Holy Stokes Pt 2
Emerging from the dormitory, Will finds himself in a rustic kitchen with a tall ceiling of exposed wooden beams. Feeling only slightly sorry for himself, he pours a cup of coffee from the steaming percolator on the wood stove and, hearing the liquid boil as it touches the metal, moves the pot to the hearthstone before walking into the empty dining room. It smells abandoned, filled with the echoes of old pine, the scrub and slough of ski wax, and the acrid volcanic dust that blossoms in little heaps against the baseboard during summer.
The only movement in the room is the heavy tick of a clock above the mantle of the door. 4:30. Two more hours to sunrise, thinks Will. An electric urge to move rises in his legs, but it’s tempered. His body feels heavy and oafish, incapable of effort. He sees his reflection in the massive square of black glass, tousled from long travel and short sleep. What makes you think you’ve got what it takes? he asks the man staring back at him. It’s a long way to go in the cold, just to stand on the top of a mountain.
Normally, that thought wouldn’t’ve wormed its way into his brain until much later. By then, the four of them would be moving in a line, stretched across the broken rib of a snowy mountain ridge. His eyes would be narrow tunnels, drawn along Erin’s blazed trail, his head swimming in sensation; ragged breath, burning calves, churning legs, the metronomic crsh, crsh, crsh, crsh of crampon on biting into firn veiled ice. That’s when he’d start thinking of falling, the black shape of his body tumbling, torn up by the mountain like a rag doll by a dog. He’d simmer in it, feeling his body grow heavier with every step until it felt impossible to go any farther without screaming. Not wanting to waste a breath on full-throated panic, he would instead retreat into himself. First he would resort to whispers, then to hand signals, then simply to curt nods, as if he was entirely absorbed by the relentless business of anchor building, belaying, leading, and following instead of frantically collecting the fragments of his psyche as they scattered like ants around his skull.
Stepping onto the summit had a way of dissolving the silence. At the top of any mountain, after hours spent in the darkest part of night, the miracle glow of sunrise would mix easily in his head, loosening his tongue from it’s awed strictures. Each time it felt unbelievable to see the shadow of the beast he’d conquered spill out across the curve of the world, shading the lives of thousands while he basked in the rosed glow of morning on a field of untouched snow. They’d sit in a little cluster at the top, perched like eagles on a roost, barely able to speak. Instead of words they would exchange little peaceful noises until the sun was bright and high and there was nothing left to do except to go back.
Descent would solidify his garbled brain into a monomaniacal repetition of don’t fuck up. His life depended on it, and not just his. So he’d hold tightly to the thought, scraping its sharp edges against his bones like he was trying to light a fire to warm his chilled, stiff fingers that always threatened to let him down. Failure always felt imminent on the way down, no matter how easy the route was. It was a time and place for danger to sneak through - weak legs, clouded heads, and the race against the setting sun made sure of it. It wasn’t until he was away from the mountain for days, sometimes weeks, that he would remember it with any fondness.
Back in the hut, Will takes a slow slurp of coffee and presses his face against the dark window, looking for headlights. Nothing. Even the moon is gone at this point, leaving him alone with a mountain he can’t see. He sits at a table by the window and pulls out his phone to refresh the messages a few times. Nothing there, either. On the table in front of him there’s a small tray covered with a checkered cloth. He lifts it to finds a plate of oven-warm medilunas, a small chunk of the yellowest butter he’s ever seen, and a small pot of blood red calafate jam. Jackpot, he whispers, and stuffs one of the doughy crescents into his mouth. As he chews, his eyes are drawn to the blank screen on the table in front of him.
He’s about to slip the phone back in his waistband, but as his palm passes over the screen, it eagerly lights up and, before he has time to register the thought, he’s refreshing the messages again. As he watches the little wheel spin, he chews the inside of his lip and tells himself there’s still a chance they flew in just behind him. With the snow coming down so hard last night they probably spent the night in town - maybe even had to sleep at the airport. Which means they’d be heading out right about now, and getting to the hut right after dawn. The little wheel stops turning.
He flicks the messages again to refresh them. While he waits for better news, clicks over to the tab of read messages.
¿Necesitas algo?
His fingers hover over the keyboard that pops up.
“Nothing you’d could give, Sami,” he says to the empty room and puts the phone to sleep.
“De donde vienes?” he vaguely remembers her asking, standing in the doorway with the light framing her as if she was so holy her whole body deserved a halo. His mouth was immobilized by the cold, teeth starting to chatter so hard they were going to break if he let them separate enough to answer. With his jaw clenched, he pointed with his chin down the hill.
