Bright Angel

The terms were on the back of the programme, in Rhys’s hand, in pencil, because Alexander had handed him the programme and the pencil at breakfast and said that if there were to be terms they should be written down.

1. To the rest house (1.5 mi) and back. NOT further. (R.W., K.)

2. Spikes on. No running on ice. Walking on ice is not running.

3. Water: one bottle each, minimum. Drink it.

4. If anybody sits down and doesn’t get up, everybody stops.

5. Sam has the watch. Sam’s time is the time.

Under that, in a different hand, very small and exact, Alexander had written Agreed. A., and under that, in capitals that leaned forward like a man running for a bus, AGREED. J.F. I’M GOING TO WIN.

Under that there was nothing. Lukas had read the terms at the table, all five, and then the line under them, and had inclined his head, exactly, and gone back to his porridge.

---

The spikes had come from the store along the rim on Sunday afternoon, steel teeth on rubber straps, and at five to eight they stood at the head of the trail between the two stone posts, putting them on.

It was forty-one degrees. The trail went down into the shadow of the rim, and the first switchbacks were white with packed snow and grey with ice. Further down, where the sun reached, the rock was red, and very small on it, far below, was the grey square of the rest house.

“A mile and a half,” said Jack, looking at it. “That’s nothing. That’s Coln to Bibury.”

“Down,” said Rhys.

“Down’s easy.”

“Down’s easy,” said Rhys, “and then it’s up. Eleven hundred feet. At seven thousand feet.” He looked at Jack. “Drink your water.”

Jack drank some water, to humour him, and looked at Lukas.

Lukas was sitting on the stone wall by the post with his spikes already on and the flask in his pocket, looking down the trail. He was not stretching. He was watching a man come up the first switchback below them, slowly, on the ice, stopping at the turn.

“Are you ready?” said Jack.

Lukas looked at him.

“You can say yes,” said Jack. “It’s allowed. It’s one word.”

Lukas looked at him a moment longer with his grey eyes, steadily, kindly, the way he had looked at Sam’s pencil and at a dartboard. Then he looked back down the trail.

“He’s not going to say anything,” said Jack, to Frederick, with a kind of despair. “Is he. All day.”

“No.”

“How do you beat somebody who doesn’t say anything?”

“You don’t,” said Tyler, who was sitting on the ground in both sweatshirts, putting his spikes on the wrong way round. “That’s like, the whole thing.”

---

Alexander was not racing.

He had said so at breakfast, in three parts. He would go down, because it was on the programme. He would come up, because the sign said the climb out was mandatory. And he would keep Lukas in sight, which was what he had done since they were eight, and which was the correct procedure. Kessler, with spikes on his shoes that nobody had seen him put on, stood at the top looking down the switchbacks as though he were reading them for errors.

Sam stood by the post with the watch.

“Seven fifty-nine,” said Sam.

They stood in a line between the posts: Jack at the front, with his weight on his front foot like a man at a dartboard; Rhys beside him; Frederick; Tyler, who had got his spikes on the right way round at the third attempt; Alexander, with Kessler behind; and Lukas at the back, at the very end of the line, on the wall still, sitting.

“Lukas,” said Jack. “Lukas. You’re at the back.”

Lukas stood up.

“Eight,” said Sam.

---

Jack went down the trail like a man who was late for last orders.

He did not run, because the terms said no running on ice; but he walked as fast as Frederick had ever seen anybody walk on anything, with his arms going and the bobble hat jammed over his ears and the steel teeth biting into the ice like somebody chewing gravel. Rhys went with him, half a pace behind.

Frederick went after them at a pace he could keep, and found by the second switchback that he could not keep it. The trail went down in tight turns against the rock, so that at every turn the whole canyon swung round in front of him and away again. At the fourth turn there was a short tunnel cut through a fin of rock, with ice on the floor and icicles on the roof, and he went through it with his hand on the wall and came out into the sun.

He looked back up.

Tyler had sat down.

He was sitting on a flat rock just below the tunnel, in the sun, with his water bottle on his knee, looking at the canyon. He was not tired. He had simply come to a place that was good to sit in, and sat in it, and was doing nothing there, completely.

