“Totally,” I say, because Ceepak is over thirty-five and wouldn’t know how to say it.
The guy returns to his measuring stick task with renewed zeal.
There are other warning signs posted near the entrance. My favorites are the graphics suggesting that this attraction is not recommended for guests with broken bones, heart trouble, high blood pressure, pregnancy, or “recent surgery.”
Sure. The day after my appendectomy, the first thing I’m gonna do is climb on a roller coaster.
The crowd crammed into the Disney World-style switchbacks cheers because, as the first train crammed with dignitaries pulls out, the second one finally slides forward. Thirty non-VIPs scamper onto the loading dock and jump into the next train’s seats. The impossibly long line is actually moving.
Ceepak and I step back, gaze up.
From underneath the latticework of planks, we can see the first train rumbling forward, clicking and clacking on the steel tracks.
Now comes the clatter of the chain running down the center of the track as it grabs hold of the coaster cars and hauls them skyward. This is the part of a roller coaster ride that always scares me the most. The anticipation of what’s to come when you finally reach the top. The thought that you could so easily climb out, walk back down, call it quits. And, near the top, it always sounds as if the chain is getting tired, that it’s stuttering, that it may not be able to hoist the train
But, of course, it always does.
The clacking stops. The first car has reached the summit.
There is no sound for a long empty second.
And then the screams start.
The train rattles down that first hill in a flash.
Now everyone is screaming. The mayor, the O’Malley family, the chamber of commerce, Cliff the D.J.-plus all the people on the ground waiting for their turn to scare themselves to death. It’s a screechfest.
They’re rolling through the first banked curve. The initial screams subside-just long enough for everyone to catch their breath for the second hill-not as steep but just as exciting.
The train rattles up and down a series of knolls, shoots into a wooden tunnel, zooms out the other side.
Some kind of alarm buzzer goes off.
In the distance I hear the screech of brakes. Steel wheels scraping against steel rails. Cars bumpering into each other.
Then an awful quiet.
2
Cliff Skeete sounds panicky. His remote roller coaster broadcast has suddenly turned into a breaking news bulletin.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Lucky Town” starts rocking out of the giant loudspeakers. Not the best choice.
“Danny?” Ceepak hops up and over the metal railings penning in the crowd. I hop over after him.
We’re in full uniform-radios, batons, guns, handcuffs rattling on our utility belts. People scoot out of our way.
“Ticket booth,” Ceepak shouts.
“AED?” I shout back.
“Roger that.”
Ceepak’s hoping Big Paddy was smart enough to equip his thrill ride with an Automated External Defibrillator, a portable electronic device that can revive cardiac-arrest victims-if you jolt them soon enough.
Ceepak barrels over the final barricade, scopes out the small hut where the ticket seller sits.
“AED!” he shouts to the girl sitting stunned behind the window. She doesn’t flinch so Ceepak shouts again: “AED!”
Meanwhile, on WAVY, Bruce is singing, “When it comes to luck you make your own.” Springsteen. The soundtrack of my life.
“On the wall!” I shout. I have a lucky angle and can see the bulldozer-yellow box mounted on the wall behind the petrified teenage ticket taker.
Ceepak dashes in, yanks the defibrillator off the wall, then darts out of the booth, AED in one hand, radio unit in the other.
“This is Ceepak,” he barks as he dashes up the empty exit ramp. I dash after him. “Request ambulance. Pier Four. Possible cardiac arrest. Alert fire department. Potential roller coaster rescue scenario.”
“Ten-four” squawks out of his radio as he clips it back to his belt.
“Danny? You know the family?”
“Yeah.”
I guess I know just about everybody in Sea Haven. I grew up here. Ceepak? He grew up in Ohio, where they don’t build roller coasters jutting out over the Atlantic Ocean. He only came to Jersey after slogging through the first wave of hellfire over in Iraq as an MP with the 101st Airborne. Saw and did some pretty ugly stuff. Then an old army buddy offered him a job down the Jersey shore in “sunny, funderful Sea Haven,” where nothing bad ever happens.
Yeah, right. Tell it to whoever’s having the heart attack.
“When we reach the roller coaster cars, keep everybody calm and seated,” Ceepak shouts over his shoulder as we race up the steep ramp. “I’ll administer CPR. Wire up the AED. Time is of the essence.”
“Okay,” I say.
We reach the unloading platform, between the control room and the train tracks.
Ceepak scans the horizon.
“There!” He spots the stranded roller coaster train-on top of a curved hill about a quarter mile up the track. He hops off the platform. “Keep to the walkboard!”
There’s a wooden plank paralleling the train tracks. A handrail, too. This must be how the maintenance workers inspect the tracks every morning.
“Use the cleats, Danny.”
I notice wood slats secured to the walkboard.