“Ay, loco! Viniste solo?” she asked as she took a step back to let him in. He took two steps into the warmth of the hut and sank to his knees in the middle of the kitchen, meltwater from the snow dripping from the eaves of his coat onto the polished wooden floor. Answering was beyond him - he was alone, accidentally; maybe not - completely; his frozen mouth wasn’t capable of nuance. He nodded his head.
She led him over to the warm glow of the stove, where she helped him take off the useless exoskeleton of his outer layers so that tendrils of warm air could reach his rubbery, frost white skin. Stripped down to his long johns, he lay curled in on himself on the floor in front of the stove. Pareces una pequeña serpiente, she told him, handing down a mug of honeyed peppermint tea with a splash of fernet.
Para alejar a los fantasmas, she told him, a little smile playing on her face that seemed like something genuine through the hospitality, a ray of sunshine on his frigid skin. No way! There was nothing to say. What was he going gonna do, see if she ran into them on the way to town? Then she’d know he was just sitting around waiting for them to show up. No way. He winced, remembering how he tried to stand up, to show that he wasn’t so weak and stumbled badly, spilling most of the tea onto the stones in front of the stove, how she cleaned it up without looking at him before setting another mug on the nightstand next to his bunk in the dormitory.
Better that he never sees her again he thinks, stuffing a second bun into his mouth. He presses his face against the glass as he chews, looking for headlamps on the path from the valley. When the bread hits his stomach it churns in a strange way and he suddenly feels hot all over, like his head is about to open at the top and let his brain roll out. He drops his head down between his knees and breathes heavily, too much, too fast and he can feel a little something at the back of his throat that makes him flip upright again. The room spins and he nearly falls off his stool, and in his blurred state he catches sight of his reflection and sees there’s a thin trickle of red running from his nose. The hot feeling starts to rise again into a buzzing heap at the front of his forehead but then he sticks his tongue out and laughs.
It’s jam.
It’s just jam.
Everything’s fine.
As his head settles back into his body he realizes that it’s much brighter outside now, though it doesn’t seem like enough time has passed to suddenly see colors - but there it is in front of him, the multitude of shades an alpine slope takes at sunrise. Blue as the ocean, pink as flesh, dressed in purple lace of wrung-out cloud. It lacked the drama of everest, but it had the solitude he’d wanted so badly. It was a blank canvas, one on which he could pretend to be in uncharted territory, where he could meet his fear directly. In the new light, the familiar pressure at the back of his neck starts to grow. If he was going to stand on the peak of Cerro Tranquilo today, it was time to go.
t’s time to go, he thinks more insistently. But he’s rooted to the Earth, as if made of rock and ice.
_______________
The last time Will saw Erin was at the airport in Karakol, haggling with a dark haired airline clerk about the price of a same day plane ticket back to SeaTac.
“Ten thousand?” She wrinkled her forehead, converting. “That doesn’t make sense, that’s only a hundred bucks. What do you mean, ten thousand? Som?” Erin asked.
“No, ma’am, dollars,” responded the clerk with an impassive look on his face.
“I don’t understand. Ten thousand dollars? For a plane ticket?” said Erin, her voice rising.
“Yes, ma’am,” repeated the clerk. He rotated the screen so Erin could see the little numbers there.
“How is this possible?” She leaned in, blinked, and looked back at the clerk. “I don’t understand, explain this to me. We paid less than two for our round trip tickets six months ago. And now you’re telling me it’s ten thousand? For a one way?”
“Well, ma’am, prices are decided by the market. As demand increases or supply decreases -” began the clerk.
“I understand how markets work! Christ. I don’t need a fucking economics lesson,” interrupted Erin.
“Yes, I can see how that would be your experience,” nodded the clerk before swiveling the screen to face him and starting to type feverishly. He paused periodically to squint at the screen, the little chrome nameplate on his breast flashing in the light from his effortful keystrokes. Azamat, it said.
“Ah, ma’am, I see now. This is because this flight is the last flight from Karakol.”
“Last flight? Of the day?”
The clerk was about to answer and then frowned, typed a few more things and shook his head briskly.
“Ma’am, I am sorry for this information, but it is the last flight. There are no others.”
“What?”
More keystrokes.
“It would appear there will be no more flights from this airport.”
“How are you so calm about this? Are you not just finding this out for yourself?” asked Erin.
“Ma’am, Karakol is a small airport in a small country. Big things do not happen here. Big things happen in other countries, and we small countries take the consequences. If there are no more flights now, perhaps there will be other flights again soon. Or perhaps there won’t.
“I, Azamat,” he said as he straightened his name tag, “will find something to do. The question is, what will you do?”
“What am I going to do? What kind of question is that? ”
“One that I am afraid you must answer. There are other customers in line, ma’am.” Azamat said, gesturing towards Will with with a graceful, open palm. Will whipped around and found no other customers in line.
