A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 4

Trevor Turner arrived at Advanced Base Camp like Charlemagne, leading a procession of people and equipment so colorful and so expensive that it was hard to interpret it as anything but a claim to kingship. Turner was the most visible and most successful among a crop of Everest guides from New Zealand who enjoyed playing the mountaineering underdog. Their assertion was that, despite the starstruck claims of Europe and America, of Reinhold Messner and Alex Lowe and George Mallory, New Zealand was the cradle of mountaineering greatness. And all the knighthoods and accolades from the West only reinforced their zeal.

Sunlight broke through a week-long cloud as if to trumpet the arrival. From the uphill edge of camp, Aaron watched Turner shake hands with other guides and their clients, working the crowd like a politician at a black-tie fundraiser. It was the same job, Aaron thought; stealing loyalties, forging alliances, asking for "support" in the form of guide fees that rose to Himalayan heights. He wore red from head to toe, the most high-tech gear and clothing, splattered with the logos of climbing's biggest sponsors, and gilded by a sweep of wavy blond hair that framed his broad, skull-capped head. His gait was easy and even, almost floating across the jumbled tallus field, greeting and hugging fellow climbers, welcoming them into his exclusive fraternity of the mountaineering cool. Turner smiled his way to the communications tent — the only collection of shared equipment on the mountain and a sort-of command post for all twelve expeditions making their bid that year. When Turner ducked into the tent, his caravan was still appearing over the moraine ridge in two lines a quarter mile behind him.

It was May first. The best guides had been on the mountain for three weeks already, spending valuable resources on the invisible processes of planning and acclimatization, and waiting for the skies to clear. The forecasts called for clouds to move out in the next few days; that's when the ascents would begin. It had been an unusually wet winter and every expert was predicting a short season. By mid-May, the snow would be too unstable for an ascent. Two weeks to reach the top of the world. Two weeks to confront another of his father's killers.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 3

The guest room was barely part of the permanent structure below it; more of a rooftop garden covered by corrugated metal and plywood. It wasn't plumbed. To pee, Aaron had to descend a cascade of wooden steps to a half-rotted platform that failed to hold level with the threshold of a metal bathroom door whose rust clashed viciously with its ochre paint. His room did have electricity, which is to say it had a single bare light bulb and a duplex outlet, half of which was permanently occupied by an electric space heater that threatened to set half of Kathmandu ablaze. Outside a small square window, the shadow of two buildings seemed to lean in toward one another as if peering in at Aaron's little nest. And between then, behind them, Aaron could see the sharpened, indigo peak where his father died.

There was a gentle knock on the door; Aaron jerked and spilled tea on his leg. He pulled an ice axe from a pile of equipment and leaned it beside his chair before he answered, "Come in!"

A tall man stepped into the light of the single bulb and let the door swing closed behind him. He smiled deeply, openly, without pity. His teeth shone brighter than his eyes which hid behind smudged walnut cheeks.

"Mr. Ghode?"

"Aaron. I bring you greetings. It is good for you to visit us," the man said loudly. He crossed the room faster than Aaron could stand so that his outstretched hand almost caught Aaron in the forehead as he rose.

"Please sit," Aaron said, studying his visitor carefully for a long moment while he levered his frame into a squatty wooden chair. The light bulb swayed narrowly above a metal card table and the two men. Aaron had only met the visitor once, years before, on his first visit to the Himalaya. Prenesh Ghode was a titan of Nepali industry. His "brokerage" (Aaron thought "slave market" might be more accurate) supplied more than three-fourths of all the sherpas on Everest. Though he had never climbed higher than the steps of his office building, he dressed the part of an explorer. He wore thick boots, wool slacks, and a down vest right out of an L.L. Bean catalog. Aaron sat and then remembered his manners. "Tea?"

"No, thank you friend. I hope you don't think me rude, but I cannot stay long. I have many men coming to the mountain this season. some arriving tonight."

"No worries," Aaron said and then waited for more. But the visitor only looked around the tiny room, taking inventory of its contents. Then, satisfied that he had cataloged Aaron's possessions, he turned his gaze to Aaron's eyes, as if taking measure of his thoughts. "I didn't expect to see you. How— how have you been?"

