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

his shoulders, hands upturned as if to say, “Oh bother! You got me!” The palm of the right upturned hand suddenly jerked forward and hit Phelps in the nose. Phelps reeled backward in a spray of blood, falling and hitting his head on a barstool. He was out cold. Hoyt must have seen the elephantine Phelps as literally the biggest threat and wanted to remove him from the equation. McGee and Junk moved quickly, taking Hoyt by the arms and collar and walking him outside and into a back alley. Hoyt’s party, now having turned on him, followed along with a hunger for vengeance in their eyes.

What happened in the alley is less clear. All Junk recalled was that Hoyt actually fought back despite the odds, knocking down two people before he himself took a punch. The police arrived at that point and drove everyone down to the precinct except Phelps and the two others Hoyt had beaten down. They had to wait for an ambulance

As if they had wanted some entertainment, the police at the precinct put Junk and Hoyt in holding cells across from one another. Junk simply stared at Hoyt for hours and Hoyt stared at the floor. The latter must have been in shock over his fate. The inside of a jail was alien to him. Certainly, he had seen businessmen arrested before - the bread business was quite cut-throat and illegal dealings occurred every so often – but Hoyt was not like that, nor was he a lowlife like the man in the cell across from him. He prided himself on being the opposite of these types. He wanted to be good with God’s Law and good with Man’s law, not festering in a jail cell redolent of urine and teeming with future denizens of Hell’s fire.

Junk on the other hand had seen the inside of a jail before, once for gambling and another time for counterfeiting, a charge he contested until the end. “I don’t deal in bunko,” he swore to the papers on more than one occasion. Per his mother’s wishes, Junk tried to stay legitimate. He had moved further and further away from floating craps games and was more involved in legal dealings like land and retail. But Junk knew that the nature of his circumstance - the streets he grew up on, his earlier careers choices - required occasional violations of his mother’s code.

The silence in the jail lasted for hours. Finally, one of Junk’s ex-wives came and posted bail for him and his familiars. Hoyt would have to wait until his wife Wizzy could wire money to the Boston police from New York City. According to a Boston American interview with Junk, Hoyt finally came alive in the last few moments before Junk was released.

Junk recalled: “He started yelling at me, calling me names that would make a hooker blush. My response was to bad-mouth his hobby of mountain climbing. I think I called it “the business of goats.” How was I to know at the time that those were the exact words his dad used to say to dissuade his kid from climbing? All I know is that the words seemed to set off an explosion in his head. He started trying to grab at me through the bars. He was screaming for my neck. ‘Give me his neck! Officers, give me just a moment with his neck!’ There was spittle on his lip. He was temporarily nuts. I continued anyway, saying if ants could climb then what’s the big deal? His so-called accomplishments were not worthy of praise.”

Hoyt regained his composure enough to insult Junk, saying if Junk tried to traverse New Hampshire’s Presidential range in winter, his remains would be food for bears come spring.

The gambler in Junk awoke. As he was walking out, he turned to Hoyt and bet him one hundred thousand dollars he could traverse the Presidentials, and he invited Hoyt to join him on the trip. He added, “And spare me any hot air from Proverbs about the evils of gambling. Are you in or not?”

Hoyt must have been temporarily detached from his good senses, and in some sort of rage fugue, as he accepted the bet.

Chapter Two: The Presidentials

Hoyt had contacted Junk by mail only three days after the Beacon Hill incident, specifying a long weekend for a climb in the White Mountains. The date was only two months off. Hoyt’s need for revenge must have been like thirst for water: immediate satiety was a matter of life or death.

The press had a heyday. In a battle over honor, two handsome, wealthy society men had landed in jail. Now, they were settling the score through the new, manly endeavor of mountaineering.

Aaron Junk had no idea what “the Presidentials” were, nor did he know a thing about hiking mountains. Querying friends, acquaintances, and business associates reaped nothing. No one knew about the relatively nascent field of recreational climbing. He checked with connections in Europe. It turned out an Austrian woman he had courted for several months came from a family of climbers. Junk traveled to Vienna and consulted with her father, an elderly gentlemen who had climbed in the Alps for decades. The man suffered from dementia and so it was difficult for Junk to separate sound advice from gibberish. Clearly, a coat made of women’s hair was not preferable to gabardine in combating the elements, but the man said other things that were less easy to dismiss. Would a climb in the Presidentials really require crampons – spikes attached to one’s shoes for ice climbing? Would it really get down to thirty degrees below zero at night?

Upon returning to the States, Junk also traveled up to New Hampshire to see what lay ahead. He spoke to people in bars and restaurants. He spoke to the innkeeper where he stayed. A bleak picture was painted by the local commoners: Although the traverse was relatively simple