High Country : A Novel (39 page)

“Think that oxygen might work?” He turned in his saddle so he could watch Thomas Haslam’s face.
“Might,” Haslam said. “A little. Maybe.”
Ty heard the coughing even before he saw the boy, the cough rattling, deep and raw. The boy was pale, almost bluish, dank hair hanging to his shoulders. Ty wasn’t sure he knew they were there.
“Tommy!” Lilly was off her gelding already. “Tommy! What have you done!”
Only then did Ty recognize him, remember the music in the parking lot, the carefree face, the lank hair. The boy offered a weak smile as Haslam pulled his shirt away, listened to his chest, peered at his gums, his fingernails. Ty already knew. He didn’t need Haslam’s stethoscope. The oxygen might make the boy’s eyes focus, but it wouldn’t clear his lungs of that gurgle.
For a moment the boy did focus, looking over Haslam’s shoulder at Ty and Lilly. “Told you. No big deal, man,” he said. “Made it up in five. Got high up high.” His smile would have frightened Lilly even without the residue of the coughing smeared across the pale face. The cough started in again. Orange spittle coming up, streaking his face, his chin. “Didn’t even need to rest.” The cough racked him again. He took some of the oxygen the ranger held to his mouth. “Till here.”
His eyes rolled back even as the oxygen helped and the cough subsided.
“Get him out of here.” Thomas Haslam seemed disgusted as he put his stethoscope away. “Pulmonary. Blood in his lungs—worse from whatever he’s been using, whatever makes him think the world’s all rosy. Get him low, Ty. The hospital.”
The boy flopped around as Ty heaved him up onto Jug, not so much heavy as disjointed, a misshapen sack. Ty didn’t like to tie the boy’s feet under Jug’s belly, but he did it anyway. Jug might get a little jumpy if the boy slid under him, but that was better than dropping him off a switchback—sometimes a thousand feet before things began to slow.
“Hoped this wouldn’t happen.” Ty tightened Nightmare’s cinch and looked at Thomas Haslam. “Wanted to talk with Lilly.”
“I noticed.” Thomas Haslam put an awkward arm around Ty, touched by what he saw in Ty’s face. “First things first. I guess.”
“Search and Rescue will be at the trailhead,” the ranger said. “The dispatcher promised.”
Lilly said nothing, but Ty felt the wet on her cheek as she hugged him.
“Back tomorrow night,” he said. “We got things to talk about.” He pulled her closer. “To do.”
He climbed on Nightmare and looked at Lilly. “Look after the horses. They wander off in these high meadows.”

He looked back from high above them, saw the ranger busy at his radio, Thomas Haslam and Lilly looking up before turning back to camp. Then he was into the climb for certain, the switchbacks cutting back onto themselves again and then again, the boy’s cough rattling in bursts. Ty tried not to hear it, tried not to think of the foolishness, the boy’s rush into the mountains as though they were some amusement park.

They were almost into the clouds when he looked back and saw rays of sun filtering through and catching the expanse of the Kaweah shelf, bringing light to the blue lakes and green meadows. It wasn’t a bad dream to have, he thought—a safe place. He could take Lilly there and tell her everything—about Willie and the baby, about Cody Jo. Maybe he could tell those things to Thomas Haslam and Alice too, Buck and Angie. Even to Walker Johnson, if Walker Johnson would quit being so pensive. They could even live with the red bear there, watch him with Spec and Fenton, learn from him.

Then he was into the cloud itself. It was thick, the visibility bad and getting worse. A wind picked up. Not strong but cold. Ty thought they might be closing on the crest, but there was no way to tell. He couldn’t see anything now, couldn’t tell if they were going up or down. Jug was lost in the mist behind him, only the wracking cough to tell him what was back there, following Ty, counting on Ty.

When the rain began he dismounted, feeling for the trail as Nightmare followed. He took off his jacket, untied his slicker from behind his cantle, worked his way back to the coughing boy, wrapped him in the jacket, covered him with the slicker. He worked his way forward again, unsnapping Jug’s lead, setting Jug and Nightmare free to make their own way. He needed his hands to feel his way, touch the rocks along the trail. Now and then he would see the trail, but mostly there was no way to see at all.

