The Mountain Between Us Read online

  He shifted in his seat. “You asked me for some advice. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told my girls before they married. Marry the man who’s going to walk with you through the next fifty or sixty years. Open doors, hold your hand, make your coffee, rub lotion on the cracks of your feet, put you up on a pedestal where you belong. Is he marrying your face and your bottle-blond hair, or will he love you when you look like whoever you’re going to look like in fifty years?”

  I broke the silence. “Grover, you missed your calling.”

  He chuckled, checking his instruments. “How’s that?”

  “Dr. Phil’s got nothing on you. You should’ve had your own television show. Just you, a couch, and one audience member at a time.”

  Another laugh. “You two walked into my hangar tonight and saw a blue and yellow plane piloted by a crusty old man with age spots on his hands and an angry little dog at his heels. A quick hop to Denver so you can get on with your busy, scheduled, e-mailed, voice-mailed, text-messaged lives.” He shook his head. “I see an enclosed capsule that lifts you up above the problems of the earth and gives you a perspective you can’t get on land. Where you can see clearly.”

  He waved his hands across the landscape passing below us in shadows. “All of us spend our days looking through lenses that are smudged, fogged up, scratched, and some broken. But this here”—he tapped the stick—“this pulls you out from behind the lenses and for a few brief seconds gives you 20/20 vision.”

  Ashley’s tone was quiet. “That why you love flying?”

  He nodded. “Sometimes Gayle and I will come up here and spend two or three hours. Not saying a word. And not feeling like we need to. Not filling the air with a bunch of static. She’ll sit back there, put her hand on my shoulder, and we’ll skirt the earth. And when we land, all the world seems right.”

  We were quiet several minutes.

  Then he coughed.

  Grover grunted, something low and guttural. He grabbed his chest, leaned forward, pushed off his headset, and his head slammed against the side of the glass. He arched his back, then grabbed his shirt and pulled, tearing the shirt and popping off the buttons. He lunged forward, hunched over the stick, jerked the stick hard right, and then dipped the wing ninety degrees toward the earth.

  The mountain rose up to meet us. It felt like we were falling off a tabletop. Just before we hit, he corrected her, pulled back on the stick, and the plane began to stall. Our speed slowed to almost nothing, and I remember hearing treetops brushing the underside of the plane.

  Then, as if he’d done it a thousand times, he pancaked the plane against the mountain.

  The tail touched first, then the left wing, which hit something and snapped off. The weight of the right wing pulled on the plane, tilting us and making an anchor of sorts. Somewhere in there Grover cut the engine. The last thing I remember was spinning, somersaulting, and the tail breaking off. Then I heard a loud crack, Ashley screamed, the dog barked and floated through the air. Snow peppered my face, followed by the sound of breaking tree limbs, followed by the impact.

  The last image I remember seeing was the green blob inching across the bluish glow of the dash-mounted GPS.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Having just met Ashley, who reminds me a lot of you, I was thinking about the day we met.

  After school. I was standing on the track. A good bit warmer then than I am now. We were running quarters when the cross-country team came skimming across the field. Actually, the team was clustered in a group, several hundred meters behind a breakaway, single girl.

  You.

  You were floating. Barely skimming the surface of the grass. A concert of arms over legs controlled by some unseen puppeteer above. A sophomore on the cross-country team, I’d seen you before. Word was that distance was your specialty. Your hair was cut short, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. You jumped the trackside bench with little effort, then the high hurdle next to me. Your breathing was deep, rhythmic, purposeful. Somewhere over the hurdle, you shot a glance at me. The whites of your eyes rolled right and revealed the jade-green emeralds in the center.

  Your whipping arms and fingers slung sweat across my legs and stomach. I heard myself say “wow,” then I tripped over a hurdle, causing a loud crash. In that single second you broke your concentration. Or allowed it to be broken. The corner of your lip turned up. Your eyes lit. Then your feet touched down, the emeralds disappeared, whites returned, and you were gone.

  I watched you running away. Over obstacles. Seldom around. The ground rose and fell beneath you, having little impact on your up-and-down movement. Laser-beam focus, and yet your face seemed disconnected from the turret. Able to operate on its own. I think I must have said “wow” a second time, because my teammate Scott smacked me in the back of the head.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “What?”

  “Rachel Hunt. She’s taken, and you don’t stand a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “Two words.” He held up two fingers like a peace sign. “Nate Kelsey.”

  I had yet to take my eyes off you. The picture of Nate entered my mind. He played middle linebacker. Had no neck. And set the state bench press record—the last three years. You crossed the infield and the adjoining practice field and then ran out of view near the girls’ lockers.

  “I can take him.”

  Scott smacked me in the back of the head again. “Boy, you need a keeper.”

  But that was all it took.

  Coach’s wife worked in the dean’s office. She was always trying to set me up. When I asked her for your class schedule, she gladly typed and printed it. Soon after, I discovered I had an insatiable desire to make a change in my third-period elective. My advisor was not persuaded.

  “You want to take what?”

  “Latin.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I think it’s cool when people speak it.”

  “People haven’t spoken Latin since Rome fell.”

  “Rome fell?”

