Angels of Light Read online

  Drinks delivered, she backed away from the table and headed for the kitchen.

  "Lots of ketchup," trailed a shout. "And hot water."

  The hot water was for the ketchup, which was for the few with no money at all. An old trick.

  Tomato soup with free table crackers.

  John plucked a fry from his plate, tuning in and out of the disparate frequencies pounding in from every side. A group of surfer types had colonized one end of the table and begun heaving product names at one another in a hectic battle of mix and match. "Maytag." "Pillsbury, man.

  Pecan Frosting." "Serta Perfect Sleeper."

  "Frigidaire." "Veg-o-Matic." "A T and T. All of it." They shouted as if there were rules to their frenzy. Last time they'd spent four and a half hours singing commercial jingles. Across from him Tucker was being roasted by a pickup partner for the day.

  Tavini was still glaring at Bullseye, both of them gnashing away at their burgers, meaning everyone would be getting an earful about the evils of red meat over the file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (26

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light next few days because meat plugged Tavini's bowels like Portland cement. Tavini's mainstay was organic peanut butter spooned straight from the jar. In a perpetual state of what bodybuilders call "ripped," his muscles showed spectacularly through his cellophane-thick skin, not a drop of lard to be seen. When asked why the diet, his bullshit answer was always "Strength-to-weight ratio." No one was fooled. Tavini was the only one who didn't seem to know that he was a latent.

  Tucker, too, was ripped, but without the vanity. Honed, in rock-speak. Buffed and polished. No beer, no wine, no California Coolers, no Wild Turkey, booze, or pot, not even milk or soft drinks. He was, for one thing, trying to drive his weight down to 140

  for an upcoming climb. Teetotaling was a matter of principle, too. He would no sooner insult his brain cells, liver, and muscle tissue with alcohol or drugs than other people at this table would step on a $120 rope. For a young man who carried a firmly bristled toothbrush in his shirt pocket everywhere, this was a perfectly reasonable concern. He'd seen too many big-wall men with the gaping tooth line of a Third

  World beggar. The one great hazard in his world was Oreo cookies, one of which he was secretly prying apart under the table. His inability to resist an Oreo disappointed him. There were even nights when he couldn't sleep while pondering this chink in his armor-clad discipline.

  For Tuck the world was Yosemite, and Yosemite the world, he took meaning that simply. So simply, in fact, that when Bullseye once asked him if it were that simple, Tuck denied it, thinking the concept somehow complicated. "The world's round," he'd actually retorted. His sincerity had silenced Bullseye for a full half hour.

  "So the gumby's up there fifteen minutes now," Eddie Delwood was relating with exaggerated animation. One hand was cocked high overhead, fingers just so. The other arm was stretched off to one side just inches from Katie's face. She was staring at the hair on his knuckles in disbelief and would have said something, but tomorrow was her turn to go climbing with him and she'd probably be giving him a hand job on the top ledge because he paid good coin. Indisputably the worst climber in Camp

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  Four—some insisted in all America—Delwood was a trust-fund baby, a TFer in the lingo. He had the largest, newest, and finest collection of gear, bar none, and consequently never lacked for partners. He rarely returned from a climb with all his gear; as long as he tolerated the petty thefts, he was in turn tolerated. Today's climb with Tucker was a notable exception—nothing had been stolen—and Delwood was ebullient because he believed it might signal a new opinion of him, an acceptance into the club. In fact, Tucker had never stolen a thing in his life and the thought had simply never occurred to him that Delwood was easy pickings. Just a jerk.

  "He's out there. I mean out there," boomed Delwood with his foreign accent. He was from New Jersey. He'd finally given up claiming he was from Asbury Park, which was a lie at any rate, when it became evident no one gave a shit about the Boss. "He's not movin', just like stuck onto this piece of 5.12 lichen with a foxhead for pro. Micro-file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (27

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light pro. Sixty feet out. Man, we're dead fucking baloney if he falls...."

  Across the table

  Tucker held his saliva, afraid to swallow, excruciatingly aware of the blush under his windburn.

  Nothing would grant him the dignity he yearned for, not this night with these people anyway.

