Vert and Hurt

Short story, 7.5k words, Winner of St. John's College Best Original Fiction Prize

This isn’t a political story, but it begins with a political event between two men who at least at first acquaintance thought of themselves and each other as merely political animals: and as such, warrants some unfortunate expository academic jargon. Political animals here should be understood as the ism sort, a derivative of the philosophical; less Aristotelian, and more racial. These men thought of each other as if he were addressing a different genus to his kind, not human like him, but rather some other ilk of human (such as Nephilim). Perhaps political beasts might be more apt to what each other thought of his opponent. So, they first met each other less as an Englishman would meet a Frenchman in the Channel and more as how a crocodile might meet a hippopotamus in the Nile.

Not that these men were strictly English or French, as they were both American with traces of these and many other roots from the Old World which were so mixed and mingled that they really didn’t matter. In fact, they didn’t really know or care what their biological makeup was: they traced their intellectual lineages from two very pure, very distinct paternal lines which transcended national boundary.

Dr. Thomas Hurt was an intellectual creature from the class of Marxists, though he was more a bastard of that line, his true parentage as he thought and spoke of it was Hegelian. He got along with other Marxists well enough unless the conversation turned to the subject of material, whereupon Hurt would run back to the safe defense of Hegelian ideal. So, all of that is to say that he didn’t get along with other Marxists very much at all. Truthfully he wasn’t a very good Marxist, as he only really sympathized with and half-championed his own class in economic discussions. Even then, he wasn’t at all a proponent of communism (for as much as he despised capitalism for devaluing the spiritual he hated communism more for replacing it).

He was a deeply religious man, a Catholic, in part descended from those rare supporters of James II and IV if he thought to look it up (which he didn’t), who sympathized with the post-conciliar, post-liberal, post-modern school of theologians who focused more on the so-called “corporal” works of mercy than the “spiritual”. Of course, for Dr. Hurt these classifications would be inverted, as he believed that the only way that man could become spiritual was through political action; feeding the poor was ideally more a spiritual act than admonishing sinners. He had written some literature which more adequately defenses his then unique theological perspective, and as it isn’t the aim of this story to understand that position very clearly at all, those who are interested should look up his early work, Reconciling Hegel with Catholic Thought: from Aquinas to Maritain (Oxford, 1990). What is written here on his philosophy is sufficient to continue.

His physical description is not very important either for the story, even if it is for the reader: probably the most useful information to know is that despite being comfortably below seventy, a teetotaler, and not at all overweight, he was winded easily and out of shape. Whatever the reader wants to imagine regarding his hair and chin is fine for them, there are pictures plenty of this long-time professor to satisfy those unnecessary curiosities. If the reader objects strongly to a lack of description, one might simply think that he sort of resembles Irving’s description of Ichabod Crane, “to see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.”

He would certainly not care for such a cartooning comparison; but it will serve to satisfy the unsavory work of describing him in an interesting way, even if it inaccurately suggests his figure to possibly exist along the profile of a hill, as he was a decidedly tarmac lowlands sort of man. In any case, one could not really help thinking of Thomas Hurt in a way that is not caricaturist when he stood in the same room with a living one, Gilbert Vert.

Gilbert Vert, MFA, was a monster in the world of small liberal arts colleges, in so far as he was both renowned and physically big. His landing in the theatrical world was an accidental one, the fact of which he was proud of, as he was far more suited for the philosophy chair at his tiny college than the fine arts, having researched and written extensively (and remarkably) on the project of Neo- Thomists. The story as he tells it is far more glorious than what the reader need know, suffice it to say, in pursuit of the final degree in philosophy he was wrapped up in a tangential project regarding Medieval Passion Plays. This so inspired him that he contrived to organize a student-led performance of Abraham and Isaac. The result of this sudden fit led to a long chain of events in which he found doors opened far easier for him in the conservative Christian theatrical world than in the somewhat stifled and left-leaning philosophical, that he abandoned the old OP who had half-heartedly took him on for a Maritain dissertation and went instead to an equally old Russian who helped him contrive an unfortunate and unlikely arranged marriage between Stanislavski and the York Corpus Christi plays.

