Whatever my time might have imagined about life in the 22nd Century, it wasn't the hi-tech marvel of science-fiction. Hi-tech takes high energy, and a family farm wasn't going to waste fuel. Modern farms operated on too small a scale to make hi-tech always profitable. We mucked out the milk-stalls and built the manure piles with shovels and wheelbarrows, much as my grandfather would have done it if he had been a farmer.
The same with the road work. I learned that modern roads were built to last a lot longer, but they still wore out. And however hi-tech they built them, they repaired them with tar and rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows and muscle. I got too tired to dance all night with Edith even if she had been around. For the Boyntons, it was a triply busy season, because the state square dance contest was coming up in Mt. Vernon, and they spent every spare minute perfecting their routines. It was the square dancing I remembered--imagined by the dance director of an old MGM musical. Like everything else in this age of equality, they tended to take every minor skill and work it to death. Like baton twirling in my day--and this day too, as a matter of fact.
It seemed like every weekend there was some big festival in some Ohio town: dance and songfests, baton twirling, and athletic contests from archery to horseshoe pitching, flower arranging, hot-air balloon races. I wasn't that big on square dancing, but from what I'd seen of the Boyntons, I had to make a Sunday afternoon date of it with Edith. She was too busy to dance this year, but never too busy to cheer her family on.
The dance competitions were held on temporary stages on the town square, in front of the court house, and at other strategic sites. Edith and I had a rare holiday together, and we strolled the crowded streets, grabbing lunch piecemeal at the booths that lined both sides.
"We are obligated to stop at your Aunt Hannah's booth for raspberry custard pie," I told Edith. "I think she's taken a shine to me. Your aunts expect to take in half a year's farm income from their cheeses, jams, syrups, pickles, whatever."
"Not my uncles?" Edith teased.
"Your men folk are into fresh meats and road tar, I think. This isn't the 20th Century, when men had to prove their sensitivity by baking pies."
The art of square dancing attracted bigger crowds than I would have guessed, but as I watched the crowds milling the streets, I noticed that most of them didn't seem much interested in the dancing. I was familiar enough with jewelry, painting, and weaving booths at local street fairs, but the variety here was bewildering. There were bookstalls of small specialized publishers, custom bicycles, all sorts of clothing, leather goods, cosmetics, toys, computer software, the variety was mind-boggling.
"Look at that," I said. "In my day if I saw people selling furniture out of the back of a truck, I'd think it was stolen."
She looked puzzled. To her it was perfectly normal. People used their savings from salaried work to start their own businesses. And since overhead is a major expense to a small shop they used these festivals to show and sell their wares. It was a revival of the medieval fair.
"Does he make a good living at it?"I wondered.
"Go ask him," she said, so I did.
We looked at his furniture, which was hardwood cabinet work made to pass down to your great grandchildren. The proprietor was a sturdy man of about forty who looked as if he did everything, starting with felling the trees. After the inevitable introductions, because what fool was going to be asking the simple questions I asked, he got candid.
"The thing is I don't have to worry about making a living at it," he told me. "If things get slow, I just get a job to tide me over. That's what I did when I was starting. Now people come to me because my shop has a reputation."
"Where do you get your wood?" I asked.
"I go around to farm woodlots and buy one tree at a time, of whatever kind I'm looking for."
"Is yours a family business?" I asked.
"It's getting that way," he said. "I've taken on three nephews as apprentices. They may not stay with it. They may just want to learn to be good with their hands. But the thing about family is that even if they don't, they'll help me out in a pinch. Meanwhile, I've got a pretty good sized shop of apprentices from all over."
"But will they stay with you once they know their trade?"
"It won't matter," he said. "A furniture shop isn't something you expect to last forever. That's why I sell out of a truck. I keep the overhead low."
We stopped at a bookstall that specialized in fine illustrated volumes of poetry and children's stories. Next to it was a stall devoted to the works of just three local novelists.
"You mean people publish their own books nowadays?" I asked the author-proprietor.
"Sure," she said. "All you need is the right kind of computer and copier, depending on how nice you want it to look. Then you take it to a binder to finish it off. The advantage of doing it yourself is that you don't have to make any more copies at a time than you think you can sell."
"How do you find your audience?"
"Through literary clubs. Then there are programs on television and radio that report what clubs are recommending. We mostly sell at fairs like this and in local bookstores. Commercial publishers hardly ever publish new books. They buy the most talked-about local stuff to bring to a national audience."
