“Des, my arms are g-getting…”
“I am not hearing that!” She dangled the belt out to him once more. Damn, still another foot to go. And not a thing to grab on to. “You can hold on. Just one more minute. One minute. Say you’ll hang on for me. Come on, say it!”
“I’ll… I’ll hang on…”
She edged lower, clinging to the side of the cliff by her fingers, clawing at the moss with her nails as the river tore on by her, pelting her with cold spray. She could not even think about how she was going to climb back up there with him. One impossibility at a time. “Hang on, I got you,” she told him, keeping her voice steady. “You’re taking me dancing, remember? I’ve been waiting for this. Think I’m going to let you weasel out now?” Reaching her belt down to him. Damn, still six more inches. Edging lower, surrendering a halfway decent toehold for no toehold, seeing him real clearly now in the flashlight’s beam, his hair glistening from the spray, his hands trembling around the branch that was the only thing between him and death. The branch that was bending and straining against his weight. “What was the name of that place again?”
“What place?”! He was panting wildly, as if he’d been running all out for miles. It was exhaustion and it was panic.
“Where you’re taking me dancing.”
“T-Tavern… The Tavern.”
One more good foothold was all she needed. One more. She reached down with her foot, poking blindly, kicking, until finally she made contact with the base of the tree that Mitch clung to. Her shoe was right next to his hand, bracing her there. “They got them a DJ?”
“Just a jukebox… Des, I c-can’t…”
“It’s okay, we’re all good now,” she said, her voice brimming with confidence. “I’ve got you. Here we go…” Des readied herself, breathing in and out, realizing with a shocking degree of clarity that it was for this singular moment in her life that she had done all of that work. Every weight she had lifted. Every mile she had run and hiked and biked. The four years of iron-willed training at WestPoint. All of that was preparation for this moment, this mountain, right here, right now. And she would need all she could bring. Every bit of strength. Every bit of heart. It all.
Because she was about to take on two-hundred pounds of man.
With her left arm, Des dangled the belt out to him. “Grab it, Mitch.”
“I can’t! We’ll both go down!”
“No, we won’t.”
“We will!” he cried out, panting. “I’ll p-pull you right down with me. Kill us both. Just let me go…”
“I can’t let you go!” she sobbed, the tears beginning to stream down her face. She could not stop them from coming. She did not even try. “I don’t want to be alive unless you are, too. Then I will die, don’t you get it? Now give me your damned hand, you fat son of a bitch!”
He made an angry lunge for the belt and grabbed hold, the suddenness of his weight very nearly yanking her right off the mountainside. But she held on, wet fingers clinging to wet granite, fingernails breaking, her shoulder feeling as if it were about to pop out of its socket.
But she had him. Now all she had to do was tow him back up one-handed. Nothing to it. Cherry pie. Great big slab of it, a la mode.
Slowly, Des began the agonizing climb back up that sheer cliff to safety, the veins in her neck bulging as she reached up with her right arm, grabbing an uncertain fingerhold, and pulled him up along with her by her left, the muscles in her legs and lower back powering them upward, inch by precious inch. An animal groan of pain coming out of her as she willed them back up. The pain in her shoulder growing so intense that she was positive she could not hold him one second longer, that she had to let him go. Or die. She was beginning to feel light-headed now, almost delirious. The mountain was starting to waver and shift on her, like a ship at sea.
“What’s our… song?” she panted, terrified she was about to pass out.
“Our… what?”
“Got to have… song… How’s Aretha?”
“Fine… by me…” he answered, kicking wildly against the side of the cliff. Somehow, he found a toehold in a crevice, freeing some of his weight from both of their shoulders for a precious moment.
Gasping, she clung there, soaking wet, every muscle in her body quivering, knowing she had to keep moving. Forcing herself to keep moving. “Here we go, baby. One more time.” Climbing upward again. Gaining a fingerhold, losing it, slipping back down, grabbing on to the wet granite for dear life. And trying it all over again. “Your favorite Aretha…?”
“Has to be… ‘Respect.’ ”
“Me, too. Oh, God!” she groaned, as the pain in her shoulder grew even more unbearable. “Tell me about… the food.”
“Des, we can’t…”
“We can!” she screamed, inching farther upward toward the dim glow that was her flashlight’s beam. “Tell me… what we’ll eat.”
“Spinach… fettuccine.”
“Love me… I love me the pasta. Must be part Italian.”
“No, can’t be. You’re already… part Jewish. Bella said so.”
One inch, then another. Until at last he could finally swing a leg up over that branch he’d been hanging from. He straddled it, his chest heaving.
She clung there, her face hugging the cold granite as if it were a goose-down pillow. Her shoulder felt dead now. She felt dead- ready to surrender to the black void below. She had nothing left. Not one bit of energy. She couldn’t make it. They couldn’t make it.
Mitch worked his foot up under himself, bracing it against the base of the little tree. Then he knotted the belt tightly around his wrist, the better to hold on. “Just a couple more feet and we’re there,” he said with a sudden rush of bravado. “Two, maybe three. We’re going to make it, right?”
Now he was trying to spur her on, even though both of his arms had to be ready to fall off. But he could tell that she was losing it.
“Almost there,” she croaked, slowly tilting her head upward, raising her eyes. She could see the flashlight up there. Five feet away. Might as well be five miles. “You… still my boy?”
“You know I am. Know something else? Your gas tank isn’t empty. You’ve got two more gallons left.”
She tried to smile but was too weak. “I-I do?”
“You come with an emergency reserve tank. I read about it in your owner’s manual. Listen to me… Des, are you listening to me?”
“Y-Yeah?”
“My turn to do the heavy lifting now. Soon as I get both feet up under me. All you have to do is move us up two more inches. Then I can push you the rest of the way, okay? Can you give me two more inches?”
Groaning, she started to climb again, positive her fingers were about to break right off at the knuckle. And now he had both feet under him on that little tree and he was pushing her upward instead of pulling her down, lifting her up, up, up the side of the cliff just like when she was a little girl and the Deacon would take her for a ride up on his shoulders, laughing and singing. And Des was grabbing for the top now and she was safely up and she was-
Until suddenly there was an awful cracking sound and that little tree gave way.
And Mitch was hanging on to her for dear life again, nothing under him besides blackness and death. But she could brace her knees against solid stone now, and he was making it up, up, and over and they were both collapsed there, alive, covering each other’s faces with kisses, grateful for life, grateful for each other, grateful.
They lay there for a long time, soaking wet, too exhausted to stir. The awful pain in Des’s left shoulder didn’t subside at all. She couldn’t move the arm one bit.
“Admit it,” she finally said weakly. “Admit that you’re glad I made you lose those ten pounds.”
“I will never, ever doubt you again,” he groaned, sprawled there beside her. “Only, what do I do now?”
“About what?”
“I just killed a man.”
“Don’t go there, Mitch. Will Durslag did that to himself.”
“No, that’s not what happened,” Mitch said with sudden vehemence. “You didn’t see it, Des. I smashed him in the head with a bottle. I killed him.”