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gwyllionTitle: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue
Author: gwylliondream
Genre: AU
Pairing: Alma/Ennis, Ennis/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Words: 60K in 16 chapters
Warnings: Major character death (not Ennis or Jack), child abuse, religious persecution, homophobia, under-aged non-consensual kissing and groping, indecent exposure, attempted rape, unreliable narrator.
Summary: Ennis and Jack thought they had seen the last of each other when they parted ways on a windy day in Signal. They were wrong. Some people thought Alma would have remarried after her divorce. They were wrong, too.
A/N: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue was written for NaNoWriMo 2012.
“Calling Me Back to the Hills” was written by Earl Shaffer, poet and friend.
Thanks: My deepest thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morrobay1990 for answering my veiled pleas for a beta over on DCF. She provided incomparable support during the 30 days of NaNoWriMo, from brainstorming, to cheerleading, to prodding, and to writing a passion-filled scene in her own inimitable style, which I happily included. Thanks to my wonderful DCF co-mod lawgoddess for audiencing this fic and giving it a thorough beta job. Thanks to soulan both for traveling to Salida to research the terrain at the foothills of the Rockies and for vehemently disagreeing with me years ago when I insisted that Alma Beers-Del Mar would never have remarried after her divorce from Ennis. If not for that spirited argument, this fic never could have been.
Dedication: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue is dedicated to Andy, for whom the hills called.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
In the woodsmoke that curls to the sky and away, is the penchant that’s luring me on
After lunch, Alma helped clear the table while Laurie washed the dishes. The two girls begged their father to go to the playground.
Lisa, five years old, with her golden hair the same color as her mother’s, ran to the closet to get her sweater and a jacket for her younger sister. Linda toddled after her into the hallway, intent on an outing.
“Here we go,” K.E. said as he helped Linda with her zipper.
“Swings,” Linda shouted. “Want to ride the swings.”
“They love playing on the swings,” Laurie said, hanging the dishcloth over the faucet to dry. “We’re lucky to have such a nice playground in our neighborhood.”
“We used to have a playground in our neighborhood back home too,” Alma said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?”
“Mama, come with us!” Linda ran from the hall and clung to Laurie’s thighs.
Laurie sighed.
“It’s okay if you want to go,” Alma said. “I still need to unpack some of my things, I won’t be much company for you here.”
“You need to help Daddy push,” Lisa pleaded.
Laurie shrugged at Alma. “Lemme get my jacket,” she said to the girls as she headed for the closet. “If you’re sure you don’t mind being alone for a while, Alma?”
“No, I don’t mind,” Alma said. “I’m used to being alone in my apartment anyway. It’s no bother.”
“We won’t be long,” Laurie said, giving Alma’s shoulder a squeeze.
K.E. and Laurie gathered up the girls and closed the kitchen door behind them.
Alma wished she could have gone along, but she knew she was only invited out of courtesy. She watched the family walk down the street to the park, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do on a Sunday afternoon. She could picture the two girls who would have still been her nieces if she and Ennis had stayed married. She could have enjoyed a day at the park with the girls, pushing them on the swings or watching them on the slide, the simpler days of their innocence still intact.
Alma realized she shouldn’t waste this opportunity to unpack the rest of her belongings so she could be comfortable in K.E. and Laurie’s home during her stay. She had no idea how many days would pass before she wore out her welcome, so she tried to make herself useful. First she dried and put away the dishes that Laurie had washed, then she mixed a new pitcher of Kool-Aid for the girls when they returned from the park.
Downstairs, in the rumpus room, Alma dragged one of her boxes onto the daybed, the orange and green bedspread bunching as she slid the cardboard box over its surface. She sat cross-legged with a pillow at her back while she sifted through the papers that had been saved from the fire. The acrid smell couldn’t be removed from some of the contents. Newspaper clippings, high school memorabilia, and bric-a-brac bore the scent of their trials.
She thumbed through the old newspaper clippings that featured her picture. She had been in the church choir for the whole time she attended high school. The group of teenaged girls performed at the school as well as in church on holidays. Sometimes, a group of the singers would get together to sing Christmas carols for the residents of the town’s nursing home or to march in the Memorial Day parade that wound its way through downtown Riverton.
Alma smoothed a sheet of newsprint with her hand, sorry that the black ink had smudged beneath her sweaty palm. There was a picture of the choir on one side of the paper and on the other was a picture of Margaret Quinn, the girl who always got the leading role in the school plays.
“Everyone thought she had a beautiful voice,” Alma said with a sigh.
She remembered the day when Father Bodine said she had the voice of an angel. He always chose Margaret when he needed a girl to sing a solo while the congregants filtered into the church on a Sunday morning.
Alma didn’t think Margaret was so special.
“I don’t know why she gets all the attention,” Alma complained one night over a dinner of her mother’s chicken and dumplings.
Ava kicked her chair from across the table. Even though she wasn’t a teenager yet, Ava obviously knew enough to recognize when Alma had spoken out of turn.
“Margaret has a beautiful voice,” Pa said. “We’ve heard her sing at all the church services. And she sang in those plays, too.”
“She came to our school once and sang with a guitar,” Ava said.
“Ron Quinn says he and Rita are thinking of sending her to some kind of school for talented folks,” Pa said. “I’ll bet she’ll be popular with the boys too.”
“George,” Ann admonished, her eyes shifting between Alma and Ava.
“Well, she will,” George reaffirmed.
“I don’t know about that,” Alma said, putting down her fork thoughtfully. “Her nose is covered in freckles and her ears are too big for her head.”
“Alma,” Ann chided.
Ava giggled.
“You’re one to talk,” Ann’s voice traveled sharp across the table to Alma. “I don’t hear any boys knocking on your door.”
Alma opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t say anything. Her eyes welled with tears. Her heart clenched tight in her chest until she felt that it might explode.
She was simply trying to point out that Margaret Quinn wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Alma sullenly took a sip of milk. She wished that she possessed some redeeming quality that would have gone remarked by the parish priest, or that she earned the admiration of the choir director, or that she got the best part in the school play. There was no reason why she shouldn’t receive some attention. She was just as good as Margaret.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize Margaret. And need I remind you, you’re no Beverly Sills?” Ann finished, clearing her throat.
Alma pushed a dumpling around on her plate. Even her own parents seemed to favor Margaret Quinn over their eldest daughter. It was bad enough that Alma knew they loved Ava more than they did her. Both Ann and George made no secret of the fact that Ava was a good baby, sleeping through the night before she was even a month old, while Alma had colic and screamed bloody murder for hours at a time, waking the nearest neighbors.