"How about non-fiction?"
"There are foundations and the University Presses. I think Americans publish more books per capita than any other people in history, but print fewer volumes per capita than at any time since colonial times."
"How do you authors make any money then?"
She laughed. "I'm not sure we do. But there are prizes and lecture fees if you are well-known. And there's a readers' fee at the public library."
We had made our way up to the stand where the Boyntons were performing their free-style, and we watched the boys throwing the girls around like some wild cross between the barn-raising scene in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and what I remembered of cheerleading contests on cable TV.
"You know," I said to Edith. "All this family furniture-making, family cheese-making, family square dancing brings home to me the fact that I don't have a family. Oh, all those relatives out West belong to me, I guess, but that's still kind of abstract."
"You're still young," Edith said.
"I know, 130, going on twenty-two. But it's no fun to sow wild oats if you don't have domestic oats somewhere you can neglect for a while."
"What are you getting at?" she asked, as if she didn't know.
"What I'm getting at is that a cubicle over a garage is no home. Even Ahmed does better than that, as far away from it as he is. I don't mind the work. I'm willing to go on mending roads and shoveling manure if I'm just putting it toward a real home."
"Well, you're always free to do whatever you please."
"No I'm not, and you know it. Because I'm your slave--yes, I am," I went on when she started to protest. "You said that first day that I was like a duckling that thought the first thing it saw moving when it woke up was its mama. But I prefer the story of Sleeping Beauty. I was waiting all that time to be unfrozen by your kiss."
"Now you're being silly," she said, but she couldn't put her heart into it.
"Tell me I am," I said and kissed her right there, much to the amusement of the passers-by.
"But you're not ready to raise a family," she said.
"I'm not talking about raising a family. I'm talking about having a girl who is willing to say she'll be true to me, and help the two of us plan for what they want--not tomorrow, necessarily. If this was 1993, we'd talk about my graduating from college, and maybe a year of graduate school."
"It seems to me you talked to a girl once," she said cruelly.
"That was another life, and I was doing the noble thing."
"But you are so much a part of that other life," she said seriously, "and you're not like the boys I'm used to. I don't know how to--"
"How to read me? That's why I need a good teacher. It can't be much different from if I were a Japanese or an Arab."
"I wouldn't marry you if you were an Arab."
I stopped and looked at her, and she recognized her half-admission and laughed. "Seriously now, what do you plan to do beyond road work?"
"You don't think I could support you on road work?"
That's not the point. The point is, people don't."
"Well, I know it should be something I'm not too wrapped up in, because people who are too wrapped up in their careers don't get married. I like the outdoors, but I suppose farms are hard to come by, now that we seem to have reinvented both the family and the family farm."
"Oh, nothing's permanent in this world. That's one of our first maxims. But how do you know I want the outdoor life?"
"You want what I want, to found a dynasty."
"You already have a dynasty, you dope. Or what was all that business in St. Louis?"
"No, I mean a passel of kids I get to watch grow up. And I know what you're going to say, and I'm ready to take the course in parenthood. I don't expect that to happen right now. I'm willing to wait for that."
"Then what is it you're not willing to wait for now?" She said almost in exasperation..
"For you to belong to me. That's the trouble with this Brave New World, though maybe you don't see it. Everybody's so damn independent that nobody needs anybody else. That's why family's so important to you. But it's really just as arbitrary and artificial when you come down to it as anything in my old world. I'm not knocking it, but I don't have a family to belong to--certainly not that accident of genes I met in St Louis, nice as they are. I want somebody to say, `Yes, I choose you to belong to.'"
"Oh, Jack, you're so--"
"Old fashioned." I sang a snatch, "'I'm old- fashioned, I love the moonlight--' It doesn't mean barbaric, as the popular image is of my era."
"Now I never thought that!" Edith protested.
"What exactly are we standing here in the middle of the street arguing?" I demanded. "Do you love me or not?"
"Tell him you love him!" someone shouted, we discovered that we were the object of considerable curiosity on the street.
"Wait a minute!" I shouted and looked around for a booth that suited the purpose, and spying one just down the street, I grabbed Edith by the arm and hauled her toward it, our impromptu audience following.
It was a flower booth. "How much for these?" I shouted. "And these? And these?" Soon I had her arms heaped high with roses--red roses, white roses, pink roses, yellow roses.
