For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun (5 page)

10

“Where can we get a gun?” Bobby asked as we pedaled our bikes down a street of repetitive single-story homes.

“You need to shut up,” I replied. “I’m not helping you get a gun, and I’m sure as hell not going to shoot you.”

Bobby pushed into an upright sitting position, his grip leaving the handlebars. I turned away with a slight eye roll. Bobby knew I didn’t know how to ride no-hands, so he was doing this in front of me to grandstand.

“Come on, wouldn’t that just be
amazing
?” he said, opening his arms into the wind. “We could do it safely. Like, you just shoot my foot or something to start. It’s really no different than the hammer trick.”

“No different?” I said, still refusing to look over at him. “Me stealing a gun and shooting you is
no different
than us playing a little I-dare-you-with-a-hammer-game? Right.”

We turned onto another street, down a slight hill, toward a row of small storefronts framed in two-story brick buildings with flat roofs. “But we’ve
got
to figure out if Walter is like us,” Bobby said. “If you shoot me and I’m okay, then, well —”

“Or I could just walk up to Walter and ask, ‘Hey, do you mind if I try to smash your hand with this lead pipe?’ That would be informative, too.” Sarcasm was practically my middle name.

“True. But I doubt he’d do it.” Bobby sort of missed my point. Then he got this
expression
. Full of excitement. “Hey, look there!” He put his hands back on the handlebars and started to pedal faster, racing away from me. I pushed to catch up.

“What?” I asked, panting as I came up behind him. He pointed up.

“There,” he said with a smile. “I’m totally going to jump that.” He was beaming.

We had stopped in an alley between blocks of the two-story brick buildings. Above us, jutting from the top of one of the stores on our right, was the edge of a sheet of plywood. “What’re you talking about?” I asked.

“Come on. Around back.” It was his only reply. Behind the stores, we saw all the unsavory elements of marginalized small business: dumpsters, grease-stained parking spaces, a part-time employee in a blue uniform smoking a cigarette a few stores over. We waited until blue-uniform went back inside, then Bobby led me to the fire escape that ran up the back of the nearest building. I followed behind like a lost puppy. I was entirely sure Bobby was up to no good, but the combination of youthful exuberance and youthful stupidity got the best of me.

Looking around to make sure no one saw him, Bobby jumped up and grabbed the suspended ladder of the fire escape. He missed. He tried to find something to stand on, but there was nothing. “Johnny,” he said, turning back to me, eyes wide. “You grab the ladder. I’ll hold you up. Come on, don’t be a wuss.”

Ah damn. Clever ploy, Bobby. As a 12-year-old boy, “wuss” was one of the magic words I couldn’t refuse. I had to help him.

I climbed onto Bobby’s shoulders, first in a sort of piggyback, then on my knees, stretching an arm upward. When that wasn’t enough, I timidly placed one sneaker on Bobby’s back as he hunched over. “It’s okay, go ahead,” he said with effort. I carefully raised my other leg and stood fully upright on Bobby’s curved back, then reached up and easily grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder. It came sliding down, ripping me off Bobby’s back.

I held firmly onto the ladder as it descended, until it clanged to a stop and I slammed into the pavement, hard. I was already regretting helping out. As I rolled over, I noticed Bobby was on the ground, too, under the hanging ladder.

Bobby was lying on his back, with his right cheek pressed to the pavement. The foot of the ladder had stopped inches from his head, and his left eye was wide, straining to peek at the rusty metal just inches above him.

But we had done it. The ladder was down. Neither one of us was hurt. Much. Yet. We looked around and confirmed, as far as we knew, that no one had seen or heard us. So Bobby started to climb, carrying his bike.

He did an awkward shuffle, latching one of the handlebars over a rung of the ladder every couple of steps. But he made progress, eventually getting to the first landing of the fire escape. Wrestling the bike onto the platform proved to be more difficult than the climb, but he got it done, then called down to me. “Were you thinking of helping me at all, jerk?”

I snapped out of my daze and climbed up to join him. Bobby was already most of the way to the second landing. I kept expecting him to mess up and drop his bike on my head, but it didn’t happen. He moved like he was on a mission.

I reached the second landing as Bobby approached the roofline. “Did I mention help would be nice?” Bobby looked down at me, dripping sweat from humping the bike up so far. I hurried to join him, then held the bike as he hauled himself onto the roof. For a moment, I was certain that I was going to drop the bike two stories to the pavement below, giving me visions of the old Bobby, beating the snot out of me. But I held on. And then he lifted it from above, and I scrambled up the ladder to join him on the roof.

It was exhilarating. And totally illegal, of course. We were only two stories up, but from the flat roof of the anonymous brick building, I felt like we could see everything in town. For a moment I scanned the horizon, looking for our self-storage building, our Mount Trashmore, but Bobby wasn’t taken in by the view. He walked over and checked the sheet of plywood that someone had left propped at an angle, one end on the flat asphalt roof, the other on the short brick half-wall that garnished the top of the building. Basically it made a ramp. Bobby shook it with one hand to measure its strength. That seemed like a very scientific test.

