"What happened to Russ?"
"He dropped out at that first switchback after you went into warp drive. Can you get my water out?" Karen presented the side of her pack to him and Brian pulled her bottle out of its mesh pocket and handed it to her. She unscrewed the lid and raised the bottle to her lips. Brian watched her drink. The long, clean line of her throat hypnotized him. Her chin bobbed up and down as she swallowed, and the muscles in her throat worked under the smooth, tanned skin shining with the gloss of perspiration. A rivulet of water escaped her mouth and trickled down a mesmerizing path along her pulsing neck, where it disappeared under the collar of her flannel shirt. Brian caught himself wanting to lean forward to see just where it went.
She lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Thanks," she exhaled. She held out her bottle. "Want some?"
Brian took the bottle and lifted it to his own mouth. Karen unfastened her waist belt and began to shed her fleece pants. Brian paused with the bottle raised. She was wearing her denim cut-offs underneath. Leaning against a rock, she quickly peeled the long pants down, exposing her brown legs, and worked the cuffs past her boots, then she deftly folded the pants into thirds. Brian watched her face as he began to drink. It was flushed from exertion, and perspiration curled a few short tendrils of hair that had worked themselves free of her braid. The scar on her temple had pumped itself to a deep red, giving her face a rakish quality that made her look like a princess warrior fresh from the heat of battle.
Brian took two long swallows of water and screwed the lid back on. Karen turned and he slipped the bottle back into its pocket. She held out the fleece pants.
"Could you stick these under a strap on my pack somewhere?" she asked. He did so. She turned back and eyed him for a moment, her expression unreadable, then one of her eyebrows arched.
"Are you just going to stand there?" she asked. "I don't want to waste this head of steam I've got going."
Brian couldn't suppress a broad grin. "That would be bad, wouldn't it? You want to take the lead?"
"You think you can keep up?"
"I'm beginning to wonder," he admitted.
Karen started up the trail again and Brian fell in behind her. He quickly decided he wouldn't have any trouble matching her pace. The consequence for dropping behind would mean losing the opportunity to watch her legs as she moved up the trail.
She set a steady pace that, while not quite as demanding as before their stop, discouraged too much conversation, which was fine with Brian. Hiking at 13,000 feet above sea level was tough enough. By now they were well above the peaks of Mt. Chamberlain and Hitchcock and were drawing even with the tip of Mt. Newcomb. They soon reached Trail Crest and the junction with the trail from Whitney Portal on the east side of the divide and decided to stop there to eat. They found a truck-sized boulder to sit on that over-looked the giant ladder of switchbacks they had just completed and dug into their packs.
"Do you feel like waiting here for everybody?" Brian asked.
"Well . . . ", Karen leaned out to look between her boots and study the trail below, then she pointed at two tiny forms moving slowly up the thread-like path. "There's Jeff and Carla. It's going to be a couple hours before they get up here. Looks like they're doing okay though. I don't see Russ anywhere."
"He must be on the other end of one of those switchbacks down there where we can't see. How do you think he's going to handle being dropped on the trail that way?"
"Mmm," Karen waited to swallow a bite of trail mix before answering. "I'm not sure. If he's smart, he'll suck it up and live with it. He can't always be first." "Is that what he's used to?"
"Pretty much. Not that he hasn't earned most of it though. He really does have a lot going for him. He's not usually the jerk he's been acting like."
"So do you want to wait until he gets here?"
She appeared to think about it for a moment. "Naw. Let's keep going to the top. If he has any attitude left by the time he gets here, I don't want to deal with it."
They finished their lunch break and shouldered their packs again for the last two miles of trail. The grade had lessened. Soon the path reached a point where a few steps off the trail presented a view of the Owens Valley some ten thousand feet. The "V" of the canyon that drained Whitney's east face framed much of the view. The town of Lone Pine was just a smudge of green on the dry valley floor. Brian followed Karen along the trail, watching in turn the way the muscles in her calves rolled under the skin and the expanding view to the west as the trail took them higher. He decided he liked the view ahead of him better. The time seemed to fly by for Brian and he wanted it to last forever.