"What am I supposed to do with these?" she said, laughing.
"I'll show you." And we skipped down the street handing out roses to every passer-by in sight.
When we had reduced the burden to a manageable bundle, I said seriously, "Come out to Washington with me. I need you out there."
"Why do you need me out there?"
"Because I have a hunch I'm going to learn something that's going to make me very unhappy, and I want somebody I love to cry over it with. Or I may not learn anything and be very unhappy and want somebody I love to cry over that with."
"What's wrong with Archie?" she asked.
"I'm not in love with him, silly! Come on. You have vacation time coming, and you told me yourself you've never seen the Northwest."
"Give me one good reason why I should--besides what you need."
"Because you're just as curious about this whole thing as I am."
I had her there.
CHAPTER
38
"I wonder if it's a good idea for you to be duplicating the party makeup you came out here with before," Edith said as we watched Mt. Rainier taking form over the forest-clad mountains in front of us.
"I think it's all right," I told her. "Archie doesn't look anything like Eddie, and you're not his sister. Besides you're not pregnant. Not that Donetta was showing, but she was having trouble with morning sickness. I remember that much."
"What else to you remember?" Archie asked. He was at the wheel of the camper we had rented in Tacoma. We'd tried to rent a cabin, but this far along in the season there was none to be had. But we managed to rent a camper through a web bulletin board. Edith and Archie had managed to swap vacation time. It cost us, but I never thought of all that media money as anything more than found money. Easy come, easy go--which scandalized all my tight-fisted friends. They were not ungenerous of time, but they ll knew the value of a buck.
"It is coming back," I replied to Archie's query. "I think we stayed at Paradise, and you know I think if I saw the cabin I could find the trail we took. But I don't suppose even if the cabin survived, the local landscape would be recognizable after 120 years. Trees make a big part of landscape, and they keep growing up and dying."
"How come the three of you came on your honeymoon?" Archie asked.
"Are you asking me what I know now or what they made me think then? Eddie had already rented the cabin and we'd made the plans. After we got married, he offered to bow out, but it was Donetta who wanted him along. Being pregnant seemed to make a big change in her. She was a lot more nervous and wanted family around her. After we started west, she wouldn't go to bed with me. She said she didn't want any more sex till after the baby. She seemed to depend on Eddie a lot more than she did before we were married. She was a pretty fair climber, but she didn't want to climb or even hike much, though it seemed awfully early in the pregnancy to be so careful. I just decided that morning sickness was affecting her mood.Yes, I did know about morning sickness, though I never saw Donetta actually sick. Looking back I think she was just getting squeamish about what was going to happen. and was putting emotional distance between herself and me."
But I was ready for a change of subject. I didn't want to remember Donetta, unless it turned out that she was more involved than I thought she was, and I needed to remember for practical reasons. I changed the subject to the scenery and the weather.
We were met at the campground office by Ranger Steve Asbury, who had supervised the removal of my body from the ice.
"Hi," he said. "I'd recognize you anywhere, even if I hadn't seen you on TV regularly. Boy, I tell you I never thought then that someday I'd be shaking your hand. What can I do for you?"
"I'm trying to remember that last day," I told him. "We thought we'd hike up there tomorrow and see what memories it conjured up. Then when we've done all we can up there, I hope you can show me where I was found."
"Sure," he said. "I brought some maps. You said on the phone you might remember the trial once you got up there." He spread out a large survey map of the park on the counter. "Here's where you were found. I'm not an expert on glacier movement, but my friend who is says that 120 years ago that spot was probably somewhere up here." He pointed a finger. "So you were probably somewhere about here when you fell. Somewhere along that ridge."
"Good," I said. "Any other questions you knew I was going to ask and got answers for in advance?"
"Well, I figured you'd want to know where you cabin was. According to the old maps, there were cabins here, but they're long gone."
"Thanks. That's about it." I looked at the map more generally and remarked that the park seemed to be a different shape from what I remembered from the map I had. Which of course wasn't all that long ago to me.
"I think all the parks are larger," Steve said. "We've done a lot of assigning public lands to the parks and also purchasing private holdings."
"Yeah," Archie said, "I think it's because so much of our meat comes from family farms closer to home. You know from living at the Boyntons that our economy encourages smaller scale farming, so we use the land around cities more efficiently than we used to, so the Western ranches have backed down a lot from the wilderness areas."