Now they made it clear that Alma’s lack of talent and looks made them favor other girls above their own daughter.
No, there were no boys knocking on Alma’s door. Alma wasn’t sure whether to regard that as a positive thing, something that was a testament to her chastity. Wasn’t that what her mother wanted above everything else?
Alma thought that her mother should have been proud that her daughter was pure, but now she seemed critical about Alma’s lack of suitors, angry even. Not for the first time, Alma figured she must have done something wrong. But what could she do to make her mother take notice? To make her mother appreciate her? To be proud of her? If her singing didn’t improve, she’d have to find another way to attract boys to her door, while making sure that she remained chaste.
Alma lay awake at night thinking about it, determined to do something to gain her mother’s approval.
Before the morning bell rang the next day in school, she cornered Janet Lynch, a dirty, rough and wild girl who was one grade ahead of Alma. Alma knew Janet smoked cigarettes with the teachers between classes at Riverton High School. Her parents had a half-dozen children, Janet being the youngest. Surely she had learned a few things about boys from her older brothers and sisters.
“Janet?” Alma asked, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear her. “What do you think about… you know… boys?”
“What do you want to know?” asked Janet, taking a drag off her cigarette, her kinky red hair sticking out of her parka hood.
“How do you find one and make him… you know… love you?” Alma asked.
“To make one ask you on a date?” Janet asked, a little too loud for Alma’s liking.
“Yes,” Alma whispered urgently.
Janet squinted. It looked like she was thinking hard. “I know some things about boys, but I’m not sure how to make one love you,” Janet said. “Why don’t you ask Margaret Quinn? She knows how. She’s always got a group of boys following her around.”
Alma sighed. It wasn’t enough that Margaret had a beautiful voice and could play the guitar, that she wore the best clothes and had the cutest poodle skirt that made her prettier than all the other girls, but now she already knew how to attract boys.
“How does she do it, do you think?” Alma asked.
Janet thought for a long while.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you a secret about her and Bradley McBurney,” Janet said quietly. “Come on.”
Janet led Alma around the back of the school building. As she walked on the blacktop, Alma’s mind raced. Bradley McBurney was the most handsome boy in all of Riverton High school. With his sleek blond hair and his success on the football team, he was the most popular kid in the school. Alma had heard a rumor that he and Margaret were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Janet stopped by the shed where Mr. Dugar, the school janitor, kept his rakes and lawn supplies. After making sure no other kids were lurking nearby, the girls snuck out to the football field. The bleachers blocked much of the view of the school. It didn’t really matter, most teachers would have turned their heads and looked the other way if the girls were caught. The teachers didn’t mind if the kids were trying to be adult-like by going out for a smoke. In fact, they’d applaud them for their maturity.
“What’s going on between Bradley and Margaret?” Alma pleaded. “This is far enough.”
Janet giggled as she crushed out her cigarette on the grassy field after she took a final drag.
“Okay, get this,” Janet said, in a conspiratorial whisper. “Margaret told Jeannie Wilson that she and Bradley were sitting next to each other in Mrs. LaPointe’s class to watch a filmstrip about World War II. Kids from Mrs. Yost’s class had to cram into the room too because they all needed to see it for a big test next week. It was really crowded, so Margaret and Bradley’s seats were right next to each other and all the lights in the classroom were turned off so they could see the screen better.”
“So?” Alma asked impatiently. She didn’t want to get in trouble for being late for school and the bell was about to ring.
“So,” Janet said leaning forward. “Bradley took Margaret’s hand and put it on his penis.”
“No!” Alma said.
“Yes,” Janet said. “Can you believe that?”
The school bell rang through the air. For five seconds, Alma stood there with her mouth agape. No, she couldn’t imagine why Bradley would have done such a thing. Putting Margaret’s hand on his penis? It was unthinkable. But in the same breath, she wondered whether it was over the fabric of his pants or whether it was against his skin. Suddenly, Alma couldn’t breathe.
Alma knew about the birds and the bees. A few years earlier, when Alma was thirteen years old, she had been sent to a special presentation of the Future Homemakers of America, where she learned about her monthly visitor, as Ann had called it. Alma was so surprised that her mother had signed her up to go to the presentation, knowing how the talk of anything below the waist was frowned on as being sinful.
There were other girls from Alma’s class there in the new Grange Hall. It was like a big secret meeting that no one had dared to talk about ahead of time in school. Alma blushed furiously when the nurse from Riverton Hospital talked about such private things. Alma almost fainted when the nurse told about the part where blood would unexpectedly pour out of her without her even knowing about it until she had to be dismissed from school to go home to change into a clean pair of pants.
Learning about what would inevitably happen to her, to all girls, was like a bad dream. She was sure that she would soon wake up and learn that the lesson was something she imagined from seeing a horror movie at the Gem Theater. She prayed that the nurse was wrong and such a horrifying thing wouldn’t happen to her. Hadn’t she always been a good girl? What had she done to be punished with this affliction that would make her to think about the part of her body that Ann only ever referred to as down below?
The presentation only became more terrifying as Alma learned about eggs and tubes and how her husband would insert his penis into her to fertilize these so-called eggs. She shuddered to think. It was sinful to be touched in that way, so how was Alma going to tolerate it when she got married? It was as if the Future Homemakers meeting was trying to undo everything Alma had been taught by her mother, and everything that was supported by her church and society itself. But Alma had no way of erasing the effects of what she had been taught. Surely she couldn’t be expected to believe that her own parents engaged in this behavior of inserting her father’s penis? Not after everything her mother had always told her about the evils of sex. Letting someone touch her or God forbid see her, down below… the mere thought of it made Alma want to fall to her knees and repent.
She had to rethink her future. She was expected to marry and raise a family, something that her mother had always insisted was the greatest achievement in life for a woman. The physical aspects of marriage filled her with utter dread.
“What did Margaret do when Bradley put her hand there?” Alma finally managed as she and Janet ran back to the school.
“She slapped him right across the face,” Janet said.
“Good for her,” Alma said. “I guess.”
Alma wondered what it might feel like for a boy to take her hand and put it on the front of his pants, but she tamped down those thoughts and convinced herself it was disgusting, just like Margaret had.
Margaret was a good girl, with the voice of an angel, even. She was no sinner and neither was Alma. Alma vowed that if anything like that ever happened to her, she’d react the same way. It made her feel a little closer to Margaret, warmer for standing in the sunshine of the popularity that Margaret enjoyed.
