Demoted

Trick had checked the carabineer himself. Twice. But has he pumped his gloved hand, cinched tightly around the rope at the small of his back and, through that slack, began to lean over the edge, he made eye contact to Chirp who had a look on his face that smoldered with malevolent satisfaction.

Chirp had been awarded his mountaineering badge last year on this same campout and the troop had since looked at him as a sort of legend, well half the troop. And really, he was the source of his own fame, as he liked to remind the Webelos and Tenderfoots of his First Class status.

The rest of the troop, the Second Classers, and Glen Junior, a real-life Eagle Scout, we were not as impressed. But now, leaning against the tension of the rope and his feet against the lip of a sheer face of rock, Trick had to put his trust in loathsome Chirp. Scout Master Glen, or SM Glen, as he wanted to be called, had put Chirp in charge of the top team (experience earned, and all) leaving him at the top of the cliff to lord over the scouts waiting their turn. And with a nod of the torch being passed, SM Glen grabbed the line and fast-roped his way down the cliff to the bottom where the Webelos and Glen Junior waited to run belay. SM Glen trusted Chirp, apparently with Trick’s life. With the troop’s lives. So it was in the guise of that trust that Trick latched his harness into the line and backed his way to the edge of the cliff.

“OK,” SM Glen called from the floor below. Trick looked over his shoulder at the scout master who had wrapped the thick rope around his waist and was leaning casually back to give it tension—fifty some odd feet below. Glen Junior was leading the Webelos, all too young to rappel, a bit away to practice knots. It was a long way down, fifty feet. Sweat was now gathering at Trick’s brow under the brittle and crumbling padding of his ancient, hand-me-down helmet.

Trick looked back up. Chirp, hand on the rope where it was attached to a thick tree, gleaming new red climbing helmet cocked slightly forward, was holding his gaze and daring him to step back on the vertical face.

The moment of truth seemed to stretch. Trick looked each one of his troop mates in the eye, the cadre of second class scouts, Bowly, Stub-Toe, and Farts all frowning with worry. Chirp’s clique, Beef and Lugknot all fixing him with a facsimile of that malevolent look Chirp had on his own face.

Trick felt the edge of the cliff bite into the arch of his foot as his back boot inched over the fall. He was worried for certain about the looks on the Chirpies’ faces, but the real threat was behind him, dropping off rather suddenly.

As he had practiced, he called out, “On belay!”

“Belay on,” came the reply from SM Glen below. Trick felt the rope slacken as SM Glen eased off it, allowing Trick to pass the line through his hand and workings of the carabiners in his harness. Trick edged cautiously out over the cliff, an inch at a time. He leaned back gently back to orient his legs, careful not to sit into it, but to swing his stiff body out and he took his first tentative step onto the face. He had to lean out over the void to gain the opposing force from his legs and the rope against the vertical.

“You like my helmet?” Chirp kept his eyes fixed on Trick’s, but he was addressing Lugknot, who was standing close by. Trick froze, the line taught with his weight, now the primary source of his safety, vibrating at knee level, right next to Chirp. Lugknot, Chirp’s chief lackey, one of the second class scouts, dutifully gave the helmet a proper looking over and nodded. Chirp continued, eyes on Trick. “I got it at REI for the caving campout we did last month. It’s fall rated and came with a free GoPro mount.”

“You mean your mom got it,” checked Bowly, who shot a quick look to Trick, a subtle indication of where and with whom he stood. Chirp was too fixed on Trick to seem bothered by the insult, but Beef and Lugknot bristled and were about to step up when Chirp thrust his hand into his zippered cargo pocket and came out with a shiny, green folding knife. He casually popped it open with his thumb. New spring and expensive workings flipped the clean grey blade out into the morning sunlight.

In the silence that followed that click, he declared, “I also got this knife.” He glanced at it appraisingly, working his thumb over the spring mechanism. “It’s a carbon steel, spring-loaded blade with an edge like obsidian.” Both factions stood still in the silence, the morning sun peaked passively through the branches of the trees at the top of the cliff, a bird flew past the scene without comment.

Trick felt the rope tighten, which was SM Glen sitting back down on it to pull it tight, to put the breaks on. The relief that Trick could relax his control a little was not long lived as Chirp laid his free hand on the vibratingly tight rope and plucked it once.

“You ok up there, Pete?” SM Glen did not use their nick names, that was not his game. But he tried to sound calm so as to not insert anxiety into what is already a very nerve-wracking phase of rappelling, those first few steps.

At the top of the cliff, Chirp plucked the rope again, like a violinist casually tuning up. Slowly, each scout standing there, who had previously been waiting their turn to clip into the rope and rappel down the cliff realized the implications of Chirp, fixed on Trick, standing near the anchor and rope that held Trick aloft and alive, showing off about his knife.