"And we don't use as much wood, either," Edith said, "since we build in concrete; and the weekend seminar pointed out that we use only about a third as much paper per person as they did in your day."
"We were worried about overuse of the parks," I said, "and it seems to me people have more leisure. Is overuse still a problem?"
"Well, they had to make a lot more places available for you rockhounds," Steve said. "But mainly you can't drive into a national park at all except designated camper parks like the one you're going to. If you've got a tent, you take it in by rail. Most of the parks are served by electric railways. Most people come to places like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon just to look, and looking doesn't cause much pollution. For hiking and wilderness camping, it was just a matter of making more wilderness."
"Do people still get mauled by bears?"
"Oh, sure, but they just have to learn that if you go out and live among the bears, you have to live on their terms."
From what I'd watched and read getting ready for our trip, in this egalitarian age, Western ranchers, sheepmen, and lumbermen had learned they had to share the open spaces with people who wanted them for other uses. Even ranchers were used to being other people at other times. Maximum flexibility in choosing and changing careers had led to more efficient land use, usually in small scale family enterprises like the Boyntons', which had reversed the popular image of my time and squeezed out most big commercial enterprises. That meant the 300 million Americans were well fed and provisioned on a lot less acreage. For instance, vast areas of the plains had been returned to the buffalo, and incidentally much of the meat on the table was buffalo. Deer, elk, moose and other "wild" game were also harvested. Many western ranches were, in fact, breeding stations for semi-wild game. Our diminished wood and paper needs were supplied by tree-farms, while nearly every general farm maintained a wood-lot.
"You're not going to make us climb that mountain?" Archie said once we had said so long to Steve and claimed our parking space.
"Come on, you can walk up with me as far as the tree line," I said. I'm not asking you to do any serious climbing. I'm not expecting to have to do any myself. I just think once I get up there among the rocks I'll trigger a memory. Here--" I spread the survey map out on the table. "If the cabins were here, and this is the spot I probably fell into the glacier from, we must have gone up this ridge." I traced it with my finger. "It's a simple walk up to here, and by then maybe I'll remember something."
We started out at the crack of dawn the next morning, lunch in our back-packs. Archie was in charge of the video camera, since he was sure there was one more good documentary in our excursion into the past. It wasn't supposed to rain, but it was one of those days when clouds would be clinging to the peak and we could expect to be in an out of them. It was a day, in fact, just like the one on which I made the fatal climb.
"How do you remember that?" Edith asked.
"You forget it was the only time I was ever here," I told her. "I have a perfectly clear image of the place--just as if I was here last fall. I just hope I can put some action into the scenery."
We were tramping along on a well-defined trail among the trees, and it wasn't wide enough for the three of us to walk abreast, Archie was a few yards ahead. A thick mist had settled in around us, and the indistinct hulk of his back moving ahead of us suddenly created a strong image in my mind of my trudging along behind Eddie.
"Drop behind me, Edie," I said. "Just let me concentrate on that form up ahead."
I
t was a strange feeling, like reliving the earlier experience. Yes, I had come up this way with Eddie, sometimes with him in the lead, sometimes me leading. If it wasn't the same trail, it might as well have been, upward movement though increasingly stunted trees.
"Are we bothering your concentration?" Archie asked as we stopped to rest in the rocky meadow we had come out into just beyond the trees. At that point we were in a clear patch, with clouds below us and above.
"It's not that kind of a memory," I told him. I just think that if I see any unusual rock formation or something like that, I'll remember what I did there. I remember Eddie was unusually talkative coming up through here, like somebody going to a party he'd been looking forward to. I suppose I was too, though Donetta's moodiness had been weighing on me. I think we went up there."
I pointed up toward the northeast. "It gets more like climbing stairs instead of just walking uphill, but nothing serious, till you come out on a view of the glacier."
So we fortified ourselves with a couple of candy bars and moved on.
"You're not getting too tired, are you?" I asked.
"Oh, no," they protested but I knew that they must be feeling the climb and the altitude. "The secret is to make one goal at a time," I told them. "Like right now our goal should be that crest up there where we can get a good view of the glacier" They smiled wanly and pressed on. By now we weren't talking much, but concentrating on the climb. We reached the crest of the ridge, but it was enshrouded in fog, and we couldn't see anything.
"I don't think we'd better go on until the fog lifts," I said. "It's too hard to tell which is the path in this fog."
