After a fifteen minute jaunt consisting mostly of Hale taking his sweet little old time down Western avenue, ignoring his beeper that the Coaches Widow gave him as a Christmas present in second grade—the beeper which always emits a nasal pitched electronic rendition of “Tequila” every time it is alighted with a request from the Coaches Widow hoping Hale will refill her Styrofoam chalice— Hale walks as he continues to reminisce over the golden sun-spangled bangs and breath that somehow reminded him of checking into a new hotel room, sporadically Hale takes the filched garment stowed in his pocket out like a Handkerchief, padding down the pebbles of post-coital sweat dotting his forehead, hoping Tim Flanagan will accept his gift as a truce of the heart somehow and not be so damn rude. 

Not yer avg. ordinary run of the mill no-none shit you can learn a lot from the ingenuity of a McReynolds Thruster (escape from CLS)...

 

“Pecker. Pecker.”

 

 

“Damnit Dave.”

 

Von Behren still is keeping Hale’s pet pecker parrot beneath his shoulder blade while his arms remain firmly buckled around Patrick’s torso. Occasionally the Thruster wobbles and purrs in a mechanical titter, coercing Von Behren to gyrate his shoulder and arm down near his waist in a motion that looks like he is trying to produce an armpit fart with the licked palm of the opposite hand.

 

“Pecker. Pecker.”

 

“Damnit! Stop that.”

 

“Dude,” Von Behren says, hoping Patrick will pay as much attention to him as he did to his brother who recently employed Patrick’s similar idiosyncratic jibe. “I’m not doing it on purpose—besides, we need to get back home. I can’t imagine what Hale and Lynnford of all people are doing at casa McReynolds to entertain Mister and Misses Mcreynolds. Your folks are gonna think somethings up—“

 

“Pecker. Pecker.”

 

“Dave.”

 

“I told you. It’s involuntary. If you’d quit jangling the vessel so much the parrot wouldn’t have to object to your slovenly skills when it comes to operating a classified aerial craft vessel.”

 

“Dude,” Allan comment from the front handlebars. “I’m proud of you bro. This Thruster fucking rules.

 

Patrick smiles to himself, thinking of the new bumper sticker he plans on manufacturing once this bad boy hits the global market. “In God we Thrust, “ puns Patrick, aloud. “All others must give handjobs.”

 

Allan immediately erupts in a cherry skin coated hiccupy-spurts of laughter. Even the barrage of muffled underarm pecker’s seem to correlate smoothly to the chorus of laughter. Patrick smiles himself, monkey-fucks a fresh cigarette from the illuminating ember of the old one before watching still-life awed open lip the cigarette descend into the wallowing blue below.

 

“Plus you forget, this bad boy thruster just has a little bit of a problem when it comes to brakes. If for some reason we run out of gas or whatever your father put in this for fuel on the way home and if it’s an emergency we are more or less again stranded in I’m fucked-up-the-ass mode.”

 

Upon hearing the word fucked, chief Allan gets excited, starts rattling his torso, saying yeah baby, bring it on. Yeah!

 

“Meaning that we have to either cruise home at such a moderate speed that we can easily be detected so that we can coast to a smooth landing or that we have to somehow dove-tail the vehicle into the lawn of the circus tent next door and hope that the impact doesn’t hurl the vehicle itself somewhere perilous.”

 

Patrick says the words, “blah” seven times in a row in a condescending and disparaging manner. Allan makes an almost Bev Pinesol like puppet with his hand and starts talking up and down, indicating the Von B is some conglomeration between a chatterbox and a worry wart. The bike wheezes out a jilted rattle, Von Behren squeezes even tighter around Patrick’s lower spine. The parrot Von Behren has been safeguarding begins caroling out Christmas tunes about an open fire.

 

                      

  

“Plus,” Von Behren continues raising his voice as if in a classroom with noisy pupils. “Both you guys seem to have somehow neglected to acknowledge the fact that we already crashed this thruster-fuck once already today while cruising at a reckless speed. Who knows how much more wear and tear the engine will take till…”

 

Allan interrupts Von Behren’s brainy discourse by transmogrifying the fist-puppet into a chill-sign and then, upon following the eyesight of his older brothers vision, into one finger and then blowing over it, offering a healthy middle-aged asexual librarian shhhhhh!!!!! From outside of the school the boys see Coach M and Marcellus’ Father Obadiah Buck strut out, Coach M looks like he is pontificating something through a megaphone. Patrick has both hands off the aerial steering handles and, along with Allan and against Von Behren’s astute judgment, has wedged dual thumbs inside their earlobes and begin protruding their tongues down on Coach M, warbling nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah in a rather pre-schoolian drawl. Whatever Coach M is echoing through the megaphone sounds like telephone static by the time it reaches the boys earlobes above them. Patrick then flicks his half-smoked cigarette at coach M, who Patrick thinks looks about the size of one of his Little People GI Joe scattered in the tall summer grass of Warren McReynolds backyard when viewed from the roof of Casa McReynolds before Patrick performs his signature cannon ball plop into the neighborhood trampoline. The blare from the megaphone continues to emit Coach M’s high-pitched baritone into the ocean of pending blue separating the two parties. Much to Von Behren’s constant chagrin Patrick pitches his tomahawk even further into the air and then catches it, before lifting up both arms into a Y removing then from the steering wheel handle-bars, offering Coach M dual fingers of choice from each fist.