  They wanted their little babe-in-the-woods Tuck, their hayseed Kid. He was so tired of being the Kid. Maybe Delwood would choke on his beer and die.

  Maybe Katie would bite his wrist and bleed him dry. Bold as she was, and Katie had once brewed and drunk a poison ivy soup as preventive medicine, she wasn't that daffy. Maybe an earthquake... But Delwood wasn't dying and Tucker wasn't going anywhere. The rush of eyes had him tight, and his corduroy pants felt stapled to the chair.

  "So he's up there, like paralyzed..."

  Was not, Tucker tried to interject. Nothing came out.

  "And then I see doom." Delwood tapped at the mild tracery of veins on his thin forearms.

  "Tuck's veins were turnin' green! Green, man! The strain!"

  John watched Tucker's agony from across the riot of soggy buns, scattered fries, and empties.

  From the way Tucker's hands were moving under the table, he suspected the Oreo down by the boy's knees. His shyness was as much a part of the portrait as his finger strength and Lancelot purity. Tucker looked at John, eyes pleading.

  Because there was nothing else to do, John winked.

  "We were goners. I knew it then. He was gonna peel and we were gonna die. I got all shaky like a big titty."

  "Shut up, Delwood," sounded a voice at the far corner of the table. Tuck took the opportunity to swallow hard. People had finally had enough of Delwood.

  "You are a big titty, Eddie," followed another voice.

  Delwood's hands dropped to the table. He looked suddenly crestfallen. "Yeah." He wrapped it up in a leaden voice. "Well, anyway, he flashed it."

  "Is Edward finished now?"

  "Edward...." The peanut gallery was taking over.

  "Neato, Tuck." People quieted. It was Kreski. The King. "Another first ascent. I gotta start eatin' my Cap'n Crunch."

  "Yeah," Tucker managed. He looked at Kresinski. Alive beneath their bony shelf, Kreski's two vapor-blue eyes were measuring him, deciding things. Because Kresinski wore Ray Bans even on a cloudy day—"It's the UV factor, man, you guys are startin'

  to look all wrinkled like scrotums"—his face carried a deeply tanned mask with two pale moons under the thick brow. The dark glasses served to hide his thoughts, of course, but more, when he took them off it was like the unveiling of weaponry. There was a singular edge in that blue stare, Page 24

  and he never tired of stropping it sharper on the skin of his herd, these rock and rollers. Tucker discounted the fine wide smile, not a caffeine stain in it, then dropped his gaze. You always did with the King. At least he always did. "You got a name for it?" Katie asked Tucker. To file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/HTML-Jeff%20Long%20-%20Angels%20of%20Light.htm (28

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light the victor the spoils. He could call it anything he wanted. It's ancient wisdom that a thing has no value until it has a name, and the climbers obeyed the call with a poetry

  Bob Dylan would have envied. John was the informal scribe, Bullseye the informal librarian. In his van Bullseye kept John's ring-bound notebooks filled with sketches of every wall and slab in the Valley, page after page of lines and dashes and notations that brought to mind the yellowed, forbidding maps of antiquity. Cartographic warnings such as "Lions" or "Here Be Dragons" had their counterpart in John's

  Spooky, Rotten Band, Very Sust
ained, and Weird. Each line represented a route, each bore a name. Some were plain, like Jamcrack Route or Mid-wall. Others testified to a marvelous whimsy. Side by side down on Arch Rock, a crack named

  Application rose beside Supplication, Anticipation, and, hardest of the four, Constipation.

  Some routes took themselves seriously, like Adrenaline or Trial by Fire; some came with a smile, like Pigs in Space. Pinkie Paralysis was a digit killer in the Fingerlickin' Area, and Meat Grinder over on Cookie Cliff could turn your knuckles into hamburger. Sherrie's Crack led to Knob Job, a scattering of "chicken heads" or stone knobs.

  There was a Hand Job, a Whack and Dangle, and a Squeeze-n-

  Tease. There was Flatus, Black Heads, Bulging Puke, Pot Belly, and a Fecophilia on Manure Pile Buttress, named for the corral where horses were once kept for the early tourists.