From that day forth, Alma walked a little prouder, felt a little more confident. She’d thwart any boy’s attempt to get close to her area down below. It was something she could easily do, and she’d be a better person for it. No fiery pit of hell would claim her.
Alma smoothed the news clipping back into place inside the folder, and thumbed through the remaining newspaper clippings, postcards from her uncle who took a trip to Mexico, and other ephemera of childhood. The folder was heavy with the worthless junk that Alma had saved, thinking it would be important one day. Only now she realized just how quickly those days had sped into adulthood, a time that began when she met Ennis Del Mar.
She wondered where Bradley McBurney was now, and if he ever got anyone to touch his penis again. It made her sad to think that Margaret had married someone else and had a different penis that she was obligated to touch. She wondered for the first time in a long time how Bradley’s penis had felt beneath Margaret’s hand. She thought about Margaret’s husband, Greg…. or Glen something… and wondered if his penis had felt the same way as Bradley’s.
She wondered if Margaret knew how to make a penis work.
~~~
In autumn, the sunlight fades and the ground cools as darkness descends earlier each day. The night air chills the planet for hours that grow longer with each passing day.
A cold wind blows across the peak, swirling down into the valleys, blanketing the forest with frigid air.
The mud of the riverbank freezes solid, the footprints of travelers preserved until the spring thaw. The marshy valley shines in the morning with frost that clings to the blades of sedges, of rushes, of grass. Sedges have edges and rushes are round, grasses are hollow right up from the ground, but they all glimmer with the frost that forms when the temperature drops below freezing.
The winter’s frost glazes the rocks and stones, making them slippery underfoot. The frozen footway waits to be thawed by the weak winter sun when it returns each morning to remind the earth that its rays can melt even the most solid ice in due time.
But when the air remains cold for longer hours of the day and night, the snow finally falls. It clings to the needles of the coniferous trees, and breaks the branches of the deciduous trees with its heavy waterlogged weight.
The long darkness becomes too much for the ice to overcome, and so it remains.
High on the mountain peaks, the leafless krummholz reaches into the wind for rime. The feathered ice grows from frozen moisture born in the wind. The clouds lighten their weight by allowing the flakes of snow to drop freely.
At first the milky flakes flow with the wind, swirling across the landscape without stopping long enough to stick. In the absence of wind, the flakes drop and land one by one, each somehow different and yet the same, just as individuals each have the same heart of man.
Without the sunlight to warm the earth, a dusting of snow layers itself on every rock and tree until it blankets the forest deeply. As each day passes, a new layer shrouds the snow that was born from clouds the previous day.
When the sun shines bright, the top of the snow layer melts into itself, then freezes shiny smooth when night falls with her cold. The snow sinks lower to the base when the air warms, then grows ten times its depth when a blizzard rains down. The wind carves the newly fallen snow into drifts that seem to know no restraints of gravity and sometimes refuse to obey nature’s force, at every challenge.
Day after day, the snowy blanket changes and molds itself to the earth, shaped by wind, sun, and time. The snow grows heavier with melting and refreezing, the cycle of its formation as vast as the striated canyons of the south.
With each passing day, the pressure builds. The snow’s weight is tremendous and each layer rides only on the slick and slippery surface of the re-frozen melt atop the layer beneath it. Sometimes the weight is too much. The pressure builds until something slips.
It begins with a crack of thunder in a cloudless winter sky.
~~~
Ennis didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He was firm in his beliefs about most ordinary things, his opinions usually changing with the nearly imperceptible speed of a glacier. But this was different. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to lash out, or retreat into his own silent shell. Whether he wanted to throw Jack down and have his way with him, or spend hours simply looking into his eyes. Most of all, he wondered what he was going to say to Jack when he saw him next.
He wanted to let loose all the words he had bottled up over the years for Jack, and Jack alone. The words had changed with each passing season. They had become more solemn when it seemed guaranteed that they would remain unspoken. But they seemed to grow more fierce and angry, now that their silence was no longer ensured.
He paced back and forth, wearing the cabin’s wooden floor smooth with his heavy boots. He could hardly believe the scene that had unfolded hours before at the rescue site.
Jack Twist, the man who ruined Ennis’s life, was alive. Alive, and on the side of a goddamn mountain in Colorado. Ennis wasn’t even sure Jack was real, but all he wanted to do was to look into his blue eyes again and touch his own hand.
Ennis held his hand in front of his face, awed that he had actually touched Jack. He put his fingers to his lips, and swallowed hard.
After the chopper left the mountain with the mountaineering accident survivor, Ennis could barely concentrate on making a safe descent with the team. Of course he provided Jeff and company with hot drinks and a place to rest when they reached his cabin. After they got their second wind, the group trekked down the melting road to the Forest Service lot where their vehicles were parked, no doubt whooping it up the whole way because of their successful rescue. Alone in his cabin again, with the company gone for the day, Ennis finally got a moment to himself to think properly.
But he couldn’t stop moving. He ripped the elastic band out of his short ponytail and laced his fingers behind his head as he paced the floor.
“I need a goddamn cigarette, that’s what I need. Jack fuckin Twist- alive. Not only alive, but said he’d come lookin’ for me, find where I live in the woods. How’s he gonna find me? I s’ppose he can ask Brian. Yeah, that Twin Lakes paramedic, the curly haired fella, nice guy, he would tell him, he would tell Jack just how ta get here. Jesus Christ, this whole mess is all his fault,” Ennis talked more when he was alone than he did when he was in the presence of other people who might judge him.
His years as a backcountry ranger taught him that there was no one around who could hear him, anyway, except for the bears and the mosquitoes.
He stomped over to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer. “Gotta be a goddamn cigarette in here someplace.” He found an old lighter that someone had left behind in the cabin. He flipped open the cover, then flipped it shut again. He remembered well the familiar sound of the lighter from the days when he used to smoke a pack or two per day.
Open, shut, open, shut. Without a cigarette, there was no point in using the lighter, except for the comfort he felt toying with it in his hand. He settled down and began to breathe normally, at last.
“Shit!” Ennis said, remembering that Jeff was coming by with the summer lady tomorrow. He tossed the lighter into the box of matches he kept by the woodstove and resumed his pacing.
“As if I ain’t got enough to think about,” he said.
