Abandon (4 page)

“Sorry, but you have to understand—I’ve been asked what happened to Abandon probably a thousand times, and I just don’t know the answer. There are some loony-tunes out there who believe the town was taken by aliens or that something supernatural happened.”

“What about a virus?” June asked.

“Bad ones were around in the 1890s, but lead poisoning would’ve been a greater threat to Abandon than an epidemic, what with their drinking water flowing out of the heart of these mountains. But assuming some super-virus struck the town, where are the remains? In the absence of any bones, I guess I can see how a person might look to supernatural explanations.”

“Even you?” Emmett said.

“In all honesty, I do have a theory, but it’s, well, personal, and I haven’t shared it with anyone ever, and don’t plan to now.”

Scott stood, took the water bag hanging from a knob on a tree, and doused the fire.

It hissed, bellows of steam lifting into the trees, cold rushing in.

“Sorry, folks, but tomorrow comes early.”

The others said their good nights and lumbered off to bed. Then just Abigail and Lawrence sat across from each other in the darkness.

She got up as soon as she realized it, said, “Night.”

Lawrence stared at the last unyielding coal, scratching his gray beard.

“Sit out here with me awhile,” he said without looking up.

“I would, really, but I’m cold and tired.”

“Abigail.”

“What?”

“I just wanted to—”

“I know, but I can’t do this right now, okay? I’m not there yet.”

Their campsite glade stood fifty yards through the trees. Abigail had to pee again, but the thought of squatting out here in the dark seemed worse than the pressure in her bladder. She climbed into her one-man tent, her sleeping bag freezing. She crawled inside the down bag and zipped herself up, pulled her long black hair into a ponytail. It reeked of wood smoke. The walk from the campfire to the tent had set her pulse racing, and she listened to the throbbing in her head. When it eased, the hush came. Even on weekends in New York, lying in bed in her studio apartment, the nearest thing to silence contained the noise of sirens and central heating, her refrigerator cutting on and off in the predawn hours. Here, the silence was a vacuum, a total absence. It made her uneasy.

With no threat of rain or snow, the guides hadn’t stretched the rain flies over the tents. The ceiling of Abigail’s was mesh. She reached up, unzipped it. A section of the ceiling fell away and she gasped. Through the opening lay a rectangle of night like none she’d ever seen, powdered with stars that dimmed and brightened, so the entire sky seemed to smolder with the embers of a cosmic fire. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen stars, had no idea of their profusion.

Footsteps swished through the grass nearby—her father stumbling to bed—and as Abigail lay there on the brink of sleep, she puzzled at this life he’d fashioned for himself. He’d certainly aged well, but she wondered if he was happy, what kind of friends he kept, what sort of women he’d been with. Prior to coming to Colorado, she’d finally Googled him, but aside from a brief bio on the Fort Lewis College Web site, Lawrence’s Internet presence was light.

Exhaustion set in, her sleeping bag warm, her ears detecting the murmur of the stream.

Nine meteors flared across her skylight before she succumbed to sleep, and despite all the campfire talk of the vanishing of Abandon, there existed no greater mystery for her than the man who snored twenty feet away, alone in his tent.

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.

They followed an old wagon trail as clouds filed in from the west. Pockets of snow clung high up the canyon walls and snowmelt bled out from them in streams down the rock face and into the ruts of the trail, making their boots squish in the mud.

Ahead lay a grassy lane, lined with rows of weather-beaten structures—all that was left of Abandon. Main Street ran for two hundred yards down the middle of the canyon, and the party walked six abreast between the false-fronted buildings. Many had collapsed. Lawrence pointed to a structure with six little balconies.

“This was Abandon’s red-light district. Those were the cribs. Prostitutes would stand on the balconies and try to entice potential customers who were passing by.”

“How’d this town get its name?” June asked.

“It was originally named Hope by Bart Packer, but as a joke, one of the better-read miners, who was none too fond of this high, remote canyon, started calling the town Abandon. Name stuck.”

“What’s that?” Emmett asked, motioning to a building across the street that had long since collapsed. “See that big metal thing in there?”

Lawrence walked over and peered into the rubble.

“This was the assay office. Assayer would evaluate samples for prospectors and the mine, tell you if your ore was high-or low-grade. That hulk of
metal is probably the furnace. Bet if you poked around in there, you’d find some old crucibles, too.”

They passed the blacksmith’s shop, identifiable only by the anvil sitting amid the rotten boards, then the dance hall and the general store, where a faded sign had fallen onto the porch. It read
ESPECIAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO THE COMFORT OF LADIES
. Lawrence pointed out the drugstore, meat market, bakery, and harness shop, though they resembled little more than board heaps to Abigail.

Midway through Abandon, he stopped them in the street. “Most important place in town.” He gestured to a building whose entire frame slanted to the right. “The saloon,” he said, eyes lighting up. Abigail was thinking how in his element Lawrence was, thrilling people with what had happened in the past. She felt envious of the childlike joy he’d found in his career, wanted a little of that for herself. “I have to tell you about the woman who was tending bar in 1893. Name was Jocelyn Maddox. She was drop-dead gorgeous, sassy, and a black widow.