Back at the campsite, we put up a tarp and start a fire from some dry wood we stashed under Jeb’s truck. Rusty and I roast wieners on sticks. Jeb builds some kind of rack out of branches and duct tape to toast the hot dog buns over the fire.
“Dude, that’s never gonna work,” says Rusty.
“You be quiet,” says Jeb, laying a bun on the rack. “I learned this here technique from my Cherokee ancestors.”
“You don’t have Cherokee ancestors,” Rusty says.
“My great-great-grandpa was a Cherokee warrior,” says Jeb. He makes a warrior face at Rusty. The rack collapses, dumping the bun into the fire.
“Your great-great-grandpa was a lunatic,” says Rusty.
Jeb ignores him and shoves a hot dog on a stick to roast. “What’re we gonna climb tomorrow?” he asks.
“Edge of Flight,” I say.
Rusty nods, stuffing the end of a hot dog into his mouth.
“Jeepers, Vanisha,” says Jeb. “I dunno how you pull that balancy stuff. I can’t get more’n two feet up that climb.”
“Ten years of ballet lessons,” I say. “Comes in useful for some things.”
“Seriously, Vanisha? You do ballet?” asks Rusty.
“Used to. I quit a couple of years ago.”
“Why?”
Why? I bite into my hot dog. There were all the usual reasons—the hours of training, the obsession over weight, the gossip and backstabbing. But it went beyond that. I didn’t enjoy memorizing steps and performing them over and over and over again. There was no room to be creative or to think for myself.
That’s one thing I love about climbing—each new route is a new puzzle to be solved. There is no single, right way to get from the bottom to the top. Like Chuck’s Crack. The way Rusty climbed it was different from the way Jeb climbed it. The route taken depends on personal technique, strength and inspiration.
In climbing, too, there is the risk of a fall, which scares me to death but also draws me in. I feel this need to overcome it. To prove that I can. That’s how it is when I stand at the crux of Edge of Flight. Part of me always wants to chicken out, but part of me says, Do it, try it, risk it. I want that second part to win. I want to train myself to be brave.
All that’s too difficult to explain to the guys though.
“I guess I just got bored,” I say instead. “Then I did cheerleading for a year.”
“You were a cheerleader?” Jeb looks at me in disbelief, as if I’d just told him I was an invader from planet Zork. I stand up and throw a backflip to prove my cheer credentials.
Jeb whistles. “Wow, Vanisha. That’s hot.”
“Why’d you quit?” says Rusty.
“Don’t even get me started.”
“Bad?” says Rusty.
“Those girls can talk for hours about mascara and bra sizes,” I say.
“Sounds great,” says Jeb. “Where do I sign up?”
I’m about to give him a punch on the shoulder when a pair of headlights cuts through the woods. Car tires crunch to a stop on the dirt road next to our campsite.
Rusty shines his headlamp on the car. “It’s the cops.”
“Don’t look at me,” says Jeb. “I’m clean.”
“You’d better be,” says Rusty.
The deputy gets out of the car. He’s wearing a heavy raincoat and a sour look on his face, like he’s not too pleased to be out patrolling the woods on a soaking-wet night. He comes up to stand by the campfire.
“You kids got a valid hunting license?” he says.
“We’re not hunting, sir,” says Rusty. “Rock climbing.”
The deputy nods and walks around the fire. He makes a big deal of sniffing the air. All I can think of is how glad I am Jeb didn’t take any of that weed.
“Y’all got any restricted materials in that there truck?” asks the deputy. “Alcohol? Fire arms? Illicit drugs?”
He draws out the last word, the way Southerners do for emphasis—“druuuuugs?”
He glares at Rusty, Jeb and me.
“No, sir,” says Jeb.
“Then y’all don’t mind if I have a look.” The deputy unhooks an enormous flashlight from his belt and opens the truck door.
Rusty shoots a look at Jeb, like, Is he going to find anything? Because we’re in big trouble if he does. Arkansas isn’t exactly known for being soft on crime.
But Jeb opens his hands wide and shakes his head, like, I’m innocent. There’s nothing there.
Before today, I would have trusted Jeb without question. But his idiocy in the marijuana patch has shaken my confidence in him. What if he’s got a stash of weed in his glove compartment, or hidden under a seat? What if he’s got a couple of cans of beer hidden among all the junk in the back of the truck? Can we get charged with underage possession, even if we aren’t drinking?
Would my mom have to come and pick me up at the police station? That would be embarassing. She’d probably go into a long rant about how bad the drinking laws are in America, and how Europeans have a much more sensible attitude, and how the ancient Greeks used to let their babies drink wine. She’d start quoting poetry. “A jug of wine, a book of verse, and thou…”
Please, spare me.
The deputy is definitely doing a thorough job of checking Jeb’s truck. He rummages under seats and floor mats, hauls out mounds of stuff from the back. He tosses them on the ground in a careless pile—CDs, sports magazines, sweatshirts, dirty socks, half-empty packs of gum, broken sunglasses, climbing rope, take-out burger wrappers, football gear.
No drugs. No booze.
Thank goodness.
After he’s finished, the deputy comes back to stand at the campfire. He seems a little friendlier toward us.
“You play football?” he says to Jeb.
“Yessir,” says Jeb. “Tight end.”
“I’m a fan myself. Got season’s tickets to the Razorbacks,” says the deputy.
“Go, Pig, SOOOOOIEEEE!” Jeb hollers the Razorback cheer so loudly, it startles a flock of blackbirds from the trees.
The deputy almost cracks a smile. “Look, there’s a mess of trouble you kids could get into up here. And I want y’all to stay out of it, you hear me?”
“Yessir,” says Jeb.
“Just stick to your climbin’, y’hear?”
“Yessir,” Jeb says again.
Satisfied, the deputy leaves.
Nothing else happens that evening, except a lot of marshmallow-toasting and storytelling. But later on, as I snuggle into my sleeping bag for the night, I think back to Jeb’s promise to stay out of trouble.
I hope he means to keep it.