Visitors always made Ennis nervous. He never knew quite what to say when he showed the summer assistant around the cabin for the first time. The gals that volunteered during the previous summers never seemed to mind his rehearsed speech. What would he say to this one, the woman who would be the summer caretaker when the road opened to the public, and throngs of hikers arrived to climb Mt. Elbert? Ennis was grateful that he would be stationed somewhere deep in the forest by then, and didn’t have to deal with the tourist types. He appreciated the time alone, since he had long considered himself a misfit.
Then, there was Jack. What was he going to say to Jack when he showed up? Give him the grand tour? What if he couldn’t find Ennis? What if Jack showed up at the cabin when Ennis was posted in the forest? Just as well. Then, Ennis wouldn’t have to deal with him being alive.
“If he shows up while I’m here, I’m just gonna tell it to him like it is. My marriage didn’t work out. And my life is fucked up forever. And it’s all your fault, dumbass. Oh, and I’m glad to see that you’re alive, so I can give ya what yer due.”
Ennis cocked his right arm back and let his fists fly, pummeling the back of the old sofa.
The sky was growing dark when his tirade ended. He stepped out onto the porch, gasping for the cold air. A gentle breeze swept over the lake and ruffled the pines surrounding the cabin. He descended the stone steps, and walked over to where the lake outlet cascaded down the smooth rocks and pooled in shallow gorges. He pulled a beer from the chilly water and popped the top, dropping the metal tab into the opening. The night was clear, unlike the last, and stars began to make themselves visible against the darkness.
“Welcome to the Mt. Elbert Trailhead Cabin, Twin Lakes Ranger District, United States Forest Service,” he made his well-rehearsed announcement in a deep voice, walking back up the steps and onto the porch.
“The cabin serves as a forest outpost during the winter months, when the caretaker, yours truly, lives here alone, surrounded only by nature’s magnificence, and the lonely sound of the mountain wind.”
He opened the heavy front door and proclaimed, “The latchstring is always out.”
Ennis entered the cabin and looked back outside through the open door.
“That means, we ain’t got no key. Y’all can just come and go as you please. Don’t matter if I’m sound asleep, or wringin’ one out. Come right on in everybody.”
Ennis fired up the kerosene lantern to ward off the encroaching night and loaded a few thick logs into the woodstove. He sat on the old sofa and removed his boots, leaving them by the door, continuing to sip his beer during the mock orientation.
“The cabin was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939. The logs were harvested on-site by the work crew from Alamosa. The cabin is heated by a woodstove, and hot water is gravity-fed, from that there big pot on the stove, into the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and my shower,” he remarked while waving his hands around to his imaginary audience.
“The cookstove and lighting runs on propane, but I gotta watch out because once FR 125 gets snowed in, about November, I gotta make the fuel last until May. Radio comes in handy for emergencies like last night… I’ll tell the story about that rescue right about now.”
He took a swig of his beer and silently recalled this time last night when Owen showed up. Ennis was pleased that the story had a happy ending. He wondered how the victim fared at the hospital. He would radio Jeff later tonight to ask how things went, and to find out if and when that new blue-eyed pilot from Salida might be paying him a visit. He couldn’t be overly prepared for that.
“Only a dozen or so folks make the trek down the unplowed road in winter, so I’ve got the place pretty much all to myself,” he continued to his imaginary audience.
“When summer comes, the road is clear, and the field in front of the cabin becomes a parking lot. Folks come from all over to climb Mt. Elbert and fish in the lake. The cabin is manned by a summer caretaker that’s you for all the months that the bulk of visitors arrive. Me? I head out into the wild. See a different place every week. Sometimes I get a watch duty from a fire tower, sometimes patrol for illegal campsites, different every summer, different thing to be done every week. Alone, just the way I like it.”
He finished his beer and placed the empty can in the kitchen sink.
“You,” he pointed at the shovel that leaned against the food cupboard. “Do what I do. Follow the rules. Help the tourists. Sell lots of T-shirts and bug dope so we can make payroll. You can sleep wherever you want, if you want to sleep in here at all, just don’t mess with my stuff. Make yourself at home, just take care of the place. I’ll be back to check on things every once in a while.”
With the lantern in his hand, he climbed the rough-hewn staircase to the loft. “And this is where I keep my own gear. Don’t got too much.”
Flopping down on the quilt-covered bed, he grabbed his reading glasses from the top of the nightstand. “This is where I sleep, alone… don’t got no one, neither,” he whispered. “All Jack Twist’s fault.”
He put on his glasses and grabbed a book, planning to wind down with the latest dime store paperback he picked up on his last trip to town. The wind blew across the lake bringing a warm breeze. Warm, only when compared to last night’s storm. The wood of the old cabin creaked and groaned with each soft gust.
Ennis couldn’t keep his mind still enough to concentrate on reading. He dropped the book on the floor, twisted his body to open the nightstand drawer, and put his glasses inside. Before he extinguished the lantern, he examined his hand again, the same one that had touched Jack earlier on this long day. Ennis brought the fingers to his lips again, then touched them to his cheek and wiped a tear from his eye.
~~~
Author: gwylliondream
Genre: AU
Pairing: Alma/Ennis, Ennis/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Words: 60K in 16 chapters
Warnings: Major character death (not Ennis or Jack), child abuse, religious persecution, homophobia, under-aged non-consensual kissing and groping, indecent exposure, attempted rape, unreliable narrator.
Summary: Ennis and Jack thought they had seen the last of each other when they parted ways on a windy day in Signal. They were wrong. Some people thought Alma would have remarried after her divorce. They were wrong, too.
A/N: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue was written for NaNoWriMo 2012.
“Calling Me Back to the Hills” was written by Earl Shaffer, poet and friend.
Thanks: My deepest thanks to
morrobay1990 for answering my veiled pleas for a beta over on DCF. She provided incomparable support during the 30 days of NaNoWriMo, from brainstorming, to cheerleading, to prodding, and to writing a passion-filled scene in her own inimitable style, which I happily included. Thanks to my wonderful DCF co-mod lawgoddess for audiencing this fic and giving it a thorough beta job. Thanks to soulan both for traveling to Salida to research the terrain at the foothills of the Rockies and for vehemently disagreeing with me years ago when I insisted that Alma Beers-Del Mar would never have remarried after her divorce from Ennis. If not for that spirited argument, this fic never could have been.Dedication: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue is dedicated to Andy, for whom the hills called.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
In the woodsmoke that curls to the sky and away, is the penchant that’s luring me on
After lunch, Alma helped clear the table while Laurie washed the dishes. The two girls begged their father to go to the playground.
