Chapter 27
The Creator works in mysterious ways. Ollie was by far the biggest among us, a doughy bulk of a man.
He happened to be directly beneath Leticia when she tumbled from the cliff.
She landed on him, which significantly cushioned her fall but didn’t do Ollie any good.
He lay beneath her, swearing a blue streak until Leticia rolled off him.
“God damn it! I think my back’s broken,” he cried.
“Are you okay?” I asked Leticia. She gave me a vigorous nod.
Stan was holding the Glock. He kept it trained in my direction but knelt beside his brother. “Can you stand up?”
“I told you my back’s broken.”
His arms were still working, so I asked, “Can you move your legs?”
He could.
“Any pain in your arms or legs?”
“Just my back.”
“Let me try to move him,” I suggested to Stan. “See if he can sit up.”
“Don’t let him touch me,” Ollie said.
“For Christ sake, let him give you a hand,” Stan said. “I’ve got to hold the gun.”
Ollie was on his back. I told him to roll over, then helped him to a kneeling position.
“How’s that feel?” I asked.
“Hurts like the devil.”
“Where?”
“Down here.” He touched his lower back.
“It’s probably just wrenched. Try to stand.”
I gave him my arm for support, and very slowly, leaning heavily on my arm, he eased himself up. He was standing but bent forward. “Jesus, I can’t straighten up all the way.”
“Try walking a little.”
He took a step, then another. He could move but not particularly well or fast, and with each step he growled a painful expletive. From his awkward position, he lifted his head and swore at Leticia. “I should kill you.”
“Not her fault,” I pointed out. “You were the one who didn’t move.”
“Before this is all over, I’m going make sure you’re dead,” he vowed, grimacing at me.
“So, no reason to help you out of the Boundary Waters then?” I returned his grimace with a grin.
“We still have her.” He nodded toward Leticia.
“But you don’t have the pack yet,” I pointed out. “You want to try Plan B?”
“There’s a Plan B?” Stan said.
“We lower her from the top. I saw a couple of rope coils in one of your tents.”
“You went through our tents?” Ollie said as if it was a profound offense.
“Why didn’t we try this first?” Stan said.
“I thought she could make it climbing. I was wrong.”
The truth was that I didn’t want them to suspect what I’d really had in mind from the beginning.
“We ease her down, she grabs the pack, we haul her back up,” I said.
Stan eyed the cliff, considered my suggestion, and finally said, “All right, let’s get to it.”
We walked ever so slowly back to the campsite.
While Stan kept the Glock on Leticia, I went into the tent where I’d seen the two rope coils amid the mess.
I brought out the nylon coils and used a double fisherman’s bend to tie the ropes together.
I looked back through the grove of trees that blocked everything but the very top of the cliff from my view.
I’d judged the height of the wall to be sixty or seventy feet.
I was pretty sure I had enough rope to accomplish Plan B, which was quite different from the one I’d pitched to the Kennedy brothers.
“It’s a long walk up to the top,” I said to Ollie. “Think you can make it?”
“You open your mouth again, I’ll shove my fist down your throat.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
I walked ahead with Leticia at my side. Stan was behind us, and Ollie followed him, bent at the waist and grumbling at every step.
Because of Ollie, we proceeded at a snail’s pace.
Which was good. I wanted to give Tucker Jackson plenty of opportunity to get himself clear of these men, if that’s what he was really going to do.
I kept an eye out for any sign of Leticia’s father and for Cordell, knowing that if I were in their positions, I might lurk somewhere hoping for an opportunity to intervene.
We spent half an hour mounting the portage alongside Devil’s Cascade and making our way to the top of the cliff above the hole in Devil’s Bottom.
The sun had moved well past its zenith and was a little blinding whenever we looked across the bay to the west. It was also hot and humid; the blackflies had followed Ollie and were still adding to his misery.
“All right, what’s the plan?” Stan said.
“First, I’m going to loop the rope around the girl,” I replied.
“Then I’m going to wrap it around that tree over there.
” I pointed to a young pine twenty feet back of the cliff edge.
“I’ll use the tree as a kind of pulley so that I can ease her down.
I’ll lower her to the hole. If the pack’s there, she’ll pull it out, and then I’ll need your help to haul her up. Pretty simple, really.”
“We should have done this in the first place,” Stan said.
