The Ledge (29 page)

“Maybe ya should just leave it all behind—be done with it,” Dad says.

But I’m not ready. Even now, the day after the worst experience of my life, I’m not ready to declare that I’ll leave climbing behind.

“I don’t think I should make that decision now,” I tell him.

Dad and I are close, but we usually have trouble expressing emotion with each other.

“I love you,” I tell him.

“I love you,” he says back.

Finally, I hobble into the bar. I order two beers: one for me, one for Mike. I drink them both.

MORNING COMES. MY
leg joints are stiff, the muscles very tender. With a single massive blue bruise stretching from my left knee to my groin, my left leg flounders worse than my right one, so I shuffle across my room in an unbalanced, halting gait. My left forefoot remains numb and feels squishy, making the wood floor seem distant beneath me.

Leaning on the bed, the walls, and then the door frame for support, I tread a slow lap around the small room. As the alpine morning light spills in through the lone window, I keep hobbling around the rustic room, trying to loosen up. The walls, floor, ceiling, and furniture are all constructed of the same honey-yellow pine. With each lap, my legs and back relax a little, so I push myself to shuffle once around the whole fifty-foot perimeter without using any support.

I stop at the doorway to the bathroom, and four feet away, just above the old porcelain sink basin, I see myself staring back from the mirror. My eyes look dark and withdrawn, almost menacing. I’m uncomfortable looking at myself.

When I grab the back of a tall wooden desk chair, pain radiates across my left shoulder. I try rotating my head to work the pain out, but I can’t turn to the left very far. I worry about it, but it’s only been two days since the accident.

The chair scrapes loudly across the pine floor as I slide it out. Using the edge of the desk for support, I sit down awkwardly. With
no cushion, the hard wooden chair is uncomfortable. Good. The discomfort will keep me awake, and besides, I don’t have the right to be comfortable now, anyway.

I glance out the window. The worn curtains are mostly closed, so I can see only a little piece of the mountain. It’s just as well. I could not bear to glimpse the summit right now. Even better, the glacier where it all happened is on the opposite side of the mountain from the Paradise Inn.

From the desk drawer I pull out some stationery. The sheets of paper and the envelope are both decorated in brown ink with a lithograph of Mount Rainier. I study the drawing to see if our ascent or descent routes are in the sketch. I run my swollen finger along the mountain’s silhouette and stop at the volcano’s apex. This seems to be an image of Rainier’s southern side. Slowly, I realize it’s the view of the mountain you can see right outside the inn.

Rummaging in the drawer, I find a pen tucked in the back. When I try to hold it, my hand is so puffy that my fingers don’t bend right.

I’m afraid to start writing.

I need to talk to Mike so badly right now, but he’s gone. Writing to him seems to be the only way. I need to tell him what happened. I’ve got to tell him how hard I tried to save him, and myself. And I need to apologize—for him dying, and for me living.

Once I leave the mountain today, everything will be different. I will have to face the world. Everyone will want to know what happened, but maybe they’ll never understand, because they weren’t with us on the glacier. I will have to talk to Mike’s family, too. God, how will I possibly be able to do that? What will I say? What can I say?

How am I going to live with this?

I shuffle and align a few blank pieces of stationery. Holding the stack of paper with both hands, I stare at the brown mountain and the words beneath it: Mount Rainier National Park.

I lay the paper flat on the wooden desk. To sit taller in the chair, I straighten my back, ignoring the aches and stiffness. My rigid fingertips crimp around the pen’s point. Trying to build momentum, but still unsure, I coax myself onward.

I PRESS PEN
onto paper.

I ALIGN THE
four scribbled sheets, then fold the stack in thirds. Dragging a wrist across my face, I wipe away the sweat so it doesn’t fall on the papers. I slide the letter into the small matching envelope, lick the glue, and carefully close the flap. Before I put it in my pocket, I stare for a long time at this sealed letter, reading the preprinted envelope over and over again: Mount Rainier National Park.

I AM SUPPOSED
to meet Madden to sort out the rest of our climbing gear, which has been pulled from the crevasse. I push my breakfast around the plate, staring at a brief newspaper story about our accident.

John takes possession of Mike’s things to ship them to Mr. and
Mrs. Price. We finish a few minutes after one
P.M
. I shake his hand and thank him for his kindness. Leaving the rental car unlocked, I use the bathroom, then return to the car and open the driver’s door. Some gear that just came off the mountain has been left on the front seat. It’s two carabiners clipped together—one of mine, one of Mike’s.

