chapter

1
March 2011, Mount Everest

T his first time, as they hoisted themselves onto the hip of

the
mountain, they had to simply learn to survive. Survive the
landscape, the thin air, the unbelievable cold, the exquisite
suffering. Each step of Dixon’s crampons on ice was
accompanied by a headache so intense he thought a tiny demon
jabbed a pitchfork endlessly inside his ear. His stomach cramped,
his tongue
against theswelled
roof of his dehydrated mouth, he inhaled heavily—
at 18,000 feet and rising, his every breath was hard won. A
perfect, exhilarating orb of suffering.
His brother Nate climbed just in front of him along a narrow
path that stretched between ice boulders. Nate looked back at
him, panting lightly but smiling, his black goggles gleaming on
his face, rock star–like. “Man! We’re in rare air. Black men on
Everest.” Dixon repeated it with awe: Black men on Everest, which
was to say freed men. Because their burdens here were of their
own making.
 karen outen

Blue-white ice glowed above their heads. They were

climbing just above Base Camp, deep in the Khumbu Icefall, a
once-cascading river frozen mid-flow. A surreal landscape of ice
boulders at im- probable angles perched along cliffs. The ground
rumbled beneath their feet. A game of dodgeball, judging which
boulder might tum- ble toward them. And this only their first
acclimatizing trip up the mountain; there would be three climbs,
up ever higher, then back down, before they attempted the
summit. Three more chances to lose this survival game. An
improbable game growing ever more ridiculous: not just
skimming boulders but spanning crevasses so impossibly deep
they might emerge on the other side of the earth. They had
chosen this, Dixon reminded himself, and squinted into the
glare ahead of him. A stunning flash, a warning flare: the sun
bounced off the aluminum shell of a ladder—four ladders, ac-
tually, lashed together and spanning a crevasse slit deep and
jag- ged in the ice. And he was expected to cross it.
Unfathomable, all of it, crevasses, ice blocks, mountains. A thrill
seized his groin. He turned toward his loosely tethered band of
twenty team members, sherpas, and guides, their red and blue
and yellow down suits iri- descent against the snow. Lunatics
did this kind of thing, lunatics and heroes, Dixon thought,
laughing, and which did he think he
was? “Both!” he said aloud.
Nate waited for Dixon near the ladders, hands on his hips.
“Well, this might be it, know what I mean?” Nate leaned close
so Dixon could hear him above the wind. “That oh-hell-no
moment.” He made a sweeping gesture across the Icefall. Ahead
of them, the ladders were strung with safety ropes and bolted
into the ice on either side of a crevasse. They still didn’t look like

4
 dixon, descending

one hand on his hip, a sly smile on his face: a challenge Dixon
knew well. “You expect me to believe you’re throwing in the
towel?”
“Hell no.” Nate laughed. He flexed his fingers against each
other, tightened his gloves.
“How ’bout I go first,” Dixon said. He did not wait for an
answer.
Don’t look down, Dixon warned himself, but how could he
help it? The pale-blue walls of ice below him darkened into a
bot- tomless midnight. He stepped onto the ladders, his crampon
spikes clunking on the metal rungs. The ladder swayed and
complained under him, his body both weighed down and
weightless in the thinning air. The wind howled around his ears.
His heartbeat reso- nated in every vein, every muscle, every
clench of his hands around the safety ropes. Thin ropes in his
hands, slender rungs under his feet, he teetered above Earth. A
gust of wind bellowed in his ears and seemed to lift him like a
kite. A belly drop, Dixon gripped the ropes as he felt himself
caught up by the wind. The frightening roar in his ears. Dixon
suspended midair. It seemed an endless ride on the bounce of
wind. He was sure he would be swept away. He could not
breathe. He might have expected his life to flash before his eyes,
but he saw only sky, endless blue clouds swirling shapeless
above him. It wasn’t death he feared, but the feeling of nothing-
ness, of expendability at the whim of the mountain.
That jolt of air swept under him only momentarily, but
Dixon was badly shaken. Mountain peaks loomed around him,
the cre- vasse beneath him like a dare. He scrambled across the
ladder to the other side, his breath heavy, his body trembling, a
bead of fear trickling down his spine. The mountain had given