They finally reached the last few hundred feet of switchback trail that would take them to the top. They lost the trail for a while as they slogged through a large patch of old snow covering the slope like a dingy blanket. The small stone shelter on the peak slowly came into view, seeming to rise out of the slabs of granite that formed the mountain top.
"There's so much room!" Karen said. "I thought we might have to watch our step or we'd fall off."
"Wait until you get out to the edge," Brian told her. "It's twenty-five hundred feet straight down to Iceberg Lake on the east side." He glanced about. "Looks like we're the only ones here. Never had that happen before."
They went to the small building. It almost seemed like an extension of the peak itself; the native stone from which the tiny structure was constructed blended into its setting perfectly. Its peaked roof was crowned by a short lightning rod.
"Can we sleep in here?" Karen asked. "We won't have to set up the tents."
"You might not want to," Brian told her as she went to the doorway and peered in. He knew what she would find.
"There's a big block of ice on the floor!" she cried.
"Uh-huh. I don't think it ever melts away completely. It's in the shade all day. There used to be a door that kept the snow out but somebody burned it for a campfire or something. Now you have the world's smallest glacier."
"We could crowd into the other half," Karen said. "There's no ice on that side."
"It's your choice. A word of experienced advice: by morning these rock walls will be radiating cold like a refrigerator. Tents will be warmer unless you get a windstorm, then you'd be better off in here."
"Let's see, refrigerator or windstorm, such a choice. I'll make an executive decision and opt for the tents. But first I want to check out the view."
Leaving their packs leaning against the little building's stone wall, they made their way over the granite puzzle pieces to the very edge of the peak's east face. Brian watched Karen carefully as she reached the lip; The sweeping vista affected people in different ways and he was curious to see her reaction.
"Oh," she breathed, her voice barely audible. She sank into a cross-legged seat on the rock to gaze out over the view. Brian dropped down beside her and alternated his attention between the panorama below and Karen's profile, until his eyes chose to remain on the changing expressions of the girl's face. He saw joy, which gave way to what he thought might be pain and doubt. Finally she closed her eyes, and Brian watched as her face grew serene. After a few long moments, she opened her eyes again and the joy he saw at first had returned. He felt as if he had witnessed something almost holy, and out of respect he turned his own eyes away.
Neither of them spoke, until Karen finally sighed. "I've waited a long time for this," she said. Her mouth moved as if she was about to say something else, then she paused. At last she stood up. "Well, we're burning daylight," she said. "Let's get those tents up."
Brian already knew where two side-by-side rock slabs, each big enough to accommodate a two man tent, could be found. He and Karen quickly erected the nylon shelters and anchored them with rocks inside since there was no way to stake them down.
"That ought to do it," Brian said when they were finished. "We should keep an eye on them though. There are marmots up here that will chew into a tent or pack to get at anything that smells good."
"So, are you going to head back down now?" Karen asked.
"I'll wait until Russ shows up. I don't want to leave you alone, but I'm not sticking around too long once he's here." Since arriving on the summit, Brian had been able to ignore a gloom he could feel building inside of him, but now there was no pushing it aside. And true to form, he could feel a reticence and the desire to flee growing as well. He shoved his fears down deep somewhere and blurted out, "Could I ask you something?"
"Yeah, sure."
He sat down on the edge of a thick sheet of rock and Karen took a seat next to him.
"What happened last night?" he began. "What made Russ want to come over and beat the crap out of me?"
She sighed. "He was mad because he knew I was with you and he didn't like it. It just dredged up some old things that needed to be talked over. That's one thing I like about the mountains: sometimes they give you a new perspective on things. It's okay now. We got it all worked out."
"If it's worked out, why was he so mad at me?"
"I guess he didn't like the way it worked out."
"Oh." He waited for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he said, "But everything is all right now?"
"I hope so. I'll have to wait and see. So--" her tone brightened, "--you know a lot more about me than I know about you. You're a waiter and you're working on an MFA in writing. What kind of writing do you want to do?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I want to be a novelist and sometimes I want to be a screenwriter."
"Have you gotten anything published yet?"
"Well, no, but I had a screenplay optioned by Disney."