Lisa, five years old, with her golden hair the same color as her mother’s, ran to the closet to get her sweater and a jacket for her younger sister. Linda toddled after her into the hallway, intent on an outing.
“Here we go,” K.E. said as he helped Linda with her zipper.
“Swings,” Linda shouted. “Want to ride the swings.”
“They love playing on the swings,” Laurie said, hanging the dishcloth over the faucet to dry. “We’re lucky to have such a nice playground in our neighborhood.”
“We used to have a playground in our neighborhood back home too,” Alma said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?”
“Mama, come with us!” Linda ran from the hall and clung to Laurie’s thighs.
Laurie sighed.
“It’s okay if you want to go,” Alma said. “I still need to unpack some of my things, I won’t be much company for you here.”
“You need to help Daddy push,” Lisa pleaded.
Laurie shrugged at Alma. “Lemme get my jacket,” she said to the girls as she headed for the closet. “If you’re sure you don’t mind being alone for a while, Alma?”
“No, I don’t mind,” Alma said. “I’m used to being alone in my apartment anyway. It’s no bother.”
“We won’t be long,” Laurie said, giving Alma’s shoulder a squeeze.
K.E. and Laurie gathered up the girls and closed the kitchen door behind them.
Alma wished she could have gone along, but she knew she was only invited out of courtesy. She watched the family walk down the street to the park, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do on a Sunday afternoon. She could picture the two girls who would have still been her nieces if she and Ennis had stayed married. She could have enjoyed a day at the park with the girls, pushing them on the swings or watching them on the slide, the simpler days of their innocence still intact.
Alma realized she shouldn’t waste this opportunity to unpack the rest of her belongings so she could be comfortable in K.E. and Laurie’s home during her stay. She had no idea how many days would pass before she wore out her welcome, so she tried to make herself useful. First she dried and put away the dishes that Laurie had washed, then she mixed a new pitcher of Kool-Aid for the girls when they returned from the park.
Downstairs, in the rumpus room, Alma dragged one of her boxes onto the daybed, the orange and green bedspread bunching as she slid the cardboard box over its surface. She sat cross-legged with a pillow at her back while she sifted through the papers that had been saved from the fire. The acrid smell couldn’t be removed from some of the contents. Newspaper clippings, high school memorabilia, and bric-a-brac bore the scent of their trials.
She thumbed through the old newspaper clippings that featured her picture. She had been in the church choir for the whole time she attended high school. The group of teenaged girls performed at the school as well as in church on holidays. Sometimes, a group of the singers would get together to sing Christmas carols for the residents of the town’s nursing home or to march in the Memorial Day parade that wound its way through downtown Riverton.
Alma smoothed a sheet of newsprint with her hand, sorry that the black ink had smudged beneath her sweaty palm. There was a picture of the choir on one side of the paper and on the other was a picture of Margaret Quinn, the girl who always got the leading role in the school plays.
“Everyone thought she had a beautiful voice,” Alma said with a sigh.
She remembered the day when Father Bodine said she had the voice of an angel. He always chose Margaret when he needed a girl to sing a solo while the congregants filtered into the church on a Sunday morning.
Alma didn’t think Margaret was so special.
“I don’t know why she gets all the attention,” Alma complained one night over a dinner of her mother’s chicken and dumplings.
Ava kicked her chair from across the table. Even though she wasn’t a teenager yet, Ava obviously knew enough to recognize when Alma had spoken out of turn.
“Margaret has a beautiful voice,” Pa said. “We’ve heard her sing at all the church services. And she sang in those plays, too.”
“She came to our school once and sang with a guitar,” Ava said.
“Ron Quinn says he and Rita are thinking of sending her to some kind of school for talented folks,” Pa said. “I’ll bet she’ll be popular with the boys too.”
“George,” Ann admonished, her eyes shifting between Alma and Ava.
“Well, she will,” George reaffirmed.
“I don’t know about that,” Alma said, putting down her fork thoughtfully. “Her nose is covered in freckles and her ears are too big for her head.”
“Alma,” Ann chided.
Ava giggled.
“You’re one to talk,” Ann’s voice traveled sharp across the table to Alma. “I don’t hear any boys knocking on your door.”
Alma opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t say anything. Her eyes welled with tears. Her heart clenched tight in her chest until she felt that it might explode.
She was simply trying to point out that Margaret Quinn wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Alma sullenly took a sip of milk. She wished that she possessed some redeeming quality that would have gone remarked by the parish priest, or that she earned the admiration of the choir director, or that she got the best part in the school play. There was no reason why she shouldn’t receive some attention. She was just as good as Margaret.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize Margaret. And need I remind you, you’re no Beverly Sills?” Ann finished, clearing her throat.
Alma pushed a dumpling around on her plate. Even her own parents seemed to favor Margaret Quinn over their eldest daughter. It was bad enough that Alma knew they loved Ava more than they did her. Both Ann and George made no secret of the fact that Ava was a good baby, sleeping through the night before she was even a month old, while Alma had colic and screamed bloody murder for hours at a time, waking the nearest neighbors.
Now they made it clear that Alma’s lack of talent and looks made them favor other girls above their own daughter.
No, there were no boys knocking on Alma’s door. Alma wasn’t sure whether to regard that as a positive thing, something that was a testament to her chastity. Wasn’t that what her mother wanted above everything else?
Alma thought that her mother should have been proud that her daughter was pure, but now she seemed critical about Alma’s lack of suitors, angry even. Not for the first time, Alma figured she must have done something wrong. But what could she do to make her mother take notice? To make her mother appreciate her? To be proud of her? If her singing didn’t improve, she’d have to find another way to attract boys to her door, while making sure that she remained chaste.
Alma lay awake at night thinking about it, determined to do something to gain her mother’s approval.
Before the morning bell rang the next day in school, she cornered Janet Lynch, a dirty, rough and wild girl who was one grade ahead of Alma. Alma knew Janet smoked cigarettes with the teachers between classes at Riverton High School. Her parents had a half-dozen children, Janet being the youngest. Surely she had learned a few things about boys from her older brothers and sisters.
“Janet?” Alma asked, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear her. “What do you think about… you know… boys?”
“What do you want to know?” asked Janet, taking a drag off her cigarette, her kinky red hair sticking out of her parka hood.
“How do you find one and make him… you know… love you?” Alma asked.
“To make one ask you on a date?” Janet asked, a little too loud for Alma’s liking.
