Chapter 4: The Domino Effect
After the first step, after getting over the initial climbing jitters, you move quicker up the wall. More fluid. You slip up some of the time. Ok—a lot. But you keep going, placing one foot a little higher than the other. One move flows into the next into the next.
Skin bleeds into sweaty shoes as perspiration seeps into your pants, but it’s stopped stinging your eyes. Every movement tumbles after the other. Muscles pump and the pads of your left index finger begin to bleed because the skin’s worn down so much. But you continue to rise.
He evades the authorities like he evaded his Mama when he snuck back into the house after curfew. He takes three more souls—old, dying ones that welcomed Death and greeted the butt of his gun with wide eyes. Their deaths tumbled one after the other like dominoes as he rose closer and closer to his goal.
Four souls—four wads of cash sitting in his pocket to give to Them. The people that would make him belong somewhere. Sometimes, he questioned their methods, but he believed in what they stood for. Cash taken from those that welcomed Death given to those that were close to it. Maybe that would make him an outlaw. But it sure as hell would make him belong.
Chapter 5: The Climax
You reach the crux—that’s the hardest part of the climb. It’s about ten feet from the top, but for this move, you have to jump eight feet above you and to the left to two slippery slopers. And if you fall…the clipping positions are so bad that if you fall, you’re plummeting twenty feet sideways into a particularly sharp part of the mountain’s face.
You breathe again. Steel yourself. Make the jump.
Their hideout is just up the hill, he thinks, subconsciously patting the wads of cash in his pocket.
But just as he starts up the hill, he sees a silhouette of a woman standing in his path. Holding a gun.
“Who goes there?” she shouts. Her voice cracks and quivers. She’s stooped double, shaking. Her voice sounds like that of an old woman, but he can’t tell for sure. It’s dark and rain drips from the sky like an oil painting.
He reaches behind him to the gun tucked in his belt.
“I’m alone and I’m not afraid to kill you! Some—someone killed my husband when he was traveling to visit a dying friend in another town.” Her voice shakes and she wails as if she was alone crying to God or to a mirror.
“I want—I want blood.” She’s sobbing now and then, as he aims his gun at her heart, she collapses in the mud.
He moves closer to her, and as he stares her down, in the pale light of the moon, he can make out her features.
Barbara, he thinks.
His arms shake as he keeps the gun trained at her skull. She’s a witness, he thinks. You have to kill her.
It’s the hardest part of his journey—his climb to belonging. Kill or be found out.
He pulls the t—
Chapter 6: Falling. And Denouement
—tonic out of his left pocket, dabs it on her forehead. Carries her limp body to the nearest house and asks the woman there to help him take care of her. Just before he left, Barbara whispers a labored, “Thank you.” And maybe that makes the guilt a little better. Maybe it makes it worse.
Soon, he’s at the hideout, offering the cash to the man in a humble worn travel outfit. The man sets the money into a box labeled “Hospital.” And then the man smiles.
“Welcome.” The man hands him the mask.
He breathes a sigh of relief.
A place at last.
You’ve caught the two slopers. Relief floods through your bones, into your muscles. Adrenaline pumps through you through the final three moves, and then—over the lip.
You breathe a sigh of relief. Untie your knot. Find your steady breath again. Hear the birds cry above you. Feel the wind, the Earth’s breath beneath you.
It’s the end of the climb—the denouement. And you’ve found your place at last.