 

“Fuck you!!!” Patrick yells out from far above, paying no attention in the slightest when Von Behren squeezes Patrick’s waist, informing him to please, quit taunting, let’s just get the fuck outta here.

 

“FUCK YOU!!!” Allan raises his fist as well. Patrick, remembering the slightly-lit cigarette butts he has been casually depositing from high-altitude all afternoon suddenly gets an idea.

 

“Check this out holmes, this will only work if we station ourselves directly above them.” Patrick can feel Von Behren digging his forehead into the back of Patrick’s neck as Patrick zips the THRUSTER BABY from Logan field back over to the top of the parking lot, the monkey bars resembling nothing more than small yellow almost country and western ghost town sage brush whistling bushel from their distance and height. With his eyes smacked tightly into his sockets and the wind rattling his body back and forth Von Behren can hear Patrick sucking up air through his lips in a graveling gushing sound and then spit, expectorating from hi-above and then shouting out bullseye followed by the word “fucker” at the top of his voice. Von Behren then hears Allan trying to do the same thing, only the first time he tries to hawk a serious loogie he ends up making a farting sound with his perched lips.

 

“Patrick, quit fucking around LET’S GO!!!!” Von Behren grapples Patrick around his waist even tighter. The parrot, tucked under Von Behren’s armpit like a triangular folded flag continues to alternate between Chestnuts roasting on an open fire and the pecker orchestration. From directly above Patrick can hear Coach M’s magnified echo. It sounds like he is planning some sort of retaliation for which Patrick sticks his thumb into the tip of his nose and forms rhinoceros visage, twinkling all of his fingers before leaving the middle finger up stationed in perennial “fuck you,” jest.

 

“Look at him,” Patrick points at Coach M who now, even from this altitude can be seen rolling his fist, yelping diatribes of certain death into his megaphone—his forehead and neck coated with a thick rash of redness. Both Patrick and Allan continue to make scathing guttural throat searing sounds with their lips before jutting their necks as far as they possibly can over the side of the Thruster and then letting the wad of collected drool into one crystal animated tear of ammunition, salivating into a spit bomb on their adversaries blow. Von Behren can hear Allan laugh like a grade school girl trying to keep her legs crossed to refrain from peeing when Patrick boasts bullseye, right on the forehead. Von Behren wishes he could speak the voice of scientific reason once again, but figures that the brothers are participating in one of their oft-ill oriented brotherly bonds. Two years ago after a field trip to tanners apple-turnips and harvest cider located north of town, It was Allan’s idea to sell apple-turnips at Bradley University outside one of the female dorms in an effort that maybe, one of the crimp pony-tailed sweatpants and college logod sweatshirt sophomores might give him a quick attaboy, a scurried frisk on the top of the head with their smooth and hands, while their packaged cleavage hobbled personal and up close in front of his vision. When Allan suggested his idea for instance hands-on feminine contact to his older Brother, Patrick, always thinking with the exclamatory mark between his thighs he will one day refer to as Lloyd, informed his precocious yet sexual naïve younger sibling that he had a better idea—which was to host a skin-to-win super solvent wet t-shirt contest until they were spotted passing out fliers in front of St. Mark’s church, Patrick being interviewed by a sour-countenance Bishop telling him that he is sort of hoping to institute a orgiastic Garden of Eden  Toga-optional sin-til-til you can sin no more party after student mass later on that evening. The apple solution somehow rendered an aphrodisiac effect and Coach M, later granting a 10 % tuition deduction for advent of that year quid pro quo an additional 20 bushels.

 

As Patrick pushes in the nub to the cigarette lighter he notices a change drawer his father must have installed knowing far well in advance that the lads would encounter their fair share of toll booths en route to the eternal sunshine state of Florida, seeing the clump of silver currency Patrick is reminded of the urban legend stating that, employed as a projectile, a penny, casually tossed from the zenith of the Empire States Building can total a car, accumulating velocity as it splatters in to the earth with the density and force of a crater. Reminiscing over this scientific fact, a wicked grin folds across Patrick’s like a Chinese fan slowly opening as Patrick punches his fist into the bushel of coins, fishing out a superfluous handful of loose change, laughing to himself like a mad scientist and without deliberation tosses them up in the air in a fit of hysterical laughter, cackling with his chin stationed north as a drizzle of nickel and dimes and quarters slide past Patrick and hail towards his nemesis below. Von Behren tries to squeeze Patrick’s waist tighter before conveying to him that he is loosing control and that he should merely stop while he’s ahead. All Patrick can do is ask his brother the 50 yard line question of heads or tails. When Allan says heads, Patrick points down, says no, they’re assholes, fuckers.

 

Screams are heard from below. The accumulated amebic bubble forming near the losers parking place is beginning to cover their heads. Car horns and alarms are heard bleeping. Patrick begins laughing his devious laugh even more so, screeching his nails deep into the change drawer and scooping out the remainder of the spare change and, with a careless fling tossing them over his shoulders, saying the words die.

Patrick’s power-haughty laugh is beginning to remind Von Behren of something Tim Brandigan might deem satanic. Patrick then launches his tomahawk an additional thirty feet, Von Behren watching as the handle to the blade falls directly back into Patrick’s grip with grace and facility. 