  Some routes bore testimony to the psychedelic era such as Cosmos, Mescalito, Tales of Power, Separate Reality, Magic Mushroom Wall, and Reefer

  Madness. El Cap's North America Wall, so christened for the vast dark blemish shaped like that continent, carried a Pacific Ocean Wall off its west coast. In Church Bowl you could climb Bishop's Terrace to Bishop's Balcony, and descend to Fire and Brimstone. On Higher Cathedral Rock, Mary's Tears hung beneath Crucifix. To the layman thumbing through John's notebook, it looked like a map of constellations—

  connect the stars, apply the legend of terrain symbols, add route names and number ratings, and you had created an elemental creature, a climbing route. It fell to the party who first ascended a route, however short or long, to name it. Once named, the route became part of the "Bible,"

  which any and all could peruse at any time, for

  Bullseye's van was never locked.

  "I don't know," Tucker hedged. Originally he'd thought of calling the smooth, slick white crack Ivory Dreams, but yesterday had been smitten by a photograph that changed his mind.

  However, he suspected that here and now was not the place to reveal the title.

  "Come on, Tuck," Sammy badgered him. The surfers broke off from a two-against-two chanting of a beer commercial.

  "We need the Word," said Bullseye.

  "I don't know," murmured Tucker, and his voice dipped to a near whisper.

  "Somethin'..."

  "Somethin' like what?"

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  Jeff Long - Angels of Light

  The halt was crushing. "Like, I don't know. Maybe, like... Whitney."

  As if holding aloft a dripping scalp, one of the surfers shouted, "Whitney."

  "Oh, whoa," joined a buddy. "Whitney

  Houston

  ?"

  Everyone else joined in the gang bang. "You like her eyes?"

  "Or those lips, God."

  "She give you a boner, Tuck?" Tucker's misery soared. He was utterly speechless.

  "What's it rated?" Katie tried to rescue him. She desired Tucker with a Victorian hopelessness, resigned to being just a buddy. This onslaught of catcalls and teasing hurt her because it hurt him. He was beyond rescue, though. They had their teeth in tonight.

  "Tuck don't rate things," someone said. It was true. He viewed the ratings game as a compromise of the art.

  "He just climbs for the purity of it all," Kresinski edged in. The way he said it made Tucker's aesthetics seem silly. John looked over, annoyed by the man's undisguised envy.

  Kresinski noticed and marked him, too, with a grin.

  Caught up in the furor, Delwood reemerged from exile. "It's a 12, I tell ya, a 12 C," he gushed.

  "Maybe even a 13." The way Ansel Adams interpreted the Valley in terms of light, and geologists in terms of the El Portal and Wisconsin glacial stages, climbers saw the physical forces in their own way, using a system of numbers ranging from 5.0 to 5.13. The 5 signified fifth-class or "free" climbing, in which you used hands and feet alone in the actual ascent. The number following the decimal point indicated how hard, on a scale 0 to 13, the most difficult climbing move along the route was.

  More than a quick thumbnail sketch of a route, the numbers comprised a sort of gunslinger language, a method for communicating one's latest kill.

  "No disrespect, Ed," said Kresinski. "But how the fuck would you know a 12 C? Or even an 11?"

  Rebuffed for a second time, Delwood lost all spirit.

  "It's just practice anyway," Tucker said. Calling "practice" a route so severe that few if any other climbers in the world could touch it brought Kresinski to the corner of his chronic anger. John watched Kresinski sit back in his chair, quiet, crouched for an opening.

  "What's a 12 C 'practice' for?" Tavini asked in disbelief.

  "The Visor. Me and John. We're gonna do it." So tonight's the night, thought John.

  Until now the Visor had been held top secret. Only three people had known about Tucker's designs upon it.

  "The what?"

  "The Visor," said Bullseye, the third of the three. It was time to share the bold idea.

  "On Half Dome."

  "That roof at the top?" said one of the surfers. "That Visor? Forget it."

  "

  That

  Visor," Bullseye affirmed. "Call it Tuck's sainted quest."

