Graphic the Valley Read Online Free PDF Page B

system. When I started to climb, so did Lucy, just behind me.
    I said, “Go slow. Keep as much contact as you can.”
    “Contact?”
    “Two hands and two feet would be four points of contact on the rock,” I said. “Keep three on the rock at all times and you’ll be fine.”
    “Okay. Like two feet and one hand?”
    “Right,” I said. “Just move one thing at a time.”
    “Okay,” she said.
    We climbed together, one after the other, up the knobs, first, then the crack, following the weakness. The rock was never vertical, but a 50-degree slab leading to a 70-degree summit sequence. Each time I looked back, Lucy had three points of contact on the rock, reaching or stepping. She seemed comfortable, and that was good. We didn’t have a rope.
    The crack we were ascending ended and I stepped over a corner onto a 60-degree slope, slightly less vertical than before. There were little chicken-head knobs and divots there. Below us a few feet were blocks sticking out of two cracks.
    I was moving right on the slick rock. Lucy was behind me. The granite felt wax-covered on my bare feet. I looked back just as Lucy slipped.
    She didn’t scream. Her foot caught and she over-corrected, stood up. Teetering. I reached for her and lost my balance. My foot popped off, and I slid past Lucy as she leaned in and grabbed a big knob.
    The rock was angled, and I slid slowly. But as I went by Lucy, my foot hit one of those big knobs at the lower corner, one of those iron doorknobs that stuck out on that section of the climb. And that chunk popped me up, vertical, stopped me, made me weightless for a second, before I started to teeter again, my hands missing everything that I reached for.
    Then there was Lucy’s hand in front of my face. She was holding onto a big in-cut knob above her with her left hand and reaching down to me with her right.
    I caught her index finger, just that one finger, and I didn’t let go. Lucy was fully extended between that good hold she was gripping with her one hand above her head and the other hand reaching down to me. She screamed as I caught her finger, as I pulled myself into the rock using her one digit for leverage, and that finger popped, turning out of joint. The skin and tendons held even after the bone dislocated. Lucy sucked in a breath at the end of her scream like choking on sand.
    I reached a good knob with my other hand and grabbed it. Pulled myself onto the rock the rest of the way, stood up solidly on the knob beneath my feet, and let go of Lucy’s finger. There was no chance of me falling again then. We were both secure.
    Lucy slid and stepped down to me, onto a knob near the one I was standing on, using her good hand on the knobs in front of her face. We stood there on that slab together, and she ducked her head into me. I couldn’t see her other hand.
    “Did you hurt anything else?” I said.
    “No, just that finger.”
    The wind coughed twice against us, the only wind yet. The gust could mean a storm was coming. I was holding the in-cut in front of me, my other arm around Lucy. I said, “I want to look at your hand but I can’t right here. It’s too dark in this corner. I know an easy way up from here, though. We can traverse to the east and it’ll get way easier.”
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Can you climb if I help you?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Then step right there.” I pointed.
    I spotted her as she stepped over the corner, and we followed a low-angled wave of granite around the dome. I had her climb in front of me. The wave was a ramp for a hundred feet, with an easy scramble to the top from there. Each time Lucy had to use her right hand, she sucked in, breathing through her teeth like mint and cold air.
    I held a fistful of her shirt in the back and helped her through the few moves where two hands were necessary.
    We got to the summit of the dome, a rounded field of gray-white granite. And there, beneath 6,000 August stars, I snapped Lucy’s finger back into place. She