Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

Far before the bend, they could see the evidence of the avalanche. A rough grey diagonal of rocks and scree obliterated the trail and had settled onto the valley floor hundreds of feet below. Josie looked up to the cliff face, looking for some clue about its intentions. Beyond the fallen rocks she could see the path as it continued to what seemed like a clearing. Somehow she and Paul and Ana would have to climb over the fallen rock for fifty yards or so and join the trail again, all the while facing the possibility that the rock would move again, that their traversing it would send it all downhill.

Some impulse in her told her to do this quickly, to avoid rumination. “Let’s go,” she said. Her back wailed again, but she crawled up on the settled rocks, finding it almost impossible to gain traction. She raised a foot, put her body’s weight over it, and immediately her foot slipped, and she went down. Ana flew off and onto the dusty stones. Josie’s hands braced her fall but her forehead had struck a high-standing stone. The pain was quick and severe but Josie knew the injury was not great.

“You okay?” Paul asked. He had appeared next to Josie and Ana, and given his light weight, he was able to move quickly atop the scree without sinking into it.

Ana nodded and Josie said she was fine.

“There’s some blood on your face,” Paul said to Josie. “Not that much.”

Josie had no hands free to wipe it. And she knew that to make it across Ana would have to crawl on her own.

“Follow Paul,” she said, and Ana made no protest.

Favoring her unbandaged leg, Ana moved nimbly over the mass of loose rock, and Josie did her best to follow. She tried to make herself lighter, more agile.

“Wait!” she yelled. The children were far ahead of her, finding this too easy.

Josie was crawling, slipping, her limbs dropping through the surface as they would through newly fallen snow.

An idea occurred to her and she acted on it, knowing she had no choice but to try anything. She turned onto her back and pushed herself with her feet, like a mechanic under a car. The scree scraped her back, her exposed neck and the back of her head, but it worked. Her hands and legs had been concentrating too much weight on the loose rock and causing her to fall through it. But her back, acting like a snowshoe, was spreading her weight, and she moved this way across the expanse of fallen rock, as her children watched and eventually encouraged her.

“Almost there,” Paul said.

“Almost there,” Ana repeated.

Josie had a strong sense that this image would stay with them, the picture of their mother backstroking across an avalanche in the middle of an Alaskan electrical storm. Josie snorted, and she laughed a loud laugh as the rain fell heavily upon her.

When she was across, her children were waiting, Ana standing on one leg, holding her brother’s shoulder for support. Paul’s legs were raw and bleeding, his hands white with torn skin and the dust of the stones he’d crawled across. Ana’s legs and hands were similarly aggrieved, and at some point she’d acquired a cut on her temple, a finger-sized red slash. Above, the thunder cracked again, as loud as any thunder had ever been since the birth of creation, and Josie laughed out loud again. “It never ends, right?” she said. “One thing after another.” Ana and Paul smiled but seemed unsure exactly what their mother was talking about, and Josie was happy that the subtext of her statement had been lost on them.

“Okay, ready?” she asked. She turned, expecting nothing, but now, on the other side of the avalanche she could see it, the bright blue lake, no bigger than a swimming pool. Josie laughed again. “Oh god,” she said, “look at it. It’s so small. All this way for that!”

“But it’s so blue,” Paul said. “And look.”

Josie had been searching for the shelter the map had promised but Paul had found it first. It was more than a shelter. It was a sturdy cabin made of logs and bricks, the straight line of its chimney standing like a beacon. On its door there was the same sagging trio of balloons they’d seen on the trailhead sign.

Josie didn’t need to tell her children what to do. They had already begun running, Ana somehow strong again, and Paul sprinting ahead, knowing his sister would be fine, and Josie walked behind them, her shoulders shuddering with cold and a kind of tearless weeping.

When she made it to the cabin she saw the sign over the porch. “Welcome Stromberg Family Reunion,” it said. She opened the door to find Paul and Ana, soaked by rain and streaked in blood, standing amid what seemed to be a surprise party. There were balloons, streamers, a table overflowing with juices and sodas, chips, fruit and a glorious chocolate cake under a plastic canopy. All around the cabin were framed photos from every era, most in black and white, all neatly labeled. The Strombergs through time. Josie could only assume that some intrepid member of the family had been to this cabin days ago, had set all this up for the family reunion, and then, for whatever reason, fire or unrelated tragedies, had canceled it all, leaving the cabin and all its bounty to another, smaller, family: Josie, Paul and Ana, so tired.

“Who are the Strombergs?” Paul asked.

“Today we are the Strombergs,” Josie said.

There was enough firewood for three winters, and there was plenty of water, so Josie started a fire, and they took off their clothes and cleaned themselves and sat naked under a vast wool blanket as their filthy clothes dried before the fire. They ate and drank whatever they wanted in no particular order, and were soon sated and though their muscles ached and wounds roared for attention, they would not sleep for many hours. Every part of their being was awake. Their minds were screaming in triumph, their arms and legs wanted more challenge, more conquest, more glory.

“That was good, right?” Paul said.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He stared into the fire, his face aglow and seeming far younger than it was — perhaps reborn. His ice-priest eyes had found a new and untroubled happiness. He knew it was good.

Josie found herself smiling, knowing they had done what they could with what they had, and they had found joy and purpose in every footstep. They had made hysterical music and they had faced formidable obstacles in this world and had laughed and had triumphed and had bled freely but were now naked together and warm, and the fire before them would not die. Josie looked at the bright flaming faces of her children and knew this was exactly who and where they were supposed to be.

But then there is tomorrow.

Thank you first to Jenny Jackson, calm soul, sensitive reader and blessedly relentless champion of this book. Thank you to Sonny Mehta, Andy Hughes, Paul Bogaards, Emma Dries and all at Knopf. Thank you Em-J Staples, constant friend, tenacious editor and proud Illinoisian. Thank you Andrew, Luke, Sarah and all the unwavering advocates at the Wylie Agency. Thank you to Cressida Leyshon and Deborah Treisman, for their faith in, and astute editing of, this book’s first excerpted incarnation. Thank you Alison and Katya, heroes and Homerites. Thank you careful readers Nyuol Tong, Peter Ferry, Christian Keifer, Curtis Sittenfeld, Sally Willcox, Clara Sankey, Tish Scola, Tom Barbash, Ayelet Waldman, Carrie Clements and Jesse Nathan. Thank you patient musicians Thao Nguyen, Alexi Glickman and Jon Walters. Thank you Terry Wit, Deb Klein and Kim Jaime. Thank you philosopher-dentists Tim Sheehan, Larry Blank and Raymond Katz. Thank you Alaska for persisting. Thank you V, A and B for existing.

Dave Eggers is the author of The Circle; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. He is the recently retired founder of the McSweeney’s publishing house, and still-active editor of Voice of Witness, a book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises. 826 National, the network of youth writing and tutoring centers he cofounded in 2002, now has affiliates in twenty-two cities around the world. ScholarMatch, a related nonprofit founded in 2010, offers college access programs and funding to U.S. students. Eggers is a winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, held the 2015 Amnesty International Chair and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.