Climb the Night, No Going Back

Inspiration from my books came from good nights and trouble.

My fingers ached. The knuckles. They had rarely borne my weight like this, just them and the tips of my fingers keeping me from hurtling toward the darkened ground below. My toes were dangling, that was the problem. I hadn’t found a foothold yet.

I was young enough that the rest of my body wasn’t such a problem. I was a good 25 pounds lighter then, in decent shape. I climbed a lot. Not so much that it was a hobby, but enough that my arms knew what to do. My legs, too, if they weren’t dangling and useless.

It was dark. Nearly midnight. We were not supposed to be here, this empty Boy Scout camp, this wooden climbing wall. Especially the climbing wall. No gear, no ropes, nothing to prevent us from falling but our aching fingertips and knuckles.

I kicked out, and my toe found the edge of a slender board. A board identical to the one I was gripping with my fingers. My foot took my weight, or a large bit of it, and the aching in my knuckles eased.

I was maybe twenty feet up. Couldn’t have been less than that. Felt like a mile more than that. Twenty miles.

I couldn’t see the ground below me. Because it was dark, but maybe because there was no ground below me. Maybe because if I let go and let myself drop, I’d find myself falling forever in a dark void. My brain knew that there was ground down there—hard, bone-breaking ground—but my imagination saw only emptiness, so it amplified that instead. Maybe it preferred that.

My two buddies were already at the top. How was this so easy for them? They weighed a good twenty pounds less than me, that had to be part of it. They were skinny and wiry, while I was thick and heavy and perfect for becoming a meat projectile, falling to create a splotch and an impact crater in the ground below.

I pulled. Not sure where I thought I was going, but pulling meant “up,” and I knew I needed to go up, eventually. Going down... that was later Kevin’s problem. Future Kevin’s problem. My job was to avoid getting to down too soon, too fast.

I reached, and above me was another slender board. I pushed with my right foot, and I made the inches. My aching fingers had something else to cling to. I pulled again, moved my foot, found another board.

It went on like this for a while. Too long. I was too slow at this. The other two, they were sitting with their feet dangling over the edge, chatting about girls and stuff and girls. I pulled and moved a foot, and the other foot, and lifted, and pulled.

And then...

And then...

I made it. I crested the top, pulled myself up to the waist, leaned in and over. I wriggled, scrambled, got my knees up there, and then, and only then, did I roll over. I sat up. I dangled my own feet over the edge, banged the heals of my Reeboks on the wood below.

I looked out over the darkened campground. I could see the shapes of trees, silhouetted against the night sky. There were stars. There were clouds. The moon wasn’t quite up yet.

The three of us sat there for a long while. I think, maybe, my two friends knew I needed a minute. I needed to recover.

I needed to celebrate.

The only thing that had kept me from making it this far, for the weeks we’d been sneaking out here at night and trying it, was fear. I had the strength. I had the ability. But I also had the fear. And that had kept me at about the halfway mark for weeks.

And now, here I was. Now I was sitting on the wooden climbing wall, a rectangular cube of slats and planks, probably built by Scouts as a badge earner. Kids who climbed this all the time. I was never a Boy Scout.

We talked about girls and other stuff and girls. And then we climbed down. Slow. Inch by inch. Then, the ground.

We hiked back to the car. We went to town for sodas and chips and trouble.

And we never went back.

A NOTE AT THE END

I had loads of ill-advised adventures as a twenty-something. I didn’t drink back then (now I love the occasional whiskey). Never smoked (never did). Never even tried pot (still haven’t). I was a good kid, though I did get into trouble (still do). The kind of trouble that comes down to being in places you shouldn’t be, climbing on things you shouldn’t climb, sneaking kisses with girls you shouldn’t be seeing (I don’t do this one anymore—Kara’s the girl for me). Good times and good days.

A lot of my books have scenes inspired by the kind of thing my friends and I used to do, when we were making trouble in the small town night. That’s what those nights were for. I didn’t realize, at the time. But those notes were built for inspiration.

Find those books at kevintumlinson.com/books