 

            More car horns. Apparently one of the coins wrecked havoc on a vehicle cruising down Starr street which may or may not be affiliated with CLS. Patrick wonders if this is what being God is like, being stationed on a cloudy throne above the masses, being able to release a lighting bolt as easily as scattering loose change. Patrick then remembers what Dr. Kennedy Marshal was always telling him about the reason he and the dave’s felt a compelling urge to scale the yellow rungs of the monkey bars was because it was, psychologically speaking, the highest attainable summit accessible to the like of a Loser like himself and how, being stationed on such a lofty summit, momentarily allows Patrick and the dave’s total autonomy and emancipation to actuate their fantasy and dream via  what Doctor Kennedy Marshal has classified over and over again as their “petty” role-playing techniques, is merely nothing more or less than pure escapism from interfacing with the day to day pangs and perils of modern life.

 

            Patrick thinks this and slowly roves the aerial vessel over the top of Dr Kennedy Marhshal’s red pick up truck. Von Behren can feel the Thruster slightly wobble as he slowly inquires what Patrick is doing as if he is prescripted in a B- movie.

 

            “Fucker.” Patrick yells out, getting vindictive. As if in a rote motion, Von Behren’s eyes tuck even further inside his sockets. Allan thinks it looks as if Von Behren is trying to squint inside his own face.

 

            “Dude,” Patrick says, addressing Von Behren. “I need you to spot me bro.”

 

            With his arms tightly buckled around Patrick’s waist Von B feels the entire Thruster Baby wobble precariously to the right and left as Patrick, the captain my captain of the vessel himself, begins to lift himself on the top frame connecting the handle bars to the seat, Patrick hobbling, sticking both of his hands out like a tightrope walker with no net in a effort to balance himself.

 

            “Pat, bro, what the fuck are you doing brother?”

 

            The entire vessel is nodding back and forth as if it has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Patrick has one foot in front of the other and Von Behren, still stationed unclasped on the pegs. Von Behren can hear the ruffled severing of Patrick unzipping his corduroy pants before Patrick asks the same question Von Behren previously addressed at him, dick curled in hand like a wounded bird.

 

            “You wanna know what the fuck I’m doing?” Patrick asks, the bike still tottering precariously in the vacuum blue of the atmosphere. “I’ll tell you just what the fuck I’m doing. It’s called, Divine Retribution, fuckers.”

 

            Patrick starts talking to somebody neither Von Behren nor Allan have ever heard of called Lloyd, telling Lloyd to go to work, baby. Patrick then begins to urinate, aiming directly towards the bluish windshield of Doctor Kennedy Marshal’s truck. It seems to take longer for the stream of broken yellow to reach the ground and when it does it does so in intermittent hisses. Allan continues to hackle out of control, laughing on the front of the handlebars, the entire bike nodding as if from shoulder to shoulder. Von behren looks up and sees Patrick giving his cock a healthy shake before grapping it in a obscene gesture, informing the hoi-poloi of CLS to eat his shit, before turning around lowering his corduroy trousers and mooning the entire building. Von Behren feels the vessel dip perilously to the left and then wobble when he sees Allan trying to balance himself on the handlebars, holding on to his brothers waist.

 

            “Dude,” Allan says, “I can totally one-up that.”

 

            Before Von Behren can properly assess the situation Allan is completely balancing himself across the center steel beam of the bicycle when he starts tugging at his waist. The next thing everyone on the bike realizes, Allan has yanked down his corduroy pants around his ankles, the prominent white of his ass situated in a squatting position, his lip and eyes tucked into his cranberry-red face and before either Patrick or Von Behren can zip out a “what the fuck?” Allan has dropped two serious turdbombs off the THRSUTER and into the direction of CLS.

 

            “SHIT!” Both Patrick and Von Behren look still eyed in the direction of Allan. Von Behren can see Bev Pinesol looking up, flapping open an umbrella two seconds too late, her yelp, audible even from this altitude. Coach M continues to warble out what sounds like magnified static into the megaphone.

 

            “Allan,” Patrick chides, “You’re acting fucking puerile. Marking your territory in public by taking a leak is one thing; popping a squat bomb is fucking disgusting.”

 

            “Pecker, pecker.” The parrot nods, seemingly in appalled concurrence.

 

