Could it be, she wondered as they pulled into a burg called Bald Nob and the fat man made signs of making his move after all, could it be that she actually liked men who were mean and stupid and no earthly good for her'? Now that was just plain sad.
When the fat man reached for her thigh she caught his I he screamed. He manhanded her and she bent his fingers back until the side of the finger touched his wrist. He used the good hand to swerve to road and slow down just enough for Aural to hop out on the dusty road from the vehicle. She was left standing on the far side of Bald Nob, looking back towards a tent they had passed just moments ago when the fat man Overreached himself. it looked to Aural like a fine place to spend a day.
Nimble as a goat, lithe as green willow, his body not much longer than the coil of rope strapped to his pack, the boy scampered up a rock face with the insouciance of youth, He never thought of danger, had no fear of falling, indeed had only the fuzziest grasp of the concept of mortality as it applied to himself. Standing above on belay, his hands taking in slack, his leg braced to absorb the shock Of any fall, John Becker watched young Jack climb with a mixture of envy and apprehension.
A good climber had no fear-or at least he never thought of it as fearbut he always had a healthy respect for the perils presented by any ascent.
At ten, Jack was simply'too young to recognize the hazard presented by,the unremitting, unbreakable law of gravity.
Jack attained the ledge where Becker stood, virtually springing up on it, his face smiling with accomplishment.
Becker remembered his own labored breathing as when he had hauled himself up after the long pitch. Jack looked fresher than when he had stood at the base of the rock. Galileo had it wrong, Becker thought.
Gravity does pull harder on some bodies than on others.
"Well done," Becker said.
Jack's smile split his face. "It was easy."
"Uh-huh."
Jack turned and looked back down the rock. Becker resisted an instinct to grab him by his belt. "That wasn't very high."
"Yeah, well, we'll work up to Everest gradually. Not till next week at the earliest."
The boy waved at his mother who stood at the base, looking anxiously upwards.
"Your turn," Becker said, wiggling the rope.
Jack laid out the line as he had been taught, took a braced position, then called out, "On belay!" Becker smiled at the seriousness in his attitude.
"Christ, I hope so," his mother muttered to herself.
She stared upwards but could no longer see his face over the ledge.
"Climbing!" she called and took her first foothold on the rock. She could feel the rope tauten subtly, allowing her freedom of movement while still suggesting security.
Behind Jack's back, Becker took his own anchored position, ready to serve as instantaneous backup if the boy should fail.
Karen climbed slowly but steadily, with a workmanlike approach. She had come to climbing only recently, under Becker's tutelage, and although her body was strong and her reflexes as sharp as any other trained FBI agent's, her mind was reluctant to surrender to the arcane pleasure of embracing stone.
The problem with opting to spend your life in a primarily male society, she thought, was proving that you could do it. And proving it and proving it and proving it.
The testing never stopped. As Associate Deputy Director of Kidnapping, she was as high as any woman had ever been in the Bureau, and she had gotten there a lot younger, too. But even so there was the constant nag of having to demonstrate again and again that she deserved to be there, that she could be as macho as any of them if the occasion demanded. And somehow or other, the occasions seemed to be always cropping up. Not that Becker doubted her, she knew that. He had no desire to turn her into a man with softer parts. He liked the femininity of her mind, was as fascinated by it as he seemed to be fascinated by so many things that were not his by nature.
Of all the men she knew, Becker was the only one that she was certain accepted herjust the way she was… Still, here she was, pressing her nose against the stone and racking what few fingernails she could allow herself to cultivate just because Becker's former wife had been a rock climber. Showing off for her man and her son. Why was it, she wondered, not for the first time, that they never felt inclined to knit her a sweater for Christmas to impress her?
Karen's ascent to the ledge was somewhat less impressive than Jack's.
She hoisted herself just high enough to sit, then leaned back, her feet dangling into space.
"Well done," said Becker.
"Pretty good," said Jack. She caught the note of condescension in his tone, but she wasn't sure if the rest of his thought was, for a woman, or for my mom. At ten, her son was already a confirmed sexist, although Becker had assured her he might grow out of it.
"Next vacation we go somewhere I can wear a skirt," she said. Becker sat beside her, snuggling his thigh against hers.
"I promise," he said. "Fair enough, Jack?"
At his silence, both adults turned to look at him. The boy was staring upwards, his attitude suddenly frozen into one of apprehension.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing.
"It's called a chimney," Becker said. "I told you about them."
I 'You didn't say they were so small, " Jack said.
The chimney was actually a vertical seain in the rock, a narrow split a few feet wide that extended upwards as if the stone had been torn by giant hands. The technique of climbing it was for the climber to use his body like a wedge, forcing his legs against one side of the chimney wall, his back against the other, and inching up as if his shoulders and buttocks were hands. Like so much of rockclimbing technique, it required a certain faith in addition to mindless resolve.
Becker had selected this stretch of mountain because although it was tiring it was not dangerous and there was a wide variety of techniques available within a small range.
"Do we have to go inside it?" Jack asked nervously.
Becker studied the boy carefully. "Not if you don't want to-" he started.
"I think you should, Jack," Karen interrupted.
"It's all right to be afraid of something," Becker said to Karen.
"I know it's all right, " Karen said with annoyance.
She was caught again in the conflict between wanting to protect her child and fearing she would injure him by isolating him from all of the risks and challenges that made boys into men. She wondered if single mothers produced the most macho of sons out of a dread of creating weaklings. "But I think he should do it. It's why we came.' "I think he should decide," Becker said patiently. Karen's eyes flashed angrily for a second.
"I think he should do it," she said.
Jack looked back and forth between the two adults.
"Couldn't I just go straight up that way?" Jack asked, pointing out a route that avoided the chimney.
"Sure," said Becker.
"But then you'd never learn how to do that," Karen pointed at the rip in the stone face. "You'll have to learn it sometime."
"Why?"
"Because life is like that, Jack," she said. "It never lets you off easy."
"We're all afraid of something," Becker said softly.
"There's nothing wrong with it."
"You're not afraid of anything," Jack said.
"Sure I am. I'm afraid of lots of things," Becker said.
"Like what?"
"Right now I'm most afraid of climbing that chimney," Becker said.
"Huh-huh."
"Trust me, Jack. I'll break into a sweat the minute I get inside it."
"Then how come you want to do it?"
Becker shrugged. "Do you know what 'counterphobic' is?"
"No."
"It means I'm more afraid of being afraid of something than I am afraid of it." Becker chuckled. "Let me try again. It means I do the things I'm afraid of. I don't want the fear to win."