The Wall (11 page)

Something inside Hugh crumpled. This was the Great Ape. He had always been indestructible. He’d never admitted weakness or pain. The knee was an excuse. He was scared. He was done.

Hugh said, “That’s no good.”

He waited for Lewis to disown the climb. That seemed next. It happened all the time among climbers. It was usually the weather that took the blame, or a bad feeling, or weird vibes, or a bum ankle or knee.

“It’s probably nothing,” Lewis said.

“Have some water.”

“If we can just get to the ledges,” Lewis said. His hands were shaking.

Fair enough, thought Hugh. “It’s only a couple pitches more to the Archipelago,” he said. “Why don’t I take the lead?”

“Are you sure? You’re the one bleeding.”

“Rest the knee,” Hugh said. But he was thinking, why go up, why risk one more inch, when they were only going to go down? Because he was quite certain that’s the way it was about to play out. If they descended now, they could be back at Yosemite Lodge in time for dinner.

“That’s all I need,” Lewis said. “I’m still good for it, you know.” But his face betrayed him.

Hugh looked around him unhappily. He’d flown ten thousand miles for this, for a swan song that ended in the middle of nowhere? Then he decided that the ledges were at least a landmark on the wall. Up there, they could spend the night, drink a lot of water, eat a lot of food, and in the morning start down. Driving out of the Valley tomorrow, he could look up at the Archipelago and mark his high point and say good-bye to El Cap.

He draped the rack of hooks and gear over his shoulders, and took more time than necessary to arrange the pieces. Fritos was supposed to have been Lewis’s hurdle to jump. The prospect of sustained hooking didn’t thrill him.

While he was trying to rally himself for the flakes, they heard a tiny voice. That second team of climbers had closed the gap during Lewis’s ordeal. Only three hundred feet separated them now. What had taken Hugh and Lewis three days to climb, this pair was going to cover in a single day.

One of the climbers was waving at them. The breeze carried off his words. “What do they want?” said Hugh.

Lewis squinted down. He had the better hearing. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “A rope. Can you believe that?”

“Why would they want a rope?” said Hugh. It made no sense. How could you claim a speed ascent if you borrowed other people’s time?

“So they can pass us, why else? Unbelievable.” Lewis flipped them the bird.

Hugh studied the pair. The top climber was in steady motion, his hands dipping in and out of the rock as he churned higher. It was his belayer who was calling and waving to them. They definitely wanted a jump up.

“Maybe they’re in trouble.”

“Some trouble,” Lewis snorted. “They’re moving like a whirlwind. Make them do their own grunt work.”

The breeze chased around in the vast bowl, chopping the distant climber’s words to gibberish. “Let them yell,” Lewis said.

Hugh half-agreed. If this was to be his last night on the wall, he didn’t want to be sharing the ledges with two strangers. Let them sweat.

Then a word stopped them. “Glass,” the depths uttered.

Lewis frowned. “They know your name?”

It came to Hugh who these men were, or at least the one calling to him. Immediately he started tying two ropes together to lower to the climbers. Lewis didn’t protest this time. He understood, too.

For some reason, Augustine was racing to join them.

Augustine came first.
He sprinted up the ropes in one swift thrust, no rests, covering the three-hundred-foot gap in less than five minutes. Even before clipping to the anchor, he bellowed down, “Now,” as if triggering a race.

His face blazed with exertion and sunburn. He hadn’t shaved for days, nor slept probably.

“She’s alive,” he gasped to them.

They didn’t have to ask who. His lover, he meant.

Suddenly Lewis was full of good fellowship. He thumped the younger man on the back. “Ah, that’s great, man, great. Here, drink.”

Augustine had the lungs of a horse. With each breath, his big rib cage pushed at Hugh on one side and Lewis on the other. The three of them sat on the portaledge, packed together. Far below, Augustine’s partner was jugging the long line.

Hugh was confused. “You got her?” he said.

Augustine shook his head no. He swallowed another mouthful of water. “Couldn’t get in under the roof. I tried everything. But the wall’s overhanging, and then there’s the Eye. It’s like a crater under a roof. I was hanging forty feet out from her.”

“What about a helicopter?”

