The Wall Read online

  Hugh turned, thinking Rachel was finally making her appearance. Instead he saw a man, probably half their age, with a long thatch of sun-bleached hair and the wide back and mason forearms of a climber, a Tarzan in old Levi’s. Wearing a white T-shirt and Teva sandals with white socks, he was neat and clean, and a local. Hugh could tell he belonged here. He carried himself directly, with no nonsense, no bluff or mannerisms.

  The bartender said hey, to no response. “Anything?” he said.

  Tarzan shook his head no.

  “Let me get you a beer.”

  The man didn’t answer. He looked straight at Hugh and Lewis and came around the big unlit fireplace with its odd, squat, Soviet-style skiers on the metal plaques of the pillars. “Hugh Glass,” he said to them.

  “That’s me,” said Hugh.

  No logos on the T-shirt, no body art, no excess. It stressed his intensity, that and his eyes, which were Hollywood blue. He was deeply tanned, the way laborers get. The only paleness Hugh saw was at the edges of his wristwatch. The guy probably combed his hair once in the morning when he shaved, then was done with the burdens of image.

  “I’m Augustine,” he said. “With SAR. I got there late. You’d left.”

  After this afternoon, Hugh knew the acronym: search and rescue. “You’re a ranger,” he said.

  “Nope, an eighties hire,” he said. He stood there, not exactly aggressive, but not friendly either. Lewis sensed it, too.

  “That’s a new one,” Lewis said.

  “Back in the eighties, the park service would go to local bars and draft men to fight fires. You got paid by the hour. The term stuck. That’s what they call us now.”

  “You’re a firefighter?” Lewis said.

  Hugh put two and two together, SAR and the hourly pay. “A rescue climber,” he said.

  Augustine nodded, wound tight as a clock.

  “We kind of missed the eighties. And nineties,” Lewis said. “Back in our day, they used to let you guys live in Camp Four year-round.” A gilded role, rescue work marked you as one of the best of the best.

  Augustine’s name tickled Hugh’s cultural memory, something about a scandal or an epic. But he’d been out of the clannish, larger-than-life climbing scene too long.

  Augustine cut to the chase. “You’re the last one who saw her,” he said to Hugh. There was no question about the “her.” Obviously they were still searching for the body. His tone held accusation.

  “I told them everything I knew,” Hugh said. “But ask me again. Pull up a seat.” He gestured at the bartender and pointed at Augustine for that beer.

  “I’m not staying,” Augustine said. “I just want to hear it straight from you.”

  “Sit, damnit.”

  Augustine eased onto the stool, but stayed distant, hands to himself, not propping his elbows on their table, not leaning into their society. He kept his gunslinger vigilance. But Hugh saw when his eyes recognized their photo. “Anasazi,” Augustine said. They became less strange to him.

  The beer arrived, and along with it two more tonic waters, though no one had asked for them. The bartender gripped the back of Augustine’s neck, nothing sloppy, then released him and left. A minute later, the golf joke flickered dead. The TVs went blank. They had their privacy.

  “How can I help?” Hugh said. He hoped Augustine was not here to recruit them. He was tired. It was an aberration that he had become part of her mystery. He had nothing to add.

  “You said she had beads in her hair.”

  “Little stone beads.” Hugh sized them with his fingers. “Some turquoise and jade and agate. Very pretty.”

  “But you said her hair was brown.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not blond? Maybe with the blood in it?” Augustine’s back was rigid, but something in his tone loosened. Hope, thought Hugh. The man wants hope.

  “Brown. Light brown,” Hugh said. “I don’t know, dirty blond maybe.”

  Augustine hardened himself. He put away his hope. “What color were her eyes?”

  “I didn’t look. I didn’t want to.”

  “How tall was she?”

  “She was flat on her back.” Flat.

  “What kind of shoes was she wearing?”

  “You mean a brand name? I can’t tell the difference anymore. They were these modern climbing shoes, you know, these slippers.” One turned upside down. Hugh emptied the image from his mind.

  Augustine’s frustration showed. “She had earrings?”

