Yosemite Fall. Scott Graham
youngster before him. “Not for mere mortals.”
He freed the climbing rope from his harness, allowing the attendant to set about reattaching the rope to the cylindrical auto-belay mechanism at the tower’s base.
Carmelita’s white teeth flashed in a smile. “When can I do it again?”
Chuck cocked his head at the climbers grouped and waiting behind the line of boulders separating the parking area from Camp 4. Jimmy O’Reilly stood at the front of the group, deep in conversation with Bernard Montilio, the two men clearly enjoying the opportunity to catch up with each other this morning, as the planned reunion of old climbing buddies, including Chuck, got underway.
With Jimmy and Jimmy’s longtime climbing partner Thorpe Alstad as their unofficial leaders, the other aging climbers attending the reunion this weekend had spent entire summers and significant portions of falls, winters, and springs at Camp 4 twenty years ago. They’d teamed with each other in twos, threes, and fours to put up ever-more-challenging routes on the valley’s towering walls, all the while bickering like family over who among them was the most talented climber and whose completed routes were toughest.
“The line got pretty long behind Jimmy while you were up there,” Chuck said to Carmelita. “I’m glad we came over first thing this morning.” He hesitated, avoiding Janelle’s gaze, the idea coming to him even as the words formed in his mouth. “The only way you’re going to get to climb any more this weekend is if you enter the Slam.”
“The what?” Carmelita asked.
Janelle stiffened beside Chuck as he continued. “The Yosemite Slam, Camp 4’s big climbing competition. It starts tomorrow and runs for two days, through Sunday. That’s why the tower’s here. Jimmy started the Slam a few years ago to raise money for his nonprofit organization, the Camp 4 Fund, which supports the campground. The competition has gotten bigger every year. Once it begins, entrants will be the only ones allowed on the tower.”
The reunion was Jimmy’s idea, timed to coincide with the Slam. Chuck had scheduled his Yosemite work, which called for him to explore a pair of confounding 150-year-old murders in the valley, to overlap with the get-together, too.
None of the reunion attendees had taken Jimmy up on his suggestion that they sign up for the Slam. In declining Jimmy’s offer, the climbers, all well into their forties, cited creaking joints and declining fitness. Chuck cited, as well, the tight timeframe he and Clarence faced to complete their work in the valley.
Carmelita begged Janelle. “Can I do it, Mamá?”
Janelle turned to Chuck, her smile replaced by a wary frown. “A climbing competition? Aren’t those for adults?”
“The best sport climbers in the world these days are teenagers. Their strength-to-weight ratios are off the charts thanks to the fact that—” he encircled Carmelita’s upper arm with a finger and thumb “—they’re so skinny.”
“But that’s teenagers you’re talking about.”
“I’ll be thirteen in December,” Carmelita reminded her mother.
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“Uncle Clarence said I’ll be driving in two years, with my learner’s permit.”
Janelle glared at her brother, who ducked his head, hiding a grin. She turned back to Carmelita. “Remember what we always say, m’hija. Cars are weapons. You have to be very careful with them. And two years is a long time. A very long time.” She shot another glowering look at Clarence, her brows furrowed.
He raised his hands in defense. “Carm’s getting to be a big girl. Like it or not, hermana, two years from now, your daughter’s gonna have a steering wheel in her hands. She’s gonna be one weaponized young lady.”
When the furrow between Janelle’s brows deepened, Clarence raised his hands farther, his palms out. “Just talking the truth to you.” He lifted his shoulders close to his ears in an exaggerated shrug. “What can I say?”
Janelle turned her back on her brother and crossed her arms in front of her.
“Carm was a natural up there,” Chuck told her.
She shifted her elbows, loosening her arms. “Do they actually have a kids’ section?”
“Maybe. Either way, though, I’d say she should enter the open division. The way she climbed that tower just now, you never know.”
Carmelita’s face glowed, but Janelle pursed her lips. “You mean, where she’d be going up against anybody and everybody?”
“All the other female climbers, anyway.”
“But that was the first time she’s ever climbed anything in her whole life. You just got her the helmet and climbing shoes last week.”
Chuck glanced up at the tower. “This is why we got them for her. Besides, I can’t imagine she’d have any chance of winning. Although I will say, climbing isn’t as much about experience and repetitive practice as other sports. It’s a matter of body control and sense of balance—which, clearly, Carm’s got by the bucketful. From what I just saw, I don’t think she’d have anything to be ashamed of.”
Carmelita beamed at him. “Really?”
Chuck cupped the back of her head in his hand and looked into her luminous, hazel eyes. “Really.”
“Cool,” Rosie declared. She jigged at her sister’s side, her arms swinging. “You should do it for sure, Carm.”
Janelle rested her hand over Chuck’s at the back of Carmelita’s head. “You really think you want to try it?”
Carmelita nodded, bouncing up and down on her toes.
“You won’t be sad when you lose?”
“If she loses,” Chuck said.
“No,” Carmelita told her mother. “I won’t. I promise.”
Rosie chimed in. “But I’ll be sad for her. Would that be okay, Mamá?”
The corners of Janelle’s mouth ticked upward and her face softened. “Okay,” she said. “You guys win.”
At the base of the tower, Jimmy tied a re-woven figure eight into the end of the climbing rope with a well-practiced flip of his fingers. He clipped the loop into his harness. Still exchanging small talk with Bernard, he gave the rope a tug, assuring it ran from his waist, up through the pulley at the top of the tower, and back down to the auto-belay mechanism.
Faded tattoos purpled Jimmy’s sinewy forearms below the short sleeves of his plaid, cotton shirt. A long, braided beard, cinnamon cut with silver, curved outward from his jaw like a scorpion’s tail. Stringy, gray-streaked red hair fell to his shoulders from the back of the battered straw cowboy hat he wore low over his eyes like a country singer. His brown canvas carpenter pants clung to his narrow waist, and the top buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a thick nest of chest hair. A red bandanna—his signature style statement for as long as Chuck had known him—was knotted around his neck.
“Show us what you can do, Jimmy,” Chuck called to him.
“You’re the man,” Bernard cheered from behind the line of boulders. He tapped the sides of his legs with his hands, a quick rat-a-tat beat. “Let’s see how much gas you’ve got left in the old tank.”
Bernard’s pasty face and jowly cheeks spoke of his current life as an office-bound attorney for a downtown San Francisco law firm, as did his trendy, turquoise-framed glasses. His ample waistline pressed at his pleated khaki shorts and short-sleeved dress shirt, while his short brown hair showed only a hint of gray.
He turned to Carmelita. “And you’re the climbing-est girl of them all,” he congratulated her. He continued to tap his legs with his hands and counted off in time with the taps, “One . . . two . . . three, four,