Abandon

Abigail stared up at him, his face surprisingly calm and expressionless in the glare of her light.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said, “but I guess what doesn’t kill you—”

“What don’t kill you makes you a mean-ass motherfucker.”

“Can I tell you something, Isaiah?”

“What?”

“It’s nothing like what you experienced, but I’m afraid right now. Afraid when you get this gold, you’re gonna kill me, because I’ve seen your face and know something about you. Will you tell me if that’s what’s going to happen, so I can at least begin to prepare for it?”

Jerrod returned, said, “Think we could end the therapy session, get the f**k up this mountain?”

“Hey, I needed to do this. Shari says I don’t talk enough about it, so I’m practicing. You should unload, brother. Shit’s empowering.”

“You ain’t right, man.”

Isaiah grinned at Abigail. “Don’t think Jerrod ain’t holding his shit together. He’s doing okay. Our man, Stu, on the other hand—sad, sad motherfucker. Just fell apart. Wife left him when he came back. Took his little girl. He lost everything. How many times he try to kill himself, Jer?”

“Three.”

“And, as you probably gathered, he’s a raging alky. I know this gold ain’t a cure-all, and we still gonna be f**ked up rest of our lives, but don’t we deserve a little compensation after all we been through? Ain’t like Uncle Sam could give a f**k.”

“Can we go now? You need a hug first?”

Isaiah chuckled, shot Jerrod the bird. “Yeah, let’s hit it.”

Never answered my question.

Before Abigail stood, she noticed something at her feet, reached down, lifted the light, brittle skull out of the snow. She shone her headlamp onto the braincase of some animal, a horse perhaps, browned and cracking, filled with bits of rock and bone fragments that rattled inside like sand in a sea-shell, and she imagined some carefree hiker, a half century from now, holding her sun-bleached skull in his hands, speculating with his companions about her fate.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Lawrence and Abigail stood at thirteen thousand feet, already a foot of snow at the pass and the wind screaming beyond comprehension, so hard that they could lean into it at forty-five-degree angles and be held upright. They watched their captors trudge upslope, wearing those acrylic black masks again to shield their faces from the stinging cold.

Lawrence waved them over and shouted above the wind, “I wanna explore this side first! There’s a recess in the cliff that looks very interesting!”

Isaiah gave a thumbs-up, and they worked their way over from the saddle to the base of the palisade, a series of broken crags that, from Abandon, resembled an old saw blade cutting at the sky. When she saw where he was leading them, Abigail grabbed hold of her father’s arm. Accessible from the pass, a ledge traversed the escarpment. To her right—vertical snow-glazed rock that lifted beyond the range of her headlamp. To her left—a stomach-churning drop into darkness. She shone her light over the edge and watched snowflakes swirling and tumbling down through the beam, losing sight of them long before they reached the bottom.

Near the pass, the ledge was four feet wide—broad enough for Abigail and Lawrence to walk abreast. But it narrowed as it crossed the face of the palisade, and Abigail had to follow behind her father, hugging the cliff as with each step she punched through a foot of fresh powder.

The ledge went on and on.

It narrowed to three feet, then two.

Toward the end, the ledge sloped down just enough so that Abigail’s boots would slide over the icy rock toward the edge if she lingered in one spot too long.

Suddenly, Lawrence turned and pulled her underneath an overhang, out of the snow, out of the wind, the rock dry. Abigail’s face had gone numb, and she took off her gloves, pressed her palms into her cheeks.

“Listen, Abby,” Lawrence whispered. “I’m gonna try to—”

Isaiah and Jerrod emerged from the ledge and ducked into the overhang.

They collapsed onto the rock, their black parkas blanched with snow.

“This it, Larry?”

“This is the place I wanted to check out, yeah.”

“Don’t look like much to me. You ain’t f**king around again—”

“How about that? Does that look like something?”

Isaiah aimed his headlamp at the back wall, the corners of his mouth lifting, his bright, perfect teeth shining their malevolent smile. “Now, that does look like some shit.”

Isaiah got up, walked over to the opening in the rock. He squatted down, peered inside.

“How far’s it go back?” Jerrod asked.

“About four feet.”

“Can you see anything?”

“Nah, this tunnel slants down and to the left.” He put his light on Lawrence. “You been in here before, Lar?”

“No. I’d planned to come up here on some downtime during our three days in Abandon.”

Isaiah pushed back his hood and pulled off his face mask. From underneath the overhang, the wind sounded like a fleet of jet engines as it tore across the pass. “See, part of me’s thinking that you might be a conniving motherfucker. You feel me?”

“No, I don’t feel you.”

“You’re telling me that’s an old claim hole?”

“Far as I know.”

“Well, I’m all for sending your ass in first, but what if it’s in fact a cave? And you just disappear once you get inside? Only one of us can fit through that tunnel at a time.”

“Look, I have no idea what’s in there,” Lawrence said. “I hope for our sake it’s a shitload of gold. Based on my research, everything I know about Oatha and Billy, I have a feeling that’s exactly what we’re going to find. But I’m not leaving Abigail, so you don’t have to—”

“All right, tell you what. We’ll send Abigail in. Jerrod, undo Larry’s end of the rope and whip up one of your fancy knots for the lady.”

It took Jerrod less than a minute to untie Lawrence and prepare a harness for Abigail.

“Second time you’ve done this,” she said as he ran the rope around her thighs. “Remember yesterday?” He’d taken off his mask, and when he looked up, her headlamp shone on the crescent moon scars that ruined his face. In spite of everything, she found it impossible not to feel a flicker of compassion for what he’d endured in Iraq.