Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I paused before responding this time. “Your great-grandmother?”

I could see him gesturing. “Yes, she was a strong woman, built like my father.”

“Your dead great-grandmother?”

“Yes, but do not refer to her in that way-it’s disrespectful.” I started to stuff the Mallo Cup into my coat, but he spoke without turning. “You should eat that.”

I looked up at him and then back at the candy bar. It was easier to eat than to argue, so I unwrapped it and fumbled part of it into my mouth-it broke off like balsa wood in the cold.

He continued along the winding rock outcroppings as I concentrated on his words and his footsteps. I wondered how he was able to keep his feet warm with only the moccasins to protect them-he didn’t seem to mind the cold at all.

“I was near water, or in water, I can’t remember. I was small, young. I turned and she was there, holding her hands out to me. I never met her, but I knew it was her. You know how you know these things?”

“Yes. I do.”

He finished his candy bar and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. “I told her that I couldn’t go with her; that I had things I still had to do. She said that she knew of these things so she left me there.” He stopped and knelt down again, the fog and falling snow so thick that I felt like I was watching him on my old television at home, the one that didn’t get any reception. “Do you think that means I’m meant to follow the Hanging Road to the Beyond-Country with the Old Ones?”

I drew up beside him with the thought that the Hanging Road was the Crow path to the other side and referred to the horizon-to-horizon bow of the Milky Way in the nighttime sky. “I sure hope not.”

His wide hand lifted and a finger pointed down the hill into the whiteness. “They have left the trail and are now going across Paint Rock Creek.”

“Then what?”

His breath condensed, and it was as if Virgil was exhaling clouds. The twin heads rose, and I knew he was looking at the top of the Bighorn Mountains.

“Up.”

Whiteout.

Not only did it sound as if I were hearing through cotton, now it looked like it, too.

The falling snow had increased to the point where we were now in a true whiteout-not the two to three inches an hour sometimes mistaken for a whiteout, but the honest-to-goodness, mountain-effect, windless blizzard where you couldn’t differentiate between the air and the ground. Visibility was cut to less than twenty feet, and the only thing that kept us going was Virgil throwing his war lance ahead and then the two of us following.

He’d made me stop and put on my snowshoes again, but he still seemed to be punching through the drifts faster than I could walk over them.

I knew it was a quarter of a mile from Solitude Trail across the creek and through the meadows to the falls and the ascent inclines that led up the west ridge of Cloud Peak. As near as I could tell, even though it felt as if I were still falling forward, we were on the flat and approaching the first climb.

Virgil tossed the lance ahead of us, and I watched as the feathers and deer toes spiraled with its trajectory. We walked after it, and he trailed a hand down and picked up the lance again.

“We used to use snowballs when I was growing up out on the Powder River. Everyone in this country has lost someone to these kinds of conditions.”

He stood and inclined his head upward toward the cliffs and ridgeline I couldn’t see. “Why do you suppose my great-grandmother was the one they sent to fetch me from this life?”

I should’ve guessed; it seemed that all he wanted to talk about was his theoretical impending death, but I was amazed at his ability to distract himself from the exhaustion that was continually causing my chin to stab my chest. I sighed. “I don’t know, Virgil.”

“You would think that they would’ve sent someone I knew-someone I’d met.”

He turned and looked straight at me. “Which leads me to believe that she was not really the one sent to take me to the Beyond-Country.” He shook his two heads. “What is it the Cheyenne calls it?”

“Calls what?”

“The afterworld.”

“Henry and a friend of his, Lonnie Little Bird… they call it the Camp of the Dead.”

“Yes, that’s it.” He gestured with the lance. “We can climb beside the falls-there.”

I looked up but could see only vague shadows through the amber lenses of my goggles. I began thinking that perhaps they were more of a hindrance than an asset, so I lowered them and was immediately blinded. I yanked them back in place. “Whatever you say, Virgil. I learned a long time ago that you don’t argue with the Indian scout.”

He nodded. “It gives me hope.”

I blinked, aware that I was becoming more and more confused. “What?”

“That it was my great-grandmother who came for me. When they’re serious, I imagine that they’ll send someone I know.” His head was very close to mine as he hunkered down to stare into my face, and it was as if he was blocking out the rest of the world. “I’ve thought about this, and I think they should send my wife. Don’t you think that’s a good choice?” I could smell the Mallo Cup on his breath and maybe even a little of the bourbon he’d poured onto the flaming log. “You don’t look so good, Lawman. White-whiter than usual.”

I laughed and converted the next series of teeth-chattering shivers into a nod. “I’m cold and kind of tired, but I’m all right.”

He bent down and unstrapped my snowshoes. “You won’t need these for this part, but you’ll need them farther up.” I stepped off them like a dutiful child, and Virgil drove the butt ends into the snow next to the trail; it looked as if someone had been buried there head first. “This will help the Cheyenne and the Arapaho find you.”

“I thought you said I was going to need them.”

He turned his great bulk toward the rocks. “We will get you another pair.”

“How?”

He ignored me, and I gestured toward the granite escarpment with my chin. “Up?”

He brushed away some of the snow to reveal a good foot-and handhold at his shoulder level-it must have been where the others had gone. “Up.”

Even with the expedition pack on his back, he had no trouble and disappeared into what the old-timers called a buttermilk sky. I made the mental note to remember where he placed his hands and moccasins, aware that in my depleted condition, his judgment was better than my own. After the first shelf there was a gully, which made for easier climbing, and I just used the giant’s prints as footholds.

A few times I could see the cairns jutting from the snow that pointed out the classic route to Cloud Peak, and we followed them when they were visible, taking the lesser drainage along the base of the southwest ridge. The climb became real and more strenuous as we got to the northeast ridge and continued east and up, ever up.

I stopped by one of the rock pillars to take a breather. Virgil continued on, first blending into the falling snow and then disappearing. “Virgil.”

There was no response.

“Virgil!”

I was just beginning to think that my hearing was going again when his voice drifted back from above. “Who would you want to see? If someone were to show up to guide you to the Beyond-Country, who would you choose?”

I shifted my weight; luckily the dry-stacked stones stayed solid, probably frozen together. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“You should be, Lawman.”

We fell into a steady, silent rhythm and arrived at the first scree field where there was a large overhang looking like the capsized hull of a ship.

There was a bit of light that just penetrated the veil of low-flying clouds and I thought that maybe those last horizontal rays of the sun were defining the highest portions of Cloud Peak and Blacktooth and Bomber mountains even though we couldn’t see them. I thought about the rays’ warmth, how it felt when they left the sky and you forced yourself further into your sleeping bag. I was thinking about all of these things as we traversed the ridge and followed the trail that led toward the vast boulder field that rose above us like the fallen city of Dis.