            Allan remains squatted in defactory posture, his eyes welded shut as he harks back at both Patrick and Von B, asking them for a little privacy, trying to concentrate, he’s on the Thruster throne. With his arms still sealed around Patrick’s waist as if he is trying to perform one of Tim Brandigan’s complicating wrestling moves Von Behren feels Patrick all but surge at his younger sibling in an act of corporeal restraint, trying to curtail Allan from releasing any more disgusting bombs in front of his face by informing his brother that Coach M could easily break down the chemical compounds in his fecal sample and then we’d all be, literally, stranded up shit creek without a canoe paddle or toilet paper. The Thruster dips perilously low and Von Behren lets out a serious yelp as he can hear Patrick curse out loud, saying the word oh shit and then hang on as Patrick jumps kicks the side of the vehicle and it takes off, performing a quick dizzying loop and then zagging hard to the left. With his eyes still welded into his upper cheekbones, Hale’s pecker-parrot still tightly lodged beneath the pit of his arms. From below there is an additional screech—what sounds like a whistle taking off from a runway in a jet fueled blast. Von Behren has to open his eyes. In what appears to be an effort to make the best of an almost sure-as-shitfire futile situation, Allan begins chirping out the theme song to the A-team before Patrick tells him seriously to cut that shit out, telling all the comrades to hang the fuck on as he yanks the handlebars rather heavily to the right as if trying to dodge some sort of arsenal. Before Von Behren can reinstate his caveat that he told them so and that, if Patrick and Allan hadn’t felt compelled to fuck around they could all be safely back home at Casa McReynolds nestled around the fake fireplace and electric neon-fizz of the Guests First barstool sign gorging on Bailey Brownies fresh from the oven while swigging copious amounts of a lambic super solvent leftover from the holidays—just as Von Behren is reminiscing over the hearty domesticity of the McReynolds living room—Tim Brandigan then showing up uninvited at the doorstep as is habit, dropping ten sides dice while for once, narrating a campaign in which Allan doesn’t cry and where Patrick’s and Von Behren’s turn out to be victorious—just as Von Behren is reflecting over all this he hears what sounds like sonic fissure zipping across the skyline, Patrick savagely oscillating the handlebars with the front tire stationed up in the air as if trying to reel in a legendary catfish from a pond of oceanic blue. Just as Von Behren pictures his tribe of friends sitting around the fake fire in the McReynolds living room and being joyful for once and not being so emotionally bandied from the ever evocative harangues of CLS and of the varsity elite in general and just being blissful in a late sunshine in spring everything is eternal adolescent sort of way, the sonic breeze seems to smack into the front skeleton of the Thruster and the next thing Von Behren realizes is that his tight grip around Patrick’s torso has been completely set free, his body splayed-limbed, free-falling, part of what looks like a spoke and a wheel plummeting to his side, a pantless Allan performing what looks like somersaults, screaming out of control to his near right. Von Behren looks up for Patrick and the remainder of the Thruster but sees nothing but blue overhead and a grisly cloud hovering where the apparent blast took place. The blacktop of CLS parking lot seems to press into him closer and closer like looking through the magnifies lens of a camcorder while putting the black lid on at the same time. Allan is still wailing out of control, performing somersaults as if cannonballing into the deep end at free swim at Bradley pool. For a terse snapped second Von Behren thinks that it feels less like falling and more like being stranded in some sort of limbo, as if hovering wide- limbed over a ventilator, thick currents of breeze creeping up around skin and skull. Falling like this is almost relaxing, lulling, breathtaking even—since hanging out with Patrick A. McReynolds and gaming around the clock nonstop Von Behren has come to realize that when situations when everything in the planet appears to be bleak and hopeless, the inevitable rush and then vacant-spine nothingness of death spilling into the vision of the foreseeable future—at moments like these a pervasive almost serene calm overtakes the boys nervous system—as if the light at the end of the tunnel is just an illuminated welcome matt to the place you were meant to be at—such a calm Von Behren is experiencing right now as a pantless chief Allan continues to somersault and yelp and howl like a mental patient. The front wheel of the Thruster has already made contact with the ground and is rolling like a hubcap below. Von Behren can see Coach M holding some sort of cannon over his shoulders with little exclamatory poofs of smoke unfurling from the tip as Von Behren wonders what it would look like from their periphery when his body hits the ground in an accelerated splatter of organs and limbs. Although his eyes had all but melted into the den of his socket as Patrick was busy taunting CLS from five hundred feet above, the lids of Von Behren’s eyes remain wide open, wanting to experience every last brisk elevated flash of life before it is yanked from under his heart like a magician yanking a tablecloth from the setting of a four star restaurant and not agitating the silverware and goblets and plates in the slightest. As he looks straight down Von Behren can see Coach M and Obadiah Buck and Bev Pinesol all continue to run towards the direction of the school as if taking cover. Even from up here it appears that Doc Kennedy Marshal has something extremely phallic dangling between her legs as she sprints towards the finance for eternity gym. Von Behren wonders just how fast he will experience leaving his own body when it splatters against the blacktop—he wonders if it will feel just like kicking off an old pair of jeans into a slough of dirty raiments on his bedroom floor. Just as the top of CLS is getting perilously close, the russet brick, the scaffolding and rafters always seemingly abutting the sides of the architecture—always adding something new, now at close range, maybe thirty feet. Von Behren smiles when realizing to himself that the moment he finds himself parallel with the top of the rafters less than a half-second later he will be no more. Because of the rate in which he is tumbling it feels more like the earth is pressing up into his forehead than he is plummeting down into it. Von Behren is almost parallel with the top of the school. Smoke still spirals out of the sockets of Ghetto Jesus. Allan is squealing for his mommy, yelling that it was all his brothers’ fault when an eruptive searing sound is heard again.

VB begins to wonder aloud what sort of a pussy Coach M is from firing at close range when he turns his head the earth flashes into his left side and then thrusts him over to the twenty feet to the right. Before he realizes just what the fuck is eternally transpiring, that he is still above ground, swooshing from left-to-right like a pendulum, a swollen pain tight in his abdomen where something fell into his side. Von Behren is beginning to wonder if maybe he already splattered into the ground and that his spirit is soaring out, back up, into the next world when he espies a quick blur and another smack spotting Allan next to him, who apparently had another accident while his entire body was drooling down the skyline like a corduroy tear.

 

            “FUCK!!!” Von Behren yells out looking around, seeing Patrick’s chin above still harnessing the front of the half-decimated Thruster. Before Von Behren can turn around completely and rip Pat’s nad’s out from the dugout of his crotch seat, Patrick foists his hand hard over both Von Behren and McReynolds heads ordering them to get the fuck down. Pat’s chin bows as well as another sonic blast rips overhead, mere feet above the vessel.

 

            “Coach M won’t quit firing. We gotta land this sonuvabitch and get the fuck out of here.” Patrick says, cruising over the patch of houses near Manual high school, close to the emerging bluff separating the dregs of the south side from the lower-middle class affluence of West Peoria. There is another blast. Patrick feels that the sonic jet streams that keep brushing past him by mere inches feels like they are actually accompanying him in some formation, like mallards migrating to the south in overhead pyramidal postures. Another thud. Von Behren’s entire body is lying limp across the v-frame of the Thruster, as if he is pinned on a clothes line in Mid-august waiting to dry. Another rackety jerk, and the sight of jet-streams shot near the handlebars. Von Behren’s head is near Patrick’s right pro-wing. The front of the Thruster appears to be burnt, the wheel that was in all likelihood blown off during the initial impact, is still steaming. Allan continues to cough intermittently, spitting out blood, before informing his brother that this was fun—can we do this again next weekend. Much in the similar fashion that the Thruster originally crashed into the retina of Ghetto Jesus for what was twenty minutes earlier but seems like decades ago Von Behren can feel the Thruster begin to burn and slope, looping several times, slowing down speed. Patrick tries not to heavily contemplate just what might have happened to the errant missiles Coach M launched which fortunately missed the Thruster—tries not to imagine that perhaps the projectiles hit some innocent family house in the Bluff, some recently assembled swing set or some father holding his daughter behind the plastic seat of her own bicycle sans training wheels. Patrick tries not to think about all of this right now, tries not to imagine what it felt like when the Thruster was initially hit and he saw his brother topple head over feet across the handlebars—tries not to imagine what it felt like when he looked behind and saw Von Behren drowning into a cesspool of blue—his limbs spread out as if crucified and how it took Patrick a minute himself to accumulate the tenacity and to wonder just the fuck is going on as the bicycle sputtered and bleeped out a foreign lexicon of symbols until finally he was able to rev the handlebars a certain way, descending into an accelerating v-cut swoosh, barely rescuing both Von Behren and his brother at the last possible second. Patrick will later tell Hale on the monkey bars that it was as of he had lived out his own last ditched second attempt—as is true with role playing game the moment the creations are about ready to give up the ghost so to speak, the moment their hero points get so low they can only be validated with negative signs in front of them. Von Behren always allows either Patrick or Hale a what is commonly referred to over the jaundice rainbow arc at the top of the monkey bars as a LDD (or Last Ditch Defense, Baker, claiming that every time he drops LDD he sees that lil’ Leprechaun sitting on a mushroom smoking a pipe next to Jebediah in Miss Wiltz’ Euclid for Eunach seminar). A Last Ditched  Defense is where Von Behren allows his players three opportunities to roll doubles or belt out the refrain to a pending swan song. Tim Flanagan claims to have such a thing as a LDD, but with Tim, it’s more like accepting the fact that his creations will always rule victorious while your own feebly crafted spawn is extremely privileged even to be sucking air in the same space continuum of Tim and his imaginary toys.

 

            Patrick feels that perhaps, having already used up his last LDD to rescue Von B and Allan as they were toppling to an almost certain demise that something transpired within his nervous system that was lacking when he was in the school and froze up—that something triggered throughout his spine where for once he didn’t pause or hesitate but acted directly, without pondering the mock outcome of the scenario—without wondering if Hollis Lyons is looking at him or noticing him in the slightest—without secluding himself in the gaming room in the back of his skull replete with character sketches of Patrick as well of those of his friends and adversaries—without consulting a pair of ten sided dice first atop the Yellow Monkey bars and blowing over them ever so slightly as they are dropped across a trapper keeper bridge, the numerical tandem blinking at Patrick, like eyes, informing him if he succeeded in the accomplishment of his endeavor.

 

            Patrick continues to contemplate all of this, informing both his brother and Von B to hang on as he marshals the bike over the coniferous green of Madison Golf course, trying to convolute his direction in mid-air, only to find the handlebars no longer connected to the frame of the Thruster as the vehicle seemingly emits one neighing sputter, descending with a deflated pause into the symphony of green trees below before giving off one final explosion as if in applause.                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A solid 45-minutes later Hale is then casually spotted exiting the suburban abode of one Miss Holly A Truner, a stain of hickies coating the curvature of both his neck and his shoulders like some sort of allergic reaction, thinking to himself that perhaps it was a good idea that Cabbages decided to tell Hale that they needed what Meredith-Elise refers to as a “Moratorium” since the whole VonB-grandmother fiasco a few weeks back. Hale’s ears register the sweet imploring chirp of Holly’s voice, hitting the side of his face like a spring wind in mid-autumn, simply inquiring when will she see her Juggy-bear again. Hale then smiles, offers his signature whoo-hoo, places a post-coital Macanudo between his lips in the fashion of a CEO and a freshly inked contract before he turns around informing the sweat-dappled forehead of his newly christened dear friend that she can find him in the erotic bedroom upholstery of her every waking dream, as he turns around once again, takes a few casually puffs, two stepping it all the way in the direction of Tim Brandigan’s abode half a mile away, a purloined cotton souvenir stowed in his pocket still semi-moist and somehow pure.      