“No, no, it’s no problem,” Will said, holding his open palms at his shoulders. “Take all the time you need.”
Hearing Will’s voice behind him caused Erin to spin around as if she had been kicked.
“You!” She screamed, spittle flying flying from her lips at the sight of Will. She continued. “You worthless piece of boneless, jelly-brained shit.”
Azamat blushed.
“Hey man -” started Will, before getting interrupted.
“Don’t you dare speak to me,” trembled Erin, before whirling back around to face Azamat.
“How many tickets are left on this flight?” He asked
Azamat leaned into the screen and raised his eyebrows. He turned back to Erin.
“Just the one, ma’am,” said Azamat.
Erin squared her shoulders and muttered something under her breath that made Azamat’s burly eyebrows shoot up into his hair.
“Yeah alright I’ll take it,” she replied. “Just as long as it means this asshole can’t get it.”
Azamat nodded sagely. “Yes, ma’am. If you make the purchase, it will be your ticket, not the ticket of anyone else.”
Erin pulled on her face with the palms of her hands, tenting her fingers into the hollows of her eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered how her skin had gone papery and fragile
“What a fucking prick” she muttered under her breath. She sighed heavily into the cavern of her hands.
“Great choice you have made, Ma’am!” said Azamat. “How will you be paying for this?”
For a moment, Erin seemed taken aback by the question, as if she didn’t think it was going to come to that. She stared at Azamat like a deer looks at a car trying to understand it as she slowly reached for her back pocket.
Will wanted to reach out and tap her on the shoulder, to stop her from pulling out her wallet, to at least offer to pay for the ticket home, even if the offer would be left on the table. Instead, he shouldered his pack, stuck his hands in his pockets, and silently walked away as Erin pulled the credit cards from her wallet and handed them, one by one, to Azamat.
_______________
Erin hit the middle. She was of medium height, medium build, with medium length hair that was a medium shade of brown. Her eyes were tan, her eyelashes barely there, her face symmetrical but not particularly beautiful. Her appearance had bothered her when she was a child really examining herself in the mirror for the first time. She’d put on her mother’s makeup, squeeze her ears against her head, suck in her cheeks, and curve her body into the shape that seemed to come naturally to other girls and - for a moment, at least before the arch in her back collapsed and the mascara ran, she would see what was possible.
Early on, she realized that girls like her found themselves at a crossroads. Down one path was a life spent in pursuit of a fragile, cosseted femininity that was second best to beauty. At some point it might offer a career, a husband, a house, a child, all the things granted to the women who agree to play by the rules laid down in ages past. Down the other path was a life spent searching for the ends of the earth. It offered little except for adventure, guaranteed nothing but an impoverished death in an obscure corner of the world. It was insane, but the very idea of it thrilled her.
It was a choice she didn’t have to make all at once, it just happened naturally as the accumulation of countless decisions along the way. Waxing appointments missed, nail salons never entered, bottomless mimosas never consumed, gossip never shared. Instead, her days were spent in monastic preparation - carrying water, chopping wood. Bagging peaks. Her true taste of freedom was the purchase of an old Volvo station wagon. It handled like a tank, idled like a washing machine full of rocks, but it was reliable and, most importantly, it was big enough to sleep in.
Her last night in town, she sat out on the porch for a long time, slowly drinking a beer and watching the last tendrils of sunset disappear. It was early June, the snow season was finally closed and, even after buying the rig, she was flush with cash after months of giving ski lessons to rich kids whose parents didn’t like spending time with them. On the steps next to her was her bag, packed with all her worldly possessions - except for a few things she couldn’t justify taking - a massive silk-screened poster for a winter street festival that had hung as a banner across the main street of her little mountain town, a statuette of Venus carved from white quartz, and an enormous potted fern that she had rescued from the frost the first winter she was here, which over the years had grown from the size of a teacup to one that spilled out from confines of an old enamel washtub. They were Julie’s problem now.
“You about ready to go, Er?” Julie asked as she sat down on the porch swing.
“Just about,” Erin replied, taking a sip of her beer.
“You know where you’re going yet?” asked Julie, setting her bare feet on the unpainted wood of the porch and slowly pushing herself back and forth.
“Not any more than I did an hour ago,” laughed Erin. “North for now, through the divide. I figure it’ll make more sense when I get somewhere quiet. It’s just a big jumble right now.”
A box truck screamed past the house; it’s plume of acrid exhaust settled over the yard. Julie sighed.
“What about you?” asked Erin. She scratched at the label of her empty beer with a fingernail.
“Not any more than I did an hour ago,” replied Julie, and they both laughed. “I’ve been thinking of heading into the city, just for a few months. You know Mikko, from the machine shop?”
