Daniel Arnold - Snowblind: tales of alpine obsession

SNOWBLIND

Copyright 2015 Daniel Arnold

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Story The Cleaning Crew, first appeared in Issue 74 of ZYZZYVA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available

Cover design by Jason Snyder

Interior Design by Megan Jones Design

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e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-499-1

To Ashley and Sage

CONTENTS

M ENDOZA, THE AUSTRAL summer of 2005. Dry, hot December dust and soot from old cars hacking through the streets stuck to the flat-faced buildings, the trees, and the people strolling down the broad sidewalks. But not to the doors, which were polished and brightly colored and swung open on oiled hinges, looking both newer and older than the faded concrete of the street front. Pacos was no exception, and I raised my fist to knock wondering how he managed to keep his door immaculate with so many people like me coming to pound on it.

After a moment, Paco appeared and told me all his rooms were full. He looked the same, filling the vertical reach of his doorway, but not the horizontal. He and his brother could have stood there comfortably side-by-side.

What about the roof? I said. Id put my tent up on the roof.

Paco raised a shaggy eyebrow and held it there a moment. The matter needed careful thought. Why not? he said. Its summertime. Anything goes. You know? Five dollars a night. Dont use too much water. Theres a queue for the bao every damn morning.

I piloted the seventy pounds on my back through Pacos narrow hallways, trying not to scrape the walls with the sharp edges of my load. I heard English falling down through the plaster above my head. One voice only, an avalanche of words, words, words. I passed rooms filled with things and no people, rucksacks open, jackets, sleeping bags, crampons, ice screws scattered over the beds and floor.

Everyone in the house was up on the second level, in the room stocked with third-hand couches and chairs that merged into the public kitchen and overlooked Calle 25 de Mayo through two large windows. Except for Paco, who was tinkering with the stove burners and could claim to be there for his own purposes, they all listened to the kid behind the voice. Pacos brother sat in a metal folding chair, and the kidI found out later he answered to JDsat across from him with a wobbly card table between them, though it could have been the pearly gates and an audition with Saint Peter from the way the kid talked. He wanted, what, applause? Absolution? He was trying hard, that was damn sure. A fine kid, someones son, one presumes. Born into a generation that never shook off its bewilderment, its disbelief in the actual workings of the universe. He watched his hands, which crawled all across the tabletop, and Pacos brother stayed quiet behind the wrinkled old leather of his face. JD never swapped eyes with the rest of us, but he didnt lower his voice either, and we circled around him.

I was relieved to take the pack off my back, to be in Pacos dark, cool house, out of the city heat, to have the mountain far away and flattening to snapshots. I sat myself on the floor next to a couch occupied by an American husband-and-wife team Id met once in Peru. He drank mat out of a gourd through a wooden straw, which disappeared into the heavy curls of his beard. She kept her hands busy sharpening the business end of an ice tool with a bastard file.

All this time, JD was sawing away, face pinched, voice stretched tight.

Its heaven till its hell, right? Its all make-believe until it turns to shit and you think youre going to die. Youre up there with the white angels watching movie magiclike youre in a place the movies cant touch. Then the sky goes black and drops on your head. I was little-kid scared. It was that big. In real lifeor flatland life, whateverRex was a Unitarian minister. Maybe it was a part-time gigI fucking cant believe it myself. I didnt know him. Hed lead AA groups in the church basement, the whole ball of wax. But he was full of shit, because midweek he was pressing flesh on the rock. He should have founded Climbers Anonymous. Up there it was like he was drunk, like he was mainlining the storm.

Rex, he had wild eyes, JD said. He didnt look human. More like a wounded animal. The wind was in our heads. My lungs got no grip on the air. It played with us. Let us up, knocked us down. There were gaps when it went still and my brain started to clear, but then it swung back at us and youd feel it coming. Ten seconds, five secondsthen out with the claws, man, and wed be down and pinned again. I got killer-mad, was screaming at the lulls. For giving us space just enough to know how bad it was going to be.

Rex led through the cliff band. The rocks stuck out like rotten teethall sharp and black. They freaked me out. I pulled on them, and they moved and spat gravel in my face. Ice covered everything, but not enough for my tools to stick. Every time I swung an axe, I got sparks jumping back, and rock splinters flying around.

We were managing, though. That was the thing. Rex finished his lead and got enough of a break to yell, Come on up, girly-boy. Something like that. Dont be afraid, Daddy dont spank that hard. Stupid stuff, saying it now. The kind of thing the dickheads say at the crag. But it got me laughing, and the climbing through the teeth didnt seem as scary as it should have. The mountain was big and bad, more than wed seen. But we werent fools. It wasnt like that.

I thought: Keep saying it. Maybe itll come true. JD was filthy. I was too. His hair hung down to his shoulders in thick, shiny mats. He had an inch of oily blond beard. His lips were split and puffy. White craters dimpled the skin around his cheekbones where the cold had done its damage, and the tip of his nose was black, though it didnt look too bad. He would probably get to keep it. But he couldnt have been twenty-three, so he still looked healthy under all that dirt and hair and frostbite. You see a forty-year-old man walk out of an extended epic, and he looks like a bus-stop bum, but JD still had a kids flush under the wreckage of his face. Scrub him up, and hed be a college boy. He was still wet clay.