Graphic the Valley (4 page)

Lucy was in her sleeping bag when I came back. She turned over as I unzipped the door.

I said, “Sorry to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “I was already awake.”

“Good.” I lay down on top of my bag, still hot from running back through the woods. Sweating.

She said, “I watched you climb.”

“Huh?”

“The dome,” she said, “I watched you climb it.”

I touched my fingers together, the calluses like rubber caps, no feeling through that thick skin, and I couldn’t see Lucy in the darkness.

She said, “I followed you, then stood off to the side at the base to see your profile.” She shifted and I heard the rustle of her body against the sleeping bag’s nylon. “You climbed pretty fast.”

I was still sweaty, but cooling off now. I said, “It’s not a really difficult route. Anyone could do it.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Yes. And I’ve done it so many times.”

I tried to think of something else to say after that but couldn’t. And in a few minutes, I heard Lucy breathing loud and slow. I’d stopped sweating, and I slid my legs into my sleeping bag. I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep yet. I lay there and listened to Lucy’s breathing. Then I held up my hands in the dark, saw them obscure the lighted tent walls on the moon side.

• • •

We made breakfast with the food from the group cooler again, a cooler that smelled like old fruit. I fried potatoes and eggs with milk and cheese. Lucy poured too much salt over the top of everything but it was still good.

The mosquitoes came in a black mist before the sun cut.

Lucy said, “Will you spray me with DEET?”

I grabbed the bottle from the gear bin.

She turned her back to me and held up her hair. I sprayed her neck. Then she slid up her shirt, showing the small of her back. She said, “Will you spray it up underneath my shirt so they don’t bite through?” I was looking at the top of her black underwear, a small mole on the left side of her hip, at the top of her hipbone.

I sprayed.

She lifted her shirt further and I sprayed over the back of her crooked spine, over the strap of her bra. Across the lace.

Lucy turned around and lifted her shirt in front, to the bottom of her breasts.

I wanted to swim again. See her pull her shirt off. Watch the swell of her chest in her wet bra.

I tried not to think about that as I sprayed her stomach with DEET.

She said, “We grew up near each other.”

I tried not to look at her chest as I sprayed her stomach. Then I bent down and got the fronts of her legs. I said, “Where?”

She turned around and I got the backs of her calves. The spray dripped down. She reached and caught the drip. Rubbed it in.

“In Mariposa. The park south,” she said.

“South? Really?”

“Yes,” she said. “Take off your shirt. I’ll get you now.”

Down by the water, children played in the shallows as their parents sat reading in camp chairs. Off to my left, Lucy lay out in the sun. Browning. Eyes closed, asleep, her eyelids twitching while I stared at her. I tried not to, but she didn’t have a swimsuit on, just that bra and underwear again, what I wanted to see all day long. I watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, noticed the thin layer of sweat on her stomach, sparkling like salt.

I left the lake to get away from her. Mumbled to myself that I was going to climb the Polly slabs, maybe swim later. I hoped she’d be gone when I got back. I could barely be around her now. I was struggling to do anything. I felt sick to my stomach.

• • •

In the early evening, I didn’t see Lucy by the water. I swam 50 yards out from the north shore. All the tourists gone, the water cold, and I turned down-lake, looking to the end, and the rise of the high-country peaks behind. Snow patches were still on the north slopes. I considered swimming all the way to the end of the lake.

Then something brushed my back in the water and I spun around. It was Lucy. She laughed and dropped underneath. Grabbed one of my ankles and turned me.

I rolled. Then came back toward her.

We wrestled in the water. She was stronger than she looked. And meaner. She bent my pinkie finger back, bit my forearm hard enough to leave indents from her teeth.

I pushed her down under the water and held her head. Shaking it. Then she jabbed me in the ribs with her thumb. She came to the surface spitting and laughing. Kicked me in the thigh and swam away like a frog.

I swam after her.

She turned and splashed me in the face. Said, “Where’d you go today?”

“When?” I said.

“This afternoon.”

“Oh,” I said, “the Polly slabs.”

