Читать книгу Jairus's Daughter - Patti Rutka - Страница 8

Eldorado Canyon, outside Boulder, Colorado, spring 2008

“Falling!”

Anna watched her fingers loosen one by one. She grimaced, but fear had no time to bloom. Peeling off the granite rock face she noticed the delicate quality of the warm air rushing past her skin. Falling was a rare and perversely delicious moment of complete letting go to space and gravity. Her body’s pull swung her out on the rope as she sailed soundlessly through the air before meeting the harness, which yanked at her waist.

Dangling in the air one hundred eighty feet off the ground, she groaned and looked around. The iron warm taste of blood dripped over her upper lip onto her tongue.

“You okay?” came a faint, disembodied shout from her partner at the other end of the rope up above an overhanging portion of rock.

Anna didn’t answer. Problem one: she was inverted and twisted. It wasn’t good. After four minutes blood flow would begin to decrease to her head, then she would pass out. The other problem was her head gash. Off her harness hung several pieces of metal called protection, used for placement in small cracks in the rock. One of these pieces had hit her in the forehead when she fell. Sweat mingled with the blood and began to tickle her nose.

She looked up and noticed the hot blue sky gathering pillows of darkening clouds. El Dorado Canyon outside of Boulder, Colorado, was famous for its late summer afternoon thunderstorms, and it looked like today would follow the pattern. A few gloppy drops began spattering.

Anna flexed her forearms, then her hands and fingers, which were bound in protective athletic tape so she could jam her hands into cracks in the rock, gain more friction, and not tear up her skin. She contemplated the possibility that the rope was jammed in a crack above her head about twenty feet up. Because her body weight was hanging on the rope, she knew she could pull on it to right herself, but she also risked dislodging the rope enough so that she would jerk down another several feet. That friction was bad: it could sever the rope. But she had to do something, and soon, because it was getting harder to raise her chest to breathe and she didn’t want to be light-headed as she attempted to climb again the portion of the rock off which she had just fallen.

She reached up for the multicolored ten-and-a-half-millimeter rope made of the stuff that went into plastic bags and car bumpers and prayed she was making the right move. Her biceps flexed and she splayed her feet out on the rock beneath her. The rope held; she got a purchase with a fairly good foothold underneath her.

Lightning cracked in the distance. Anna counted under her breath, each five seconds representing a mile between the center of the storm and her. Two miles away. There was no chance now of hearing her partner above her until after the storm stopped. She would need to be able to hear her partner confirm the short command of her “up rope!” as she climbed, but if the rope jammed farther above and her partner could not hear her, then the rope would not ascend and stay taut on her harness. Her spine curved uncomfortably as she settled into the awkward stance on the small foot ledge she had found. The bulk of the storm would have to pass. As she waited under the small overhang above her, she closed her eyes to let the warm rain mingle with the blood from her head and run in streamlets down her sweat-soaked body. When she opened her eyes a moment later, she realized there was rain-melted pigeon crap from the crack above coming down. Her stomach heaved.

“I do this because . . . why?” she muttered to herself.

But she knew the answer that was wedged into a deep inarticulate place inside her like a hidden treasure: the rock never changed. That is, almost never; on rare occasions there could be some shifting and slight rock fall, or a loose hold, but it was rare. The rock was an intimate and private place that held her trust. She climbed because she placed her faith in rock, trusted that it had been there for a very long time and would continue to be there for a longer time after she was gone. She cringed when she saw roads blasted through rock ledges on highways that had been put through mountains, but here, in the protected wilderness areas, the rock was pristine and untouched, except for the climbers who had gone before her.

Most rock felt good under her hands. Granite was best, because of the friction it provided, as well as its solidity; mica schist and basalt tended to be a little more slick, and hardened volcanic ash, such as at Smith Rock in Oregon, would tear at a climber’s fingertips after a single day, leaving raw skin. Exploring a rock’s surface was, she imagined, like a blind person exploring the features on a person’s face. She could know the rock, and the rock was solid; it was simply there, acknowledging her silent probing. She supposed answers came to her questioning hands in their own time, more likely when she was off the rock rather than on it, and she rested in that knowledge.

The rain began to lighten and she wiped her face on her shoulder. She looked up again, worried about getting the pigeon junk in her eyes. Uncertain if the rope was jammed or not, she wavered in her decision to climb again. She had fallen only because she had ignored the flaming pain in her forearms, simply wanting to get this particular climb over; it wasn’t that the climb was beyond her ability. In fact, she could have led it, so that she would have been at the top now instead of her partner. They had decided to try it despite the known weather hazard, but he owed her one on account of the pigeons.

She climbed a few feet. The rope did not rise with her, remaining slack at her waist. Nervous at this development, because another fall with slack rope this time would hurt a lot more than a fall with a rope tight on her, she yelled “Up rope!” at the top of her lungs. The rope didn’t answer.

“Up rope! Up rope!” Still nothing. She would have to climb another foot, try to dislodge the jam.

She found another small ledge for her feet and stacked them side by side, then yanked on the rope for all she was worth. Blessedly, it came loose. Her partner was awake at the other end and hauled it up until it was snug again at her harness. She shook out her arms, dipped her hand into the chalk bag at the back of her waist, then realized in dismay that she had left it open during the rain storm so that the chalk had gummed up and was now useless. The rock was wet anyway, she realized, and she would just have to make do. Wending her way through the cracks, using each fissure to her balance and leverage advantage, she snaked up the rock. Her focus distilled as she blocked out all other sensory input to complete the harder section near the top.

Her forearms were on the edge again for lactic acid build-up, but now she calculated how much strength she had left and decided to make the final lunge for the top. Her fingers grabbed a nub, she worked her feet onto a good hold, then proceeded to put to shame a Barbie doll’s flexibility as she pulled up and over the top of the climb like she was getting out of a swimming pool.

Jonathan, looking like a bedraggled rat, his legs braced against the ground, widened his eyes at the blood, then smiled at her when he realized her flying accusations were sign enough she was okay.

“How’d you like that finish?” he said.

“Just ducky. I had pigeon poop dripping in my face. And the rope was jammed.”

“Yeah, I figured. I kept tugging and tugging after you fell and you just weren’t moving for the longest time, so I figured there was a jam. Guess you undid it, huh? Good thing. I’d trade you the pigeon poop for being a lightning rod up here.”

She smirked at him, then rubbed her forefinger and thumb together. “World’s tiniest violin.”

“Good climb, but it would have been a lot better if it had been dry,” he offered.

She just shook her head. They began coiling the rope and organizing the metal gear pieces before hiking out for the last day of their vacation before the drive home to Wisconsin across the Badlands.