"You mean we might fall?" Archie asked.
"No," I said, "but we might take a route that doesn't go anywhere and then have to turn back. Eddie and I were climbers and could expect to climb out of a situation, but you aren't. In fact, I think that's what we did."
So we sat there and ate our lunch, huddled in a rocky cleft against the chill of the mist and waited for it to blow away. Suddenly the cloud seemed to sink into the rocks below, and before us opened the whole panorama of the peak and the glacier falling away below us. And with the falling away of the cloud, my mental mist seemed to fall away, and I remembered every-thing. Everything.
CHAPTER 39
"Eddie, what the hell are you doing?" I yelled, more in annoyance than in fear. I was dangling over something like a 200 foot drop. We had taken the lower route along the base of the ridge, hoping to get some real climbing in, and we had found it, maybe more than we had bargained for. We had gotten to a point whether it was either go back or go over. and we had opted for over. It was, after all, something less challenging than some chimneys we had scaled in the East. It was steep, but there were plenty of hand and foot-holds, and only the last few yards offered any real challenge, since the lip of the cliff overhung the face. Now he was supposed to be bracing the line while I hauled myself over, but somehow he let it slip, and I was swinging out in space. He peered over the edge of the rock, his face ghostly in the eddying mist. "What I'm doing, pal, is unfastening the line," he said placidly.
"Are you crazy? It's a 200-foot drop!"
"About right. After the first bump you won't feel a thing." He seemed to be tugging at a kink in the line that passed through his safety harness.
"What's got into you? this is no time for joking!"
"Oh, it's no joke. I'm letting you drop. It's nothing personal. I need a new identity. Yours." He seemed to be struggling with the kink, which my weight was jamming into the buckle.
"Nothing personal! It's pretty damn personal! Now quit joking around!"
"It's no joke," he said. "I've killed three guys a lot messier than it's going to be for you. I'm not about to be squeamish about you."
"But what for?"
"For more money than you ever dreamed of. I'm sorry it had to be you instead of one of the other guys in the club, but you can feel noble about saving their skins."
"But you can't hope to get away with it! People know we're up here!"
"Who knows?"
"Donetta. My wife!"
"You silly fool, she's my wife, not your's. She helped me plan this whole thing. But don't worry, we'll raise your kid like it was our own. If it even is your kid, which I doubt."
He was distracted by the stuck line. Where I was dangling was pretty openly exposed to anybody with binoculars, and he was trying to get the business over before the cloud lifted. Desperately I was trying to get myself swinging so I could swing my piton into a crack in the rock. It might have been Eddie's weight, or the force of my swing, but suddenly the lip of rock crumbled away and boulders were tumbling around me into the mist.
Then I'm not sure what happened, but somehow the force of Eddie's lunge backward, or the rocks tumbling down the other side pulled me over what was left of the crest, and we were skittering down a snowy slope. Eddie had gotten the rope free, but we were tumbling together, and I made a grab for him while he was desperately trying to anchor himself with his piton. Suddenly we stopped sliding, and I guess his piton held, right at the lip of the other edge. The sun had broken through, and I found myself dangling over the gleaming white slope of the glacier.
"Let go!" he screamed. "I can't hold us both!" I was too out of breath to say anything. I just held on with both hands to what I suddenly realized was Eddie's money belt. When we started out, I had teased him about wearing it, but he said he kept all those little things that were always coming in handy in the little pockets, like needle and thread, a compass, a cigarette lighter.
"Let go!" he tried to kick me loose but was bracing himself with the wrong foot, and he couldn't reach me with his free hand. I was dangling over a void, so I didn't have any choice in the matter. It was hold on with what hold I had or fall. Curiously I remember thinking that for someone who was bent on killing me, Eddie at the moment was a lot more hysterical than I was.
"Let go," he kept screaming. "You'll get us both killed!" A sudden shift of position told me his ax-hold wasn't holding very well. I don't know if the money belt simply came undone or in his desperation he unfastened it, but suddenly I wasn't holding onto Eddie anymore, but I was still clutching his belt. I don't know how long a fall it was, but I hit the snow at a fairly steep angle and went on sliding downhill. I remember thinking, "Well, I'm not dead yet," and then I was falling again into darkness, and that was the last I remembered.
CHAPTER 40
"So Eddie wasn't searching for you all those years; he was searching for the money belt."