The wind kicked up, and he was sure they were on top. He knew there was a long traverse there. It took them above the glacier and then turned back, turning away from it into switchbacks again, switchbacks that turned and turned again down to parallel the long glacier and cross below it, below the moraine the glacier had deposited through the centuries. He thought the moraine must be older than the mountain, at least the mountain he knew—the one still heaving itself up, growing even as the glacier tore away its flank.

He was not surprised when he heard the distant rumble. It was the kind of day that could call up a thunderstorm. But he wasn’t worried. The rain was still light, the weather just getting ready. All Ty wanted to do was see. He hoped at least that would be given him by the time he had to drop down through the switchbacks.

When it came he heard nothing. It was too late for him to hear. But the boy, Nightmare and Jug, were jolted upright by the flash, deafened by the crash. They waited in the silence, Nightmare quiet as the cloud they were in. The boy’s cough rattled, once, twice. Then stillness. A hush.

Finally Nightmare began to move. Jug sensed it, moved along behind her. Nightmare seemed to be looking for something, but moving on with an instinct for the trail as sure as Smoky Girl had had before her, an instinct as sure as Ty Hardin’s—the man she was seeking, the man who had taught them both, learned from them both.

Two Die As Lightning Hits Hikers Struck on Mt. Whitney in Freak Storm Fourteen Hikers Struck While Taking Shelter in Summit Hut: Two Dead, Six Others Injured

The story named each hiker, describing the background of the dead and the injured. At the end it noted that Ty Hardin, a Sierra packer, had died at about the same time.

Few details can be confirmed. All that is known is that Ty Hardin’s horse, followed by a mule carrying a hiker suffering altitude sickness, made its way to the Whitney trailhead. They were discovered there by Norman “Buck” Conner, a colleague of Hardin, and two Forest Service paramedics.

After the hiker was evacuated, Conner returned up the trail to recover the body of Hardin, which he found on the boulder field below the Whitney glacier.

At this time it is not known whether Hardin fell from the trail because of poor visibility or was dislodged by the force of a lightning strike.

The people in the valley paid little attention to the falling part, knowing Ty Hardin would never fall off a trail—not on the blackest night. But they paid much attention to his being gone, stories about him growing even as the news spread, most concluding that only lightning could separate Ty Hardin from his mountains.

Lilly and the Haslams learned Ty was gone the same day it happened, the young ranger coming to their camp at dusk with the dispatcher’s report. Lilly had not accepted it, everything in her going numb, staying numb through a sleepless night. It was not until the next day, when Buck—riding through the night to find them—took her into his arms, held her against his big body, and wept uncontrollably, that the loss washed through her.

On the day of the service they gathered in the chapel yard, warming under a weak fall sun. Lilly held Buck’s arm and talked with Angie, worrying about what this day would do to Buck. When the doors opened they filed in and filled the second row, awkward as they settled into their own thoughts. Cody Jo came down the aisle, helped by a gentleman friend who had driven her, her cane clicking on the wooden floor. She motioned them to join her in the front and sent her friend away, nodding to the Haslams, who were filling the row across the aisle. Then she sent Buck up the aisle to get Sugar and Maria Zumaldi, wanting them to sit with her too.

They sang a hymn the minister had chosen, the piano loud, the voices ragged. There was a prayer. Then the minister spoke about Ty. Lilly tried to listen, but her mind drifted to their day at the lake, the last camp at Crabtree, Ty leading the mule and the crumpled boy up into the cloud. The minister was brief and she was thankful, paying more attention to the prayer about “lifting thine eyes unto the hills.”

There was another song. Then it was over, Lilly walking up the aisle with the Haslams and Cody Jo and realizing the chapel was full— cowboys from up and down the valley, rangers and trail-crew workers, young packers, Harvey Kittle standing at the back with Cody Jo’s driver friend.

Lars had invited everyone to the Deerlodge, and most went there directly. At first they were quiet, reflective; but Lars was generous, and soon they were telling and retelling stories about Ty. Lars liked it when they began to relax. He knew Ty would like it too.

Alice Haslam had kept in touch with Walker Johnson. She went over to Lilly and Cody Jo by the bowling machine and read them a letter from him. It was about all the things Ty had done for Walker, meant to Walker. Lilly, sensing the rhythms of the south in Walker’s words, grew even more blue as the letter went on.

Lilly knew the box, had listened to the tinkle of “Red River Valley.” She turned it in her hands, feeling the frayed corners, the leather worn away—wishing it were Ty she were feeling, Ty she were touching.

