by A P Bateman
“These guys sold out?” Stone prompted. “Didn’t sound like they needed the money.”
The man dropped the cardboard box behind the counter and rubbed his neatly trimmed beard. It was jet black, in contrast to his grey hair. He looked like a pint of Guinness. “You know what? They didn’t. They invested a lot of time and effort. Seems they thought the conditions of light, temperature, humidity and rainfall was similar to the growing conditions for grapes in France. That Atlantic coast hits them hard in winter, but those vineyards are all on big rivers and it reflects the light or some such and holds the moisture in the air. I heard them telling Maggie over at the hotel that one evening. It worked too, because after a few years they had bumper crops and started their cider operation because they couldn’t sell the apples to the wholesalers fast enough. Then Bart Conrad comes back from the war and in a matter of weeks buys them out lock, stock and barrel.”
“And the…” Stone hesitated, trying to choose a better word, but failed. “…Hippies moved on?”
“That’s right. Maggie was hurt, seems she became friendly with them. They used to come down to the hotel every Sunday night. Maggie puts on a good dinner – roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, corn and gravy. Only five dollars. What the hell can you get for five dollars? I think she does it for the company. A few older people go to use the hotel bar. The bar on the main street is more of a sports bar – burgers, pool and bottled Bud. Anyway, they upped and moved without so much as a goodbye.”
“So what about Claude?”
“Well, he’s about a dozen years older than the others I’d say. Not entirely sure how old they all are. Maybe he’s close to twenty years older than Bart. He lost his wife when she was really young. She needed medical treatment, an organ donation of some kind, they never found a match in time. He did a good few years out of state after that. It cut him up bad. He ended up pretty successful in his own way. He made a lot of money when others were losing it. Narrowly missed going to prison over some unlawful loan enterprise. Seems the State of California thought four thousand percent was a little too much interest to charge on a three year secured loan. He lost a lot of money in legal fees and charges, fines by the IRS, but the biggest of his cases was dropped through lack of witness involvement. He came back to Oregon after that.”
Stone nodded. “And is he in the lumber or apple growing business?”
“Oh, no,” the store keeper said as he took Stone’s money. He didn’t hand him a receipt. “No, he’s the mayor…”
2
Stone stashed the rope and carabiners in his day sack and bid the store keeper farewell. He stepped back into the street and looked across at the diner. The younger Conrad brother, Bart, was still watching. This time he had taken up a booth in the window and Stone could see him drinking coffee. Their eyes met and for a moment. Stone held his stare, but wasn’t going to get caught in a staring contest. He was done with him, had other things to do. He turned, looked both ways down the deserted street and took off east, the way he’d come into town earlier.
He walked a mile, leaving the town behind and keeping to the wide shoulder. Fall leaves were still mulching down on either side, compressed and wet from the thaw. It had been a dry spring for Oregon, but there had still been the banks of fog and rain that came off the Pacific. The ground was wet and the shoots and young leaves on the trees were glistening and lush. The forest smelled damp and rotten. Stone looked at the upward slope on his right. It was uneven, a tangle of fallen trees covered in lichen and wet moss. Shoots of bracken were unfurling. He had heard that the mountains here took their brunt of storms in the winter, huge weather patterns that gathered momentum from the Antarctic and gained strength all the way across the Pacific and unleashed upon the mountainous coastline all the way up to Washington and Vancouver. And then there were the Arctic storms, cold. Savagely so. The temperature could drop dramatically. Indeed, Stone carried a few days’ heat-up rations, a thermal blanket and a fleece jacket in his day sack, despite the warm temperature and bright sunshine. He supposed that the sheltered orchards were on the eastern sides of the mountains. Which made sense as they would get the dawning sun and keep it until mid-afternoon.