"I makes sense," I said, "more sense than anything else, anyway. I remember teasing him about wearing it all the time, but I really didn't think anything much about it."
"I wonder why he didn't leave it with Donetta, if she was his wife and was in on the whole thing," Archie said.
"Apparently he didn't entirely trust her. Maybe he wasn't entirely confident she wouldn't run out on him."
"But wait a minute," Edith said. "There's something funny about this story. How much money can you wear in a money belt, even a large one?"
"Yeah, what was the largest denomination of cash in your day?" Archie asked.
"I think a hundred. I think after we went to a check and credit card economy, the government didn't print anything higher just because they wanted cash money to be bulky and hard to conceal."
"So what could he have on him? A hundred bills would be quite a stack and that would be only $10,000. How much was that in your day?"
"I suppose a modest year's income was about $40,000. Eddie must have been making several times that dealing drugs. So you're right, it doesn't seem logical that he would have gone to all that trouble for no more cash than he could carry around on his person."
"What else could it have been, a safe deposit key?"
"That wouldn't have taken a money belt, and besides, I think you had to let bank officers see what you were putting in your box."
"But what happened to the belt?" Edith asked. "Do you remember letting go of it?"
"No. I was hanging on to it like my fingers were welded in place. Eddie couldn't shake me off, though he was trying. Like I said, I don't know if he loosened it in desperation or it just came loose, but I was still clutching it for dear life as I fell. I don't remember from then on, but I bet it went into the crevasse with me."
"So why don't we go up to where they found you and take a look?" Archie suggested.
"My thoughts exactly."
We made our way back to the camper and drove over to the ranger station.
"Well, did you remember what happened?" Steve asked.
"I sure did," I'll tell you about it tomorrow, if you can take us up to the place where I was found.
"Sure thing," he said. "I thought it would be easiest by horseback. You do ride, don't you?"
Well, Archie wasn't about to tell him he'd never been on a horse, but Edith was a farm girl, and I had done a little riding at the Boyntons, so we figured we could manage. I took Steve aside later and advised him to get a hose suited to Archie's style. The horses, luckily, turned out to be experienced with city slickers, and we set off for the foot of the glacier. It was a glorious morning, clear and bright, and Steve pointed out the interesting biology and geology of the region.
"You're lucky you came down where you did," he said, since if some hikers hadn't spotted you in the ice cave you might never have been found until you'd been mostly eaten by the local fauna."
We came out of the trees at a marshy meadow below a kind of natural dike that Steve explained was a glacial moraine. From the top, we looked down on a gravelly plain that led up to the face of the glacier. "The ice recedes and advances in cycles," he told us. In a cold cycle, it can come all the way down to here, and in a warm cycle, it can recede another mile or more up the valley. The water percolates into the gravel here and emerges in that marsh we came up through and in springs on down the mountain. But given time and a bit more melting, this will become a mountain lake."
"How come the glacier ends in a fairly distinct wall instead of just melting away from the top?" I asked.
"Because the top is white and reflects away most of the heat of the sun, but here at the end, the gravel reflects heat up into the darker face of the glacier, and the stones also absorb heat which they radiate back up well into the night."
We traversed the face of the glacier which was riddled by several caves. "I think this is the one," he said.
"They change from year to year, so we may have to explore a couple before I'm sure."
We staked the horses and entered the cave. It was a magical place, all blue from the reflected light of the sky. It was surprisingly light even well inside.
"What causes the caves?" Edith asked.
"Apparently warm springs seeping through cracks in the bedrock. The caves wind pretty far up into glacier, and a cave can last several decades or more, though of course they are constantly forming at the top, sliding downhill, and melting at the bottom. This ice down here isn't deep enough any more to flow. It's simply being pushed forward by the force of the ice upstream."
"Yes, this is the cave," Steve said after looking around. "Notice that straight wall ahead? That's the crevasse you fell into. It probably broke open on some obstruction in the rocks it was passing over. Then after it filled up with fresh snow, pressure from upstream closed it up again pressed the fresh snow into smoother, harder ice than the surrounding pack. Then as the pack ice melted away it left that wall of glass-like ice. Here's where you were found."
Sure enough, a niche was still carved into the glass wall where they had cut me out.
"What position was I in?" I asked.
"Sort of splayed out," he said. I've got some pictures of the business if you want to see them."
"Nothing else was found?"