Someone was rapping a jackknife against a bottle. Lilly looked up and saw it was Buck.
“Like to thank Lars for having us.” Buck looked around the room, his beer high.
Lilly turned the music box over and over in her hands, unable to worry about Buck anymore.
“There’s Ty to thank, too.” Buck hesitated, made sure he could go on. “Just for being Ty.” He stood there, unable to say anything at all for a few minutes, the room waiting, the young packers awkward in their best clothes, the styles they had taken on—high-crowned hats, kerchiefs tied just so, pants tucked into high boots.
“He always found our horses,” Buck finally said, his voice shaky, “when they run off.”
The quiet held, the packers thinking how seldom horses ran off these days, all of them tying their horses up so there would be no need to seek tracks in the morning.
The talk picked up again. There were more toasts, more drinking, more thanking Lars for his generosity. But they didn’t quiet for those toasts as they had for Buck’s, weren’t as interested as they’d been in Buck’s—as though Buck was part of something that might be slipping away forever.

“Well, it figures,” Harvey Kittle said, coming over to where Thomas Haslam and Lilly stood, still talking with Cody Jo. “Him loving them glaciers so. ‘Let time heal the wounds those glaciers make,’ he’d always say. ‘Leaves the prettiest country of all.’”

“You think that glacier was telling us something?” Thomas Haslam said. “Or what those glaciers left was? Think that country doesn’t want us up there?”

“That’s the thing,” Harvey Kittle said. “It don’t like you too close. It liked to killed my old man. Crippled me. Now it’s done Ty in.”
“Ty didn’t see it that way,” Thomas Haslam said. “Thought he was part of it. That if he could get Lilly up on that Kaweah shelf of his, he could have it forever.”
“Well he should of thought twice,” Harvey Kittle said. “No way up on that shelf for one thing. For another, he never could of run off with just one person. Too damn many backpackers up there now. Climbers.” Cody Jo saw the blood rising in Lilly’s face.
“You don’t know anything,” Lilly blurted. “Ty had things in him he couldn’t explain. Can’t you see what the mountains were to him? They were ...his music.”
Thomas Haslam saw her begin to shake, clutching hard at the music box.
“Harvey’s just wondering,” he said, calming her, “why it was the boy who was saved. By Ty’s mare. Ty’s mule.”
“We should have waited.” Lilly’s anger dissolved into tears. “It would have cleared. You should never have told him to go. We could have waited.”
“If we’d waited, Lilly, that boy wouldn’t be alive.”
“Don’t you see?” Lilly cried, Cody Jo holding her now. “We gave him no choice. He
had
no choice. He’s worth ten Tommies. A hundred . . .”
Cody Jo led her away, soothing her, listening to her, touching her.

“Never seen anything like that,” Cody Jo’s friend said, pointing the car down the long reach of Owens Valley. “All those toasts. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if they were about Ty Hardin or that husband you talk about.”

“They came to be a lot alike over the years,” Cody Jo said. “I get them mixed up myself.” She thought she’d had more to drink than she should have, but so had everyone else, even the singer, who’d taken her aside when she was leaving, tried to tell her something.

It troubled her that she couldn’t remember what Lilly had said. She liked her, liked her music, liked it that she’d tried to give Ty what she’d been unable to give him herself.

“Only I think Ty was more haunted.” She looked at the long stretch of highway ahead. “Afraid he might run out of those high meadows.”
She rested her head on the window and tried to sleep, watching the mountains, dozing a little, watching the mountains again.
The sun had dropped behind the crest, the eastern escarpment fading into that half-light of a day’s end. A glow remained on Whitney— high and lonely. She watched the shadows lifting toward it, wondering what Lilly had wanted to say, liking it that the singer had given Ty more comfort than he’d ever known, thinking about the mountains taking him at last.
Maybe it
was
time, she thought. Maybe Harvey was right: there was no place for a Ty Hardin up there any more.
The light was gone from Whitney now, only the darkening mass outlined above the crest.

And suddenly Cody Jo was with Fenton again. They were at White River. “People might get you,” Fenton was saying. “But not these mountains.” He was watching her, loving her there on that big rock that tilted down into the currents of White River.

“The high country doesn’t want to get you—or anybody else.” He said it as though he could see into the night, unsparing as the moon.
“It’s too big to care.”