Page 39 of Making His Bones

Tobiah laughed in a high-pitched woman’s tone. “Whaaaat?”

We all peered over his shoulder. It was one of those bills you get when you go over a bridge without your transponder, showing a photo of the offending car. Only in this case, it was a motorcycle. Tobiah clearly was the driver, and he’d given his lid to a fender fluff in his bitch seat.

Knoxie slapped his forehead. “Oh, no. Here we go again.”

Galileo pointed at the photo. “Is that Tracy? I haven’t seen her in awhile.”

Wolf ripped the paper from Tobiah’s statue-like fingers. “You better fucking know it’s Tracy, and it’s dated five days ago!”

“How did you get this?” asked Tobiah, squeaky like a Chipmunk. He was completely busted, and I started laughing. I knew I was acting like an emboldening bully, but I just couldn’t help it.

With his right hand shaped into a steely U, Wolf took a few steps forward, catching Tobiah’s neck in his grip. “We made a deal, gearhead, and you broke it,” he snarled. His fingers dug into Tobiah’s tender flesh.

Tobiah grappled at his neck trying to pry the leaden fingers off. “I know we made a deal, Wolf! Tracy was just visiting for the day! She wanted to see Gudrun, and June, and Maddy, and—agh!”

Wolf lifted Tobiah off the ground and rattled him fiercely like a dog toy. It seemed to me that Tobiah’s eyes lolled in his skull, and his high-top sneakers kicked pointlessly for traction.

Galileo took the paper from Wolf’s other hand, gazing at it with fond memories of Tracy, I guess. Knoxie led me by the arm to the cliff’s edge.

“Cumon,” he said. “No better time than now, right?”

“You fucking nerdasaurus rex!” shouted Wolf.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong!” protested Tobiah, attaining the level of a Betty Boop character.

I stepped to the brink. My suit was ready, my chute was ready. Knoxie took my helmet from Galileo and plunked it on my head, strapping me in. I wore an ordinary pair of wrap-around shades we’d gotten at CVS.

“Go with Ahsonnutli,” said Galileo earnestly. That was the Navajo sky god who created heaven, earth, and the sky.

The last thing I heard before I exited in a free fall was, “You fucking knew what you were doing, gearhead! This is the last fucking straw from you!”

“But I . . . “

It was a nice exit. I was in the cockpit of a jet fighter. The fabric between my legs and under my arms instantly filled with a warm, billowy air.

Now, all of this I’m saying is in vast retrospect. Because when you’re flying, you’re just in the present moment. There is no past, no future.

I dropped vertically at first, and all I saw was the cliff rushing past me in shades of rust and gingerbread. Shortly, I altered my body shape, arching and rolling my torso, changing the tension in my fabric wings. I gained lift and soared over the valley.

I often wondered, when flying, if this is what death was like. Was there more to it than quiet and nothingness? I often ran the gauntlet of memories while gliding, like the “life review” people near death are supposed to see. I felt taut with change, as though I emitted some healing light, a fearlessness toward death. Would I be absorbed into the play of particles and silence? Maybe it was flying so close to death that gave me these impressions. It was true, though, that since I started wingsuiting, I stopped fearing death.

While alive, you go through one change after the other, continuous and chained. But flying is a stillness that means a draining of your identity and its scenes, a splitting off of your ego, a devolving into memory, outspread like my wings. You were no longer restrained up tight, but strewn among beautiful, generous feelings, things that made you cry, impossible to describe when earthbound.

It wasn’t like I had a death wish, don’t get me wrong. But at different times in my life, I didn’t feel as though I deserved to live. I raised myself on the streets like a lot of Bare Boners with nothing but rough and gruff parents as guides. Making money in adult films in LA had not enhanced my ego any. Many mornings I’d woken up, especially after partying with my fellow actors, seeing no reason not to die. I’d relied on some strange inner spirituality to keep going.

This is how I felt, looking back now, while soaring over the twisting dirt roads, saguaro, and copper stills of Pitchfork’s ranch. Maybe three people walked about, one pushing a wheelbarrow full of tiny fluorescent yellow kernels I assumed was corn maize. Although I was still about as high as a red-tail hawk, one guy shouted and pointed at me.

Another guy came out of a trailer with an assault rifle.

Why the fuck were they just blasting random guys out on a weekend lark? Didn’t that draw more attention to their scam than just letting the guys sail on? What if I was some county supervisor’s son? They didn’t know I wasn’t.

Some of the rounds punched holes in the wings of my suit, and a couple punched my arm and ribs. The fabric holes affected my lift, and I realized I’d have to pull my chute much sooner than expected. We’d thought I’d make it to the other side of Pitchfork’s land where the guys would drive around and pick me up, but gravity landed me about a half mile too soon. Luckily, I had enough control to avoid a stand of saguaro, and I tumbled into a cloud of red dust, only getting a few smallish prickly pears stuck in my ass.

The fat guy came running over brandishing his rifle.

He looked exactly like a guy named Pitchfork would look. He should’ve been wearing overalls and holding a pitchfork, I swear. Almost totally bald, his face was scrunched like a rotten pear. Wait, I like pears. A rotten apple. He was definitely of the age to be Bud Pitchfork’s son Upton.

“What the hell you doing up there, you rancid tourist?”