by Jan Redford
“Rik!” I called again.
The rope went slack. He’d found another anchor. “Rap down slowly!” His voice was faint.
With the rope through my rappel device, I lowered my weight onto the piton. I started to descend into the night, cringing as the rope ran in quick jerks, putting more strain on the anchor. My jumars and etriers dangled from my harness, clanging against the rock, the only sound except for my breathing as I took short, quick sips of air.
“Be careful. I barely made it to the anchor.” Rik appeared in the moonlight just below me and off to the right, still several feet away. Relieved to see him, I descended faster.
“Watch your brake hand! You’re going to run out of rope! STOP! NOW!”
As the words ripped from his mouth, I felt the tape that marked the ends of the rope and instinctively squeezed before the last bit of nylon could slip through my rappel device. Three inches. That was all that stood between me and the paper bags of shit at the base that climbers jettisoned during their multi-day climbs. If Rik hadn’t shouted at that moment, I would have rappelled right off the end of the rope.
I hung, over five hundred feet up the wall, paralyzed. I didn’t weigh enough for the rope to stretch those extra few feet to the anchor.
“Rik, what do I do?” To keep from crying, I clenched my teeth.
“Just don’t move. Don’t let go. I’ll get to you.” I could hear him unclip from the anchor but didn’t dare move my head. By the time he rigged up a sling and hauled me over to him, I was shaking like an epileptic.
“It’s okay. We have a good anchor now.” He clipped me into two bolts and I slid my back down the wall to sit on the ledge. My feet dangled into nothingness. Rik sat and put his arm around me but I couldn’t calm my body, couldn’t stop the tears.
“I’m so sorry. We’ll get down. I promise.” He unclipped his water bottle from his harness and passed it to me. I gulped it down. Terror had sucked up the last of my saliva. “The guys should be here soon, but I think we can get down another pitch.”
“I don’t think I can move.”
“It’s okay. We’ll take our time.”
We watched headlights creep along below us on the road. One of the cars was in dire need of a new muffler, just like my own, and out of the blue, homesickness exploded in my chest. I wanted to go home but I couldn’t even narrow “home” down to an address. Home was Canada. Home was my car. The most stable thing in my life was a rusted-out Dodge Dart.
Rik eventually broke the silence. “Can I ask you something?” His voice was strained.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just want to know something.” He paused. “Why Gary?”
His dark eyes shone and his mouth twisted under his beard. Shame burned through me, like I’d been caught screwing around.
I cleared my throat. My mouth was so dry. “I don’t know. It just happened.”
It just happened. Like everything else in my life. Like hanging off El Cap without a rope, waiting to be rescued.
Rik removed his arm from around my shoulders. A shiver coursed through me as I lost his body heat. “I thought you didn’t want a boyfriend.”
“I didn’t think I did.”
“Gary is almost old enough to be your father.”
“I know.”
“He just separated from his wife.”
“I know, I know.”
Gary was seventeen years older than me but he seemed young for his age. Playful. Just the other day he’d said, “I bet I can bench-press you,” and got me to put on my harness so he’d have something to grab on to when he lay on his back and hoisted me into the air like I was a barbell. Rik would have had no trouble doing the same thing—I’d watched him do endless pull-ups—but the thought wouldn’t have even occurred to him.
“I don’t get it,” Rik said.
Had I been leading Rik on? My friends seemed to think so. After I crawled out of Gary’s tent that first night, Janet, one of our Canadian contingent, said, “What about Rik?” and I said, “What about Rik? He knows we’re just friends.”
“You’ve been flirting with him.”
“I do that with everyone. That’s just my way,” I joked.
“It’s not a very good way.”
Niccy hadn’t said anything, but Doc, a friend I’d met at NOLS, had defended me in his North Carolina drawl, “She doesn’t do that with me.”
“You’re not hardcore enough,” Janet told him.
Was I really that shallow? But I couldn’t go out with a guy just because he wanted me to, though it was probably as valid a reason as going out with a guy because he could bench-press me.
While I searched for the right words, Rik said, softly, “They’re here,” as though the zombies had found our hiding spot.
