McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [114]
He is watching the land pass through the window near his right cheek, and the air of outside waters his small blue eyes.
Shelly is in her late forties and looks precisely her age. She is slim, fit, almost wiry. Her hair, long, ponytailed, once blond, is fading to gray and she is not fighting it. She has the air of a lion, Rita thinks, though she doesn’t know why she thinks of this animal, a lion, when she sees this small woman sitting two seats before her, in an anorak of the most lucid and expectant yellow. She watches Shelly tie a bandanna around her neck, quickly and with a certain offhand ferocity. Shelly’s features are the features Rita would like for herself: a small thin nose with a flawless upward curve, her lips with the correct and voluptuous lines, lips that must have been effortlessly sexual and life-giving as a younger woman.
“It’s really miserable out there,” Shelly says.
Rita nods.
The bus stops in front of a clapboard building, crooked, frowning, like a general store in a Western. There are signs and farm instruments attached to its side, and on the porch, out of the rain, there are two middle-aged women feeding fabric through sewing machines, side by side. Their eyes briefly sweep over the bus and its passengers, and then return to their work as the bus begins again.
Frank is talking about the porters. Porters, he says, will be accompanying the group, carrying the duffel bags, and the tents, and the tables to eat upon, and the food, and propane tanks, and coolers, and silverware, and water, among other things. Their group is five hikers and two guides, and there will be thirty-two porters coming along.
“I had no idea,” Rita says to Grant, behind her. “I pictured a few guides and maybe two porters.” She has a sudden vision of servants carrying kings aboard gilt thrones, elephants following, trumpets announcing their progress.
“That’s nothing,” Frank says. Frank has been listening to everyone’s conversations and inserting himself when he sees fit. “Last time I did Everest, there were six of us and we had eighty sherpas.” He holds his hand horizontally, demonstrating the height of the sherpas, which seems to be about four feet or so. “Little guys,” he says, “but badasses. Tougher than these guys down here. No offense, Patrick.”
Patrick isn’t listening. The primary Tanzanian guide, he’s in his early thirties and is dressed in new gear—a blueberry anorak, snow-boarding pants, wraparound sunglasses. He’s watching the side of the road, where a group of boys is keeping pace with the bus, each in a school uniform and each carrying what looks to be a small sickle. They run alongside, four of them, waving their sickles, yelling things Rita can’t hear through the windows and over the whinnies of the van going up and up through the wet dirt. Their mouths are going, their eyes angry, and their teeth are so small, but by the time Rita gets her window open to hear what they’re saying the van is far beyond them, and they have run off the road with their sickles. They’ve dropped down the hillside, following some narrow path of their own making.
There is a wide black parking lot. MACHAME GATE reads a sign over the entrance. In the parking lot, about a hundred Tanzanian men are standing. They watch the bus enter the lot and park and immediately twenty of them converge upon it, unloading the backpacks and duffel bags from the bus. Before Rita and the rest of the hikers are off, all of the bags are stacked in a pile nearby, and the rain is falling upon them.
Rita is last off the bus, and when she arrives at the door, Godwill has closed it, not realizing she is still aboard.
“Sorry please,” he says, yanking the lever,