Pulling the Roof

Forget the rope. Forget the slight ledge beneath my feet. Forget the sinking sky. Monsoon season.

I feel the wind pick up. Forget it. Forget the voice of my belayer, encouraging from above the rock’s craggy roof.

Only twenty feet or so higher, he’s hanging at the belay station. Waiting. For me.

But I’m not here. I couldn’t tell you the last time I ate or showered, or name my favorite band or beer. I couldn’t even give you my full name or date of birth or ethnicity. I forgot all that.

I am the sun hot against the slip of skin exposed at my neck.

Breathing, I place my hands up, touching gray rock. It’s warm and solid, ready for me.

Now, I am my hands and my feet. I am the breath surging into my ribcage. Muscles only, not organs. Not brain. No thought.

Sharp. The fingers of my left hand dig into the small crimp above me, twisting my stance to the right. More breath. Let it go. How can I haul my body weight up on this one arm? Tendons protest. The bones moan their deep, insistent dissent.

My right leg leaps out and up and hooks the hold, level with my reaching left hand. I’m hanging now, as if on a child’s jungle gym. Hanging above a ninety foot vertical drop. The hold is smooth granite, with bits of crystal quartz pressing their jagged pyramids into my thigh.

Forget that you fell last time. Tumbled from this perch with only wind in your ears to catch you. For that second, you were flying. And then the rope at your harness caught and you ricocheted back and found the wall of rock, comforting, indomitable. Nearly cracked your skull.

Go. If you stop too long now, you’ll fall again. Go, damn you.

The adrenaline sickness from a moment ago slowly passes. My gut dispels the ghost of it. Climbing.

I grunt and move. Left hand on the crimp, the barest outcropping ledge of rock, forcing my weight perpendicular, using the torque supplied by my thigh on what should have been a heel hook, if I were taller—to move upward.

“Yeah! Nice,” my belayer shouts from above. I can’t not make it. This is a multi-pitch climb. I have to finish it. I have to pull this roof. New sweat breaks. There’s a hold above my right hand, just out of reach. If I fall again, this heel hook will rip into my thigh. Blood on rock. It won’t be the first time. “Get it, Lora! You got this!”

I spit breath and tears, yelling, “Shut the fuck up!”

I don’t have the mental capacity to listen and be buoyed by the sound of his voice. I have barely enough strength to drown out the internal clamoring of my own paralyzing fear. Of falling again. Of failing. Of breaking down completely.

I forget his words.

The wind has dropped a few degrees. Rain is coming. Rain. While clinging to the face of this rock. Suddenly even good holds will slide out from under fingers. Shoes won’t stick. Chalk will soup and stew, useless at the bottom of my chalk bag.

Fucking move, won’t you!

I am breath. I am muscle. I am sinew. I am fingers, crawling, reaching, right-handed fingers craving, creeping, clawing for the hold just out of reach. The pressure on my left hand is agonizing, a stabbing pain at the joint of my wrist. I am only pain.

My right fingers find a crimp, barely the diameter of a quarter, the width of a playing card. Good enough. Three points of contact.

I lean to center.

Now to stay upright. My core constricts around the breath in my diaphragm. Balance transfers to my leg, weight transfers to the hand above me. Enough to bring my left foot up. Enough to match foot to thigh. Enough to stand.

My breath doesn’t stay in my lungs.

He’s calling congratulations, but I hear none of it. I hear my sobs now, driven by all that fear suppressed until this moment. Now I feel it like icy pinpricks, giant waves of them. It’s all I can do to keep moving. Can’t freeze up.

Blood tickles the back of my knee. I barely feel it.

One hand above the next. Balance and breath. But I’m choking back tears. That he has me on belay from above doesn’t factor in. “Goddammit. Oh God. I can’t—”

“You’ve got it, just breathe. Breathe and feel your pulse.”

My pulse is a mountain lion leaping at my throat. My right hand comes loose. No. I’m slipping. I can’t pull this roof again. If I fall, it’s over. I can’t do it! I will move, or I’ll freeze and be stuck on this mountain forever. That is my reality.

I grunt low in my throat where my heart is crushing my windpipe. I am my hands and my throbbing feet. I am the sound of my curses and the sticky hot chug of my breath. I am climbing.

Dear Arizona's Children:

From KVOA news:
"Services for foster kids on the chopping block"

Dear Arizona's Children:

Guess what, kiddos?

You don't get to see your parents today. Or next week. The next time you visit, you'll be in a single, white-walled, sterile office with hard-backed chairs too big for you. No toys. No books. No snacks. You've got 60 minutes for hugs and kisses. Now go play and grow up.

We don't want to spend our hard-earned money on you.

Love,
The STATE ~ AZ

KVOA NEWS:

Services for foster kids on the chopping block | KVOA.com | Tucson, Arizona

Local in Tucson?

November Book Review: a She Reads Pick

Man in the Blue Moon

by Michael Morris

published by Tyndale House Publishers

Michael Morris’s Southern historical, Man in the Blue Moon, paints a rich picture of small town Florida during the Great War. From influenza epidemics and corrupt local authorities to the prejudices of gossiping neighbors and the frenzy of traveling evangelicals, Morris’s tale of one woman’s struggle for her family land and reputation is rooted in vivid detail that will woo lovers of period fiction.

Ella Wallace is at the end of her strength: her opium-plied husband ran off, leaving her with three sons and a mountain of debt on her family property. When a windfall grandfather clock shows up at the port with her name on it, Ella hopes she can manage to keep above water at least till the end of the war. The government is hollering for pine and cypress, both prevalent on Ella’s land. If she has to, she can sell wood. But from the shipment case springs not a clock, but an unlikely young man with demons of his own and a strange talent that will soon have the neighbors buzzing and the sheriff, in the banker’s back pocket, knocking at her door—and shooting at it. When a preacher rides into town claiming her land as God’s sacred Eden, and when old family enemies track down her new clock-delivered field hand and confidant, Ella must dig deep to find the strength and dignity to protect the lives of her three sons, salvage her reputation, and move beyond the emotional toll of her husband’s failings.

Morris employs an authentic sense of claustrophobia in Man in the Blue Moon, derived in part by an enormous cast of point of view characters rivaling those of much longer books. There’s no telling whose perspective might next take center stage, or what new plot thread might suddenly uncoil from an already dense thicket of narrative jungle. Subplots between characters take the spotlight for short stints and then fade into the background throb of nosey neighbor gossip and interior monologue. Even the pacing of the main plot mimics the slow mundanity of rural Southern life.

In that respect, Morris certainly accomplishes a certain realism with structure and style, adding to a chorus of colloquialisms and pitch perfect dialects. His literary flare is evident in striking descriptions of the natural world, and his use of suspense—scene-by-scene—lends a nice sense of movement to otherwise rather stagnating chapters.

Thus, a reader hoping for a quick, mindless jaunt into story or, on the opposite end, one hoping for total immersion and escape might be advised to look elsewhere. Anyone with a hankering for emotional connection to character will find the book delivers little substance to that effect. The novel’s strengths lie primarily in its detail and adherence to historical period.

Overall, Man in the Blue Moon would have been well served by achieving a better balance of fictional elements.

In the mood for heartwarming fiction?  Mosey over to the She Reads Book Club. Each month a lesser-known new release takes a graceful swan dive into the spotlight. This month's selection is Man in the Blue Moon by Michael Morris.

October Book Review: a She Reads Pick

Blackberry Winter

by Sarah Jio

published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group

Engaging from the get-go, Sarah Jio’s Blackberry Winter is a delightful mystery, like an elegant, loose-weave scarf. Wrap up in its rich, warm fibers of plot and character and find yourself lost in its love story, walking the snow-strewn streets of Depression Era Seattle, and racing for the nearest modern-day Starbucks or Pike’s Place Market café to learn what will become of a missing boy, a broken marriage, and a family secret, hidden for decades by money and power.

Vera Ray is a 1933 poor working woman with a fiery will and a single wish—to take care of her three-year-old son, born of a Cinderella love that ended less than happily ever after. The week following her son’s disappearance, Vera’s only lead is still her boy’s discarded teddy bear, found in the snow outside their old apartment. Desperate, out of work, near starvation, Vera will do whatever it takes to find him, even if it costs her everything.

Almost a century later, in present day Seattle, reporter Claire Aldridge has a week to cover a rare “Blackberry Winter,” a later-season winter storm reminiscent of the one that blew through in 1933. Not much of a story, she thinks, but she hasn’t been on her game since her devastating loss a year ago, and now her marriage is falling apart. Digging for an angle, Claire uncovers the mystery of Vera Ray’s missing child—and discovers the truth of that story is closer to home than she could have imagined. It might be just what the doctor ordered to resuscitate her career, her marriage, and her spirit.

The book's twin narratives are cleverly, if somewhat predictably, intertwined  Graceful prose is balanced against enjoyable dialogue. Ms. Jio’s Seattle is populated by disarming and sympathetic characters, whose chief failing, perhaps, lies in their having been cast in too perfect a shade of black or white—too good or too bad—to be perfectly believable.

But Ms. Jio’s cozy mystery doesn’t suffer too much from plot contrivance or coincidence, and on the whole, the story’s affect is quite pleasing. A quick read with a lot of heart, Blackberry Winter is the perfect pick for an autumn evening, as the nights grow longer and chillier. Bring out your steaming cocoa, pull up your comfy armchair, and prepare to disappear into the charming folds of this “mystery-slash-love story.”

In the mood for heartwarming fiction?  Mosey over to the She Reads Book Club. Each month a lesser-known new release takes a graceful swan dive into the spotlight. This month's selection is Blackberry Winter.