does, with me.”
“But you’re making it count, as you call it”—Mariah trying on a voice of reason none too successfully—“on somebody who can’t even know you are. Your dad isn’t around to have the errors of his ways corrected, is he.”
“Fine, then he won’t be bothered about not being up here, will he.”
Through it all, Lyle reposed again in the bottom compartment of Mitch’s backpack.
As soon as dark arrived they turned in, Mitch and Mariah all but wordlessly acquiescing to Lexa’s suggestion that they get an early start in the morning, down out of here. Marching orders on the trail were hers, she reflected as she angrily snuggled into her sleeping bag. It was only everything else about life that she couldn’t herd in any given direction. How do I keep getting hooked up with the wars of the Roziers? The cabin was a contest area of tossing and turning. She could hear Mitch lie on one side and a restless minute later revolve to his other. She could practically feel the shock waves when periodically Mariah reared up to punch her rolled-up sweatshirt into shape as a pillow, then slam her head back down on it.
In the crow’s nest of the continent, Phantom Woman the topmost mast of mountain between Halifax and Astoria, the three rolled through the night.
By midnight or so, Mitch finally was in half sleep, the notebook of his mind open but woozy material creeping in, right in the old girl’s eye slurring around in there with not without your telling me why . . . He heard the dry rustle of a sleeping bag, then a pause. Lexa or Mariah, needing to go down the stairs to do the necessary and obviously reluctant about the three-flight trip in the dark. A miniscule flashlight clicked on resignedly. He started to settle back into drowse, not for the first time in his life taking satisfaction in the male anatomical arrangement. Then heard the scrabbling at the packs. Mice were to be expected, but why didn’t Lexa or Mariah as the case may be step over there and scare off the persistent little—
With an explosive grunt, Mitch reared up, the sleeping bag cocooned on him. He fought at the zipper, floundering at the same time toward his backpack and the pencil beam of light there.
“Quit!” he shouted. “No you don’t! Put that back—”
Finally managing to shed the sleeping bag, Mitch closed in on the figure at the stack of packs. He couldn’t make out her face in the dark, but how many photographers were there on this mountain incensed because the devious last wish of Lyle Rozier had not been honored? She was holding the box of ashes with both hands and the tiny flashlight clamped against the box. Faced off against him in the darkened tower, she feinted with the box to one side and then the other, Mitch recalling with dismay that Mariah had been a standout ball handler in high school basketball.
“Just put it down, okay?”
The answer was a palmed move, the box moving down behind her in the dimness while the flashlight hand flicked back and forth in the other direction.
Trying to read her in the dark, Mitch shuffled his feet in a stutter-step fake, but stayed poised just where he was.
The box came back together with the flashlight in a protective clutch and the hands hesitated for an instant. He leaped in and grabbed.
“Keep the damned stuff, then.” Lexa’s voice was resigned.
“I intend to,” Mitch said, taking a righteous step backward from her while cradling the box tightly.
“What is going on?” The groggy sounds of Mariah from the direction of her sleeping bag mingled into his surprised plaint as he confronted the downcast pencil light of Lexa. “You were going to spread these off of here, weren’t you. Let me wake up in the morning and that father of mine would be blowing around out there. Is that it, Lex?”
Her silence was all too much answer.
“Well, no way,” his tone still high and hurt. “These,” he spelled out into the dark to her, “are going back down with us,” taking another step for emphasis. Backward into the stairwell.
He fell like a full keg, one thump after another after another, noises alone loud enough to bring out bruises, tumbling and tumbling down the steep chute of stairs and railing until he hit the top landing, sprawling there on his back like a flattened prizefighter. His breath knocked out of him, he lay in an aching heap waiting for the stun to go away and air to return. The box of ashes was still in his gripping arms like a recovered fumble, mashed but not leaking. Every whomp against a stair step had left a place on him that hurt. He managed to come to a bit more. Toward the base of his body, he realized, was something that did not feel right.
“Mitch!?”
Lexa’s voice sounded almost in awe, in the dark at the top of the stairs. “You okay? Say something.”
“My leg. Broken.”
Lexa swore impressively and came clattering down the stairs to him.
“I know what I was going to do, and didn’t.” Mariah’s voice and footsteps following her down. “Take that first-aid course.”