5
 karen outen

like god, everest had a sense of humor, which dixon dis-

covered days later climbing through the Western Cwm halfway
between Base Camp and the summit. He wore a thick down suit
as he trudged through dense snow,and unbelievably, it was hot
as hell. Just that morning his socks had been frozen stiff. Now,
sweat poured down his cheeks and welled along his collarbone.
He tried to imagine convincing anyone back home that Everest
could be this way. Wily. Winsome. In the snow-covered bowl of
the West- ern Cwm, the wind died down and the sun
sparkled along the snow until Dixon saw stars twinkling and
dancing off the ice; he tripped lightheaded through the galaxy.
“Practically beach weather,” Nate croaked out, his voice
thin. Nate’s dimpled cheeks wet with sweat, his medium-brown
skin tanned a reddish-chestnut in the sun. Dixon flashed to their
child- hood summers at the Maryland shore, slathering on their
mother’s concoction of iodine and baby oil as suntan lotion, then
sliding slick and dark as eels into the water. He might be there
now, they might be boys playing if he squinted his eyes just
right, the glare of sun off the brittle snow like the glare off water.
In the nearly eighty-five-degree heat, Dixon slipped his
ruck- sack from his shoulders, removed the jacket of his bright
blue snowsuit. He tossed his head back, drinking up sun, and
Nate piled a handful of snow under Dixon’s hat. Nate laughed. A
tease, a com- fort, Dixon let the snow melt and trickle down his
neck.
Nate unzipped his one-piece snowsuit, slipped out of the
top half, and let it bounce around his waist. Hadn’t Dixon
warned him to get a two-piece suit for just this reason? Dixon
frowned.

6
 dixon, descending

swept his hand wide. In the gentle slope of the Cwm, which
spanned the mountain’s belly, they had stripped to T-shirts and
bandannas, their sunglasses tightly secured. They might be
miners or the Seven Dwarfs coming home from work in lockstep
across the snowy field. Their smallness stood out; their
impressions on the landscape were only minuscule. The surface
vast and snowy, they were sur- rounded on three sides by
mountains, one a looming glacier that stood between them and
the top of the world. Just now, Dixon thought, they were safe
and warm, weren’t they? The altitude must be already making
his thoughts fuzzy. Because all of this, the sun, the feeling of
brightness, all of it was deceptive—ah, Everest was always up to
something. And as if she had heard him, the mountain rumbled
and shifted, the snow dust of a far-off ava- lanche blowing
toward them, a sprinkler on a hot summer’s day, so they threw
back their heads to drink it in.
Soon, Everest returned to form as they ascended the Lhotse
Face, a steep, vertical sheet of glacial ice. Nate let out a bemused
laugh. “You gotta be half billy goat for this.”
“Don’t see any of those living up here.”
“Nope, just us paying fools.” Nate latched onto the safety
rope. They headed up the Lhotse Face, their sherpas beside
them, their teammates before and behind, but they may as well
have been alone. Dixon focused only on Nate in front of him.
Clipping their jumars onto the rope, sliding the jumar up,
kicking their crampons into the blue ice of the Face, they lifted
themselves, then rested; slide, kick, pull, rest; slide kick pull rest
over and over, a steady rhythm echoing their breath. When he
was a runner, Dixon had loved following the cadence of his
breath, the sound of his spikes hitting the track. He had loved
the gift of his body: the span of his arms, the strength of his

