McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [130]
She listens as the paying hikers get ready for bed. She is in her sleeping bag and is still cold—she is wearing three layers but she feels flayed. She shivers but the shivering hurts her head so she forces her body to rest; she pours her own calm over her skin, coating it as if with warm oil, and she breathes slower. Something is eating her legs. She is awake when a panther comes and begins gnawing on her legs. She is watching the panther gnawing and can feel it, can feel it as if she were having her toes licked by a puppy, only there is blood, and bone, and marrow visible; the puppy is sucking the marrow from her bones, while looking up at her, smiling, asking, What’s your name? Do you like zebras?
She wakes up when she hears the rain going louder. She shakes free of the dream and succeeds in forgetting it almost immediately. The rain overwhelms her mind. The rain is strong and hard, like the knocking of a door, the knocking getting louder, and it won’t end, the knocking—sweet Jesus will someone please answer that knocking? She is freezing all night. She awakens every hour and puts on another article of clothing, until she can barely move. She briefly considers staying at this camp with the porters, not making the final climb. There are photographs. There is an IMAX movie. Maybe she will survive without summitting.
But she does not want to be grouped with Mike. She is better than Mike. There is a reason to finish this hike. She must finish it because Shelly is finishing it, and Grant is finishing it. She is as good as these people. She is tired of admitting that she cannot continue. For so many years she has been doing everything within her power to finish but again and again she has pulled up short, and has been content for having tried. She found comfort in the nuances between success and failure, between a goal finished, accomplished, and a goal adjusted.
She puts on another T-shirt and another pair of socks. She falls back to sleep. She wakes up at dawn and Shelly is holding her, spooning. She falls to sleep.
The light through the vent is like a crack into a world uninterrupted by shape or definition. There is only white. White against white. She squints and reaches for her sunglasses, reaches around to no avail, feels only the rocks beneath the tent, and every rock beneath her fingers somehow makes its way into her head, every rock beneath her fingers is knocking against her head. She is breathing as deeply as she can but it has no effect. She knows her head is not getting enough blood. Her faculties are slipping away. She tries to do simple mental tasks, testing herself—the alphabet, states of the Union, Latin conjugations—and finds her thoughts scattered. She inhales so deeply the air feels coarse, and exhales with such force her chest goes concave. Shelly is still asleep.
It’s the first light of morning. If there is sun the rain must have passed. It will not be so cold today—there is sun. Already she is warmer, the tent heating quickly, but the wind is still strong and the tent ripples loudly.
What is that? There is a commotion outside the tent. The porters are yelling. She hears Frank, his tent so close, unzip and rezip his tent’s door, and then she can hear his steps move toward the voices. The voices rise and fall on the wind, fractured by the flapping of the tent.
There is someone trying to enter the tent.
“Shelly,” Rita says.
“Yes, hon.”
“Who is that?”
“That’s me, dear.”
Hours or seconds pass. Shelly is back. When did she leave? Shelly has entered the tent, and is now slowly rezipping the doorflap, trying not to bother her. Hours or seconds?