“M-Mitch, I’m sorry. Am I ever sorry.” With care Lexa lifted his head and shoved her sweatshirt under as a pillow. “Don’t move, don’t move,” she keened, although he showed no signs of doing so. Her mind raced to what it was going to take to get him off this mountain. “You couldn’t have brought a cell phone instead of that laptop, could you.” She shined the pencil light in his eyes, checking his pupils for shock.
“Do you mind,” he gritted at her, “if I don’t be blind,” clamping both eyes shut, “as well as half dead?”
She turned her head toward Mariah tensely kneeling beside her on the landing. “It’s too chilly here. We’ve got to get him moved.”
Mariah thought so too, but glanced dubiously at the long sharp flight of stairs to the tower cabin. “Up or down, do we?”
That brought Mitch’s eyes open again. “If it’s between griz country,” he panted out, “and up with you two, I’ll take you two. Although it’s not a real clear choice.”
The women were stymied for anything to splint his leg with until Mariah thought of the shingles she had encountered on her photographic excursion to the roof. Together they raced up and out onto the platform. In the open dark, the stars up there with them, it seemed miles down to the ground.
“Careful.”
“I am being—oof!”
“I’ve got you. Take your time. Just don’t—”
“I’m not going to—”
“—fall.”
Mariah crept up the ladder until she could stretch from the waist and feel around on the roof, Lexa two rungs below her holding her legs in tightest clasp against the ladder boards. Pawing around up there for loosened shingles, Mariah broke several to the accompaniment of an equal number of swearwords, until she at last managed to wrest enough off.
Mitch’s leg wrapped in the shingle splints from thigh to heel, they now had to maneuver him up the stairs. It was like slaughterhouse work, his agonized grunts hurting their ears as they tried to help him lift himself. Finally onto his good leg, he teetered against the railing of the landing, gasping that he was as ready for the next as he was ever going to be.
Lexa staggering under one of his shoulders and Mariah wobbling under the other, they supported him up each stair in a perilous series of lurches. Mitch, close to passing out on every tread of the way, remembered hoping that whoever installed the steps did a solid job of it, with the weight of all three of them on each one.
• • •
Like tangled contestants in a three-legged race they made it to the side of the cabin nearest the barrel stove; Mariah fretfully propped up Mitch, whose every breath now was a ragged shudder, until Lexa could drag his sleeping bag and foam pad over and they could work him down, splinted leg causing him harsh toothsucks of pain no matter how careful they tried to be, into resting position on the floor.
Lexa was still tucking and zipping him into the bag when he blurted: “The ashes. I don’t want you to—”
“All right, all right, we won’t touch them, right, Mariah?”
“Speaking for myself,” Mariah ground out, “I never have, never wanted to, don’t intend to and won’t.”
She flung into starting a fire in the stove but Lexa didn’t wait, lighting the butane camp stove and hurrying water on to heat. Seeing what she was at, Mariah went to her pack, felt around in all the gear she had in there and handed what she found to Lexa, who turned it over in the light of the candle lantern to read its label. “Can’t hurt.” In a minute she was pouring hot water and stirring and then kneeling to Mitch, Mariah holding his head up enough that he could drink from the cup she held steady for him in both hands.
“What—what’s this?”
“Black cherry Jell-O, hot. With airline brandy in it, courtesy of Mariah.”
He took a dubious swallow. The mixture was luscious. He needed no coaxing for the repeated swigs Lexa urged on him while the drink was still hot.
Gradually his breathing settled down. He felt himself going into a kind of daze, haze, combination of shock and the dark glow of the drink spreading through him. As he slipped under, the women backed off quietly.
Now that she had time, Lexa was crying. She grabbed her backpack, brought it to the table and dumped everything out.
Mariah saw she was sorting to travel light. She caught Lexa’s wrist. “Why not you stay with him and I go?”
“Because I’m faster on the trail,” Lexa raged in a rushing whisper. “Because the last thing Mitch needs right now is looking at my face for the next two days. Because I was the bucket head who thought I was doing everybody a favor with the ashes. Because . . .”
“Those’ll do,” Mariah murmured, swallowing. She didn’t let go of Lexa’s wrist yet. “Two days. Coming in it took us—”
“Alone is always faster.” Lexa wiped her eyes with her free hand. “It better be two days, a leg like that—”
They both checked Mitch, lying with an arm over his eyes. They hoped he was conked out and not hearing their diagnosis.
“It won’t be any cinch here with him, either,” Lexa pointed out softly.