  He was not impressed. “Ben.”

  “Well…they should. It’s time for the Latin Renaissance.”

  He shook his head. “What’s her name?”

  “Rachel Hunt.”

  He signed my change form and smiled. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  “Next time I will.”

  “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leaned around his desk. “You got health insurance?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You seen her boyfriend?”

  I got to class early and watched you walk in. If I hadn’t been seated, my knees would’ve buckled. You looked at me, smiled, and walked straight toward me. Set your books on the table to my left. Then you spun, tilted your head, smiled, and stuck out your hand.

  “I’m Rachel.”

  “Hi.” Okay, okay. Maybe I stammered a bit.

  I remember looking at your eyes and thinking I’d never seen green like that. Big, round. They reminded me of that snake in The Jungle Book that was always trying to hypnotize people.

  You said, “You’re Ben Payne.”

  My jaw fell open, and I nodded. In the hallway, one of my teammates was slapping a knee, laughing at me. “You know me?”

  “Everybody knows you.”

  “They do?”

  “Fast as you run, who doesn’t?”

  Maybe my dad wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

  You smiled, looked like you wanted to say something else, but shook your head, turned away.

  Maybe I was just a tad self-conscious. “What?”

  You turned your head sideways, half smiling. “Anyone ever told you you have a nice voice?”

  My finger touched my voice box. My voice rose about eight octaves. “No.” I cleared my throat. “I mean…” Lower this time. “No.”

  You opened a notebook, started flipping through it. You crossed one leg over the other. “Well…you do. It’s
…warm.”

  “Oh.”

  We spent the rest of the year as “friends,” because I didn’t have the you-know-whats to ask you out. Not to mention the fact that Mr. No-neck could break me in half—if he could catch me.

  Junior year, I had just arrived at school, had about thirty minutes before the first bell rang, and we bumped into each other as you were walking out of the girls’ locker room. Your hair was wet from the shower.

  Your eyes had narrowed, and a deep wrinkle had creased the area between them.

  “You okay?”

  You turned, eyes wet, and began walking toward the track and bleachers. Away from school. Your fists were clenched. “NO!”

  I took your pack, and together we walked out onto the track, circling the obvious. “What’s wrong?”

  You were exasperated. “I’m not getting any faster, that’s what.”

  “You want help with that?”

  Your nose wrinkled. “You can help me?”

  “Well, yeah. Least I think so.” I pointed at the cross-country coach’s office. “I’m pretty sure he can’t help you. If he could, he would have told you by now.”

  You weren’t convinced. “Oh, and you can see something he can’t?”

  I nodded.

  You stopped and threw up your arms. “What, then?”

  “Your arms. Too much lateral movement. Not forward. And…” I waved my hand over your hip flexor. “You’re too tight in here. Stride’s too short. Your feet are fast, but you need to cover more ground with each stride. Maybe two inches would help.”

  Your lips turned down, like I’d just said you looked fat in that outfit. “Oh, really?”

  Another nod. I was starting to look over my shoulder for your boyfriend. To my recollection, this was the longest period of time we’d ever spent talking alone and in public.

  You put your hands on your hips. “And you can fix this?”

  “Well…I can’t really fix it. You do that. But I can run alongside you and help you see it differently. Maybe help you find a rhythm that will cause you to lengthen it. Like running down a sidewalk—you naturally either start trying to land on the crack or miss it. Run with someone who has a longer stride, and then let your brain kick in. Either way, your stride adjusts without your thinking about it.”

  “And you’d do that?”

  “Well…of course. Who wouldn’t?”

  You crossed your arms. “Until now? YOU! You’re the only one who won’t give me the time of day.”

  I was still looking over my shoulder. I could almost hear him breathing down my back. “What about…number fifty-four? The guy with no neck.”

  “In case you haven’t heard, Einstein, we stopped dating…last year!”

  “Oh.” I scratched my head. “You did?”

  You shook your head. “You may be fast out here”—you waved your hand across the track, then tapped me in the chest—“but when it comes to this thing, I can run circles around you.”

  You still do.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was dark, and the pain had worsened. I pressed the light button on my watch. 4:47 a.m. Maybe six hours had elapsed since the crash. Another two to daylight. This high, maybe earlier. But in this cold, I wasn’t sure I’d last another fifteen minutes. I was shivering so hard, my teeth were clattering. Grover was covered in four inches of snow. I was still buckled into my harness, and my seat had broken at the hinge.

  Ashley lay on my left. I touched her neck and carotid artery. Her pulse was strong and elevated, but she was quiet. I couldn’t see her in the dark. I felt around me. Snow and broken glass covered us. To my right I found the compression sack strapped to the underside of Grover’s seat. I pulled, and the sleeping bag came out slowly. I unzipped the side and spread it over us as much as I could.

  I could only move a little at a time because the pain in my rib cage left me breathless. I tucked the bag around her, slipping her feet into the end. The unnatural cant of her leg told me she was in a bad way. The dog tucked himself in with me. I pressed the light button again. 5:59 a.m. The light was a fuzzy green. The numbers a fuzzy black. Several feet in front of me, I saw the propeller protruding into the air. Caked in snow. Part of the blade was missing.