I leaned out and looked over the edge. The blackness below was punctuated by a procession of headlamps bobbing through the trees. I wanted to dance on the ledge and yodel, partly because I knew we’d survive the night, and partly because I wouldn’t have to continue our conversation.
“Thank God. I could use a beer. Even gutless American beer.”
“Don’t get too excited. It’ll take them a couple of hours to climb high enough to shoot us another rope. Hopefully they’ve brought the rope gun with them.” Rik stood up. “I’ll head down and find another anchor.”
Suddenly a blast of white light pinned us to the rock. When my eyes adjusted, I saw two huge spotlights tilted up toward us from the ground; half a dozen bodies fluttered around them like moths.
“Hey, Rik! What the fuck you doing up there?” someone hollered.
“Rik, you moron! Is this whatcha gotta do to get a date with a chick?”
Rik turned his back to the taunts and set up to rappel while I yelled down, “You assholes sure took your time! We’re freezing our nuts off up here!”
He leaned out from the rock and started to descend.
* * *
—
At two in the morning we walked through a quiet Camp 4. Neither of us spoke. Most of the tents were dark, but the occasional fire still crackled in a campsite, with climbers huddled around in pile jackets and down vests, passing joints and sipping beer. There was no sign of life in the sagging tent I shared with Niccy, nor in Gary’s big yellow dome beside it. Rik and I said goodnight and he turned to leave, paused, then came back and gave me a hug.
“Sorry ’bout the fuck-up.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” I punched his arm. “At least now I can say I’ve been rescued off El Cap.”
“You did good up there.”
“No, I didn’t. I was scared.”
“You were brave.”
I waited till he faded into the night, then knelt in front of Gary’s tent and unzipped the door.
4
SPEED RUTS
She was a fast machine…
Bellowing out AC/DC, I stepped hard on the copy of Shōgun I’d duct-taped to my gas pedal. Because I had to sit on a pillow to see over the dash, it was the only way I could reach it with my foot. This was my second Dodge Dart, a green ’73 I’d bought for five hundred dollars after a bunch of kids took my first Dart for a joy ride in Calgary. They’d left it wrapped around a telephone pole and took off.
You shook me all night long…
The highway, a shimmering black line, led straight into the white-tipped Rocky Mountains, and beyond that, another ten hours from here, my tree-planting camp in the bush outside Hope. The lights of Calgary faded in my rear-view mirror. I was still jet-lagged from the flight from Indonesia, but it felt so good to drive after spending seven months in the passenger seat on the other side of the world.
A year and a half earlier, I’d parted ways with Gary in Yosemite, come back to Calgary, and started climbing frozen waterfalls with Jim, a Scottish climber. When he was offered a job as a geologist in Jakarta he invited me along. Accepting that invitation had not been my smartest move. We’d already failed the compatibility test during a road trip to Yosemite, where I discovered
he was prone to fits of car-punching rage. But as usual, I was broke, homeless, in love, and looking for a new adventure. And who could turn down an all-expenses-paid trip to Asia?
Not once had I dared drive in Jakarta’s traffic, which was left-sided and terrifyingly unpredictable with its spontaneous lane reversals. Either our driver, Siyarifudin, or Jim had done all the driving. Of all the expat women I met, Australian, British, American, German, not one drove a car: not to the Western-style supermarket, the high-end shopping mall, the tennis courts, the Hilton for lunch, or their kids’ international school. We all had drivers.
The flat prairie gave way to the dips and rolls and curves of the foothills, and off to my right, the grey fin of Yamnuska pushed up from the earth: a crumbling mountain of limestone where I’d spent hours climbing in various states of exhilaration and terror. I was itching to get on the rock again, to move my body, find my muscles, bloody up my hands, get grubby, smelly and tired. To breathe fresh, clean, Canadian air instead of thick, mucus-coloured Indonesian smog.
I steered past Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise, past tree after tree, lake after lake, mountain after mountain, and had them almost exclusively to myself. This was what I missed the most. The wilderness, the space. Jakarta had been like a stirred-up anthill teeming with eight million bodies.
