I TOLD THEM I’d be the one to bring her down. Capiche? Fine, they said. Sure. You do that. But what’s the hurry now? Everything’s frozen solid up there. Capiche? It might as well be Ice Station Zebra up there and there’s no by God helicopter. I said that doesn’t matter and they said just leave her for a while, until a thaw. It’s not like she’d know the difference. It’s not like she’s going anywhere. I said that’s not the point. I said that it lacks dignity.
They watched me sort what I’d need: warm clothes, boots, ski goggles – a couple cargo cords, for sure. Handy little devils, cargo cords. The goggles, too -- it’s all whiteout up there. An ice planet above the tree line. Everything crystallized, a world encased in ice.
I saw how the cargo cords figured in right away. It was an awful thing lacking dignity, how I’d use those cords, but practical. It was a time for practical as well as dignity. Anything else I’d need would already be up there – a couple blankets, maybe some sort of plastic tarp. The whole thing played out in my head as I slipped into my boots and laced them. I remembered that she always kept a sled up there. I’d need that, too. I wouldn’t be able to carry too much going up.
I’d have a big load coming back down.
There was no horizon up there. Like entering a void. A white, frozen void with no start and no end. Only void. I disappeared into it. I became part of it. There was no behind me to see. No ahead of me. Just white void. They said take a dog or two. For company, if nothing else. But I wouldn’t put a dog through it. Dogs wouldn’t help. Too much snow and ice for them. They’d be liabilities and fold up. They’d suffer.
And I preferred to do it alone. I wanted to be responsible only for myself. And her, of course. She was waiting, her patience now unlimited. But she had plenty of patience in life, too. I remembered that well. She was patient with me. Would she have thought I’d become a good man? Would I now just dismiss her as old?
I held out fading hope at first, like the ebb of a fire’s last cooling ember. But it had been days. There was no call from her. No answer to our calls up to her. There was no power up there after the storm. And she was old. So, I went up. I owed that much to her from when I’d been young — younger. She was much older than me, but our souls were the same age and not measured in years. We were gold and silver, wet and tangled in a web of pleasure and contentment. But not kidding each other it would last. Or even should.
Regrets? No. We had what we had when we had it. I had my own family, the kids grown up. She had her solitude. Her mountain. She was a faded memory. Surely, I became that to her, too. A summer fling. An education. Fleeting passion.
How long had it been? It must be thirty years. I’m now 48. I think she is — was - 75. She won’t get any older. Would she even recognize me now? I think she would – if she could. But I don’t know. Wishful thinking, I supposed. Soon, I’ll be a bit long in the tooth to hike up into treacherous hills during an ice storm to perform an act of mercy. That’s what I saw it as. Or maybe more precisely, an homage to a memory, to a time when – when what? I just didn’t know for sure.
We had our brief time together. She was the one who taught me the saying, “The past has nothing new to say.” That was my guide all these years. I reached the first plateau and rested. I tried to picture her up there, a human icicle. That was callous. Rude. Nobody should have called her that. I shook that image away and reminded myself it was a job to do. Not just a job, but a task to perform and do right. With dignity.
How could I do it? By reminding myself I’m not that 18-year-old boy anymore. And she was not the older, experienced lover who taught me passion and skill and – and what? Did I even know? That was maybe the hard part – remembering what was truly learned. If anything at all. The years send clouds and cover up a lot. What we remember – how much was true? How much really happened that way?
But I could not just let her stay there until a thaw. That was – rude. I won’t ever explain it to my wife. I didn’t know how. It will make the papers, what I did, but my wife and I won’t have that conversation, the backstory. There was no point to it. It didn’t affect her, my wife. Knowing would create images that wouldn’t go away for her and since it had no bearing on her, to us, it stayed in my head. Part of the price of it all. It was history before the history of my wife. The only other person who knew the truth was up at the top, waiting. Her lips were sealed. And frozen. She would never speak of it. She may have even forgotten our history years ago. We never saw each other again after that summer. She stayed on her mountain. I lived in the valley far below. Different worlds that just that one time, so long ago, intersected briefly.
