Rock, Paper, Fire

by Marni Jackson

  There was something wrong with Ralph. The laugh got sharper. He screeched like a crow. Olaf’s arms started to shake, air rippling through his chest.

  Olaf was not going to laugh.

  Ralph’s arms were going to loosen. Laughter slackened his muscles.

  “Keep going,” Knut shouted to them from somewhere above.

  “I can’t. It’s not me,” Olaf said. “Ralph stopped. It’s not me.”

  Ralph had swung to the side of the ladder so Olaf could pass. Ralph was giggling quietly now. His feet were jammed tight together and he was hanging on with one arm. His body swayed out like a cupboard door.

  Olaf clawed his fingers around the ladder’s rungs, one hand over the next until he was sharing a rung with Ralph. He could keep only one boot on the ladder, tucking the other as close to the rung as possible. His left hand began to spasm. Just a few feet above, the ladder straightened and their ascent would become easier. Olaf opened his mouth to explain, but something about Ralph’s laugh made him stop. He wanted to climb away from it.

  “Wait here,” Olaf said. “Wait and we’ll get you on the way down.”

  He climbed ahead. Looking down, he saw that Ralph was gripping the ladder again with both hands. Olaf felt lighter. The laugh coming out of Ralph faded.

  Olaf was stepping into the sky. The half-moon lit the edges of the surrounding clouds. Beside him a seagull rolled on the air.

  He curved around the tank where the ladder straightened, his arms reaching ahead to find the rungs. When he got his grip, he had to let both feet hang out free before he could swing them back onto the ladder as he pulled himself up. His sweating palms squeaked on the metal. He climbed another eighty feet. A cobweb caught his cheek.

  In the last stretch of the climb, the ladder narrowed, the rungs not rounded but flat. Their edges dug into his palms. Bits of rust stuck to his hands, flaked into his eyes. He tried to keep climbing with his eyelids clamped shut, but the surge tank started to tip.

  The ladder seemed too narrow for a man. Olaf wondered who had to climb up here and why. A seagull swooped and cawed. Olaf waved at the too-close flap of its wings.

  Above him the other boys had reached the top. Olaf couldn’t hear Ralph at all.

  He grabbed the last rung, swung himself up and folded his body over the edge of the roof, his arms dipping into shallow, stagnant water.

  The other boys watched him, Joel’s face as white as the tank.

  Three hundred feet. Olaf stood up.

  The roof of the surge tank was flat and white and the boys scattered like five peas on a plate. Rain had pooled on the surface. The boys all kicked at it—small explosions of water. They whacked their boots into the metal to hear it clang.

  Ralph would feel that from far below.

  The wind answered. It sounded different than it had on the ladder, low and hollow, it didn’t thud against the roof but whipped and whined across the surface as it tried to slide the boys right off.

  Olaf leaned into this wall of wind pushing at his chest. Gusts fattened his jacket. He couldn’t believe he was up here, a hundred feet taller than Ralph.

  There were dead birds. A seagull, dark grey and rotting, its wings splayed out in a puddle. The feathers shimmied slightly as wind raked the water. And smaller birds, a blackbird, and what he thought were chickadees, although it was hard to tell in the dark. Their bodies were clumps. They reminded him of the mice trapped in the cookhouse, the cook walking to the woods with a dustpan full of eyeless tufts of fur. Did the birds fly here to die? Or was there something on the roof that killed them?

  Olaf looked across the water at the lumps of islands, darker black than the black of the sky, each island rimmed in purple. He was higher than any tree. His father had never been this high.

  The boys airplaned past him, arms stretching into wings, their lips whirring the buzz of a high-pitched motor. Raven One, they shouted, come in Raven One.

  Olaf curved his hands into imaginary binoculars and scouted the landscape for signs of enemy invasion. Up the coast the electric glow of the Powell River mill cast an eerie light that was as yellow as the stink of sulphur. It lit the smoke pouring into the sky in four iridescent columns. Right now men wearing masks were scurrying inside that box. He could reach over and pluck it from the ground.

