Alex Morel - Survive

“Will and I lived in the same room together for sixteen years,” he starts. “He’d write all kinds of crazy stuff. He was a writer, like my dad. When he died, I think my dad hated me for living. That’s crazy-sounding, but I think it’s true.”

“Yes, they can hate you for living. I know that’s true,” I say, and I feel the overwhelming truth of it even though I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. As much as my mother loves me, she resents that I am here and he is gone. I’ve never allowed that thought to surface in my consciousness before, but there it is, as plain as any truth I know.

He closes his eyes and lays his head down on my lap.

“Will died of cancer, right?”

Paul looks up at me. I see some tears well in his eyes.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fucking leukemia. I’m sitting around sometimes, waiting for it to grow inside me.” He pauses. “It was fast, like six months. One moment we were reading on the beach-well, he was reading, I was probably surfing. And then by winter he was gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “The faster they go, the harder it is, I think. At least when it takes a long time, you have time to prepare.”

Paul reaches out and takes my hand in his. I put my other hand on top of his and then lay my head down gently in his lap.

A cold wind picks up and cuts into us.

“ Fuck, that’s cold,” Paul says.

I look up to the mountain before us. It is short, but a steep peak, and I wonder if Paul can even climb it. Snow begins to fall again, and I see that we are in for more rough weather by the clouds that are amassing.

“Can you climb?” I ask.

“Yes. I could climb with no legs and no arms.”

“Good.”

He sits up all the way and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pack of cigarettes he took off the captain.

“Nothing like a smoke after dinner, right?”

“They cause cancer,” I say. I’m smiling because I know it’s irrelevant-given our situation-but I couldn’t help myself.

“My mother would rise from the dead if she saw one of these in my mouth.”

“I think we get a survivor’s pass at this point, don’t you?”

“Yes. ‘You can indulge at death’s door’ is our motto.”

We light up and smoke. I inhale deeply and cough a little. Paul just sucks his down.

“I started smoking after she died. I know it makes no sense, but I wanted to say fuck you to everyone and everything. It drove my brother crazy, and my father would take my packs and throw them away if he found them.”

“You do crazy things when people die. It’s true.”

“Yeah, crazy is the only thing that feels real.”

I nod and then inhale. I look up at Paul and then throw the cigarette filter into the fire and lean my head against his shoulder.

After he finishes his smoke, he stands up for the first time since his fall. He winces. He holds the side of his chest and the pain momentarily overwhelms him. He bows and falls to one knee.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He puts his hand up. He pauses with one knee on the ground for a few moments, gathering his strength. The wind picks up, and it blows frozen snow off the top of drifts. Suddenly, Paul lifts himself and he lets out a loud grunt, his face red and radiating with the effort he’s expending to perform this normally simple maneuver.

I hand him the bottle of Tylenol and one of the water bottles. He takes out a handful and drinks the remaining water.

“I’m ready,” he says.

We walk to the mountain pass that connects the two peaks. I can see that animal tracks have already made their way to and fro across the pass. It’s a good sign. I realize what we were looking at from a distance-what Paul described as a natural bridge-is simply the highest point where the landmasses have remained connected. The animals already knew what we had discovered: to avoid a deadly climb down to the basin of the valley, this was the only place to cross. There’s a sheer wall on either side and it’s only about ten feet wide, thinner in some places. On top, the pass sits like a thin saddle with very steep drops on either side.

Ice and snow cover it, so Paul and I rope up.

“I’ll go first,” I say.

He gives me a funny look and says, “World’s funny that way.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense, but I think I’m in charge now, right?”

“I think that’s right,” he says, nodding for me to go.

I walk out and even though there’s ample space on either side, my heart jumps up and down. The ground is slippery and bumpy, and more than once I almost lose my footing. I decide to lie down and crawl across. After about ten feet of crawling, I reach the midpoint, and the trail narrows to only a few feet wide for about a distance of ten feet or so.

I decide to flatten out like a pancake, my arms and legs straddling around either side of the pass. If I try to crawl across that narrow strip of ice, I fear I’ll slip right over the edge.

I slowly shimmy across, careful to move as slowly as I can. I look back a few times at Paul, who is crawling on his hands and knees. I hear him grunting the whole way, and I can only imagine how painful it is when his body slips or slides. Keeping oneself steady on top of the trail requires a constant tightening of the upper-body muscles, the muscle group my gym teacher in middle school called “your core.” Paul’s core is bruised and perhaps broken. Even a simple trek like what lies before us will be brutally painful for him.

“You have to pancake that part,” I yell. I see Paul nod and he tries to lie down in a flat position, but it is too painful. He shakes his head to tell me he can’t do it. I put up a hand, telling him to wait.

I shimmy beyond the narrow section of the pass, and then I stand up. I dig my heels into the snow to get as much leverage as I can. Then I triple wrap the rope around my forearms, readying myself. Doubt creeps into my mind for a second, but I push it away. I know I could never hold Paul if he really slipped over the edge, but I can’t abandon him.

I nod to Paul to say I’m ready. Paul looks at me and shakes his head.

“You’ll never hold me if I fall. It’s suicide,” he yells. “Sorry-you know what I mean.”

“I’m not letting go,” I shout back. “You didn’t let me go on the cliff.”

“That was different-we had a chance!”

Then Paul lowers himself onto his belly and he screams, “ Fuck, this hurts.” I know he is doing this for me, so that my life isn’t at risk, or at least as much at risk. Sacrifice. The word dances in my head, and I can’t help but notice how similar sacrifice is to suicide, but to die for someone else seems so much nobler. Paul begins to shimmy, but it is slow going. I pull the rope gently and work my way backward, offering a little pull with each push he makes with his back legs. Paul screams and hollers with every slide, but he makes his way; and in fifteen minutes or so, he crosses the narrow strip.

We hug each other when he’s finally able to stand.

“Thank you,” he says.

“What did I do?” I ask, perplexed.

“You were willing to die for me,” he says. “Thank you.”

I pitch up on my toes and kiss his icy lips. I’m crying. I put a hand on his side as softly as I can and ask if he’s okay.

He nods, but his eyes betray the enormity of his pain.

I am filled with hope as I stand at the bottom of the peak.

We climb. It is steep and thickly lined with trees at the bottom, mostly pines. I lead us up the mountain.

It takes the whole morning to ascend the first hundred yards. Our faces are cut and bruised and our necks savaged by the razor-sharp branches. With nearly every step, Paul screams or grunts or swears with pain, mostly from his chest. I call back to him a few times, but he ignores me.