Jamie reached her right hand into the chalk
bag at her waist and kneaded the dry white powder into her fingers, to improve
her grip. She then tensed her legs and lunged outwards, her hand fastening onto
a distant nub of rock the size of a pencil eraser. She stabbed her right foot
at another nub and swung her left foot to a crag that seemed stable, at least
for the moment.
A drop of
perspiration slid from her short blonde hair, across her forehead, past her
ear, and then 100 feet down to the mesa below. The sunlit blue sky was still
crisp with the morning’s dew. A lone cloud seemed embarrassed to be marring the
perfect, golden scene, and was doing its best to drift eastwards out of view.
Jamie pressed her
feet in opposite directions, and continued upwards, her fingers expertly
finding bumps and crevices to hold herself to the rock face. She was
three-quarters of the way up a slender spire of rock — a narrow stone finger
thrusting upward from the earth to the sky. It was like a scene from a Disney
nature movie, but without the stirring soundtrack.
An eagle soared
past her head, its sharp eye clearly unimpressed with her climbing feats.
Still, the eagle made a better companion than had the hissing snake or the
snapping coyote she’d encountered earlier in the climb.
She had
thoroughly enjoyed peeling six hundred-dollar bills off a roll of cash to pay
Cecil for her car. Plus fifty dollars for the fence she’d cut through. His face
had been priceless, and she’d left him speechless for once.
And Mrs.
Baxelbelt! She was so astonished at the fifteen hundred in cash that Jamie
counted into her hand that she nearly keeled over on the spot. Jamie just
smiled sweetly and sauntered up to her room, using the stairs for once.
Jamie had
MaryElle to thank for that money, not that she ever would. She figured she’d
thanked her enough. It still made her mad to think of MaryElle’s high-handed
ways and low opinion of her. Another few years without ever having to see — or
talk to — MaryElle sounded pretty good to her.
She was
contemplating whether to drop into Barney’s Eats for breakfast some morning,
when the chime of marimbas suddenly sounded behind her, causing her to miss a
hold and slide sideways for three yards before she managed to grab at a passing
lump of rock and twist her feet around in time to save herself. She hugged the
rock until her heart slowed its pounding.
Note to self:
turn off the damn ringer before climbing!
Then she reached
around into her fanny pack, withdrew her cell phone, frowned at the screen, and
said, “Hey, Mama. Little busy right now. What’s up?”
Her mother sighed
dramatically. “Well, I simply haven’t heard from you in — oh, it must be weeks
— and is it so terrible for a mother to call her only daughter, especially when
she hasn’t — ”
Jamie rolled her
eyes. “Yeah, I’m good, thanks for asking. What’s up?”
“I hear you went
and spent some time with your cousin MaryElle recently — actually here in
Tennessee — and you never even thought to look in on — ”
Jamie frowned,
her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I did see her. A little. How did you hear about that?
“I just happened
to be speaking with MaryElle’s mother, and she told me MaryElle told her that —
”
This struck Jamie
as even more mysterious: it was no secret that MaryElle’s mother couldn’t stand
Jamie or her Mama, never could. It was hard to imagine either one calling
the other.
“Why would
MaryElle’s mother be calling you?”
“She was simply
keeping me aware of the latest terrible family news, not that you ever
give a thought to your own — ”
“What
terrible family news?”
“Well, if it
interests you at all, your Aunt Abigail seems to have fell and injured her leg.
Apparently — ”
“Abs hurt?” Jamie
found herself thinking about flights back to Nashville again.
But I don’t
want to go to Nashville.
But this was
Abs, the one person in her family she could bear …
“Is she hurt bad?
Is she all right?”
“I hear she’s
back at home, but you know she lives alone, so — ”
“I’m gonna go see
her. See what I can do for her.”
“Well, that’s
very commendable of you, Jamie. Very generous. And — speaking of generous — I
don’t suppose you could send your mother a little something until — ”
“Naw, I’m busted
myself,” Jamie said, ignoring for a moment the thousands of dollars now sitting
in her checking account. “Sorry. Maybe next week.”
Her mother said
decisively, “I’ll call you next week.”
Jamie smiled to
herself. “ Talk to you later.”