"Really!" Karen clapped her hands. "That's great!"
"Yeah, that's what I thought, but they let the option expire after six months. Nobody else has picked it up." Brian shrugged. "I got five hundred dollars out of it anyway."
"I'll bet your folks were really proud of you."
"Um, yeah, they were. So where do you live when you're not going to school? Don't tell me you're from Vegas. Nobody really lives in Las Vegas."
She laughed. "Lots of people live in Vegas, but when I go home to Mom, it's in Moreno Valley."
"Hey, you didn't tell me you were from California!"
"You didn't ask, did you? Where do you live?"
"Anaheim," Brian said.
"Well, we're practically neighbors."
Brian stood up and shaded his eyes with his hand. "I wonder what's taking Russ? He should have been here by now."
Karen rose to her feet and stepped to the top of the slab of granite they had been sitting on. "Maybe he stopped to wait for Jeff and Carla."
Brian gazed toward the area where the trail left the summit. "Maybe," he replied. He sat down on the rock again. "How long have you guys all known each other?"
"Since we were all freshman. What's that--three years now? Carla is my roommate. Jeff is her boyfriend obviously. I met Russ at a track meet I was covering for the school paper. Oh, here comes somebody. It's Carla and Jeff." Brian stood up again as she waved an arm over her head to get their attention. They each waved in return and started angling toward Brian and Karen. When they got close enough Karen called to them: "Where's Russ?"
They didn't answer until they reached Brian and Karen. Carla eased out of her pack and leaned it against a rock. "Would you believe he's probably halfway down the switchbacks on his way to Whitney Portal?" she said.
"What?" Brian and Karen echoed.
"Yup," Jeff said as he set Brian's daypack down. "He was waiting for us at the trail junction. Said he was going down to take a hot shower and he would see us at school on Tuesday. He gave us the stove. Thanks for carrying my pack," he said to Brian.
"No problem," Brian said. "I can't believe he left you guys."
Carla turned to Karen. "Didn't you tell him?"
"Not yet," said Karen.
"What?" Brian looked back and forth between the two girls. "Tell me what?"
"You know that argument Russ and I had last night?" Karen asked Brian.
"How could I forget? He was ready to pulverize me."
"Well, he blamed you for what happened."
"So what happened?"
"They broke up last night, that's what happened," Carla jumped in.
Openmouthed, Brian stared at Karen.
Karen held up a hand. "It's been coming for a while. It's not your fault," she said to Brian. "It's that new perspective I mentioned earlier. It helped me make up my mind."
"Let's put our stuff in the tents, then we'll talk," Carla suggested.
Two hours passed and the four hikers found themselves sitting on the edge of the peak again, with the girls in the middle, watching the lights wink on in Lone Pine. Darkness had gathered in the valley below and sent its shadows climbing Whitney's east face until they brushed the boots of the four friends.
"So, Russ's attitude wasn't any better when you guys met up with him?" Karen asked.
"Nope, in fact from what you described, he was even worse." Jeff said.
At the right hand end of the line Brian started laughing. "What's so funny," the others asked.
"All afternoon I've been wrestling the fact that I didn't feel guilty," he replied.
"Guilty for what?" they asked in unison.
"This morning when he was ranting I took that bag of crap and put it in his pack."
When they finally stopped laughing the moon was rising over the White Mountains to the east.
"Hey, I just realized, I don't have a sleeping bag," Brian said. "I'm gonna freeze."
"I'll help you think of a way to stay warm," Karen offered. "I know! I'll get my sleeping bag and unzip it and we'll wrap it around us and sit here all night telling stories."
"Okay, but before we do, I have a story I need to tell you. It's a story about my dad. But first you have to close your eyes and listen."
"What are we listening for?" Karen asked.
"Shhh. Just close your eyes and listen."
Karen's right hand crept between Brian's left arm and side and found his own hand, their fingers intertwining. He'd never felt anything so right.
After a few minutes of listening, they heard a rock fall somewhere out on the face of the peak below them.
"Did you hear it?" Brian asked them. The three others nodded their heads, and he said, "That's the sound of the earth breathing."
THE END