Vert’s actual renown and size came about when he accepted a large role in a filmed documentary on the life of Hillaire Belloc in which he played the role of Chesterton. The preparations for the part suited him so perfectly that he kept the affect of the journalist giant ever after, keeping his mien with such perfect detail that he found himself ever having to turn down offers from various Catholic liberal arts colleges to visit and (hopefully) staff full time. He chose instead to settle in a small town with a small college with enough of a dubious reputation to satisfy his occasional eccentric fits of unorthodox productions that resulted in tame but pleasurable outrage from the student body.

The man wasn’t Catholic, but he loved to flirt with a conversion so much that everyone thought he basically was and allowed him to remain so. Had he any care for his genetic composition he wouldn’t have found any inspiration in his mostly Franco-Jewish ancestry anyways. He was in absolute love with the religion itself and attended High Solemn Mass at a Society of Saint Pius X chapel on every Sunday, even singing in polyphonic choirs for the Triduum. That he could not receive the Eucharist was (apparently) of no consequence to him, he had no memory of his baptismal record, and he would jokingly say that the biggest impediment to his swimming the Tiber was that he was so bloatedly full of sin that upon leaving a confessional for the first time he would be so thin and weak that he’d become a comatose.

Neither of these men had any business being in each other’s company, as they would have found (and as will be revealed: did find) the other to be intolerable. Hurt wanted to place Christ at the head of the secular movement towards a future historical transcendence of suffering, Vert wanted a perpetual Wedding at Cana or Pentecost at Camelot. They initially shared one single interest however, which was to reform what they considered to be the disastrous state of current affairs at the yearly International Conference on Medieval studies in Kalamazoo.

Vert’s interest in “the Zoo”, as he called it, was strictly missionary, as he believed that a good deal of revisionism and Marxist scholarship had nearly done his pleasure hobby in. As such he was a regular attendant and panelist and was known for giving up-and-coming scholars a hard time. His most often heard criticism was that the newest generation of medieval scholars were intellectual anachronists, and that the medieval wouldn’t know what to do about gender or race theory, never mind concepts like patriarchy or institutional oppression. He chaired his own yearly panel on Aquinas and Aristotle, and threw the biggest and most obnoxiously hedonistic after-hour party. This was the source of his love-hate relationship with the conference board, who both saw his presence as somewhat detrimental to progress in medieval studies, but acknowledged (even admired) the draw of his personality.

Hurt, on the other hand, hadn’t had a paper approved for the conference since 1993, when he infamously accused a senior Kalamazoo panelist for thirty years of “deflowering a modern Lucretia to bring about a New Rome, instead of stopping the stoning of a Magdalen for the coming of Heaven on Earth”. He in turn was accused of being “a Judas who wants to weaponize Christ” (an allusion to the theory that Iscariot was a faction member of the Zealots) and of whom should, via implication, enjoy very much “a certain Dantian canto: number thirty-four”. All of this is to say that Hurt accused the senior panelist of being, metaphorically, a rapist; and the senior panelist told Hurt to go, metaphorically, to the deepest part of Hell. He never would have come to this conference if it hadn’t been for the young doctoral candidate whom he was at the time mentoring, who had submitted a paper (against his advice) and who was going to lead a panel there. It took some time to work down Hurt’s vehement protestations against his attending, but he reluctantly did so after the student reminded him that it had been nearly thirty years since the incident (of which she heard about from another student, never from Hurt) and that she was working with his research, of which she felt he was the best representative to have for questions.

So it was that Vert and Hurt first encountered each other while sitting in a seminar on a new translation and criticism of Petrarch’s Ascent of Mont Ventoux. It was strikingly procedural in every way, celebrated as an excellent presentation given by a woman on a text that has traditionally been treated on by men, and had a mix of dialogue which was mostly agreeable, but entirely not noteworthy, especially not for this story. Gilbert Vert, uncharacteristically did very little talking, seeming almost preoccupied with his little notebook which was, also uncharacteristically, filled with words instead of imitative sketches from Pugin’s Principals of Christian Architecture.

After the end of the seminar then, just when everyone thought that the young doctoral candidate had almost escaped an attack by the obnoxious actor, and as everyone was packing up their things to go to another scheduled presentation, Vert made the following remark to a student who sat by him, “Of course, anyone who actually climbs mountains would know that Petrarch’s account of it all was entirely fabricated. Had he really climbed Mont Ventoux—he didn’t— and brought up Confessions with him—again, he didn’t— he couldn’t have become ‘the father of humanism’ as Miss Almost puts it, because...”

