Phases of Gravity (17 page)

Two feet in front of Baedecker's eyes, a weed grew out of a narrow fissure in the bridge surface. He could not reach it. It would not hold him if he did. He felt the saving pressure on his torn hands and arms lessening. His shoulders ached and he knew that it was only minutes, perhaps seconds, until his trembling upper arms gave way and he would slide backward with a terrible rasping of palms and forearms across the burning concrete.

Then, dreaming but rising from his dream like a diver rising from depths, Baedecker became aware of the wind rising and the tent flapping and of the smell of rain approaching, but he could also clearly hear—as he had heard forty-five years before—the steady throb of the approaching outboard motor, falling into silence now, and then the touch of strong hands on his side and the calm sound of his father's voice. "Let go, Richard. Jump. It's all right. I've got you. Let go, Richard."

Thunder was rumbling. A cold wind blew in when the tent flap was parted. Maggie Brown slid in, settled her foam pad and sleeping bag next to his.

"What?" said Baedecker. His palms and arms were sore.

"Tommy wanted to trade places," whispered Maggie. "I think he wants to do some solitary drinking. I said okay. Shhh." Maggie touched her finger to his lips. The darkness in the tent was broken by sudden, brilliant flashes of lightning, followed scant seconds later by thunder so loud that it seemed to Baedecker that freight trains were rumbling across the high tundra toward them. The next explosion of light showed Maggie slipping out of her shorts, tugging them over her hips and down. Her underpants were small and white.

"Storm's here," said Baedecker, blinking away afterimages of the lightning flash that had illuminated Maggie removing her shirt. Her breasts had looked pale and heavy in the brief, stroboscopic flash.

"Shhh," said Maggie and slid against him in the darkness. He had fallen asleep wearing only his jockey shorts and a soft flannel shirt. Her fingers unbuttoned the shirt in the darkness, pulled it off. He was rolling next to her on the soft jumble of sleeping bags, his arms enfolding her, when

her hand slid under the elastic waistband of his shorts. "Shhh," she whispered and pulled off his underpants, using her right hand to free him. "Shhh."

The lightning illuminated their lovemaking in images of frozen light. The thunder drowned all sound except heartbeats and whispered entreaties. At one point Baedecker looked up at Maggie as she straddled him, their arms extended like dancers', fingers intertwined, the nylon of the tent bright behind her as lightning flash followed lightning flash and the waves of thunder rolled through them and across them. A second later, rocked tight in her arms, resisting the explosion of his own orgasm, he was sure he heard her whisper above the cascade of external sound, "Yes, Richard, let go. I've got you. Let go."

Together, still moving slightly, they rolled over in the tangle of sleeping bags and foam pads, and listened as the wind rose to terrible heights, the tent strained and flapped wildly against its restraints, and the lightning flash and thunder crash were no longer separated by so much as a second. Together they huddled against the storm.

"COME ON, GODDAMN YOU GODS, LET'S SEE YOU DO YOUR WORST! COME ON, YOU COWARDS!" The scream came from just outside the tent and was followed by a blast of thunder.

"Good God," whispered Maggie. "What is that?"

"COME ON, LET'S HAVE A GODDAMN GOD OLYMPICS. SHOW YOUR STUFF. YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! SHOW US, YOU SHITS!" This time the scream was so raw and shrill that it barely sounded human. The last words were followed by a lightning flash and a sound so great that it seemed the sky's fabric was being torn by giant hands. Baedecker tugged on his shorts and stuck his head out of the tent flap. A second later Maggie joined him, pulling on Baedecker's flannel shirt. It was not raining yet, but both of them had to squint against dust and gravel thrown up by the gale-force winds.

Tommy Gavin Jr. was standing on the boulder between the tents. He was naked, legs apart for balance against the wind, arms raised, head thrown back. In one hand he was clutching an almost-empty bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey. In the other he held a three-foot section of aluminum tent pole. The metal glowed blue. Behind the boy Baedecker could see lightning coursing through the belly of thunderclouds looming darker and closer than the mountain peaks illuminated by each flash.

"Tommy!" Gavin yelled. He and Deedee had thrust their heads and shoulders from their writhing tent. "Get down here!" The words were whipped away by the wind.

"COME ON, GODS, SHOW ME SOMETHING!" screamed Tommy. "YOUR TURN, ZEUS. DO IT!" He held the tent pole high.

A blue-white bolt of lightning seemed to leap upward from a nearby summit. Baedecker and Maggie flinched as the shell fire of thunder rolled over them. A few feet away, the Gavins' tent collapsed in the rising wind.

