Page 43 of Free Fall #1

Sejin

P eggy’s Jo’s place is in the high-country forest and about a thirty-minute drive from town. The house itself is basically my dream home, except I’d probably have a dog instead of three cats. But I like cats too, so I’m good with caring for them. Plus, they seem to adore me.

Or they did, until Peggy Jo started moving her luggage out to her truck. Now they’re hiding beneath beds and in cubbyholes, glaring balefully, looking worried, or somehow, mysteriously, both.

The kitchen is an open-concept with a counter separating it from the living room, which feels massive with its gleaming wood floors and floor-to-ceiling glass doors along the entirety of the back wall.

These show off a stunning view of the mountains, and I can’t wait to see how the light plays over the land at all different hours of the day and what the stars look like at night.

The light pollution must be low out here.

There’s so much space to wander and what seems like unlimited privacy.

The living room is cozy, with a big sectional sofa, a large television screen mounted on a wall, and a rug that’s nicely fuzzy against my bare feet.

The décor isn’t any particular style, but just Peggy Jo personified into a living space.

There are photos of her daughter—a slightly plump, dark-haired little girl—and then woman—with a wide smile, and photos of Peggy Jo climbing at various ages.

There’s a wedding photo of Peggy Jo with her husband, a tall, handsome man with heavy, dark eyebrows, and, most interesting to me, a few photos of Dan.

In one he’s probably not even twenty yet and hasn’t grown into his eyes.

They look enormous—like dinner-plate large—and they’re full of skepticism and mistrust. As the photos of Dan progress, he begins to look more and more like himself, and that mistrust gradually fades.

I decide to take a closer look at these pictures, and the photo albums she has sitting out in plain sight, later when I’m alone.

In the middle of the living room, there’s a wood-burning stove that Peggy Jo assures me will heat the entire room for most of the cold months of winter.

There’s central gas heat too, but she says the stove will warm things up more quickly and efficiently, so she keeps a big pile of wood just around the corner of the giant glass doors.

She asks only that I keep up with it, replacing what I use every few days or so.

It’s not hard, she says, given that there are plenty of downed trees and limbs along the edge of her property, many quite big.

I’ve never chopped wood before, but I figure it can’t be that hard. There’s probably a YouTube video demonstrating best practices for it.

There’s also a big hot tub, the barrel-shaped kind that requires climbing a ladder on the outside to get in. Peggy Jo says I can use it any time, just to be sure to test the water regularly and to keep the lid on to prevent pine needles, leaves, and critters from getting in.

After showing me around the property one last time, Peggy Jo and I take the last of her luggage out of the house and strap it onto the racks of her truck bed, cover it all with tarps, and then come back inside for a cup of coffee before she heads out on the road.

“Sure you don’t need my help moving your stuff in?” she asks.

“Nah, I’ve got it.”

“I want you to feel comfortable here. Please don’t hesitate to make yourself at home,” she says to me for the five-hundredth time since I pulled up this morning with the entirety of my worldly belongings in the back seat. I don’t even have enough to warrant using the trunk.

When I left West Virginia, I also left the concept of accumulation behind. More for the sake of lack of space than out of any decision to try to save the planet or anything. Dan has more stuff in his van than I own, despite his lifestyle seeming much more on the fringes.

“Don’t worry, I will,” I say, laughing a little when she slaps my arm gently.

“I really do appreciate you staying here to look after my brats.” She gazes around sorrowfully. “I said goodbye to them all this morning because I knew they’d hide when it was time to go, but I wish I could give them all one last kiss.”

“I’ll give them one for you.”

She grins, and it makes her wrinkles stand out in a wonderful way. “Thank you. And, I have to say, I’m glad it’s you here. As much as I thought it would solve a few of Dan’s financial problems to move in, the cats really do hate him.”

I laugh.

“Which maybe isn’t a problem in terms of keeping them fed and watered, but if something happens and one of them needs to go to the vet, Dan would have a hell of a time getting them in their travel crates.”

“I’m not sure I’ll have it much easier if it comes to that, but I’ll totally give them loads of love every day, I promise.”

“That’s another thing Dan wouldn’t give them. He’s not a fan.” She eyes me speculatively. “Speaking of Dan…”

I brace myself. I’ve suspected for some time that Peggy Jo is curious about our situation and that getting information out of Dan about us is probably as useless as digging for coal in a played-out mine.

