Together (23 page)

There were
perilous moments when he slipped and fell, but the big dog dropped to the
ground in front of him, breaking his master's slide. Sometimes Nelson would
whine and come to a stop because the angles or step-downs were too high.
Brenden would drop down and crawl to the edge, searching for a hand-or
foothold under the snow.

In every
effort, in every slip, in every movement, Brenden knew that the clock ticked on
Charlie's life, and the guilt he felt about his friend's predicament became
almost overwhelming.

Charlie Evans hovered
between light
and dark, consciousness and unconsciousness. The thin thread of his knowledge
of the mountains became a mantra.
Stay awake. Don't sleep. Stay
awake. Don't lose it. Stay awake: live. Sleep: die.
Charlie understood it
completely, and with every ragged breath he focused his entire being on just
trying to hang on to life. Sometimes his mantra turned into a prayer.
God,
help me to stay awake. Jesus, give me the strength to survive.

Somewhere in
the back of his mind, he believed he needed a miracle, and he hoped against
hope that Brenden and Nelson would be that miracle. From his position at the
bottom of the crevasse, Charlie was somewhat protected from the gusting wind,
and yet he registered that there seemed to be a slackening in its violence.
Shading his eyes against the snow and looking up, he saw what appeared to him
to be—yes—a sliver of light. The moon began to break through the clouds. Did
that mean the storm was lessening?

"Please
God," he prayed out loud, "let that be part of my miracle."

There were
other people on the mountain just then feeling the same thing. The haste team
noted the same sliver of moon that Charlie saw, and Brenden felt the snow
slackening and the wind beginning to die. But where was he on the slope? He
still could not feel up or down. He tried to count the cairn steps, but they
were not clear in the snow. He forgot to check his watch, so time became
irrelevant, except as it related to Charlie. The dog kept him safe and kept him
moving. He wondered if rescue teams were also moving. He knew Charlie's cell
phone could be tracked if it hadn't been destroyed in the fall, so maybe they
were up here, and maybe he and Nelson could find them.

The big dog
came to a stop. Brenden felt his body tense as if he were on point hunting a
bird somewhere in a sunny meadow.

"What is
it, Nelson?"

The dog was
perfectly still, every fiber taut, alert, focused. And then Brenden heard it
too—the sound of voices somewhere out there in the snow.

"Over
here," he croaked, the sound little more than a whisper. "Over
here," he tried again.

Thank God the
dog had a voice, and his bark reverberated through the storm.

"Good
boy, Nelson. Good boy," Brenden said to the animal. "Keep it
up."

The dog did.
In less than three minutes, Brenden was surrounded by the rescue party, and in
the next few minutes, he described both what happened and approximately where
Charlie was up on the glacier.

The team
leader radioed Brenden's information about the glacier to support teams back in
the valley. He wondered if a helicopter could get in there. He believed it was
flat enough, and maybe they could pull it off.

"Listen,
Brenden, can you be more specific?" he asked. "Do you know any more
about where Charlie is?"

"I'm
sorry," Brenden said. "I can't help you with any other information
because ..." He spat the words into the air. "Because I'm
blind."

Hearing the
anger in his master's voice, Nelson leaned against the man's leg and looked up
as if to say,
What's the matter, Master?
And Brenden got it.

"Listen,"
he said, suddenly excited by the thought, "I may not know exactly where
Charlie is, but Nelson does. Take us up there in the helicopter. We'll find
Charlie."

Thirty
minutes later four men, along with the pilot, were crowded into the narrow
space of the aircraft with a guide dog lying across their feet. With the
combination of moon and Zeon light reflecting off the snow below, the
helicopter descended slowly, hovered, and then skidded onto the snowy surface
of the flat meadow just below the glacier.

"Okay,"
the pilot called, "everybody out. Good luck."

"All
right," the team leader said to Brenden, "you indicated that Charlie
was somewhere on the far right of the glacier. Is that correct?"

"Yes,"
Brenden said. "Have you been able to triangulate from his cell
phone?"

"No. I'm
sorry," the man told him. "It must have been broken in the fall, so
it's up to you and your courageous friend here."

"Okay,"
Brenden said. "Okay." His voice didn't hide the tension he felt.

Dropping down
to the snowy surface next to the big animal's ear, he began speaking softly,
taking off his gloves and stroking the beautiful head at the same time. He
remembered that every time Charlie pulled up to his house in his truck he told
Nelson, "Charlie's here. Charlie's here." The big dog had learned
what that meant. Charlie was the guy who always played ball with him. Charlie
was someone Nelson had come to love, and Brenden used that memory to channel
the animal's attention.

"Charlie's
here, boy. Charlie's up here somewhere. Where's Charlie?"

The animal
looked around.

"Atta-boy,"
Brenden said. "Where's Charlie? Find Charlie, boy."

Now Brenden
pointed his hand up the mountain. "He's up there, boy. He's up
there," he said enthusiastically, rising to his feet. "Charlie's up there.
We've got to find Charlie. Let's go get him, boy. Let's go get him."

The dog began
to animate. Did he know? Was he figuring out what his master wanted? Brenden
wasn't sure, but he felt that maybe he was. And then the dog began to lean
forward in the harness with anticipation.