7
 karen outen

over high hurdles. He simply did what was in him to do. In

high school, coaches had said he could be the next Renaldo
Nehemiah, and for a time he had willed it, posting signs around
his bedroom: “High Hurdles Under 13 Seconds like Nehemiah!”
He had so deeply imagined that triumph, smelled it, tasted its
sweetness, cradled it in his arms at night. He had missed
qualifying for the Olympics at national trials by two-tenths of a
second. Two fucking tenths! For weeks afterward, his failure so
raw that his skin felt bruised, he had not been able to bear being
touched. Never again, he had de- cided, would he give over to
such excruciating wanting. And he had not. Until now.
He yielded to the kick, rise, pull, the sheer desire for this
mountain.
Sheer desire. It wasn’t a gentle thing. He couldn’t decide
when the wanting was worse, when the mountain’s bare rock
shone like obsidian, or when clouds veiled the sharp bones of
the summit. Sometimes desire overtook him with an angry
impatience. Like now, as Nate climbed in front of him up the
Lhotse Face, moving with more ease while Dixon fought through
each miserable, with- holding breath. Nate was taking to altitude
the way Dixon had always taken to running. Nate’s ease—a thing
Dixon had imagined rejoicing over—rode hot under Dixon’s
collar, rising into full- blown fire across his cheeks. Because Nate
moved closer to the summit with each step.
Dixon slid, kicked, pulled up the icy face of Lhotse, lulled
away from the mountain’s dangers by sheer tedium. But
discipline was Dixon’s forte. He trusted himself, and with a
chill, he glanced at his brother. Did Nate double-check his clip,
did he hold the safety ropes, had Dixon taught him well
enough? Dixon mouthed up to- ward Nate, “You got it?”

8
 dixon, descending

Nate gave a slow smile that soon faded, the hard work of
climb- ing etched on his face, but then he smiled again.
Charming Nate. Even as a toddler, he could peek out from his
stroller, bat his long lashes, flash his dimple, and make women
swoon. Dixon, only six- teen months younger than Nate, had
learned to lean to the right in the twin stroller to let himself be
passed over. With a disarmingly handsome older brother, Dixon
had to become someone in his own right: he became a good boy.
Wasn’t it natural, then, that Nate would be the one to woo
Everest? At Base Camp the day they arrived, when they had
finally stood at her feet, Nate had squared himself, rising to her
glance, and the sun had broken over the mountain’s face. Of
course. For his part, Dixon had been stunned by how the
mountain dominated the sky. He had sucked in a hard breath
and stumbled backward, tripping over the uneven ground and
landing on his butt. The mountain was so beyond his imagining,
with terraces of slate and ice that spiraled up toward the
summit, their broad, imposing presence like the arms of God.
“She’s beautiful,” Nate said with a calm admiration while a
bewildered Dixon found himself only able to steal looks toward
the summit.
As they ascended, Dixon noted his brother’s slow, steady
pull up the rope, the intensity and sweat on his face—he did the
hard work! Dixon quietly congratulated himself: he had trained
Nate over the past six months, and wasn’t that training paying
off? A steady calm fell over Dixon; the cool, clear wire that had
always been his recompense for goodness resounded in him, a
measure of the world and of Dixon’s place in it.
A hundred feet higher, the mountain revealed the depths of
the crevasse below. At first, Dixon thought he saw below him
the

9
 karen outen

colorful prayer flags that waved above Base Camp. A lightning

jolt of recognition as the forms morphed: a blue arm, a yellow
torso, a red elbow, the black stretch of snow pants, the green toe
of pricey climbing boots. A wash of terror flushed through
Dixon. Bodies lay below him like broken marionettes, legs
akimbo, arms over- head, lifeless in snowsuits still stalwart
against the cold. Dixon stalled. A long, trembling beat. And then
the high siren call of wind, the tickle of snow against his cheek.
The call, the awful call. He slid, kicked, climbed.
Later, he would remember the many ways the mountain
had revealed herself, and he would wonder: why did they
excuse her fits of temper, cajole and caress and long for her, as if
they would be spared?

10