"No, I'm sure you didn't expect me," Ghode smiled. "I wasn't sure I should come but—" here he trailed off and resumed his study of the room.

"Why did you come?" Aaron asked.

"I heard you were in town and…and I'm sure you have heard about Dawa?"

"Yes. Terrible."

"Well, your arrival and his death coming so close together, I thought…I saw it as a sign. An opportunity."

"Oh? An opportunity for what?"

"To betray a secret.

Involuntarily, Aaron's left knee started to bounce as if keeping time with a rapid, barreling tune. He tried to respond casually, "Secret, huh? I'm all ears."

"Dawa Lob-sang was a dear friend. We worked together for many years. He was the best guide in Nepal."

Aaron remembered Ghode's habit of using the title "guide" for his sherpas, and the title "sponsor" for the foreign climbers charged with getting their increasingly unqualified clientele to the top of the world's highest peak.

"I was glad to see him once more before he died," Aaron said quickly.

"Yes. It's convenient that you were here when he did," Ghode paused again and eyed Aaron carefully.

"Why is that?"

"Dawa has left you an inheritance."

"What?"

"He was a frugal man with no family. After Aapti died, he had no one. His family was his fellow climbers…your father among them. He leaves you four million rupees."

Aaron was blank. Why would Dawa leave money to him? Out of guilt? A buddhist penance? And how on earth did Dawa Lob-sang have almost forty thousand dollars?

"There is something else; the secret," Ghode said.

"Tell me."

"Dawa was not there the day your father died. Your father climbed alone. Dawa refused to leave high camp that morning. There was weather and—"

"Bullshit! Dad would never have climbed alone. What the hell are you talking about?"

"I know it is hard to hear, Aaron," Ghode's tone was slower but no softer. "But it is true. They fought. And Dawa thought that Robert would not climb without him. Dawa thought he was calling a bluff. But Robert wasn't bluffing. He attempted to summit alone."

"Where are you getting this bullshit?" Aaron was standing now, looking down at Ghode with his arms crossed and his head canted aside. The light bulb lit his jaw and the steep slope of his chest, but left his eyes dark. "Who's telling you this? And why now?"

"Dawa told me on the day of Robert's funeral. He told me so I would allow him to work, but he swore me to secrecy in order to protect your father's name as a climber."

"That sonofabitch let my father die! He killed him! He made up a story so he could keep his job and you believed him?"

"That sonofabitch saved half his salary every year from that to this and has left it in an account in your name at Rastriya Banijya Bank. I have the account number," Ghode produced a slip of paper from a zippered vest pocket and laid it on the table.

"There were witnesses, Prenesh."

"Two. Trevor Turner and Sherpa Tonsing. Tonsing doesn't work for me. He refuses to discuss that day with me or anyone else. And Turner is…" Ghode looked at his unscuffed boots. "also not talking."

"And you've asked?"

"Not exactly."

"Because he's Western?"

"Kiwi. It's not wise for me to make trouble, Aaron."

"I see. Bite the hand that feeds you and all that, huh?"

"Something like that."

Aaron took his seat again and let his arms hang from slumped shoulders. He stared toward the window and fingered the tip of the ice axe still leaning against his chair.

"What, exactly, are you saying? Turner and his sherpa lied to cover Dad's ass?"

"I don't know their motives. And I don't know what happened that morning," Ghode said. "I just know it happened without Dawa Lob-sang. And I'm giving you four million reasons to believe me."

"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"That's up to you. You don't have to do anything, Aaron. Take your money and go back to America. I'll cancel your climb this year." Ghode wrestled himself out of his chair and put a hand on Aaron's shoulder. "But if you want to know how your father died, you'll have to ask Turner."

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 2

Aaron watched his dinner companion drink the poison, but it brought him no joy. Six years of plotting and seething were over. He had succeeded. And it was over so quickly, so casually. Just another drink like so many passed around the tavern that night, raised to smiling lips, drunk with hungry forgetfulness. Just another dead old man like so many others. Just another day in the shadow of the Mother Goddess like millions before.

