Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [74]
When he reached the top of the trail where she’d been standing, his heart sank. He wondered for a moment if she too had seen what lay before them and had stopped because of it.
Ahead—and he could see a solid mile—the trail became a treacherous strip only slightly wider than a balance beam, the rock wall to the left so sheer he thought he’d have to press his hand against it and run his fingers along the stone like a child strumming a picket fence as he passed by. To the right, the drop-off was acute, the edge rounded by erosion. Absurd. He pictured Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint scaling down Rushmore in North by Northwest. If your right foot came out from under you, you’d slip into the void. If you tumbled forward, your pack would knock you sideways and then you were dead. Just proceeding would require an inner negotiation with panic, arbitration between the need to keep your eyes on the path and the vertigo it brought on, the foamed edge of the ocean bursting in silence far below. Come up on the short end of that haggling and you might find yourself paralyzed with terror. You might dig your fingers in and choose not to move until someone came along. And then you might grab your rescuer and take him or her down with you. Perhaps, he thought desperately, if I wait for a few minutes Alice will appear. Ahead, the cliffs bulged in humped succession, with the trail visible at each horizontal apex. Alice might be right there at any moment. But after what seemed like an eternity, David gave up. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d gone over since he couldn’t fathom how she’d gotten so far. And going over was like a magic trick, an act of total disappearance: no one to see you fall, your death forever destined to be only imagined by loved ones. Going over was like getting plucked from the world by God.
He believed the safest, most efficient way to proceed was to leave his pack here, before the path narrowed further. His goal would be strictly one of pursuit. He stripped it off and took his water bottle and as many energy bars as he could stuff into his pockets, then ran through a checklist. Was there anything else he needed? He had a waterproof top, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Sunscreen? A first-aid kit? If he didn’t take these, would he regret it? The need to bring along his rain gear felt significant. He thought of Harold: The thoughts just before the event are like the fortune in the cookie. The fortune’s as random as the thought. He wanted to laugh. It was like the wave he’d dived under earlier. Only by facing such a crossing would you consider making it. Otherwise, you could spend your whole life avoiding any such event.
He began to walk, though to call it walking was an exaggeration. He found himself leaning so hard to the left, against the cliff, that it retarded his progress and made him overcorrect each time he took what might be called a step forward—a measuring out of distance, heel to toe, as if he was sneaking out of a room—and sometimes trapped his rear foot behind the other and, stuck, took in hesitant fear a complete step backward. And several times he leaned left so hard that his feet shifted under him, a half-inch slide he could feel in his spine, his palm pointlessly smacking the rock as if for a handhold,