“Tyler,” Frederick called up.

Tyler lifted one hand.

“I’m good,” he called down. “I’m gonna watch.” He considered the canyon. “This is a really good rock.”

Behind him, coming down out of the tunnel at a steady walk, was Alexander, with Kessler a pace behind and a pace to the left; and behind Alexander, at the same steady walk, not faster, not slower, with his hands at his sides and his eyes not on the trail but on the people below him on it, was Lukas.

He was last.

He was behind Alexander. He was behind Kessler. He was going down the Bright Angel Trail at exactly the pace, Frederick thought, at which a man would go up it.

---

“He’s losing,” Jack shouted, from two switchbacks down, looking back up the wall, delighted. “He’s last! Lukas! You’re last!”

Lukas did not look up. He was watching a woman coming up the trail towards him, who had stopped at a turn with one hand on the rock, breathing, and he watched her as he passed her, all of her, her face and her breath and her hand on the rock, and inclined his head to her, exactly, and went on down.

---

The rest house was a stone hut with a roof and three walls and a bench inside, and an emergency telephone on the wall in a yellow box, and a sign about water that said the tap was off until May.

Jack reached it at eight thirty-one.

He reached it at something very close to a run, on the red rock below the ice, where the terms did not apply, and slapped the stone wall of the hut with the flat of his hand, the way a swimmer touches the end of a pool, and turned round with his arms in the air and his face the colour of the sweatshirt, and shouted up the canyon, at nobody, “FIRST!”

The canyon sent it back to him, twice, from a long way off.

Rhys came in behind him and sat down on the bench and drank half his water. Frederick came in at eight thirty-six and sat down beside Rhys. Alexander came in at eight thirty-nine, at his steady walk, and stopped outside the hut, upright, and wrote something in the margin of the programme.

Jack was sitting on the wall eating a cereal bar and looking up the trail.

“I’ve beaten him. By miles. He’s still up there somewhere looking at people.” He finished the cereal bar. “I’m going to have it put on the wall at the New Inn, next to the dartboard, in gold.”

Lukas came round the last turn at eight forty-four.

He came down the red rock at the same pace, the same pace exactly, with his hands at his sides and his breathing even, and walked up to the hut, and put his hand flat on the stone wall, once, beside the mark of Jack’s hand in the dust.

Then he turned round, and went back up.

---

There was a silence at the rest house.

“He didn’t sit down,” said Frederick.

“He didn’t drink,” said Rhys, looking at the bottle in his own hand.

Jack was on his feet on the wall.

“Oi!” He was off the wall and on the trail. “Oi! That’s cheating!”

“It is not cheating,” said Alexander. He put the pencil back in his pocket. “The terms are to the rest house and back. He has been to the rest house.” He looked up the trail, where Lukas was already going round the first turn above them, at the same pace, not faster, his back straight and his hands at his sides. “Now he is coming back.”

“But we’re resting!”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “He watched people do that yesterday, at the top of the trail. The man with his hands on his knees.” He began to walk, at his steady pace, up the trail after Lukas, with Kessler behind him. “You may go after him or you may stay. I am going to keep him in sight.”

Jack looked at the trail, and at Rhys, and at Frederick on the bench, and at Lukas going round the second turn above them, very small already, red rock, a dark jacket, the same pace.

“Brilliant,” said Jack, in a voice of real anguish, and went.

---

The way up was eleven hundred feet.

Frederick had known that. Rhys had said it at the top, and it was written on the sign about the climb out being mandatory, and he had read it there, and nodded, as a man nods at the figure for the national debt. He had not known it in his legs. By the fourth switchback above the rest house he knew it in his legs, and in his chest, and in the backs of his eyes, where the air at six thousand feet did not seem to be arriving in the quantities he had ordered; and he slowed, and slowed again, and at the sixth turn he stopped, with his hands on his knees, and breathed.

Above him, Jack had stopped too.

He was two turns up, on a flat place at the corner of the trail, standing with his hands on his knees and his head down and the bobble hat in his hand, steaming, and Lukas went past him.