The tavern was little more than a windowed closet on the upper floor of a dusty brick rowhouse along a narrow street. On the floor below was an office of some sort where men wore ties clipped to short sleeved white shirts and did their best to appear "professional" and "developed" despite the frequent sound of fistacuffs from the market across the street. It didn't matter, Aaron thought, looking down at the street through stained windows, trying not to watch too eagerly for the oncoming visitation from death. No one in the "professional" or "developed" worlds was paying attention.

The poison had been easy to get. The Nepalese version of the DEA, if there was such a thing, was apparently unconcerned with a myriad of mood-altering drugs being sold openly in bodegas, in street markets, and on street corners by bleary-eyed teens carrying their inventory in plastic milk crates on the back of scooters propelled by black smoke. It didn't take many quesions to lead from dealer to supplier to producer who could provide a drug that would alter more than one's mood. It was risin, or some Himalayan version of it. The druggist, whose shop occupied a cinder-block hut which jutted into the alley behind a butcher shop, had said it was odorless and tasteless.

Aaron's dinner companion sipped his tea slowly at first, blowing and casting stern looks across its surface as if he wasn't sure of its quality. But as the tea cooled, his consumption sped until he was gulping and calling for a second cup.

"It is so good to see you, Mr. Aaron. I am so glad you are here in Nepal. So glad to sit and have tea with Mr. Mann again, eh?" He raised his cup. "To your father."

Aaron felt a twist in his gut at the mention of the man whose death he was avenging, but he raised his cup and smiled. "Yes, to my father."

Aaron's companion was Dawa Lob-sang, a sherpa of legendary longevity with twenty-five ascents of Chomolungma to his credit, if anyone asked, which no one ever did; summit ascents were counted and congratulated by white men. Dawa was toothy and thin. His balding head shot forward from his torso and his shoulders were slender, bony and hunched. They looked pressed together as if some invisible giant were constantly squeezing him in an unwelcome hug. His face was vacant and joyful, punctuated by China teeth and a permanently-raised brow that made him look as if he was constantly expecting a punch line.

"I miss him," Dawa Lob-sang said, wiping the poisoned tea from his lips. "Your father was a good man."

Aaron Mann seethed at the guile of his father's killer. The innocence of his manner only made his feigned allegiance more vile. Aaron wondered if Dawa had been this calm when he cut his father's rope, or when he raided the tent, or when he created the cover story about a micro-blast. "A good man," Aaron repeated studying Dawa for a tick or downward glance that would betray his guilt. None was there. He turned again to peer through the grime on the window. In the street, one of the office workers was leaving loudly, shouting at someone in the office below and holding high two middle fingers.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 1

Steely Dan was almost loud enough to drown out the deadening hum of the Airbus A320's engines. Aaron Mann adjusted his headphones and tried to close his eyes and see his father. This had been Dad's favorite album. He could see the elder Mann wobbling his head in rhythm with Walter Becker's guitar and the washboard road under the tires of their mud-caked 4Runner on the way to another weekend ramble through the mountains. Dad. And Steely Dan. And that rusted blue 4Runner stuffed full of rope and harnesses and a dutch oven with a broken handle. And the hum of the road like the hum of jet engines, only softer. Less angry. Less violent.

Aaron moved his hands to his lap to give Bill-the-accountant-from-Atlanta a turn with the armrest. He let his head fall to his shoulder and peeked through the window at the jumbled landscape below. The cataclysm punching those mountains toward the sky must have been enormous. The chain stretched beyond his view from forty-thousand feet, through Myanmar and into China. It was a squalid terrain where nothing living was allowed to stay, scraped by glaciers stained brown like the skid marks of nature, dotted with bitter peaks that threatened to claw the belly of the airliner. Up here, Aaron thought, it was all blues riffs and armrests, the dull drone of engines and sun-lit memories of his father. Below, it was all icefalls and tallus and spindrift.

And murder.

