CLIFFHANGER by Ellen Notbohm

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You could blame Iris Jordison for the most terrifying five minutes of my life. It’s not fair to blame her, but what ten-year-old boy on a southern California school playground in 1959 was all that concerned with fairness, especially if the instigator was a potty-mouth tomboy like Iris? Who else but Iris would have arrived at school that morning and announced, just out of earshot of the nuns, that her family had watched a cool new TV show called Toiloight Zone? She never missed an opportunity for toilet humor.

But she also never stooped to calling me Four Eyes, Poindexter, Specky, or any of the other names classmates inflicted on kids who wore coke-bottle glasses like mine. Though my weak eyesight precluded sports with fast-moving balls coming at my face, I could run like the wind—and I excelled at four-square.

The smell of the rubber ball, the tangy-clangy sound of its bounce on the asphalt, my agility and ability to anticipate the direction the ball would take, my dead-on aim and spin, placing it just right so it hit close to the line but not on it. When kids would call me Four-Eyes Steve, Iris would follow shortly with a comment about Four-Square Steve. I wasn’t sure that being defended by the likes of Iris made things any better, but it didn’t make things worse. Four-square was the most popular thing to do at recess, and kids lined up at the square for turns. Since we might only get one turn each, it had to count.

That day, Iris pulled one of her famous no-look fake-outs shots, cocking her head toward the square next to me, then slamming the ball into mine, saying “Here you go, Steve.” It landed on the line right behind me and went bounding across the playground in robust arcs. Without thinking, I turned and ran after it. There was no fence at the playground’s edge, just a drop-off into one of many steep, rugged canyons gouging the area. A ball going into the ravine meant Game Over; no one ever went after them. As I barreled up to the edge, someone behind me called “Let it go!” but instead I let myself go, fast and faster, too fast, plunging down that wild slope where I had to keep my eyes ahead of my feet, dodging holes, scrub brush, lizards, rocks, unable to stop. I had to take my eye off the ball, could only hear the high-pitched ringing of each thump as it got farther and farther ahead of me until, with one last mighty leap skyward, the ball slammed into a rock wall and fell to the ground, hiccupped once, then lay still. When I pulled up to it, I found myself at the base of a cliff. A cliff of wonders, climbing sixty feet into the sky, its crumbly sandstone face encrusted with hardened seashells and sea creatures. A fossil fantasy come true.

The religious instruction part of my parochial school bored me to stone. Lot’s wife had nothing on me; if turning to a pillar of salt freed her from the drumbeat of God this and sinner that, I envied her. But by reading about Biblical settings, countries, and peoples, I’d developed a fascination with all things ancient. Stonehenge, Easter Island, the gardens of Babylon, the Appian Way. But I also knew what fossils were and, looking up at that cliff, knew I was looking at something much older than any pyramid or temple.

I knew I’d be back.

The bell sounded on the playground two hundred yards behind me. Recess was ending. I climbed the slope back to the playground, ball under my arm, already planning my return.

Ten to the tenth power! We’d just learned about those exponents, I’d just turned ten, and I felt the power. But I would wait until school was out for the summer. I wanted it to be between just me and that cliff.

That day came, seeming as unremarkable as any other. My parents went off to work, a babysitter barely older than me having arrived to take care of my younger siblings. Dishing out corn flakes and tuning into morning cartoons, she didn’t even notice when I left. She wasn’t my keeper. My folks never knew where I was during those summer days.

I picked my way through the canyon, excited to finally be there for the adventure I’d been dreaming of. My climbing attire was no different than what I wore every day, a button-down shirt and light khaki pants. Blue jeans were not yet popular with kids, and shorts were only for the beach. But my shoes—Pedwins! I chose them for their black leather sleekness and their V-shaped grippy spikes in horizontal rows across the bottom. Not an athletic shoe at all, but to me they were really cool, and I could run fast in them. Their traction gave me a sense of power. Maybe that’s why I thought I could climb a rock wall, though in truth I’d never climbed anything other than an apple tree or jungle gym. It’s easy to be fearless when you just don’t know any better.

Where to start seemed ordained (a word I learned from the nuns and now diverted for my own purposes). Thirty feet above me, beckoning me, tempting me, daring me, a nautilus fossil of impressive size protruded from the cliff wall, almost like an awning. I could see at least eight inches of it. I wanted it as I’d never wanted anything before. I knew I could get to it. Knew I could pry it loose. With one hand. I would slip it inside my shirt as I descended. The weight of it wouldn’t affect my climbing. It would be the trophy of the summer, the out-and-out envy of every kid I knew. Where’d you get it? they’d breathe. Oh, just climbed the cliff behind the school, I’d reply, casual as you please.