“Same deal, only the rotors would keep you that much farther out from the wall. A waste of time.”

“She couldn’t catch your throw line?”

“She’s injured.” He was terse. Stoic. Dealing with it. He bent forward over the ledge. “You’re almost here,” he shouted down to his partner.

“How bad is she?” Hugh asked.

“She’ll be all right once I get to her.” Nothing about broken bones or wounds. Just a statement of faith.

Augustine wouldn’t meet his eyes. He kept peering up toward the ledges and across to where, somewhere among the shadows and stains, Trojan Women rose. Cyclops Eye remained invisible.

“And the other woman?” said Lewis.

“Dead.”

“That’s tough,” said Hugh.

“She sure looked dead,” Lewis said.

Augustine seized on that. “You mean you’ve seen her?”

“From the meadow,” said Lewis. “The morning we started up, they had a big spotlight. She was hanging at the end of a rope.”

Augustine shook his mane of hair. “No, no. You got it backward. Andie’s the one on the rope.”

Andie,
thought Hugh. That was the name of the one who belonged to Augustine. “She’s the one we saw?”

“That’s what I said.”

Hugh and Lewis looked at each other. Judging by the way she was hanging, Andie had seemed as dead as it got. And if she wasn’t dead three days ago, she surely was by now. Unless by some miracle…

“She looked right at me,” Augustine said. “She smiled. I told her the plan. She knows I’m coming for her.”

“And what about the other one?”

“Cuba? She’s still tied in at their camp, way in the back of the Eye, all tangled in ropes. She must have taken the full shock of the fall. I called to her, but didn’t get a word or a motion. Like I said, dead.” He didn’t seem especially torn up about that.

“Did they ever find that girl’s body in the woods?” Hugh asked.

“Cass? Still missing.”

Cass, Cuba, and Andie. Hugh liked their names. He was glad they hadn’t been Sally, Jane, or Britney, not for a wall called Trojan Women. “And the caveman?”

“Joshua’s gone to ground.”

“He attacked us,” Lewis said. “We were sleeping at the base. He almost gutted Hugh with a stone shiv. The guy’s armed and dangerous. Do you have a radio? You should report that.”

“They’ll find him,” Augustine said. The assault didn’t seem to surprise or concern him. They were in a different universe up here, with potential violence all around them.

“He’s an evil bastard,” said Lewis. “I’ve never seen pure evil.”

“You call that evil?” Hugh scoffed.

“He’s a necrophiliac, a homicidal, Satanic son of a bitch. He tried to kill you.”

“He’s out of his tree, that’s all,” Hugh said. “I’ve been thinking about him. You know what’s scariest? We could be him.”

“You better rehydrate, Hugh. Your brain’s shrinking.”

“Joshua’s what happens when the serpent poisons you.”

“The serpent being the devil,” said Lewis. “Unless I misread my Genesis.”

“The serpent being the serpent. Nature. The wilderness.” Hugh slapped the stone. “This.”

Augustine spoke. He put a stop to them. “They’re bringing in dogs. They’ll get him.”

After a minute, Hugh said, “I just want them to find the girl.”

Augustine looked at him. “Did Joshua do that to your face?”

Hugh dabbed at his nostrils. The blood still hadn’t quit. Next would come black eyes. He pointed at Lewis. “He’s still learning how to climb.”

Lewis raised his chin proudly. “Somebody’s got to keep you on your toes. You let your guard down. You deserved it.”

The big-wall repartee seemed ready to carry them off again. Augustine leaned forward. “What’s taking that kid?”

Hugh glanced down at the approaching figure. “What’s your plan?” he asked.

“Going down to her didn’t work, so we’re going up. I hired a gun.” A rope gun, Hugh knew. “He’s a wall rat, really young, but really fast.”

“Why use Anasazi, though? North America Wall travels right under Cyclops Eye. Or you could have followed them up Trojan Women.”

“Except nobody knows where exactly their route goes, only where it ended. And this is our quickest access. Anasazi’s a milk run.” Augustine paused. “No offense.”

Hugh shrugged. Every route had a life cycle. Repeated climbing almost always moderated the dangers. Each time climbers hammered a piton in and out, the crack eroded. The obstacles got rehearsed. Bolts got placed. New hardware, new shoes, new techniques, all these things tamed once fierce challenges. Still, it stung. Anasazi, a milk run?

Augustine went on. “Once we hit the Archipelago, we’ll pendulum across to Trojan Women, then climb to Cyclops Eye. With a little gusto, we’ll reach Andie by dark. I’ve got a summit team waiting to lower a litter. All I have to do is radio them. We’ll catch the throw line, and they’ll haul us up, and that’s that.”

Hugh looked across the valley at Middle Cathedral Rock. The sun line was moving up the buttress. He couldn’t believe how fast the day was going by. Lewis’s pills, and then his fall, had eaten it up. There were probably four more hours before sunset, and then another hour of alpenglow after that. It wasn’t like on the sea where the light just suddenly switched off.

But even squeezing every minute of light out of the day, even pushing his partner, Augustine was going to be lucky just to tag Trojan Women. First they had to reach the ledges, and the pendulums would take time.

Augustine looked down, and said, “About time.”

The kid arrived. “Joe,” Augustine introduced him.

Joe was thin, almost anorexic. No more than seventeen, he seemed full of self-certainty. He had a pianist’s long, thin fingers. His eyes burned a little too bright. Thirty years ago, Hugh might have been him.

“Have some water,” Hugh said.

Joe took only a little.

“The whole thing,” Hugh told him.

The boy looked at Augustine, who nodded okay. He drank deeply. Then Augustine said, “Are you ready?”

Joe handed back the water. He spent maybe three seconds judging the rock, then took off like a shot, hooking the flakes as if they were rungs on a ladder.

For the next few minutes, while Augustine belayed his young partner, Lewis hauled up their bag. It weighed hardly anything. He towed it in, hand over hand. “You guys travel light,” he said.

“A little water, some sleeping bags, a med pack,” Augustine said. He was paying out rope in big lobs, practically throwing it up the wall. The boy scampered like a spider. He grew smaller on Fritos of Fear.

“We brought extra water,” Hugh said. “Take a couple gallons. And food. Whatever you need.”

“We’re all set,” Augustine said to Hugh. “Speed is everything. She’s waiting.”

“Have you thought about a night on the ledges?” asked Lewis. “Rest up. Get a fresh start. You know, ‘Preserve Thyself.’ ” It was the number one rule in rescue work. He was letting Augustine know that he, too, had served among the saviors. For years, he’d been a member of Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue. He saw it as an obligation.
One day that could be me out there.

“We’re under control,” Augustine said.

“That’s not what I meant. I’d have the pedal to the metal, too. I’m just saying, you’ve been hitting it hard. And the ledges are large.”

“We’ve got it covered,” Augustine snapped.

Lewis shut up.

Augustine jutted his chin at the heights, sorry for his tone. “We were going to get married,” he said. “You know that little stone chapel?”

“I’ve seen it,” said Hugh.

“Yeah,” said Augustine. “That was two years ago. We kind of postponed things.” He tossed another hank of rope up the wall. The kid was streaking the flakes.

Hugh didn’t pry. This was personal. Something had gone wrong. Now Augustine was trying to make it right.

Overhead, Joe reached the crack, jabbed in a piece of protection, a single piece, and stormed higher. The entire crack—a two-hour climb when Hugh had done it years ago—took the kid eight minutes flat.

Augustine got ready to go.

“How can we help?” Hugh asked him.

“You’ve done plenty. You saved us an hour at least by lowering your rope. You gave us water. How about I trail a rope for you guys?”

Lewis pretended to consider the offer. But Hugh could see his relief. This way they could bypass Fritos in one fell swoop. Within a half hour, they could be on the ledges.

“Sold,” said Hugh.

Joe’s tiny voice peeped. He’d set an anchor. It was Augustine’s turn. Augustine lifted his jumars, one in each hand like cardio-shock paddles, and fastened on to the rope.

“Bring her back,” said Lewis, and he meant it. He clapped Augustine on the back. Hugh looked on. In saving his lost love, Augustine was saving all their lost loves, or so Lewis would have it. But to accept that, you had to accept the converse, that to lose one love was to lose all loves.

Augustine vanished up the rope at a near vertical run.