| writing that puts story first

They were rabble to begin with. You couldn’t call them friends really, because they didn’t call themselves that. They were drunks for the most part, for William the only part. Johnson, not his first name, merely what someone sometime ago had taken to calling him, was a divorce with two kids somewhere. Herb was an old Army vet, but he’s served without war and thus without purpose. Greg had a dead-end job, but a promising cocaine habit. As a collective they weren’t anything more than the sum of their parts – three guys who drank and one who tried to live at the same dingy bar. When the West Coast sun started to set, they’d all certainly find each other there. They weren’t the kind to share their problems, not when they were lucid enough to prevent it, but they did have the comforting view from the bottom of the life’s barrel. It was a world of difference to how they felt towards the greater Seattle area, or the country, or the world for that matter. There just wasn’t any comfort out there, no room, not for them, or people like them.

So, it must have been a year ago when it first happened. It was just a drunken discussion, like so many others. Only this time it wasn’t about the merits of Miss March, artificial turf, or the present price of gas, this one had a bit more fuel to it.

“You know what I want?”

“Two chicks at the same time?”

“No. Yes. Well, besides that.”

“What?”

“Everyday, outside, I see that damn mountain, Rainier. And it just sits there, big and important, and it gets at me man, under my skin.”

“Yeah. Fuck Rainier.”

Everyone agreed with Johnson, most likely because of the brew. But it had grown from that, hadn’t it? It had gotten stronger, so much so that they could almost taste it. There was a definite palpable aggression from inside a smoky dive against a cold, old rock that hadn’t ever done any good, yet everybody loved it.

There guys, these four guys who had done things, but they were just social discards. They were just drunks, not even friends, just drunks. Herb, he’d given his country twelve years before a forced retirement due to ‘medial reasons’, but he was just a drunk. Johnson had been married for the better part of a decade, fathered two lovely girls, the oldest now in high school and wearing braces, but his wife ran off with a realtor-who-wanted-to-be-Senator, and now he was just a drunk. Greg put in forty-plus hours a week of backbreaking manual labor, he had the calluses to prove it, but he was just a drunk. William was screwed from the start, an orphan who was abandoned by the system and who should have gone to jail or died a dozen times, could barely read, but was otherwise a stand-up guy, but he too was just a drunk. But the mountain, that damned mountain, it didn’t do anything but pile up death and injury statistics, and it was treasured. And they were just four drunks who hated that mountain.

In the beginning they just talked about hating it. The hatred took on the coat of jealousy and the glasses of inequality. They wanted to be better than it. They needed to be better than it, to provide that first nudge, the momentum to show the greater Seattle area, the country, the whole damn world that they were more, more than just drunks.

Just yesterday, Greg had come in. Alcohol begat dejections, and from that, with emotion unmasked, conversation came. See, recently Greg’s boss had taken a vacation, and when he’d come back he caught Greg working while dusted. Unlike the times before, this time the cocaine became an issue. Greg got canned.

“And guess where that fat fuck had gone?”

The other three just looked at him.

“Camping, on fucking Rainier.”

And that settled it. Something had to be done about that mountain. It needed to be conquered. Only form the top could these four show it that it was no better than they were. They could gloat from the top, huddled together like victorious rapists, triumphant, showing Rainier that after all, it was just a dumb, Charlie Brown rock that had gotten too big for its britches. Just an old, dumb rock. That was yesterday. They’d, with all the immediacy that drunks can muster, gathered liquor and smokes for the trek and piled in Johnson’s car. The rolled-up windows turned the car into a pressure cooker, trapping, reflecting, and harnessing rage as they drove for dark hours to the base of the mountain. Johnson’s car was pushed as far up the side of the mountain as it could manage. From there they got out, fixed a collective, unspoken gaze at the summit. They were beyond, so far beyond words now, turning into one machine, a year’s focus and a lifetime fucked into the making.

They fought the mountain as valiantly as possible, sending countless burst of energy against a craggy, rock face. The hours tumbled on, over and over. The alcohol wore off, so the did the rage. But, as the initiative dwindled, they, four men dreaming to be more than drunks, they didn’t stop. This was it, this was their stand against the world. William, Herb, Greg, and Johnson against the mountain. It was a title-weight fight for who was real, and who deserved to live the dream.

Herb was first to fall, a twisted ankle paired with ‘bad Army knees’ and a hacking wheeze. Johnson was next, losing his footing on a steep grade, falling hard, far, and fast. Both William and Greg made it into the snow. The deep snow tripped him up though, he started panting, holding his chest and blood appeared from his nose. As best as William could figure, Greg died right there on the spot. The fight was just between William and Rainier now. The snow was past William’s knees and he was so cold and so hungry now, hungrier than he’d ever been in his life. He had to keep on, to continue. He just had to, the rock could be beat. He wasn’t just a drunk, a waste of life.

And he sure showed it, didn’t he? From the top, William could see forever. And that was it, the crowning achievement to a year of drunken hatred. The mountain didn’t feel any different, it certainly didn’t feel conquered. William just felt tired, cold, empty, hungry, and alone. He looked around, but there was no one there to congratulate, or to ask the big question that was stirring around in his mind – now what? Should he have felt differently? He’d done it, he was living the dream now. Slowly, William started back down the lonely cold rock that is Mount Rainier. Just a mountain, just a man, just a drunk who climbed down the mountain today.