“More climbing, huh?” She reached out and tugged on my wrist, pulling my face into the water.

I came up and slapped the water to splash it into her eyes. Then I backstroked. “Yeah, more climbing, why?”

“Well, I was asleep, so thanks for ditching me.” She faked one way then went the other.

I dove toward her but missed. Came up and turned around. She was smiling, happy with her dodge.

She splashed me again. I dove and missed her once more.

“Missed me twice,” she said. She spit water straight up, then swam ten feet away. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.”

She slapped the water one last time, and I turned to let it hit the back of my head.

She said, “Let’s go eat then.”

• • •

More chili and cheese and chips for dinner. The only dinner food we had in the bear box. I liked that Lucy didn’t complain. We could’ve hitchhiked into the store and gotten different food if we’d wanted to. But she didn’t say anything about that.

I filled both bowls and handed one to her.

She bumped into me with her elbow, almost knocking the bowl out of my hand. “Oh sorry,” she smiled. “Real, real sorry about that.”

I bumped her back.

She said, “Are you going to climb again tonight?”

I nodded.

“Really? I was kidding,” she said.

I took a gulp of water from the jug.

“Same dome?” she said.

“Probably.”

“Don’t you get bored by it?”

“No,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter to you how many times you’ve done the same thing?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

“Huh. Okay.” She poured water into her bowl and began cleaning the inside with the tips of her fingers. “Do you like climbing more than talking?”

I smiled. Poured a little water into my bowl and started to scrub. “Normally, yes,” I said.

Lucy finished scrubbing her bowl with her fingers and dumped the cleaning water out onto the ground. She said, “I like that. I really do. Some guys just talk too much. Did you know that you were the only guy on the crew who didn’t talk to me the first day I worked up here?”

“No,” I said. I rubbed the ends of my fingers around in the bottom of my bowl, finished cleaning, then drank the dishwater.

Lucy shook her head. “That’s nasty,” she said. “Did you just drink your cleaning water?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sick. You should’ve dumped that out.”

I said, “I always drink my dishwater.” I grabbed a few pine needles to scrub a spot off the bottom of my bowl. Then I shook out my bowl and wiped it with the inside of my T-shirt.

Lucy pointed at the chili pot. She said, “You know, this would’ve been better with an apple for dessert. Or a carrot.”

• • •

We walked into the trees. The hill slanting. Then the granite. I scrambled to an easy line I knew, only rated a 5.5, but a good line, up one of the southern ramps leading to a higher, easy crack system. When I started to climb, so did Lucy, just behind me.

I said, “Go slow. Keep as much contact as you can.”

“Contact?”

“Two hands and two feet would be four points of contact on the rock,” I said. “Keep three on the rock at all times and you’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Like two feet and one hand?”

“Right,” I said. “Just move one thing at a time.”

“Okay,” she said.

We climbed together, one after the other, up the knobs, first, then the crack, following the weakness. The rock was never vertical, but a 50-degree slab leading to a 70-degree summit sequence. Each time I looked back, Lucy had three points of contact on the rock, reaching or stepping. She seemed comfortable, and that was good. We didn’t have a rope.

The crack we were ascending ended and I stepped over a corner onto a 60-degree slope, slightly less vertical than before. There were little chicken-head knobs and divots there. Below us a few feet were blocks sticking out of two cracks.

I was moving right on the slick rock. Lucy was behind me. The granite felt wax-covered on my bare feet. I looked back just as Lucy slipped.

She didn’t scream. Her foot caught and she over-corrected, stood up. Teetering. I reached for her and lost my balance. My foot popped off, and I slid past Lucy as she leaned in and grabbed a big knob.

The rock was angled, and I slid slowly. But as I went by Lucy, my foot hit one of those big knobs at the lower corner, one of those iron doorknobs that stuck out on that section of the climb. And that chunk popped me up, vertical, stopped me, made me weightless for a second, before I started to teeter again, my hands missing everything that I reached for.

Then there was Lucy’s hand in front of my face. She was holding onto a big in-cut knob above her with her left hand and reaching down to me with her right.