  “Silver rings, five or so. Up here along the edge of her ear. They stood out. I guess it’s the fashion.”

  “Both ears?”

  Hugh reached in his mind to the far side of her. “I don’t know about that,” he said.

  Augustine pressed it. “You saw them in the one ear.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you said they stood out. You would have seen them.”

  “To tell the truth, I’m trying to remember if she had another ear. She came down through the trees, and the other side of her, it was unpleasant.”

  Augustine stared at him.

  “Look,” said Hugh, “it’s obvious you know these girls.” No surprises there. The Valley was cloistered and tight-knit, especially the climbing community, like tribal settlements in every mountain valley he’d been through, from the Solu Khumbu to the Appalachians.

  Augustine’s jaw tightened.

  “Tell me how to help you name her,” Hugh said. “Keep asking me questions. Maybe something will come clear.”

  “Just tell me, was it her?” Augustine opened his wallet. He showed a photo of a young woman drenched with sunshine. Her hair was white with light. Augustine was in the photo, too, practically transparent in the radiance. He had his arm around her.

  Hugh might have guessed. The woman—or one of the women on the wall—was his lover. “No,” Hugh said. “It wasn’t her.”

  “Forget the hair,” Augustine said. He was plaintive and skeptical. He was afraid Hugh might be wrong. “Look at her face. You saw her face.”

  The more Hugh examined the face in the photo, the less certain he became. There were resemblances, but maybe he was imagining them. He tried to remember the face he’d covered with the tarp, but its features melted in his memory. And this face in the photo was so ethereal, like a face in a dream. What if he was wrong? What if this woman was the same one he’d found in the forest?

  “You don’t know,” Augustine decided.

  “Who the hell would steal a body?” Lewis said.

  Hugh started to describe the wild man, but Augustine interrupted. “Joshua,” he said. “He’s one of the cavemen.”

  The rangers had used the same term that afternoon, “cavemen,” as if the hermit were part of a rare, dying species, an American yeti.

  “Joshua?” Lewis said. Hugh looked at him. “Didn’t he used to work in housekeeping? This was thirty years ago, a kid. A crag rat. He got hit by lightning. I thought he died.”

  “It was before my time. But he lived,” Augustine said. “He kept coming back. They finally gave up and let him stay, a charity case. Ever since, he’s been living in caves and animal dens, eating tourist leftovers and downed game, foraging for nuts and berries. He rants and raves. We thought he was harmless.”

  “Somebody must know where to find him,” Lewis said.

  “Do you know how many places there are to hide?”

  “What about dogs?” asked Lewis. “Can’t they bring in dogs?”

  “It’s not her,” Hugh said. “I’m telling you.”

  Augustine didn’t believe him, though.

  “Have you spotted the others?” Hugh asked. He wanted Augustine to hold on to his dignity, or at least not come apart in front of them. “There were three of them. They couldn’t all have disappeared.”

  They could all have fallen, of course. Their anchor could have pulled and sent the other two to their deaths. But the rangers knew that and Hugh had watched them looking everywhere, including the
treetops.

  “We’ve been calling. There’s no sign of anybody up there.”

  “They’ll find them,” Lewis said.

  “I know,” Augustine said. It was spoken without emotion, a promise to himself, to fetch the dead and wounded. To keep on hoping.

  FIVE

  Hugh looked at their reflections in the dark window.

  Over the next days, El Cap was sure to peel them open and see what grit each contained. Hugh and Lewis would run their stone gauntlet. Augustine would probably kiss a cold forehead, or a hand, something still recognizable, and learn grief, the hardest lesson of all. No matter what happened on the wall or in its forest, their shapes would shift. Each of them would come away changed. El Cap was like that.

  Even as Hugh gazed at the dark glass, a woman’s face surfaced in the mirror. Lewis and Augustine didn’t notice as the ghost gradually joined them from the other side of the window. Her eyes stayed fixed on Hugh.

  At first, rising from the darkness, she could have been any woman, old or young, practically an idea. Closer to the glass, her features grew more distinct. The pallor took on color. Her lips were a lush red. She seemed to be boring in on Hugh, seductive and dangerous at the same time. Was he imagining the dead girl? At the last instant, she reached her chin forward and pursed her lips and pressed them against the glass, a kiss for Hugh.

