Jeff Long Angels of Light

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

he was sitting on a coil of yellow rope. For a moment John thought he meant to
spend the night here. "This the bivy?" he asked.
"You must be kidding," Kresinski said. "I'm just keepin' warm." John turned
and searched the horizon and middle ground behind and below them. There wasn't
a single motion out there. Even the stunted pines, deformed by the elements,
weren't moving in the wind. John's black hair whipped across his eyes. He kept
looking for any part of the landscape to shift and become a tiny animal that
would become a man, their man. Or ghost. "Don't worry about it, man,"
Kresinski shouted up to him.
"He's coming."
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (187
of 216)19-1-2007 22:42:52
Jeff Long - Angels of Light
John backed up and squatted down beside him. Something about the flat light
made
Kresinski's eyes even lighter. It was like looking into the sky when there was
nothing to see up there. Kresinski smiled. "Want some strawberry Kool Aid?" he
said, offering a plastic water bottle.
"We'd see him from here," said John.
"Don't crap out on me now, dude."
"There's no one out there, Kreski."
"Don't give me that redskin crap," Kresinski retorted, losing his smile. More
Page 159
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
heatedly, he said, "You can't see everything. Besides, I got a feeling he
don't want to be seen." And then he smiled again.
John pried a pebble loose from the tundra and flicked it in the air with his
thumb.
"I'm thinking I'll head back now," he said, even though he wasn't. "This is a
drag."
"Yeah?" Kresinski appraised with a glance. "I think you're going the distance.
You look pretty beat, though. You tired?" When John didn't reply, he fished
inside his parka and pulled out a small jar that said D. Marie's Olives on the
label. "Time to punch on the overdrive." He unfolded a blade from his Swiss
army knife, unscrewed the jar's lid, and then hunched against the boulder,
away from the wind. His back lifted once, then twice with separate
inhalations. It was cocaine. "Here you go, bud,"
Kresinski offered. "Put you over the hump."
John almost accepted the jar of powder and the knife. It would indeed put him
over the hump. He could pack his nose and race to the lake, and there wouldn't
have to be a downside to the high. Not for a day or two at any rate. There was
enough coke in the jar to last them to the lake and back. But it was
Kresinski's high. Bad enough this was Kresinski's trail on Kresinski's time
schedule. "Where'd you get that?" John asked, not that it mattered. It was
just something to say.
Kresinski screwed the lid back on and tucked it inside his parka. He wiped the
blade between his fingers and smeared the residue on his gums. "It's just
leftovers, man.
Come on, you sure you don't want to catch up?" When there was no response, he
snapped the blade shut.
"He's not out there," said John.
"No problem. He'll come."
John stood up into the wind. It tore at his long black hair. "We'll see," he
said. He saddled up and walked on. The lake couldn't be more than a few hours
deeper in, and he'd grown tired of having Kresinski out front like a guide. By
dusk they'd be on the shore of the lake; by dawn tomorrow, John would be
hustling down the Valley of
Death toward exit and Liz. He wondered if Bullseye's rope was still attached
at the top of the ice pillar or if the feds had cut it loose or confiscated it
as evidence. Either way, descent was no problem. Like Kresinski, he was
carrying a coil of rope.
It was ironic, he thought. He had more in common with Kresinski than any other
person alive. Not quite side by side, but at least simultaneously, they had
survived
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (188
of 216)19-1-2007 22:42:52
Jeff Long - Angels of Light hundreds of walls and mountains and seen things
people had never seen. They had seen tiny spiders clambering across snow on
twenty-six-thousand-foot mountains and solitary blue flowers in the Antarctic.
They had seen that where life was possible, it persisted. Especially on the
brink. In their vertical wilderness, that was the measure. It was more honest
than right or wrong, sin or justice. Survival itself was right and just. The
fact that each of them was still on his feet with air in his lungs on a day
like today made it so. They should have been friends.
John moved quickly, a prizefighter's ache in his bare hands. Closer to the
lake, he started coming across refuse left by the Gold Rush crowd. Smaller
trash like candy and food wrappers had blown east with the jet stream, but the
heavier stuff like abandoned sleeping bags and flattened tents were either
pegged to the ground or tied off to rocks or plastered into the trees and
brush. People had jettisoned everything they owned to make room for the
marijuana. Closer still, John found torn, slashed burlap sacking fluttering
from branches. He passed sorry roofless shelters made of stone with blackened
Page 160
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
circles staining this or that corner: cavemen's fire pits. Well, the fire had
gone out. There were no Young Turks in search of booty this time around.
They'd come all this way just to find the ruins of Stone Age rock and rollers.
The place looked more like an archaeological dig, like the disintegrating
remains of a long-lost tribe.
The temperature continued dropping and snowflakes streaked past. Up ahead the
land hit sky in a solid horizontal line. That would be the lake, John knew. He
hurried on, anxious to get it over with. The mud was freezing up; his footing
got slicker but also more solid. Hell, he thought, why bother even staying the
night? He could tag the lake, descend what was left of the ice pillar, and be
partway home before
Kresinski even got here. With the headlamp in his pack he could even pick his
way back to the valley floor and Liz by dawn. When all was said and done, he'd
accomplished nothing by coming up here except to put more wear and tear on his
knees and more hurt in Liz's heart. Certainly he didn't feel noble for having
come. He didn't feel particularly true to Tucker's spirit. To the contrary,
Tucker had never wanted to come up here in the first place. The smuggler, if
there was a smuggler, had declined their invitation to follow them. The closer
he got, the more reasons John counted for not being where he was. Spurning the
lake was a luxury he could indulge in now that the lake was so close. A true
ascetic at heart, John believed in pacing his self-indulgences, and for him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki