Dirt Bikes, Drones, and Other Ways to Fly

by Conrad Wesselhoeft

  It’s all so beautiful. Wish I’d noticed before—truly noticed. Why does it take maybe dying to see the world like this?

  I clasp my fingers around the grips.

  Grind!

  GRIND!

  So loud my mind goes silent.

  Empty.

  I focus on that line—that perfect horizontal.

  Drop into the Zone.

  Full drone.

  Yea, though I fly through the valley of the shadow . . .

  I jerk my wrist.

  Buck into a wheelie.

  The earth churns under me.

  Shudders.

  When I hit speed, everything smoothes out, like a gallop.

  I open the throttle all the way.

  Ride into the sky.

  Chapter 50

  Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. . . .

  Topped the windswept heights . . .

  Chased the shouting wind . . .

  And done a hundred things . . .

  You have not dreamed of . . .

  Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

  That’s how Pilot Officer John G. Magee felt when he flew his Spitfire over England in 1941.

  And it’s how I feel the instant rubber meets sky.

  Only it’s an understatement.

  The wind rushes up. “Where ya been?” it seems to say. Like it’s been waiting all this time. The brother they never told me about.

  The Monster slips weightless out of my hands, its tractionless roar twisting into a high-pitched scream, a whiff of gasoline my last contact.

  I punch my arms forward and spread my legs.

  Colors pour into me. The dusty-green of the far hills. The powder-blue of the forest—black where fire singed it. The broken gray of the talus shelf. All swirling into veined rust, which is the color of the tumbling mesa—the color of life.

  My webbed skin puffs out like a sail.

  I fall, lifted,

  my mind shouting

  awesome-awesome-awesome-awesome.

  I soar beyond the face of Burro Mesa,

  glimpse the Monster windmilling below,

  my fear oxidizing into joy,

  into dazzling awareness.

  FROM HIGH UP, THE BANKS of the Rio Loco look sandy and smooth. But when I drift in, I see that all that “smooth sand” is actually spiny yucca and brittlebrush, crowded with saber shoots. I can’t spot a decent place to land, so I spill air and splash down in the river.

  Big mistake.

  The Rio Loco billows into my chute. Before I can unhook my harness and peel out of it, I plow into a rock. I brace my arms and legs and push off, tasting nylon as the canopy plays out behind me like a noose. The current grabs hold and sucks me toward boulders. Water sucks up all around me.

  What saved me in the air will kill me here.

  Pit of the gut, I’m scared.

  The lines snap taut, and I’m jerked under. Held and hammered by the overflow.

  I think of Dad, aware that my last thought is of him. Not by conscious choice, it just is. Aware of how much I’ve hurt him. How sorry I am.

  Then the lines slip, and I burst to the surface.

  Gasp giant air.

  The river thunders in my ears. The chopper whop-whops around me.

  I fumble with my leg pocket, grab my knife, and slash the lines. Swim for the bank and drag myself out.

  The chopper takes a last look, then peels off.

  I’m ice cold. Shaking all over.

  I stumble up the bank, slicing my hand as I push through the yucca. But it’s nothing. Just blood. I can’t even feel it.

  The chopper finds what I couldn’t—a clear patch to land. Mr. Cooper and the cameraman rush toward me.

  “Big numbers, Arlo.”

  These are the first words I hear. The next are: “We’re definitely scheduling this for Sweeps Week.”

  “T-t-t-totally frozen,” I stutter.

  Mr. Cooper wants to do an interview now. Catch me dripping and shaking. He stands me with Burro Mesa off my shoulder and the river behind me. I can see Uncle Sal coming across the field.

  I’m sucking the blood off my hand when the camera light goes on. The interview goes like this:

  Mr. Cooper: “Arlo, can you describe how it felt?”

  Me: “Aw-aw-awesome. No words.”

  Mr. Cooper: “Talk about fear. How afraid were you?”