  He turned to the south. A mile down the coast the moon caught the powerhouse’s grey roof. That would be a good place for his air force to land. He signalled and pointed it out to the older boys who were busy chasing each other and howling at the moon like coyotes.

  From up here Olaf couldn’t see more of that powerhouse than the roof, but he knew the entire front of the building had been painted like a huge picture to match the shore and trees, camouflage against attack. A warship could pass by and never know it was there. Every day the powerhouse greeted the ocean with this false face.

  Karl started shouting cuss words upward into the wind and the other boys tried to be even louder. Ingmar balanced near the edge and spat over it. He said his spit smacked Ralph right on the head, and they all knew it didn’t.

  But if the Japs attacked now, Olaf could watch the planes swoop down and the incendiary bombs fall. The vibrations would rattle the surge tank and shake Ralph off the ladder.

  The Japs wouldn’t bomb the ocean, he knew, they’d bomb the mill. And the camps. Olaf spun around and beeped his own made-up signal of Morse code. Tin Hat Mountain stretched out behind him. The mountain was a black mass, something inked out.

  He imagined his mother and sister alone in the wooden house. They were sitting by the stove and worrying about where Olaf had gone. Across the table they passed his name back and forth. What I’m going to do to that boy, his mother said. She couldn’t see him, way up here. Greta couldn’t watch his hands. He stretched them up in the air.

  “What’s that ball for?” Joel asked him, pointing at a metal ball the size of a crouching man. It lay on top of the tank like a giant’s toy.

  “Lightning,” Olaf said right away, and the boys nodded. His words lifted in the dark wind. “It captures lightning. It protects the surge tank.” Olaf wasn’t sure if this was really what it did, but the boys looked convinced. He could say anything up here and it would become true.

  The others were kicking the birds off the tank, waiting to hear the splat and not hearing the splat so shoving at each other and asking who was scared, who was scared now, until one of them finally marched toward the ladder.

  Olaf watched each head disappear.

  He wondered if another boy would help Ralph down or if he’d still be there, his body blocking the way. Olaf didn’t want to have to stop.

  He tried not to look at the smashed birds the boys had left lodged on the edge. He grabbed the ladder. It was trembling. The wind and all that space down to the ocean dragged him forward and urged him to fall. He backed away from the ladder. And since he was sure that the others couldn’t see him, he got on his hands and knees and crawled. He turned to nudge his foot down until he could feel the third rung. The wind pulled at his clothes. If he let go now, he would float.

  It was harder going down, his arms and legs awkward with each backward step. His hands were growing numb. He counted as he descended. The seagulls had gone. What time was it now? His mother would be furious. He kept his eyes on his hands, dizzy with the effort not to look below.

  The rungs of the ladder thickened. He reached the bend where it began to run diagonal. He had to curl himself around the corner, boot searching for a rung. He hinged from the hips, kicking his feet forward so they could catch the ladder while he kept his right hand on the straight section above. With his left hand he grasped the lower part of the ladder. The rust made his grip slide. To continue down, he was going to have to let go of his upper hand. He hooked his feet, released his fingers, each one still frozen around the shape of the rung. He reached below for the ladder. His hand opened and closed on air.

  He was falling backward. Then his fingers smacked the metal and he clasped the rung
tight. His whole body began to shake.

  Ralph was still there. As Olaf climbed slowly toward him, swaying his feet forward with each step so he could catch the next rung, he could see Ralph’s arms rigid against the ladder. The laughing had stopped. Olaf swallowed a flake of rust and it tickled his throat.

  Olaf coughed. It sounded like a laugh.

  Ralph hooked one arm over the rung and one arm under it and leaned closer in.

  “Ralph Forrest,” Olaf said. The name ricocheted off the surge tank.

  The wind tugged at Ralph’s hair and flapped his jacket open. Olaf wondered if he had seen the birds the boys kicked off. Ralph squeezed to one side of the ladder so Olaf could pass.

  Olaf stepped down until the two boys were perched on the same rung, boots cramped in a line. Ralph pressed his cheek against the ladder.

  “Go on,” Olaf said. Below them there was the steady clatter of boots hitting metal. The other boys had climbed right past Ralph. Were they going for help? The wind whistled through the ladder and whipped Ralph’s hair across his eyes.

