Rock and Roll

He stared blankly at the rope inching like a snake through
the leaves at his feet. His neck ached from looking up and he
was sick to his stomach. His palms were actually sweating.

He was having a heart attack! Certainly that was a good
enough reason to back out. But at 14 years old, it was hardly
likely.

Both bored and frightened, he became gratefully engrossed in
the insect life teeming on the tree beside him. The endless waves
of footsteps marking the journey of a centipede, the sinister
lopings of spiders, all seemed to hold some great meaning. About
an abandoned crumb from some ancient sandwich, a swarming mass of
ants became a great black sponge absorbing his thoughts.

Suddenly the rope snapped taut at his waist. Words dropped
to him like falling bodies.

"FRANK! YOU'RE ON BELAY!"

"CLIMBING!" Did he say that? What had he gotten himself
into? And all because he was too chicken to fight Jack Murphy.

Frankie took a deep breath, flexed his fingers, and gave the
earth one last loving look.

Everybody had heard him agree to meet Murphy after school.
And everybody knew he didn't show.

Frankie became acutely aware of the distinct odors of
things: the leaves, the rock, the rope, as if he were noticing
his sense of smell for the first time.

It was at the Wednesday night scout meeting that he'd seen
his shot at redemption when Mr. G, in classic Mr. G attire: scout
shirt tucked into jogging pants, asked if anyone wanted to go
climbing with him and his daughter Mary. He periodically asked
the question. Nobody ever did. Who was that crazy? But as he
sized up Mary, her blue eyes and matching ribbons like
accusations against his manhood, he realized this was the only
way he could save himself. Besides, Saturday was two full days
off...anything might happen.

The sun-dappled patterns of leaves swaying on the cliff made
him dizzy, like the whole world was tilting off kilter.

Before he realized it he was ten feet off the ground. A
strange thrill surged through him as his fingers and toes
searched out tiny grooves and imperfections in the rock. He
watched his hands as if they were not his own...searching,
hesitating, gaining certainty and moving on.

The few feet of rock in front of his nose became the world.
It never occurred to him to look down. There was only up. Only
handholds and footholds and that few feet of bare rock. Each
move was like a math problem, absorbing and without physical
consequence. "This will never hold me...oh, it did, move on to
the next."

About twenty feet up Frankie came to the first piece of
protection placed by Mr. G. A metal wedge with a wire hanger
called a chock, it was jammed into a v-shaped crack. A
day-glow-green, nylon sling was clipped from the wire to the rope
by caribiners.

"You'll clean the first pitch." Frankie could see Mr. G in
the church basement after the meeting, one tail of his scout
shirt now dangling absurdly over his jogging pants. "Mary will
go second and back clip her rope through the protection. The
next pitch Mary will clean and you can belay." Mary had smiled
at him each time her name was mentioned. Her teeth were
unbelievably straight and the bridge of freckles across her nose
made the word "cute" bob in his mind like a beach ball you are
trying to push under water. There was still time to back out.
In fact, right now after having volunteered, it was just possible
no one would even know he hadn't gone through with it. Frankie
remained silent, nodding at Mr. G's words.

He studied the piece for a moment carefully checking his
hand and footholds before letting go with one hand to tug upward
on the sling.

It slid out easily and Frankie clipped it to his harness
as nonchalantly as though he'd been climbing for years.

A few feet up he pulled back the spring loaded levers of a
a mechanical camming device known as a Friend, and watched it
fall into his hands. His cockiness grew. He began humming
"Stairway to Heaven," visions of Everest taking shape in his head.

He was pure motion. A wave moving across sand, gliding over
hand and footholds as smoothly as the shadows of the swaying trees.

Suddenly he couldn't move. His first thought was that his
shirt was caught. He tried tugging harder but this only made him
teeter on the verge of coming off. He began to panic, think absurd
thoughts, some kind of animal had him, a bear trap, a booby trap.
Finally he summoned the presence to look down. He had somehow
climbed past a piece of protection. He was bound to the rock by a
three foot loop of pink nylon.

He pulled himself together and checked his footing. Slowly
he began to reach down between his legs twisting grotesquely in
the effort to stay on the rock, his fingers stretching, trembling.
It...was...just...out...of...reach. Fingers...just...touching...it,
the nylon tickling the tips. There! He had it! Just pull...just
pull...Yank..."Ow!!!" It was in solid. Like trying to haul up a
truck.

Frankie tugged, grunted, and twisted. He had to switch hands
with each try. Sweat poured off of him and his fingertips ached.
It was no use. Soon he would be unable to hang on. He couldn't
get a rest. His feet were almost level with his hands and his
fingers were turning to rubber. The rope tugging at his waist
would not let him stand up straight.

There was nothing left to do but climb down to get below it.
But going up was one thing; down, quite another.

What he glided past on his way up he now gave back in
agonizing inches, all the time marvelling at what he had trusted
his feet to. Every move was awkward. While in motion he was
convinced nothing would hold him. When he found a good hold, he
hated to give it up.

The rope was tight, nagging at his waist. He knew the tighter
the rope the shorter the fall, but each time it jerked at him,
stopping his progress, his nerves were pulled equally tight. When
he yelled for slack it took all his might to make his voice more
than a mouse-like whimper.