Gauging the entire setup, this is what I figured: Each store, though connected, had its own flat roof, with its own surrounding half-wall, perhaps a foot or two high. The angle of the ramp looked relatively low — let’s say, 13.57 degrees. As if I had any idea. And the distance to jump across the gaping hole of the alley and onto the next roof was maybe 15 feet. Carry the one, divide by pi. Yep, it was confirmed.

In short, there was no way in hell Bobby could make it.

He started to ride his bike in circles on the roof, getting ready, building up speed.

I was certain he was going to die.

But kids at our age use those words too much, in a disposable way:
You’re gonna die! I’m gonna kill you!
They didn’t have a lot of weight.

I was 12, after all. If you asked me, for real, whether I’d rather die or go to the principal’s office, I’d pick death.

So we were kinda stupid.

Bobby turned toward the ramp, at the best speed he could manage in the small space.

I watched, holding my breath as he hit the ramp. For a split second, I thought,
this is going to be AWESOME!

As he launched into the air, I was suddenly sure he was going to make it, land on the other roof, skid to a stop, and laugh at my fear. Perhaps fireworks would go off in celebration. They didn’t.

He didn’t.

Midway through the jump, Bobby and his bike started fading. They’d never make the other side. Bobby let out a wail of fear and anger and surprise. He dropped past the roofline and I rushed to the edge as he fell to the alley below, uttering only a solitary, unsatisfying
oof
as he landed.

His bike, however, made quite a racket. It clattered and rang as it hit the pavement and broke into several unexpected pieces. No doubt the Schwinn corporation would have considered it
totaled
.

Bobby lay splayed in an obscene pose, arms and legs all crooked and wrong. I stared at his head. It seemed
flatter
than it should’ve been.

Oh Jesus, did he brain himself?
I wondered.

But there was no blood. He seemed intact, just crumpled in a weird position.

Then I saw the blood start to pool.

Crap crap crap crap crap
, I thought, clanking loudly down the ladders to the alley. “Bobby! Are you all right?” I called out as I descended, not really wanting to hear the answer.

I hit the pavement, turned, and ran over to him. He was still in the same twisted pose I had seen from above, face down on the rough pavement.

One eye looked up at me, but he didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t speak. His head still had that
flattened
look to it.

“Oh my God oh my God OHMYGOD,” I chanted. “What the hell am I gonna do?” My mind scanned for options, but for some reason only
You need to kick his stupid butt for being so stupidly stupid!
came through. “I’m getting help,” I said, running out of the alley.

Back on the main strip of stores, I looked left and right for someone to help. An old woman, a teenage mother with an infant in a stroller. No, no. Then, down the street. A cop! I ran.

“Hey! Officer!” I yelled, but several cars were passing and he didn’t hear me. I kept running.

Listen, adrenaline is great, you know? Nature’s little pick-me-up. Works wonders. But even though I was jacked on adrenaline, I wasn’t exactly a world-class sprinter. I finally pulled up near the cop, winded, hands on knees.

“What is it, son?” he said, pulling off his reflective sunglasses.

“My frien—,” I said, panting. I took two more deep breaths. “My friend hurt himself.” The cop stood up taller, realizing this might be serious. Don’t you love cops? I mean, that’s pretty badass, right?
Someone’s in trouble? Point the way!
I’m pretty sure if someone came up to me and said,
Hey, someone’s hurt! I need your help!
I’d just start sweating. And maybe cry.

“Where?” he asked.

Still panting, I pointed. From where we were, the alley was only a narrow break in the repetitive facades of stores stretching down the street.

“Take me to him,” the officer commanded. I was 12, so being ordered to do something by a police officer was akin to having God himself, clad in the purest shimmering samite, appear in front of me and utter a commandment. I sucked in some air, stood, and started hurrying back to the alley. The officer followed.

Bobby just tried something stupid. We’re really sorry.
That’s what I was planning to say. Then we rounded the corner into the alley.

Bobby was gone.

The cop looked at the bike wreckage, noticing the blood around it. He started checking the area, all the way to the back parking lot. When he found nothing — no one — he looked back to me, part confused, part angry. “What’s going on here?”

Oh crap.

Where the hell did Bobby go? I figured he must have pulled himself back together, at least enough that he could walk, but now what was I supposed to do? I hesitated, stammering
ums
and
uhs
at the cop, and basically not doing anything to gain his confidence. He leaned in closer. “I said,
what’s going on here?
”

I faked it! Ha ha!
I thought.
Yeah, that’s an excellent thing to say, if I’d like to rent a room at the Iron Bar Hotel
. My brow furrowed, and still I offered nothing, no explanation.

The cop reached for his radio.

No no no not that, don’t call this in!
My mind raced. Then I realized what I had to do.

I had to force him to think something else.

Do you have any idea how scary that was? The idea of using some unexplained, mystical
mind power
that I acquired unexpectedly, and on a
cop
? When you’re 12? I was sure I’d need new underwear afterward.

His hand lifted the radio. I had about one more second to decide.