I started up the wall, scrambling very fossil hunter-like the first several yards on adrenaline. Showing off to myself. Up I went, hugging the cliff face, shoving the toes of the Pedwins into little recesses in the rock, setting off mini-showers of shell fragments, pebbles, and dust. Midway up that three-story climb, it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t easy, the wall more sheer than I could admit. The nautilus was just over arm’s length above me when I realized I could go no further. There were no toeholds. Above or below.

Time stood still, as it had for the countless creatures around me, hardened to stone over an amount of time I could not comprehend. If I could go neither up or down, was I to become one of them, baked into the rock for all time? I’d wanted to come alone, just me and the cliff. I simply never considered how it might be my undoing.

A hot breeze swept the cliff, lifting my hair and crawling across my scalp, and leaving with it the pit-of-bowels knowing that I had no viable out than to get back down. Somehow, someway. I couldn’t see what was beneath me or behind me, what I could use for footing. I thought about jumping, or more like pushing off backwards. I wasn’t afraid of jumping in general, but it would be a jump from thirty feet up, not being able to spot a place where I might land, therefore not knowing where I’d land. Now I was beyond terrified. If I fell backward, I wouldn’t be able to see what’s coming; I’d be on my head without even a second to prepare. Landing in any position in that debris-filled canyon would mean injury, but falling backwards would be the worst. I could split my head, break bones, be cut to ribbons—even die. A month of lunches for the geckos and chuckwallas. Maybe a giant red rattlesnake would come along and swallow me whole.

The sun winked off the ancient sea creatures who hadn’t moved in eons. Young though I was, and paralyzed as the prehistoric mollusks I clung to, I realized I had no options. There wasn’t a soul near enough to hear my calls for help. Waiting for someone to happen by might be forever. Even then, what could they do?

I knew with grim clarity that waiting would just make it worse. There was only one way down—to hug the cliff face like I loved it madly and start sliding, start silently pleading and bargaining with the higher power I didn’t believe in. But there are no atheists stranded on rock walls. So I slid and prayed, my face pressed into the rough surface. Inch by finger-shredding inch. Until my fingers slipped and I fell.

I couldn’t have been out cold too long because the sun was still glinting in about the same place. I rose out of the thick blackness behind my closed eyes, hauled back to consciousness by the thought that this had been the stupidest stunt of my life and I sure wasn’t going to try it again. I’d done what I dreaded most, landed on my back, my neck now stiff and throbbing. But after a few moments, I felt like trying to get up. A small spot on the back of my head stung. I slipped my fingers under it and they came away only slightly bloody—and with a sock, folded in thirds and placed under the cut to protect it.

What? I sat up and looked around. And around, and around. Not a moving thing in sight. I checked my feet. Both socks still there, firm inside the Pedwins. I dropped the sock in my hand, warm from the rocks and bloody from my head, exactly where it had been. The owner might miss it and come back for it, was my addled thought. But I’d had enough terror and strangeness for one day. The mysterious sock was too much to ponder, too much.

Oh so carefully, I got to my feet, filled with the wonder of still being alive. Then I noticed my hand, the little finger sticking out at a right angle. There was no pain, no sensation other than relief, overpowering, almost crushing relief. I cradled my arm in my other hand and slowly climbed out of the canyon. My pockets were empty, I had no fossil to show for my adventure—or to give me away.

I walked the two miles to the office where my mother was a bookkeeper. I showed her my hand and said, “I think I broke my finger.” She said, “You sure did,” and without touching it or moving it, whisked me off to a clinic across town. That doctor applied a hard cast that went completely over my hand and two-thirds up my forearm. On our way out, my mother motioned me to wait by the door while she spoke to the receptionist in a quiet but measured voice. I could only pick up a word or two here and there but “payment plan?” and “appreciate if you could” was enough to get the picture. My little escapade was going to cost my family dearly. My dad would show his usual minimal interest in me, perhaps with a “boys will be boys” shrug. But inwardly he would seethe. It would leak out in small but unmistakable ways, like asking me to do something I couldn’t manage with my arm in a cast or sending me to the Signal gas station vending machine for cigarettes but not giving me enough money.

Back home, my mother swabbed and bandaged the cut on my head, dabbed Bactine on my face scratches, and inspected the damage to my shirt and pants. Finally, she stepped back and said, “Okay, how?”

The truth was going to cost me even more dearly than my father’s contempt, in lost freedom and a summer spent under tighter tabs than I could bear the thought of, maybe even having to work off some of my foolishness doing odd jobs she’d drum up with the neighbors when the cast came off. Weeding, dogwalking, window washing, watering plants. I felt a panic not much less than what I’d felt up on the cliff. So I said only, “Rock hunting. Tripped,” and did my best to look embarrassed by my fumble-footedness.

“Uh-huh,” she said. I couldn’t read her expression. She suggested I stay home for a few days. I knew it wasn’t a suggestion.