  “Go on.”

  Ralph didn’t move. The boys were nearing the bottom. Olaf dropped one foot to the next rung.

  He waited. Ralph glanced down, snot running into his mouth. He wouldn’t let go of the ladder long enough to wipe it away. His sleeve slipped to the elbow. His arm was taut with muscle and veins.

  Olaf could still reach out and rest his palm on the nape of Ralph’s neck to coax him down, but he didn’t want to touch Ralph.

  “Say something. Ralph. Talk. It will make it better.” Bits of his words were torn by the wind.

  Olaf waited.

  Even the jaunty under-the-breath comments Ralph always made, even those he’d take.

  “Come on.”

  “Go on.”

  Ralph was not going to move.

  Olaf took another step down. He felt Ralph watch him. Three more steps, four, and he looked up through the black shapes of Ralph’s boots. If Ralph let go without leaping free of the tank, his body could tear Olaf from the ladder and they both would drop to the earth.

  He climbed more quickly, careful not to look down until he was close enough to jump. Three yards from the ground, he leapt free with a high-pitched yell. He cleared the logs, landed on the balls of his feet, then rolled into the familiar crunch of sand and shells. He lay there for a moment, feeling the moist sand flat between his shoulder blades. Above the clouds, the stars looked as if someone had thrown a handful of rocks across the sky.

  Ralph was small, way up there on the surge tank. He hadn’t moved. If Olaf hadn’t known Ralph was there, he wouldn’t have realized the dark speck was a boy.

  Olaf scurried to his feet, rubbed shells and pebbles off his knees.

  “You coming?” Karl yelled as he ran toward the water. The other boys ran too, jumping up and down on beach logs. The salt air was sharp on Olaf’s face. Down by the ocean, the boys began to shout.

  “Dumplings and gravy! Right now a whole plateful of dumplings and gravy!”

  “Roast beef!”

  Olaf couldn’t tell who was saying what. His stomach spasmed. It was long past supper. Greta and his mother would eat without him. Greta would ask if she could have his portion and his mother would blow cigarette smoke across the table, then slide his plate to Greta.

  “No, flapjacks. A foot-high stack of flapjacks!”

  “And bacon!”

  “And bacon! Hey Ralph! We’re going to have bacon!”

  “Pork and beans!” one of them bellowed over the noise of the waves.

  That’s what Olaf wanted. They could stay out here all night and sit around a bonfire like the men did in the summer, heat a can over the flames. Ralph would climb down, shoulder Olaf for a space, grab a spoon. They wouldn’t say how long he’d been up there.

  Olaf missed his tin lunch box right now, its slim black handle. He’d unfold his mother’s wax paper and pass her bread pudding to the boys.

  “Salmonberry pie!” Olaf heard his voice toss the words out into the wind. He was suddenly giddy. “Salmonberry pie!” He yelled up to Ralph as if he had a piece to offer. He could do this. He could just shout out what he wanted to eat.

  The boys scampered back up from the ocean. Ingmar said it was too bad they didn’t have a tarpaulin—then Ralph could just jump down and they could catch him. Knut said he was too high up for that. He’d need a parachute from up there. “That’s right, a parachute!” they shouted. “Hey, Ralph, you need a parachute!” Olaf said he knew how to get him down. You bunch are just making him nervous, he said. I’ll get him down, he said. You head on back. We’ll catch up.

  Olaf waited until the boys were out of earshot then yelled up that Ralph’s mother was waiting for him at home.

  “You don’t want to scare her. She’s alone now, Ralph. She’s kept dinner warm for you.”

  But Ralph stayed where he was.

  Olaf turned around to see how far the boys had got. Maybe they were going for help. They’d reached the trail that led to the road. If he didn’t go now, he’d lose them.

  “Salmonberry pie!” he shouted at the surge tank before breaking into a run.