In the distance he could see a semi, saw it before he could hear it. The engine noise came a few moments later, its heavy low tone reverberating off the mountainside. Stone could see that it was heavily loaded with timber. It came towards him slowly, the driver working the gears up the slight incline. As it drew near he could see that it towed two trailers. Both were laden with prepared timber planks. There were various piles of different lengths. The ends butted together tightly and the lengths were held in place by many webbing straps. He supposed it was a vehicle from Big Dave Conrad’s operation. The truck passed him and he stepped back to watch it head down the road. There were no markings on it.
There were no more vehicles for the half mile or so to the sharp turning which headed up the mountain. There was a sign warning no heavy vehicles beyond this point. It was a narrow road, so much so that moss had grown in places in the middle of it, tyres unable to reach it and rub it away. He reached the sharp turning, which backed up on itself, turning at an acute angle up the mountain. The road zig-zagged for approximately a mile to within half a mile from the top, but Stone would go no further. He found the pathway and walked a hundred metres or so along a path to the edge of the cliff. He could see the fringe of the outskirts of the town below. It was set out in classic block network, but lost its shape at the edges where properties became bigger and more spaced out. The main strip was just about visible, and he was sure he could make out the red roof of the diner.
He dropped his day sack onto the damp earth and took off and folded his jacket. He pulled out the harness and rig and placed it carefully beside the sack. He stashed the jacket, slipped the harness over his body and adjusted and secured the webbing straps. He wouldn’t need the resin or crampons, but he kept out the hammer and pitons. This was a retrieval descent. He had somewhat carelessly, perhaps arrogantly taken the more demanding route and had come unstuck. Not sufficiently climbing fit to a high enough standard, he had been forced to traverse too far, was unable to find the right line and ran out of rope. Careless, perhaps foolhardy, but he had found a good route for descent, but would only stave off the pang of defeat sufficiently if he descended and at least retrieved several hundred dollars’ worth of equipment in the process.
He could stand to lose a few pitons, and so hammered one into a nice narrow crag in the rock at the top. He clipped on a heavy carabiner and thread through the rope, brought the rope through his rig but did not tie to the carabiner. He would use a double length and attach to another piton further down, thread the rope, release the other end and pull the length back down to him. That way he estimated on losing perhaps half a dozen of the metal spikes, but would retrieve many more as well as the lengths of rope, the expanding crevice hooks and carabiners he had left on the cliff-face.
When he had double checked his equipment he attached the sack to his rig with a six-foot length of para-cord and let it go over the edge.
The descent was fun, a simple abseil, and did much to restore the apprehension which had risen to the surface as he had traversed, and got out of a potentially life-threatening climb. He was aware of the dangers. It was what had drawn him into climbing in the first place. However, he was also aware that he was no longer a teen climbing in organised groups in college. He was alone, out of practice and in his mid-thirties. Surely there were death statistics for this age group? Like a mathematical equation. Man + approaching middle age + money + motorbike/climbing/parachuting (insert risk) = death (painful and unnecessary). In fact, Stone would be the first to admit it but he didn’t so much enjoy taking risks, rather hated the void within that a life with lack of risk created. He couldn’t ever remember enjoying battle in Afghanistan. But he missed it nonetheless.