"No, but I don't think we particularly looked. What gear did you have?"
"It was a kind of belt with pockets in it," I said. I remember clutching it as I fell. It has to have landed near me."
"Of course it may have got squeezed away by the pressure of all that ice, but I'm no expert to tell you anything in particular. All I know is that it would probably be in that same wall of ice you were found in."
"Is it all right if we dig?"
"Ordinarily, we don't let you dig in the caves to preserve them for other visitors, but in your case I don't see why we can't make an exception. After all, nature is tearing it all down anyway and building new caves."
So we trained our flashlights on the wall and gave it a closer examination than it had gotten from the tourists. It was Edith who finally spotted something high up on the glass wall about twelve feet from the hole I had come out of. We got out the pick we had brought along and hacked away at it until we dug it out.
"Is that it? It's got to be it!" Luckily, Steve had come prepared for every eventuality including coffee. We got the water heating in a coffee pot on the Sterno stove and dropped in the frozen mass.
"What's all this about?" Steve wanted to know.
"Before I explain," I told him. "Can you tell me exactly how I was found?"
"Well," he said, "when the tourists came down and reported something embedded in the ice, I came up here and immediately telephoned the University at Seattle on the assumption that if it was something historical, they'd know how to take care of it. They took it from there. I didn't really have anything to do with it except some of the actual chopping--under their supervision."
"But your carefulness did save my life, so I guess I owe you one. But you've got to promise not to tell about what you see here."
"It's not something illegal, is it?"
"Not after 120 years."
We watched the ice melting round the undefinable whatever.
"I hope it's not something that shouldn't be gotten wet," Edith said.
"It's about 120 years too late for that," I told her. We watched the mass as it gradually unwound into the shape of an olive drab money belt.
"Is it ripped?" Archie asked.
"No, It looks like it was unfastened. I hope the bastard did unfasten it. I hope he let it go to save his life, whatever is in it."
We didn't have long to wait. As soon as the water was comfortably warm I fished out the belt and lay it out. It had eight snap-flapped pockets, and each seemed to be filled with something lumpy.
"Is old currency still good?" I asked.
"I think so," Archie said. "The design's been updated several times but never repudiated, as far as I know. But that doesn't look like currency."
I unsnapped the first pocket and fished out a roll of soggy black velvet tied with a string. I unrolled it, and it was a kind of lumpy packet, and when I poured it out, a dozen or so cut diamonds rolled out into my hand. Big ones. Real big ones.
"Wow!" was the general response. I unsnapped the second packet, unrolled it, and let a dozen or so red stones drop into my hand. I'll let a second "Wow!" stand for a variety of comment, some unrepeatable
The third pocket contained green stones. The fourth, blue stones. The fifth, diamonds again. The sixth, rubies. The seventh, emeralds. The eighth, some credit cards and a driver's license with a not very identifiable bearded picture on it and my name and address.
"How much is this worth?" I said. "In my day it would have been a fortune. Do people still collect stones?"
"Sure they do," Edith said. "That explains why he kept coming back to look for it. Jewels are about as negotiable as anything, I suppose."
"Yeah, and I suppose that's why they dealt in it. Emeralds come from Columbia, which was where the drugs were coming from. I suppose they were trading in jewels because they were easier to transport than cash."
"What's going on?" Steve asked.
"Well, if you've been following my story, you must know I was the victim of a murder plot. The Jeff Weimer you thought I was at first switched identities with me and was hoping finding my body with his identification on it would satisfy a search for him.
Only yesterday up there on the mountain, I remembered how his plan went awry. I went into the hole clutching this, and you'll note the identification on the driver's license: Jack Frost. I don't suppose there's anybody in the world who can dispute my claim to this property."
"Not me, anyway." he said.
"But I'm willing to be generous and offer a finder's fee."
"Oh, you don't have to do that," he said.
"Oh, well, then," I said and folded up the belt, and then before he went too far into shock, I said, "Just kidding."
CHAPTER
41
"Well, do you think you got your revenge on Jeff Weimer?" Rev. Moon was asking. We were all gathered at Zillah's apartment to view the rough cut of what I swore was to be the last Frozen Man documentary ever.
"Yes, I do," I said "Poor Jeff--Eddie--whatever his name was--unloosed that belt to save his life. And he spent the rest of his life searching for it. And I'm alive and I've got it. May he rest in peace."
