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

When she removed her wig, Junk saw the woman was some sort of Indian. She was also lovely. Junk wrote to his friend Simon Phelps, “I asked her very slowly what her name was. She quickly responded, in perfect English, that her name was River Leaf. I thought she didn’t speak English. She explained that ‘Fontana is an imbecile. I’ve seen him trip over a fire hydrant, stand up, and trip over it again. He thinks I don’t speak English because he never speaks to me. Nor does he care.” Before it was time to retire for the night, Junk was able to get out of her that she was a member of the Great Sioux Nation. As the Nation’s territories disappeared in Minnesota, taken piece by piece by the “Great Father” (the United States government), her mother had asked the young girl to leave and try to make a life for herself in the white man’s world. She would have more luck there. Needless to say, she did not. She got Nick Fontana. Years of suffering at the hands of belligerent providence had made this young woman as pliant as a broken American warmblood.

Junk made River Leaf a cup of tea and prepared a bed for her. “That night, I sat in a chair across the room from her bed and watched her as she laid there, her back to me. She was probably awake and aware of my staring eyes. I was not watching her in any untoward way. I was actually looking at her in complete despair. Was I actually going to ask her what I needed to ask her? Was I really so desperate to go through with this foolishness that I would invite this fainting flower into the mouth of Certain Death? I could not ignore the dying request of a friend and abandon my charge, but it was also mandatory I bring my personal war with Hoyt to a conclusion. So what else could I do? The sadness and shame were overpowering.”

She was indeed awake and she turned over and asked what he wanted. If it was to make love, fine. Just be quiet about it. In the moment, Junk came up with a compromise. He asked her to come with him on the journey, but she could wait safely in Darjeeling until he returned from Fumu. Again, her response was “fine.”

Sitting on the Chappaquiddick shore that night was also Cranston Fenimore, a law student from Chicago. Fenimore was only twenty-five years old. By far, and to this day, he is the youngest man to ever try for the summit of Fumu. Educated overseas at Eton, Fenimore had packed a lot of climbing into those twenty-five years, three times climbing Mount McKinley before even graduating from university. The summit was reached on all three climbs. Fenimore had signed up for the army in 1940 but could not join because a serious case of tinnitus made him almost deaf in his right ear. The constant ringing impaired not only his hearing but his balance. He was fervent in his patriotism and wanted desperately to be enlisted when the inevitable call would come to ship off to Germany or Japan. But the army wanted nothing to do with him. Fenimore would have to get his excitement from climbing.

Junk had actually climbed with Fenimore onan earlier expedition in Europe. He had been impressed with the young man’s abilities. When Junk made the offer to Fenimore to go off to Fumu, it was a godsend for the dejected youth. Fenimore had no wife or children yet, and he been struggling through law school at the University of Chicago. He was a strong student, but a distracted one. Upon receiving the call from Junk, Fenimore wrote to the dean, withdrew from his classes, declared “maintenance of status” until his return, and then left Chicago. His parents were too busy in their own social affairs to care about the comings and goings of their now-grown middle son of three, and so he did not even tell them he was leaving for Nepal.

The last person waiting on the beach that night was none other than Patrick McGee. The bear of a man was quieter than usual. He was actually petrified. Junk had approached McGee before any of the other team members, almost right away after Hoyt’s proposition. Over draughts at Beacon Hill Tavern, Junk said, “I need people I can trust in a tight situation even more than I need people who can climb.” McGee was shocked by the request. He explained he was in no kind of shape to be climbing anything. Junk responded that McGee could head off to Blue Hills Reservation every day for the subsequent week and just try to run up the mountains. It would hurt, but it was possible to get physically ready in seven days (of course it was not). In the debate between the two old friends it also came out that, to McGee’s embarrassment, he was deathly afraid of heights. He had lived his whole life on the city streets. Boston, Providence, and occasionally New York. He explained to Junk that the highest he had ever been was Commonwealth Avenue out past Brookline. They were like brothers, but McGee pleaded with Junk not to ask for this favor. He was not a mountain climber. Junk put his hands on the giant shoulders of his oldest friend who was visibly sweating and said, “There are people out there who beat their children yet they call themselves ‘parents.’ There are cretins with crooked writing and sparse vocabulary who call themselves ‘writers.’ So why can’t you call yourself a mountain climber?”

McGee mulled this over, and then repeated slowly and quietly, “I’m afraid of heights.”

Junk responded, “I swear you’ll be safe. I won’t let anything happen to you. Let me speak a language you understand; I will bet you one million dollars