Authors: Geoff North
Steady, Hugh, hold it steady.
There was no mistaking the guy behind him.
The sun shone off his gleaming bald skull, and he moved like a loping wolf, his
shoulders bent forward, his back slightly stooped. It was Thomas Nelson. Hugh
ran a hand down his cold, damp face. “It’s happening, oh my God, it’s actually
going to happen.”
The boys couldn’t see the men approaching
from their position beneath the tracks. Fortunately, Billy had yelled himself
out, and Hugh hoped he hadn’t been heard over the roar of the passing train.
Now if he could just keep his mouth shut for a few more minutes, Hugh figured
he could handle the upcoming events on his own.
He would wait until the men got out a
little further, then he would begin to yell at the top of his lungs. That
should do the trick, he hoped. Any homicidal ideas Nelson might have would
instantly evaporate if he knew there was someone watching below.
So why bring Billy and Bob out here with
me?
Were the three of them supposed to go rushing
in to the rescue? They were just kids after all. Did he need witnesses to
report how heroic he’d been? He looked back up and saw a single body hurtling
down past the maze of iron girders. Thomas Nelson was still standing above,
peering over the edge, his hands planted on his knees, watching his handiwork.
No! It wasn’t supposed to happen yet!
Hugh watched in disbelief as Mr. McDonald
waved his arms helplessly, watched as his body spun around endlessly, and
listened in vain as the man made his fatal hundred foot plummet without a sound.
The men hadn’t even made it a third of the way out onto the bridge, but there
was more than enough height to kill.
Hugh shut his eyes the moment before the
body hit the ground. His stomach lurched at the sound, like a wet bag of flour
hitting a pile of dry branches. He kept his eyes closed and heard a whistling
sound from above. He wondered absently if another train was coming so soon
after the last one. There was another wet flour bag smack, much louder, much
closer. Hugh felt a warm spray across his forehead and cheeks.
When he opened his eyes again, the first
thing he saw was the large cement foundation. It was coated with a splattering
of dark liquid. As if someone had tossed a bucket of red paint against the
bottom half. Next to that lay a broken, completely still body, wearing blue
jeans coated in blood, a good fifty feet from where poor Mr. McDonald had
finally come to rest.
He almost landed on top of me.
He looked back up and saw one boy still
clinging at the top of the service ladder. He looked back at the body on the
ground and remembered Billy Parton never wore blue jeans.
Mr. McDonald and Bob Richards hadn’t made a
sound.
Don’t people scream when they fall?
As Hugh puzzled over this, he failed to
notice Thomas Nelson watching him. The man pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up
the bridge of his nose and wiped the sweat from his creased brow.
When Hugh finally looked back up, the man
was gone.
Bob wasn’t supposed to die.
Hugh looked at the broken body and back up
to the boy clinging two-hundred feet above his head, and then back to the body.
Definitely Bob, not Billy.
What about all the girls he’s meant to
date in high school? Who’s going to hire me at Little City Food store now?
He couldn’t possibly die now, not at this
time, not in this place.
Hugh started to gently push the boy’s body over
with one sneaker. He thought how odd it was that people treat the dead so
carefully, almost fearfully, as if they might jump back to life any second. Bob
was lying face down in the wet sand and gravel, his head somehow folded up into
his chest. Hugh wanted to be sure it was still attached.
He backed away suddenly, the shoulder
slumped back down. No, there was no point in seeing anymore. There would be
enough nightmares to come. Why make it worse?
I just wanted to prevent a tragedy. I
never meant to be the cause of another one.
He wiped the cooling droplets of blood away
from his face with the sleeves of his shirt, mindful not to touch any with his
hands. He took another quick glance up at Billy. No more hot-dogging. The boy
clung to the rungs, his face buried into the crook of one arm. He’d be safe
there for a few more minutes. Hugh started over for McDonald. There was a
chance he may have survived his fall. He’d heard of such things, how people had
miraculously survived falls from tremendous heights with little more than a few
scratches to show for their trouble. The closer he got the more hopeful he
became. The man’s body didn’t appear as broken, as misshapen as poor Bob’s.
Please, please, please make this
horrible day have a reason.
It didn’t. Hubert McDonald was as dead as
Bob Richards. Hugh staggered over to the edge of the river and retched up
spittle and hot air. He swayed back and forth for a few moments, and then sank
down to his knees. He splashed some water on his face and washed the remaining
blood from his forehead.
Get it together. You still have to help
Billy down.
The last
thing he needed were three deaths hanging over his head.
A phone call would have been enough. An
anonymous ring made a day earlier, warning McDonald not to go out on any Sunday
walks would have saved
two
lives.