  “Rachel,” he murmured.

  She rapped at the window, and the other two men started. With a silent laugh, she vanished back into darkness. A minute later, she came through the door. The men rose to their feet, Lewis last of all. “My wife,” he explained to Augustine.

  Hugh had never seen her this way, in designer jeans and a black sweater that sparkled and played with her curves, and with exact makeup, and a stride that suggested daily tennis or aerobics. Her beauty confused him. It was so different from the beauty he remembered. Over three decades had passed.

  Gone was the granola girl with her hair in a ponytail tied with a bandana. She and Annie had been the closest of pals, bonded by Yosemite and camp life, and by the dangers their boyfriends courted on the walls. The four of them, the two couples, had traveled up and down the West Coast, from Baja to Vancouver, thousands of miles.

  “Finally,” she said to Hugh, and kissed him on the mouth. She gave him thirty years’ worth of a hug. Hugh was surprised by how good she felt. It was almost embarrassing. Over her shoulder, Lewis was grinning from ear to ear. She held Hugh at arm’s length, looked him over, and gathered him in for a second long, hard embrace. “Just like you were,” she said.

  She had been their gypsy spirit, forever on her feet, eyes closed, arms up, twisting and curling like smoke, ready to float off into the cosmos it seemed. Everything was so fresh and present in those days, the music, the poster art and flowers in your hair, the Conan comics, even the ancient war. He remembered driftwood campfires on Pacific nights, the ocean going in and out under the stars.

  Annie had perfected a drop-dead Janis Joplin impression, with every high, rusty, piercing note. Hugh had memorized on his harmonica a fair John Mayall riff that basically worked for any occasion. All of nineteen, Lewis would drunkenly preach the orthodoxy of the Beats, and the spontaneity of art, and the art of climbing. Between songs, he would chant his precious Ginsburg, who was, to the rest of them, already old, fat, and hairy. Hugh would argue with him as if it really mattered. Forget the elitism of the junkies, queers, anarchists, and urban hipsters. In the wilderness lay true freedom. In the stone.

  She let go of him.

  “This is Mr. Augustine,” Lewis said, and Augustine gravely shook her hand.

  “You’re going with them?” she said.

  Augustine frowned uncertainly. “El Cap, you mean?”

  “You’re not a guide?” she said. “I thought they’d come to their senses.”

  “A guide? Them?”

  Hugh was grateful beyond words. Them. They were not forgotten. Until that moment, he had not realized how profoundly he was waiting for such a judgment. He still belonged. They might actually pull it off. Lewis heard it, too. His eyes were suddenly bright.

  Rachel didn’t miss a beat. “Did you know this is where I met them?” she said. “Before you were born, I’m sure, right here, this very room. It wasn’t a bar back then, just a gathering place. It was raining. There was a fire. Some of the Camp Four refugees had come over to dry out. I was just this young thing, sixteen, all bedraggled. And here were these two boys in the corner, totally serious, totally business, the walls, you know, the walls. They saw me across the room, but I had to go up to them. Do you remember?”

  “I remember,” said Hugh.

  “And a little bit later, Annie came over, soggy as a hound, a total stranger just like me. It happened like magic, great loves, everything, our whole future born out of one wet afternoon. I ended up with Lewis. And Annie got herself the lone wolf. I can’t remember how we got all sorted out and paired up. We just followed the stars.”

  It was strange to hear Annie’s name spoken so gaily, without the solemnity people seemed to think Hugh required. Five years had passed, but because this was his first trip to the States since her death, they acted like it had happened just yesterday. Lewis was the worst in that respect. He seemed afraid to even mention her, as if Hugh might have a breakdown.

  Then Hugh noticed Augustine. He looked trapped by all the happy talk about great loves. The pain on his face was unmistakable. Rachel had no way of knowing.

  “Let’s walk outside,” Hugh said to him.

  “No need,” said Augustine. “We’ve covered it all, I guess.”

  “At least have some of your beer.”