“Does he treat you right?”

“Of course.” I’m surprised she needs to ask that. She knows him plenty well to know he’d never mistreat anyone, much less someone he cares about, and I think she knows he cares about me.

“It’s not that I think he wouldn’t want to, but sometimes Dan is…” Peggy Jo sighs, turns sideways on the sofa, and faces me more fully. “Dan is so used to being alone in the world, he doesn’t always consider how things affect other people who care about him.”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling and hoping to hide my raw vulnerability.

“Dan is a good man,” she says, like I might not know. “I’ve grown to love him as my own.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course he didn’t come to see me off today, but I’m not too surprised by that. He struggles with goodbyes. He typically sees it as abandonment.”

“He doesn’t seem to think you’re abandoning him. If anything, he seems—” I bite off the end of my words.

“Glad I’m going?” she says with a laugh.

“Oh, there’s a part of him that is most definitely glad I won’t be around for the big climb.

The pressure of knowing someone down on the ground cares about him is…

well, not necessarily too much for him, but he feels it’s a burden. Which brings me back to you…”

“You worry I might be a burden to him?”

“I struggle with my own feelings about this part of who Dan is,” Peggy Jo says, frowning out the massive windows at the big lawn. “I admire his drive, his athleticism, his bravery, and his determination. I spray about him constantly—”

“Spray?”

“Climber slang for bragging,” she clarifies. “He’ll never spray about himself, and he isolates so much from the community that very few will spray on his behalf. Which leaves me and Rye for the most part doing the bragging about his various accomplishments.”

“He doesn’t want people to know what he’s done?” That seems odd to me because I get the impression Dan is very proud of what he can and will do.

“It’s not that he doesn’t want them to know, so much as that’s not why he does it. Public accolades or external validation doesn’t play into his motivations. It’s internal for him.”

“But why? What’s he got to prove to himself?”

“I’ve been trying to understand that for years. How are you handling that aspect of who Dan is? Emotionally, I mean. You alright?”

I clear my throat and chew on my lower lip, trying to think of how to answer. “I try not to think about the free solo too much. He showed me his plans the other day. I asked to see them, and he explained the…the pitches?”

She nods.

“He explained the pitches to me, and I believe it’s safe to climb it all with ropes—barring things like rockfalls or freak accidents. Challenging, yeah, and maybe you bust your knee on a fall or whatever, but not deadly. Without ropes, though…”

“Without ropes reduces the room for mistakes to zero.”

“Right, and mistakes happen.” I twist my hands in my lap.

“I remember when I was just a kid riding my bike down the same street I always rode down…” I laugh.

“I don’t know what happened, but I took a corner too fast and wiped out.

Cut my knee. I still have a scar. If Dan’s up on the wall and he ‘takes a corner too fast,’ he’s dead , and there’s just exploded body bits to scrape off the…

the…what do you call the ground? The deck? ”

“The floor.”

“Right. Well, it’s not like I can stop him from doing it.

” I try to smile, but it feels shaky. “I don’t even think I should try.

If he tried to stop me from…” I pause. “I literally cannot think of a single thing I do that’s half as dangerous as what he does, so that doesn’t work.

I just know in my heart that if I forced his hand…

Well, he’s been in love with free soloing a lot longer than he’s been in love with me—if he’s even really in love with me—”

“He is.”

“So, what he’s doing might seem unhinged to me, but the choice is to lose him for sure or just lose him maybe.”

Peggy Jo watches me with such empathy in her eyes that tears well up.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, reaching out and dragging me close. “You’re very brave. Braver than he is, actually.”

“I don’t think so. I’m terrified of heights.”

“But you’re the one choosing to stay with him knowing that you might have to live with the pain of his consequences…

and he wouldn’t. He’d get maybe a dozen long seconds to make peace with it, and then it’d be over.

You, though…you’d have to live with it for a very long time.

And I get the idea you’re familiar with grief. ”

“My mom,” I choke out.

She pats my shoulder. “Ah, I see. But you’re willing to risk that to be with him.”

“My dad says it’s worth it?” I say it into her shoulder, and it comes out like a question.

She lets out a small laugh. “It might be. I hope we never find out.”

“Me too.”