Dirt Bikes, Drones, and Other Ways to Fly

by Conrad Wesselhoeft

  “Dude, don’t die on me! Please, do not die on me!”

  Referee Ray Sandoval rushes up. “Don’t even think about moving, Arlo!”

  Then Dad’s here. Eyes so fragile I think they’ll break.

  “Did you see him?” Lobo says to someone. “Lit up like a struck match. Those wings—he just flew!”

  “Shut up, Lobo!” Dad says.

  The paramedics slide a spine board under me. Lobo trundles alongside as they carry me off. “Listen to that!” he rasps.

  I can barely hold on.

  “They love you, man. C’mon, give ’em something to let ’em know you’re alive.”

  I try to lift my arm.

  “Hey, you can do better than that!” Lobo says into my ear.

  I manage to lift my arm in the air. Even clamp my fist.

  You’d think I’d fired a cannon.

  Man, do I hear it.

  I’m pretty sure they hear it in Mexico, too. Maybe even the Incas down in Peru.

  The stadium roars.

  “DON’T TRY TO COUNT the stitc hes, Arlo.”

  It’s Dad. Somewhere off to the side. I can’t move my head to see him.

  I watch anonymous fingers thread a needle through the purple-jagged skin of my left arm. The gash begins to close in a long, even seam.

  Dad’s right. Don’t count the stitches. It’s depressing.

  I fade out.

  Next, I’m inside a machine. Crammed like a corpse. The machine goes chuffa-chuffa-chuffa. I freak. They slide me out. A tech in mirrored glasses puts a towel over my eyes and tells me to imagine paradise. They send me back into the coffin. I imagine Burro Mesa.

  I fade again and wake in a darkened room. Dad is snoring in the corner. It feels like everyone in the world is asleep. I watch rain slither down the windowpane.

  Now I sink deep. People come and go. Touch me. Say my name. But I’m far away on Burro Mesa. Anchor of earth, spiral of sky.

  Mom stands on the north rim, wind whipping her hair. She looks out toward the mountains. I stand beside her, looking down at that sheer drop.

  It would be so easy to step off.

  Instead, I step back. Onto safe ground.

  Then a baseball bat smashes the piñata that is my head. I gasp and scream. Dad calls a nurse. They drip painkillers into me. The piñata slowly pieces together.

  A doctor comes in. She bends all my extremities, down to the pinkies. “Can you feel this? Do you have any sensation here?”

  I say “Yes” over and over, and Dad whispers “Thank God!” each time. And finally to her, “Thank you, Doctor.”

  She tells him she’s not a doctor but a medical student. Born in the Philippines. Dad reads aloud her name tag: “Student Dr. Malea Santos.”

  “Do you mind if I lift your shirt and palpate your chest?” she asks me.

  “Hell, no, he doesn’t mind!” Dad says.

  The closer Student Dr. Santos’s fingers get to my collarbone, the more I want to puke. And then I do. Dad lunges for a towel and catches the dregs.

  Later, my primary-care physician, Dr. Henry Akeem, comes in.

  “May I shake the hand of a celebrity?”

  We shake. And even though his clasp is light, I wince.

  “You were all over the Action Seven News, Jett,” he says. “I saw it twice, once in slow motion. Looked to me like you were going to fly over the moon.”

  “Arlo, not Jett,” I mumble.

  Dr. Akeem and Miss Santos huddle over their laptops murmuring medical-speak—“MRI,” “hematoma,” stuff like that.

  “Arlo,” Dr. Akeem says, looking up. “While you were missing in action, we did a number of tests. Are you ready to hear the results?”

  “Guess so,” I say.

  He tells me that I have:

  A concussion.

  A punctured lung.

  A broken clavicle. (“The clavicle is your collarbone,” he says.)

  Two cracked ribs.

  An ugly-as-hell gash on my left arm.

  And a hundred hell-a deep bruises.

  “No single one of these is life-threatening,” Dr. Akeem says. “But taken as a whole, it’s serious. Still, you could’ve been paralyzed. Or worse yet, killed. All in all, I’d say you were very lucky.”