“Yes,” Alma whispered urgently.
Janet squinted. It looked like she was thinking hard. “I know some things about boys, but I’m not sure how to make one love you,” Janet said. “Why don’t you ask Margaret Quinn? She knows how. She’s always got a group of boys following her around.”
Alma sighed. It wasn’t enough that Margaret had a beautiful voice and could play the guitar, that she wore the best clothes and had the cutest poodle skirt that made her prettier than all the other girls, but now she already knew how to attract boys.
“How does she do it, do you think?” Alma asked.
Janet thought for a long while.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you a secret about her and Bradley McBurney,” Janet said quietly. “Come on.”
Janet led Alma around the back of the school building. As she walked on the blacktop, Alma’s mind raced. Bradley McBurney was the most handsome boy in all of Riverton High school. With his sleek blond hair and his success on the football team, he was the most popular kid in the school. Alma had heard a rumor that he and Margaret were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Janet stopped by the shed where Mr. Dugar, the school janitor, kept his rakes and lawn supplies. After making sure no other kids were lurking nearby, the girls snuck out to the football field. The bleachers blocked much of the view of the school. It didn’t really matter, most teachers would have turned their heads and looked the other way if the girls were caught. The teachers didn’t mind if the kids were trying to be adult-like by going out for a smoke. In fact, they’d applaud them for their maturity.
“What’s going on between Bradley and Margaret?” Alma pleaded. “This is far enough.”
Janet giggled as she crushed out her cigarette on the grassy field after she took a final drag.
“Okay, get this,” Janet said, in a conspiratorial whisper. “Margaret told Jeannie Wilson that she and Bradley were sitting next to each other in Mrs. LaPointe’s class to watch a filmstrip about World War II. Kids from Mrs. Yost’s class had to cram into the room too because they all needed to see it for a big test next week. It was really crowded, so Margaret and Bradley’s seats were right next to each other and all the lights in the classroom were turned off so they could see the screen better.”
“So?” Alma asked impatiently. She didn’t want to get in trouble for being late for school and the bell was about to ring.
“So,” Janet said leaning forward. “Bradley took Margaret’s hand and put it on his penis.”
“No!” Alma said.
“Yes,” Janet said. “Can you believe that?”
The school bell rang through the air. For five seconds, Alma stood there with her mouth agape. No, she couldn’t imagine why Bradley would have done such a thing. Putting Margaret’s hand on his penis? It was unthinkable. But in the same breath, she wondered whether it was over the fabric of his pants or whether it was against his skin. Suddenly, Alma couldn’t breathe.
Alma knew about the birds and the bees. A few years earlier, when Alma was thirteen years old, she had been sent to a special presentation of the Future Homemakers of America, where she learned about her monthly visitor, as Ann had called it. Alma was so surprised that her mother had signed her up to go to the presentation, knowing how the talk of anything below the waist was frowned on as being sinful.
There were other girls from Alma’s class there in the new Grange Hall. It was like a big secret meeting that no one had dared to talk about ahead of time in school. Alma blushed furiously when the nurse from Riverton Hospital talked about such private things. Alma almost fainted when the nurse told about the part where blood would unexpectedly pour out of her without her even knowing about it until she had to be dismissed from school to go home to change into a clean pair of pants.
Learning about what would inevitably happen to her, to all girls, was like a bad dream. She was sure that she would soon wake up and learn that the lesson was something she imagined from seeing a horror movie at the Gem Theater. She prayed that the nurse was wrong and such a horrifying thing wouldn’t happen to her. Hadn’t she always been a good girl? What had she done to be punished with this affliction that would make her to think about the part of her body that Ann only ever referred to as down below?
The presentation only became more terrifying as Alma learned about eggs and tubes and how her husband would insert his penis into her to fertilize these so-called eggs. She shuddered to think. It was sinful to be touched in that way, so how was Alma going to tolerate it when she got married? It was as if the Future Homemakers meeting was trying to undo everything Alma had been taught by her mother, and everything that was supported by her church and society itself. But Alma had no way of erasing the effects of what she had been taught. Surely she couldn’t be expected to believe that her own parents engaged in this behavior of inserting her father’s penis? Not after everything her mother had always told her about the evils of sex. Letting someone touch her or God forbid see her, down below… the mere thought of it made Alma want to fall to her knees and repent.
She had to rethink her future. She was expected to marry and raise a family, something that her mother had always insisted was the greatest achievement in life for a woman. The physical aspects of marriage filled her with utter dread.
“What did Margaret do when Bradley put her hand there?” Alma finally managed as she and Janet ran back to the school.
“She slapped him right across the face,” Janet said.
“Good for her,” Alma said. “I guess.”
Alma wondered what it might feel like for a boy to take her hand and put it on the front of his pants, but she tamped down those thoughts and convinced herself it was disgusting, just like Margaret had.
Margaret was a good girl, with the voice of an angel, even. She was no sinner and neither was Alma. Alma vowed that if anything like that ever happened to her, she’d react the same way. It made her feel a little closer to Margaret, warmer for standing in the sunshine of the popularity that Margaret enjoyed.
From that day forth, Alma walked a little prouder, felt a little more confident. She’d thwart any boy’s attempt to get close to her area down below. It was something she could easily do, and she’d be a better person for it. No fiery pit of hell would claim her.
Alma smoothed the news clipping back into place inside the folder, and thumbed through the remaining newspaper clippings, postcards from her uncle who took a trip to Mexico, and other ephemera of childhood. The folder was heavy with the worthless junk that Alma had saved, thinking it would be important one day. Only now she realized just how quickly those days had sped into adulthood, a time that began when she met Ennis Del Mar.
She wondered where Bradley McBurney was now, and if he ever got anyone to touch his penis again. It made her sad to think that Margaret had married someone else and had a different penis that she was obligated to touch. She wondered for the first time in a long time how Bradley’s penis had felt beneath Margaret’s hand. She thought about Margaret’s husband, Greg…. or Glen something… and wondered if his penis had felt the same way as Bradley’s.
She wondered if Margaret knew how to make a penis work.
In autumn, the sunlight fades and the ground cools as darkness descends earlier each day. The night air chills the planet for hours that grow longer with each passing day.
A cold wind blows across the peak, swirling down into the valleys, blanketing the forest with frigid air.
The mud of the riverbank freezes solid, the footprints of travelers preserved until the spring thaw. The marshy valley shines in the morning with frost that clings to the blades of sedges, of rushes, of grass. Sedges have edges and rushes are round, grasses are hollow right up from the ground, but they all glimmer with the frost that forms when the temperature drops below freezing.