  Me, pointing to Burro Mesa with my bloody hand: “Up there, h-h-huge.” Pointing toward the river. “D-d-down there, even more. I almost died. But in the air, n-n-not at all.”

  Mr. Cooper: “How do you explain that?”

  Me: “C-c-c-can’t.”

  Mr. Cooper: “Anything special you can share?”

  Me, shaking like a leaf: “No words. No words.”

  “Enough!” Uncle Sal shouts, coming up.

  Mr. Cooper nods, and the cameraman powers off.

  Uncle Sal helps me out of the Flying Squirrel and throws his jacket over me. It’s full of his big warmth.

  “We’ll promote the hell out of this,” Mr. Cooper says. “Sweeps Week is coming up. I can promise big numbers.”

  Here’s what I would’ve said if I hadn’t been frozen, and if the cameraman hadn’t been pointing his camera in my face. But most of all, here’s what I would’ve said if they’d tried to help me out of the river. Because you don’t give your best stuff to people who shoot video of you while you’re drowning.

  Say, for example, Cam had asked me the same questions. I would have told him:

  “The instant I crossed that line, I wasn’t alone anymore.

  Wind, sun air were alive around me.

  I felt this in every atom and molecule.

  Connected.

  I’m part of all this!

  Mesas, mountains, stars.

  Me, part of all this!

  I slipped out of my skin.

  Broke through.”

  MR. COOPER WAVES TO US from the chopper. “Time to get on board,” he shouts.

  The pilot and cameraman are already buckled in.

  “Let those bastards wait,” Uncle Sal says. “Follow me.”

  We pick our way through the spines and sabers and go down to the river. From the bank, it looks more innocent than it really is.

  Uncle Sal reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a cigar.

  “Pre-Castro, Arlo. Hundred bucks a stick. Reserved for only the finest occasions. Too bad you don’t smoke.”

  He holds the cigar at arm’s length and surveys the valley. Sights on Burro Mesa, now monolithic in the creeping dusk.

  “Why the long face?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “It was too close,” I say. “Even for me.”

  What I don’t say is, a dead son is not what a father needs. A dead brother is not what a sister needs.

  “That’s the last one,” I say. “Never again.”

  Uncle Sal runs the cigar under his nose. “Music to my ears, Arlo.”

  “Dad’s gonna be mad as hell,” I say. “He’ll tell me I’m crazy.”

  Uncle Sal lights the cigar, puffs a few times, loosens his jaw, and blows a smoke donut.

  “Funny thing,” he says, touching the donut with the tip of his cigar and sculpting it into a pretzel. “One man’s crazy is another man’s courage. I suspect your dad will come around when he hears the outcome. After all, you’re rich.”

  “Not rich enough,” I say.

  Uncle Sal takes a puff. “Nobody’s rich enough, Arlo. But what you did—you earned.” He winks. “Hey, whaddya say we call him now, in the spirit of the moment, and tell him the news?”

  “Bad idea,” I say.

  But Uncle Sal’s already punching the number. As he waits for Dad to pick up, he blows another donut. Me, I look across at the mesa—at the dusk and shadow, the cut and fall—and feel a weight lift.

  “Hello, Hector!” Uncle Sal says, his mouth quirking into a grin. “This is Sal Fo
cazio, your favorite uncle. Now, listen—listen up. I’m here in Colorado—standing on the banks of the Rio Loco . . . Why? Never mind. Just listen. I have some good news and some bad news. It’s about Arlo . . . Hold on—hold on!—I’m about to tell you.”

  Uncle Sal takes a long pull on his cigar and blows a cloud. “The good news is, Arlo will be depositing a large sum of money in the bank on Monday morning. The bad news is . . .”

  He steps to the river’s edge, squats, and holds the phone an inch or two above the gurgling water. I can’t see his expression, but his shoulders are shaking. Then he stands and puts the phone to his mouth again.

  “The bad news, Hector, is that the funds won’t be available for twenty-four hours.”

  Click!

  “Nice one,” I say.