Down the long hill into the Yoho Valley, toward the Kicking Horse River and the tiny railway town of Field. Water seeped out of the mountains that soared on either side of the highway. Last winter, before Jakarta, Jim and I had ice-climbed routes here named after beer: Extra Light, Cool Spring, Massey’s. That was in the first few months of our relationship, when we still got along.
The winding hairpin turns of Kicking Horse Canyon kept me edgy and alert, but by the time I hit the drab strip of gas stations and restaurants of Golden, drowsiness had set in. I was still hours away from Hope. It looked like I’d be trying to find our camp in the dark. I opened my window and breathed in the wood smoke, then pulled out my tin of Copenhagen and tucked a pinch into my lower lip. That perked me right up.
Seven months without chewing tobacco. I’d visited tobacco shops in England, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Jakarta asking for snuff. No one knew what I was talking about, and my charades-like explanation had them looking at me the way I looked at the lepers and limbless children squatting on the streets. Jim had finally begged me to stop. One of the first things I did when I got home was buy a tin.
Revelstoke, Salmon Arm, Kamloops. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in each town I went through. I needed to settle somewhere, find a home and a real job. Jim had given me some money to get on my feet again, but I’d spent most of it on a tent, a rope and some climbing gear. Fortunately I had a job for the next two months with the tree-planting company I’d worked for last season, so I’d soon be making my own money again.
I reached Hope just before dark. The mountains here reminded me of Indonesia. Green, tropical bumps—soft compared to the Rockies. I found the turnoff to the logging road and followed a creek of raging white foam that spilled off the mountain like an upside-down geyser.
At a fork in the road, I stopped to dig out my map to the camp—pencil scrawls on the back of a paper bag. I’d been tipsy when my boss, Troy, gave me directions over the phone. Now I could barely read them, but there was definitely no mention of a fork in the road.
Eeny meeny miney moe. My finger landed on the road to the right.
Jakarta was, to date, the blackest period in my twenty-three years. Dumping me into a professional, wealthy, clean, middle-aged expat community was like plucking Tarzan from the jungle and dumping him in New York City. To fit in as a kept woman, I’d shaved my legs and armpits, then spent the next few months drinking gin and tonic, gaining fifteen pounds, and waiting for our sea freight with my climbing gear to be released so I could get the hell out of there. I often stayed in bed all day, making hysterical calls to Jim’s office from our townhouse compound where Indonesian men ogled me through the barbed-wire fence whenever I hung out by the pool. As soon as I’d gotten my hands on my climbing gear and secured a job tree planting, I booked my flight back to Canada, hauling packs and duffles back with me on the plane.
It was completely dark when the car dropped into a ditch that sliced across the road. I could sense but not see the thick trees to my left, the steep ravine to the right. My Dart crawled out the other side, tires spinning. I drove on, bouncing through rut after rut, stopping a few times to stare at the map. There was supposed to be a turnoff.
When I plunged into the deepest rut yet, I heard a familiar metal-on-rock screech from under the car, then a roar worthy of a Harley. Churning up gravel and dirt, the car barely crawled out the other side.
“Shit!” With my headlamp and the work gloves I kept handy for this purpose, I slid under the car, lifted the muffler out of the dirt, slipped it back into the exhaust pipe, and tightened the wire that held it in place.
At the next rut the muffler dropped off again, so this time I pulled the hunk of rust from under the car, tossed it onto the back seat and carried on.
I stopped when I heard gushing water, got out and looked down at a stream raging across the road. This could not be the way. I took a closer look at the ruts, saw evidence of a backhoe, and it finally dawned on me: the ditches were here for a reason. To decommission the road.
The way behind me looked like a black hole, and backing up was not my forte. But turning around would be a bitch too. The road was only a single lane, with a ravine to the right, a stream in front of me, and trees forming a wall to the left.
My bones went soft and I slumped against the car. A yearning for Jim coursed through me. I wanted him and our driver to come rescue me in our Jeep. Siyarifudin would have been so shocked to see a white woman out in the bush alone like this. He’d shadowed me everywhere I went, up and down streets as I shopped, and especially when I took photos at the sprawling cardboard ghetto across from the Western-style supermarket. He’d said over and over, “Not safe for you on your own here, missus.”