The rest of the thesis was lost for a moment as the room became very suddenly silent. Those who wished to escape the slaughter in Heorot quickly made their exit, and the rest of the Dane-shields watched with anxious eagerness as an old Hrothgar and young Wealtheow stared with clear irritation at the wide-grinning Grendel sitting with a sort of slouch in the high-backed conference chair with a bag of multigrain Sun chips and a diet cola can between his fat thighs.

“Sorry,” began Vert, amid the carnage. Then to his student he said with a wink, “Over lunch.”

As much as medievalists may want to deny it, they do tend to resemble the objects of their fascination in several ways, though not all in the same way of course. In this instance however, both Vert and Hurt had heightened sense of Arthurian-age honors. John Hurt likened himself to Launcelot (pre-fall), and would defend the honor of the Church anywhere, Gilbert Vert enjoyed playing the role of antagonist knights who decorated large trees with the shields of fallen heroes.

Hurt wouldn’t have taken the bait in this instance, had it not been for his concern for the graduate student whom he had already taken great pains to assist and represent. When Vert made his comment, Hurt noticed a disguised look of pain on the face of his protégé. This, and no other reason really, was what caused him to descend from his usual highway to exchange blows with the giant bulldog in the alley.

“On my way out I couldn’t help overhearing,” he lied, “you mention an interesting pushback to something in the seminar.” But Vert was already moving towards the cafeteria, and Hurt’s inquisition was hardly enough friction to slow down that man’s inertia. Vert merely smiled and pecked his head sideways over and over as if he were a bad actor being yanked offstage by a cartoon shepherd’s crook as he walked to where he was headed and invited Hurt via an echoing shout,

“Over lunch!”

John Hurt had the distinct feeling that a trap was lying in wait for him, he initially resisted falling into it, but couldn’t help feel the prick of injury at the careless comment made by the actor towards his companion student. He reluctantly joined the catered line and sat with Mr. Vert. The private conversation which occurred between these two men was later made famous on a similar level to tabloid journalism. The petty squabbles which rise between two great men in the company of lesser knowns is often seen as an opportunity to topple dynasties and seats of power, and unfortunately this was one such occasion for it. What was actually said between them has been obscured by history, all that is remembered is an article published after the convention, published in Medievalist by a trouble-maker and particular young rival of Hurt’s. While it was a conversation between a Marxist and a Thomist: neither of these men argued under the pretext of philosophy. In a very short time the argument devolved heatedly to the rhetorical misusages of “what true Scotsmen would do” and “going against the man”:

“I doubt very much that if you climbed a mountain, Dr. Hurt, being the flatlander that you are—like Petrarch was—, and brought up with you Confessions and opened it to a random page, you would in your exhaustion and winded stupor encounter any kind of beatific revelation which would impact the world for ever after.”

“I at least am in a physical condition to attempt the climb,” Hurt rudely snapped back. “Or at least I could after some few weeks of preparation. But I’m sure from looking at you that you know everything about mountain climbing and what it is like to end an ascent.”

To record any more of this conversation would be uncharitable, and to give any more credit to the article published in Medievalist at that time would be gross. Man likes to record what other men do at their worst, and it is not in the interest of this story to do such an injustice to Dr. Hurt and Mr. Vert, who were in ordinary circumstances very much admirable and accomplished creatures. The truth is that conversations like this often happens at conventions, but the folks who have the most to lose by them are the ones who end up spotlighted afterwards. So it was that Dr. Hurt found himself yet again as the object of humiliation (despite having vowed decades ago that he would never put himself in the same position ever again) and Mr. Vert enjoyed the status of an antagonistic celebrity once again at someone else’s expense, and a little at his own.

It all might have ended there, with both men returning to their respective colleges and settling back into the schedule of teaching, advising, and writing (if there was any time), had it not been for the remarkable coincidence that both men decided to take sabbatical. Gossip among the intelligentsia was sure that it was due to the spring drama in Michigan, and it would not be untrue that at least John Hurt found it to be convenient that his sabbatical followed the event, but in all truth both had long been planning to take the semester to pursue their individual projects. Gilbert Vert had long been planning a trip to Colorado Springs to visit his daughter and son-in-law, and to get a good chunk of his new book written on the dramatic and aesthetic qualities of the Mass of Trent. John Hurt, having seen the dissertation of his protégé to its celebratory end, had been invited to lecture leisurely for a semester at the university just under a hundred miles north in Boulder.