"THAT'S A SIX POINT EIGHT," screamed Tommy as he held up an imaginary scorecard. He had dropped the bottle, but the tent pole still waved. Gavin was struggling to free himself from the collapsed tent, but the fabric was wrapped around him like an orange shroud.

"OKAY, SATAN, SHOW YOUR STUFF," shouted Tommy, laughing hysterically. "LET'S SEE IF YOU'RE AS GOOD AS THE OLD MAN SAYS." He pirouetted, almost fell, and caught

his balance five feet above them on the lip of the boulder. Baedecker saw that the boy had an erection. Maggie yelled something in Baedecker's ear, but the words were lost in thunder.

The two forks of lightning seemed to strike simultaneously, one on either side of the camp. Baedecker was blinded for several seconds during which he found himself incongruously reminded of electric trains he had owned as a boy. The ozone, he thought. When he could see again, it was to watch Tommy leaping and laughing atop the boulder, his hair whipping in the still-rising gale. "NINE POINT FIVE!" screamed the boy. "FUCKING AYE!"

"Get your ass down here," yelled Gavin. He was out of the tent and reaching, his hands inches short of Tommy's bare ankle. The boy danced backward on the boulder.

"GOTTA GIVE JESUS HIS TURN," cried Tommy. "GOTTA GIVE THE MAN A TRY. SEE WHAT SHIT HE CAN THROW. SEE IF HE'S STILL AROUND."

Gavin ran around to the low end of the rock and grabbed for handholds. Lightning rippled through a dark billow of cloud low above, exploded outward, and struck the summit of Uncompahgre Peak a mile to the east.

"FIVE POINT FIVE!" screamed Tommy. "BIG FUCKING DEAL."

Gavin slipped on the rock, slid back, began climbing again. Tommy danced back to the highest corner of the boulder. "ONE MORE!" he yelled over the wind. Baedecker could hear and smell the rain approaching now, dragging over the tundra like a heavy curtain. "YAHWEH!" screamed Tommy. "COME ON! LAST CHANCE TO GET IN THE GAME IF YOU'RE STILL AROUND, YAHWEH, YOU OLD FART, LAST CHANCE TO SCORE IN THE . . ."

It all happened simultaneously. The tent pole in the boy's upraised hand glowed as bright as a neon sign, Tommy's hair rose from his head and writhed like a nest of snakes, and then the dark form of Gavin merged with boy and the two tumbled off the boulder just as the world exploded in light and noise and a great implosion pressed Baedecker into the ground and submerged his senses in pulses of pure energy.

Whether the lightning struck the boulder or not, Baedecker was never to know. There was no mark on the rock in the morning. When he could hear and see again, Baedecker realized that he had shielded Maggie with his body at the same instant she had attempted to do the same to him. They sat up together and looked around. It was pouring rain now. Only Baedecker's tent had withstood the storm. Tom Gavin was on his hands and knees, head down, panting, face pale in the retreating flashes of light. Tommy was shivering and curled tightly into a fetal position on the wet ground. His hands were clasped together tightly over his eyes and he was sobbing. It was Deedee who crouched above him, half-holding him, half-shielding him from the darkened skies. Her T-shirt was plastered against her back so that each vertebra showed. Her face was upraised and in the final flashes of lightning before the storm disappeared to the east, Baedecker saw the exultation there. And the defiance.

Maggie leaned toward Baedecker until the wet tangle of her hair touched his cheek. "Ten point oh," she said softly and kissed him.

The rain fell the rest of the night.

They reached the south ridge shortly before sunrise.

"This is odd," said Maggie. Baedecker nodded and they continued to climb, staying ten yards behind Gavin. Gavin had been packed and moving before five A.M., long before the first, gray light of morning had penetrated the drizzle. He had said only, "I came to climb the mountain. I'm going to do it." Neither Maggie nor Baedecker had understood, but they had come along. Baedecker could see their two tents far below, still in the shadow of Uncompahgre. They had been able to repitch Gavin's tent in the night, but Tommy's had been a total loss with shreds of nylon strewn far over the tundra. When Gavin and Baedecker had gone out in the dark to bring back the boy's sleeping bag and clothing, they had discovered two more whiskey bottles in the

debris of the tent. It was Deedee who mentioned that they had come from the bar that the Gavins kept stocked for company.

