Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain by Jonathan Bloom (bookreader TXT) 📗

sirens at the ready. Bonds offered up as a benefaction to the gods of war. A whole generation of young men noticeably absent from the streets and parks and churches. So was the state of things as the Year of Our Lord 1942 came into being. Every new day could bring the End. The city of Boston was no different than the rest of the world. It was well known German submarines lurked only miles away in the Atlantic and possibly even in the harbour. Every heart, mind, and tongue was busy conjuring images of ruin.

But for Junk, the End was a mere formality. His actions in this world were already meaningless. He wandered the land like a wraith. While most around him feared the curtain coming down for the last time, Junk was already backstage removing his makeup.

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Joy of the End

“The hills are a reclining female figure from whose breasts flowed life-giving forces, and to them the Lakota went as a child to its mother's arms."

- Luther Standing Bear

VJ-Day found most Americans ecstatic to the point of kissing nurses. Champagne was uncorked not just to mark victory over the Forces of Evil, but also to celebrate the birth of the world’s newest empire. The United States was a young, strong native who had just proved himself to the rest of the tribe by slaying the monster in the jungle. He had not just killed the beast; he had flensed it and raped it, in that order. No one dared challenge him, not even his father. The future looked splendid for the American people.

But not all American people were well. Aaron Junk was miserable, and that feeling continued well after the war. Fourteen years after Fumu and one decade after the end of World War Two, Junk’s spirit was still dead. The problem is that a man’s spirit can only feign death for so long before his body follows suit. And so it was with Aaron Junk. In 1953, after repeated complaints of utter exhaustion and multiple visits to the doctor’s office, he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia. There was no time to waste. Using every ounce of leverage at his disposal, McGee got Junk in to see Dr. Sydney Farber at Harvard. Dr. Farber did not mince words; aggressive radiation treatment must begin within days and even then, the chances of survival past a few months were slim. Although Junk was ready to give up, McGee demanded his oldest friend fight to the end. “The odds aren’t in my favor” Junk said to McGee. “With a hand like this, I think it best I just quietly fold.”

Only one day after Junk received the grim news, a long distance call came in from Kathmandu. McGee answered the phone. It was Chhiri Tendi. “McGee!” he bellowed into the phone. “The fattest, ugliest woman I ever met! I’m moving to the United States! What are your thoughts on those apples?” It had been a dream of Chhiri Tendi’s since he was a young man. Porting paper and guiding mountaineering expeditions had become tiresome and now that his hair was graying and his body slowing down, he wished to take his savings (much of it coming from the “allowance” of Fumu’s lava tubes) and try his luck in the Land of Opportunity. But alas, Chhiri Tendi’s excitement was quickly extinguished when McGee told him the news about Junk. Chhiri Tendi ended the call abruptly, saying he would make his way stateside sooner than planned.

The chain of rapid events continued, for not twenty-four hours after hearing from Chhiri Tendi, another call came in from Asia, this time from Darjeeling. McGee handed the phone to his ailing friend, suggesting he may want to take this one personally. McGee recalls, “He had trouble handling the phone and his ‘hello’ was pretty much a whisper.”

It was River Leaf.

Junk rallied. His cheeks filled with color. The old glimmer of a warm-hearted rogue appeared in his eyes. He sat upright in his chair and his voice returned to its meaty bass register. He unloaded a staccato succession of questions as if his mouth was a Gatling gun. Where was she? What was she doing with her life? Why had she stayed in India? But most importantly, could she please visit him? He wished to say goodbye to her face to face. As one might expect of this stoic Sioux, her responses were short and to the point. Indeed, she was disappointed with Junk’s decision not to rescue his friend high up on Fumu years earlier, but McGee had convinced her the decision made sense to all but her and was therefore not completely cowardly. She continued, “But don’t be so arrogant, Aaron, as to think I would stay in Asia just because of you and my anger toward you. No. I stayed because I wanted to stay, because I did not want to return to the country that was slowly destroying my people. I wanted to start over. And I had spent my entire life doing what had been required of me by others. Wherever the current led, I went without complaint. I was done with that. Now I am the current.”

As for Junk’s plea for her to visit, River Leaf made it clear that it was not going to happen. She would never set foot on American soil again. However, she proposed an alternative. “She demanded Junk come back to Asia,” McGee recalls. “’There are people here who can help you,’ she argued. They can’t save your life, but they can bring you peace in your last sliver of days.” Junk became flustered as the thought of travel around the world was, to say the least, rather distasteful at the moment. He apparently shot back into the phone that there were people who could help him in the United States as well and that he was to begin radiation treatment the following day. River Leaf laughed.