Thus, with the events in May still fresh in the minds of both men, it portended a near disaster when they ran into each other again at the Shakespeare Festival in Boulder that August. Both men were seated comfortably near the stage for that year’s production of Macbeth. Hurt detested Shakespeare but had come to humor the friend who was staying with him, Esteban Squire, who focused on the development of Reformed Churches in Europe; he had his doctorate from Oxford, where Hurt first knew him. It had been a pleasant surprise to Hurt thus far that the production was not altogether unpleasant to him, as he was sensitive to what he considered overtly religious elements in Shakespeare which was unappealing to his quasi-secular interests. He even laughed during the bumbling Porter scene, and was very nearly ready to give in to Squire’s insistence that they visit a brewery after the show (a departure indeed from Hurt’s more puritanical sensibilities), when he felt such a laugh that overpowered his and Squire’s so much that he lurched forward from the flow of outburst from the unseen patron behind him. The reader fully knows who Dr. Hurt saw upon turning around.

At seeing Dr. Hurt again, this time in a very different element (which he felt was altogether more his than Hurt’s), Gilbert Vert felt a twitching need to establish some kind of territorial demonstration. He had not escaped the Kalamazoo exchange unsinged, and had been thoroughly tired of the jabs made at him back in his small town college where he was used to getting the best of everyone else. His large size, which had been thus far a benefit to him in nearly all situations—and which he could joke about as well as anyone else—had become now a sensitive area; and he had found the recent sabbatical a good time to recover and fall back in love with the physique which he had for many years championed. He decided that the best course of action would be to immediately address the elephant in the amphitheater, and called out with half-hearted spite,

“Here for the mountains, Hurt?”

While it is impossible to speak on behalf of the good souls in heaven who now enjoy fully the Beatific Vision which those in purgatory now pine for, if the titular bishop of Christmas saw the punch thrown by Dr. John Hurt, he would doubtless be unamused at the lack of charity which inspired it. Medievalist found a more worthy sequel to its original May article, and the cocks were at length ushered out of the pit with a good deal less plumage than when they entered. For Hurt, this was a second (recent) strike against him, and as consequence he enjoyed an unpleasant phone call with the president of his ivy who made it very clear that even tenures with a hundred publications behind them can be unfavorably negotiated. This private displeasure, however, was nothing compared to Vert’s. Vert had violated the sacred space, had peddled violence in God’s temple, and had committed the unforgivable sin of interrupting a dramatic performance. He left the festival for the first time its fool, and the faint anathematized corpse of his former self was quickly transported back to Colorado Springs. He hadn’t even been able to hear his favorite line, which was delivered eventually by a flustered and indignant Third Apparition:

“Be lion mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.”

At Dr. Squire’s home, a tactical treaty was first proposed between the two. Squire cared very much for his colleague, having owed much to Hurt for his position in Boulder, and so was determined to put things right as quickly as he could. He put his cleverness to good use, and over an order-in dinner that evening posed the question which would have long-reaching consequences that not even he, its inceptor, could fathom.

“You might both just climb one.” He said. The vagueness of his statement was intentional, as he desired to feel out the depth of the low-spirits of his companion. Hurt, of course, knew exactly what Squire referred to, but wanted time to answer smartly.

“One what?” Said Hurt, feigning ignorance, and only after a long while as if he had been deep in thought on something else.

“One mountain.”

Hurt’s outburst was now prepared, “Oh yes! And the Medievalist will be offered the means within a single year to a trilogy on a silver plate which will complete its descent into the demonic depths of tabloid journalism!”

Squire took the sarcasm in stride and attacked again. “How the story ends should be up to you. Now that you’re solidly in the public eye with Vert you can’t get out of it without a win. He’s got the best of you twice, not that he hasn’t been hurt by you, but—yes, yes please ignore the pun, and forgive the sports metaphor but— you’re sitting at “o” and “two” with the dugout in your peripheral. What you need is an out of the park grand slam for redemption.”