"That's
right, Nelson. That's right," Brenden said. "Are you ready, boy?
Okay. Let's climb. Let's find Charlie."

The dog began
to move across the meadow, up over the cairn, and onto the snow-packed glacier
surface.

Brenden kept talking,
kept encouraging, as the rescue team followed behind them. "Where's
Charlie, boy? Where's Charlie? Find Charlie, Nelson. Where's Charlie?"

Brenden
wondered how his animal conducted the search. Certainly there was no scent
coming from Charlie. The snow covered everything, so there were no visual cues.
Charlie wasn't calling out, so the animal certainly wasn't hearing the lost
climber. So what drove Nelson across the glacier, angling from right to left,
gaining the right side of the mountain? It had to be instinct, Brenden thought,
an instinct born of the dog's unique need to please his master.

"Find
Charlie," he told Nelson again. "Atta boy. Find him, boy."

The dog came
to a stop, whining.

"Where's
Charlie, Nelson?" Brenden asked.

The whining
continued, and the animal sniffed the air. Had he picked up something? A scent?
Maybe
, Brenden thought,
maybe.

"Listen,"
he said to the team, "call Charlie's name together."

"Charlie!"
the climbers chanted. "Charlie!"

The sound
prompted Nelson to bark, and the cacophony of noise cut through rocks and
chasms.

"Charlie!"

No
reply came, and Brenden
understood why. His dear friend
was too weak to respond—or worse.

The dog
continued to sniff the air, and soon he began to quiver with excitement.
Brenden decided to go for it all. Reaching down, he unfastened Nelson's harness
and took off the leash.

"Find
Charlie," he said. "Find Charlie. Go get him, boy, go get him. Follow
the dog, guys. Follow him."

Nelson almost
ran now, laterally across the snow. He came to a stop just feet away from the
edge of the chasm where Charlie had fallen. The night-lights of the men took in
the scene.

"We got
him. We got him," they said over the radio to the helicopter.

Hours later Charlie lay
in
the same
hospital that only a year ago had saved Brenden. They had operated on his leg,
inserting pins to stabilize the broken tibia and fibula along with controlling
the internal bleeding. His ribs were heavily taped, and he was substantially
sedated. Then there was the question of hypothermia. Time would reveal the
extent of the frostbite. But he knew that Brenden, Mora, Kathleen, and his
father were standing around his bed.

"Am I
alive?" he croaked, smiling through parched lips. "Or is this just a
dream?"

"You're
going to be okay, Charlie," his father said, blinking back his own tears.
"You're going to be fine."

"We're
all going to be all right, Dad," Charlie said, through the haze of the
medication. "We're all going to be fine. The mountain's tough, but we're
tougher." Reaching out, he touched Brenden's arm. "Give me five,
pal."

Instead
Brenden leaned forward and gently hugged his friend's shoulders.

"You've
got it," he said quietly. "The mountain is tough, but we're tougher,
and so is Nelson."

Brenden couldn't sleep.
His mind
still raced with thoughts of what he and the dog had just been through, not
just on the mountain but also over the last year of change, growth, and love.
He knew in his gut that Nelson had become an appendage of himself, as relevant
to him as his arms and legs, senses and brain. The man and the dog were one,
bonded in interdependence unlike anything he could have ever imagined.

So was he
better off than he had been when he was sighted? No, he couldn't say that.
Certainly he wished he could see Kat or look once more on his mother's lovely
face. His love of the outdoors reminded him that he would never again look at
the natural beauty of things in the same way or have quite the same freedom and
independence he enjoyed before he went blind. But he had learned so much about
life through the application of all of his senses and the ability to be
empathetic when it came to the issues facing his fellow man. He knew without
question that he had become a better person and that much of the change in who
he was had been brought about by the example set by the big black dog.

Nelson was a
part of him, but he believed he also had fulfilled the animal in a significant
way. They were a team that would spend years together getting better at the
work. He understood that much of what he learned from Nelson would carry over
into his relationship with Kat.
Simply put,
he thought,
Nelson has taught me how to love, and that love, that friendship, that perfect
goodness expressed without hesitation or reservation in every experience will
make me a better man, a better friend, a better husband, and someday
—he smiled—
a
better father.

epilogue

Winter had
ended, and the big dog had shed his coat for a lighter summer one. Life was a
wonderful experience for the magnificent animal. Working daily to take Brenden
to classes or anywhere else the man needed to go, along with weekend hikes and
climbs with Brenden and Kat. Then there was his relationship with Gus and any
other friend of his master's who was willing to play ball.

As winter
turned into summer, the three became four. A few grey hairs were beginning to
appear around the black muzzle.

They called
the boy-human Brian, and Nelson called him his. When he wasn't working, the big
dog would lie wherever the baby was. Somehow, like dogs had done from the first
when they became man's best friend, Nelson had adopted another person as his
responsibility.

Just now, as
Kat watched, little Brian was attempting to crawl toward something he probably
shouldn't have been grabbing, and Nelson was right with him, eventually
reaching down and gently pulling the baby back by the seat of his pants to
where Kat had originally placed him. The girl laughed out loud, making the
animal perk his ears.

"You're
an amazing dog," she said to Nelson. "You take care of Brenden, you
love me, and now you take care of Brian. Aren't we the luckiest people to have
you?"