Rising Page 6

  “Yeah, well, he has something to worry about and we should all be listening,” he says.

  I am listening and I dread the first storm.

  * * *

  The next morning after breakfast, Jane tries on the spare plastic double boots that Dwayne has loaned her. She clomps around and dances splay-footed, then collapses over her ski poles laughing between gasps. “Lordy,” she says, “my feet are big enough already, but with these things on it looks like I’ve got clown feet. How do you walk in these?” I show her how to turn her foot sideways on the uphill and keep her heel on the ground to avoid levering off her toes and straining her calves. Jane trekked the Annapurna circuit in Nepal as one of the conditions for joining this team. Although that trip was much tamer than this one, she’s no stranger to skiing and trekking and she soon catches on. It was the same a week ago when I coached her on how to pee into a two-litre wide-mouthed bottle so she could stay hydrated without having to venture out into the cold at night. She’s taken that on as she does all the complexities of thriving at altitude, all in.

  Jane and I start out together ahead of the other two. “Look at that rock on top of that ice pedestal! Is it going to stay there or fall over, and when—now?” she says. Then moments later: “I can’t believe this place. It’s beautiful! Do you know how lucky we are to be here?” Her fresh eyes make me look around in a way I haven’t before. Rather than the long plod getting in the way of the climbing, the approach walk becomes an event in itself.

  We reach the cache and catch sight of our boys on the headwall, they look to be the size of ants. Jane gasps as she registers the immensity of the North Face. “Okay,” she says, “I can see where the fun ends for me. I’m quite happy down here, thank you very much.”

  Dr. Bob arrives and takes it in too. He tells us he doesn’t feel half bad for his first time this high. He is conducting a study of the neuropsychological effects of prolonged exposure to high altitude. Back in Calgary he gave us all a test to write and plans to administer the same one as we reach each higher camp. He says, “I expect some pretty interesting results, given how slow-witted I feel at this altitude.”

  I’m dull-witted at the best of times when it comes to tests, I think. I plan to dodge them to avoid further humiliation.

  Dr. Bob is not a climber but is keen to get on the mountain to experience what it is like to ascend the ropes. His primary role on the team is as our physician. He provided us all with individual pharmaceutical kits containing remedies for digestive ailments, painkillers, sleeping pills called Halcion, which are short-lasting with a minimal hangover affect, and a high-altitude drug, Diamox. He will also record most of our radio transmissions.

  After a long break, the three of us unload oxygen bottles, tents and food bags marked for higher camps, putting them under a tarp weighed down by rocks. Soon after we start back down we meet Dan, who is still on his way up.

  “Hey, big guy, how’s it going?” Jane asks.

  Dan keeps his eyes on the ground and says, “I’m headed for Basecamp tomorrow for a decent night’s sleep. See ya.”

  As he trudges onward, Jane says under her breath, “Whoa. Do you get the impression that Dan is a dour sort of fellow?”

  “I haven’t known him to be effusive at the best of times,” I reply. “But I know how he feels. I imagine he’s just really disappointed that he’s feeling so shitty.”

  * * *

  We all go in different directions the following day. Jim’s plan of three teams moving through lead, support and rest rotations has eroded because everyone’s rate of acclimatization is different and Dan and Laurie are still not well enough to move to a higher camp. Jim has to return to Basecamp to deal with an extra charge of thirty thousand dollars the Chinese want to add to our tab. And as Barry puts it, “They only want to deal with the big man.” He and Kevin stay low as well to arrange and accompany the final yak loads to Camp One. For the next three days, Jane, Dr. Bob and I carry much-needed supplies from Camp One to the cache.

  We start out with our loads the next morning. Where Jane and Bob are relaxed, and chat and stop to take pictures, I am antsy and ready to push harder in preparation for the next jump in altitude in a few days’ time. I load my cassette player, slip on my headphones and begin charging up the trail matching my cadence and breathing to the rhythm of rock and roll. Sometime later, huffing and with my eyes on the ground, I am brought to an abrupt halt by the sight of feet right in front of me. I look up to see Jim and Chris grinning down at me and I whip my headphones off.

