by Adam Forrest<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was always terrifying. They were practically always dead. Culkin\u2019s breath fogged up a little heart-shaped patch of window as he stared at the ground below. Blinding in the break of morning light. Miles upon miles of white sliding by, three hundred feet down. The snow stretching forever, maybe. It was hard to imagine anything anywhere had escaped it. Massachusetts? Snow. New Jersey? Snow. Florida, California, Texas? Snow, snow, snow. The helicopter pivoted to the left and he leaned back, wiping the window clean:<\/p>\n
\u201cPoor bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStupid bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPoor wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLucky wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCome again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFreedom, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Culkin shook his head. Wanted to smile but it wouldn\u2019t come. He knocked his boots together. Brown slush out from between the grooves. Melting and sliding on the hard deck of the cockpit. Trails of wet crisscrossing everywhere, rising and falling over the ridges of polyurethane, down into the grommets and aluminum drains lining the edges of the floor. It\u2019d be impossible to trace them all. \u201cPoor folks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Poor folks.\u201d Stolie throttled the collective up a bit and the mast whispered down vibrations of new power, fuselage trembling slightly, rotor blades whipping faster, a long slow lurch in the stomach as the red arm of the altimeter jumped back to life. Out the windshield, north-northeast, the dual spires of Mt. Liberty and Mt. Flume rose up in a line. Lafayette further north. Hancock due east. Other lesser crests popping up along the spine of the ridge. Once again, the sight brought to Culkin\u2019s mind the image of a sleeping leviathan, any moment now ready to shake off the snow and the moss and the rocks and the years and take its reckoning with the young human world. To reclaim something lost. Once again, he felt a strange disappointment as the peaks held fixed, unimpressed with the chopper\u2019s approach. Useless talking to Stolie about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoo-wee, Culk! Feel that juice!\u201d Useless talking to Stolie about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeelin it, captain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah sure, but really feel it, man! Forty-one years and it never gets old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your shirt on, cowboy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat a dare, young blood?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPolite request, Sasquatch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t preoccupado piloting this old bird I\u2019d be in the buff already.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSave it for the Mrs., Stol.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wants it less than you do.\u201d Rapping knuckles against his helmet for something like luck.<\/p>\n
Now the smile came. Culkin turned out the window to hide it, peering down at the ground as it collected itself and began to follow their ascent. Liberty and Flume coming into prominence, slowly squeezing their neighbors out of view. Culkin, broaching. Tip-toeing:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the chances?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t kid yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you had to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, son,\u201d and not a comforting thing when Stolie got parental, \u201cIf we see anything, it\u2019s gonna be a body. And we\u2019re not gonna see a body.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould\u2019ve had a mirror in his kit. Or a flare. Coulda got a fire goin.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fresh powder everywhere. The dense evergreens wreathed. The Pemigewasset\u2019s eastern branch completely buried, surface ice covered in feet of snow. A smooth white vein through hard white country. Everything camouflaged from up here, the world below squashed flat by their vertical perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stolie peered up and east. A grey wall of cloud falling over itself. A second front right on the tail of last night\u2019s. Measuring. Twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five miles off. That gave them an hour point five. Give or take. Minus ten minutes to destination, minus forty back to base. Equaled another forty for the search and, if all went well, the extraction. Forty was no time at all. More of a public gesture than a rescue mission. Keep the taxpayers happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCulkin, I gotta be honest. I\u2019m happy to take your money again if you want to put it down, but you\u2019re only fleecing yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not lookin to bet this time. Don\u2019t wanna jinx it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy neighbor \u2013 Mrs. Wilson \u2013 sends the lemon bars? Yeah \u2013 she\u2019s got these big crystals you can rub next time if it makes you feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStraight from her guru in India. Guy can levitate and hasn\u2019t eaten in twelve years, so you know they\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re never alive when we bet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes palm readings in her garage if you\u2019re interested.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCall me stupid but it\u2019s bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome would call it bad odds. Hang on.\u201d Stolie pushed the cyclic to the right and the helicopter banked sharply. They turned over the ridgeline just south of Flume\u2019s summit and held altitude as the ground fell away, down into the valley beneath. An easy bank to the left and they were pointed directly at Owl\u2019s Head, due north. \u201cHe\u2019s down there somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s down there somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCould be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCulkin, quit it. If he\u2019s good enough to walk out, he\u2019s good enough to know to stay put. If he\u2019s not, some college kid\u2019ll find his body ten yards off the trail in the spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPoor kid, then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHoly bleeding heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the truth isn\u2019t it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re gettin soft about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot getting soft about anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo shame in sayin it\u2019s got to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus, Stol. I love it, ya know? Just cause I f. Just cause I hope a little doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHopin\u2019ll eat a man alive out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cErnest Fucking Hemingway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell. Was just messin with ya anyways, kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m not thinking. I get the odds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust messin, kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStill.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLong as you don\u2019t drag me into it.\u201d Another glance to the east. Culkin following his gaze.\u00a0 \u00a0Some storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cMissing or dead and you get fifty. Alive and I get a hundred.\u201d A blast of wind shoved on starboard, \u00a0hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cShit, make it two if ya like.\u201d They shook hands.<\/p>\n