He approached the first, or last rope set, landing gently beside it. He attached on, unfastened the length of ab
andoned rope and let it fall. He released the end of the rope and pulled. It held firm. It shouldn’t have, he had threaded it through the carabiner, not tied on. He eased his body out a little, pulling the rope out from the cliff-face and tugging. Still it held firm. He pulled some slack out from his new carabiner and slotted his fingers into a crevice and pulled himself up. Another mistake, he regretted not attaching the crampons to his lightweight boots. The extra traction and grip would have been useful, but not lifesaving at the moment. The resin would have been invaluable. He worked his way up about eight feet and pulled at the rope. Still it held firm. But now, there was a vibration in the taught line. Faint, slight but he could feel movement. The line on the rock moved slightly. He watched it move - left, right, left – like a sawing motion. Stone gripped on tightly and started to slide down the rope towards the carabiner and new line but he was too late. He felt the release, the instant gut wrenching acceleration as he fell, still holding the flaccid rope uselessly in his hands. He passed the first carabiner as he fell. He was silent, no scream, just gritting his teeth and taking the fall. The rope tightened, the carabiner taking the weight, stalling him momentarily, then again he was falling ten, twenty, thirty feet and again the next carabiner held momentarily. For a split second Stone registered the piton pinging out of the rock, the rope changing direction slightly. There had been a long traverse across the face, but panic had set in and he no longer recalled where the carabiners were and in what pattern he’d set them. Again he slowed, this time for a recordable measure of time, but it didn’t hold and he fell again, but only a short way. Ten feet. The carabiner held. He was on an overhang. The worst place. He could not reach the cliff-face. He hung, spinning slowly like an unwanted puppet hung up on the back of a child’s bedroom door. The loose rope fell on top of him. He couldn’t recall how the line was set. Was there another one? No. He had traversed this far. Set up a new line for a new stage of ascent. Above him there was a substantial ledge. He breathed erratically. He knew he had to remain calm. One hundred and ninety pounds held by a quarter inch diameter of rope and a piton hammered a mere four inches into a crack in the rock. He felt a sudden, slight movement. Make that three inches. He looked down, fatal, but necessary and saw it was about sixty feet to the boulders below. He looked at the line below him, a ten-foot length dangled uselessly, wafting in the breeze. Above him the overhang was ten-feet away from him and the piton was moving. One thousandth of an inch every few seconds but those increments would add up. He contemplated using his shoelaces for a foot climb rig, but he knew he didn’t have the time and the piton would not hold throughout the movement. And he’d never tried it before. He should have bought the fast motorbike instead. He took his lock knife out of his pocket and opened it with the thumb stud. He cut away his day sack and suddenly lost ten crucial pounds. He put the knife handle between his teeth and gripped the rope far above him. Closing his eyes and drawing upon all his strength he started to climb hand over hand. He remembered the rope climb in his army training, remembered the instructor screaming, bellowing at his entire intake of recruits to climb the ropes all the way to the ceiling of the gym. Remembered that you couldn’t pass until you did a further three pull ups when you finally reached the top. He bit down hard on the handle of the knife, he could feel the movement in the rope loosening the piton further. Still he concentrated on the rope, the voice of the drill instructor and the ceiling above him. Only it wasn’t a ceiling, it was a ledge of rock and moss and it was just another pull up away.
The piton was on its last inch. Stone could see it now, but couldn’t quite get his feet into a crag. His belly was against the damp moss and he had just a foot and a half to go. He held on tightly to the rope and reached behind for his hammer. The hammer was for knocking in the pitons and was secured like a contractor’s hammer in their tool belt. The fall had dislodged it, but Stone was thankful that he hadn’t forgotten to secure a piece of para-cord through its handle. It dangled a few feet below him, and he fumbled it up to him, his eyes transfixed on the moving piton. He held the hammer firmly, but then realised that if he hit the spike he may well loosen it further, and if he tried to knock it deeper, would he be able to account for his not inconsiderable weight on the line? He dropped the hammer onto the ledge and whipped the knife out of his jaws. He jammed the blade in tightly against the piton and hammered it deep into the crevice, the piton on one side of the blade and the rock on the other. The blade sparked on the rock. The piton held firm. Stone dropped the hammer and pulled the last few overhands until he could get his knee onto the ledge and collapse, exhausted.
3
The rope had been cut. There was no doubt in Stone’s mind. He sat on a moss covered boulder at the base of the cliff, studying the two cut ends. They were not cleanly sliced, but they had not rubbed and frayed on the rock. The knife edge was sharp, but not razor sharp like so many hunting types were proud of. Maybe a serrated edge. Above him he had seen no sign of anyone. He wasn’t going to go back up the cliff and there was no other way except to get back on the road and go back up the way he’d came. It would take an hour from here. No point starting a hunt unless you’re going to finish it.