  Jim says, “Good tunes, eh? What are you playing? We could use some of that to get us moving faster on these carries too. We’ve been watching you barrel up the trail toward us for the last few minutes.”

  Chris smiles carefully, a trickle of blood oozing from his sun-ravaged lips. He brings a hand up to stop the smile from cracking them any farther. He is a slight man to begin with and looks even thinner after his first shift up high. He brightens when I tell him Jane and Dr. Bob are behind me. So far, they seem to know this quiet and gentle wildlife biologist the best. Given Chris’s propensity to burn, Jane will call him Crisp, and it sticks.

  Chris, like the rest of us, has previous experience in the Himalayas having climbed Pumori, a beautiful peak near Everest, where he gained a reputation as a solid team player. Even though I knew the least about him, knowing that Jim chose us all based on our ability to work with others I trusted Chris from the beginning. When Bob and Jane catch up and linger to talk, I bolt ahead again only stopping when I arrive at the cache.

  A couple of days later while Jane and I are waiting for Dr. Bob to catch up, Jane says, “I’ve been thinking. Stewing is more like it. Why do you think Dan has a problem with me?”

  “He’s just grumpy. Don’t take it personally,” I say and bend to pick up my poles. Let’s not go there, is what I want to say.

  “Wait.” Jane lays a hand over my poles. “You’re defending him, aren’t you?”

  A moment of stillness comes between us as she waits for my eyes to meet hers. I say, “Here’s the thing. You invent ovens to bake bread, feed and nurture us, carry heavy loads—all in a day’s work—and you’re cheerful about it. This is not a happy place for him right now. We’ll all feel like that at some point on this expedition, and by the time it’s all over we’ll all have taken a turn at misbehaving.”

  Jane thrusts her hands into the air, punctuating each word she says. “He’s not making this a happy place for me right now. I’m as fucking miserable as he is! My ovens don’t show up, so yes, I invent some; there’s stuff to carry, so I carry it. I’m trying to make the best of it, so I’m cheerful.” She adds, “I just want him to stop being so mean to me! Surely others see what’s happening. Why is no one saying anything?”

  I blurt, “Because you’re expendable; you’re not a climber. He won’t have to depend on you. So you’re his whipping post.”

  “What?” she exclaims. “I don’t get you climbers. I’m on my own here, aren’t I?”

  We walk the rest of the way back to Camp One together, but alone in our own thoughts. I wish I could take back what I’ve said. It seems I am more faithful to climbing than to any one person; climbing has become the only thing I have always been able to count on.

  That night the two of us lie awake as we have many nights, listening to one another unwrap our life stories. The dark makes it easy to feel transported without interruption. Tonight Jane takes me to Ireland, where she was raised, and tells me how she ended up being on her own since she was fifteen. “I didn’t feel like I belonged, and I’ve always wanted that.”

  I tell her she’s the first friend I’ve had who has gone it alone since she was fifteen—like me.

  “What’s your story, then?”

  I tell Jane about my siblings, Barbara and Randy, born nine years earlier than me, and my second brother, Larry, three years older than me. Randy was athletic and taught m
e how to ride a bike, run atop spinning logs in the water, fling my body around on the high bars and do flips. I dogged my future fashion model sister’s heels, watching her put on make-up and try one dress on after another before a date. And when no one better was around for Larry, we were either playmates or enemies. My siblings, however, were less interested in me than I was in them. They would have to sneak out of the house with my dad to enjoy an outing unencumbered by their baby sister. My mom wasn’t outdoorsy so I’d get left behind with her until I was old enough not to slow them down.