When I got up there, the sun had come out. I saw her cabin, nestled under spruces. It was rustic, quaint. A gingerbread cabin in a fairy tale. But no smoke curled from the fireplace. I figured she’d been there for some time. Maybe even before the storm.
I didn’t go in right away. Instead, I poked around a shed, looking for the sled I was told she had. But it was nowhere to be seen. I walked behind the shed and then the cabin, but the sled had vanished. No tracks, even. Maybe that was just a story. Maybe she’d given it away. Or it had been stolen. It made my task harder, but then, I never expected any of it to be easy.
I found a large sheet of plastic in the shed. I had no idea what it was from or what it was used for. But I knew how I’d be using it with the duct tape I brought and that made me wince and stop for a moment, my breathing coming out as vapor spurts. I estimated how much plastic I’d need and cut it to size with my knife. There was nothing left to do but finally go into the cabin, to see for myself, but I put that off for a minute and shielded my eyes as I gazed into the cold sun. Then I remembered not to linger too much – not to avoid reality too long -- because without that sled, the job would take more time, and it would get colder again. I’d sort of counted on that sled being there. First big mistake. Never assume. Up there, in that weather, not many mistakes would be tolerated. The descent would now be harder, take longer, would take more out of me than I originally figured and not just physically.
Surprisingly, she looked almost peaceful, her head lolled to the side, in her bed. Where she made her last stand. I took a long, good look, the last one I’d care to put myself through, before I got to work. It was like working with a heavy piece of wood. I got her to the floor and then looked around and found a couple blankets. The blankets were solid colors—one red, one black. I wrapped her head to toe – a frozen Egyptian mummy -- in those blankets and then slipped the plastic sheeting around her. I used a good amount of duct tape and then tied it up all neat and snug with cargo cords. Very practical. But also, with as much dignity as I could muster, as much as was available for such a job. I looked down at her shape. Just a bundle. Cargo to be hauled.
I sank to my knees. I cried. For the first time but also the last. There couldn’t be any more of that. I couldn’t afford it. The real work was about to commence. I had to focus and not fall apart. Focus on the job, the mission, and not the past. Time and the cold were now factors. The clock was running. It had run out on the past a long time ago.
I got her on up and over my shoulder and set off. She didn’t feel too heavy – at first, anyway. Later, that would change. Later, she would go from bundle to burden. I would struggle then. The goal was to get down before nightfall, to stave off hypothermia. Nobody would question it if I’d just left her and went back down. Nobody really saw her as a person anymore. But I couldn’t do that. She was real enough to me.
It was cold – colder. There were no sounds. Not even birds stirring. It was as cold and silent and isolated as inside a poem by Frost that I’d read in school. A good name for today – Frost. My shoulder throbbed from the weight of the bundle – the burden. I saw some suitable dead branches just off the trail that I could burn, and I decided to rest and make a quick, small fire. Just to warm my hands and face while I recovered some, so that I had enough left in me to put her up on the other shoulder.
I warmed my gloved hands over the pitiful, low flames and glanced at the burden, sagging against a tree trunk like a huge sack of potatoes and I even smirked at it. Good. Keep that sense of humor. That’s useful. Humor can lighten the load. That was the theory, anyway. This load was heavy enough. I tried not to picture her face as I’d seen it in the cabin. Her last moments. Who was the last person she thought of? Me? Some other – better – lover, more recent to her memory? Was I forgotten? I bowed my head and covered my mouth with both hands and willed myself not to cry again.
I looked up, realizing I’d lost track of time, a few minutes of it, anyway, and that was dangerous late on a day like that, in those temperatures. The flames cast a shadow against the burden. The sky was a yellow blue, a color I didn’t understand. The sky looked fragile, like it could shatter into pieces and fall on me. I turned away from it. To her. I had not yet said her name out loud. “Carolyn.” Jesus — it hurt just to say it, to hear it. I couldn’t say it again. I wouldn’t.