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  "His what?"

  "Yeah," Kresinski leaned forward, smelling blood. "The Kid wants to prove he grew some nuts for his eighteenth birthday. Or was it your seventeenth?"

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  "You had a birthday?" Katie tried to digress.

  Tucker hated being called the Kid. It was yet another of Kresinski's inventions.

  Tucker sat in his seat, staring at the saturated tablecloth. There was nothing to say.

  There never was.

  Then a new voice broke in. "You worried, old man?"

  The voice had a New Mexican clip to it and people knew right away where to look, to John Coloradas. John leaned forward into the thick of it. He'd had a bellyful. Drunk or getting there or just plain looking for some return fire, Kresinski pushed too hard.

  Fuck him, thought John, but he didn't bother flashing his wild-mestizo look, it wasn't worth backing Kresinski all the way down. It would be enough just to get the bull off Tucker's back. Even those pretending not to were looking now. There was an uneasy titillation, no one quite sure if there was humor or not. The Apache versus the King: august figures.

  "I'm gonna live forever, sport," Kresinski snapped back. "How about you?"

  "Here I am," said John.

  The two men didn't waste time glaring at each other. They'd locked horns often enough to do this in the dark without words. Each saw the other as corrupt. They'd lived with that mutual contempt for so long it had built into a source of pride. Where other men with this kind of hatred would have pulped each other in a one-on-one and finished the feud off, John and Kresinski held off. By not physically striking out, they reminded themselves of what they were not, that other. Call it style, which climbers value above almost everything. They'd lived in the Valley in the same camp for going on a decade now, never a blow struck. Even so, when they circled like this, everyone else got scared. It's one thing watching a couple guys sissy-box. If John and

  Kreski ever decided to really rodeo, though, there was going to be destruction. It would tear the Valley asunder, wreck their encampment, lay waste to their idea that ascent was all.

  With his thumbnail, Kresinski started peeling the label from his beer bottle. "Don't you know you can get arrested for climbing with jailbait like Tuck?" No one laughed.

  A black hole gaped in their bonhomie. Everyone felt it and was confused. This was group. The King was king. Coloradas was a loner, remote and yet right in the middle.

  And the rest of them, they were quiet. Pawns were pawns, that was part of
it. For a bad moment they saw how trite the construct was and how servile they were to it.

  "Ah," Kresinski expelled, seeming to drop it after all. "Who the hell cares if John climbs with the cupcakes?" He was getting somewhere else, though, and people let him get there. "Hell, who cares even if he comes home empty?"

  There it was. The Andes. Tony Schaller. The storm.

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  "My advice, Tuck. When you're up with your friend there, make sure you can get yourself down.

  If it starts lookin' hairy, bail out. Come down. Better safe than fucking dead."

  The insult to John outraged Tucker. "You know what?" he revealed. "Tony thought you were a jerk. He told me so." In fact Tucker had barely known the big-boned man before his death on the South Face of Aconcagua. They'd done a few hard climbs together here in the Valley, not much but enough for Schaller to have confided exactly the sentiment Tucker was now sharing.

  "Save it, Tuck." Kresinski smiled patiently at the furious boy. "Wait 'til you've sprouted a few pubes. If you last that long."

  "You're a jerk," Tucker repeated. It was the worst word in his tightly limited vocabulary, and because of that it had a peculiar sting. Kresinski flushed, and his trophy-hunter eyes bleached Page 27

  bluer. He was about to hit back when Bullseye jumped in.

  "Look," he said. "Remember Perry Watts? What, '79? August, Malibu, right?"

  "Oh, grody," recognized one of the climbers, an ex-surfer. "Listen to this one. What that great white did to him."

  "It was this day of perfect waves," related Bullseye. "Eight-foot lefts and ten-foot rights, beach breaks and boneyards. Classic overhead glass all day long. But around five, where's Perry?

  Gone. He's just gone. Everybody's bummed. And next morning his board's lyin' there on the beach with a twenty-inch bite out of the edge. And before the sun goes down, old Perry finally makes it back to shore. He was missing the same twenty inches that his board was. One clean bite."