  Steve Swenson

  THE TELEPHONE POLE

  I HAD NEVER paid particular attention to the fifty-foot-high telephone pole that towered above me at the bottom of our driveway. It was an old pole, full of splits in the wood, and it had two wooden crossbars bolted to the top, with ceramic insulators that held overhead power and telephone lines. I was sixteen and had been climbing for a couple of years, and I had studied books on how to rock climb up cracks similar to those in the telephone pole. I desperately wanted to put my bookknowledge into action, but I couldn’t yet drive to real rock cliffs. So I started looking for things to climb in my neighbourhood, and there was the pole. I decided to climb it.

  Just up the driveway from the pole was the house in Seattle that I shared with my parents and four siblings. My father worked as a mechanical engineer for Boeing and my mother managed the household. My parents were devout Catholics, and family activities revolved around their parish church and the Catholic schools we all attended. It was a healthy and loving environment, but I felt hemmed in. I was much more interested in exploring and having adventures in the natural world. I joined a local Boy Scout troop to hike and explore the Cascade Mountains. One of the dads in our troop, a climber, started taking a few of us on trips where we learned basic mountaineering skills. My earliest obsession was Mount Rainier, a peak that dominates the skyline south of Seattle. I reached its top with my Boy Scout group when I was fourteen, in an experience rich with excitement, fear, and wonder.

  By the time I noticed the telephone pole, my friends and I had already started teaching ourselves the basics of technical rock climbing. My parents didn’t understand the dangers in what we were doing and, later on, when I’d drive away to go climbing, my mother would call, “Have fun hiking with the ropes!” To them it seemed like a wholesome outdoor activity that I would probably outgrow. So they let me pursue my climbing, so long as it didn’t interfere with Sunday churchgoing. They were more concerned with familiar issues, such as my brothers and sisters driving the family cars and dating—activities they saw as more dangerous, both physically and morally.

  Around this time, a UPS truck appeared in our driveway, and the driver unloaded a heavy box addressed to me. I ran to the door so full of excitement I collided with my mother, almost knocking her over. Inside the box was a mound of different sized pitons, the metal spikes used for rock climbing. I signed for my new prized possessions, paid for with money I’d earned doing odd jobs. Now I was equipped for the telephone pole.

  My plan was to climb the pole during the day, when my dad was at work and my mom was running errands. One afternoon during summer vacation, that moment arrived. I quickly called Gordy, one of my Rainier climbing partners, to come over and help. We eyed the equipment. Each piton had a thick metal ring—the “eye”—forged at a right angle to a tapered metal blade
similar to the business end of a table knife. The blades came in different sizes—thin, medium, and thick. My safety depended on handling these correctly: I knew I had to place the right size piton into a crack and hammer on the end of the eye until it was firmly wedged in the wood.

  It was time to go. I started up the pole using direct aid, a technique I had studied in my rock climbing books. This involved reaching as high as I could to hammer in a piton. Then I clipped a short rope ladder to the eye of the piton using a carabiner and clambered up to the highest rung. Perched there, I reached up higher again to place another piton and repeated the process. It worked, and soon I was fifteen feet up the pole.

  My climbing books had taught me another important lesson: how not to hit the ground if a piton pulled out of the wood when I weighted it. I accomplished this by tying the end of a climbing rope to my harness, and now, after placing each piton, I clipped the rope into the carabiner attached to it. Gordy stood at the base of the pole and fed the rope through a braking device. If one of the pitons pulled out as I moved up, Gordy would hold the rope firmly to keep it from slipping through the braking device. The rope would then come tight where it ran through the carabiner on the piton below and stop me after I took a short fall.

  I tried with each placement to choose a piton whose blade was thicker than its destined crack, but thin enough to be pounded all the way in to where the eye was flush with the outside of the pole. Yet as I got higher, I became afraid that the soft wood might compress on both sides of the crack and the pitons would not be wedged tight enough to hold my weight. One of the safety measures I had read about was to gently step into my rope ladder, once I’d clipped it to the newly placed piton above me, and give it a little bounce. It was less scary and more secure to commit my weight to the new piton placement if it passed this bounce test. As I gained more confidence in my system, I began to enjoy my position high off the ground. Looking down on the familiar neighbourhood that I had never seen from this perspective, I felt free. But how much more liberating would it feel to be on a real rock wall hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet above the ground!