Climbing High (24 page)

“One step at a time,” Josh translated. “Good metaphor for life, great advice for climbing.” He sipped his tea then looked thoughtful. “And a hopeful philosophy for love.”

Jake mulled that over, pushed his cup aside and crossed his arms on the rough surface of the table. “If you’re still on a journey to love.”

“Aren’t we all? Aren’t we always?” Josh emptied his cup and pushed it aside, settling more comfortably across from Jake. “One thing my mother, a devout Christian, pointed out to me is that humans are always in a hurry. We think we can do it all ourselves and try to wrestle it into place with brute force. Some things need patience, subtlety, the knowledge that they’re so precious they’re worth any sacrifice. That’s how I look at love. I know it’s out there for me, and I know it’s going to be so far beyond what I can imagine that it’s worth the wait. And I see it, the waiting, as time I need to become the best person possible for the woman who’ll complete me.”

“Its power sure surpasses anything I could imagine. The agony and the ecstasy is not just a saying.” Some of the tension left Jake’s shoulders. He knew beyond any doubt that Siree completed him. No other woman ever could. Surely, they were predestined and kismet, fate, God, something, would reunite them. After all, her presence demonstrated her desire to be with him. Maybe he hadn’t lost her forever, but just for a while. Still he wouldn’t take any chances. Gribbs flew in by helicopter that night and took the fourth bunk in their section.

****

From the breast of the Sleeping Woman, Siree looked out over a panorama of rock and snow.

“That’s Popocatepetl, the Smoking Mountain.” Jake touched her arm and pointed to the volcano that seemed to hover nearby.

“Such a sad story,” she murmured, suppressing the longing to curve herself around him. She had to accept the casual camaraderie he offered. “Lovers parted to die alone.”

“But they’re together now.” His voice held a reassuring note that warmed Siree’s chilled heart.

“Tell Gribbs the story.” Sam grinned at them from his seat on a jutting rock. “Poor guy didn’t get to do his research.”

Hearing a love story would be the last thing Gribbs wanted. Siree took up the tease and started in. “Iztaccihuatl, or Izta, as the locals call her, was the daughter of an Aztec emperor. She fell in love with one of her father's warriors. He loved her too. But the father had other plans for his daughter. He sent her lover away to a war in Oaxaca, promising when he returned he would give him Iztaccihuatl as his wife. Later, the father told his daughter the warrior had died in battle. Iztaccihuatl, who in my mind was a real wimp, died of grief. Her lover, who wasn’t dead, returned and carried her to the mountains. He lay down and knelt beside her, himself dying of grief.” She slanted a glance at Jake. “Yet another who couldn’t get on with his life. The gods felt sorry for them, covered them with a blanket of snow and turned them into these mountains. When Popocatepetl is active, the people say he is raining down his revenge for the death of his lover.”

Gribbs snorted as he scoped the land around them with field glasses.

“Clump together!” Sam instructed, sweeping her into the circle of his arm and depositing her next to Jake. He dropped his arm and waved Josh and Gribbs in. “Our stalwart guide offered to take a picture of us for posterity.”

Jake gazed off in the distance, oblivious to Sam’s efforts. He unthreaded Siree’s comment from the story and sorted through it. Giving in to despair was not an option. She would emulate his decision to move on. With no tears or pleas, she’d accepted his choice to keep it casual. And there was that damn phrase again.
His choice
. Josh and Sam had pointed out that he’d made all the choices for her from day one. He’d stayed away, closed in, pulled back, taken her as a lover, and walked away.

He soaked in the picture of her standing with his friends, teasing Gribbs.
This time the guys are wrong. We continually underestimate her.
She makes her own choices. She chose to let me into her life, chose to let me protect her, chose me for her lover. She chose to fight back from an attack that would have left many people in therapy for life. She chose to accept my decision and make this climb. And she’s choosing to walk away clean. No tears, no blame.

Fear flashed through his body like deadly lightning. He dropped onto the snowpack. Josh’s advice to have patience was worthless if she moved on. A thousand men out there would want her, recognize her special qualities. The thought of Siree giving herself to anyone else made his stomach cramp. But he’d set his course to protect her and had to follow it to its end.