"How do you want the documentary to handle the story?" Edith asked.
"Well, from the very first moment you documented the fact that I wasn't Jeff Weimer, it's been public knowledge that somebody switched identities on me, so I think the story ought to be told to its end. Jeff Weimer has lots of descendants, but they know their ancestor by other names. Did you tell the Hintons why you were asking about Eddie Hinton?"
"No, they just thought I was interested in a local legend."
"Well, keep the name of Hinton out of it. No use to embarrass them. The other Frosts will just have to take their chances. But I think there's a kind of natural statute of limitations on how far back we're embarrassed by rogues in our ancestry."
"What are you going to do with all that loot?" Zillah asked.
"Well, I've done something with part of it already," I said. Edith was sitting beside me, and I took her left hand in mine and fumbled in my pocket with my other until I came up with a little box which I flipped open.
"I saved this one stone and went out to a jeweler the first thing I got home," I said. "Edith, there's no use keeping me hanging fire. You know I'm yours forever. Say you'll be mine--now."
She was speechless, but her maidenly blush told it all, and her kiss planted firmly on my lips. It was the smallest diamond in the collection, but even so, only its history kept it from being ostentatiously vulgar. Everybody applauded wildly.
"Now you can't put me off, because I've decided to put part of it into a fund equal to what the average couple has saved up when they get married. You see, if you've got a good librarian to help you, you can find almost any statistics. I figure at 140 I've waited long enough."
"Talk about frozen sperm banks!" Doc Flemming said and everybody laughed.
"But that can't begin to put a dent in that haul," Jim Breckenridge pointed out.
"That's right," I went on. "And this isn't the kind of society where anyone would feel right not pulling his own weight. So I don't intend to keep a big bankroll to live in idle luxury. I'll earn my way. Part of the loot will go to the hospital to pay off my bill and to fund Doc's research in cryogenics. Part goes to see Archie here through med school so he doesn't have to waste any more time than he has to becoming a doctor. Not that he hasn't done pretty well for himself in the last year. If that embarrasses you, Arch, you can pay back into the fund later, and welcome.
"As for the rest, you know, it was my folks who suffered the most all those years, thinking I'd abandoned them. So I'd like to set up a memorial fund in their name. But you know in my day--this is my day now, isn't it?" I corrected. "In my parents' day, it would have been easy to find a cause to support and hard to choose among so many urgent causes. Today, I'm gratified to say it's hard finding something that really needs doing--no homeless to care about, no shelters for runaways.
"But there is one area where there's still a lot to be done, and that's getting the message out to the rest of the world. I've decided to set up a foundation to bring people here from all over the world to study how we do it, and take the messages back to their country. Not the children of the privileged who have a stake in not changing things, but the children of Ahmed and his cousins. Give them the chance and both the intellectual and physical resources to go back home and make a difference. If that ill-gotten treasure could make a difference there, maybe it would be doing some good in the world."
Everyone applauded my plan and had their own suggestions for implementing it.
"I'm appointing you all my board of directors," I told them. "And I want you all to think about policies and implementation for--oh--about five months. And I'm calling the first board meeting the last week in December in--Nassau. Do you think that's far enough away from mundane distractions?"
They figured it would do, and when I moved the foundation pay the tab, they said no. Zillah explained that the whole point of the foundation seemed to them to be that they all had the resources to treat themselves to Nassau at Christmas.
"So what are you going to do?" Jim asked.
"You mean for a profession?" I said. "I haven't really decided. It has to be about the outdoors, because I want my kids to grow up close to nature. But you know, it's nice to have so many choices. Now for the first time in my new life I can go back to the Boyntons', work hard, and not have anything more heavy than road tar to wrestle with."
We talked for a while and ate and sang songs, and then it was time to walk Edith home, through quiet streets that linked her time and mine.
"Do you think you can be happy married to a freak?" I asked.
"You're no freak!" she protested.
"Well, in the technical sense of the word."
"But I think you can teach our children--and keep reminding me, too-- of the real meaning of the blessings of our civilization."
The moon was just rising over the houses.
"You know it's hard to think that about the time I was born we put men on the moon, but all the time I remember, I don't remember any men on the moon, because we couldn't afford to put them up there. Maybe I should have saved out money for a trip there, but it's something I'd like to earn myself. Would you like to go?" I asked, squeezing Edith.
"I'll go anywhere--with you," she answered, squeezing me back.