You were above me when the wind stopped. I want that written down before we talk about whose weight was on whom. You had the blue equipment bag. I had the replacement camera housing, and the wind was blowing hard enough to make its strap hum against my jacket.
Then the strap fell quiet. My face was still cold. My hair kept whipping across my mouth. Below my waist there was no wind at all.
You dropped a washer. It fell past my knee and stopped in the air.
I remember you laughing. Neither of us understood enough to be frightened yet. You said the maintenance contract had finally included a miracle. The washer hung there, bright edge toward us, turning slowly on nothing.
Below it a third climber raised his head.
He wore the old brown company coveralls, the ones discontinued before either of us started. His hood concealed his face. There was no rope above him, although his gloved hands moved with the patient rhythm of someone ascending one.
I called the ground crew. They said nobody else had gone up. The camera on the van showed only us and the mast, with low cloud moving beyond it.
You asked the third climber his name.
He raised one hand. Your line loosened. I saw the slack travel upward toward you, as though the tension were being paid out from somewhere beneath us. Your expression changed. You grabbed the mast's metal framework with both arms and pulled yourself against it.
The third climber raised his other hand.
My weight went sideways. There should have been a downward pull, a familiar force against the harness. Instead I felt myself being laid gently on my back. The ground stayed where it was, far below. The body in the brown coveralls moved nearer without climbing any faster.
You caught my shoulder and brought me against the mast. I remember the bruise your thumb left. It was an ordinary bruise, exactly where your thumb had been, and I kept looking at it afterward because it made sense.
We abandoned the equipment. I had to say it twice before you let go of the bag. You were thinking about the cost and the report and the man in the office who would ask why we hadn't secured everything first. I was thinking about those things too. The camera housing had cost more than my car.
It hung where I released it, beside the washer. The strap stretched toward the third climber as if seeking a hand.
We began moving down the structure, using the service route we had come up. There was a damaged section below the platform where the protective framework had pulled away from its fixing. We had crossed it easily on the way up, with our equipment carrying the weight. Now the gap looked wider.
You went below me. That is the next thing I need written down. I watched you move past my boots and settle on the far side of the gap. You told me where to put my foot. I could hear the ground crew asking us to repeat ourselves, but neither of us answered.
The third climber waited beside the gap.
He turned his hood toward me. There was no dark face inside it, no pale face either. I could see the distant hillside through the opening. A sheep moved across the grass where his mouth should have been.
He offered a hand.
I used your shoulder instead. I am certain of that. I felt your jacket beneath my palm and the hard edge of your shoulder blade. You shouted something, and I moved my weight before I understood the words. For an instant my fingers found a series of narrow ridges under the fabric, evenly spaced like rungs.
Then I was below the gap and you were above me again.
We came down without looking at the brown coveralls. The wind returned at my knees, then my chest. When we reached the ground, the crew helped us out of our equipment and sat us in the van. They had seen us stop for almost twenty minutes. On their screen, they said, we had appeared to be waiting for something.
You told them we were lucky.
I agreed. I kept agreeing while the supervisor spoke to us. It seemed rude to introduce the other possibilities when everyone was so pleased we had come down safely.
That evening you called to ask whether my hands were sore. I said yes. You said yours were too. We discussed gloves and cold weather for a while before you asked whether I remembered climbing across your back.
I did. You said you remembered climbing across mine.
Come over when you finish work. I won't ask you to go back to the mast, and I don't want to show anyone the photographs the office took. I only want you to take your shirt off so I can look. There are six straight bruises across each of my palms now, and this morning one of them moved when I bent my head.