  My concession prize was having Mom to myself for the day. We had always gotten along. My mom and the queen looked identical in my eyes—still do, actually. My grandparents had pictures throughout their house of the monarch posing regal, sashed in satin, with her hair perfectly coiffed in short curls and “not too much lips,” as my mom would say about her lipstick. I was convinced for the longest time that she and the queen were the same person and couldn’t understand how Mom could rule the kingdom, run our household and have time for me all at the same time. As I got older, I saw another side of my mom—frazzled. I pictured her prying Larry and me apart when we fought, clashing with Barb, arguing with Dad and slamming doors. Who wouldn’t with the likes of us, and a job like hers? She seemed trapped. Chores and all things domestic were her life. Adventure was my dad’s life.

  I think of us as a pretty average dysfunctional family, which dissolved by the time I was thirteen. Barb and Randy had moved out of the house and Larry, no longer fond of the outdoors, was doing his own thing with his friends.

  I had known my parents were growing apart. Their solution for a crumbling marriage was for Mom to take an office job and my dad to spend less time around home. I had had him to myself for years of mountain excursions, but that joyful life vaporized when he started taking off for entire summers to fly crop dusters and firebombers. I missed him.

  I probably would have been fine if I hadn’t been idle and confined to the suburbs. Despite my mom’s efforts to set boundaries, I left the house whenever I wanted and strode out of stores wearing two pairs of jeans under my own. Boldness made me feel smart, my heart pound and my senses flare. I was drawn to the kids who bought drugs and my loot on street corners, the kind who were wild, inside and out. It wasn’t as if I was trying to be a bad kid. It was more about a fierce need for adventure seared into my DNA. By fourteen, I was doing acid, and was fascinated with the altered state of consciousness it revealed and highly engaged in riding the wave.

  I tell Jane the story about the night I took too much and the wave got too big for me. It sucked me down under. There was no end to the nightmarish visions and sounds, which had me believing myself permanently condemned to the closest thing to hell I would ever experience. Although I couldn’t tell Mom what was wrong when I called her at work, she must have heard the terror in my voice because she got home fast.

  “Wasn’t she mad?” Jane interrupted.

  “No, she wasn’t mad, bless her. My mom knew I was out of control. I think she really wanted to help me but was at a loss for how.”

  “So, what did she do?”

  “Nothing. That was what scared me most. What could she do?” I never felt more alone than when Mom and I sat across from one another that morning at our kitchen table. “I can see it now,” I say. “We both stared at the Formica tabletop, black with gold specks, me at the swirling galaxies and she at the black holes, lost in space—lost to one another. And I suddenly realized then that she couldn’t save me. And just that brought me down from my high.”

  My mom was brimful with problems. A few weeks before, she had received a call from a stranger telling her to ask my dad to leave his wife alone. Then she got another call from a police officer telling her I had just been arrested for shoplifting.

  I describe to Jane my probation officer. “He was the one who finally got through. So, on our last meeting he said”—and I imitate his voice, which was like the actor John Wayne’s, slow and with rounded syllables—“‘You’re the writer, director and actor of this one big play called My Life. Now get on outta here and make it the best one that ever was.’ Maybe he told every kid the same thing. But the way I heard it blew the gates off the hinges, and I left that office with a dream of heading for the mountains!”

  I remember the day before my sixteenth birthday when Mom drove my boyfriend and me down to the highway. Before I got out of the car into the slashing rain, she asked me, “You sure you don’t want to wait for a better day?”

  “Nope. Ma, this is the day.”

  “Nothing stopping my girl, is there?”

  I always kept my head down when I defied her in the past. This time I looked into her eyes welling with tears. Never had I seen tears. I took Mom’s face in my hands and kissed her on both cheeks and was off.

  A few days later, I walked into the employment office in Jasper, Alberta, and left with a job as a tour boat guide at Maligne Lake, fifty kilometres out of town. To get my boat-operating license, I had to be eighteen so I told the manager I’d been robbed and the thief had taken my ID. That one lie catapulted me into the world of adults and handed me a ticket to the life I wanted.