Hurt pouted at the base reference, Squire had a son who was just now in Little League and had always been more interested in athletics and physical exertion than he. Hurt had, once or twice over the summer gone to one of Squire’s coached games to support him and the preteen, despite being completely uninterested in the sport.

“I don’t know what any of that means.” Hurt lied.

“Don’t be so pretentious.” Squire quipped. “I’ll appeal to your Hegelian ideals if you insist, and remind you that spirit of history will never forgive the actionless man. If you were to climb the mountain, and take up the Confessions with you, you’d settle this stupid debate with Vert.”

“It’s a stupid idea.” Said Hurt curtly.

“It’s a romantic one. Something that a renaissance man like Petrarch might have had. Look, if you’re side of this whole thing is that Petrarch did scale it then you have to put your mouth where your money is and at least put the bet up to him.” Squire was waiting for the right time the spring the trap, and as he saw that his argument was slowly working down Hurt’s resistance, he gave the final riposte, “And it isn’t as if Vert could do it.”

“You’re damn right about that.” Hurt said, letting slide the innocent vulgarity which he was doing more easily now than usual. He found himself, in a way quite unlike himself, enjoying the idea of Vert panting behind him with sweat rolling down his fat cheeks and getting stuck between the folds of his double chin. But he still felt some resistance as he thought about his own slight frame and flat footedness.

“I don’t have any business climbing mountains, I don’t know anything about it. You’re the sportsman, not me. This would prove nothing except that neither of us are any good at climbing mountains.”

“That’s easy. I’ll guide you up one, not a fourteener either, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you. We’ll go for a starter mountain. Big enough to get you both up there with enough of a challenge to still make for an impressive victory.”

The rest of Hurt’s resistance that followed was less effectual than the Vendée and ended in the equal massacre of every counterpoint that he raised. Eventually he was convinced that, with Squire’s help, he would be able to end up on top of this debate; and he also saw how it was necessary to counteract all the negative publicity with some that would be decidedly positive. Squire found out where Vert was staying and called the house of his daughter and son-in-law, who answered for him, as he had remained in the family den writing furiously without break to try to forget the recent most unfortunate event of his life. To the surprise of all, however, Vert required no convincing. The romantic idea of climbing a mountain to prove a ridiculous academic conflict seemed to him a way to restore his dramatic honor, and he accepted the challenge without seriously thinking about the consequences.

Three weeks of preparation were all that it took to settle the exact mountain, date, and time for the ascent. Squire happily informed both of them, Vert through email of course, that mid-September was a perfect time for beginners to hike at high elevation in Colorado as most of the snows were melted and the weather was mildest. Vert had proposed two obvious and touristy choices, Pike and Evans, which had modes of transport going up and down the mountain in case of an emergency. These were discarded by Squire for two reasons. First, that a mountain of fourteen thousand feet was out of the question; second, that they faced the possibility of further ridicule by climbing a mountain that could simply be peaked by tram or car. With the two obvious peaks out of the way, the neophytes begrudgingly let the experienced hiker choose for them.

A decision was reached, and James Peak was set as their goal. It was a modest peak, a little over twelve thousand feet, but with a starting elevation closer to ten thousand. Squire assured them that a two-thousand-foot ascent and return was achievable even for their types in a morning, and that they would be able to comfortably eat an early dinner afterwards. So, at five o’clock in the morning, Hurt and Squire departed from their hotel in Denver and drove for forty minutes into the Rockies. They departed from the interstate at Empire, and after crossing the divide they mounted switchback after switchback until they reached the high-altitude community of St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s wraps itself around a glacial lake, named likewise, and offered some feed parking for hikers near the southside of the lake. Hurt and Squire waited for the better part of an hour for Vert, and were beginning to think that the ascent was not to happen until they finally saw his truck pull into a place in the lot opposite of theirs. With a half-sigh of relief, and with some anxiety about seeing his rival again, Hurt exited the passenger side of Squire’s car and went around to the trunk to summon the light pack that Squire had prepared for him. Once loaded, he finally turned around to see whether Vert had done likewise.