  Dad lets out a long whistle.

  “That scar’s going to last,” Dr. Akeem says. “Think of it as a reminder.”

  “Of what?” I ask.

  “Of what happens when you make stupid decisions,” Dad says.

  Student Dr. Santos adjusts her glasses. “There’s a sticking point, Arlo. We don’t understand why you did this—why you chose to jump your motorcycle off such a steep height. Can you tell us why?”

  “Nah,” I say.

  “Give it a try,” Dr. Akeem says.

  I try to focus my memory. I go back to the bluff, the rain, the Lips.

  “All those hoots,” I say, my voice slurry, “how do you go back down to that? The spotlight came around and caught the rain. It was beautiful. Like it was calling to me. So I thought, Here’s my chance. Maybe you get only a few chances like that in your life. Do you go or stay? The time you have to decide is a split second. Green light or red.”

  “And it was green?” Miss Santos asks.

  “Yeah, green,” I say.

  Dad frowns.

  “Arlo,” Dr. Akeem says, “you’re alive and in one piece for three reasons. First, you were healthy and fit to begin with. Second, you wore a helmet. Third, you’re lucky.”

  “And fourth,” I say, “my shocks. Don’t forget them. They deserve some of the credit.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” Dr. Akeem says. “I’d like you to shockproof your home environment. The whole Arlosphere.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “By taking it extremely easy for the next few weeks,” he says. “Concussions and bones need time to heal. Tissue needs time to grow. Slow way down, Arlo. Pretend you’re walking on the moon. Can you do that?”

  “Moonwalk? Yeah, sure. But can you do something for me?”

  “I’ll try. What is it?”

  “Hospitals are expensive,” I say. “So I was wondering, since I’m not too bad off, can you let me out of here? Because every day costs like five thousand bucks, and we’re already deep in the hole.”

  Dad winces. “Damn it, Arlo!”

  He and Dr. Akeem go out into the corridor and powwow. While they’re gone, Miss Santos fits me with a sling to protect my collarbone.

  “You’ve suffered a lot of trauma, Arlo,” she says. “If it were me, I’d keep you here for a week, just for observation.”

  Dr. Akeem tells me that I might be able to go home a day early—but only if I show steady progress and promise to get lots of rest, moonwalk, and take my meds religiously.

  “I’ll see to it that he joins a monastery,” Dad says.

  “In the meantime,” Dr. Akeem says, “I want you to meet with Dr. Cynthia Andrews. She’s our mental health specialist. I’ve asked her to drop by. And one more thing: stay off that motorcycle.”

  “For how long?” I ask.

  “Four weeks,” Dr. Akeem says.

  Dad frowns. “Forty years is more like it,” he says.

  “HOW SHOULD WE PASS the tim e, Arlo?”

  Dad’s seated in the armchair beside my bed, his face slack with tiredness.

  “You tell me,” I say.

  “Well, I can read to you. Or we can watch TV. Or we can play ‘Who Am I?’ But let me propose something more practical. We Americans get two hours less sleep each night than did our forebears a century ago. Therefore, it behooves us—as patriotic citizens—to help pay down the National Sleep Debt.”

  We sleep all afternoon—at least, as much as you can in a hospital with all the interruptions.

  Later, Dad calls Major Anderson and tells him about my little “event” at Rio Loco. Major Anderson says he’ll notify Colonel Kincaid.

  After dinner, we watch The Shawshank Redemption, which is a good movie t
o watch in a hospital bed, because when the escapee Andy Dufresne gets it all—money, freedom, a reunion with his friend, and a great beach to live on—you truly feel better, even though you hurt in a hundred places.

  I drift off just as Dad starts on a grainy Humphrey Bogart movie.

  During the next two days, I spend most of my time paying down the National Sleep Debt. Visitors come and go without me even knowing or wanting to know. Dad is with me, day and night.

  On the morning of my third day in the hospital, Student Dr. Malea Santos slips some treaded socks on my feet, and Dad and I go moonwalking up and down the corridor. In reality, I go slower than Neil Armstrong padding across the Sea of Tranquility. I hurt everywhere, but it’s sharpest in my chest. My lungs crackle. It takes a long time to walk to the end of the corridor.