  Uncle Sal flicks an ash. “Let him stew on that for a few hours. You can tell him the rest when you get home.”

  Chapter 51

  CAM, LOBO, AND I are lounging on our bikes in the school parking lot. The bell rang five minutes ago, and everybody’s scattering to go home. Normally, we’d blast out of there, but today the sun hypnotizes. We soak it in.

  Nobody knows about my big jump off Burro Mesa yet, except Dad and Uncle Sal. I keep it to myself—partly because of what the ancient Greek Herodotus said: “All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears.” And partly because what happened—on the mesa, in the air, and in the river—is still working its way into my pores and molecules. How can I talk about that?

  Anyway, the whole damn town will know soon enough. Sweeps Week is coming up.

  Lobo’s phone pings. He peers at the screen: “Slam! Got him!”

  Cam yawns. “Got who?”

  Instead of answering, Lobo gets off his Bandit 350, plants his legs apart, and shouts. “USA!”

  Some kid across the parking lot echoes, “USA!”

  “What the hell!” Cam says. “What’s got into everybody?”

  I have a pretty good idea. And now Lobo confirms it.

  “They just nuked the king of all terrorists,” he says.

  Cam shudders. “You mean—?”

  “Exactly,” Lobo says. “Obliterated the living shiz out of him.”

  Cam spikes a fist in the air.

  The news is landing on other phones. The reaction is like super-accelerated Darwinism. In a blink, kids evolve from bored knuckle-draggers into swaggering Homo erectuses.

  Horns get honked. A tree gets climbed and shaken. A shirt gets peeled off and waved.

  “USA! . . . USA! . . . USA!”

  Me, I don’t evolve.

  I sit on my bike, frozen.

  Lee rushes up. “C’mon, Arlo. Let’s get out of here.”

  She fires up the 125.

  We blast out of the parking lot.

  Gone.

  “If you’re just joining us . . .”

  Ethan Shackleton stands with the broken hills of the Swat Valley behind him.

  “Approximately two hours ago we learned from our intelligence sources that Caracal, the insurgency’s top commander and mastermind of some of the most horrific atrocities of the past decade, is dead. A missile fired by an aerial drone reportedly killed him as he fled up a mountain road on the back of a motorcycle.”

  The camera zooms in. All I can make out of the blurry images are a pit in the road, bloody clothes, and twisted metal.

  “The strike was carried out by a special ops team working in consultation with the U.S. National Security Agency and CIA.”

  Ethan gives a summary of Caracal’s life, during which they flash photos of him as a kid standing beneath Big Ben in London; as a student standing outside the U.S. Capitol; and as a rifle-toting warrior standing in some dusty hills.

  Then the photo of him and his family pops up—wife, son, and tiny twin daughters.

  “His death brings the United States and its allies one big step closer to completion of its military mission on the North-West Frontier.”

  Tears are tracking down Lee’s face. I know she’s thinking about her dad and that he might be closer to coming home.

  Me, I’m thinking about a phone call I got from Major Anderson.

  He woke me in the middle of the night, and I told him what he didn’t want to hear—that no matter how much extreme and lasting good it might do for me and my family, I couldn’t take anybody out.

  Not even Caracal.

  It’s not who I am.

  And besides, you never take out just one person.

  A perfect hit goes beyond a single target. It goes wide. And it goes deep.

  So my answer was no.

  “Second best can do it,” I told him.

  And I was right.

  Seeing these images on TV, I feel no joy—zero.

  Maybe I didn’t push the button, but I primed it.

  Lee sweeps back her hair and shows me her tears. I slip my hand into hers, and our fingers twine together.

  “Caracal achieved near-mythical status in the borderlands, where he orchestrated a fierce, decade-long campaign against U.S. and NATO forces.

  “He was the last of a triumvirate of leaders accused of plotting and executing terrorist strikes on three continents.”

  Ethan lowers his eyes, takes a moment. Then he looks straight at Lee and me.