Not safe. But Jim had been able to go anywhere, any time. The crowds had parted for him like the Red Sea. Groups of school boys hadn’t come up to him saying, “You wanna fucky fucky?” White men were gods in Jakarta; Indonesian men came next, then white married women. Unmarried fornicators like me placed somewhere with Indonesian women near the bottom. I’d like to have seen the expats’ faces if they’d known my little trip to Singapore a couple of months after we arrived hadn’t been a shopping trip.
Siyarifudin must have suspected. I’d thrown up in a bag all the way to the airport and he’d kept asking, “Why Mr. Jim not coming?” In the airport I passed out going through customs and woke up with a bunch of Indonesians arguing around me. Then I threw up the whole flight to Singapore. Jim arrived at the hospital the next day, just before they wheeled me away. In the middle of a huge operating room, as cold as a meat locker, I’d waited, my feet up in stirrups, alone except for a worker who mopped the floor around me. That’s all I remembered. That’s all I wanted to remember.
I pulled out my tin of Copenhagen and tucked some tobacco in my lip. My courage in a can. My handy-dandy man repellent. I spat out a long stream of tobacco. Clint Eastwood could hit a lizard from a couple of yards away. I was lucky to miss my feet.
“Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.” My voice sounded loud in the silent forest. One of my planting friends, Shelly, used to say, “Don’t fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.” I was going to take her advice. Maybe become a nun.
I climbed into the car, backed up to the widest section, cranked the wheel, inched toward the trees till I felt the car dip, reversed, then crept backwards again. I couldn’t see through the rear window, couldn’t see the edge of the ravine, so I only went a couple feet at a time. By the time I was turned around and pointing downhill, I’d done at least an eighteen-point turn.
Going downhill gave me momentum through the ruts, and I had more clearance without the muffler. I dro
ve too fast, every once in a while pounding on my steering wheel yelling, Stupid, stupid, stupid! Normal people would have figured it out by the second rut, but no, not me.
When I finally got to the fork, I turned up the left-hand branch this time, onto a smooth, well-maintained but narrow gravel road. As I rounded a steep bend, the high beams of a pickup truck suddenly blasted me and I slammed on the brakes. We both sat there. It was a standoff. One of us was going to have to back up and it sure as hell was not going to be me.
The doors to the truck opened and two men stepped out. I froze for a moment, then slammed my lock down, slid across the seat to lock the passenger side door and back doors, then peered through the windshield at the men walking toward me.
I let out a yelp, unlocked my door and jumped out. “Brad! Troy! You guys scared the shit out of me!”
“We were starting to get worried about you. Thought you might need rescuing.”
“Yeah right, do I look like I need rescuing?”
Troy smiled beneath his blond handlebar moustache. He was the owner of the outfit. Last year, he’d hit on a few women until one of the rookies moved into his trailer. She’d looked miserable for the rest of the season.
We hugged, but I kept it brief, so he’d know right away not to bother. He was over thirty, and I was done with old guys. The older they were the bossier they were. Jim had been only eight years older than me but due to his receding hairline, the Indonesians had thought he was my father. It had been an improvement over the seventeen years between me and my Alaskan guide, but if I ever looked at a man again, it would be one closer to my age.
Brad gave me a drawn-out hug and said, “Wow, you look great.”
It was dark. He couldn’t see the extra fifteen pounds. He’d figure it out tomorrow.
I hadn’t gotten to know Brad too well the year before. He was cute, but in a friend’s-little-brother kind of way. He was a serious kayaker, so whenever we had time off he’d be on a river somewhere and I’d be climbing. I did know he and Shelly were a tree-planting couple, and at the end of the season he would go back home to Fernie to his girlfriend, Becca. She’d visited once, unannounced, and everyone in the cook shack had watched them sit awkwardly together at one of the picnic tables, while Shelly ate at another. Brad had looked extremely sheepish, but it had made for good camp gossip.