  On the way back, we pass Miss Santos standing at a workstation. Dad checks out her legs. Gives me a sly look.

  “Whew! That Malea!”

  “Hey, man, show some respect,” I say. “She’s in medical school.”

  “Point taken, Arlo. I shouldn’t be dragging my knuckles at a time like this.”

  “Ask her out,” I say. “’Bout time you did something.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Too soon, Arlo. I’m still on the charred side of the burn line. Besides, I’m way too old for her. She’s closer to your age.”

  “C’mon, man, she’s like twenty-five. Plus . . .”

  “Plus what?”

  “Plus nothin’.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, DR. CYNTHIA ANDREWS stops by my room. She’s a nicely dressed woman with dyed-brown hair pulled into a tight bun in the back, and a serious but not unkind face. Dad offers her his chair and slips into the corridor. She sits down and opens her notebook.

  “Arlo, you sustained a concussion, so I’d like to begin with a memory exercise. Just to see where we stand.”

  She asks me some basic questions, starting with “What is your name?” followed by “Who is the president?” followed by “Can you count backward from twenty?” On and on, until she asks:

  “In what year did World War I begin?”

  “Depends,” I say. “If you mean in Europe, 1914. If you mean, when did the United States join in, 1917.”

  She jots something in her notebook.

  “Arlo, let’s talk about that motorcycle stunt. What was that all about?”

  “Just seemed like the thing to do,” I say.

  She makes a note.

  “Were you trying to take your life?”

  “What!”

  “Is that what you had in mind?”

  “No, not at all.”

  More notes. The fact is, her question has blindsided me.

  “Was this the first time you’ve engaged in such extreme behavior?”

  “It’s not extreme behavior to me,” I say.

  “What would you call it?”

  “Extreme beauty.”

  She jots more notes. I know she’s trying to help me, but she’s also closing doors.

  “Arlo, sometimes there’s a connection between excitement-seeking and wishing to harm oneself. I’m not saying that’s true here. But let me ask, do you have any unresolved feelings about your mother or the violent circumstances surrounding her death?”

  “Look, no offense,” I say. “But this is starting to feel like trespassing.”

  “Arlo, I don’t want to trespass on your feelings. But the facts are public information. Your father’s own newspaper reported them.”

  “Hey, I know the facts,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I want to talk about them.”

  “Talking about them can be good for you, Arlo. Getting them out in the open is a big part of the healing process.”

  “Nah, the healing process is way different,” I say.

  “How would you describe it?”

  “Blasting my bike into the light. That was healing.”

  “Did it work?” Dr. Andrews asks.

  “You mean, am I healed? Not yet.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning . . . I dunno.”

  It goes downhill after this. As far as I’m concerned, she’s closed all the doors. Still, I get where she’s coming from. What kind of normal person would ride his bike off an edge like that?

  But no matter how many notes she makes, I doubt she’ll ever get the point. Namely, that just because something doesn’t make sense—or seems extreme—doesn’t make it wrong.

  She closes her notebook and flashes a tired smile. “There’s lots to talk about, Arlo. This is merely the tip of the iceberg.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the whole iceberg,” I say.

  After she goes, Dad comes back in and tosses me a little bag of SunChips.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asks.

  My hands are too shaky to open the bag. Dad opens it for me.

  “Hey, do you think I’m suicidal?”

  “No, Arlo, I don’t.”

  I crunch down on a chip. “What about crazy, do you think I’m that?”

  He ponders this—too long, if you ask me.

  “Not slipped-a-gasket crazy,” he says finally. “Just young-and-stupid crazy. But I’ll tell you something, Arlo. When I saw you come off that hill, it about killed me. Don’t ever do anything like that again. I want you to promise me.”

  He looks at me hard and hurt.

  “Yeah, promise,” I say. “Never again.”