The winter’s frost glazes the rocks and stones, making them slippery underfoot. The frozen footway waits to be thawed by the weak winter sun when it returns each morning to remind the earth that its rays can melt even the most solid ice in due time.
But when the air remains cold for longer hours of the day and night, the snow finally falls. It clings to the needles of the coniferous trees, and breaks the branches of the deciduous trees with its heavy waterlogged weight.
The long darkness becomes too much for the ice to overcome, and so it remains.
High on the mountain peaks, the leafless krummholz reaches into the wind for rime. The feathered ice grows from frozen moisture born in the wind. The clouds lighten their weight by allowing the flakes of snow to drop freely.
At first the milky flakes flow with the wind, swirling across the landscape without stopping long enough to stick. In the absence of wind, the flakes drop and land one by one, each somehow different and yet the same, just as individuals each have the same heart of man.
Without the sunlight to warm the earth, a dusting of snow layers itself on every rock and tree until it blankets the forest deeply. As each day passes, a new layer shrouds the snow that was born from clouds the previous day.
When the sun shines bright, the top of the snow layer melts into itself, then freezes shiny smooth when night falls with her cold. The snow sinks lower to the base when the air warms, then grows ten times its depth when a blizzard rains down. The wind carves the newly fallen snow into drifts that seem to know no restraints of gravity and sometimes refuse to obey nature’s force, at every challenge.
Day after day, the snowy blanket changes and molds itself to the earth, shaped by wind, sun, and time. The snow grows heavier with melting and refreezing, the cycle of its formation as vast as the striated canyons of the south.
With each passing day, the pressure builds. The snow’s weight is tremendous and each layer rides only on the slick and slippery surface of the re-frozen melt atop the layer beneath it. Sometimes the weight is too much. The pressure builds until something slips.
It begins with a crack of thunder in a cloudless winter sky.
Ennis didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He was firm in his beliefs about most ordinary things, his opinions usually changing with the nearly imperceptible speed of a glacier. But this was different. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to lash out, or retreat into his own silent shell. Whether he wanted to throw Jack down and have his way with him, or spend hours simply looking into his eyes. Most of all, he wondered what he was going to say to Jack when he saw him next.
He wanted to let loose all the words he had bottled up over the years for Jack, and Jack alone. The words had changed with each passing season. They had become more solemn when it seemed guaranteed that they would remain unspoken. But they seemed to grow more fierce and angry, now that their silence was no longer ensured.
He paced back and forth, wearing the cabin’s wooden floor smooth with his heavy boots. He could hardly believe the scene that had unfolded hours before at the rescue site.
Jack Twist, the man who ruined Ennis’s life, was alive. Alive, and on the side of a goddamn mountain in Colorado. Ennis wasn’t even sure Jack was real, but all he wanted to do was to look into his blue eyes again and touch his own hand.
Ennis held his hand in front of his face, awed that he had actually touched Jack. He put his fingers to his lips, and swallowed hard.
After the chopper left the mountain with the mountaineering accident survivor, Ennis could barely concentrate on making a safe descent with the team. Of course he provided Jeff and company with hot drinks and a place to rest when they reached his cabin. After they got their second wind, the group trekked down the melting road to the Forest Service lot where their vehicles were parked, no doubt whooping it up the whole way because of their successful rescue. Alone in his cabin again, with the company gone for the day, Ennis finally got a moment to himself to think properly.
But he couldn’t stop moving. He ripped the elastic band out of his short ponytail and laced his fingers behind his head as he paced the floor.
“I need a goddamn cigarette, that’s what I need. Jack fuckin Twist- alive. Not only alive, but said he’d come lookin’ for me, find where I live in the woods. How’s he gonna find me? I s’ppose he can ask Brian. Yeah, that Twin Lakes paramedic, the curly haired fella, nice guy, he would tell him, he would tell Jack just how ta get here. Jesus Christ, this whole mess is all his fault,” Ennis talked more when he was alone than he did when he was in the presence of other people who might judge him.
His years as a backcountry ranger taught him that there was no one around who could hear him, anyway, except for the bears and the mosquitoes.
He stomped over to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer. “Gotta be a goddamn cigarette in here someplace.” He found an old lighter that someone had left behind in the cabin. He flipped open the cover, then flipped it shut again. He remembered well the familiar sound of the lighter from the days when he used to smoke a pack or two per day.
Open, shut, open, shut. Without a cigarette, there was no point in using the lighter, except for the comfort he felt toying with it in his hand. He settled down and began to breathe normally, at last.
“Shit!” Ennis said, remembering that Jeff was coming by with the summer lady tomorrow. He tossed the lighter into the box of matches he kept by the woodstove and resumed his pacing.
“As if I ain’t got enough to think about,” he said.
Visitors always made Ennis nervous. He never knew quite what to say when he showed the summer assistant around the cabin for the first time. The gals that volunteered during the previous summers never seemed to mind his rehearsed speech. What would he say to this one, the woman who would be the summer caretaker when the road opened to the public, and throngs of hikers arrived to climb Mt. Elbert? Ennis was grateful that he would be stationed somewhere deep in the forest by then, and didn’t have to deal with the tourist types. He appreciated the time alone, since he had long considered himself a misfit.
Then, there was Jack. What was he going to say to Jack when he showed up? Give him the grand tour? What if he couldn’t find Ennis? What if Jack showed up at the cabin when Ennis was posted in the forest? Just as well. Then, Ennis wouldn’t have to deal with him being alive.
“If he shows up while I’m here, I’m just gonna tell it to him like it is. My marriage didn’t work out. And my life is fucked up forever. And it’s all your fault, dumbass. Oh, and I’m glad to see that you’re alive, so I can give ya what yer due.”
Ennis cocked his right arm back and let his fists fly, pummeling the back of the old sofa.
The sky was growing dark when his tirade ended. He stepped out onto the porch, gasping for the cold air. A gentle breeze swept over the lake and ruffled the pines surrounding the cabin. He descended the stone steps, and walked over to where the lake outlet cascaded down the smooth rocks and pooled in shallow gorges. He pulled a beer from the chilly water and popped the top, dropping the metal tab into the opening. The night was clear, unlike the last, and stars began to make themselves visible against the darkness.
“Welcome to the Mt. Elbert Trailhead Cabin, Twin Lakes Ranger District, United States Forest Service,” he made his well-rehearsed announcement in a deep voice, walking back up the steps and onto the porch.
