Chapter 12 - A Battle with Death

Bundled up in his jacket and wearing a couple of crew cut pullovers, Tim sat on the edge of a chair, spreading out his palms and fingers as close towards the stove as possible.

He sat there, feeling so depressed and lethargic that he couldn’t summon the energy to even tie up the speed laces of his boots, let alone pack away his sleeping bag, which lay sprawled on the floorboards in exactly the same place where he had left it when he had climbed out of it at 8 o’clock that morning, feeling as ill tempered as a bear emerging from hibernation.

He’d had to muster all his will power to fight back a sense of apathy and futility and make himself some breakfast. It’d had taken him over an hour to cook up some porridge and brew some coffee. He’d plunked himself by the stove and had not stirred from that place, though it was coming up to midday. A watery light fell through the ice-covered window. It gleamed on the hard edges of the metal stove. That light drained whatever objects it touched of all vitality. Tim couldn’t shake off the feeling he was having a nightmare or hallucinating. Or maybe, it was he who had become unreal? Drained of all soul, all substance and vitality?

And then the cold! The penetrating cold breathed shivers down his spine!

Tim tucked the bottom of his sweater inside his trousers, and then pulled his belt tigther to maximize the insulation. He spread out his hands flatwise to toast them beside the stove and he did find some comfort in the pleasant sensation of warmth tickling his palms.

Was there anything more likely to make a person think of suicide than having nothing to do on an overcast winter morning in the mountains?

“I wonder where Cormac is?” Tim wondered, picking up a stick and poking the logs crackling in the stove.

“How long is that guy going to stay out there in the mountains? Jude said he was a holy man, but I reckon he’s just plain la-la. Only someone out of their mind would chose to live up here. What does he do all day? I can’t believe he stays outside in this freezing cold. Mind you, he looked as strong as a bull. Yes, he’s lost his marbles. But I guess, I should be grateful He didn’t throw me out. No, it’s not peaches in cream in this cabin, that’s for sure, but it would worse if I was out there on my own. Yes, yes, Hargreaves and Zack just want to kill me, that’s it. They want to take over the church. Oh, sure!”

He thought and stamped his boots, angrily, on the floor. He drew a sharp breath. He glanced around and caught sight of the Bible on the kitchen table.

Of course, he knew he should be spending his time busy trying to save his soul. He should be getting down on his knees and praying to God for mercy. But the thought of kneeling down on the bare wooden floorboards in the freezing cold cabin didn't appeal to him. As for studying the Bible, he couldn't whip up any enthusiasm for that either. By telling him about all the absolute moral commandments he had failed to live up to, the Bible would only add to the damp depression settling on his soul.

Unable to endure the sight of those grey clouds outside, Tim started to stare, instead, at the door, which was made of planks of wood hammered together with some rusty nails. He stared at the planks for so long he began to notice the precise shapes of the whirls of the grain, every variation in the shade and tone of the woood….

Bored of that, he picked up at random an enamel mug standing on the table close by. He looked inside and saw the cold remnants of the coffee he had brewed up earlier that morning. He lifted the mug to his lips and swallowed the last drop. What a bitter taste it had!

Irritated, he began to rap the empty mug against the stove. Ting, ting, ting.

Listening to the metal of the hollow mug clinking against the metal of the stove wasn't nearly as much fun, though, as seeing Rob Owen. But why was he thinking about Rob Owen? That man had been his ruin!

Tim went over every detail of what had happened in his mind again and again. He hurt himself with the thought of how much everyone at the church must detest him now that they had found out about the dark side of his nature.

He beat the mug harder against the stove; a fiercer note rang out. TING. TING. The sound sent ripples through the great void of silence around him. That unearthly silence! That silence meant he couldn’t escape his own thoughts, trivial, banal though they might be. Nor could he escape the tormenting feeling of abandonment, isolation and fear that gnawed away at him.

These emotions became so intense that he could not endure them. He decided to go for a walk, explore his surroundings a bit, escape from this trap.

The sight of the wild fir tree outside reminded him that he was in mild and inhospitable mountain territory. And there was not a soul about for miles and miles. Apart from the brown bears, of course….