AT THE AIRPORT
I call Gloria and then her mother, Marilyn Neesham, and a family friend, Father Peter Mihalic, who obtained the pope-blessed medal I wear. I assure them all that I was wearing the medal and thank them. They tell me they are praying for me and Mike. As we lift off, I try to spot Rainier out the window on the other side of the plane, but I can’t see much. It’s probably just as well. After what seems like an eternity, we touch down in Denver. As we roll to the gate, I tap the protective medal around my neck.

I am one of the first people off the plane. I see Gloria waiting for me, her expression contorted in sorrow.

“Your face looks bad,” she says.

“It kind of hurts,” I say, and the tears come.

We hold each other tightly for a time, right at the gate, then finally gather ourselves and trudge out to my pickup. By midnight we are home.

THE NEXT MORNING
, I listen to the answering machine’s forty messages—there’d been stories in the newspapers.

Finally, I pick up the phone to do something I’ve been dreading and dial Daryl Price’s number. A man answers.

“Hello, Daryl?” I ask.

“No, this is Daryl’s dad.”

“Mr. Price,” I say in a monotone, “this is Jim Davidson.”

“Hello, Jim,” he says wearily. “How are you?”

“Oh, okay, I guess.”

It feels awkward. Every word seems wrong. I ask him if they want to get together.

“Yes, yes,” he says. “We’ve been wanting to hear from you.”

We agree to meet later that afternoon.

DARYL’S HOUSE IS
only a few blocks from mine. I’ve never met him—or Mike’s parents. I know I owe it to all of them to explain what happened, to answer their questions, to express my sorrow. Gloria and I step out into the sunshine; I need her with me. I have no idea how I’ll be received, or exactly what I’ll say.

After a ten-minute walk, I find myself standing on Daryl’s doorstep, nervous, scared, dreading what lies ahead. Will they blame me for Mike’s death? Will they be angry?

The door opens. I see Don Price, a stoic man with a powerful presence.

“I’m Jim Davidson,” I say.

After meeting Donna and Daryl, we all sit down in the living room. Gloria sits on my right, holding my hand.

“We just want to know what happened,” Donna says in a soft Oklahoma accent. “If you don’t talk about it, you’ll never be able to live with it.”

I start the story from the beginning. Only a few sentences in, my hands—and my voice—tremble badly. Donna gets up and moves over to sit next to me. She reaches over and takes my left hand, holding and patting it while I talk for the next hour or more about the climb, about the fall, about Mike’s death. Donna never lets go of my hand, an act of kindness and grace I know will stay with me always.

I consciously shorten the story of my own survival, skipping over big chunks. This isn’t about me—it’s about Mike. After I finish, Don
and Donna both tell me they understand that it was difficult to tell it. I go to the bathroom and splash water on my face.

When I return, the Prices ask me to help them pick out Mike’s best slides for his memorial service. They ask about Mike’s camera, and I tell them I’ve already dropped off the film for developing and will be glad to go through the Rainier slides with them and explain everything if they’d like.

“No, I don’t think I need to go through the slides,” Don Price says. “What you just told me will be indelibly put in my mind. I want the slides and I wanted to hear the stories because they are memories—that’s all we have left now.”

We talk about the logistics of Mike’s memorial service. After good-bye handshakes and hugs, Gloria and I slowly walk home. Gloria says, “While you were gone in the bathroom, Donna said to me, ‘The one thing we want Jim to understand is that we never did, and still don’t, think Jim was at all responsible for Mike’s death.’ ”

It feels like a heavy burden has been lifted from me. We discuss how incredibly kind the Prices have been to us and Gloria says, “Now I know how Mike got to be so wonderful—he has wonderful parents.”

Later that day, Gloria and I drive to the mall so I can buy a new pair of cowboy boots for the service. Mike was a cowboy-boot kind of guy, and it seems to me that wearing a pair to the memorial service would be a fitting tribute. Maybe nobody else will understand it, but I will know.

ON THURSDAY NIGHT
—four days since the accident—I steel myself for Mike’s memorial service the following morning. Around eight-thirty, the doorbell dings, and I welcome two friends, Rodney Ley and Pat Rastall.

Pat was a coleader on our Aconcagua expedition and a friend of
Mike’s; Rodney and I are really just getting to know each other. He had been a good friend of Mike’s also, and two weeks ago the three of us climbed in the Lumpy Ridge area of Rocky Mountain National Park, up a route known as Beelzebub—the Devil. Rodney was between me and Mike on the rope. It was the first time I’d ever climbed with Rodney, and the last time I’d climbed with Mike before Rainier.