Ice Fall

Frozen black claws bulge out of my hands, right where my fingers ought to be. I don’t mind the look of them. Waxy, gnarled digits. Nerves deader than Elvis. I’m too damn tired to flex the muscles, but not so far gone that I believe it’d make a difference.

My worry is that my feet have gone the way of my hands. That when I get my second wind and decide to move my ass, my boots won’t cooperate. The cold has cut too deep.

The poor dead bastard next to me isn’t worried about anything. His hands are frostbitten like mine, but the back of his neck is bone white. Clumps of ginger hair stick out from underneath his stocking cap. An XXL tag clings to his parka by two frosty threads, flapping in the wind.

He’s the fattest mummy I ever had the rotten luck of meeting. And I mean that with all due respect to his family.

_________________

His pop got in touch with me last Christmas. Mr. James Collins, no different from any other client. They all have dead sons, dead husbands, dead friends. Same problems and same tears.

Parents are usually the worst.

“On your website,” James said, “I notice that you offer several different options for…you know.”

“Burial,” I said.

“Indeed. But none of them include actual retrieval of…” James paused and coughed, the world’s saddest frog lodged in his windpipe.

“Bodies,” I said.

“Yes,” he sniffled.

On the television, dusky women shook across the stage to some bouncy Indian hit, egged on by the show’s greasy host. I leaned forward and cranked down the volume.

“James, I understand what you’re going through. The pain and suffering. Your son is dead, died too young, died senselessly. You think it’ll get better if you could see him just one more time, give him a proper burial, all that jazz. But I’m here to tell you, that even if it would help you come to terms, it’s impossible.”

“Impossible how?” James said.

“Because there’s no such thing as a proper burial for folks who die on Mount Everest.”

“But I’m not asking you to bury Patrick on Mount Everest,” James said. “I’m wondering if it’s possible to bring him down, so we can bury him here. In Dublin.”

“James, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. It can’t be done.”

“Why not?”

I sighed and clicked the television off. Those gyrating hips were a distraction. “Everest has a powerful grip. She draws people in, and once she’s got them, she’s hard pressed to let them go.”

“Please, Mr. Robicheaux,” James said, “spare me your gilded shit. Straight answers only.”

I sucked down a few inches of beer from my Nalgene bottle, and burped into the phone. “OK, pop quiz. You ever been on Everest, Jim?”

“Certainly not.”

“Are you aware of the conditions up there?”

“To a point, yes.”

“It’s a rough place. Rough like you wouldn’t believe. Pretty sure you don’t have any 8,000 meter peaks in Dublin, but if you did, you’d understand where I’m coming from. It’s hard enough for me to hike to base camp, scale the icefall, and nose around every nook and cranny looking for a stiff. Ever played hide-and-go-seek when it’s forty below, Jim? It’s no picnic. And all the while, I gotta worry that the altitude is gonna pop my brain or fill my lungs up with blood. That’s bad business. The only thing that could make it worse is having to haul an extra two hundred pounds back with me. That’s suicide.”

“Excuse me if I’ve misunderstood,” James said, “but your website states that you are well suited to this business, due to a birth defect in your lungs.”

“I prefer to call it a birth benefit.”

“Regardless, an aberration in your lungs that allows you to process oxygen at an optimal rate, far superior to most climbers who attempt the summit.”

For the record, this is not a complete myth. I have always suspected that my lungs were above average. Proof positive: my record-breaking win in the 100 meter dash at the St. Tammany Parish Track Meet of 1993.

“And you have an able team of Sherpas,” he continued.

“The best in the business,” I lied. “But nobody on my team is willing to risk their life to bring down Patrick’s body.”

“I see.”

“I could have lungs that stretch to my toes, Jim. I could have a lifetime supply of oxygen. It would still be too much of a risk.”

“Understandable.”

“I didn’t get into this business to die,” I said.

“Would you consider extricating Patrick if I quadrupled your fee?”

And so I tumbled down the rabbit hole, little dollar signs dancing in my vision, each one sexier than those Indian girls could ever hope to be.

_________________

“Tomorrow summit? No,” Subba said. I took a long drag off the joint, hacked out a plume of smoke, and shook my head. Eau de cannabis filled our tent like a balloon.

“Tomorrow summit yes,” I told Subba. “It’s almost September. We don’t have a choice. Con-tract. Dead-line. Mon-ey. Un-der-stand?”

He scowled and fiddled with the camp stove.

“Bad weather,” he said.

“It’ll clear up. Even if it doesn’t, we’ve seen worse. Am I right?”

Subba remained silent.

“You’ll feel better after dinner. And you’ll feel fucking spectacular after we’ve finished this, and you get paid. I told you your cut, right?”

Subba smiled. A brilliant gold tooth peeked out between his brown lips. “Three thousand,” he said.

Chicken feed compared to my share, but more than enough for a Sherpa.

“Damn right. So let’s celebrate with some shitty bacon.” I tore into a package of dehydrated breakfast and dumped it in the skillet. Realistically, nothing can make a freeze-dried bacon and egg meal appetizing, but at least the weed makes you hungry.

