‘It was good enough for me,’ yelled Cirillo, ‘and my fingers’re twice the size of yours.’
Hatcher dug his fingers in, scraped dirt out of the tiny ledge, made a crevice deep enough to slowly pull himself up another six inches. Fear was bile in his throat.
That’s when it had started getting darker. The clouds blew in on a cold, biting wind that carried with it the dampness of rain.
The wind picked up, battering him. He could feel his fingers trembling.
‘It’s turning bad, kid,’ Cirillo yelled. ‘Pick it up, keep movin’.’
‘Can’t . .
‘Bullshit. Get your ass in gear or you’re gonna be nuthin’ but a puddle.’
‘Shit,’ was all Hatcher could manage. His fingertips were raw and bleeding and his toes ached as they had never ached before. His arms trembled with exertion. Sweat stung his eyes and tickled the corners of his mouth.
He was hanging on for dear life. The first drops of rain had begun to pelt Cirillo’s face and panic began to gnaw at him, too. But he couldn’t let the kid know that.
Cirillo was at the overhang, he reached up and slowly crawled the fingers of one hand toward the edge, stretching out as far as he could until he very cautiously reached around the edge and felt for a finger hold. His aching fingertips found a small trench. He dug at it, making sure it would hold him, then pushed himself up and out and swung free of the face of the wall. He hung there by one arm, staring down at the kid, who clung to the wall, pressing against it like a piece of moss.
Cirillo switched hands. Hanging with his right arm, he extended his left toward the kid.
‘C’mon, another six feet, I gotcha.’
Hatcher inched his way up, snatching a peek at Cirillo and then closing his eyes and feeling for another finger hold. Finally his head bumped the overhang. No place else to go.
‘Grab my hand, kid,’ Cirillo said.
Hatcher looked at him through terror-stricken eyes, stared at the fingertips wiggling an invitation to him.
‘Trust me,’ Cirillo said.
The kid had never trusted anyone before. He started to look back toward the ground.
‘Gimme your hand, kid,’ Cirillo ordered. Hatcher reached out very slowly, stretching toward the cop’s bulging arm. He felt Cirillo’s callused fingertips, felt his hand slide across his palm, felt the powerful fingers enclose his wrist.
‘Okay,’ said Cirillo, ‘swing free.’
‘What!’
‘Do it now, I can’t hang on here forever.’
The kid closed his eyes, swallowed, and freed his other hand. He was hanging in midair with nothing below him but space. Cirillo gritted his teeth and slowly lifted the kid’s dead weight.
‘Okay,’ Cirillo whispered, ‘hang around my neck.’
Hatcher reached up and wrapped his arms around Cirillo’s thick, bulging neck as the cop chinned himself on the ledge.
‘God Almighty,’ he whispered as Cirillo hauled himself over the lip of the ledge and rolled to safety. Hatcher lay on his face, his breath blowing little billows of dirt away from his mouth. His heart was beating so hard his teeth hurt. Then suddenly he started laughing hysterically.
‘Damn,’ he said, ‘we’re alive! We’re a-fuckin’ live!’
He had confronted and cheated death, a new and seductive experience for him.
‘I did it!’ the kid yelled at the forest and it echoed back:
I did it!’
‘Just remember, kid,’ Cirillo said. ‘Ya can’t quit in this life. Quit and yer dead. Ya take a job, ya do it. Ya don’t hold back nothin’, ya put it all on the line. Ya don’t leave yourself any outs.’
Hatcher turned to Cirillo. ‘Let’s do another one,’ he said eagerly.
And Cirillo had smiled.
‘We still gotta go back down,’ he answered quietly.
Yes, Hatcher thought, these old walls would be a piece of cake. Getting through the jungle, that was the tough part.
Then the rains came. The face of the prison became a slimy river of muck. The rainy days became rainy weeks and then months. With each passing day, climbing the wall became more treacherous. he drew rough maps on the floor, trying to remember directions and distances from the trip upriver. And finally he accepted the reality that without weapons or even a compass, without maps or any knowledge of the area, escape was suicidal. As the rains continued, the challenge slowly faded.
And so he imposed upon himself a daily regimen:
calisthenics to keep his muscles from atrophying; mental exercises to keep from going mad, although gradually
