The Ascent(61)

“Grab the next one!”

“It’s too far!”

“Tim,” Andrew interrupted, “swing out and grab the next cam. You can do it. It’s not too far.”

“It’s too far!” I cried. My feet suddenly felt like they weighed fifty pounds each.

“It’s not!” Petras added. “You can do it! It’s just an arm’s length away.”

I strained, trying to reach past the broken cam to the next one in line. It was too damn far. An impossibility. The only possible way would be to start a momentum, to swing out and grab it. But if I missed, the strain on my other arm would be too much. I’d surely suffer the same fate as Curtis.

“Stop! Wait! Don’t f*cking move, Shakes! Don’t f*cking move!” Chad hooked himself up to a fresh line, intent on climbing out toward me with a safe line he had looped around his shoulder. “I’m coming! Hang on!”

“Too … dangerous,” I called, but I doubt anyone heard me. My voice was no louder than a child’s sob. And my goddamn feet were weighing me down. I closed my eyes and thought of the comic books I used to read as a kid, the ones with Plastic Man who could stretch to preternatural lengths.

“Tim—”

When I opened my eyes, I saw Chad hanging from beneath the stone arch facing me, no more than four feet away. He hung from one camming device while harnessed to a series of ropes. He shook the wound safe line off his shoulder, down his arm, and into his hand.

“Here,” he said. “You gotta f*ckin’ catch this, dude.”

“I’m … a horrible … shortstop,” I responded.

Chad actually chuckled, and had we been on solid land I would have wrapped my arms around him and kissed him right on the goddamn lips.

“You’re a wiseass, Shakes,” he said and tossed the rope.

I didn’t so much as catch it as it got tangled around my arm. Nonetheless, I snatched it, worked it through the karabiners, and cinched it at my waist. The strain in my other hand from hanging from the spring-loaded camming device was causing numbness throughout my whole arm.

“Let go,” Chad said.

“No, man. Let me … reach for the … the goddamn …”

“Just f*cking let go, Shakes. The rope’ll hold.”

“I think I can—”

“Do it!”

I closed my eyes and let go. My stomach lurched as I felt myself drop and swing in an arc at the end of Chad’s line. I couldn’t tell when I stopped swinging, and I wouldn’t open my eyes. I wouldn’t.

The line strained, sounding like someone twisting a leather wallet in big hands. Open your f*cking eyes, coward, I thought and opened my eyes. I was turned on my side, twisting horizontally in midair, as the safe line held me suspended over the abyss.

“You’re still alive,” Chad said.

“I’m gonna puke.”

“Climb up.”

I was beginning to hyperventilate. My exhalations burned my throat. Suddenly I was positive I was going to die out here. But unlike that day in the cave, lying in the dark with my bone jutting from my leg, I did not want to die. You might have come out here not caring whether you lived or died, a small voice spoke up in my head, but you care now, and you’re not going to die. Do you hear me, Overleigh? You’re not going to die.

I rolled over and gripped the safe line. A single tug sent me vertical. Hand over hand, I climbed up until the bottoms of Chad’s boots thumped against my helmet. I climbed higher, so intent on Chad’s pant legs I could make out the individual fibers woven together in the fabric. When I’d climbed high enough, Chad grabbed my shoulder.

Petras shouted something incomprehensible. He could have been shouting from another planet, for all it mattered to me.

“Up, up,” Chad urged. He was running out of breath. “Grab onto me if you have to. Just climb up and grab the cam above your head. Come on, Shakes. You can do it.”

Somehow I managed to do it. Using Chad’s body for extra support, I climbed the rope until I was able to hook back into the network of cams that ran the length of the arch. I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet, and I had serious doubts as to what strength remained in me to climb the rest of the way, but the outcome was suddenly looking much better.

“All right,” Chad mumbled, his voice nearly a gasp. He seized the next cam with his free hand. “Not bad for a lousy artist.”

“Move … your … ass,” I said. “In … my way.”

“Let’s go, fireball.”

It seemed to take an eternity to make it across. I hadn’t come down from the final cam before Petras and Hollinger dragged me onto the ledge. Solid ground never felt so good. I staggered a few feet, brushing off all the hands that were eager to hold me up, until I dropped to my knees and vomited in the snow.

4



PETRAS WAITED TILL AROUND MIDNIGHT BEFORE

going back for the rest of Curtis’s gear. After what happened crossing the arch, there was nothing left in us to continue, so we built camp against the mountain and lit a fire. The wind came moaning through the canyon, so cold it could fillet the skin off our bones.

Petras bundled up in extra layers and trekked to the arch to collect Curtis’s pack and the extra line that still flapped in the wind. Twenty minutes later, he returned in utter silence, Curtis’s pack over one of his broad shoulders, the broken line wound around the other. He set the items at the farthest corner of our cramped little tent, then sat down heavily, exhaling a sigh that shook the tent fabric.