Vert stood six feet away from their car, the absolute picture of a comic Wagnerian hero clothed in a completely authentic full German Lederhosen, with feathered cap. It had been fitted for him, clearly, though he couldn’t help but resemble a gourd dressed for a table centerpiece at an Octoberfest. With an audacious grin, he held a single strap of a diminutive backpack behind him, containing some items of dubious use for the trip ahead. Had Hurt not hated him so, under circumstances where they were friends, this would have been a great joke and Hurt would have teased him cruelly. But Hurt, dressed in practical sweats and loaned material from Squire which bagged and rippled flaglike around his skeletal frame in the wind, was contented to think his counterpart ridiculous and said nothing. It took everything that Squire had in him not to laugh, and he instead hid his face by making busy with preparations.

Squire outlined the trek, noting that there were three parts to the ascent once they circumnavigated the lake. The hardest part was climbing the glacier, which was the only point of entry. St. Mary’s Glacier was a permanent geographical establishment, which gathered the stream tricklings further up the mountain and fed the lake at the base. After the glacier, they would hike up until they passed the tree-line, where they would deal with some exposure. Finally they would reach the final two-hundred-foot push up to the top, which was covered in a loose-boulder layer of scree, until they made it to the flattened summit. Having no idea what any of this meant, the two professors vigorously nodded their heads, and eagerly anticipated the coming opportunity to humiliate their respective rival.

There were no other hikers around the lake at this early point in the morning, and none who were ascending the glacier when the three men reached the base. Squire stopped at the edge of the snow and ice, and turned back around so that the two behind him could no longer see the large and well-packed bundle on his back.

“This is it,” He said. “I’m headed up to the top. If you’d like, you can come up with me.”

Done with the formalities, and filled with an adrenaline that neither of them had had since their youth, Vert and Hurt pushed past Squire eagerly and started to scramble up the chilly incline. So they left behind the Colorado pines and lake, and slowly dug their feet into the slush and snow and ice; sometimes making quick process, and at others sliding downwards a few feet. Both men quickly learned to angle their feet to the side as to avoid involuntary retreat, and they kept at it neck and neck, pure hatred and spite for each other making up for their quickly depleting stamina.

About halfway up the glacier they encountered a more difficult obstacle. A bitter wind funneled down into the cold ravine and cut up their noses and ears as if it were a flock of razor blades. Had Vert’s Bavarian character been named Rudolf it would have been a fitting picture for a Christmas card, his nose so brightly red that it did indeed seem to glow in the soft rising sunlight of dawn. But it was Hurt who had the worst of this trial. The wind was not strong enough to push him, but he was not strong enough to push through it, and he began to fall behind the other two as a result. It was all he could do to continue, the crown of his head leading the way as a sickly ox pulling too much share of a plow might. He looked down at his feet, half buried every other step in the crunching soup slop of half-ice half-earth, noting despite the numbing pain how the orange creep of the sky splintered reflectively off the parts that were snow in a way that seemed to him pleasant to look at. This glimmer of beauty seemed to recharge his soul more than his petulant anger at Vert, and inspired him to lift his head a little to note where his companions were now.

As he did, he saw Squire a good fifty feet ahead, but no sign of Vert. With a confused jerk, he attempted to look around, but instead slipped hard where he stood and nearly hit the ground. But he felt a slab of warm flesh tuck through his underarm, and he hung suspended temporarily until he found his footing. Vert stood shivering beside him, his exposed arms and legs red as a beet, with squinted eyes and a taught feather in his cap which was prepared at any time to launch into the wind.

“Can’t let you stop here.” He said. “Got to read Augustine with you when you’re wrong.”

Hurt half cursed and half blessed his companion for the unlikely deed. Feeling the need to say something equally witty, he managed to say back,

“Should’ve got myself one of those German kits. You seem pretty warm!”

“Freezing.” Vert said. And he released his rival to follow Squire, who by this time had stopped and pulled out some warmer coverings from his towering backpack which he had prodigiously packed in case either had come dressed lightly.

The rest of the ascent of the glacier passed without similar incident. Hurt looked back every now and then to see how far they had climbed, and was more and more impressed with the beauty of the landscape behind them. The silhouette of the firs cut a jagged line along the now yellow sky, and the lake below was a hot red mirror which rippled in constant pin-sized spots like white noise on a television, but softer. Vert pulled out some handwarmers which he had found buried in the bottom of his small pack, a thoughtful insert from his daughter while he slept the night previous, and had begun to think about how foolish he must seem to the other two men who seemed far more prepared than he.