The neighborhood rec center next to the school was the hub of summer activities for kids like me. Arts and crafts wasn’t my thing, but I figured I could still play four-square. When I showed up with my cast, it got a lot of attention. Everyone wanted to sign it, doodle on it, play tic-tac-toe on it. But I liked the blank slate of that whiteness. I laughed with them, said I’d think about it, and after a while they stopped asking.

“You were going after that giant nautilus, weren’t you?” Iris asked, seizing a rare moment when no one else was around as we walked the breezeway to the playground. She held up her hands, rounded into the size of a dinner plate, only a slight exaggeration.

I stared at her.

“I’ve tried for that one a couple of times myself,” she said. She lifted her hair and turned her head to show me a two-inch scar on her neck. “Kinda like Frankenstein, huh?”

I stared some more, speechless.

“I didn’t leave you there,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to be seen with me so I waited behind the rocks until I saw you were okay and walking.”

“Iris—”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

A potty-mouth she might have been, but Iris was as good as her word. She never breathed a syllable about her rescuer ministrations, never hung it over my head. The closest she ever came was the day I tried to emulate her fake-out shot but sent the ball out of bounds, sailing over toward the canyon. In the fulsome second I hesitated, she said, “I’ll get it” and headed toward the spot where the ball had already vanished over the edge of the playground. “Nice job, Cliff,” she whispered as she passed me. Did she wink, or was it a trick of the sun?

The summer flowed on. After six weeks, my cast came off, the skin beneath it white, flaking, and itchy, begging for some sun. Even I could only play so much four-square, could only read so many Hardy Boys novels, could only make so many popsicle-stick grenades. So like any common miscreant, I returned to the scene of the crime.

Picking my way over the rocks, using the school above on the bluff as a reference point, I reached the spot where I thought I’d climbed and fallen. But nothing looked familiar. I scanned the fossil wall over and over, moving several yards, then farther, in both directions, backing up, squatting down to get different perspectives. It finally dawned on me that the nautilus I was looking for wasn’t there anymore. I searched the base of the cliff, hoping to find pieces I might reconstruct, or perhaps it survived a fall miraculously intact. I mean, I did. Sort of.

But the nautilus was gone, and when I returned to school a few weeks later, so was Iris. Perhaps her devil-may-care ways were too much for the nuns, or perhaps her family moved. Whatever the reason, there was noticeably less energy on the playground. I found I missed that. It felt a little like… love?

The foibles of youth can lay forgotten—until they’re not. Several decades had rolled by since my childhood close call. In the ensuing swirl of career, family, and the satisfying pursuit of happiness, it had long ago melted into distant memory when the story flicking across the news made my spine tingle and straighten.

A local reporter was interviewing a paleontologist seated in what appeared to be her office, prefacing his opening question with, “Dr. Murtagh, tell us why this find is so significant.”

Something about Dr. Murtagh seemed vaguely familiar. I cocked an ear toward the TV as she described how a nearly complete skeleton of million-year-old Mammuthus meridionalis had been discovered in the Borrego Badlands, its tusks nearly ten feet long. As she explained that it was the second species of mammoth discovered in San Diego County, her full name flashed in caption at the bottom of the screen.

Dr. Iris Murtagh

Anza-Borrego Center for Natural History

The mammoth was the latest fascinating find in the county, she continued. The first dinosaur discovery, part of a hadrosaur spine, was unearthed nearby in the 1960s by a junior high school student.

The tingling in my spine ratcheted up.

Before closing the interview, the reporter remarked upon a large specimen on a shelf just over her shoulder. “That’s quite a nautilus. One of your finds?”

Yes it was, she said. Her first major find as a child. Right here in San Diego County. Then she smiled.

“I call him Steve.”

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AUTHOR BIO:

Ellen Notbohm’s work touches millions in more than twenty-five languages. She is author of the award-winning novel The River by Starlight and the nonfiction classic Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew. Her short prose appears in many literary journals, including Eclectica, Brevity, Halfway Down the Stairs, Quail Bell, Eunoia Review, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Does It Have Pockets?, and in anthologies in the US and abroad.

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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Cliffhanger”:

There is an art to crafting a compelling short story. It begins with a strong hook, a compelling character, and a strong and interesting voice. But the sentences that follow must weave a compelling story as well and lead to a satisfying (and perhaps unexpected) ending that, ideally, circles back to the opening in some way.

Author Ellen Notbohm has checked all those boxes with “Cliffhanger.” She takes the reader on a journey in a well-defined setting, sprinkles in some humor along the way, and gives us a surprise and a smile at the end.

With this wonderful piece, the author also demonstrates that not every story needs to have some deep philosophical message of the human condition to be excellent and thoroughly enjoyable. Or maybe there is a message in this story? We’ll leave that to the reader to decide.