I caught her index finger, just that one finger, and I didn’t let go. Lucy was fully extended between that good hold she was gripping with her one hand above her head and the other hand reaching down to me. She screamed as I caught her finger, as I pulled myself into the rock using her one digit for leverage, and that finger popped, turning out of joint. The skin and tendons held even after the bone dislocated. Lucy sucked in a breath at the end of her scream like choking on sand.

I reached a good knob with my other hand and grabbed it. Pulled myself onto the rock the rest of the way, stood up solidly on the knob beneath my feet, and let go of Lucy’s finger. There was no chance of me falling again then. We were both secure.

Lucy slid and stepped down to me, onto a knob near the one I was standing on, using her good hand on the knobs in front of her face. We stood there on that slab together, and she ducked her head into me. I couldn’t see her other hand.

“Did you hurt anything else?” I said.

“No, just that finger.”

The wind coughed twice against us, the only wind yet. The gust could mean a storm was coming. I was holding the in-cut in front of me, my other arm around Lucy. I said, “I want to look at your hand but I can’t right here. It’s too dark in this corner. I know an easy way up from here, though. We can traverse to the east and it’ll get way easier.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Can you climb if I help you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then step right there.” I pointed.

I spotted her as she stepped over the corner, and we followed a low-angled wave of granite around the dome. I had her climb in front of me. The wave was a ramp for a hundred feet, with an easy scramble to the top from there. Each time Lucy had to use her right hand, she sucked in, breathing through her teeth like mint and cold air.

I held a fistful of her shirt in the back and helped her through the few moves where two hands were necessary.

We got to the summit of the dome, a rounded field of gray-white granite. And there, beneath 6,000 August stars, I snapped Lucy’s finger back into place. She didn’t scream then, but gasped like I had played a bad trick on her. Then she set her forehead against my shoulder.

I put my arms around her and held her as she cried. I said, “It’ll be better now. It’ll hurt less now that it’s in.” I tucked her head underneath my chin. Smelled her hair.

After a couple minutes, she pulled her head back and looked at me. “I’m okay,” she said.

“Good,” I said, “and thank you for catching me. I would’ve gone all the way without you, a ground fall.”

“Yeah, but I lost my balance first.”

“But you held on,” I said, “and you caught me.”

• • •

We hiked off the back of the dome. Scrambled a few steps on the way down, but nothing like the southwest side, and hiking down didn’t take too long.

At camp, I taped Lucy’s index and middle fingers together with duct tape. I taped over the end of her fingernails hoping to push back the swelling, to keep the blood and the fluid dispersed in her hand.

“I’ve got something that might help,” I said. I went and found half a fifth of Old Grand-Dad that a climber had left for me after we’d bouldered in Camp 4 together a few weeks back.

I unscrewed the cap and held it out to her.

Lucy read the label. “Eighty-six proof?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She smelled the opening. Shrugged. “Could be good.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t had any yet.”

She sipped and coughed. “Whoa.”

“Strong?”

“Yeah.” She took another swig and passed the bottle to me.

I drank a gulp. I said, “I thought your finger was going to come off in my hand.”

Lucy laughed and took the bottle back. Drank another gulp of whiskey. “And then?”

I shook my head. “And then it didn’t.”

“Well you’re lucky,” she said.

I thought about that. The angle off the dome. The fall would have been 200 feet of tumbling down to sharp talus. I said, “You’re right. I am lucky.”

Lucy looked at her taped fingers. She said, “It’s aching so bad.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. Other than the tape, there was nothing we could do.

We each took another swig. The alcohol was unraveling me, everything tight coming apart. I sighed.

“Are you okay?” Lucy said.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “Just thinking about falling, and the rocks. Glad neither of us went.”

She said, “If either of us had gone all the way down, that would’ve been it. We would’ve died.”

“Probably,” I said. “At the very least, we’d have been broken.”

Both of us nodded. We were sitting on the picnic table, drinking our way through the bottle.

Lucy took another swig. She said, “Do you know people who’ve died?”