Stone had traversed the ledge to where it thinned and became shear once more. He had hammered two pitons into a crevice, approximately two feet apart, applied carabiners and tied the rope directly on to the furthest most one, keeping the tension to the second one. Theoretically each would take half his weight. He had simply repelled down in a few seconds, left the rope where it hung and sat on the rocks for ten minutes before getting up and retrieving the length of sabotaged rope and his day sack. He drank all of a can of full sugar Coca Cola in a matter of seconds. So fast it burned at his nose and the back of his throat. He ate most of a Toblerone chocolate bar as well. The bar was a Swiss chocolate and nut affair shaped like a ridge of tiny triangular mountains and it had been a whimsical purchase in a service station that made him feel foolish now that he’d been scared witless on the cliff face.
He bagged what equipment he had and put his jacket on. The sun had clipped a distant mountain to the west and the valley was suddenly cold. He looked back at the top of the cliff. Was there a movement in the trees? He wasn’t sure. He felt like shouting something, but simply turned and followed the path back to where he’d left his car.
It took ten minutes and he was glad to see the glossy red paintwork of the 390GT Mustang like a beacon through the green curtain of leaves. The car had been restored to its sixties glory and maintained at great expense, but Stone never felt the need to justify it. He was single, had never had children and had learned from his father that life needed to be lived, not planned for. Two weeks after his father had retired, a head and heart full of future plans and dreams, he had died. Of course, Stone knew that the life of a family man, working and providing for a wife and two children was never going to be frivolous, but Stone had used both his father and the subsequent purchase of the classic car as a metaphor for living in the moment.
He wasn’t even close to the car when he saw how low it sat, the wheels deep in the flared arches. He looked around him, then back at the punctured tyres. He bent down and looked at the nearest one, a savage gouge running along almost the whole top wall. A deep and wide slash at least eight inches long. He could see the rear tyre was the same and knew without moving that the other two would be identical. Maybe the tough rubber had gone some way towards dulling the same knife which had cut through both pieces of rope. He took out his smartphone, looked at the screen but there was no signal. Hadn’t been from thirty miles outside of town on the road in. He walked around and popped the trunk. Tucked in a pocket inside he had a basic Nokia phone that was over ten years old. It was always on charge, a dedicated charging wire ran from the cluster of wires in the rear light unit, trickle charging it twenty-four hours. Stone needed to be able to maintain contact in his line of work. He slipped off the cover and took out the three chips from different cell providers that he had stored inside the phone. The
card already inserted showed no signal. The basic cell phone with its two-inch aerial was undoubtedly the best signal receiver he’d known and often out-performed the array of expensive technological smartphones he had invested in over the years. After he had checked the other three chips he concluded that nothing was going to get a signal out here.
Stone dropped the day sack and rope in the trunk and took out his overnight bag. It was four-thirty and the air was chilled. The light was dropping fast, the range of mountains to the west had selfishly taken it for themselves. The trek down the narrow road was even darker under the canopy of trees. This was natural forest with pine, spruce, maple, beech and birch. The pines were tall and had escaped logging. The forest on either side of the road was thick and smelled of dampness and rotting vegetation. Again, Stone could see the thick moss as well as the bracken, although now it was folding on itself for the night. He noted he’d never seen moss like it. Like thick green carpets covering rocks and fallen trees and branches, and swamping the bottom few feet of the trees on all sides. He had been taught that moss grew mainly on the north side of a tree in the northern hemisphere, but the survival instructor had clearly never been to this valley.
The main road was clear again. No semis laden with lumber. Or timber. He didn’t know when wood became which. When he entered the northern end of town, he realised just how instant it was. There was no suburb, no periphery of township, the woods merely stopped a few feet short of the buildings and the street.
The hardware store was still open and Stone climbed the wooden steps and opened the door. The store keeper was on the phone, but seemed to end the call abruptly.
“Hello again,” he said, replacing the telephone receiver. It was an ancient phone. Probably bought soon after the till. “Everything okay?”