Mariah let her go back to readying her pack. Lexa chucked back in one change of heavy socks, her wind shell and rain pants, a share of trail mix, her water bottle, container of matches and fire starter, the smallest cooking pot and a Sierra cup, package of noodles and, after hesitation, the last of the sausage. “Hate to, but I’ll need it.” Without a word Mariah dealt her a swatch of moleskin for blistered feet, drawing a rueful glance from Lexa as she stood there ticking off items in her head. “Let me have your sweatshirt, okay? Mine is Mitch’s pillow.”
Mariah crossed over to her sleeping bag and tossed the sweatshirt to her. She strenuously kept from saying anything until she saw Lexa stand the pack ready by the stairwell with neither sleeping bag nor tent strapped on.
“Lexa, think about this,” Mariah whispered furiously. “Hypothermia when you have to sleep out won’t help this situation!”
Lexa turned around expressionless. “That fishing camp,” she reminded in a murmur. “I don’t dare aim for any farther than that anyway tonight—do myself in too much.” Now tried for a reassuring look to give Mariah. “Maybe I’ll be lucky, meet somebody on the trail even before then.”
They both knew this was the start of their fifth day with no other people than themselves.
• • •
The first hard thing was to wait for light beyond question. Stumbling in the dimness getting off the rocky summit of Phantom Woman, Lexa over and over told herself, was very much to be avoided.
At dawn plus a little, Mariah went down the lookout tower stairs with her. Mitch was asleep or passed out; they hoped one was as good as the other. Mariah’s eyes glistened as she kissed Lexa. “Don’t make me sisterless,” she instructed with a jumpy attempt at a grin. Lexa tucked in the bottom of the Glaciers are a kick in the ice sweatshirt under the belt strap of her pack and wordlessly went.
Watching until the top of Lexa’s pack disappeared beneath the brow of the mountain, Mariah checked west for the change of weather she could feel coming. She hoped Lexa hadn’t seen the telltale thin streaks over the farthest mountains, mare’s tails before more serious clouds.
• • •
Mitch, damn, why—
He jumbled in with every thought she tried to put to the day she had ahead of her, the mountain’s severe shoulder, the gorge, the corrugated valley before the Ledge Creek crossing. The weather. If the clouds closed in up here, it could take a week to get him out. That invited complications on a broken limb, she knew that much medicine. Gangrene, her boots pounded out the syllables. Blood clot—break loose—hit the heart. Complications and worse beat upward at her from each jarring footstep.
Watch your own bones, she fiercely counseled herself as the trail steepened down from Phantom Woman’s brow. The downhill trick of hiking. She stopped and tightened her laces so her boots were firm on her ankles and kept the toes from jamming. Then set a steeled careful pace, not to pound herself too much on the trail yet make steady time.
Her mind jittered back into the night, to the ashes, to the hours of furious thrashing. Lot of mental coin flips you have to do in life, and hers to throw Lyle to the winds for Mitch was one she would grab back out of the air of time if she could. Not that Mitch, damn him, hadn’t flipped out, too. She knew it wasn’t right to be as mad at him as she was at herself. But why couldn’t he have just scattered those ashes, let Lyle blow away if that’s what the old poot wanted? Lyle Rozier wasn’t the first dubious choice to mingle into the earth. And likely not the last. Who appointed Mitch to be the decider?
She knew in the heart of her despair that he’d have said they all did. The old holies of earthwatching, his laptop tribe of wordslingers. Muir. She breathed in as her right foot lifted. Leopold. Rhythmed the exhale to the stride of her left. Stegner. Her boot dodged a fist-sized rock in the trail. Abbey. The other boot set a firm mark into the dust-filmed ground. Bob—
• • •
—Marshall jounced down the identical shoulder of Phantom Woman, his bootprints an everlasting instant coinciding where hers were alighting in the dust of the trail, the bulging canvas pack on his back gray-shadowing her Kelty, she and he together breathing the thin air of not enough time.
Now that he was down out of sight of the fire tower and could write without setting off the nervous young ranger, he made himself stop. He batted a persistent horsefly from the vicinity of an ear, then creased open his notebook to this day’s page, June 21, 1939. Poor old notebook, nothing but interruptions today; lunch to smooth the ranger’s feathers, and then that doozy of a close call on the stair landing. Shortcut to the parlor, of the funeral sort. But didn’t happen. It will when it will, and until then, he would get away every chance he could, up here away from the swarm.
