My Father Helps Me Down by Jason Hess

It’s nighttime in Red Rock Canyon and I’m with a near stranger, Bart, trying to get to safety. We’re out of food and water, it’s getting cold, and we’re about fifteen hundred feet off the ground on a vertical rock face named Solar Slab.   

Bart and I stand, gear slung from our shoulders, at the edge of the route’s largest cliff system. I look at him, half of the rope coiled in my hands, his face shining in my headlamp’s beam. I throw the rope into the darkness and hope it’s a clean toss. It’s been a frustrating day and things have only deteriorated on the descent. We’re working in the dark and can’t seem to prevent the rope from tangling.

The main park is closed now. We’re worried about the possibility of a parking ticket being posted to our car at the nearest turnout, a few miles from the route’s base. We’re in a kind of mortal danger but arguing over who will pay the fine keeps us calm. We don’t talk about the more immediate possibility of being stranded on this rock face overnight.

Bart rappels first, his straight legs out against the stone, his back and head falling slowly into the vertical darkness over the edge. He disappears from sight into a free-hanging rappel above the desert floor. He briefly becomes a headlamp glow over the edge before descending beyond sight. I’m left alone with my thoughts and the image of the taught rope disappearing over the sandstone edge.

I worked for my dad earlier in the week to obtain finances for this climbing trip. I didn’t need much, just enough to cover gasoline, ramen noodles, PBR, and camp fees. We upgraded some of the lighting fixtures in his auto parts stores. At the time of this climbing debacle, my father is at a business conference on the other side of Vegas—within an hour’s drive of my campsite. He flew in the same day I arrived by car. I sit here watching the double ropes vibrating with the weight of my partner’s body. He’s on his own for now.

Bart shouts, “off rappel!” I set up my gear and walk backwards off the cliff side. The cool desert air surrounds my body. Backing down the rock in the dark, I can sense the largeness of the distance between my body and the ground. If a ranger is at the car considering whether to ticket us, I appear as a white light floating a few meters from the silhouette of the rock face, like a star descending slowly to the desert floor.

About mid rappel, the bright-light cityscape of Las Vegas comes into view. The contrast between the quiet, dark space I occupy and the Sin City light pollution haze is dizzying and strange. Right now Dad is in a hotel somewhere drinking long islands with business associates. We made tentative plans to meet for a drink but it probably won’t happen. I have little desire to cruise the strip, deal with the party people, or squint under the barrage of neon. I know he doesn’t want to drink cheap beer in the dusty BLM campground. I might be seeing his hotel’s lights from where I hang, but it’s impossible—if he happens to be on a rooftop bar—for him to see the wash of stars above, let alone the white dot of my headlamp descending to the ground west of the city.  

§

My father dislikes heights, but he hates darkness with an unbridled fervor. When I was a kid of ten or twelve, he recruited me for every project involving heights.

Every December, we adorned the branches of the cherry trees lining our driveway with strings of electric lights. The trees have burnt red leaves in spring and summer but are skeletal during winter. I’d stand in the bucket of the John Deer with coils of Christmas lights slung around my shoulders and Dad would carefully align it so that my weight wouldn’t tip the machine down the hill.

“Ready?” he’d ask.

I’d brace myself against the sides of the steel bucket.

“Ready!” I’d shout.

The hydraulics would whir as they lifted me to the crown of the tree and I’d work the strand of lights in concentric descending circles down the trunk, my father raising and lowering the bucket as needed. It was as if Dad could help me defy gravity.

At night you could see our trees from a street across the neighbor’s hay field. We transformed the spindly canopies into floating orbs of brilliant electricity. He was a master at coordinating the lighting arrangement, directing my placements, lifting and lowering me with his mechanical powers. Lighting the trees in December was the most pleasant example of Dad’s constant battle with literal darkness. I loved him nearly to the point of worship, a sentiment that—in keeping with our family’s lexicon—was rarely expressed.

