is why we got them for her. Besides, I can’t imagine she’d have any chance of winning. Although I will say, climbing isn’t as much about experience and repetitive practice as other sports. It’s a matter of body control and sense of balance—which, clearly, Carm’s got by the bucketful. From what I just saw, I don’t think she’d have anything to be ashamed of.”
Carmelita beamed at him. “Really?”
Chuck cupped the back of her head in his hand and looked into her luminous, hazel eyes. “Really.”
“Cool,” Rosie declared. She jigged at her sister’s side, her arms swinging. “You should do it for sure, Carm.”
Janelle rested her hand over Chuck’s at the back of Carmelita’s head. “You really think you want to try it?”
Carmelita nodded, bouncing up and down on her toes.
“You won’t be sad when you lose?”
“If she loses,” Chuck said.
“No,” Carmelita told her mother. “I won’t. I promise.”
Rosie chimed in. “But I’ll be sad for her. Would that be okay, Mamá?”
The corners of Janelle’s mouth ticked upward and her face softened. “Okay,” she said. “You guys win.”
At the base of the tower, Jimmy tied a re-woven figure eight into the end of the climbing rope with a well-practiced flip of his fingers. He clipped the loop into his harness. Still exchanging small talk with Bernard, he gave the rope a tug, assuring it ran from his waist, up through the pulley at the top of the tower, and back down to the auto-belay mechanism.
Faded tattoos purpled Jimmy’s sinewy forearms below the short sleeves of his plaid, cotton shirt. A long, braided beard, cinnamon cut with silver, curved outward from his jaw like a scorpion’s tail. Stringy, gray-streaked red hair fell to his shoulders from the back of the battered straw cowboy hat he wore low over his eyes like a country singer. His brown canvas carpenter pants clung to his narrow waist, and the top buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a thick nest of chest hair. A red bandanna—his signature style statement for as long as Chuck had known him—was knotted around his neck.
“Show us what you can do, Jimmy,” Chuck called to him.
“You’re the man,” Bernard cheered from behind the line of boulders. He tapped the sides of his legs with his hands, a quick rat-a-tat beat. “Let’s see how much gas you’ve got left in the old tank.”
Bernard’s pasty face and jowly cheeks spoke of his current life as an office-bound attorney for a downtown San Francisco law firm, as did his trendy, turquoise-framed glasses. His ample waistline pressed at his pleated khaki shorts and short-sleeved dress shirt, while his short brown hair showed only a hint of gray.
He turned to Carmelita. “And you’re the climbing-est girl of them all,” he congratulated her. He continued to tap his legs with his hands and counted off in time with the taps, “One . . . two . . . three, four, five. You’re the girl who’s got the jive.”
Jimmy settled his fingertips on two holds above his head. “You guys are next,” he called over his shoulder to Chuck and Bernard.
“Not me,” Chuck said. “No way.”
“I’m ground-based these days,” said Bernard.
“You’re scared you can’t do it anymore,” Jimmy chided.
“You got that right,” the two of them said in unison.
Jimmy tightened his grip on the holds at the base of the climbing tower and lifted himself off the ground. He ascended the large, easy-to-grasp holds on the lower portion of the tower smoothly, the belay mechanism automatically taking up the slack in the rope as he climbed. Each of his moves was precise, his fingers set, his feet poised on holds beneath him. He angled left and right, scaling the wall with no apparent strain, his decades of climbing experience evident.
He passed the halfway point on the tower and reached above his head for a small hold thirty feet off the ground. Only two of his fingertips fit atop the tiny protrusion, which sloped outward, providing little purchase.
He grunted as he transferred his weight to the hold, revealing his first sign of effort. His knuckles turned white as he clung to the tower. Then his fingertips slipped from the hold and he fell.
The ratchet in the auto-belay mechanism should have kicked in, catching him when he dropped no more than a few inches. Instead, he cartwheeled away from the wall and plummeted toward the ground, his arms and legs flailing.
He screamed as he fell, the climbing rope zipping unimpeded through the mechanical belay device bolted to the base of the tower.
Jimmy’s scream echoed across the parking lot as he plunged headfirst toward the ground. Chuck charged forward with Janelle at his side, but they were too far back to reach Jimmy in time to break his fall.
At the last possible second, Jimmy spun himself upright and struck the gravel parking lot feet-first. The sharp crack of breaking bone echoed off the tower wall, followed by a howl of pain from Jimmy. He crumpled on the gravel at the base of the tower, the rope still attached to his waist. He gripped his left leg with both hands, his face contorted.
Janelle knelt at Jimmy’s side while Chuck slid to a stop in the loose rocks and stood over them. Clarence and Bernard and the other onlookers formed a circle around Janelle and the fallen climber. Carmelita and Rosie peered around Chuck from where they pressed at his back.
Jimmy took quick, gasping breaths. He moaned, the sound coming from deep in his throat. Janelle slid his jeans up his leg. Chuck bit his knuckles to keep from gagging at the sight of Jimmy’s foot turned sideways from his ankle at a ninety-degree angle.
“Ouch,” Rosie said.
“Rosie!” Janelle scolded without looking up. Then, to the group, “Someone call 911.”
Clarence plucked his phone from his pocket. “I’m on it.”
“Goddammit,” Jimmy muttered. He grimaced, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Appears to be a fracture and dislocation of the ankle,” Janelle said. “No way to reset it here.”
She shifted to put her knees on either side of Jimmy’s head, bracing his neck. “Do you hurt anywhere else?” she asked him.
“I think my leg took all my weight,” he said through clenched teeth. He exhaled, his breath morphing into a groan.
“Good.”
“Good?” His pupils glinted between his slitted lids as he squinted up at her. He breathed hard and fast, chuffing like a steam engine.
Clarence jabbed at the face of his phone. “I can’t believe it. No service.”
“That’s not a surprise,” the climbing tower attendant said as he arrived from the tiny A-frame building set between the parking