A Son Who Wants Love

When he was six, Sean held on to his dad's pants while the men talked and smoked in the dark on the front porch before they would all get into one car and drive away. Sometimes, his dad would turn aside toward the light of a window and check the roll of cash in his front pocket, squinting through cigar smoke while he counted. When his mother put Sean to bed on those nights, she would pray for her husband with a special earnestness that Sean didn't know what to do with besides notice.

---

When he was ten, Sean held a basketball in the driveway waiting for his dad to come home. He had promised to be home in time to practice before Sean's game. The ball felt heavy and useless in his hands. He realized he was afraid to bounce it, as if it would break into thousands of tiny orange pieces. He stared at it for a long time, wondering if it really was a basketball, realizing that the ball was growing larger and heavier and uglier, until his mother shouted that it was time to go. His father wasn't there. He wasn't at the game either.

---

When he was twelve, Sean held the door to his room closed while his father raged against the other side. He was asking about money, about where Sean's mother had hidden the cash. He wasn't drunk — Sean had seen drunk before — but he was panicked. More than once his voice broke. Was he crying? Who cries and begs for money at his son's bedroom door? Who was his father becoming, Sean wondered. Who was Sean becoming?

---

When he was sixteen, Sean held out his brand new drivers license for his parents to see. His dad seemed both proud and preoccupied at the same time. Sean wondered how a human could combine those two affectations at once. At worst, his father hated him; at best he was ambivalent.

His father asked him to go for a drive and Sean was more than happy to oblige. Maybe this was a turning point? Maybe the truth would come out? While Sean backed out of the driveway, triple-checking his blind-spots, his dad seemed overwrought. Sean expected him to make some kind of announcement.

"Sean, you're mother and I are splitting up..."
"Sean, I have to go away for a while…"
"Sean, you're a disappointment to the family and I never want to see you again…"

These are the fears of a boy on a drive with his unknown father. But all his dad said was, "I'm glad you got your license son. A car is a lot of freedom. I hope you don't misuse your freedom."

After that, they drove in silence.

What did that mean? Was that some kind of code? Was he supposed to know how to interprets dad-speak like this? Was it something every other teenage boy came by naturally, but he was missing somehow? Were other teenaged boys driving around with their dads, getting the same cryptic messages and knowing in silent understanding?

He started to ask, but his father said, "Let's go home. I don't want your mother to get worried."

---

When he was eighteen, Sean held his diploma in his right hand and swung the tassel across his cap with his left. He scanned the audience for his father, but didn't see him. Maybe he was in the back. Maybe he was proud of him even if he wasn't there.

---

When he was twenty-three, Sean held his bride's hand and smiled for the cameras. He felt sick. He almost wretched when he heard the photographer say, "Ok, now let's have the happy couple with the groom's parents." His mother stepped dutifully forward, and they smiled for the camera.

---

When he was twenty-six, Sean held Benjamin who weighed seven pounds, one ounce and measured nineteen inches long. Everyone said he had Sean's eyes. His mother said they had said the same thing about Sean having his father's eyes. He posted photos on Facebook. Three days later, his father liked them.

---

When he was forty-six, Sean held eight tickets to Paris. They were a family of six now; Ben had three sisters. He handed two tickets to his mother who said she would do her best, but he really shouldn't have spent the money already.

"Mom, you know as well as I do that I wouldn't have gotten a commitment from him. Besides, I'm a partner now. We're doing fine. I'm willing to take the risk."

It seemed a foolish risk though, another in a lifetime of risks taken, of putting his neck out or his hand out or his heart out only to have it ignored. His father had always wanted to see the Mona Lisa, his mother said. Maybe it would work out.

---

When he was sixty-seven, Sean held his father's head off the pillow so he could sip through a straw. The pale pink sippy-cup seemed an ignoble detail, but hospitals aren't places to worry about things like dignity. He lowered his father's head and sighed. There was little hope — for the cancer or for their relationship. Sean rocked on his heels a little, waited a beat in case there was anything else, then started to gather his things. The nurses had been adamant about a ten o'clock bed time.

