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

his youth. His investments including recent wagers had not been panning out making this an inopportune time to be heading off to Nepal. He found himself selling off many of his business concerns in order to pay the pirates, the waiting Sherpa, and to pay off the losses of some recent gambling debts. Money be damned. He had to make this trip. He had to win this row, and he was willing to live off of the dole in order to make it happen.

Waiting on the beach with him was the team he had picked in a rush to accompany him to the top of the world. Each one of them was a desperate choice – another reason for Junk’s likely apprehension. Any sane person was involved in the war effort or some other noble project and would immediately reject any offer to essentially drop everything and commit suicide. There had been no way for Junk to sweet-coat his sales pitch to these individuals. “How would you like to leave the relative safety of the American mainland to enter a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life? Arrival at the mountain is highly unlikely, but if you do get there, success is not an option.” What else could he possibly say that would not be deception? Swindling men out of the contents of their strongboxes was one thing, but Junk was not the sort of fellow to intentionally swindle men out of their lives.

After asking every able-bodied person he knew, some odd individuals agreed. First there was Joseph Cole. Cole was a top-notch climber, having scaled multiple peaks in the Swiss Alps including the Matterhorn and the Dent Blanche. Once before having been to the Himalaya, Cole had not succeeded in an attempt on K2, but that expedition had reached higher than any other up to that point. Cole was of moderate height and weight with a pairing of bright blue eyes and ink-black hair one usually finds only in the Irish. Junk had never climbed with Cole, but had heard he was in a class all of his own. When not climbing, Cole was a physicist. Since the war in Europe began, he had been doing classified work for the United States Government at Michigan State University. Recently unclassified documents from the Physics department suggest that Cole’s role in the project had been to ascertain at what temperature the atmosphere catches fire. His written notes from that time suggest the job was too unsettling for him; they begin to digress toward irrelevant but less troubling topics such the best recipe for shepherd’s pie, a half-written screenplay about a lovelorn lighthouse keeper, and so forth, until notes on actual physics end entirely. He was soon kicked out of the research project for being “unstable.” Not one week after, Cole heard from Junk - only four days before the rendezvous at Chappaquiddick. Cole had nothing else to do and had no family, so the assault on Fumu made perfect sense. He grabbed his equipment and hopped on a plane for Boston right away.

Next was Frederick Morrow, a professor of Psychology at Harvard, focusing on memory. He was also an occasional gambling and climbing friend of Junk’s. Morrow rarely climbed anything bigger than what could be found in the northeastern United States, although he had once successfully climbed the Maroon Bells in Colorado. The experience had been harrowing for him. He had been trapped at the top overnight by foul weather and required rescue. However, based on the regularity and technical precision of his climbs locally, his talents were unquestionable.

Also on the journey was a woman. No female had ever climbed in the Himalaya and Junk had no interest in changing that. He would never have chosen a woman for such a harrowing and manly adventure under normal circumstances, but his options were limited. Her presence on the expedition was truly one of the stranger aspects of Hoyt and Junk’s story.

According to the recollection of some of Junk’s old South Boston friends, approximately one week before leaving on the expedition (his friends thought he was “going to New Hampshire for a long repose”), Junk had gotten an unexpected knock on his door. It was an old gambling chum by the name of Nick Fontana. Fontana entered without being invited, looked out the door and windows apprehensively, and drew the blinds without asking. He was accompanied by a small woman dressed in a man’s trench coat and wearing a long blond wig covering most of her face. He guided her everywhere as if she had no sense of direction or balance. Fontana started telling Junk a long tale of gambling debts and angry mafia. They had already twice beaten up Fontana, and he had the black eye and broken thumb to prove it. “They said they’re gonna kill her, Aaron” Fontana apparently yelled. “Because I’m delinquent on five measly large they’re gonna kill Dollface!” Fontana first asked for money to pay off the thugs. Junk refused because of his own financial straits. Fontana apparently thought this may happen because he had asked for money so often before. So he turned to his true intended request. “Hide her, Junk.” Fontana himself was going to Juarez, Mexico to hide, but he suspected the mob would catch up sooner or later. He wanted this woman safe. “She’s the love of my life. Hide her for me, Junk. You’ll be doing something that guarantees you a place in Heaven at the same table with the Big Guy.”

Fontana was asking too much. Junk explained he could not; he was going out of town for a long time and he simply could not watch this woman, whoever she was. As if not hearing him, perhaps seeing uncertainty in his eyes, Fontana hugged Junk, patted him on the shoulders, and walked out, leaving the woman behind. On his way out, he said “She speaks no English, so you’ll have to talk slowly.” With the exception of a prostitute