As they reached the top of the glacier, the wind died immediately, and they felt as if they had broken through clouds in their flight upwards. Squire announced that they were a third of the way there, and rewarded them with a water break and some granola. They sat in a wide triangle. Hurt took his nourishment with thoughtfulness. That Vert had made it thus far, and was game to go farther, was indication to Hurt that he had maybe misjudged his companion. He himself was loathe to continue, he already felt aches in his small muscles and he secretly longed for Vert to show any sign of weakness so that they might turn back. But the stupid giant had more to him than Hurt bargained for, and he felt a twinge of resentment against Squire for roping him into this contract in the first place. He imagined what kind of article the Medievalist would publish about this, and at least in that prospect found some resolve to push forward.

Vert had no idea of Hurt’s new found esteem of him, finding it surprising himself that Hurt had been able to make it up the glacier given his slight frame and difficulty in the wind. The more he thought about Hurt the more he found he liked, and even shared in common with him. An old line that he had memorized when playing the Lance part sprung suddenly and incongruently to mind,

“O, 'tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself
in all companies! I would have, as one should say,
one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be,
as it were, a dog at all things.”

Why he thought of this ancient line he hardly knew. The only other one from Two Gentlemen that he could remember at the moment was a same scene line from Julia,

“Come, shadow, come and take this shadow up, For 'tis thy rival.”

“Yes,” he thought. “Julia’s is far more appropriate in this situation.” But the thin air and his exhaustion clouded his mind from better examining itself, and he was satisfied for the moment to leave the Bard behind. These thought’s conclusion coincided with Squire’s insistence that they continue up.

They passed the tree-line and came to a large boulder of volcanic rock which stuck up from the subarctic brush with the prominence that seemed to Hurt to resemble a middle finger and to Vert as a massive version from a rock collection kept by a girl he knew and liked as an undergraduate. The sun had thus far been out and shining, which warmed them all and made progress no more difficult than what the poor experience of Vert and Hurt naturally made it. But when they reached the rock (which Squire noted was technically the half-way mark, but decidedly not their next resting place), the sun became obscured by a sudden roll-in of clouds overhead. To the sore professors it seemed to portend rain, and they both suggested to their host the idea that they might be in some danger, but Squire knew things about the weather that they didn’t, and seemed not to be flustered at all.

“It’ll drizzle a bit.” He said. “Should clear up by the time we get to the scree.”

It did not clear up by the time they got to the scree. Instead a thick fog set in, thick enough to put real fears into Hurt that they might topple over some unseen precipice, and into Vert that they might be spoiled of the view at the top. Squire had them stop again at the base of the final ascent, congratulating both of them for having made it thus far. Squire’s own impressions of both men had also greatly altered, but that is of little consequence for this story. He left off his new found feelings of respect, and proceeded to scout a little further on the best way to navigate the boulder field which lay between them and the top.

Vert and Hurt spent their break standing at a nearby drop. A great gap in the fog had revealed three round and shockingly blue little lakes which fell for some hundred feet beneath them. An adolescent thought occurred to Hurt, which he tried to dismiss, but he felt that an immature joke could perhaps be appreciated by the immature creature to his right. So reaching down at his feet, he picked up a rock the size of his hand, hefted it until Vert saw what he was after, and tossed it down, while pursing his lips and whistling out lout in a cartoon manner until they heard the faint crack of the stone hit the side of the mountain and echo back up to them.

“Probably killed someone.” Vert cracked. But he couldn’t help chuckling as he said it, and realizing that he betrayed his own determination to dislike the Marxist-Hegelian, he turned and went to look for Squire.

The party reached the top by twelve-thirty in the morning, about an hour later than what Squire had anticipated to them. The scree-field had, pleasantly, not posed any insurmountable challenges to them, and as the two men strode to the bronze peak marker embedded in the high exposed rock, they neither of them could deny inwardly to himself that he felt a definite admiration for the other, who had seemed so hateful before. Vert thought that Hurt had gained some mass from the trip, and had a healthier tone of color in his face; Hurt thought that Vert seemed more reasonable, and had even shed a few pounds. They were so surprised by their lack of animosity towards each other, that they busied themselves with looking for gaps in the dense fog for unlikely views, and even made discussion with a few other hikers who were on the mountain top.