He went past him at the same pace he had gone down, and did not look at Jack, and did not slow; and Jack lifted his head and watched him go up the next wall, and said something Frederick could not hear, and put the hat back on, and went after him, slower.

Rhys was next. Lukas passed him at the ice.

Frederick, at the sixth turn, with his hands on his knees, felt somebody come up the trail behind him, and looked round, and it was Alexander, at the steady walk, breathing hard but evenly, with his eyes on the trail above, where Lukas was. Kessler was behind him.

“Are you all right?” said Alexander, as he passed.

“Yes. Go on.”

“I am keeping him in sight.”

“I know.”

“It is the correct procedure,” said Alexander, and went on up, past him, and round the turn.

---

Tyler was still on his rock below the tunnel.

He was watching them come up the trail towards him one at a time, the way a man on a porch watches a road.

Lukas passed him first. Tyler lifted one hand. Lukas inclined his head.

Then, a long time after, Alexander and Kessler. Then Rhys, red to the hair. Then Frederick, who stopped at the rock, because he could not not stop.

“You want to sit?” said Tyler. “It’s a really good rock.”

“I can’t sit. If I sit I won’t get up.”

“That’s term four,” said Tyler, who had read the back of the programme at breakfast more carefully, Frederick realised, than anybody had given him credit for. “If anybody sits down and doesn’t get up, everybody stops.” He considered it. “So it’d be, like, my fault.”

Frederick looked at him.

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah. In a sec. I’m waiting for Pubs.” Tyler looked down the trail, where, two turns below, a red sweatshirt was coming up the ice, very slowly, with a bobble hat on top of it. “He’s gonna need somebody to walk with,” said Tyler. “That’s the worst. When you’re last and nobody’s there.”

---

Sam’s time for Lukas, at the top, was nine fifty-two.

Alexander was second, at ten nineteen. Kessler was beside him and was not given a time, because he had not been racing, and Sam had written in the notebook, under Alexander’s, K. (not racing; present). Rhys was at ten twenty-four. Frederick at ten thirty-one. And at ten forty-six, side by side, Tyler in both sweatshirts with his hood up and Jack in the red one with the bobble hat in his hand, walking slowly up the last of the ice between the stone posts, with Tyler talking, which nobody had ever heard Tyler do for more than a sentence, about Parma, and snow, and what you did with it, and Jack listening.

Jack walked through the posts and lay down flat on his back in the snow by the wall and looked at the sky.

Lukas was sitting on the wall.

He had the flask out, the steel one with the dent in it, and a stack of paper cups; and as each of them had come through the posts he had poured one and held it out, without a word; and now he poured the last and crouched beside Jack in the snow and held it out over his face.

Jack looked up at it.

“I’m a landlady’s son from Gloucestershire,” he said, to the sky, “and I’ve been beaten up a mountain by a German who hasn’t said a word since Saturday.”

Lukas held out the cup.

Jack sat up, and took it, and drank it, sitting in the snow, with his hair steaming.

“It’s cocoa,” he said.

Lukas inclined his head.

“It’s very good,” said Jack, with great bitterness, as Rhys had once said it on the top of a butte; and Sam, by the post, wrote something down.

---

“How?” said Jack, later, on the wall, with a second cup.

Lukas did not say anything. He was looking at the canyon.

“He watched,” said Alexander. He was sitting on the wall too, upright, with the programme on his knee. “Yesterday, at the top of the trail, for twenty minutes. Not the people going down. Everybody watches the people going down. He watched the people coming up.” He looked at the trail. “The ones who had gone down fast were the ones who came up with their hands on their knees. The ones who went down at the pace they would come up at did not stop.” He considered it. “And then, at the hut, everybody sat down. He did not, because the people he watched who sat down at the hut took longer to get up than they had sat.”

Jack looked at Lukas.

“Is that right?”

Lukas looked back at him, and lifted one hand off the wall, three fingers crooked, and put it down again.

“That’s a yes,” said Tyler.

---

At dusk they went back to the rail by the lodge.

