was 11:30.
"What the hell are you raving about, Brant?" His face came to life
now that he was being noticed, and he looked at me with great
excitement, like some dumb little kid who was about to tell some
terrible secret and was getting the great flood of details together to
form a top-confidential plan.
"The SkyCoaster."
Dewey looked over the top of his magazine and shot Brant a look
of mild interest.
"Skybar's SkyCoaster?"
"'Course, ya damn idiot. What other roller coaster ya gonna find in
Starboard? Now the way I figger it, we could make it over the
barbed wire and inside to the SkyCoaster easy enough."
"What the fuck for?" I asked. Brant was always pulling stunts like
this, and it was no telling what the crazy bastard was up to this
time. I remember one year when we were out smashing coins on
the BY&W tracks by Harrow's Point, Brant got tired of watching
trains run over his pennies and dimes and dared us to take on a real
challenge. Whenever Brant came up with a real challenge, you
could almost always count on calling up the You Asked For It or
Ripleys Believe It or Not crews for live coverage. Not that the
challenge was anything like that man from Brazil who swallowed
strips of razor blades, or that fat lady from Ohio who balanced fire
sticks on her forehead - Brant's dares were far more challenging
than those. And, as young volunteers from his reluctant audience,
we were obligated to take part in them or kiss our reputation for
bravery goodbye.
Brant reached into his pants pocket that day and pulled out a small
cardboard box wrapped tightly with a red rubber band.
Unwrapping it, he revealed four or five shiny copper bullets, the
kind I used to see on reruns of Mannix when Mike Conners would
stop blasting away at crime rings long enough to load up his
revolver again. They were different from T.V., though. On the tube
they appeared to be no more than tiny pieces of dull plastic
jammed into a Whamco Cap Pistol. In front of me then, they sat
mystically in Brant's hand, the shells glittering bright rays of light
in the late afternoon sun, the tip of greyish lead heavily refusing to
reflect any light at all.
Then Brant clapped them all together in a fist and headed up the
bank toward the tracks. I started after him, half expecting him to
wheel out a gun for them at any minute, hoping he was just going
to relieve himself rather than starting to open fire on something, or
trying some other dangerous stunt. It was dangerous, as it turned
out, but I didn'tsay anything. I just stood there by the rails, taking a
plug off the chewingtobacco Dewey brought along, my mind
watching from some faraway place as he set them up single file on
the left rail.
"The train wheels should set 'em off the second they hit," he smiled
smugly, eagerly forming his plan. "All we have to do is stand here
by the rails until they do. How's that for a challenge, huh? Oh, and
the first one to jump is pussy of the year."
I didn't say anything. but I thought a lot about it. About how stupid
it was, how dangerous it was, and how weird a persons brain had
to be to think things like that up. I thought about how I should bug
out right then, just yell "Screw you, Brant!" and take off for home.
But that would have made me green. And if it was one thing we all
had to show each other back then, it was that we were no cowards.
So there we were, Brant, John, Dewey, me, and Kirby, although
Kirby wouldn't set foot near the tracks, bullets or no bullets, with a
train coming (he began to conveniently get sick on the tobacco and
had to lie down). We lined up next to the rails, determination in
our eyes as the bullets gleamed in front of us. John was the first
one to hear the train, and as we stepped closer to Brant's orders, I
could hear him softly muttering a short prayer over and over to
himself. Dewey stood on the far right side of me, the last person in
our Fearless Freddy Fan Club
Then the first heavy rumbling of the cars came, John reeled as it
got louder, and I thought surely he was going to collapse over the
tracks, but he didn't, and we all stood still as the train came on. The
churning squeak of the wheels hit our ears, and I stared blankly at
the bullets in front of us, thinking how small they seemed under
the wheels of the 4:40. But the more I looked, the larger they
began to appear, until it seemed they were almost the size of
cannonballs. I shut my eyes and prayed with John.
In the distance. the whistle rang out a terrifyingly loud Hooooo-
HOO Hoooo, and I was sure it was on top of us, sure that I would
feel the cracks of lead pounding in my ears any second, feel the hot
metal in my legs. Then the steady thud-thud-thud of its wheels
grinding closer bit into my ears, and I screamed. turned, and fell
down the slope to where the black gravel ended and the high
meadowy grass began. I ran and didn't stop or look back until I
was what felt like at least a mile away, and then collapsed in the
stickery high grass, my hands and knees filling with sharp pain.
Behind me, five or six bullets roared into the air consecutively, and
I wondered vaguely how Mike Conners could stand such a loud
sound every time he squeezed the trigger. My ears filled up with a
steady EEEEEEEEEEE, and I lay back in the grass, my hair full of
stickers, my pride full of shame.
Then Kirby was in front of me, telling me I was all right. I sat up in
the grass, and down the hm about ten or fifteen feet from me,
Brant, Dewey, and John sat puffing loudly, laughing, out of breath.
The air filled with smoke and I collapsed again into the high sea of
shrub and stickers, feeling fine.
Brant admitted time after time that we were all brave for going
along with him that day, but he never brought up the fact that we
all had run away, he and Dewey in the lead. Somewhere in my
mind, the fact appeared to me that somewhere in Brant, his ego
ended and his brains began. That's why I listened along with the
others, and why we all wound up going with him that night when
he began scheming up another mastermind stunt.
"First we make it over the fence. When we do, we head for the
SkyCoaster. Here's the trick: we'll all meet in the station and start
up the tracks - not the wooden beams - the tracks, and, in single
file, climb to the King drop, then back down." "You're fuckin nuts,
Brant." "Maybe. But at least I'm not fuckin' pussy." "Who's
pussy?" I asked, pulling my Converse All-Star tennis shoes on.
"You in?" asked Kirby, his lower jaw shaking. It was almost like
that shaking jaw and those glassy, scared deer eves of his were
trying to pull me back, to help me forget about the dare and get
back to reading another chapter in Amazing Detective Stories - as
if that once shaking jaw were a sonar, bouncing off waves of
detection and coming up with the same reading: Dangerous Barrier
Ahead.
"Don't be ridiculous, Kirb. 'Course I'm goin"' I shot a glance at
John and Dewey, who both gave me nods of bravery and
confidence, mixed highly with regrets of Brant's ever being with us
that night. We left the flashlights on in the tent in case John's dad
peeked out the back windows of his house to check on us. It turned
out he never did.
Skybar can be pretty damn dark at night with no lights on. Few
people know that like I do since most have only seen it in the
daytime with sunlight bouncing off of the metal roofs of Pop
Dupree's and the Adults Only freak tent or at night with the