Around midnight, the wind died down and the snow stopped.
Crocker left his third game of chess with Andreas—the shorter and healthier of the two Germans—put on his boots, hat, helmet, backpack, and mittens, and stepped out to breathe the fresh air.
The wind whispered and the full moon cast weird shadows on the snow.
Looking almost straight up at the snowcapped summit of K2, he felt like he had arrived in another world. Gods and spirits lived on the mountain.
Climbers had a saying: The climb is possible only if the mountain allows it.
Maybe these spirits don’t want to be disturbed.
But the still beauty of the night drew him forward. He stepped carefully, boots crunching into the billowy snow until, when he looked back, the camp was only a dim shadow.
Enjoying the feeling of being alone with the mountain, he moved another fifty yards to his left to get a better view of the peak. Stopping and leaning on his pole, he sighed. The moonlight cast an eerie bluish, otherworldly glow.
I wish I had a camera.
His had apparently frozen the night before, even though he’d kept it wrapped in his parka.
Crocker had just pushed off with his right foot when the ground under him gave way and he started to fall.
What the—
Down. Down, picking up speed. Nothing to hold on to. No way to fucking stop.
It seemed that minutes passed before he landed with a thump, adrenaline coursing through his body, the air pushed out of his lungs until he passed out.
He awoke several minutes later, surrounded by a faint blue light. He thought he had died and been transported to another dimension. Then felt his heart pounding wildly.
Somehow, I’m still alive!
Biting cold under him, and pain emanating from his right thigh, hip, and arm. Crocker realized that he was lying on a tiny ice bridge somewhere in the middle of a curved crevasse. Alone and trapped.
It would have been much worse if the backpack hadn’t cushioned his landing.
He reached under his jacket and checked for broken or loose bones. There seemed to be none. Just blood on the palm of his right hand from a superficial wound.
I’m fucking lucky.
He pulled his legs up under him and shouted, “Help!”
Then realized that his voice would barely reach the surface.
He was a good thirty to forty yards down. The camp was another two hundred yards away. He squatted, embarrassed that he’d made such a stupid mistake. And hoped that sooner or later, Davis, Akil, Edyta, or one of the Germans would notice that he was missing. If the wind didn’t kick up again, they’d be able to follow his footsteps and they’d find him—if he didn’t pass out from exposure first.
Even though he was wearing only a light down jacket, it didn’t feel terribly cold yet. But that could change quickly.
Chasing away an impulse to panic, he looked for a way out.
The icy bridge he rested on was barely four feet wide, and slick. Carefully holding on to a crease in the wall, he climbed to his feet and, using the light on his helmet, surveyed the crevasse above.
It glittered back like an ice jewel, with dozens of various-sized stalactites and columns sticking out at different angles.
As amazing as it looked, there appeared to be no chance of climbing out without crampons and an ice axe. The former were back in the tent, and he had lost the latter in the fall.
So he slid the backpack under him and curled up in a ball, calculating that he had five hours at most until the others awoke, hoping he could survive that long in the clothing he was wearing. At least he was protected from the wind.
Thinking: How ironic that I abandoned my mother when she was dying, and now that I’m in danger it feels like she’s with me. Warm and loving. Nothing had mattered more to her than her husband and children.
Crocker bit his lip and willed himself to think of something else.
He tried to recall the names and faces of all the people he’d grown up with. Kids he’d played baseball with, boys he’d gone fishing with, first grade, second, third. The names of his teachers. Miss Moore. Mrs. Murray. Miss Hastings, who told him he’d never amount to anything.
He remembered them more vividly than he had in years. Incidents, facial features, jokes, shards of stories. Like the time he and his cousin Jake had buried a dead crow in his backyard. Marked the place carefully. When they dug up the grave two days later, the bird was gone.
Crocker felt the cold creeping into his body and fought off the urge to close his eyes and sleep.
Not now!
He remembered running with his biker friends. The names of girlfriends. The first girl he kissed and the color of the sweater she was wearing: pink with white piping around the neck.
He was furiously going back through names. Making a list of his favorite people. His father, his mother, Holly, his daughter…