“The cabin serves as a forest outpost during the winter months, when the caretaker, yours truly, lives here alone, surrounded only by nature’s magnificence, and the lonely sound of the mountain wind.”
He opened the heavy front door and proclaimed, “The latchstring is always out.”
Ennis entered the cabin and looked back outside through the open door.
“That means, we ain’t got no key. Y’all can just come and go as you please. Don’t matter if I’m sound asleep, or wringin’ one out. Come right on in everybody.”
Ennis fired up the kerosene lantern to ward off the encroaching night and loaded a few thick logs into the woodstove. He sat on the old sofa and removed his boots, leaving them by the door, continuing to sip his beer during the mock orientation.
“The cabin was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939. The logs were harvested on-site by the work crew from Alamosa. The cabin is heated by a woodstove, and hot water is gravity-fed, from that there big pot on the stove, into the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and my shower,” he remarked while waving his hands around to his imaginary audience.
“The cookstove and lighting runs on propane, but I gotta watch out because once FR 125 gets snowed in, about November, I gotta make the fuel last until May. Radio comes in handy for emergencies like last night… I’ll tell the story about that rescue right about now.”
He took a swig of his beer and silently recalled this time last night when Owen showed up. Ennis was pleased that the story had a happy ending. He wondered how the victim fared at the hospital. He would radio Jeff later tonight to ask how things went, and to find out if and when that new blue-eyed pilot from Salida might be paying him a visit. He couldn’t be overly prepared for that.
“Only a dozen or so folks make the trek down the unplowed road in winter, so I’ve got the place pretty much all to myself,” he continued to his imaginary audience.
“When summer comes, the road is clear, and the field in front of the cabin becomes a parking lot. Folks come from all over to climb Mt. Elbert and fish in the lake. The cabin is manned by a summer caretaker that’s you for all the months that the bulk of visitors arrive. Me? I head out into the wild. See a different place every week. Sometimes I get a watch duty from a fire tower, sometimes patrol for illegal campsites, different every summer, different thing to be done every week. Alone, just the way I like it.”
He finished his beer and placed the empty can in the kitchen sink.
“You,” he pointed at the shovel that leaned against the food cupboard. “Do what I do. Follow the rules. Help the tourists. Sell lots of T-shirts and bug dope so we can make payroll. You can sleep wherever you want, if you want to sleep in here at all, just don’t mess with my stuff. Make yourself at home, just take care of the place. I’ll be back to check on things every once in a while.”
With the lantern in his hand, he climbed the rough-hewn staircase to the loft. “And this is where I keep my own gear. Don’t got too much.”
Flopping down on the quilt-covered bed, he grabbed his reading glasses from the top of the nightstand. “This is where I sleep, alone… don’t got no one, neither,” he whispered. “All Jack Twist’s fault.”
He put on his glasses and grabbed a book, planning to wind down with the latest dime store paperback he picked up on his last trip to town. The wind blew across the lake bringing a warm breeze. Warm, only when compared to last night’s storm. The wood of the old cabin creaked and groaned with each soft gust.
Ennis couldn’t keep his mind still enough to concentrate on reading. He dropped the book on the floor, twisted his body to open the nightstand drawer, and put his glasses inside. Before he extinguished the lantern, he examined his hand again, the same one that had touched Jack earlier on this long day. Ennis brought the fingers to his lips again, then touched them to his cheek and wiped a tear from his eye.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Competition
Date: 2013-02-11 02:32 am (UTC)As for Ennis the emotions overwhelming him will soon change when he hears of the avalanche and the peril that Jack is in. To be so close to be being reunited and then the chance that they will be separated again will be something that will send him into automatic pilot on rescuing his man. Yeah, he blames him for making him the way he is but he also is thankful for who he is because of Jack.
Joe
Re: Competition
Date: 2013-02-12 04:06 am (UTC)Have a great week!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 05:54 am (UTC)I guess Ennis is not going to have to worry WHEN he will see Jack. With the helicopter down, that meeting is going to be sooner than he thought so I hope Ennis has his speech prepared (:D)
Looking forward to more,
D
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:08 am (UTC)Thanks os much for reading!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 07:54 am (UTC)it will not be the case here, right? RIGHT? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:18 am (UTC)http://www.mountwashingtonavalanchecenter.org/
Some climbers were recently injured in an avalanche a couple weeks ago. I lost a friend in an avalanche back in the 1990s. Avalanches are so scary. We are taught to dig a test pit before heading up when the conditions may be unstable.
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 08:18 am (UTC)this here was one of the worse..
http://www.google.at/search?q=galt%C3%BCr+lawine&hl=de&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=0_IZUe-DNoLl4QTIhYH4Bg&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=603
but we have them every year, especially through skiers who leave the open tracks and venture into deep snow, and so any unstable layer starts to slide...
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:43 pm (UTC)I had heard of the Galtur avalanche before. The study of this tragic incident has laid the foundation for avalanche science and the prevention of such an occurrence in the future. In fact, the test pit I mention digging in my comment above is a direct result of how the study of the Galtur avalanche has affected climbers' precautions to this day.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 03:22 pm (UTC)http://www.fsavalanche.org/Default.aspx?ContentId=20&
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 10:27 am (UTC)Christina
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 10:16 pm (UTC)My first boyfriend taught me how to have sex. He was very gentle with me, but I admit I never enjoyed it. It was lucky for me that he taught me about that, and I was able to marry and have children eventually (with a different guy, though!) I lived Alma's social problems in school, though I never spoke to another girl about boys or sex. I was more uptight than Alma was!
Great chapter!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 07:07 am (UTC)My favorite line! I was surprised she had the gumption to go to Janet for information -- an early sign of her pragmatism.
Like the way you draw out the Ennis part. Looking forward to him getting the shocking news.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:46 pm (UTC)I hope the slow build is shedding some light into Alma's past.
Janet- LOL! There's at least one Janet is every woman's life, isn't there?!
Thanks so much for reading.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 09:32 am (UTC)Warnings: Major character death (not Ennis or Jack), child abuse, religious persecution, homophobia, under-aged non-consensual kissing and groping, indecent exposure, attempted rape, unreliable narrator.
I'm looking forward to all of it.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 04:47 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for reading!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 03:47 am (UTC)Thanks so much for voicing your observations. This was proabably a tough chapter to read, but there's so much more to come. I hope I do her justice by fleshing her out some, instead of making this into a big mess!