Now Gavin paused on the ridge as they caught up to him. They were well above twelve thousand feet. They had climbed directly east to the ridgeline, ignoring the easier approach from the south. Baedecker's heart was pounding and he was exhausted, but it was an exhaustion that he could deal with and still function adequately. Next to him, Maggie was flushed and breathing hard from the exertion. Baedecker touched her hand and she smiled.

"Somebody," said Gavin and pointed far up the ridge to where someone was struggling on a steep section of trail.

"It's Lude," said Baedecker. He could see the man slip, fall, and struggle to his feet again. "He still has the hang glider."

Gavin shook his head. "Why would anyone kill themselves to do something as useless as that?"

"How I yearn to throw myself into endless space," said Maggie, "and float above the awful abyss."

Both Baedecker and Gavin turned to stare at her.

"Goethe," she said as if in self-defense.

Gavin nodded, adjusted his climbing pack, and moved on up the trail. Baedecker grinned at her. "Can't memorize the first stanza of Thanatopsis, eh?" he said.

Maggie shrugged and grinned back. Together they moved up the trail toward the beckoning band of sunlight.

They found the tattered remains of the small backpack tent near the thirteen-thousand-foot level. A hundred yards farther on they found the girl named Maria. She was huddled against a rock, her hands clasped between her clenched knees, and, despite the direct sunlight now bathing them all in gold, she was shivering violently. She did not stop shaking even after Maggie wrapped her in a goosedown coat and sat hugging her for several minutes.

"St . . . st . . . storm t . . . tore the t . . . tent all to shit," she managed, the words coming through clenched and chattering teeth. "Got all . . . w . . . w . . . wet."

"It's okay," said Maggie.

"G . . . got . . . t . . . to get up the h . . . hill."

"Not today, young lady," said Gavin. He was rubbing the girl's hands. Baedecker noticed that the girl's lips were gray, her fingers white at the tips. "Hypothermia," said Gavin. "You've got to get down the hill as soon as possible."

"Tell L . . . L . . . Lude I'm s . . . sorry," she said and began crying. Her sobs were punctuated with fits of shivering.

"I'll go down with you," said Maggie. "We have hot coffee and soup down below." The two women stood, the smaller one still trembling uncontrollably.

"I'll go down with you," said Baedecker.

"No!" Maggie's voice was firm. Baedecker looked at her in surprise. "I think you should go on," she said. "I think you both should go up." Her eyes were sending Baedecker a message, but he was not sure what it was.

"You're positive?" he asked.

"Positive," she said. "You have to go, Richard."

Baedecker nodded and had turned to follow Gavin when Maria called out. "Wait!" Still shaking, she fumbled in her pack and came out with a rectangular plastic case. She handed it to Baedecker. "Lude for . . . forgot I was carrying it. He's g . . . got to have it."

Baedecker opened the case just as Gavin walked back to join him. Inside the carrying case, set into niches in foam, were two disposable syringes and two bottles of clear liquid.

"No," said Gavin. "We're not carrying that to him."

Maria looked uncomprehendingly at them. "You've g . . . g . . . got to," she said. "He'll n . . . need it. He forgot yesterday."

"No," said Gavin.

"We'll get it to him," said Baedecker and put the case in the pocket of his flight jacket. He did not flinch when Gavin wheeled to confront him. "It's insulin," said Baedecker. He touched Maggie's hand again and moved ahead of Gavin up the narrowing ridge.

Lude had made it to within fifteen hundred feet of the summit before collapsing. They found him curled under the heavy pack with the long, sailcloth-covered poles across his shoulder. His eyes were open, but his face was parchment white and he was breathing in short, shallow gasps.

Baedecker and Gavin helped him out from under the unassembled hang glider, and the three sat on a large rock next to a two-thousand-foot drop to the high meadow below. The shadow of Uncompahgre reached well more than a mile now, touching the steep flanks of the Matterhorn. High peaks and snow-dappled plateaus were visible as far as Baedecker could see. He looked back down the ridge and picked out Maggie's red shirt. The two women were moving slowly but separately as they picked their way down the south ridge.

"Thanks, man," said Lude, handing the canteen back to Gavin. "I needed some of that. Ran out of water last night before the storm hit."

Baedecker gave him the syringe case.

The little man shook his head and ran a shaking hand through his beard. "Hey, yeah, thanks," he said softly. "Stupid. Forgot Maria had that stuff. And all that crap I ate yesterday."

Baedecker looked away as the injection was administered. Gavin glanced at his watch and said, "Eight forty-three. Why don't I go on up? You can help our friend down, Dick, and I'll catch up to you."