 

Inside the back room of Lums there is an office with scattered sheets of multiple revision, scripts with broken spines lying half-open and thoroughly pencil annotated.  Streams of sliced film, ribbon and cut out in tiny squares, arranged with assumed chronology on the floor.  A husky voice is heard bitching aloud, grousing that everything he has worked on today has resulted in pure bona fide grade A choice cut shit. Somebody is saying the word places.  Mary yawns, adjusts her wig and knots her apron strings, tapering out a cigarette. A plucked ostrich quill brushed beneath her chin curves the crevice of her chin into a smile. 

 

            Someday Patrick thinks to himself that perhaps he will take this route again someday. The moment the no non-break thruster popped an aerial wheelie and blasted above CLS, with wigwam Native American Allan lodged on the front handle bars, his butt drooping almost into Patrick’s face. Patrick, steering one handed, twirling his tomahawk in the other hand as if it were a revolver spinning it nonchalantly as if to say alls in the days work. Von Behren is stationed on the pegs behind Patrick, uneasy to be flying this height with no net below or parachute affixed, his arms buckled around Patrick’s waist, Hale’s pecker-pecker parrot tucked under one arm like a pig-skin.

 

            “Dude,” Allan says, out of breath, sounding so much like his older progeny it’s frightful, “You literally saved my ass. Check out the royal rug burn around my neck.” Allan turns around showing a one-handed Patrick before commenting out loud just how fucking cool this contraption is, asking Patrick if he built it, which of course, Patrick will claim, that the original idea was patented by his truly and that he had additional supervision from the man upstairs i.e. Casa McReynolds that is.

 

            Von Behren sways on the bike back and forth trying not to look down, trying not to realize just how close Allan’s ass is to both Patrick’s face and his buckled arms wishing he would quit circling around the top of the school and just head the fuck home—granted, since the Thruster is void of brakes. 

 

            Most imperatively right now he just wishes Patrick would keep two hands steady on the handlebars and quit fucking around with his joe-cool tomahawk routine. Although squatted Allan performs a little marching bit with his limbs, and continues to hum out the A-team theme song like a victory chant.

 

            “Dude,” Allan says again, taking one swinging marching hand off the front of the handlebars and forming a little fist, “That was like so fucking cool the way you just busted right in there, dove straight down and picked me up. Fuckwad Coach M had no clue what the fuck just hit him.”

 

            From above the three lads can still make out a billow of exhaust smoke twirling out from the sockets of ghetto Jesus. Von Behren wishes Patrick would quit doing the thing with the tomahawk and just get the fuck home. As in now—wondering  just how and what Lynnford and Hale are doing to entertain Warren and Helen. Last time Lynnford spent the night during one of the McReynolds thrice a season all out role-playing up all night water-gun wars, Lynnford spent the entire night kicking it with Patrick’s older sis Amy, getting manicures and facials and doing something with his hair that required rollers and walking around the house with pink bunny slippers wearing a very disgruntled outspoken Warren’s housecoat, until Helen pointed to the neon stuttering Gu  ts  Fi st sign above the fake fire place. Having long been accepted as a rule in the McReynolds’ household that, during these massive dice-clattering sleepovers, where Warren seemingly pops out from the middle of nowhere to tell the boys to keep it down or it’s time to start thinking about bed, guys, it has long been the well accepted truism that at the gong of midnight, the splattering of ten-sided dice subside, the Nintendo control pad become rashly unplugged like a sixth grade girl and a tampon, the remote Warren refers to as his royal scepter in the kingdom of his household clicked off the channel where the boys ogle at Green Nipple porn into the pink eye-shadow haze of dawn —at the gong of Midnight, the grandfather clock Helen claims is a family heirloom even though it has absolutely nothing to do with hair that Patrick can think of, when the clock gongs twelve, uttering out an almost painful rendition of O, Danny Boy,  chimed with what sounds like synthesized Uillean pipes and traditional kettle Bodhran drum, many a nights Patrick has spotted his parents reveling misty eyed under the allure of this syncopated interpretation, as if they were reminiscing over something indelibly lost and twice Patrick has even walked up next to them with an empty pint glass and had his father pour him a rather healthy shot of Jemeson, as Patrick began to talk about ye olde days of yore, reminiscing about U2 and  James Joyce, and  the Irish potato feminine of ‘79 and the one freckled red head lass named Fiona who got away before Patrick could secure the sheep farm as dowry. The second time he joined his parents Patrick inadvertently confused the acronyms for the Irish Republican Army for the International Revenue Service so when Patrick was in the middle of reminiscing about ye days of olde country and how we’ll fight against injustice and the tyrannical ways of the IRS Warren was suddenly hurtled back into reality and shouted out the acronym IRS and then spewed out a “where” and then said duck, scooping his familial litter and ducking behind the wooden planks of the heirloom grandfather clock before knocking on the side wall-paneling in a certain way Patrick had never seen before so that it guffaws wide mouth open and what appears to be some sort of bazooka Patrick had seen him used only once in jest at French Luc the paper boy, the Bazooka opening up from the covert hidden artillery shaft, his father mumbling something under his breath sounding very much like twenty acres and a mule my ass before saying that he always new it would come down this, now it’s war. Warren yelling an all too familiar bloody Murder as he charges outside only to fire randomly, into the electronic yielded fence of the scrooge who lives across the street, watching the ammunition dissolve into some other vector of space time and causality before reentering his abode and saying fuck noticing that his youngest son is still chugging a half pint of Jameson special reserve blend. Warren saying give me that, pouring a table-spoon shot from the bottle into the pint glass, handing the glass back into the paws of his sweet and innocent son and keeping the bottle for himself, leaning his head back and taking a long elongated chug that last for three minutes, which, by the time Warren removes the bottle of Jameson from his lips, he stumbles to the front porch, claiming he can see through the fence, into the place his bazooka cannon dissipated off to—a place full of gables and vernal country side and sunsets before French Luc boomerangs a morning edition of the Urinal Jar into Warren’s forehead and Warren himself collapses, completely exhausted as if something forlorn inside him has been defeated.          

