8.

“I GOTCHA, MAN. I GOTCHA.”

The voice was McFetridge’s. It was straining, but it was comforting, too. It kept saying the same thing over and over.

I opened my eyes. The trees above me were at a funny angle. They were growing out of my feet. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at their tops, from the bottoms up. Blood was in my head. But it wasn’t loose blood. Not wet blood. I blinked and listened to McFetridge cooing to me. I listened to him grunt, curse, reassure me all over again, and I realized I was upside down. I was on a steep slope and my head was lower than my feet. But where were my arms? Where were my hands? What was holding me?

I remembered now. I remembered jumping, seeing I wasn’t going to reach the water, trying to find a place to land. I had hit feetfirst and then pitched forward, head over heels. I had gone back into the air, seen the boulders below me as I flipped, and grabbed for whatever I could. And now I was lying upside down, not feeling anything in my limbs. Except I could feel my feet. I just didn’t want to move them because they were caught on something, holding me in place.

“Hang on there, buddy. I gotcha. I gotcha. I’m almost there.”

I could sense McFetridge more than I could see him. He seemed to be swinging from one handhold to another. I concentrated very hard on moving my left arm. It moved and I had a rush of exultation. I tried my right arm and it moved as well.

“I’m okay,” I said. I meant it only in terms of how bad I might have been, but it was enough.

McFetridge stopped his descent. I could hear him breathing hard. I could hear despair. Why despair? Because he hadn’t killed me right away? Or because I was broken?

How broken could I be? I could feel my arms. I could feel my feet. If I could feel my feet and I couldn’t move them, what did that mean? I began to hyperventilate. Noises were coming out of my chest. They weren’t noises I had ever made before. They weren’t noises I had ever heard any human being make before.

“It’s okay, buddy, I’m gonna get you.”

He was going to get me.

“You sonofabitch,” I said, because I was scared, because I did not want him to see how scared I was. “Come near me and I’ll fucking kill you.” I did not explain how I was going to do that and McFetridge wasn’t listening anyway.

“Wait, wait, wait, buddy, don’t move!”

But I wasn’t moving, was I? If I couldn’t move my legs that meant I couldn’t dig them into anything. Which meant I would slide. Plummet. Go headfirst into the boulders, ricochet into the water and get carried downstream. I lay very still for a moment, trying to get my thoughts under control.

“Look,” I said, “if I sit up, am I going to dislodge anything?”

“I got nothing to haul you up with,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer.

I tried again. “If I swing my legs around, am I going to be all right?”

“Do it slowly. Move them one at a time, just a little to your right. You’re on about a forty-five-degree pitch, Georgie.”

Except I couldn’t move my legs. Unless, possibly, I swung them from my hips. I pictured it in my mind. A right angle—forty-five degrees was half a right angle. I could swing my legs as a unit.

I groped with my left hand and found something long and thin and secure—a shoot off a tree root, in all likelihood—and I held it as hard as I could. I dug my right hand into the dirt and it gave way, sending a mini-avalanche of stones tumbling down toward the water, scaring me all over again, making me think the whole hillside was going to collapse beneath me.

“Move it up higher, Georgie. Move your hand a little higher. Reach, buddy. Reach!”

My fingers closed around a branch of some kind, something that bit into my palm but was anchored to the ground. I started the swing. My legs moved, but not together.

Slowly I worked each one around like the hands on a clock.

“That’s it. Keep going, guy. Keep it up.” McFetridge’s voice had dropped to an encouraging whisper. “You’re almost there.”

The idea was to spin my body, get my head uphill from my feet.

I inched around until I could see him. He was hanging off a bush himself, hanging with his right arm, reaching down toward me with his left. If that bush pulled out of the hillside, he was gone. All of his weight would propel him like a missile into the boulders below.

Was McFetridge risking his life to save me? But he wasn’t saving me, was he? He was there and I was here, and at least ten feet of sloped earth was between us.

I had to let go of the root if I was going to get to him. Did I want to do that? He wanted me to. Why? Because he knew I couldn’t.

I tore into the dirt with my fingers. I balanced one foot on a rock that I had to trust would stay in place. I pushed the side of my face into the hill and tried to dig it in as though somehow my skin would create some adhesion, and I spun slowly and deliberately, and all the time McFetridge kept calling to me, telling me I was almost there, that I was going to make it.

He reached, I reached. I touched his fingers. Our hands crept over each other and I grabbed his wrist.