“You were the guys who wanted to climb.”
“Just get to it,” Ollie snapped.
I looped the rope snugly around Leticia’s torso just beneath her armpits and tied the loop with a bowline hitch. It’s a knot that holds well but can be fairly easily untied.
“When I lower you, you may need to push off the rocks. You know how to rappel, yes?” I said, pretty sure that her rock-climbing experience had involved the technique.
“Of course.”
“Even if something went wrong up here?”
She studied me, and I hoped she got my message.
“Yes,” she said.
“All right then.”
I took the rest of the rope and walked back to the pine, where I looped it once around the trunk.
Combined, the two coils created a rope about one hundred feet in length.
I was twenty feet back from the cliff edge.
I’d judged Devil’s Bottom to be between sixty and seventy feet high.
If my calculations were correct, I believed I’d have enough rope for my real Plan B.
“Okay, look at me and kneel at the edge,” I instructed Leticia.
When she’d done that, I sat down facing her and the cliff where the Kennedy brothers stood watching the procedure. I braced my feet against the tree to anchor myself, took a firm hold of the rope, and said, “Now ease yourself over. I’ve got you, I swear.”
Without any hesitation, the young woman slipped from her perch.
Her sudden weight pulled on the rope, but the bulk of the pressure was on the tree trunk.
I began to let the rope slide slowly through my hands.
I should have worn gloves, but I hadn’t seen any in the mess of the tents.
I watched Leticia disappear over the edge of the cliff.
“You okay?” I called out.
“Ten-four,” she replied.
I smiled. I really liked this kid.
I eased her down. I’d given her about twenty feet of rope when she called up, “I need to go left.”
“How far?” I called out.
“Four feet.”
“Hey, you two, ease the rope four feet to Leticia’s left.”
Stan crouched and grabbed the taut rope, but Ollie, when he tried to bend over, just gave a howl of pain.
“I got it,” Stan called out.
“Careful!” I hollered. “Don’t let the rock edge cut into the rope!”
“I’m trying. Christ, give me a hand,” he said to Ollie.
The big man crouched down slowly behind his brother and took hold of the rope.
“Lift!” Stan said.
He and Ollie together reoriented the line, Ollie screaming in pain most of the time.
“That’s good!” Leticia called. “I’m there!”
The brothers released their hold, knelt at the cliff’s edge, and leaned over to eye the young woman and the pack they’d been so desperate to find.
“She’s got it!” Stan cried. “We have to pull her up!”
But I didn’t pull. Instead, I let the rope slide rapidly through my hands, burning my palms as it did.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell!” Stan hollered.
The rope continued to slide until it was almost at an end, then I felt the pressure let up. I knew she’d reached the bottom.
As loud as I could, I yelled, “Run, Leticia!”
“Give me the goddamn gun!” Ollie hollered.
Stan handed him the Glock. Ollie fired three rounds in rapid succession. “Shit.” He glanced at his brother. “Go after her. I’ll stay up here with the cop. The dead cop,” he added and gave me a killing look.
Stan took off at a run. I let go of the rope, stood up, and walked to where Ollie sat on his fat bottom, the barrel of the Glock pointed up at my chest.
“I’m your only ticket out now,” I reminded him.
“And I’m going it make it a trip through hell for you, I swear,” Ollie snarled at me.
I could see Leticia. She was at the canoe that she and her father had come in. I watched her lift it and slide it onto the lake. She stepped in, backpaddled a few yards into the bay, then headed toward the narrows, stroking furiously.
I turned my gaze toward Devil’s Door. The sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw two figures standing atop the wall on the near side. Cordell and Tucker? I blinked against the glare, and when I looked again the figures were gone.
Down below, Stan raced to the lake’s edge and stood frozen as Leticia’s canoe grew smaller and smaller.
Then, as if he’d had a sudden thought, he turned and disappeared on the path that ran through the trees past the pit toilet.
He dashed toward the fold in the rock that was Devil’s Bottom.
As Ollie and I watched, he grabbed something from the tall wild grass at the base of the cliff, gave a cry of triumph, and lifted the pack for us to see.
“Ha!” Ollie cried. Then, oddly for a man who seemed to care nothing about the Divine, he said, “Thank God.”
In that moment I wondered, and was to wonder many more times across the next few days, what God exactly was he talking about?