“We ready to start down?” He swung around to set the rope that bound them together. It allowed them to more safely negotiate the crevasses cutting through the ice field. Their guide led off, Sam behind him, then Siree, Jake, and Josh with Gribbs in the rear. They bypassed last night’s high camp and followed the Ridge of the Sun back to the base at La Joya. Tomorrow they’d be heading for Citlaltepetl and their second climb.

****

From the high camp at Citlaltepetl, Siree looked out over miles of rock ridges and folds. At sixteen thousand feet her lungs felt like bellows with a leak in them. She couldn’t get enough air and tomorrow they would climb straight up Glacier de Jamapa to the crater’s rim. She would conquer the third highest mountain in North America. If she could do that, she could conquer her love for Jake, one way or another.

“You okay?” Sam wrapped his long arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You’ve been quiet today.”

“I never knew it took so much energy to be distantly convivial.”

“Hard going?” He squeezed her. “If it’s worth anything, I think you’re doing a great job of handling the situation, and making the right choice for the moment.”

“How’s Jake doing? Has he said anything to you?” She laid her cheek on his shoulder, soaking up a few seconds of comfort, then straightened and moved away. She had to stand on her own.

“He had a tough time of it at first, but settled down after Josh talked to him.” Sam accepted her withdrawal. “Isn’t that something? All those pine trees at this altitude.” He lifted his camera to get a shot of the green space that joined Citlaltepetl and Sierra Negra the next in the range. “Jake said that NASA is studying them to see if they could grow them outside Earth.”

“This is quite the center of science. The guide told me that the world’s premier astronomical instrument is housed on Sierra Negra. It’s called the Large Milimeter Telescope.”

“Maybe we picked the wrong mountain to climb,” Sam teased. “You sound like you want a closer look at the stars than we’re going to get.”

“Don’t you find it fascinating that we leave home to explore these empty reaches of the world, only to find that they’re not empty, but filled with marvelous people doing incredible things? It gives me such hope for mankind.”

Dusk lay purple shadows into the deep folds of rock, and the wind drove glacier-chilled air down around them. Someone hammered a spoon on a pan. A voice called out. The wind carried the words past them too fast to decipher, but the smell of roasted beef and peppers lingered.

“Finally, I thought my belly would eat my butt before they fed us.” Sam turned for the circle of small yurts that made up the camp. They slept two people each. A larger yurt served as kitchen and eating area; another off to the side held chemical toilets and washing facilities. Sam had bunked in with their guide. Jake and Josh took a second and she shared with an Indonesian woman from another climbing group, who had just arrived today.

The added climbers eased the tension between Jake and Siree, allowing them to keep away from each other. She sought her sleeping bag early. The other climbers stayed behind, giving her some much needed solitude.
One more day with Jake
. After the climb tomorrow, they would be going their separate ways. How different things had turned out from what she’d imagined. Tears slid in slow streams across her cheek to pool at the corner of her mouth. She swiped at them with the flannel lining of her bag, then pulled it over her head to stifle the soft sound of her weeping.

Lying across from Josh in the yurt they shared, Jake too sought sleep. In fact, he was desperate for it. The last two nights in the Hut had been hellish. Though Siree had moved into the next partitioned space, fate had placed them both in upper bunks separated by only the thin partition. He’d worked so hard to suppress his feelings for her, to bury the memories, yet they came instantly alive, galvanized by the woodsy scent unique to her, his first look into her golden eyes. Even on the other side of a wall he could hear her light breathing. He tortured himself with images of their naked bodies entwined, of sinking into her silken depths. He heard again the sound of her voice calling his name as she found completion. His painful erection kept him awake through the night.

Lying in the yurt, begging for sleep, he pleaded with his brain to shut down. He might have to walk away after the climb, but in his heart he would never leave her. Fixing her in his mind like a talisman, he finally found sleep.

At predawn breakfast, their guide reported favorable conditions. They would climb. Topped up with huge helpings of
huevos reneheros
and corn tortillas, they huddled in a circle against the cold. They worked through their checklists in teams of two. Siree dashed away for her last chance at a toilet. “Men get all the breaks,” she grumbled, struggling to straighten out the layers of her clothing. Using bottled sterilizer on her hands, she pulled on her gloves and rushed back to the men, who only had to pull a zipper, lift a flap and pee into whatever space beckoned.