Bowly was the first to act. With a start, he launched himself at Chirp, shoving him off and away from the rope. Stub-Toe, Bowly’s younger brother, stronger than he looked, not as smart as he should have been, was right behind him, just in time to get twisted into LugKnot and Beef, who, more surprised than skilled, made their best efforts to pummel at him. Farts, always a little slower than the rest, got hung up on the knee high rope chasing after Stub-Toe, but did his best to get over it and into the ruckus.

This action jostled the rope enough to cause Trick to swing chest-flat against the curb with a whomp. He caught himself as well as he could with his free hand, the other locked at the small of his back, keeping him from sliding down the rope. He felt the rope go tense as SM Glen sat harder onto it. Trick knew this would tighten the line in his network of carabiners, but dangling at the top of the cliff and being banged against its face did not help his confidence in small rings of metal and the properties of a somewhat elastic rope.

The melee was not slowing down, either.

Trick looked up from the cliff face to see that Chirp and Bowly were rolling around, careless of the knife in Chirp’s hand and without heed to the cliff edge toward which their struggles moved them. Beef had wriggled his way out of the Stub-Toe/LugKnot/Farts pile and readied a kick to whomever was going to end up on top. It was Farts. And with a good wind up of his leg, he toe-punched Farts in the side ribs, evicting from him a volume of wind from both ends, true to his name.

Bowly gained a footing and knocked the folding knife from Chirp’s hand. It bounced, blade still out, past Trick’s face and over the edge of the cliff.

“Hey! Be careful up there!” Shouted SM Glen, who had only Trick’s situation in view, to have a green folding knife bounce down the rocks next to him. A scoutmaster is used to casual shenanigans, teenage boys being the creatures they are. So when the knife came to rest at his hiking boots without any harm, he refocused his attention on Trick stuck where any novice rock climber might be stuck. “Pete, you have to get your legs up under you,” he began instructing.

At the top of the cliff, Stub-Toe, back to the ground, unaided by Farts, and set upon anew, got his legs under Beef and shoved him up and away, into LugKnot who, unprepared, spread eagled backwards toward the cliff. He was not in any danger of falling off, but Farts, shuffling ineffectually behind him, took a stiff arm to the head which knocked him closer still toward Trick and the edge. What saved him was Chirp and Bowly, completely self-absorbed in their mutual torment, wrestling on the rocks, edging closer and closer.

Farts fell into them, farted loudly, and dislodged Bowly from Chirp, who, seeing red, used it as an opportunity to lunge at Bowly. But Farts came up with an accidental elbow the managed to change Chirp’s course, tripping him over Bowly, and sending him rolling into Trick’s face.

And off the cliff.

Over the edge he went and Trick, in an instant reaction, released his grip on the rope in the small of his back and with both arms, caught bodily hold of Chirp, sending them both whirring down the rope, clasped together in a desperate bid to defy gravity.

“Cheese and CRACKERS!” Shouted SM Glen as he dropped all his weight onto the line. In a jerking instant, Trick came to a halt face-to-face with an astonished Chirp. The Webelos and Glen Junior down below all snapped to two of their troop dropping down the cliff.

Well above them, hanging on for all of their lives, Chirp and Trick hovered, mid-air, mid-cliff, and mid-skirmish. Trick finally felt his anger at Chirp bubble up.

“So you were gonna cut the rope on me?” Trick hissed through his clenched teeth; spittle carelessly shot into Chirp’s stupidly gaping mouth. “Let me fall and die?!?” Chirp grabbed hold of Trick bodily like a life preserver in a raging sea.

“Nuh, nuh, n—” stammered Chirp.

“Shut your chirp hole, you snake,” was as articulate and biting as Trick could be, anger dumbing him down to white hot awkward words. They had slid down the rope a good fifteen feet before SM Glen could tighten up and stop them. Trick was aware of the cliff face banging their entwined bodies lightly as they hung there.

“Jesus CRACKER,” SM Glen sort of repeated. By now, the Webelos and Glen Junior were on their feet, all faces up at the pair on the rope. Trick glanced up at the lip and saw that the scouts above had put their melee aside and were peering over the edge down at them, eyes wide, hiding their involvement in this very unsafe development behind the curb. “OK, hold on, boys,” hollered SM Glen. “I am going to let y’all down.” Quickly, but with some control, SM Glen eased up the rope and Trick and Chirp bounced down five feet, then another five, then another five. Eventually Trick felt Glen Junior’s hands pushing his shoulders up and his feet touching the ground. Maintaining eye contact, Trick released Chirp who fell with an “oof” to the dirt at the base of the cliff.

Trick, as if he had been imprisoned in his climbing harness for years, ripped at the clasps and buckles until free of the rope. He flung the trap aside and found Chirp’s green, Benchmade, carbon steel, spring-loaded folding knife on the ground at his feet. Without hesitation, Trick retrieved the knife and crouched over Chirp.

Chirp, expecting to be stabbed repeatedly, flinched with an audible whimper. But Trick, instead of drawing blood, grabbed a handful of shirt, cut the Boy Scout Second Class patch from Chirp’s sleeve, and flung it at his astonished face.