  DAYLIGHT BROKE, AND I WOKE to the dog standing on my chest, licking my nose. The sky was gray and still dumping snow. Grover, a few feet away, had mostly disappeared beneath what looked like a foot of it. Somewhere an evergreen tree grew out of the earth, and one of its limbs extended into view. I tucked my hands under my armpits. The down sleeping bag was both good and bad. It was warming me up. Which was good. Increasing blood flow. Now maybe the cold wouldn’t kill me. But with blood flow came more pain in my ribs.

  Ashley still lay next to me, silent and unmoving. I touched her neck again. Her pulse was still strong and not as elevated. Meaning, her body had burned through the adrenalin that flooded her system when we crashed.

  I sat up and tried to examine her. Her face was swollen and caked with blood due to the cuts above her eyes and on her scalp. I ran my hand along her shoulder. It looked like someone had stuffed a sock inside her down jacket. Her shoulder was dislocated, hanging low from the socket.

  I slid my arm up her sleeve, pulled down, and let the tendons pull the bone back and snap it into the socket. Once in place, I manipulated the joint. It was loose and had a good bit of side-to-side movement, which told me she’d done that before, but it was back where it belonged. Shoulders are pretty good about going back into place if you start them in the right direction.

  Without undressing her and talking to her, I couldn’t get a handle on whether she had any internal injuries. I ran my hands along her hips. Fit, lean, muscular. Then her legs. Her right was fine. Her left was not.

  The femur had broken when the plane smashed into a rock upon impact. Probably the source of the scream. Her thigh was grossly swollen, maybe twice its normal size, and her pant leg was taut. Fortunately, the bone had not broken the skin.

  I knew I had to set it before she woke up, but before I could do that, I needed space to work. Currently, I felt like I was in an MRI machine with all the sides too close to my face. I sat up and found that we were encased in a snow and plane-fuselage cave. Which, from a certain perspective, was good.

  The impact, along with the storm, had buried us in a snowbank, then mostly covered us up. That formed a snow-cocoon, and while that sounds bad, and it was, it also meant that we were more or less maintaining thirty-two degrees, which was better than whatever the outside temperature was. Not to mention that it kept the wind chill from cutting through us. The majority of the light was coming in through the Plexiglas atop the plane, filtering through the snow and letting me see to work.

  While I worked to dig away the snow to make room to get at her leg, the dog whined and spun in circles. Then he climbed up on Grover’s lap and started licking the snow away from his face. He wanted to know when this plane was taking off. I pulled at the snow with my fingers, but that only lasted a minute before my hands got too cold. I realized that if I kept it up my hands would be useless. I dug around in front of Grover and found a plastic clipboard wedged into the pocket of the door. I pulled off the papers and used the clipboard like a shovel. It was slow work, but I dug a cavity, or shelf, in the snow that was long enough for Ashley to lie in. It also meant that once I got her in there, I could get at her left leg.

  I pulled the bag off of her, laid it flat inside the shelf, and then slowly slid and lifted her body across the seat and onto the shelf. The effort exhausted me, so I fell back against Grover’s seat and sat there breathing. Still short and shallow, trying to lessen the pain in my chest.

  The dog walked around me and hopped up on my lap, licking my face.

  “Hey, boy,” I whispered. I couldn’t remember his name.

  Thirty minutes passed before I had enough energy to return to her leg.

  I sat up and spoke to her, but she didn’t respond—which was good, because what I was about to do was going
to hurt more than the initial break.

  I took off my belt, wrapped it around her ankle and then my wrist, giving me an anchor to pull on. Then I took off my left hiking boot and slowly placed my left foot between her legs. I straightened my leg, pressing it against her, then tightened the belt and grabbed her foot with both hands. I took four or five deep breaths and felt her hand slide onto my foot. I looked up and saw that one eye was partly open. She patted my foot and mumbled, “Pull…hard.”

  I pulled, pushed with my leg, and arched my back, all at the same time. The pain shot through her, her head rocked back, and she uttered a muffled scream before losing consciousness. The leg popped loose, I turned it, let it straighten itself naturally, and then let go. When I let go, the left leg “hung” to the side in a mostly natural position that mirrored the right.

  There are two keys to the healing of a broken leg. Setting it correctly and then holding it in place while the bones fuse. Neither is easy.

  With the leg set, I began looking for a brace. Above my head hung two mangled wing supports, more than three feet long and about as big around as my index finger, that had ripped in two when the left wing became disconnected from the plane. I began working them both back and forth, weakening the metal, and they eventually snapped off.

  When hiking, I carry two pocketknives, a Swiss Army knife and a folding single-bladed knife with a lock. Given that I had passed through security in the airport, both had been packed into my backpack to be carried in the belly of the plane. The pack lay behind us, mostly submerged into the snowbank. Only a corner was visible. I pulled away some snow, found the zipper, and slid my hand around inside until I found the knives.

  My Swiss Army knife has two blades. Using the smaller, I slit Ashley’s pant leg up her thigh to her hip. The leg was swollen, and much of the thigh was black and blue. A deep purple even.