Cole had already arrived at the threshold of his endurance with Naomi not far behind, but they kept climbing, even as they cried, the rocks getting smaller and the slope steeper and the sun plunging toward night.
They would climb in increments of fifty feet and then stop while Cole fell apart and Dee and Jack calmed him and primed him to go just a little farther. Big, bold lies that they were almost there.
At four-thirty, Jack gave his pack to Dee and lifted his son onto his shoulders. Climbed another hundred feet and when he stopped this time, the sun perched on the western horizon and it hit him that they’d gone as far as they were going to make it today, that they’d be spending the night on the side of this mountain. He looked up, head swimming. The rock pink, summit spires glowing in the late sun.
“Let’s stop,” he said.
“Stop?”
“We should find a place to hunker down.”
“For the night?” Naomi said.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the tent going to go?”
“No tent tonight, sweetie.”
Naomi eased down onto the loose rock and the sound of his daughter crying swept down into the basin.
Jack let Cole off his shoulders and crawled over to her.
“I’m sorry, Na. I’m so sorry. I know this is hard.”
“I hate it.”
“Me, too, but we’re going to find the best spot on this mountain. Think about the view we’ll have.”
“I don’t give a shit about the view.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“I hate this f**king mountain.”
“I know, sweetie, I know.”
Jack collapsed in the dirt on the downslope side of the largest stable boulder he could find, his hands raw from eight hours of climbing, eyes irritated with dust. They reclined back against the mountain using their spare clothes for pillows and blanketed under the two sleeping bags. Not a cloud in the sky and everything still and Jack praying it would stay that way.
Already it was freezing. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and Jack could see seven lakes on that treeless tableland below. Each oilblack in the dusk.
Somewhere below, a band of coyotes yapped.
Jack cracked open the last four cans of food and they ate in silence watching the last bit of sun drain away.
The planets faded in and then the stars and soon the sky swarmed with pinpricks of ancient light and they slept, dug into the side of the mountain.
* * * * *
JACK woke cold and stiff and thirsty. His family slept, Cole burrowed into his side completely under the sleeping bag, and Jack let them sleep, a temporary escape from the diamond-cut hardness of this place. The panic was certainly there. Felt it lingering in his blindspot, trying to break in. He’d gotten them into a terrible bind, it whispered—out of food, out of water, twelve thousand feet up a mountain they had no business climbing. He’d utterly failed them, and now they were going to die.
Naomi said, “A box of Fruit Loops, and I don’t mean one of those little ones.”
“Family size.”
“Exactly. I’d pour the whole thing into one of our glass mixing bowls and open a carton of cold whole milk. Oh my God, I can almost taste it.”
“Lucky Charms,” Cole said. “Except just the marshmallows and chocolate milk.”
“I would kill for one of those southwest breakfast burritos from that place near campus,” Dee said. “Filled with scrambled eggs and chorizo sausage and green chiles. Couple fried cinnamon rolls. Steaming cup of dark roast. Jack?”
“Bacon, short stack, two eggs over easy, biscuits smothered in sausage gravy. Everything, and I mean everything, drowned in maple syrup and hot sauce.”
“No coffee?”
“Of course coffee. Goes without saying. Might even splash some bourbon in it. Start the day off right.”
They got underway, climbing in shadow, the rock still freezing. Logged another two hundred feet and then emerged from the loose talus onto solid granite, the steepest pitch they’d seen, Dee leading now and Jack climbing under his kids, all four appendages on the mountain.
He was reaching for the next handhold when Dee said, “Holy shit, Jack.”
“What?”
“Have you looked down?”
He looked down. The sweep of the mountain falling away beneath them nothing short of a total mindfuck.
“That looks way worse than it is,” Jack said, though he felt like he was going to be sick. He shut his eyes and leaned into the mountain, clutching it, his chest heaving against the rock. “Just keep climbing,” he said. “Don’t look down if it bothers you.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Cole said.
“Good, but you be as careful as can be,” Jack said. “Na?”
“I’m f**king freaked.”
“I know it’s scary, but a little less profanity, angel.”
“I can’t do this, Jack. There’s no way.”
“Dee, you want to know something?”
“What?”
“We’re kicking ass. Think of all we’ve been through since—”
“This is the worst.”
“Worse than getting shot at? Than some of the things we’ve seen?”
“For me it is. I’ve had nightmares about this before. Being stuck on a cliff.”
“Well, we aren’t stuck, and we have to get over this mountain. That’s all there is to it.”
“My legs are shaking, Jack.”
“You can do this. You have to do this.”
They started to climb again, Jack hanging back, watching their progression, monitoring how comfortable Naomi and Cole looked on the rock, telling them how good they were doing and struggling to hide his own fear.
It was almost worse looking up the mountain. He couldn’t see the spires anymore, had no idea how close or far they were from the summit ridge. It was just cold, fissured rock and the deep blue sky above it all and a blinding cornice of sunshine.
He worked his way up a series of ledges in a wide dihedral, and it occurred to him as he climbed that even if they wanted to, going back down now would be an impossibility.
“We taking a rest?” he asked.
His family stood just above him on a grassy ledge and he climbed the last few feet to them.
“This is bad, Jack.”
“What?”
“This.” She patted the vertical rock. “It just got steeper.”
“There’s another way up,” he said. “Has to be.” He stepped around Naomi and followed the ledge along the rockface, which slimmed down after twenty feet to a lip barely sufficient to support the toes of his shoes.