Just get a grip, I reminded myself. She wasn’t Carolyn anymore. She wasn’t anybody. Think of her as a sack of potatoes. A burden to deliver, to take care of. Don’t see it beyond that. She would have said we’re all just a sack of potatoes in the end. She was a realist. I wasn’t sure what I was at all. I stamped out the fire and stared at the burden. Then I sipped from the canteen on my hip and rolled my shoulders, getting them ready. I figured there was enough distance left that I’d have to start on the fresh shoulder and then switch again back to the worn one not long after. I should have remembered to bring along some kind of padding.
I glanced at my watch, seeing there really was no margin of time left. It was either get going or risk never leaving the darkness. Risk getting lost shouldering a burden. I grunted loudly and winced from the pain as I tossed the burden onto my fresh shoulder, and I set off again. The sun had dipped precariously. One last push. Straight through. I believed I had that in me. But just that. No more.
Maybe.
There was a point at which I was not seeing what was ahead, my eyes half shut and then fluttering. My shoulder was numb. Which one did I start with? I couldn’t remember. My memory had gone cold, too. I felt shot to pieces. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, through deep snow. My feet were plunging anvils. I was like a blind man headed home on instinct. Then I wavered, the burden shifting, heavier than even an anvil. I thought I was finally defeated. It all ended there. In the middle of nowhere. And how funny that it might end with us together again. For all eternity.
I sank slowly to my knees, the burden threatening to collapse me. This was the last part, the only thing between just sinking slowly into snow. Gobbled up by time. I felt the grim reaper coming like a firm hand on my back, inching up and creeping along me like the ice that did the same to her. But there was one last spark in the fading embers deep inside me. It wouldn’t die. It resisted. It flashed. It shot up, into my free arm, which had touched ground through the snow, and I pushed hard, the rest of me feeling that surge, and up I got, to my feet, but wavering, the burden teetering. I somehow secured it in place with that good arm. My savior. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in and out. I walked, still stumbling, but catching myself. Catching her, too. We were now the same. Had become one. I wanted to cry or scream but I just trudged along. Making sounds simply took too much energy. I was beyond speaking.
Darkness was only a few minutes away. Everything had become dim, amber tinged. Was I even still on the trail? A better question came to me – would I die soon? Would I then see her again? Just when I felt truly lost, my resurgence just false hope, darkness creeping over me, shrouding me, I emerged into a clearing. I was nearly senseless. But then I felt something. Familiarity. Through slit eyes crusted with snow, I saw I’d made it back down after all. I saw it: our maintenance building. I saw my crew, vague shapes, but real enough. Several of them ran toward me, struggling through the snow. They smiled. I doubted that I could.
I handed off my burden to them with a heavy, drawn-out sigh, and felt suddenly weightless. I resisted collapse by the barest margin. Someone held me up, steadied me. I watched for a moment as they carried the burden to a truck. The burden was shapeless. You wouldn’t know what they carried if you happened onto the scene. Maybe a sack of potatoes, for sure.
Somebody’s hands were on me, helping me through the door, my legs rubbery, giving way, and I was guided to a chair by the roaring fireplace. It felt like I would never be able to get off that chair again. It took a minute before I could try and remove my gloves and another minute before I managed to get them off. I still shivered. My face was numb. Nobody said a word. I sat by the fire, leaning toward it, hands to the fierce glow. Someone handed me a glass of brandy. I held it gingerly with both hands and tossed it down and felt it warm in my stomach.
But it was the only thing I could feel.
— MICHAEL LOYD GRAY
Michael Loyd Gray is the author of ten published books of fiction and more than sixty published short stories. His story collection, The Space Between Now and Then, was released in May 2026 by Silent Clamor, and his novel The Writer in Residence was released in April 2026. Gray’s novel Emperor of the Mundane will be released by Regal House in 2027. He earned a MFA from Western Michigan University and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with three cats and a lot of electric guitars.