"Can we look for it?"
"Absolutely. After we take a break."
I settled onto the stone slab, unhooked my canteen from my belt, and took a long swallow of slightly warm, slightly metallic-tasting, incredibly delicious water. The park ranger I'd spoken to on the telephone had emphasized that we needed to take canteens with us and knapsacks containing trail food, a compass and a topographical map (neither of which I knew how to use), a first-aid kit, and a rain slicker in case the weather turned bad. "Dress in layers," she'd advised. "Keep a dry jacket in your knapsack." I'd already put on my denim windbreaker before we left the car. Now the hike had so warmed me that I took off the jacket and stuffed it into the knapsack.
"Anybody want some peanuts and raisins?" I asked.
"I'm still full from lunch," Petey said.
Jason looked uncomfortable.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I have to…"
It took me a moment to understand. "Pee?"
Jason nodded, bashful.
"Go around that boulder over there," I told him.
Hesitant, he disappeared behind it.
My parental obligations taken care of for the moment, I stepped forward to admire the chasm. The stream tumbled down a series of low waterfalls. Spray hovered over it. How had Jason described the view? "Neat"? He was right. This was totally neat.
Behind me, he suddenly shouted, "Dad!"
Something slammed my back with such force that it took my breath away. I hurtled into space.
15
The drop sucked more of my breath away. The little that was left jolted from my mouth when I struck loose stones. Avalanching with them, rolling sideways, I groaned. Abruptly, I hurtled into the air again, plummeting farther, my stomach squeezing toward my throat. I jerked to an agonizing stop, my left arm stretching as if it were about to be ripped from its socket. My arm slipped free of something. I dropped again and hit something hard. Cold mist swallowed me. Darkness swirled.
When my eyelids slowly opened, black turned to gray, but the swirling continued. Pain awoke throughout my body. Delirious, I took a long time to realize that the gray swirling around me was vapor thrown up from the cascading stream. The roar aggravated my dizziness.
I felt that I was breathing through a cold, wet washcloth. Gradually, I understood that my left arm was across my nose and mouth. My shirtsleeve was soaked from the vapor that the thundering stream tossed into the air. Then I trembled, seeing that my sleeve was wet from something besides the mist. Blood. My arm was gashed.
Alarm shot through me. I fought to raise my head, and discovered that I was on my back on a ledge. Below was a fall of what I judged to be I50 feet. A series of outcrops led sharply down to the roaring stream.
Jesus, what had happened?
I peered up. The vapor made it difficult for me to see the top of the cliff. Nonetheless, through the haze, I could distinguish a long slope of loose stones below the rim. The slope had saved my life. If I'd fallen directly to where I now lay, my injuries would have been catastrophic. Instead, I'd rolled down the slope, painfully reducing the length of the fall. But beneath the slope of loose stones, there had been a ledge over which I'd tumbled to the ledge I'd landed on, and the distance between them was about twenty feet. A potentially lethal drop. Why wasn't I dead?
My knapsack dangled above me. It was caught on a sharp branch of a stunted pine tree that had managed to grow from the side of the cliff. I remembered stuffing my windbreaker into the knapsack and hanging the knapsack over my left shoulder before I'd walked over to peer into the chasm. The branch had snagged the knapsack. The sharp pain in my left shoulder indicated the force with which I'd been jerked to a stop. My arm had slipped free from the strap. I'd fallen a body length to this ledge. Luck was all that had saved me.
Every movement excruciating, I strained to sit up. My mind tilted, as if ball bearings rolled from the front of my skull to the back. For a moment, I feared that I'd vomit.
"Jason!" I tried to yell. "Petey!"
But the words were like stones in my throat.
"Jason!" I tried harder. "Petey!"
The roar of the stream overpowered my voice.
Don't panic, I fought to assure myself. It doesn't matter if they can't hear me. They know where I am. They'll help me.
My God, I hope they don't try to climb down, I suddenly thought.
"Jason! Petey! Stay where you are! You'll fall and get killed!"
My voice cracked, making my words a hoarse whisper.
Straining to see through the haze, I hoped to catch a glimpse of Jason and Petey peering over the rim to try to find me. No sign of them. Maybe they're trying to get a better vantage point, I thought. Or maybe they're hurrying back to the mouth of the chasm, hoping to reach me from below.
I prayed that they'd be careful, that Jason wouldn't take foolish chances, that Petey would make sure he didn't. Trembling, I parted the rip in my sleeve. Wiping away the blood, I saw a gash five inches long between my elbow and my wrist. Blood immediately welled up, obscuring the wound. It dripped from my arm, pooling on the ledge.
Bile shot into my mouth.
Do something, I thought. I can't just sit here and let myself bleed to death.
My knapsack seemed to float above me. I stretched my good arm but couldn't reach it. In greater pain, I mustered the strength to try to stand.
The first-aid kit in the knapsack, I thought.
My legs gave out. I clawed at a niche and barely avoided toppling into the chasm. Despite the cold from the stream, I sweated. Shock made me tremble as I grabbed for a higher niche and wavered to my feet. For a moment, I saw specks in front of my eyes. Then my vision cleared, and I stared up toward the knapsack. Despairingly, it seemed as high as ever. My injured left arm dangled at my side. I extended my right arm upward. Another six inches. All I need is six inches more, I thought.
Pressing my chest against the cliff, standing on tiptoes, wincing from new throbbing pain in my hips, my sides, and my ribs, I stretched as high as I could, then breathed out in triumph as I touched the knapsack's strap.
Vapor from the stream had slicked the nylon. I lost my grip but instantly pawed for the strap again, pushing my tiptoes to their limits, this time clutching with all my strength. I tugged the knapsack to the side, toward the chasm, working to free it from the stout branch it had snagged on. I tugged once, twice, and suddenly felt weightless as the knapsack jerked free.
Falling, I dove toward the ledge. I screamed as my injured arm landed, but I couldn't let myself react. I had to concentrate solely on my good arm hanging over the ledge, the knapsack dangling from my fingers.
Cautiously, I rolled onto my back and placed the knapsack on my chest. The temptation to rest was canceled by the increased flow of blood from my arm. Nauseated, I opened the knapsack, pawed past my windbreaker and rain slicker, pushed the Ziploc bags of trail food aside, and found the plastic case of the first-aid kit.
I clumsily pried it open, dismayed to find only Band-Aids and two-inch-square pads along with scissors, antiseptic swabs, antibiotic cream, and a plastic bottle of Tylenol. None of that was going to stop the bleeding.
A tourniquet, I thought. I'll use my belt. I'll tighten it around my arm and…
But even as I unbuckled my belt, I remembered something I'd read about tourniquets being dangerous, about the risk of blood clots and gangrene if the tourniquet wasn't loosened at proper intervals.
What difference does it make? I thought. I'll bleed to death before I die from gangrene.
A pressure bandage. Whatever I'd read about tourniquets had warned that a pressure bandage was the safe way to stop bleeding, something that put pressure on the wound without cutting off the flow of blood. But where was I going to find something like that?
The bleeding worsened.
Perhaps because I was light-headed, I took more time than I should have to remember something else that might be in the knapsack. Once when Kate had been on a college trip to Paris, she'd sprained an ankle and had limped painfully from drugstore to drugstore, trying to find an Ace bandage, the wide, long elastic material you wrap around a sprain to give the injured area some support. Since then, whenever she traveled, she made sure to carry one in her luggage, and she always took care to pack one for me.