Page 44 of God’s Country

For several seconds, she struggled before finally getting her footing. I couldn’t tell if the slip had been accidental or calculated, and I prayed I wouldn’t regret sending her up that cliff.

She was ten minutes into her climb, maybe eight feet below the hole in Devil’s Bottom that I believed to be the “asshole” the brothers kept mentioning, when she finally stopped. She spent a few minutes scrutinizing the rock above her. Then she called out, “I can’t get to it!”

“You’d better get to it!” Ollie hollered back.

“Don’t do anything risky!” I called up to her.

“You shut up.” Ollie glared at me.

“He’s right,” Stan said to his brother. He called up to her. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to get shot, but I’m sure I can’t make it this way. I can’t quite reach the next hold.”

“Was your uncle a tall man?” I asked Stan.

“Well over six feet.”

“Two heads taller than that girl. A far greater reach with his arms and legs. Tell her to come down.”

Stan gave her the word, and Leticia began making her way off the cliff. In a climb, descending can be, for so many reasons, more difficult than ascending. Not only does it require a different set of muscles, but your perspective can make it harder to spot the holds and can easily lead to a misstep. At that point, Leticia had been using her whole body intensely for quite a while, and fatigue was also a possible issue. As much as I’d been concerned watching her climb up, I was far more fearful about her coming down. As it turned out, I was right to be worried.

She was still fifteen feet above us when she fell.

CHAPTER 27

The Creator works in mysterious ways. Ollie was by far the biggest among us, a doughy bulk of a man. He happened to be directly beneath Leticia when she tumbled from the cliff. She landed on him, which significantly cushioned her fall but didn’t do Ollie any good. He lay beneath her, swearing a blue streak until Leticia rolled off him.

“God damn it! I think my back’s broken,” he cried.

“Are you okay?” I asked Leticia. She gave me a vigorous nod.

Stan was holding the Glock. He kept it trained in my direction but knelt beside his brother. “Can you stand up?”

“I told you my back’s broken.”

His arms were still working, so I asked, “Can you move your legs?”

He could.

“Any pain in your arms or legs?”

“Just my back.”

“Let me try to move him,” I suggested to Stan. “See if he can sit up.”

“Don’t let him touch me,” Ollie said.

“For Christ sake, let him give you a hand,” Stan said. “I’ve got to hold the gun.”

Ollie was on his back. I told him to roll over, then helped him to a kneeling position.

“How’s that feel?” I asked.

“Hurts like the devil.”

“Where?”

“Down here.” He touched his lower back.