Culkin knew it was a losing bet but fifty was a small price for a little motivation to keep pretending. Keep the thoughts away, and images. Bodies dead of exposure were the most disconcerting. Drowning victims, car crashes, mountaineering or skiing accidents: all gruesome. But all held within a sort of logic. Bacteria decomposing flesh and internal organs turn the body into a gas-filled balloon that floats on the water\u2019s surface. That\u2019s biology. A one-and-a-half-ton metal frame slamming into another at fifty miles an hour will obliterate any soft, organic material within; and a rolling fall of two hundred yards down exposed slab will crack a human skull like a cantaloupe if it ends in anything other than an improbably placed pile of packing peanuts. Physics. Even the most horrific murders could be traced back to some untended seed of psychological imbalance. But hypothermia was different. Its victims \u2013 frost-bitten, ice-covered, and gaunt \u2013 were often found naked, their clothing scattered in a long line, piece by piece, behind them. Torn at zippers and seams. Footprints set at a running stride apart. As if they couldn\u2019t get away from it fast enough. Supposedly this was because at a certain point the tiny muscles responsible for shivering and the contraction of surface capillaries \u2013 restricting blood flow to the more mission-critical areas \u2013 ran out of energy. They\u2019d release, allowing blood to rush back to the extremities, creating a flash hot enough to convince an already-addled brain that it needed to cool down again. And off came the cold-gear. Fine, so much for that paradox. But what happened next was not so easy to explain away. After expending their final reserves sprinting around, the victims would try to dig. Under fallen logs, boulders, cars when they were available, even in the snow itself \u2013 anywhere low and dark and tight. Then they\u2019d shove themselves in, headfirst and as far as possible, contorting their failing bodies into cartoonish angles to fit. They were burrowing.<\/p>\n
What was it like, watching one\u2019s mind spool out? Were they aware in those last desperate moments, trying to preserve a bit of self-respect by digging their own makeshift graves? Or was there something else happening. Something darker lurking deep down, under all the pomp and ceremony of the frontal lobe, under the great grey chatter of the cerebral cortex, under the time-conditioned understandings of the temporal region. Something that knew the real terror of the world and the stony, unyielding face of truth. Something small, and anxious, and scared, and mute, and deaf, and wet, and unthinking. What did those people remember, curled in their dark holes. The improbability of life? The absurdity of self. The totality of meaninglessness. Or, worse, was it nothing at all.<\/p>\n
The radio crackled.<\/p>\n
\u201cConcord to Teams Owl and Carrigain. How\u2019s that sky looking? Over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stolie pressed the transmitter on his helmet. \u201cTeam Owl thinks it\u2019s one fine day, Concord. Over.\u201d He released the button and grinned over at Culkin. \u201cCan\u2019t have you accuse me of cheating. Let\u2019s see what we can see.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third voice across the airwaves:<\/p>\n
\u201cTeam Carrigain, here. This pilot for one\u2019s getting jumpy. Requesting updated 10-13. Over.\u201d Culkin leaned forward and craned his neck around to see out the cargo hold\u2019s window behind him. Squinting, he could just make out the little black bug of another UH-60 zipping east-northeast across the backlit landscape. Thomasson and Greenwood. Just beyond the suddenly-darkened hump of Mt. Hancock, en route to Mt. Carrigain, further east. They were heading straight at the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cCopy that Carrigain.\u201d A staticky pause. \u201cDoppler\u2019s showing increased speed. Front coming in at 70 knots.\u201d Only the big ones picked up speed coming over the Whites. \u201cGoing to have to pull the plug on this one, Mike. Over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat official, Sarah? Over.\u201d Another pause.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeam Carrigain, abort and return to base. Over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c10-4, Concord. Over and out.\u201d A copper glint of sun shot through Team Owl\u2019s cockpit as, ten miles off, Mike Thomasson swung his aircraft in a tight one-hundred-eighty-degree arc and pointed it back towards the town of Lincoln, where he\u2019d then straighten out his line and follow I-93 along the Pemi River proper, through its deep valley on the western side of the National Forest\u2019s bounds, down past sweeping portside views of Squam Lake and Meredith Bay, through to where the mountains petered out just north of Sanbornton, and down still across that wet, cold basin-land running south to Concord.<\/p>\n
Culkin didn\u2019t envy Team Carragain. The low thrum of anxiety he felt sitting at base, the wait for what might come, the hope that nothing did \u2013 it was exhausting, and it was blasted away as soon as a call came through. He would suit up and strap in, terrified in a new way, a better way, hard to pin down, heading towards something definite. There was a reality in each moment of approach that made it seem as if nothing had actually mattered until that instant. Like he was watching everything from six inches outside his own body. He could never shake the sense that they were flying into something unlike anything that had ever come before, skirting along the expanding edge of a great and inexplicable knowledge. A bubble outside of time, beyond history. In the turn back to Concord, whether it was premature or not, the bubble would burst. Even when he was performing CPR or emergency surgery on a patient in the helicopter\u2019s bay, the world was back to its normal, predictable self, and he was James Culkin again, full stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeautiful.\u201d The storm front was rearing up, swallowing the light as it drew nearer.\u00a0 Those ten miles separating Mt. Carrigain and Owl\u2019s Head looked like nothing. They were nothing, anyway, as the chopper flies. In the winter, in good conditions, maybe fifteen or eighteen hours on foot, if you knew what you were doing. Mt. Carrigain was the hiker\u2019s destination, according to the outline he had left his wife before he set out, but the search focused there had been a longshot from the start. There was no way he\u2019d made it that far. It was only a small blow to the mission to have Thomasson and Greenwood called off. But Concord would likely call Team Owl off early, too, and that would be game over for the man down there, if the game wasn\u2019t over already.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n