They roped up in the same order as the previous day. She felt secure walking between Sam and Jake, and a little better when Josh’s breathing sounded more ragged than hers. Living in Washington, D.C., he got the least time to climb and train. Sun pinked the snow and traced a golden line along the rim of the volcano. They worked their way up a glacier comprised of a network of narrow, deep crevasses and snow bridges. Both could seem safe while luring one to death. Midmorning, they stopped for a breather and Sam took photos of the group. Their guide pulled out a miniscule burner and boiled water for tea. They moved out, the pitch steepening.

The view from the summit made each hard-won breath worth it. Sun poured over the valley below and shimmered off the ice field, setting a zillion diamonds to blink across its surface.

Jake stepped up behind Siree, reliving the glory of the sun setting over Mont Blanc, the feel of her in his arms for the first time. Some part of him that hadn’t existed, or was buried so deep he didn’t realize he had it, had been born then. Everything had seemed possible with her standing beside him, knowing they’d conquered death together. She must have been thinking about it too, because she turned to him, her face illuminated with a tender joy. “From that moment I trusted you, and I always will. Whatever happens in the future, I don’t regret a second of the time we had together. Please know that and stop torturing yourself with guilt. I don’t want to be remembered that way.”

Desiree, desire of my heart, compassionate and giving even in defeat
. He swung away, blinking to clear the moisture from his eyes. They began their descent.

Sun bounced off the snow, making it difficult to define the shadowed sides of the crevasses. Most of them were narrow enough to take with a wide step, some required a leap of faith. Siree looked down into an amazing frozen waterfall that twisted toward the center of the earth. Blues on blues of every shade formed fantastic ice sculptures. Beautifully lethal.

They moved in a straight line between the points of one crevasse, coming in from the west and another from the east. Between the two was another narrower crevasse. Their guide chose to jump it. Sam jumped the crevasse ahead of her and moved on. She approached the crevasse and looked down. It narrowed dramatically into a deep V. If a climber dropped low enough, he would have no room to maneuver and couldn’t get himself out. Josh called them popsicle molds because that was what a climber would look like when rescuers pulled the body out. She jumped wide, landed lightly well away from the down slope edge and moved ahead to tighten the line for Jake.

The loud booming of cracking ice sounded and Sam disappeared. He’d walked onto a snow bridge that collapsed under his weight. It jerked her off her feet, before she could anchor herself. Her helmet slammed onto the ice, her vision blurred. She hurtled downhill like a runaway toboggan, dragged by Sam’s falling weight. Their combined weight pulled Jake off balance mid jump. He grappled at the edge of the crevasse she’d just jumped, slid in. His descending weight brought Siree to a jarring stop. She lay on the glacier like a bead on a string, pulled taut by two opposing forces.

Below her, their guide scrambled for purchase, struggling to stop Sam’s weight from dragging him backward into the gaping chasm with him. Josh was down and sliding after Jake, but Gribbs had time to self-anchor. It gave Josh the seconds he needed to drive his pick in the ice and slowed his momentum. He too self-anchored, calling Jake’s name into the abrupt silence. Siree could hear his harsh breathing.

“I’m good,” Jake called back.

“We’ll get an anchor in to hold you. Can you get out with your Prusik sling?” Gribbs asked.

Jake cursed and fell deeper, dragging Siree back toward him. To make matters worse, when she’d fallen, she’d rolled and Sam and Jake’s ropes now made a half turn around her body, pulling in opposite directions. She felt like she was being squeezed by a boa constrictor. She gasped for breath and shook her head to clear it of the bright dots flashing behind her eyelids.

“No room to maneuver, you’ll have to belay me out.”

Their guide came to a halt ten feet back of Sam’s hole and dug in. Because Jake’s greater weight had pulled Sam upwards, he hung only a few feet down from the edge. The guide checked him then looked up to assess where the others were and saw her strangulated by the ropes. He braced his feet and icepick on the edge of Sam’s chasm and shouted down to him. “Get a foothold. Release Siree’s rope. I’ll pull you up.” His command decision put both himself and Sam at risk. Sam could as easily pull the guide in.