Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain, Jonathan Bloom [best ebook reader TXT] 📗

and healthy enough to speak, the two men spoke. They spoke like friends. One asked the other how he would return to the States.

“I am not sure. You?”

“Broke.”

This got the two onto the topic of money. Hoyt confessed in a rather relaxed fashion that he had cheated Junk out of the bet at the Presidentials and that he would reimburse him as soon as they reached home. “And should I not make it home alive, there is another source of money for you, Aaron…if I can call you Aaron.”

“Sure.” Junk replied.

“The cave under the Qila Pass you so sneakily walled up.” Hoyt began.

“The cave I-? Oh right. Sorry about that. No hard feelings, pally!”

Hoyt winced slightly. “No. Not at all, I suppose. Anyway, you may want to take that tunnel back.”

“Why?” Junk inquired. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

“Everything, you crafty old wolf. Everything.”

Hoyt told Junk of the gold lining the walls of the ancient lava tube, not to mention the ease with which a team of explorers can walk along its pahoehoe floor. “Much easier than climbing over the pass. Just don’t bring any pack animals” Hoyt added.

Junk was in awe. What information for his mortal enemy to share! Junk’s financial worries were over and knowledge of this made Junk walk a little easier, a little more upright despite the damages Fumu had inflicted. However, Junk never said “Thank you” to Hoyt. That may have been too difficult to do. But we can assume both men had an understanding of what had just passed. They were clearly willing to act in a kind manner towards one another at this point, but kind words would be another thing entirely in this, the most masculine of realms. Should the world ever bring these two to the point of kissing for some preposterous, unimaginable reason, they would still be calling each other ghastly names when coming up for air. Such is the way of Man in our times.

The sun was nearly going down over Asha’s shoulder. The view must have been lovely; to one side of them, a tall, vertical cliff that happened not to collapse with the rest of the maw and now offered a sweeping vista of a world bathed in orange light. On the other side of them, the setting sun and a long blue shadows cast by distant peaks. The men were getting much closer to Camp Three where a good dinner and long sleep awaited them. They could nurse their ailments for a time and then, perhaps as soon as noon tomorrow, they could be at base camp.

Now was Junk’s turn at kindness. Hoyt had been speaking about the challenges facing him on the voyage home. “Possibly I am not returning to the United States at all. If I do not have this one gentleman with me when I get to Calcutta, I will be killed by a group of mercenaries in the employ of the Japanese. And that one gentleman is dead. My selfishness allowed him to die. And what is the cosmic recompense for my behavior? I will never make it home to set things right with my wife.”

Junk replied, “I may have your lift home.” He went on to explain that the pirate Gary Cooper would be waiting for them at the Calcutta train station on November 1st. “That whack job will definitely take on more passengers if we drop a pile of gold in his mitts and give him assurance there’s more where that came from.”

What once had been a competition of escalating brutality between Hoyt and Junk was now becoming quite the opposite. Good deeds were spiraling out of control. An unspoken challenge was in the works. Outdo the kindness of the other man! Who would ultimately check mate the other and perform the ultimate act of kindness? And how wonderful are things when we are asking ourselves such questions?

The thing about descending a mountain is that threats to life and limb are not suspended. The summit does not herald the end of trouble. The couloirs, cornices, and cliffs do not “shut off” like carnival rides at midnight. If anything, the environment has become even more treacherous because the men are more physically spent than they were on the way up and also less focused on the task at hand. There is a final problem making descent hard. As the author Laurence Gonzales so keenly pointed out in the field of aviation, landing an airplane is harder than taking off because “takeoff is optional. Landing is mandatory.” A man climbing a mountain may change his mind. If things become too daunting, he can make the rational (if not cowardly) decision to back out. But another man at the summit has no such luxury. He simply must descend.

At roughly three o’clock in the afternoon, not more than one hundred yards from Hoyt’s Camp Three, Junk took a bad step. The air was cooling as evening approached, turning the water on the rocks into a sheen of veer glass. Junk’s left foot did not come down properly, the ankle bending outward. His legs quickly split from one another until his groin touched rock. He then began an uncontrolled slide sideways. He was wearing no crampons and his axe was tied to his rucksack because there had been no deep ice or snow on their chosen route to camp. But the moment Junk had slipped down off their route the world became nothing but ice and snow. His glissade sent him at top speed toward the edge of Rauff’s Maw. True, the sides of Rauff’s maw were now mostly gentle slopes of ice chunks since the collapse one week earlier, but Junk had chosen an unfortunate spot to slip where the maw had maintained its awful integrity. One moment he was barreling down a short slope and then the next he was going over the edge of a three hundred foot drop into