 

            Patrick motions the bike in round aerial motions so it feels like he is going up the aluminum tongue of the curly slide in upper Bradley park, going higher and higher. Flashes of red fire trucks ache throughout the lower bluff like red nails snapping out a quick screech across a chalkboard. There is a moment of peace—a calm that ensues as the boys look down at the smoke drifting out from the sockets of Ghetto Jesus, feeling that they have almost accomplished something together in unison for the greater good of mankind. Even Allan, who has been chattering and giddy nonstop since being rescued pauses and looks out from his squat in the nest of the aluminum thruster-baby handlebars, his eyes seemingly lost in the draped ocean of blue sky bulging like a sail in front of him for what could pass for infinity.

 

            “Dude,” Pat says, feeling serene. Thinking for once in his life he didn’t freeze up in the zone. He didn’t hit the pause button. Patrick twirls the tomahawk again, before padding down the side of his pocket and finger out a smoke, firing it up with the cigarette lighter his father had installed in the Thruster, perhaps knowing in advance his son  would need a nicotine pick-me up on his pedaling flight down to Florida.

 

            “Pecker, pecker.”

 

            “Well, at least we got the parrot.” Von Behren addresses the crowd, still wobbling on the pegs with his arms buckled around the torso of a very relaxed pilot Patrick.  “I mean that’s why we had to rush back. Hale forgot his Goddamn pecker parrot. I didn’t even realize Allan was missing til…”

 

            The parrot interrupts Von Behren’s sarcastic oration by chirping out another chorus of peckers.  Patrick continues to glide, coasting the handlebars, as if he is out for an afternoon jaunt, a daily callisthenic care-free spring afternoon constitutional feeling one with the aerial vessel. Von Behren remains dubious eyed, tightens his grip around Patrick’s shoulder in the manner that is too reminiscent of leather-clad femur clenching boot attired females casting their arms around their male biker escort outside the pool hall on Farmington road. Patrick seems to be having the time of his life monitoring the direction of the Thruster of the handlebars and, if it was night, and a full moon was out, Patrick would fly beneath its illuminating oyster penumbra and have Allan do his “ET phone Slut,” routine that Patrick taught his younger sibling when he was only three years old.

           

Patrick continues to fly whipping out his middle finger below. Von Behren coughs several times, sounding almost uncannily like Warren hinting about bed guys, trying to tell Patrick that he should have no trouble landing this so-called bad boy even though it doesn’t have any breaks in the Garcia clans back yard since all it essentially is is one giant trampoline. Patrick remembers how, when Amy started attending Manual and it was way less ghettoey a few years back when Patrick himself was only in fourth grade, donning a top hat and cane and seated at the former Lemonade-slash-ex-super solvent-slash-step-right-up ladies and experience the 69^th wonder of the West Bluff, the Garcia clan residence whenever Amy would bring one of her classmates home with her and if Patrick was lucky she would be adorned in a posh hopefully checkered-catholic girl skirt and Patrick would lead her aside while Amy had her hair crimped into a side pony-tail and explain to her about the wonder curiosity of the Flyin’ Garcia Lawn next door and then, have his brother Allan employed as a well known stunt double urchin to perform a swan dive into the grass of the Garcia Clan lawn next door sans net and at the moment Allan performs his precipitous dive, his fingers pressed together, elbows forming an arch waiting for the classmate to jump off the lip of Mcreynolds window sill and hopefully, if Patrick was lucky, his brother would already have the nose of the camcorder rolling in a certain direction know as juvenile lust.

 

 

“Dude, bro,” Allan says again, really starting to annoy the fuck out of Von Behren with his older siblings colloquial. “You have no idea how close it was in there.”

 

Patrick looks back at his brother’s neck and flashes a look of duh. Von Behren tries to yell something over Patrick’s shoulder, but the hi-altitude and spurts of wind keep his inquiry muffled.