§

The work I performed with Dad prior to this climbing trip was familiar. We installed new light fixtures in the stockroom of his auto parts store. As a child, I’d wandered the wide aisles, wondering what strange objects were contained in each of the thousands of cardboard boxes. I knew that if anyone had something broken, my father had the knowledge to select a box containing the single thing needed to fix the problem. In my child’s mind, he was capable of far more than locating and selling the correct master cylinder or oil filter; he distributed remedies for every problem. It was my fantasy that if people came into Dad’s shop disgruntled, they left with an all-encompassing sense of satisfaction. Perhaps it was a particularly American form of father worship that I believed he sold mechanical solutions to emotional problems.

Since childhood, the stockroom shelves had expanded and the aisles had shrunk. The supply of boxes grew until there was no room for childish wandering. The ever-expanding inventory had rendered the shelves opaque, the corners dark, and the old light fixtures insufficient. My father couldn’t stand it and needed to eliminate the shadows.

He loaded a shipping pallet onto a forklift, positioning it directly below an old light fixture in the loading area. I stood on this and he raised me to the highest reaches of the ceiling. The maneuver was reminiscent of our childhood routine and we easily fell into an old pattern. He gave me directions and I obeyed.

The fixture, which had been in use for decades, was a monstrous thing resembling an Apollo re-entry pod. I had replaced a number of similar lights and knew what I was doing, but Dad directed me anyway—shouting from where he stood at the forklift’s controls. I used a climbing-trained grip on a rafter to help me lean out from the pallet, reach the mounting points, and complete the wiring one-handed.

On the final day of this pre-climbing work trip, we installed new fluorescent fixtures on the low ceilings of the stock room’s ground floor. One quirk of his lighting obsession is his reluctance to cut power. I’ve never understood how someone could develop this ridiculous habit but I suppose that there’s immediate gratification in seeing a bulb shine as soon as it’s wired.

While we moved the fixture into place I accidentally pinched a live wire and a spasm shot through me. My jaw clenched and my knees started to buckle but I somehow remained standing, holding the un-mounted fixture in place. I shook my free arm in pain. Dad laughed and handed me a pair of  heavy leather gloves.

Later that same day I was hauling an armful of six-foot fluorescent tubes over my shoulder like fishing poles and knocked an already-installed bulb from its place on the ceiling. I turned just in time to glimpse the cylinder of glass—fluorescent gasses still alight—hit the floor. One end struck the concrete and the entire bulb shattered, the rest of it turning to dust before reaching the ground. A fine powder rose from the floor like mist.

§

Perhaps climbers are not afraid of heights, but many of us are afraid of falling because we have intimate knowledge of what happens when you hit the ground.

I’ve known my climbing partner for only two days. Bart and I met in the Bureau of Land Management campground situated in the small un-suburbia-filled strip of desert between Red Rock Canyon and the Vegas city limits. The original plan had been to climb with a friend who’d driven down from Logan, Utah, for the weekend. We met somewhere near Eli, Nevada, and carpooled the rest of the way. During the drive, he told me he wasn’t feeling comfortable with traditional climbing. He said he was sorry, but he’d have to stick to shorter routes. I was supremely disappointed.

I’d been training for the storied, long, and high routes of Red Rock. I’d been tying knots during college lectures, reading and memorizing route descriptions, and envisioning the crux of every pitch. The whole trip was designed for the sole purpose of climbing the multi-pitch routes Red Rock Canyon was known for. If my friend couldn’t be my partner, then I’d find somebody else.

We arrived at the BLM campground—a spot in the desert with pit toilets and posts in the ground to mark camp sites—and pitched our tents by twilight. We had stopped at a Vegas mega-beer-and-wine emporium to purchase cheap beer. I opened one of these, grabbed a second, and went to hunt for a partner. Bart was sitting in a circle of young people near a fifteen passenger van owned by a university geology department. They were a climbing club, he said.

Bart wore a cowboy hat, possessed a look-beyond-you stare, and was willing to join me. I handed him the second beer which he drank to consummate the partnership. I walked back to my tent and dozed off to the sound of sand blowing against it’s plastic sides. About to fall asleep, it occurred to me that Bart looked pretty young. I counted down from one hundred, a trick to lull myself asleep, and fell into dream somewhere before halfway to zero.   

§

It’s cavalier to meet someone and then immediately set about climbing a two thousand foot vertical rock route with them. I have a demonstrated pattern of this type of behavior. It’s a family trait.

