to climb, but to me he was no pussy.
A lot of things go through your mind when you're 45 feet off the
ground climbing rail by rail on a ladder without rungs. One
hundred feet of sheer pole climbing with occasional crosspieces to
hang on to isn't much, and you begin to wonder, What if Dewey
slips and falls into me? What if I lose my grip and sail to the
bottom? How will I get down once I'm up there? Can drunk
Dragons fly? And then you look at the bottom, and all of your fears
are summed up in one phrase:
Don't look down.
Hand over hand, pull over pull, I made my way upward, trusting
that the pace of those above me wasn't too slow. I never really
looked up to where Brant and his friends were while I was
climbing. Even to this day I remember the blackness of the night
sky mixing well with my own blackout as I shut my eyes tightly to
the things around me. I was climbing to the top, and I just couldn't
stop. Hand over hand. That's when the screaming started, loud and
forceful, over and over, with an occasional splashing behind it as if
someone below were enjoying a late night swim and horseplay in
the murky pond. Ignoring my own rule, I shot a glance down.
God, how weird it looked. If you've ever been on a roller coaster
right as it goes down the steepest slope, you can understand the
feeling; the depth, the rails shooting together as they plummet
below right as you drop over the top. Imagine yourself frozen in
that position. Below, the rails meet and your stomach assumes a
new position in your throat. And standing on those gleaming rails,
still holding Eddie's flashlight and stained with the dark was Kirby,
gazing back up at me, a look of confusion, horror and what to do
next? written across his face. He scared the hell out of me the way
he just stood there, arms at his side, staring at me but saying
nothing.
'What the hell's the matter with you?' I shouted down with extra
force. No answer. 'Kirby, what's wrong?' By then I knew damn
well what was wrong. The tracks had begun to drum under my
hands, and the frame of the SkyCoaster itself had begun to sway
rhythmically from side to side. Then the awful sound of the roar of
a coaster car spinning around some distant bend, fading out, then
coming back in, fading out again-and coming back with
thunderous racket that sent my stomach and my heart both jumping
on top of my tonsils.
Then Brant screamed. It was like the scream of a woman's that I
described earlier, but louder, blending in with the steady clack-
clack-clack of a chain-dragged coaster car on an electrified track. I
didn't ask any questions, but simply locked both hands together,
swung both feet together and slid down the rail to the bottom.
If you've ever been on a roller car as it plummets the final hill - the
Grandaddy drop - you'll probably know the feeling of fear that
builds up in you. There's always a chance that you may fly from
the car to the steel tracks below as the force presses your spine
