'Come on, lard-asses!' he shouted. 'Are ya all just going to sit
around playing Dick-fucking-Tracy all night?'
Kirby slapped at the bugs attacking his glowing arm and looked
from Brant, to me, to the rest of the guys still gazing with mild
interest at their Alfred Hitchcock tales of suspense, unaware of any
other activities going on in their presence. I gazed at my watch. It
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