For my father, it’s extremely upsetting to be let down by someone new he’s put his confidence in. At the point of hiring a new employee, he can only guess at their quality of character. I’ve seen Dad rehire a man he’d once fired for stealing. The man had taken only expensive parts for his own car’s make and model, a car daily parked in the store parking lot. Believing the man was, at his core, an honest guy, Dad rehired him. Shortly after, he had to fire him for replacing hundred dollar bills in the till with childlike fakes he’d printed at home. The look on Dad’s face, when he told me that he’d had to fire the man, was of honest surprise. He couldn’t understand why someone would let him down like that. He’d trusted the man with access to the business, to our family’s lifeline.

I once met a man in an Idaho bar and we got to howling about Hell’s Canyon. Unlike most beer-fueled bar talk, schemes for flying machines that will never be built or fights that will never be fought, we exchanged information and made plans. Three weeks later we hiked the entire Idaho side of Hell’s canyon.

§

Bart and I have made some grave mistakes. All I hear, walking backwards down the rock face—my headlamp illuminating my climbing slippers—is the tap of my soles against the wall as I negotiate shrubs and sandstone features. At next anchor point Bart is sitting on a ledge about two feet wide. He’s looped a blue vinyl sling around a craggy tree. His headlamp is off and he’s staring out into darkness, his shoulders visibly tense.

“Pull the rope,” he says.

“Of course,” I say, slinging myself to the same questionable tree. “I’m really sorry about this. I should have climbed over those people. We would’ve had plenty of time.”

“Just pull the rope,” Bart says, still not looking at me.

I go about setting up the next rappel. The tree that Bart has anchored us to looks dead and loosely rooted in a sandy fissure. I sling the rope around the tree, wind it into coils, and prepare to toss it. Bart looks at me.

“No,” he says. “Let me throw it.”  

I comply and he tosses. By the sound, I can tell that we have again thrown the rope into knots. Bart demands to untangle it himself. He turns on his headlamp and backs over the edge, rappelling into nothing, leaving me frustrated and alone.

§

My father strongly dislikes overhead lighting in domestic spaces. In my parents’ current home there is a study lined in dark-stained wood panels. The room features a double high, vaulted ceiling. Because, I suspect, of regional building requirements, Dad was required to install one ceiling light. Clearly, he did so begrudgingly. Flipping the fixture’s corresponding switch has the effect of turning on a star in the night sky. By the time the light reaches you, it could be millions of years old.

Proper lighting is important to him, but he has a very particular definition of proper. In rough terms, all domestic lighting should be plug-in floor or tabletop units. There are two reasons for this: 1- It allows for a more flexible floor-plan. 2- Overhead lighting is generally unpleasant and unsuitable for places of relaxation.

The workplace is governed by an entirely different principle. Work lighting is utilitarian. Therefore, in my father’s line of reasoning, ceiling units are ideal for these spaces. Work is not meant to be pleasant, but instead efficient. If possible, there should be enough light washing a workspace to see a person’s skeleton through their flesh. He designs his work and domestic spaces accordingly; one dimly lit in the style of noir detective films, the other so bright it is visible from outer space.

Finding the perfect balance between these two extremes is an ongoing and impossible task. Dad was always rewiring things around the home, searching for that perfect mix of light and dark. He rarely finished renovations in one go and my childhood home was laced with unprotected copper wires protruding from uncovered switches and other surprise locations.

Once, when I was nine or ten, my mother sent me to the basement to get something from the freezer. The concrete floor of the unfinished furnace room was cold and I was barefoot. I stepped back as I opened the freezer door and the soft skin on the inside of my left knee was struck by something hot. I crumpled to the floor, the freezer door open, light shining from it into the dark room. I had backed into a heavy gauge copper wire sharp enough to pierce my skin and it had jolted me with one hundred and ten volts.

I ran screaming to my mother, who noted the yellowing flesh on the bottoms of my feet and then scolded my father. I still remember the sheepish and apologetic look he gave me when he went to tuck away the wire. How could he have done this? Didn’t he know better? There was nothing he could do to ease the pain in my leg. He might not have a solution for every breakdown. He could lift me above the trees in the bucket of the tractor, but if I slipped, gravity would take over.

§

The crisp air is growing colder. We have light jackets, but no gloves to keep our fingers from becoming stiff and useless. It’s too dark to accurately judge the distance, but we guess that we’re only a few rappels from finishing this epic.