  Jane laughs. “How’d you manage pulling that off? I thought you were a skinny, flat-chested teenager, for God’s sake!”

  “I was! But I was learning that boldness was like putting on a magic cape that made me appear more than I was. If I wanted what I was after, I could make it happen.” I tell Jane about living with university students that summer, driving boats, going to bars—and channelling my fear of being discovered into a fierce vigilance to protect this amazing new life. “I read voraciously to educate myself, kept a dictionary at my bedside, carried it everywhere and listened carefully. The cost of that lie, however, was how alone and on guard I always felt, despite how most of them assumed I was one of their own. I have spent the last ten years making sure no one ever learned the truth.”

  “Well,” she says, “that explains why you came across as cagey when I first met you.”

  “What do you mean by cagey?”

  “Unavailable, wary. You didn’t give anything away.”

  “Oh, you mean like a block of wood?”

  “That too,” she laughs. “You come by your last name honestly.”

  * * *

  The next morning, we pick up where we left off. “Jane,” I say, “I’m sorry I told you that you were expendable yesterday. Please know you’re not. I don’t know what I’d do here without you, and everyone else here loves who you are—other than perhaps Dan, for now—and what you bring to this expedition as well.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “Most of the time I know that, but it helps to hear it now and then.” I notice a transparency and tenderness about Jane that I hadn’t been able to identify until now.

  “I hear you. I’ll work on reminding you more often, less wood, more soft. That’s what I can do.”

  After breakfast the two of us head down to Basecamp together, each of us quiet and lost in our own thoughts. Jane is the first person I have told this whole story to. It strikes me now how this austere way of life on Everest exposes our character, and being here feels like a chance to renew and fortify who I am now.

  Chapter 7

  Redemption

  Jane has slipped out of the tent before I wake. After several days up high, I have slept soundly in the relatively thick air of Basecamp. I take my resting pulse as I do most mornings, as a means of monitoring my acclimatization. Fifty-two beats per minute; it is down from seventy-two since the last time I was here. At home it is thirty-nine.

  It is eerily still, and the light is different—soft, yet bright—making it hard to guess the time. When I unzip the door, a wafer of snow slides off the roof of the tent onto my head. In a rare absence of the wind, Basecamp lies under a blanket of undisturbed new snow, which muffles sound and light.

  I find Jane in the cook tent w
ith Mr. Leo, who is the Chinese cook and her helper. The slight man, a head shorter than her, stands with his arms crossed and a blank look on his face.

  “I’m getting sick and tired of trying to get this guy to help out around here,” she says. “I just asked him to get some water and he won’t. This morning, his excuse is he doesn’t have the right shoes for the snow. I don’t speak Chinese but that’s the gist of it. There’s only a dusting of snow on the ground, for God’s sake!”

  The spring where we fetch our water is just a couple of minutes away, and the chore seems a minor one. I glance down at his flimsy canvas running shoes. Then his eyes briefly meet mine and he turns to leave. I touch his arm and he spins away as if I’ve hit him with an electric cattle prod. “Here.” I smile as I thrust two buckets into his hands and give him a little shove toward the door.

  Mr. Leo accepts the buckets, then drops them and shouts for help. Mr. Yu arrives and a rapid exchange passes between them, which ends with Mr. Leo thrusting a pointed finger down at his feet. All eyes drop to his shoes. “Forget it,” Jane says, sighing, and reaches for the pails.

  “Please wait!” I say to Mr. Leo. “I’ve got something you may like.” I run to our tent and return with a pair of winter boots that a sponsor has donated to each of us. I offer him the boots and say, “Here’s a present for you.”

  Mr. Yu says, “They have no laces.”

  “Well.” I mime the action of pulling the laces out of my shoes and threading them into the new boots, and speak very slowly. “Take the laces from your shoes and put them in these.”

  Jane stirs a pot of porridge, bearing down hard on the wooden spoon. “I was told Mr. Leo was paid to help us. How has that changed?”