Guys were about her age, nice enough looking, blond, dressed to the nines, well built, athletic. Could have been brothers. Kind of guys you see and think they got it made. Money. Everything handed to them on a platter.
The girl with them was maybe a couple years older, I don’t know. Pale. Black hair. Gorgeous. Lean. All muscle. Had on those real tight, white, workout pants.
And Sharon, remember I didn’t know her name then, because we hadn’t bothered with introductions, said to me, “This is Dave and Bob K Da"0e and Carrie.” Then she looked at me and smiled, and I told her my name, and she got around to telling me hers, and that’s how I met Sharon and her friends and heard about the Disaster Club.
Turned out they were all rich kids, just like they looked.
We fell in with one another, Uncle Hank. I don’t know why. Maybe there was something there I needed.
Dumb as it may sound, I was Mr. Well Adjusted around this bunch. Maybe that’s another thing led me in with them. Being the one whose bread is most done in the middle for a change.
What motivated these people was the adrenaline rush. They didn’t have that, they crashed, like they were on the end of a drug high or something. They told me these things they’d done together. Said they started out doing what you might call pranks. Cheap thrills.
They put some green dye in the big fountain up by the University library. They put a sack of dog shit on the porch of the college president one night and put lighter fluid on it and set it on fire and rang the doorbell and the president came out stomping flames, throwing shit all over the porch and himself. They got some dead armadillos off the highway and put them in mailboxes around town. Egged some cars and houses. That kind of stuff.
After a bit, that business wasn’t getting them where they wanted to go. They decided what they had to do to get the rush they needed, was something dangerous.
First thing they did like that was go over to the highway at night, hide behind some shrubs, wait until the traffic started coming, then dart in front of cars. Letting the cars get close enough to be scary, but not so close there was no chance of making it across. By the time some motorist dodged all over the place and cussed and got collected enough to call the cops, they were gone.
Week later, they upped the ante. Took turns blindfolding one another, and the one that was blindfolded elected one of the others as his or her Indian Spirit Guide. Meaning the Spirit Guide was supposed to wait until the cars were close and say when their blindfolded partner should run. The runner had to depend completely on the guide this way. A bigger thrill. And after they’d gone across a couple of times, they upped the ante again.
They started wearing tennis shoes with strings. Tying the blindfolded runner’s shoe strings together so he or she had to short step and hop across. Sharon said they all looked like constipated ducks trying to run like that. Said too that Carrie called a car so close to her once, she felt the wind from it lift her hair up.
The blindfolded part got picked up by the news. Motorists reporting and all, and the cops got so they were hanging out there by the highway a lot, looking for the culprits. So the Disaster Club, as they began calling themselves, had to back off that idea. Which was okay with them. They were bored by it.
That’s about the time I came in, and I wish now I’d stayed home from the library the night I met Sharon, watched a little TV and took care of my urges with the old nimble fingers, because, to hear the Disaster Club talk about the thrill they got, the blindfolds and the cars and all, they were so goddamned animated, I couldn’t help but feel the spirit.
It’s a little like when you’re drivin Kut help g along and there’s a car coming from the other direction, and you realize that car is like three to six feet away from you as it passes. You’re that close to death. It’s kind of creepy-in a pleasant way.
Pretty soon we were hanging out together a lot, though I can’t honestly say I liked any of them, except for Sharon. And she was hard to understand. Even after I started living over at her place some of the time, she was kind of an ice maiden. Except when we were in bed. Then she’d growl and scream and hump till I thought my heart would give out. But outside of bed, she stood at the window a lot. Stared off into space for maybe an hour or so.
This Dave guy, he was the ringleader. The one came up with plans. One night we were all over at Sharon’s apartment, drinking beer, and Dave said, “Let’s take a ride.”
We got in his car and drove out of town, toward Busby, stopped off at that old bridge goes over the highway there. There’s a little road winds up to it, and it’s not easy going. The bridge is a railroad track bridge. We bumped up there and parked by it and got out and Dave said to me, “You want a charge, huh?”
I wanted to show Sharon I was a hard guy, so I said, cool like, “Sure, let’s do what we gotta do.”
Dave smiled at me and said, “Not we, motherfucker. You.”
Next thing I knew Bob was behind me. He looped a rope over my head and got my arms down to my sides with it. Carrie dove down and grabbed my knees from behind so I couldn’t run or kick, then they all brought me down and Dave started helping Bob tie my arms. Sharon unbuckled my belt and pulled my pants down.
So there I was, in my underwear and shirt, my pants around my ankles, my upper body tied. They carried me onto the railroad track and laid me on my back, my neck against one rail, my legs draped over the other.
I heard the trunk lid of the car open and close, and Bob came back with a sledge hammer and three of those steel spikes like what were holding down the track. Bob straddled me and Dave took a spike and held it by my shoulder, and Bob drove it into the ground. Then they did it on the other side. Took some more rope and fastened it to the spikes and ran the ends of it through the rope tied around me. That way I was held down and couldn’t roll off the tracks. They got another spike and drove it between my legs and tied my feet to it.
I was screaming like a sonofabitch while they were doing all this, but they didn’t pay me any mind. Wasn’t anyone around but us and the crickets. And pretty soon I gave up the yelling, tried not to show how mad I was. Started saying stuff like, “Hey, now, this isn’t funny. What if a train comes along?”
Me saying that got them to grinning, and I began to have a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Began to think this wasn’t such a big joke. This was well-planned. They were all in on it, Sharon included.
Bob came back from the car with a video camera and a tripod, and he set the whole thing up on the side of the track.
Guess I was cussing pretty good by then, but finally I just tuckered out, and Dave squatted down beside me and took a penlight out of his pocket and turned it on and pointed it in my face and said, “You’re about to get a big rush. Biggest y Ksh. ft"ou’ve ever had.”
He reached in his pocket and got out a piece of paper and said, “I know a guy works over at the train depot. He gave me a train schedule for all the tracks around here. All the trains moving on them. And guess what? Thirty minutes from now, you’ll get to say howdy to one of those trains, a la The Perils of Pauline.”
He showed me the schedule then, and to tell the truth, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I was too scared to try. I kept telling myself he was funning me, but deep in my heart I knew I was in some serious deep doodoo.
Sharon stood between my feet, smiling down at me. Carrie brought a boom box over and turned it on. Sharon started stripping off her clothes, slow-like, to this tune that was playing, and I tell you, even under the circumstances, I was getting a boner. I’m not talking battering ram material here, but there was some action going on down there at a time you wouldn’t think it.