She replaced the
phone in her fanny pack, then twisted her head from side to side until she
spotted a chimney in the rock about twenty yards above her and ten yards to the
left. She worked towards it with determination, then braced herself inside it —
her back to one wall, her feet to the other — and caught her breath.
Jamie retrieved
her phone and pressed the Favorites button for her Aunt — well, actually, her
mama’s Aunt — Abigail. While she waited for the phone to be answered, the eagle
dove at her head.
“Buzz off!” she
cried. The echoes of her curse rebounded over and over. Then she said, “Hello?
Abs?”
“Jamie? Is that
you, dear?”
“Hey, Abs!”
“It sounds so
windy, dear. Where are you?”
Jamie blinked.
“Oh, I’m on campus. In front of the library. It sure gets windy here.”
There was a
moment’s silence. “Jamie. Please. Where are you, really?”
Jamie shrugged.
“Utah. Moab. About seventy feet from the top.”
“Oh, it sounds
wonderful! Take some photos for me.”
“I will. But,
hey, what’s all this I hear about you busting up your leg?”
“Oh, I just
tripped over my own feet. The kind of foolish sudden movement you make when
you’re 82. No dancing The Nutcracker
this year,” she said with a rueful chuckle.
“That’s awful!
Are you in pain?”
“I’m fine.
They’ve got me in a wheelchair — ” Jamie winced. “ — and taking these pills
every four hours. Silly nonsense. I’m only glad my classes are over for the
semester.”
Aunt Abigail was
a professor of accounting, the one that students dreaded getting, but were
later glad they’d had. In her classes, the word “homework” was definitely a
verb.
Jamie could just
about remember the first retirement party the college had thrown for Aunt
Abigail, when she’d turned 65. Jamie had been 5 at the time and had eaten most
of the cake.
That retirement
hadn’t taken hold. Neither had the next one, when Jamie had been 12 and Aunt
Abigail had been forcibly retired at 72. Jamie remembered that second
retirement party much better. She’d ignored the cake and focused on catching
the attention of the college guys.
But even after
two retirements, Aunt Abigail still showed up to teach her accounting courses
every semester. The university had shrewdly decided to deal with this by the
unusually practical expedient of letting her do it.
“But how are
y’all getting along around the house?” Jamie wondered. Aunt Abigail lived in an
immense old house with two wings, three stories, and eccentric wooden floors,
three miles from Balesboro, the nearest town, about 30 miles south of
Nashville. Not the easiest place for an 82-year-old invalid to maneuver a
wheelchair around.
“I’m doing just
fine. They converted the breakfast room into a temporary bedroom for me on the
first floor.”
The eagle
fluttered back, alighting on Jamie’s bare knee and pecking at her head. Jamie
opened her mouth in a silent scream of pain, then swatted the bird away and
gazed incredulously at the bloody gouges its talons had left in her leg.
“ — cooks for me
each day. And I have Orlo and my gentleman friends to look after me.”
Jamie frowned.
Orlo was the space-cadet grad student the college had assigned to help Aunt
Abigail with errands and photocopies and so forth for the classes she taught.
Orlo could mess up a two-car parade.
And her
“gentleman friends” were all retired professors who were each at least in their
seventies themselves.
“Yeah, but — ”
“And they have
this visiting nurse who sees me regularly. That Ida Suggs, from town.”
Jamie rolled her
eyes. Ida Suggs looked like a cow who’d just been stunned insensible. Not the
kind of medical personnel you wanted caring for a loved great-aunt.
“I’m flying right
down there,” Jamie announced.
“That’s sweet of
you, dear, but I can’t ask you to — ”
“Come on, Abs.
Orlo and your gentleman friends can’t help you with — you know. And Ida Suggs?
I wouldn’t trust her to take care of a shrub.”
“Oh, but you have
your, er — ”
“I have nothing.
I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She began mentally plotting the trip from here
to Moab to Salt Lake again to …
“Well, if you’d
really like to visit, it would be wonderful to see you.”
The eagle swooped
down on Jamie again, causing her to fumble, then drop, her phone.
“Talk to you
later!” she yelled as her phone plummeted down the rock face, before smashing
on the boulders below.
“Crap,” she said, then looked up,
saw her next handhold, and began climbing again.