  “Another time, that would be good.” Augustine’s big arms hung like string.

  Hugh didn’t insist. The man had a long night of the soul ahead of him. On balance, Augustine had given more than he had received. Without knowing it, he had declared Hugh and Lewis’s legitimacy. Now he was going off empty-handed. Hugh left it at that.

  “Keep the faith,” Lewis said. He looked sheepish. He knew it was lame.

  Rachel looked at the men, mystified by their unease.

  Augustine nodded to them. “When you’re up there, if you see something…” He didn’t finish. By then it would surely be too late.

  “We’ll report,” Hugh told him.

  “Great.” Augustine turned and stepped through the obstacle course of bar stools. Hugh watched until the door closed behind him.

  “What was that all about?” Rachel asked.

  Lewis gave Hugh a warning look. “He’s with the park service. He wanted some information.”

  She wasn’t stupid. “He looked like the Grim Reaper.”

  “There was an accident this afternoon,” Lewis said.

  “On El Cap.” Rachel nodded. “You thought I wasn’t going to find out?”

  Lewis’s twinkle dimmed.

  “It happened near the top,” Hugh said. “Three women. One fell. The rescuers are getting it figured out.”

  “Three women?”

  Rachel seemed more surprised by their gender than by the accident. In the old days, girlfriends tended the campsites and worked on their bikini lines down along the Merced River. They were trophies the men returned to from the heights. If a woman tied into a rope, it was only for something very short and very easy that involved a picnic at the top.

  “And what did the ranger want?”

  “He’s not a ranger, babe,” Lewis said.

  She stared at him.

  “I found one of the girls,” Hugh said. Then he recalled Lewis and Rachel’s two daughters, each grown up and moved away now, but an echo nonetheless.

  “And you’re still going up there?”

  “It’s different,” Hugh said. “They were off on something new. We’re doing a victory lap on Anasazi. Only the weekend warriors bother with it anymore.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “A girl died today. On El Cap.”

  “They were pushing a first ascent. A radical first.
Off the scale.”

  “And when you two did Anasazi Wall thirty years ago, what do you think everyone was saying? The same thing. Radical. Crazy.”

  Hugh shut up.

  “We’re way under the speed limit here,” Lewis said.

  “Act your age,” she snapped at him.

  “We are. It’s this or really loud golf slacks. Come on. El Cap, our old stomping grounds. A little Viagra for the soul.”

  “God, Lewis.” She sounded sad.

  The bartender came over. He was respectful this time, almost fraternal. Their powwow with Augustine had elevated them. Rachel ordered a glass of Australian wine.

  It was too late to turn over the photo. El Cap occupied the table. Their silence lasted until the wine arrived.

  “The girls,” Hugh finally said. “Your girls. You must have pictures.”

  Rachel sighed. She had a small purse, more like a leather wallet on strings, very chic. It held a credit card, a lipstick, and snapshots.

  “Look at them,” Hugh said. The daughters were truly beautiful. “Tell me about them.”

  “As of this college semester, we’re official empty nesters,” Lewis said. “Trish made Bucknell, and Liz is in her third year at UT Austin.”

  “A Yankee and a rebel,” Hugh said.

  “Business, and engineering,” Rachel pointed at one, then the other. “No philosophy. No poetry. I think Ezra Pound is finally dead.”

  She couldn’t have been clearer. The daughters were moving on past Lewis. And Rachel was, too. Hugh suddenly realized that she was going to leave Lewis. She hadn’t told him yet. But El Cap figured into her strategy somehow, or else she wouldn’t have bothered to come.

  Lewis stood up. Rachel didn’t. “We’re still good for four in the morning?” he said.

  “I’ll be ready,” Hugh said.

  Rachel saluted her husband: “0400.”

  Hugh started to get up, but she grabbed his wrist. “No you don’t. I have a glass of wine to drink, and Lewis gets you for the next week. I think I’m worth a half hour, don’t you?”

  Hugh lifted his fingers in surrender and sat again.

  “Make her understand,” Lewis told Hugh. To Rachel he added, “And don’t kill my messenger.”