McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [123]
Today the porters are passing the paying hikers. Every few minutes another goes by, or a group of them. The porters walk alone or in packs of three. When they come through they do one of two things: If there is room around the hikers, when the path is wide or there is space to walk through the dirt or rocks beside them, they will jog around them; when the path is narrow they will wait for the hikers to step aside.
Rita and Grant are stepping aside.
“Jambo,” Grant says.
“Jambo,” the first porter says. He is about twenty, wearing a CBS News T-shirt, khaki pants, and cream-colored Timberland hiking shoes, almost new. He is carrying two duffel bags on his head. One of them is Rita’s. She almost tells him this but then catches herself.
“Habari,” Grant says.
“Imara,” the porter says.
And he and the two others walk past. Rita asks Grant what he’s just said. “Habari,” Grant explains, means “How are you,” and “Imara” means “strong.”
“Blue!” Jerry yells, pointing to a small spot of sky that the fog has left uncovered. It’s the first swatch of blue the sky has allowed since the trip began, and it elicits an unnatural spasm of joy in Rita. She wants to climb through the gap and spread herself out above the cloud line, as you would a ladder leading to a tree fort. Soon the blue hole grows and the sun, still obscured but now directly above, gives heat through a thin layer of cloud cover. The air around them warms almost immediately and Rita, along with the other paying hikers, stops to remove layers and put on sunglasses. Frank takes a pair of wet pants from his bag and ties them to a carabiner; they hang to his heels, filthy.
Mike now has the perpetual look of someone disarming a bomb. His forehead is never without sweat beaded along the ridges of the three distinct lines on his forehead. He is sucking on a silver tube, like a ketchup container but larger.
“It’s a kind of energy food,” he explains.
They are all eating the snacks they’ve brought. Every day Steven gives the paying hikers a sack lunch of eggs and crackers, which none of them eat. Rita is eating peanuts and raisins and chocolate. Jerry is gnawing on his beef jerky. They are all sharing food and needed articles of clothing and medical aid. Shelly loans Mike her Ace bandage, to wrap around his ankle, which he thinks is swollen. Jerry loans Rita a pair of Thinsulate gloves.
Fifteen porters pass while the paying hikers are eating and changing. One porter, more muscular than the others, who are uniformly thin, is carrying a radio playing American country music. The porter is affecting a nonchalant pride in this music, a certain casual ownership of it. To each porter Grant says “Jambo” and most say “Jambo” in return, eliciting more greetings from Jerry—who now likes to say the word, loudly.
“Jahm-BO!” he roars, in a way that seems intended to frighten.
Shelly steps over to Frank.
“What do the porters eat?” she asks.
“Eat? The porters? Well, they eat what you eat, pretty much,” Frank says, then reaches for Shelly’s hips and pats one. “Maybe without the snacking,” he says, and winks.
There is a boom like a jet plane backfiring. Or artillery fire. Everyone looks up, then down the mountain. No one knows where to look. The porters, farther up the trail but still within view, stop briefly. Rita sees one mime the shooting of a rifle. Then they continue.
Now Rita is walking alone. She has talked to most of the paying