“The ragged looking one?”
“No, that’s Asher. Mikko is always in the flannels.”
“Oh, yeah. What about him?”
“Well, he said some friend of his knows someone who needs an au pair. He said he’d hook me up.”
Erin wrinkled her nose. “You’re gonna be a nanny?”
“Man, I’m sick of ski lessons. Always the same thing every day. At least there’s stuff to do in the city.”
“Yeah but can you imagine if the kids suck? Or the husband’s a total creep?”
Julie laughed. “Yeah, they’ll probably all suck.”
“And the wife! Even if you wear nothing but sack dresses and kerchiefs she’ll still hate you.”
“That’s not true!” Julie cackled. “Or maybe it is, but that’s a her problem because I’m not into her stupid husband. I’m just into getting out of this place. I’ve been here for what,” she paused and looked out into the falling night. She continued softly. “Five years. It’s been five years. I just can’t keep doing it. I’ll end up like Charlie, with chicken legs and a drinking problem.”
“Nah,” said Erin. “You think so?”
“Definitely, that’s the old ski bum template. Something about the place just chews people up. Everyone shows up so optimistic, certain that they’re going to find a secret way of life that’s been kept from them. But then they get bored, strung out. Turns out there’s no secret, just high-elevation poverty that you end up having to claw your way out of,” said Julie, starting to pick the dead leaves from the potted ficus sitting on the porch rail. “At least you’re getting out, though I don’t know what you’re going to do to keep from going crazy.”
“What, without someone to talk to?”
“Not just that, it’s the exposure, too. There’s bears up there, moose, crazy dudes with high-caliber rifles. You could run out of gas, blow a tire, flip the car, your appendix could burst, you could get lost, you could freeze to death, you could -”
“Whoa, hey, heavy dad vibes there,” Erin interrupted. “It’s going to be fine. People have done harder things. If I get freaked, I’ll come right back.”
“I just don’t want to read about some townie cop dragging you from a ditch in the middle of nowhere.”
“If some townie cop drags me from the ditch there’s no way the newspaper is going to find out about it”
Julie looked horrified. “I’m serious!”
“No one’s getting dragged from ditches, Jule! Christ, you sound like my mom when I told her I was coming up here to work for a few seasons. You’d think I was captain cook, telling her I was heading to Hawai’i.” Erin rolled a piece of label between her fingers. “But it’s just another place. Yeah there’s creeps and weirdos. And yeah, you can’t let down your guard, but worrying that something bad might happen isn’t a good enough reason to not do it.”
Julie nodded a little and tossed a handful of dead leaves into the yard. They fluttered down like little streamers, flickering excitedly on their last adventure. “Yeah, I get it. But I get your ma, too. There’s a lot that’s worth worrying about.”
“Look, our fate is that we’re stuck poor. Some of that has to do with the fact that we like the life it gives us, some with the fact that the deck isn’t stacked for us, some because we don’t much like the rules everyone else is playing by, and we’d like to do things different. I’m never gonna be a rich girl, never gonna marry some Czechoslovakian count on ski holiday. I might as well make a life that’s worth getting excited by, else I’ll die thousands of times instead of just once.”
“Well what if you run out of gas, what then?”
“I won’t run out of gas, Bee. I’ll wait tables, take people shooting, fishing, whatever. I’ve yet to find a place where there isn’t enough to do to get a full tank.”
Julie frowned and folded her arms tightly across her chest. “I don’t like it,” she said.
“I know,” answered Erin. “But my time here is up,” she said as she stood up and brushed flecks of paper from her sleeves.
Julie stared at her dumbly. “What, now? It’s dark!”
“Sure is. But light or dark, she’s got a bed in the back and I’ve got a long way to go.”
“You’re crazy.”
Erin smiled, and shrugged on the backpack and dug her keys out of one of the pockets. She peeled her house key from the carabiner on which she kept her keys, and passed her thumb over the worn grooves one last time before giving it to Julie. She’d already returned all the other keys - to the office, her work locker, the mailbox - and removed all the little tags she’d accumulated in this place. All that remained was the well-worn key to the Volvo.
Julie came over and gave her hug, the kind where it will be a long time before it comes again; the kind where their bodies closed the gap that normally lives between people who were once strangers; the kind where it’s possible to feel the heat of someone’s heart as it breaks.
Erin let go first, pulling back to give Julie a kiss on the forehead, and then stepped back completely. “I’ll See you ‘round, Bee,” she said and, not waiting for a reply, threw her backpack onto the passenger seat and started the engine. It growled for a minute, threatened to choke, and with a rattle rolled to life. She threw it in reverse and, without looking back at the house, pulled away into the night.
——-
Part 3 coming soon