"See you tomorrow," Sean wished. He wasn't sure his father would see tomorrow, and he wasn't sure he could bear to sit with him in meaningless silence again if he did.

His father grunted and shifted his weight.

Sean walked through the door and away from his father finally. The elevators were at the end of a long passageway lined with half-opened doors through which Sean heard wheezing old people and clicking machines. He punched the button and waited for the ding.

"Mr. Calvert? Excuse me, Mr. Calvert?" It was a nurse coming behind him down the hallway.

"Mr. Calvert, your father wants to see you."

"I just came from there."

"I know. I think he pushed his button right after you left. He's calling you back."

Sean wondered if that had ever happened before, his father calling him to his bedside. He looked the same when he got back to the room.

"What's up?" Sean said. He stood near the door.

"I want to tell you something."

"You told me before, dad. You don't want a ventilator. They aren't going to put you on one."

"Close the door and come here."

Suddenly, Sean was eight again, taking orders form his old man, hoping he wasn't in trouble. Hoping he would hear something that would give him footing, that would steady his little-boy world full of school yard bullies and enigmatic girls and unnoticed successes.

"Joseph is a fruitful vine,
a fruitful vine near a spring,
whose branches climb over a wall."

Sean looked at the monitor above the bed and checked his father's vital signs. He must be delirious. Didn't they say his mind might go in the final moments? He reached into his pocket for his phone. He needed to let his mom know.

"Those were some of Jacob's last words to Joseph."

"Who?"

"Jacob and Joseph. In the Bible. I read it this morning."

Sean chuckled and put his phone back in his pocket. "Since when do you read the Bible?"

"Since I've started dying, or at least started dying faster."

"Dad, you're going to be fine. Now go to sleep. I'm going to get in trouble for—"

"Jacob loved all his sons," his father said. Then he coughed and caught his breath. "But he loved Joseph most."

Sean couldn't respond. He wasn't sure what his father was trying to say. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He just didn't want the end to be any more painful than the middle had been.

"But Jacob failed his sons. He was a terrible father. Absent. Angry. Scheming." He coughed again.

"Look Dad. I appreciate your trying to get right with God and stuff, but I don't really want a Bible lesson right now—"

"Shut up, Sean. Give me a minute. I'm trying to do something here."

"What, Dad? And don't tell me to shut up. I'm a grown man. What the hell are you trying to do?"

"Bless you. I'm trying to bless you, Sean."

There was silence and for the first time in his life Sean saw tears in his father's eyes.

"I realize a lot of things now. This bed has made me see a lot of things. I've realized my regret can't change anything; it never has. I've realized you're a good son. I've realized you're a successful man, a terrific husband and a helluva good father.

When I was a boy, people used to talk about a beautiful death. If someone died peacefully at home with their family around, that was a good thing. If they fought death and cursed, that was undignified. I've realized I'm not going to have a beautiful death. Hell, look at all these damn tubes. And I've realized an old man's dying words aren't worth a lot but they are the only thing of any value I have left."

The old man lifted himself to sit up with a grimace so that he could meet his son's eyes level.

I was never sorry for failing you, Sean. I thought it was your mother's job to raise you. I was too busy trying to earn a name for myself than to think about giving you one. But now I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't give you a better start and that makes me more grateful for the way you turned out.

I'm proud of you, Sean.

And I love you."

---

When he was sixty-seven, Sean held a hymnal and looked up a stained glass window he had never seen before but seemed oddly familiar. The preacher had never met his father, but he told some recycled stories he had heard from the family the evening before, and did a well-enough job of paying such respects as were due, as due to all men, as due to an enemy killed in battle or an outlaw gunned town in the wild west or an inner-city crime statistic who never knew his father.

There were thirty people in the chapel, most of them hardly knew his father. Those who did were probably mourning a lost debt as much as a lost friend, Sean mused. There seemed a lot of regret in the room. But Sean held the hymnal and sang, "Twas blind, but now I see." And he smiled at all that regret, hanging about the room, draped across his father's memory like the flag of belligerent army. He smiled. And when someone asked him how he was doing after the service, he said, "I'm blessed."