Hugh threw his head back and screamed. “I
want to go back! Put me back in that goddamned car!” He listened as the word ‘car’
echoed off the distant hills. Where was the voice in the brown? Why send him
back if all it caused was more death and suffering? The voice didn’t answer. It
never did. He started to cry, he bawled until there was nothing left to feel.
He washed his face again in the river, just tears and snot this time, no blood.
“It’s okay kid, it ain’t what you think.”
Hugh rubbed the wet sting from his eyes,
tried to focus in on the voice. “Who?”
Thomas Nelson was approaching him, his
hands held out in front, so as not to scare him Hugh off. “It was an accident,
right? My friend lost his footing and fell.”
He was less than twenty feet away. Hugh remained
silent and listened.
“What’re you doing out here, kid?” His
voice was quiet and soft, but carried an edge of nervousness to it. He glanced
over to Bob’s crushed body and then looked quickly back. “What happened there?
That a friend of yours? Did you cause this?”
Hugh shook his head and kept his eyes on
the man’s advancing, muddy shoes.
‘Looks to me like a bunch of kids screwing
around. You could be in a lot of trouble.”
Ten feet.
“Let’s get back to town and I’ll help you
out of this mess. I can be your friend. I can tell everyone what happened out
here.” Nelson stopped. His big, black eyes flitted anxiously from one dead body
to the other, and finally back to Hugh. Beads of sweat ran down his scalp. “My
friend heard those kids under the bridge; he was just leaning over to check it
out when he slipped. Jesus, kid, this is more your fault than anyone’s.”
“Quit calling him…your friend.” Hugh’s
voice sounded stronger than he felt. Could Nelson see his hands shaking? He
rested them on the wet ground.
Nelson took two quick steps forward, he
reached down. “Come on, kid. We’ll talk.”
Hugh dug into the sand and threw a double
handful of damp earth into the man’s face. Nelson stumbled back, pulling off
his glasses and spitting dirt from his mouth. Hugh ran for the cement
foundation next to where Bob lay. He considered heading into the bushes, it
would be easy to outrun the middle-aged man, but there was Billy to consider.
He had to help him out of this mess, or risk losing another life on this
disastrous afternoon.
He scrambled up the first dozen rungs of
the service ladder without looking down.
“Where do you think you’re going, you
little bastard?” Nelson yelled.
Hugh stopped at the thirty foot mark and
took a quick peek below. The man was standing on the ground, one shoe
disrespectfully planted on Bob’s back. He was squinting up at Hugh, a grin
spread across his sweating, muddy face. “I know who your parents are, and by
God Almighty, they’ll hear the truth!”
“You’re damned right they will,” Hugh had
begun to climb again. “You dirty, old murdering fuck!”
Nelson lunged at the foundation and pulled
himself up with a surprising burst of agility.
“Oh, shit.” Hugh reached for the next rung.
“I’ll tell everyone that you and your
faggot friends were playing with each other out here.” How could he be so fast,
Hugh wondered? Nelson had almost cut the distance between them in half. “That’s
what you were doing out here, wasn’t it? Three little homos finding pleasure
out in the woods. I’ll slit your faggot throats wide open…bleed you good.”
Hugh had heard enough. “Your glasses still
covered with dirt?”
Nelson peered up, surprised at the remark. “Huh?”
The binoculars hit him square in the
forehead before smashing down into the cement foundation sixty feet below. Nelson
moaned and reached for his bloody scalp. His other hand lost its grip on the
rung and he fell back.
“Yes!” Hugh cried triumphantly.
Nelson’s one leg caught behind a lower rung
behind his knee and stopped his fall. His upper body continued its arc through
the air until the back of his head slammed into the ladder. His arms flailed
about uselessly, spinning around comically in circles, searching for iron to
grab onto. Any harder and he might start flying, Hugh thought. He finally found
a rung and pulled himself back up by two fingers, grunting with effort and
whining in pain. He leaned into the ladder and Hugh watched his back shudder as
he caught his breath. He watched him rub his bashed forehead, and massage his
twisted leg. Must have hurt like hell. Hugh had nothing left to throw at him.
Lucky old prick.
There was only one way to go. Hugh took a
deep breath, narrowed his eyes and stared at his hands clinging to the rusted
iron rung.
Don’t look down, don’t look up. Look
straight ahead and climb.
It was good advice, and he followed it. The
last seventy or eighty feet went much quicker than he thought. The fear and
adrenaline must have given him twice, three times the normal amount of energy needed
to make such an ascent without becoming even slightly winded. Finally his head
bumped into the bottom of one of Billy’s sneakered heels. The boy made a weak
moan, the first sound Hugh had heard from him since the train.
“You doing okay, Billy?”
“Wh-what do you think?”