It was the programme: 18.33. Dusk (rim). The sun was going down behind them, over the trees on the west, and the canyon in front of them was going the other way, from gold to red to a deep blue that came up out of the bottom of it like water filling a basin; and the far rim, ten miles off, held the light longest, a long line of red along the top of everything, and then that went.

Frederick stood at the rail with Jack, a little way along. Tyler and Rhys and Sam were further along still. Kessler was by the lodge door, not there.

Alexander and Lukas stood together at the end of the rail, apart, where the stone wall turned a corner and went out over the edge.

They stood side by side with their hands on the iron, not touching, looking at the canyon, as Frederick supposed they had stood at the edges of things since they were eight; and for a long time neither of them said anything, and the light went down.

Then Lukas said something.

He said it in German, to Alexander, not looking at him, looking at the canyon. He said it quietly, too quietly to carry, and the wind was coming up out of the canyon at dusk and took it the other way; and Frederick, twenty yards off, heard that it was German, and heard that it was not long, a sentence, perhaps two, and did not hear any of the words.

Alexander did not turn his head.

He stood at the rail with his hands on the iron for a long moment after Lukas had stopped speaking, quite still; and then Frederick saw him nod, once, very slightly, at the canyon; and then he took one hand off the rail and put it, for a second, on Lukas’s shoulder, flat, the way you steady somebody on a boat, and took it away again.

Lukas did not say anything else.

Frederick did not ask what it had been. He turned back to the rail, and looked at the canyon going blue, and did not look at the end of the rail again, and beside him Jack did the same thing, at the same moment, without being told.

---

“He’s all right, then,” said Jack.

It was nearly dark. The others had gone in. Jack was leaning on the rail on his forearms with the bobble hat on and his hands round the last of the cocoa, which had gone cold, and the canyon in front of them was black now, with no bottom again, as it had been yesterday at six, and the stars were coming out over it, more of them every minute.

“He’s all right,” said Frederick.

Jack drank the cold cocoa.

“You’re all right,” he said.

It was not a question. Jack had said it the way he said things along a bar at closing, to the glass, as a thing he had noticed and was putting down on the counter for the other person to pick up or not.

Frederick looked at the dark.

He thought about a sentence said once in November, and a programme on hotel paper in his worse hand, and a pencil that had not been parallel and then had; and two words from a green chair in London, and the spaces between them.

“Yes,” he said.

Jack nodded, at the canyon. He did not say anything else. He finished the cocoa and put the cup in his pocket, because there was nowhere to put it, and they stood at the rail for a while longer in the cold until Frederick’s teeth hurt, and then they went in.

---

The programme was on the table in the room at nine.

Frederick saw it when he came out of the bathroom. It was the second page, Monday’s, lying flat on the table under the lamp, with every line on it ticked, from 06.00. Wake down through the trailhead, and the rest house, with 08.39 written in the margin, and the top, and 18.33. Dusk (rim), and 19.30. Dinner.

And below 19.30, in the space that had been empty, in pencil, in a hand that was small and upright and exactly spaced, as though each letter had been measured against the next, there was one more line.

21.00. Nothing.

It was nine o’clock.

Alexander was on the bed by the window, on his back, with his shoes side by side under the table, toes to the wall, and his hands at his sides, not folded. Lukas was on the floor on his sleeping mat with his eyes shut. Tyler was in the armchair with his headphones on and nothing in them. Jack was on the other bed, already asleep, face down, with the bobble hat over the back of his head.

Frederick looked at the line on the programme for a while.

Then he turned the lamp down, and lay down on the floor beside the bed, on the spare blanket, on his back, and did nothing either.

Nobody said anything. The wind came up out of the canyon and went round the corner of the lodge. Somewhere in the building a door shut, and somebody laughed in a corridor, and stopped.

He did not look at his watch. He did not know, afterwards, how long it was.

At some point, in the dark, from the bed by the window, he heard Alexander reach out to the table, and the small sound of the pencil being picked up, and a tick, short and exact, a short stroke down and a long one up; and then the pencil being laid down again on the wood, carefully, by the side of one finger, parallel to the edge.