We’d been hunkered down just below the South Col for two days, and we weren’t hungry at all. High temperatures crested at twenty below zero, gale force winds buffeted our tent like a kite, and our bodies were eating themselves from the inside out.

“That’s Everest, baby,” my old girlfriend told me the first time I went for the summit. I’d been complaining about something, everything: the ache in my gut, the dizziness in my head, my shortness of breath. She just laughed and tossed those seaweed-green dreadlocks over her shoulder. A real veteran. Trust fund mountaineer.

With all the bitching I did that trip, it’s no surprise she left me. I’d followed her like a dumb puppy from New Orleans to the Himalayas, blinded by her hippie platitudes, perfect ass, and endless supply of cash. She ditched me in Kathmandu, with a Dear John note on the door knob, no plane ticket, and a nasty infestation of crabs.

I really shouldn’t complain. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably be back in the States, crunching numbers in a cubicle.

_________________

My website says I’m a “purveyor of last rites.” Fellow climbers call me “the mountain mortician.”

Everest is full of corpses. Loads of them are out in the open, left to freeze-dry where they dropped, right along the main routes. Poor bastards who laid down, too beat to go any further, went to sleep, and never woke up.

I take care of the ones I’m paid for, give them some posthumous dignity. Cover them with flags, throw in a few mementos, snap a photograph for the client.

If I’m not mistaken, my website also claims that I say a Buddhist prayer over the deceased. Or that I will read any eulogy requested by the decedent’s family.

What the families don’t know can’t hurt them.

Folks sometimes request that I remove the body from public view. This means three things: dragging it from its resting place, pitching it off the side of some cliff, and a whopping increase in my rates.

At this altitude, it takes every ounce of energy just to keep your own self moving. Don’t get me started about the manpower it takes to heft a mummy.

Patrick Collins is not your average mummy. The photograph James sent me showed a beefy, carrot-top kid. I counted six dimples beneath his scraggly beard. The Jolly Red Giant. A heavyweight like that has no business climbing this mountain.

But according to my contacts, climb it he did. All the way to the fucking summit.

Nobody saw his descent, and nobody saw him die. Air up here is sparse, enough to discombobulate even the best climber. Patrick Collins was not the best. Who knows what killed him.

Subba and I wrenched ourselves from our sleeping bags at 11 PM, gasping for breath, a day’s worth of brutal climbing on the horizon. As I strapped on my crampons and adjusted my headlamp, I didn’t care how Patrick bit the dust.

I just hoped he bit it nearby.

_________________

It’s impossibly cold up here, but there’s a soothing warmth spreading through my shoulders, tugging me down toward the snow. My eyelids are filling up with lead. The straps on my oxygen mask are tight, cutting off the blood flow to my brain. Better take the whole thing off.

Hypothermia is a vicious cunt.

It took hours to find Patrick. Most of the day. I don’t recall exactly when Subba ditched me; just that he shouted something about brewing a fresh pot of tea, clapped me on the back, and scurried off in the direction of our camp.

So now it’s just me, the mummy, and the setting sun. I fumble around my pockets and dislodge my flask, unscrewing the metal cap with my teeth.

“Sláinte, you fat fuck,” I croak, waving my flask at the mummy. “I hope you’re happy now.”

Cheap whiskey scours my throat. I chuck the empty flask; it lands on a patch of ice and slides down the ridge.

And just keeps sliding.

Maybe I was going about this the wrong way.

I look down at the mummy and nudge him with my blackened fingers. It took me forty minutes to drag him ten steps, before I gave up and sat down to die myself.

Patrick is fat. He’s heavy. He’s wide. And he’s dead.

If his face hits a rock on the way down, he won’t care.

I crawl sideways and lurch around until I’m sitting square on Patrick’s back. His weather-beaten parka is dangerously slick, so I lean down and slide my arms underneath it, hugging his dried husk as close to me as I can. Tufts of his brittle hair tickle my forehead.

“Tell you what, Patrick,” I say. “You get us out of this, and I’ll give you my share. Every penny. Honest Injun.”

Shadows are creeping out around us. My eardrums are full of nervous, pounding blood.

I dig my crampons into the snow pack and push off.

The zipper of Patrick’s parka squeals as it tears a swath through the icy slope. My peripheral vision is a whirl of gray and white. I raise my face from my companion’s neck, squinting my eyes against the headwind. Himalayas dance and bob in the distance, receding into the growing dark.

We sled faster and faster, me and my mummy. Each time we dodge a boulder or skirt a drop off, it’s pure coincidence.

A younger version of me, one who’d breathed nothing but that Louisiana milkshake air and never been higher than Monkey Hill, would expect my luck to hold.

I suspect otherwise. I’ve spent too much time on this mountain.

I still have no clue what got Patrick in the end. But as I’m ripping down the south face, riding his corpse like a boogie board, I have an idea what’ll get me.