There was a long pause; Hugh could hear him
breathing heavily, the snot bubbling through his nostrils like it always did. “How
did Bob fall?”
“Fuckin’ hard, you saw that, didn’t you?”
“Why Billy?
Why
did he fall?”
It took another half minute for him to
answer. Hugh could hear his teeth chattering. “We saw the guy fall…strangest
g-goddamned thing. You know what I mean? Bob pointed as we watched, and then,
next thing I know, I’m watching him fall, too. I dunno, his other hand must
have slipped…Christ, I don’t know for sure.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem…Who’s the guy on
the ladder? Is he trying to help us?”
“No, he’s not trying to help,” Hugh
answered looking below. Nelson was still sitting there, both legs now tucked
around the rung that had saved his life. Hopefully he had a concussion and
would drop away at any moment. “He killed that guy, Billy, pushed him off the
bridge. Now he’s after us.”
Billy groaned. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“We can’t go back down, we’ll have to climb
up onto the track and make a run for town.”
“I-I can’t move anymore. I’m fuckin’ done.”
Hugh tapped his friend’s shoe reassuringly.
“Come on, don’t talk like that, we can get out of this.” Billy groaned. “Sorry
buddy, but seriously, if we don’t try and get out of here, that guy will kill
us for sure.”
“Just-just give me a minute…I can’t feel my
hands no more.”
“Take all the time you need.” Nelson was on
the move again. His ascent was much slower, but he was still climbing. “Uh,
maybe you better speed things up.”
“I’m not ready!”
“Move, Billy, move or I’ll throw you off
and climb up myself!” He pushed up on the boy’s heel. Billy started up, crying
with each shaky step.
“I can’t go any further,” he blubbered. “The
ladder’s ended.”
Hugh looked up at the underside of the
bridge. At least it blocked out his view of the dizzying clouds moving
overhead. Why wasn’t there an access opening? Who the hell had designed this
thing? The outer edge of the track’s underside was two feet out from the top
rung. They would have to reach out for it and pull themselves up and over. “The
ledge, Billy, you’re going to have to reach out for that ledge.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“You little homos are dead!” It seemed
Nelson had fully returned to his senses.
“You hear that, Billy?” Either you go for
it, or he’s going to pull both of us off here.”
Hugh heard him make a final squeak as he
reached out with one hand. He grabbed the edge and held on for dear life. “That
wasn’t so bad. Now grab on with your other hand.”
Billy’s next few words came out rushed and
high pitched, like a duck trying to sneeze. “Just a second.” His scrawny body
was stretched out a precarious angle. His arms extended out in a flying
position, his body doing a half-twist at the hips.
Like an Olympian in mid-dive.
After what seemed like an eternity, he
lunged out with his other hand and grabbed the ledge. His feet left the ladder
and his legs swayed out into midair. Hugh had a sickening feeling he was about
to watch a second friend fall, but Billy pulled himself up. Moments later he
was completely out of view.
“Billy! You okay up there?”
“Yeah, not as hard as it looks,” he
answered breathlessly. It sounded as if he were standing a world away. It was
Hugh’s turn now, and he didn’t feel nearly as confident as he did a minute ago.
Billy’s upside down head appeared along the
edge. He held a hand down for Hugh to take. “You going into labor down there?”
It was good to hear he had his sense of
humor back. Hugh took a deep breath and scrambled up the last few rungs. He let
go of the ladder and caught the ledge in both hands. He felt Billy’s cold grip
around his wrist. “One chin-up, Hugh, that’s all it is. One chin-up and swing
your leg over the ledge. I won’t let you fall.”
What about Bob? I shouldn’t have let him
fall.
The wind whistled through his ears and he
heard a hawk screeching in the distance. He looked out into the sky and spotted
the bird of prey whirling around gracefully against the clouds. A smaller bird,
a swallow or a sparrow of some sort was whipping around it, effortlessly diving
in and out, tormenting the hawk as it circled around and around. The effect made
Hugh’s head spin.
It’s all my fault.
“Come on! Pull yourself up!” There was fear
in Billy’s voice.
The birds continued to swoop, and dive, and
circle.
I don’t belong up here. This isn’t my
world.
“Don’t make me face that fucker all alone!”
Never should’ve come back.
“Hugh!”
Hugh blinked. He could hear something else,
a steady clanking sound. Shoe soles pounding relentlessly on iron. Nelson was
less than twenty feet below. Hugh pulled and swung his right leg at the same
time. Billy helped him the rest of the way.
They sat on the ledge, side by side, their
feet dangling over, and surveyed each other. Billy’s red hair was stuck to his
head in a glistening sheen of sweat. “You had me worried for a second, there.”
Hugh punched his shoulder. “What the hell
made you climb up here in the first place? I thought you were scared of
heights!”