He rummaged around in his backpack and slipped a few candy bars into his jacket. He also slipped a pistol into his pocket. Who could tell what creature might cross his path out there? Tim thought to himself as he put on his hat and a pair of leather gloves lined with cashmere.

Puffing out his chest to give himself courage, he walked outside and stopped on the top step, kicking away some of the fresh snow. He pulled up the zip of his jacket to the very top. He screwed up his eyes to observe the bleak winter landscape. There was a snap. A bird broke from the fir trees. Its cry echoed in the immensity of the sky as it soared on the wind.

Henry Thoreau and those other writers who had lavished so much praise on nature must have been incurable romantics, he thought to himself as he sucked in the icy air. Was there anything more desolate than the wilderness? He had never seen such a cruel spot, so bare of everything to do or to see in his entire life! Wherever he looked, he saw the same forests -- monotonous -- and the same snow, too, blanketing the same mountains.

Pulling up his collar, he walked down the steps, decidiing to climb the mountain that rose up behind the cabin.

“I bet it’s not as hard to climb as it looks!” Tim thought to himself, punching his gloves. “I bet it’s only a couple of miles as the crow flies. I just need to find a track. If I meet a brown bear, I’m going to sock it to the critter. I’m going to make him pay for his arrogance in assuming I’m a meal…” Tim thought to himself, patting his pocket with the pistol with satisfaction.

Fresh snow had fallen overnight; it formed a soft powdery layer on top of the compact frozen surface of older snow, and so Tim sank a few inches with every step.

He spotted a shallow dip in the snow. Bits of dry twigs and leaves showed through. He followed the track into the dense forest. It was so dark he paused to allow for his eyes to adjust. He focused and saw an intertwining network of branches all around him. Snow weighed down the branches, making them creak and groan as if they were alive. He breathed in the air smelling of earth and wet pine needles.

Punching his gloves together, he set off up the slope.

Twigs snapped under his boot. He brushed past a branches, sending clumps of snow tumbling down as he climbed higher. After half an hour, he began to get into a comfortable rhythm, stopping only now and then to eat one of his candy bars.
He passed the tree line, and saw, a glistening white slope of snow rising to the summit.

Taking a deep breath, he started his climb. The higher he went, the deeper the snow became. By the time he was about mid-way up the slope, he was sinking up to his thighs in the stuff. He had to lift up his legs at the knee each time to take another step; the exertion started killing him.

Drenched in sweat, he finally scrambled around a ridge, laboured over some icy rocks, and then he was there! On the summit!

He unzipped his jacket as he moved his head from side to side, scanning the valley. He felt a rush of adrenaline, a surge of triumph, euphoria. There was a magnificence about the view, too, that took his breath away.

He watched the sun slipping down behind the unbroken chain of mountain peaks that stretched along the horizon, sending a red glow up the valley. He became so absorbed in the glorious sight that he forgot everything. He heard the wind soar past him and spread its wings to fly onwards into endless space and felt awe. But then, all of a sudden, his mood flipped.

He began to punch his gloves, restlessly aware of a hollowness in the pit of his stomach.

“What’s the matter with me?” He asked himself, frowning. “I did it! I made it to the pinnacle, to the summit. So, where’s the problem?”

Then it hit him! It was the realisation of just how insignificant his life was that shook him up! Yes, the mountains and sky might be beautiful, but they made it clearer to him than anything else that he was not the center of the universe, after all, like he had always imagined.

He was not the pivot of the world, the focal point, the axis, the alpha and omega. Far from it! Viewed from the perspective of the eternal mountains and the vastness of nature, he was an irrelevance, a marginal pawn in the universal drama.

The ideas that made up the architecture of his mental world were not the be-all and and end-all. There was a greater reality outside his mind. The sun would rise and sink independently of him and his desires, hopes and fears. Yes, seen against the huge scale of the mountains and the enormity of the sky, his life really seemed to be no more than a flake of snow, a speck of dust! A puff of smoke! Ephemeral. That shook him to the core.