After what might have been days, Frankie descended the
necessary three or four feet, and stood squarely in front of the
defiant piece. The steepness of the rock thrust tiny pink
strands of frayed nylon into his face, tickling his nostrils. It
was another wedge-shaped chock, but because of all the twisting
and tugging it had set tight in the crack. Frankie unclipped the
nut tool from his harness, a hooked metal device shaped like a
shelving bracket with holes. He began jabbing and thrusting at
the chock in a curious parody of fencing. Soon he was lost once
more in concentration, and after a few moments of battle, the
chock surrendered. Frankie clipped it like a scalp to his
harness, and started up again.

The victory, following so closely on the heels of panic,
fueled his adrenaline. He was once more on cruise control,
working up and right into a crevice with large holds on both
sides, a natural ladder.

He gained height quickly, but shielded in the gully he was
unaware of the growing proportions of the view.

At the top of the chute Frankie was greeted by a smiling Mr.
G, who sat tethered to a tree on a ledge about three feet wide.
Next to him was Mary, her legs crossed, grinning widely. She had
on a rust-colored bandanna from which her tangled curls spilled
like foaming root beer.

Beyond her the valley exploded in a dizzying panorama.
Frankie grabbed instinctively at the tree. Panic rose from an icy
tingle in his toes to a roaring avalanche of fear engulfing his
body and erasing all reason.

It was his turn to belay and climb second. In a dream he
heard Mr. G's instructions as detached sounds with no meaning,
saw the rope threading through the braking device at his waist.

"Climbing."

"Climb." The voice was someone else's, the hands feeding
rope not his own.

He belayed for an eternity of fear. Mary was talking. He
responded, but understood nothing of what was said. He stared at
the rock. Marbled bands of orange and black. White and gray
stripes. He felt the great weight of geologic time, of
gravity...Millions of tons of rock above and below him...every
ounce of it straining against...against what? What was holding
it up?...Nothing...Then...

"You're on belay! Climb when ready!" Finally.

Frankie raced up the second pitch like the hundred yard dash,
hardly pausing to tear the protection out. He didn't dare look
anywhere but those few feet of rock before his face. Driven by
fear, it didn't occur to him, nor would it matter if it had, that
going more slowly was safer.

He was panting when he reached the belay ledge and shrugged,
smiling weakly when Mr. G said, "You didn't have to run."

Then Frankie did what he feared most. Looked around. His
heart dropped the 200 feet down the cliff-face as he realized that,
not only was this ledge half the size of the last and twice as
high, but there wasn't even a wall separating them from the abyss.

There he sat, tied to a tree...a small tree...a very small
tree...feet dangling into space two hundred feet from the ground.
Below the tiny specks that were a flock of swans disturbed the
glassy stillness of a miniature lake, set like a mirror in
the hills. Above, three vultures were circling. "Fitting," he
thought.

"That was fun!" Mary climbed onto the ledge. The sounds she
made were unearthly, void of meaning.

"It's beautiful up here." She giggled, kicking her feet
over the edge as though she were sitting on the hood of a car.

The world was a giant hole there was no escape from falling
into. Frankie desperately wanted to grab onto something, but there
was nothing...nothing but Mary chattering like a strange bird at
home in its high perch.

"Oh look, that's where I live, over there, in one of those
tiny dots." His mind erased by a numbing, glassy fear, Frankie
unconsciously obeyed. He could see the town ten miles off in the
distance. It had been reduced to a meaningless patchwork beyond
which he could see the curve of the earth.

Mary readied her equipment with the swift ease of tying
shoes, and Frankie was glad it was her turn to belay. He never
looked at Mr. G. as he made his way up a crack and around a
corner, but hung on white-knuckled to his tiny perch, refusing to
even think about what lay ahead.

Then the world began to shake. At first he thought it was
his own trembling, but it grew unmistakably till the ledge hummed
like the vibrating strings of a guitar. "Earthquake!" The word
was huge, filling him and blotting out everything. Blind with
fear, he barely registered three great shapes taking form in the
void before him. They filled the valley with a massive presence,
moving with the deliberate, lumbering slowness of planets
turning. Their size was magnified by their inappropriateness..
three military transport planes flying in Vee formation.

Frankie didn't know if he was going to puke or scream. Mary
was shouting something, her voice the whine of a mosquito in
a hurricane. Above, Mr. G. emerged from behind the blocky corner
and was laughing and pointing at the planes. The roar grew till
he couldn't distinguish the buzz in his chest from the vibration
of the mountain. Then quite suddenly, his fear lifted as if it
were a shirt he had pulled over his head and tossed away.

The sky was unbelievably blue, the valley a quilt of glowing
fall colors. The dizzying height became a painted background
across which the planes glided with uncanny grace. There was
something smooth and silent in their passage despite their noise,
and Frankie marveled that something so big did not simply drop
out of the sky.

"Were you scared?" Mary's voice reached him as the noise
subsided. She was giggling, and Frankie noticed her eyes were
the clear blue of the sky.

"A little." He was laughing himself, both at the double
meaning of this exchange, and at the uncontrollable thrill the
fear had left in its place.

"They must be practicing how to fly below radar." Frankie
pointed off in the direction of the planes, noting to himself how
calmly he let go of the rock, trusting himself to the equipment.
He had no idea what he was talking about and was stunned by the
assurance he sensed in his own voice. His hands felt good, fingers
gritty and tingling from the touch of the rock. There was
something almost mystical about looking out at the world from this
height.

In the valley the swans rose from the lake like a single
being. Above, the vultures were still circling. The air tasted
like a fresh drink of water. And Frankie, strangely at home on
this tiny ledge, eyed the next pitch, already working out the
moves that would carry him through the crack and around the
corner.