  Chapter 35

  I’M IN THE HOSPITAL for five days. When I get home, I do a lot of moonwalking. Pop a lot of pills. The big ones are called Oxy blues, and they do more than kill pain. They gauze my mind. It’s not a bad feeling. It’s not a good feeling. It’s a personal-vacation-from-self feeling. Destination Siberia.

  One thing the Oxy blues don’t gauze is my memory of Lee. How when I kissed her, she brushed a hand on my cheek, threw back her head, and laughed.

  I know she saw me all beat-up at the hospital. Dad said so. I don’t remember any of that. I don’t want to see or call her now. Fact is, I don’t want to see or call anybody.

  During the next few days, I rack up some of my highest scores on Drone Pilot. My left arm may be in a sling to protect my clavicle, and my mind may be in Siberia, but my fingers haven’t forgotten. No offense to SergeiTashkent and IpanemaGirl, but all they can do is eat my dust.

  When I’m not playing Drone Pilot, I’m paying down the National Sleep Debt. The best place for this is the barn. I shove some bales into a square and layer the base with an old mattress and a couple of quilts.

  I love the smell of hay and the closeness of horses. I’m less into kittens. But once those kittens take me for who I am, they help me to pay down the debt. We sleep under the caring eyes of the mares. No sweeter lullaby ever was sung than that by pregnant mares just breathing.

  On my third night home, Dad finds an old recipe box in the pantry closet. Resurrects Linda Evans’s Dynasty Corn Pudding—which we both agree is muy delicioso.

  After dinner, he comes out of his study carrying a stack of books. “Hey, remember these, Arlo?” He plops down on the couch beside me.

  “These” are books he read to me when I was a kid. Now he pages through them, reading aloud bits and pieces, holding each book like he’s holding a crystal ball.

  Until we come to the bottom of the stack.

  A thin yellow book.

  “Saved the best for last. Remember this one?”

  “Yeah, sure do,” I say.

  He opens to the title page and gasps at the sight of Mom’s handwriting:

  For Arlo—our very own Curious George.

  Love, Mommy and Daddy.

  He starts to read:

  “This is George. He lived in Africa. He was a good little monkey, and always very curious.”

  His throat clogs up. He takes off his glasses, drops his head, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

  I put my arm around him—the only one I have left not in a sling.

  Chapter 36

  FOR A WEEK AND A HAL
F, Cam and Lobo take turns dropping off my homework. I make an effort to keep up, but it’s pretty half-assed. One evening, I’m snoozing in my bed of hay and kittens when Kenya Man jolts me awake.

  “Hello, Arlo. It’s Colonel Kincaid.”

  I rub the sleep off my face. “Hey, sir.”

  “I saw the whole thing on YouTube,” the colonel says. “Quite a stunt. Got banged up good, huh?”

  “Yeah—yes, sir. But I’m better now.”

  “Well enough to fly drone?”

  “Um . . . When would that be, sir?”

  “Tonight, Arlo. We can’t put this off any longer. We have a map to draw.”

  I peel a kitten off my chest and sit up, one degree at a time, so as not to awaken my clavicle.

  Colonel Kincaid says, “What I need to know is, can you do it? Or has this knocked you out of the ring?”

  I grab a post and pull myself to my feet. “There’s nothing wrong with my head and hands,” I say. “It’s in between that’s messed up. Only problem is, I’m not supposed to drive.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Arlo. Just give me a straight answer: can you fly?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’ll have Major Anderson send up a transport. Be at the Shell station off the interstate in two hours—that’s twenty hundred my time, eight o’clock your time. Don’t be late.”

  Click.

  I head over to the house and find Dad slouched at his computer staring at his novel. When I tell him the plan, he jerks.

  “What! No. It’s too soon.”

  “It’s not too soon,” I say. “All I need are my fingers. They’re as good as ever. And, I don’t have to drive; they’re sending up a transport. Plus, it’ll be another paycheck.”

  Dad glances at the clock. “You sure about this?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, then.” He hoists himself out of his chair. “Better get dinner going.”

  He goes into the kitchen and starts banging around. I go into the bathroom and slap water on my face. Brush my teeth. Gargle Listerine. Pop two Oxy blues. Drop a half-dozen more in my pocket.