“I’m a footnote to the symphony, a blip in the big scheme of things,” Tim thought to himself. “I might live to be 50,60, 100 years old – but I’m still going to die. There will be nothing left of me in a few years time, let alone a few decades. No trace. Why bother? Why fight, struggle and battle on when whatever successes I do achieve are only going to be temporary anyway? No matter how much I accomplish, I’m facing total oblivion. So what if I’m a senior pastor who gets to appear on the national cable TV networks and earns a fortune. It’s still nothing compared to the immensity of this world and time... Even if I do manage to turn my character around up here in the mountains, even if I turn into a tap dancing saint, it’ll all be in vain. I might leave these mountains in six months a holy man, an absolute saint. The congregation might welcome me back with open arms. I could become the most famous pastor in the USA, or under the UN, but I’m still going to die. Cindy might take me back. So what? It won’t last. Everyone who is ever born is doomed to the same decline and decay! How pointless it all is! How futile! Why have I always been pushing, pushing so hard all my life, putting myself under so much pressure to achieve this or that? Yes, why do I get so upset when I don’t get what I want? Fact is, it’s all the same in the end. It’s all huff and puff, all futile, all meaningless. Someone really must be playing a sick joke on us, humans. I mean, why create human beings with so much energy, so much purpose, and then to give them nothing permanent to channel all that energy into?”

Tim sucked in a lungful of icy air and expelled it slowly. With narrowed eyes, he watched the rim of the sun disappear. The sky began to burn like fire. The clouds turned red. It was a breathtaking sight. But after a few minutes, the red glow faded. Blackness ran down the steps from heaven like a maniac with a razor blade.

As the darkness fell, it also became palpably colder. Tim’s teeth started to chatter uncontrollably. Ice cold terror squeezed his throat as he looked at the darkness around. Shadows smothered the valley down below.

“Shit!” He muttered as the wind howled around. “It’s almost f**king night and I’m nowhere near the cabin! I could freeze out here! How could I have been so stupid!”

A city man, he had lost all his instinct for the dangers of the wild. Now, he might have to pay for his stupidity with his life! He could die of hypothermia out here in just a few hours. A hike in the wilderness is good for you, he'd often heard people say. That was simply untrue. This hike in the wilderness could well be his death sentence!

The intensity of his fear was frightening. His body was shaking. He had only one thought: survive! Survive! Adrenaline pumped through his body and he found the energy to scramble down the rocks and powered down the slope.

He powered down the slope, slipped, fell, plunged and turned over in somersaults.

Panic stricken, he picked himself up, shook down his jacket, and then flew on down the slope with the energy of the desperate. In the meantime, the tree line that had merged into a solid black wall. All the same, he plunged straight into the forest. He was all set to keep on running, running down the slope without a pause, but it was so dark, he might as well have been blind. He hit something and stopped.

His eyes dilated, squeezed, peered in search of something that would give him some orientation in this vast void. But all he could see as lackness, blackness everywhere! A sea of blackness full of threats and menace.

The hairs stood up at the back of his head at the thought he would never see Cindy and his children again, never be able to say sorry to them, or tell them how much he loved them. That second, he realised he wasn’t ready to die: he understood he had missed his mark, the purpose - whatever that might – of his life. The thought of being cut off so suddenlywith so much uncompleted work to do filled him with such horror that a fresh surge of adrenaline charged him with a wild energy.

He staggered on through the darkness. How angry it made him to see trees and yet more trees coming towards him with every step he took. How it made him seethe with rage to see them! He absolutely loathed the way he saw the same fir trees covered in the same salty crystals of snow winking at him out of the night wherever he looked.

He was so seething mad at those trees, so furious, he could have taken an axe and cut them all down. Branches jabbed him from all sides as he stumbled forwards, breathing fast, his heart pounding, terrified.

A branch came flying down at him and caught him at the throat; for a second he was sure he was about to be choked. He thrust the branch aside, but it rebounded and hit him straight in the face. For some reason, the way that branch came flying back filled him with terror.

How absurd! How absurd to think that he, the great pastor Tim Leitner, who had founded the Young Life Church, who had even been a star guest on late-night Bernie Peters Show could die here in the middle of nowhere from hypothermia – and that very night.

His feet became numb. After an hour, he could not feel the ground so that all movement was difficult. He had to use all his concentration to lift up his right foot and put it down again and then his left foot and put it down again. His teeth were chattering. His tongue stuck to his mouth. He was so thirsty; he was panting for a drink. He needed a drink! A drink of pure, clear water!

