[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]like his, and it bore the inevitable bumper sticker promoting guns. That and
the sound of horses running spontaneous circles in the far enclosure was it.
Liz didn't get out quite yet, though, didn't even look at her watch to check
the correct time. "I don't want to waitress, that's all."
"I don't want you to."
"And I don't have any other skills. I know trees and I know horses." She was
earnestly trying to be nice, but her words made him feel foolish. "I know
rocks" was all he could say. Oil rigs and rocks. His earlier elation about
being partner to her was sinking fast. A fine pair they'd make, a prole and a
bureaucrat.
"I just can't stay in the Valley anymore," she said. There it was. "And you
can't either." There it was in deuces. But then he'd come to Reno and Palomino
Valley for this very reason. Liz had to say leave and he had to say I'll think
about it. "It doesn't have to be here. It doesn't have to be horses. We just
need to leave the Valley, John.
We can go anywhere. We can do anything."
He looked down at her hand. The first time he'd held this hand, it wasn't her
long fingers or strength that astonished him so much as the thick ridges of
callus on her palms. They weren't the horny pads you find on the climber's
fingertips, just old-
fashioned working calluses in the meat of her grip. It was the hand of Eve.
"I'll think about it."
"I know."
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light
"But the train's leaving?"
"The train's leaving."
CHAPTER 5
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In the tradition of boxers who pickle the skin on their knuckles in brine and
urine, of alpinists on the streets of northern European cities who carry
balled snow in their bare hands as a prophylactic against colder, steeper
walks, of cyclists, kayakers, and football players who endure freezing showers
and ice baths for the sake of improving themselves Tucker had a theory. It
reduced to one word. The word was Suffer. That was it. It was that
fundamental. Suffer. Suffer enough and you reach an end to the suffering.
Suffer enough and you get transformed. There's something to it, of course, the
idea that by humiliating the flesh you lift yourself closer to God. Not that
Tucker had in mind the intellectual history of self-mortification, from early
Christian martyrs and Blackfoot warriors to flagellants in the streets of
modern-day Tehran.
He simply kneeled face forward in the bed of John's pickup truck and kept his
teeth clenched against the early-morning bugs. Like that, all the way from
Reno to
Sacramento and then to Yosemite, he let the various winds pour over him,
steeling himself for the day he would rise upon the West Face of Makalu in
Nepal and be baptized in the jet stream dividing earth from heaven. His knees
ached from the corrugated sheet metal, and passengers in passing cars probably
thought he was a fraternity pledge. But he could feel his skin toughening. His
blood thickening. He forced himself to peek through what would one day be the
hurricane-force winds of high-altitude mountaineering. He pondered: to let his
hair grow out for the big mountain or to keep it short like a Marine Corps
AWOLs? Longer hair might trap heat, maybe it wouldn't. That was a pertinent
question to ask John, who'd been high, eight thousand meters and higher. Like
that, with Tucker in the rear of the truck shoving back at the world with wild
fantasies while he "caught wind," they arrived back in the Valley on Thursday
morning to find the early sun casting rays bright as canaries.
"Home," John announced as he swung right at the Conoco gas station opposite
Yosemite Lodge. Behind the gas station and its rustproof, bearproof dumpster,
with a much-despised wooden National Parks marker reading "Sunnyside
Campgrounds,"
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light lay the teeming, ground-level slum to which any
climber worth his beans, even the
Eastern Bloc lads, will make at least one pilgrimage in his active lifetime.
"Home," Liz dully echoed. The Valley was no more home than Reno was Oz. She
was thinking that if only there'd been the time and money, they could have
flown to
Mexico, a beach, a village, a boat, anywhere. At least they could have
pretended to be pioneering new land. Circle the wagons. Unhitch the oxen.
Taste the river. Work on a tan line, something sweet and salty to accent their
nights. Spend some time. Warm time. She stared off into the woods. Screw the
BLM. Screw the Valley. And if John couldn't rise to the occasion, screw him.
She'd be so much dust on his narrow, pinched little horizon.
It suddenly seemed like they'd been gone a very long time. When they'd left,
the
Valley's furniture its conifers and ponderosas and massive, upright planes and
the waterfalls that had paused blue in midflight for the winter all had stood
still. Now everything was in motion. Bluejays threaded the trees, the Merced
was thawing.
Yosemite Falls was frothing white with early runoff and the meadows were
promising wild-flowers soon. They'd left in winter and here it was spring. She
groped for the date. She groped for the headline of the Reno
Gazette she'd purchased yesterday with the last quarter scored off a slot
machine. Nothing came. Already the time warp had taken effect.
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"What in hell... ?" John muttered.
Only then did Liz take notice.
The parking lot was skeletal. An old Buick with British Canadian plates, two
Chevys from the Beach Boys era, and a much-cannibalized orange Saab rumored to
be hot sat at scattered points, sad carcasses in some flatland junkyard, any
flatland, all flatland being junkyard. Otherwise it was barren, not a soul to
be seen. The engine idled as they gaped at the emptiness. The resurrection of
John Lennon couldn't have stunned them more. Liz reached forward and punched
off the tape deck, leaving them blank, no theme music, no idea what was what.
Back in the bed, Tucker got off his knees and stood in place, two unmoving
stovepipes of faded denim in the rear window. There wasn't even a game of
Hacky Sack going on. No one slouching about spooning peanut butter from the
jar, not a wave of greeting, not a sound. Even on slow days the Camp Four
parking lot brought to mind the bazaars of Bombay with their scarves of motion
and gossip and color fluttering everywhere. This morning it looked like a
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