They had quite forgotten about Confessions until Squire brought it up. Then both men found again a still burning coal of hatred in his soul for the other, and solemnly each undid his own pack to pull out the book that each had agreed to carry his own copy of to the top. No real ceremony had been planned for this final part of the trip. They had agreed to each do exactly as Petrarch did, to open Augustine up to a random page, and then to have a scholar’s debate on it. Squire was supposed to be some sort of judge as to the outcome, but as he was a friend of Hurt’s Squire had agreed to record the dialogue so that Vert could appeal to a more neutral authority if no agreement could be reached then and there. Vert’s copy of Confessions was the old Bouverie translation, found in a nostalgic book shop in the tiny town he taught in that clung to life via the ballooning activity of the college. Hurt’s was a well annotated Oxford print. As each man dug to the bottom of his pack, they broke the silence with some verbal sparring, as if to warm up for the great duel to come.

“No view up here for you.” Said Hurt as he dipped his hand passed into a stuffed canvas pocket. “Nothing to think about but thought itself.”

“I expect you’ll find,” Responded Vert as he searched with one arm for his book, “Our tired minds are as cloudy as this peak.”

However, a terrifying suspicion had crossed both of their minds which prevented further jibes. First Hurt over-turned his backpack, allowing odds and ends of hiking necessity to tumble out over the rocks and some even down the side. Vert turned his inside out in vain, and each looked up at each other after some frantic searching to confirm silently the truth of what they had discovered on the mountain top.

“You both forgot it?” Said Squire incredulously. They had. Vert had thought to bring the hosen but forgot Confessions, Hurt had left his by the toilet the night before as he crammed to work an angle on the thirty odd passages he thought it likely that he would turn to.

A sudden cathartic release, such as what Hercules must have felt when he contrived for the waters Augeus and Peneus to flush the muck from the Augean stables were felt by the three men. They were all so tired, that the situation had ceased to have the same solemnity that they had all given it, and it was all now quite apparently ridiculous to them. Had any nearby hikers wondered how to find the peak through the fog, they merely had to follow the deep belly-laughs which echoed around the jagged rise.

All hikers will tell you that the journey down is far more pleasurable than up. In no time at all they traversed the scree and dipped down below the tree-line, until at last they came to the top of St. Mary’s Glacier again. Here they found that a great crowd had gathered, some were skiing down the icy slope, others were sledding down. The professors, having been in good humor the entire way down to here, even took turns with an abandoned sled, going down only so much as they felt prudent for sages of their age, until a young undergraduate student called from a hundred feet out whom Squire thought he recognized. Then, with affected gravitas, they tossed the sled aside and hurried down the rest of the slope as quickly as they could to avoid the embarrassment of recognition in an environment wholly unlike what they had spent years cultivating to give contrary impression. They could not help chortling as they did so, and anyone nearby would never have thought that these were distinguished tenured chairs but might have mistaken them for mischievous grandfathers.

When the last boot touched warm earth again, they all agreed that the best remedy for their burning feet could be found in the glacial lake. Each man pulled off boots one at a time, followed by socks, emitting a pleasurable groan as one does. For a good half-hour they sat there, joking and conversing with minnows darting about their blistered toes. It was at length agreed upon that they should all share dinner, and Squire proposed a brewery halfway to Denver in Idaho Springs. Hurt forgot in the merriment about his teetotaler platform, and managed to become quite drunk, as the high elevation and lack of experience afforded him cheaply and quickly. Vert however satisfied himself with only a few draughts and three cigarettes and spent the rest of the evening arguing with Hurt about whether the Eastern or Latin church held the correct position on the tradition of the sanctification of Pontius Pilate. Squire recorded the whole thing, and Medievalist published it.

What Squire noticed while he recorded the brilliant nonsense of the other two was the faded heraldic symbols which was the brand of the establishment named after James Peak. On a white shield, a green chevron, inverted, and under it, a blue circle, or rondel: so as to look like James Peak and St. Mary’s Lake below. Recalling faintly a class from his graduate days where the professor indulged the rest of them with a tangent on medieval heraldry, he proceeded to write in his mind the heraldic script which formally described the crest, remembering the Anglo name for the blue rondel and the French for green:

“Argent, a vert chevron and hurt rondel.”