He had been wandering around for what seemed like an eternity through the hellish gloomy night without a chink of light, without a star in the sky, without the glow of the moon, when, all of a sudden, he saw, between his frozen eye lashes -- hard to pull apart -- a light!

Was he dreaming? Hallucinating?

He stopped, lifted his trembling hand and wiped away the ice stinging his eyes, and saw there was indeed a fire shining between the iron black bars of the trees. It was a fire! A real fire, a big fire judging by the brilliance of the flames! Distance? Hard to say.

His heart lept up in his chest with elation. He lifted one foot up and put it down, then the next foot up and put it down, groping his way on towards that light. He moved forward step by step. Panting heavily, he finally chested aside some branches and found himself out in the open.

Flames roared upwards into the black sky, sending showers of sparks dancing into the air. And there was Cormac! He was throwing logs onto the fire.

Walloped with delight, Tim stumbled on.

Cormac saw him, dropped the log he was about to hurl onto the flames, and ran over to him.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Tim looked up at Cormac. He wanted to say something. But his lips were dry and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He sank to his knees.

Cormac packed him under his arms and pulled him to his feet.

“It’s alright, now. Just you come along. I saw your footprints and knew you’d gone up the mountain back there! And I guessed you hadn’t taken any camping equipment with you and had gotten lost. All’s well that ends well! You saw the fire!”

“Thanks!”

Tim limped over to the cabin, leaning on Cormac’s arm. He slipped on the ice on the steps, but Cormac caught him just in time and pushed him through the door into what seemed to Tim like an oasis of light and warmth. The shadows from the fire burning in the grate danced over the walls.

Tim slumped down on the chair beside the stove. He wanted to take off his jacket but his arms hung at his sides, useless things. But slowly, he felt he felt the ice start to thaw out of his body. He blinked and saw the cat looking at him. Her green eyes flashed in the lamplight. She rubbed herself against his legs. It was almost as if she felt sympathy for him.

Cormac took off Tim’s jacket and put a blanket around his shoulders. Then, he peeled away Tim’s gloves, and rubbed his fingers and hands that were so sore, he did not dare to move them. Next, he untied the laces of Tim’s boots, took them off, and removed his socks. He rubbed Tim’s feet and toes vigorously until Tim felt a sensation again. Cormac put on some ointment on his feet, and then a bandage and a fresh pair of woollen socks.

"You're lucky you didn't get frostbite," Cormac said.

He took out a silver flask, unscrewed the cap and lifted the flask to Tim's lips.

Tim prised open his stone-like lips just about enough for some liquid to trickle down his throat. On contact with the whiskey, the ice that clung to the interior surface of his lungs began to thaw out. The soft organ that was his heart began to beat more regularly again and his blood began to circulate once more.

Next, Cormac poured some hot water into a mug. He took down a jar from a cupboard, opened it and spooned some honey into the hot water and stirred it. He lifted the steaming mug to Tim's lips.

Tim gulped down the hot, sweet liquid in blissful agony.

“I was sure it was over, over!” he muttered, finally feeling a bit more like his old self.

“You’re lucky. I was going to go get the mountain rescue. But I don’t know they’d have been able to find you on time in this darkness.”

"No, I didn’t have any matches with me, nothing to attract attention. So stupid! Went up to the top of the mountain, completely misjudged distance….." Tim stammered.

Cormac gave him an affectionate slap on the back.

“You're not used to the wilderness,” he said. “Walking around here is not like taking a stroll in the park. But you’ll be right as rain.”

Cormac gave him a bowl of steaming soup and some bread.

His hands shaking, Tim could spooned the soup down greedily. He chewed the bread. Never had food tasted so good. Every morsel filled his body with energy. The thought of the Last Supper flashed through his mind: for the first time, he understood the symbolic significance of the bread Jesus had given his disciples: "Take this and eat it, the bread of life!"

Cormac had made a loaf of the bread of kindness and given him a piece of it to eat – and so kept him alive. He had taken the trouble to light the fire when he could have sat back and done nothing. Without Cormac’s initiative, he would have died.
Tim finished the meal. The cat rubbed herself against his legs. He took the cat in his pale and trembling fingers. He stroked her warm fur. She didn't protest.