  “On a personal note, in the cadre of correspondents in which I serve, no question has been asked with greater frequency or urgency than this:

  “‘Where is Caracal?’

  “Today we know the answer:

  “He is dead.

  “This is Ethan Shackleton, BBC World Update, reporting from the North-West Frontier.”

  Chapter 52

  LIKE MR. COOPER PREDICTED, the numbers for Crazy-Dirty&Extreme are big.

  “Thirty-eight percent market share, Arlo,” he tells me by phone after the segment airs during Sweeps Week. “That’s nearly three million more viewers than we usually get. Do you know what that means?”

  “No idea,” I say.

  “It means, Arlo, that you’re famous.”

  “Interesting,” I say.

  And that’s exactly as excited as I feel.

  I’ve never gone looking for attention. But attention seems to find me. Maybe Uncle Sal’s right—destiny is a huntress, and she’s hunted me down.

  Chapter 53

  LEE WANTS TO SEE WHAT Drone Pilot is all about. We agree to meet me at TunzaFunza—the caffeine and cyber heartbeat of Orphan County.

  When I get there, it’s packed with day-off wranglers wearing their go-to-town cowboy hats and sipping Americanos. Uncle Sal has opened the terrace. It’s sunny and warm outside, but the wranglers huddle inside in the shade.

  I get catcalls:

  “Hey, everybody, it’s Arlo!”

  “Nah, it’s Jett Spence.”

  “Arlo! Can I borrow ten thousand bucks?”

  “Jett, autograph my ass!”

  On and on.

  I bump a few knuckles. But I don’t autograph any asses.

  Uncle Sal has hung a poster-size picture of me on the wall above the espresso machine. It shows me flying off Burro Mesa on the Ducati. I’m still gripping the handles, but my wings have puffed out. I’ve crossed that line.

  Uncle Sal took the picture from the chopper using a fisheye lens. He caught the burnt colors of the high mesa, the golden-red sun, and the thousand shadowed shades. New Mexico paints this for you better than any artist who ever lived.

  People tell me it’s a great picture, and I admit, it’s pretty good. But when you’ve been there and opened yourself up like that—your pores, atoms, and molecules—all you can think is, it doesn’t catch a tenth of it.

  Lee waves to me from the game station. I go over and squeeze beside her—two asses, one chair. Mine, the bony ass. Hers, the perfect one. It’s a good fit.

  “Listen up,” I say, logging on. “Anybody can score the points. But you gotta score ’em every time. That’s what separates the cowboy from the cows.”

  Lee bumps me. “It’s called con
sistency, Arlo.”

  “Nah, it’s called customizing,” I say.

  As I go through the setup, Lee studies the international rankings. SergeiTashkent has fallen many notches. IpanemaGirl has climbed to second place. She’s seriously breathing down my neck.

  “Hey, isn’t that you?” Lee says, pointing to my username: ClayMadSwooper.

  “Just so happens.”

  “Wait! Does that mean you’re . . . the best?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “Ranks change all the time.”

  Today, we’re playing the newest version of Drone Pilot, just released. Now you can tap into a full global menu of geolocation options.

  You can build your own battlefield, or strike zone, anywhere in the world, from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo. You’re not limited to the same old war holes. My guess—these topo maps have been ripped off from the Pentagon. Drone Pilot simply layers animation and lots of cool features on top.

  Couple clicks and we’re over Orphan County.

  Lee traces a finger along the Cimarron to where it flows into the Rio Loco. Another click and we’re over Clay Allison. From the satellite, the town looks like a round waffle iron.

  “Kids!”

  Uncle Sal walks up carrying two large glass mugs brimming with his latest invention, the Arlo Santiago Mesa Blaster. The Arlo consists of two shots of espresso, one shot of mocha, steamed milk, a dash of cayenne pepper, a splat of whipped cream, and a final shot of espresso poured macchiato-style on top, for extra power.

  I could do without the cayenne pepper, but it’s Uncle Sal’s signature ingredient, so I say nothing. Plus, it’s on the house. And always will be.