We shouldn’t be in this situation. Earlier in the day, instead of passing a slower pair of climbers, we stopped to eat lunch, enjoy the view, and laugh at the bickering couple ahead of us. They were a male/female pair relying on walkie-talkies for communication, a system that broke-down when they started picking up a school crossing guard: “Johnny Thompson’s mother is—static, garbles, static—Bus blue-seven has arrived—static, garble.”

We easily caught up with them on every pitch. He yelled at her for not understanding and she yelled back for having been yelled at. We spent four hours moving at their pace. Now, stuck in the dark with an agitated partner, not climbing over them seems like a possibly mortal mistake.

Every rope toss is resulting in perplexing Dr. Seuss-level knots that the lead rappeler must straighten. Untangling weighted rope is always difficult but it’s especially maddening in the dark.

The combination of darkness, cold, dehydration, and exhaustion are creating confusion. My hands are shaky, my lips dry, and my thoughts wandering. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon but am now being forced to complete a jigsaw puzzle before I can have water. Bart and I can’t comprehend the source of the tangles, and so we recreate them again and again. He’s spent the day evading my questions about his age and climbing experience. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted him. Maybe he’s sabotaging us.

Bart demands he throw the rope for the last three rappels and each time it becomes massively jumbled. Because he insists on being the leading rappeler, I’m also left relying on his ability to find anchor points. He speaks tersely and infrequently.

Waiting for Bart to set-up the final rappel, I think about how extraordinary a headlamp is. These small torches on our heads have been our primary tools of survival. Sure, we have the rope, but it’s trying to kill us. I turn my lamp off a second and then back on. It barely illuminates our work. I run my hands back and forth in front of my face. This is domestic level lighting in a work place. I look around the cliffside for a place to mount fluorescent ballasts.

My father has spent the night trying to relax in the world’s most overly-lit city, a short drive from where Bart and I are threading our way to safety by the low light of our headlamps. His hotel likely features recessed overhead fluorescent bulbs and he probably hates them; work lights in a domestic space. Both of us have spent our evenings in environments explicitly breaking his rules: I working in dangerously low light, he trying to relax in the operating theater of Vegas.

I wish he could help me now.

Bart throws our lifeline over the edge and there’s a thud when the rope hits the ground. I’m overcome with a physical sense of relief. It’s the same way I used to feel when the tractor bucket touched the ground beneath our cherry trees. Whenever I come down from high places it feels as if my dad has controlled the descent, lowering me to safety.

We hastily stuff gear into backpacks and then turn off our headlamps to better see the expanse of stars. Slowly, my eyes adjust. Exhausted, but energized by safety and the promise of sleep, we rush the few miles to the car—where there is no parking ticket.

In the campground, I find my tent upside down in the dust a hundred yards from where I’d staked it. I turn it upright, drag it back to my campsite, and pass out on top of my sleeping bag.

I never see or speak to Bart again.
The next day, my father leaves Vegas on an early flight.

I feel weak all morning but need to be at work the next day and have a nine hundred mile drive ahead of me. I am a master of ill-conceived plans. I pull into a fast food joint and buy breakfast burritos on my way through Vegas. They’re cheap and delicious but also the only hot food I’ve eaten in days. I rush outside, my body shuddering all over, and puke into a neatly trimmed hedge in the parking lot. It’s the culmination of a steady succession of mistakes.

§

A few years later, I’m on vacation in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, a small lakeside city surrounded by volcanoes. I have it in mind to climb the smallest of them, a full day of hiking. Shortly after arriving to town I meet a local man interested in joining me. He’s a complete stranger but we make plans to climb the next day.

At four thirty on the following morning I’m standing on an empty dock in the dark, waiting for a person I barely know so we can cross the lake in a motorboat and then climb the volcano. It’s a steep climb, the trail is unmarked, and there have been recent reports of violent banditry.

At this point in the story, most people comment on how cavalier it is to put so much trust in a stranger. I could get lost or murdered. But when I tell it to my father he says, “Jason, what an incredible opportunity.”

Jason Hess lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works in the public library system. His poems have appeared in the literary journals Whitefish Review and Camas: The Nature of the West.