 

“I mean, Coach M literally thought I was an Indian or something. I couldn’t breath for like five minutes he had his belt lassoed around my neck so tight and then when he stationed me in the Guillotine, I suddenly saw my whole life flash before me—which sad to say, was not very much at all.”

 

Patrick adds a no shit and then comment a that’s because you’re only eight.

 

Patrick has looped fairly high that Von Behren can see all of West Peoria and he is pretty sure he sees what appears to be Northwoods Mall, looking like a rather dull monotonous box of wet cardboard luring in beads of car-ferrying patrons like ants. Allan continues to tell his tomahawk twirling brother how he saw Hale scoop him up and ferry him over the shoulder out of the side door of the gym and how he remembers seeing Lynford run like a female basketball player runs with his elbows transitioning into windshield wipers as he jetted out the gym and Dejuan looking around and tipping his hat before dashing out and how Allan felt betrayed and just a tad pissed, thinking about Justine Bateman in lurid sexual positions as Coach M tethered presumably his own belt around Allan’s neck. Allan said he felt rather betrayed by his brother, but then admits that this ride on the Thruster and the rescue was one hell of a way to make up for forgetting his sibling’s ass in the first place. Although Von Behren can tell from where he is stationed that Patrick and Allan are participating in what his grandma calls a “Taster choice” moment of sentimentality and recognition between them, he is still frantically trying to yell something into their direction.

 

“Wah???” Patrick yells back, still steering the vessel with one hand.

 

“I said, Allan, did Coach M happen to recognize it was you? Did he see your true identity? Did he know it was you underneath all the pancake make-up and the pow-wow-wow-wows?”  

 

“I don’t think so,” Adds Allan. “In fact, I’d more or less swear on a back issues of Playboy and Nintendo Power that they thought I was bona fide.”

 

That parrot bleats out its pecker pecker dance again. Patrick turns around and tells it to shut the fuck up, Polly. Allan takes a fresh whiff of air before continuing on with his rendition of the captured events.

 

“After Coach M took me hostage and put me in the Guillotine he asked the crowd who should we set free this low-life redskin terrorist wannabe injun or some guy named Barabbas, who is apparently locked away somewhere in the school and the crowd started chanting set free Barabbas and then, as if I was pinned in a gallows, starting hurtling tomatoes and eggs and expired fruit. I think Bev Pinsol even tossed her bra in my face, which nearly wiped me out—talk about overload on the olfactory sensory device. Ick!!!”

 

“So no one realized it was you?” Von Behren inquires again, trying not to look down or to think about which stratosphere his captain is currently cruising through in a rather slovenly fashion or from overhead, what sort of shape his own body would make if he would topple off of the side pegs of the Thruster splattering in the center of Starr street below—how it would resemble leftover jam with a cable static array of flies humming annoyingly over his remnants. Allan turns over and looks at Von Behren on the back of the Thruster as if he needn’t harbor any care in the world and says that he’s getting to that.

 

“I was about ready to be crucified—martyred which is kind of cool if you think about it, since I’m sure once all of this pancake makeup would wear thin I would be recognized and coach M would have to erect a statue in my honor.”

 

Both Dave and Pat yell at Allan. Allan says he’s sorry for the martyr jab and then continues.

 

            “Anyway, Coach M said for legal purposed that he had to wash his hands of the entire event before he quote, unquote, accidentally tripped over the latch setting the guillotine blade free and then goodbye Mr. Allan.”

 

            “He washed his hands?”

 

            “Publicly. Yeah. The Crowd made a big fucking deal about it too. It was as if he was reenacting something rather important and life changing.”

 

            “So anyway,” Von Behren says, briefly releasing one hand free of Patrick’s becoming torso, making a reeling carry-on motion with his pointer finger as if he wishes Allan would stop digressing before slightly stuttering, fastening his arms back even more tightly around Patrick’s waist like a cummerbund. Patrick ashes his cigarette and keeps looking down lost in how the ashes seem to drop and then all of a sudden dissipate into the falling atmosphere of the forever blue.

 

            “Yeah,” Allan comments. “Anyway, the crowd apparently was familiar with what Coach M was doing because Coach M kept trying to do a routine where he would quote, unquote “accidentally” trip over the latch but lucky for my ass, literally the latch wouldn’t break. First he put on sunglasses, turned around and started doing a moonwalk backwards into the latch but he just ended up tripping over his own feet, which made the crowd breakout into laughter. The he started pretending to skip across the stage like a little school girl on her way to loose her virginity at Little Red riding hoods house, tripping right when he reach the latch but when he fell, that failed to skewer the latch as well also.

 

            “Shit.” Notes Patrick in the same drawled out monotone commonly reserved for his “dude,” mantra. Patrick has let the bike slowly idle. Both him and Allan feel completely safe up here, what seems like hundreds of feet above the school. Von Behren has resorted to taking deep breaths and holding them before squeezing his eyes shut, coercing himself not to look down no matter what.

 

            Patrick finishes his smoke, lights another smoke, from the nub of his recently extinguished one in a fashion in which he will day call monkey-fucking before dishing the lit-butt end of the cigarette off the vessel and watching as it slowly winks out into deep blue pasture below before catching a breeze and entering a windy draft of oblivion.  

 

            “Coach M then apparently pretended he was a waiter and knocked over some sort of tray into the side of the guillotine and still, the latch failed to snap. On a final endeavor he did a cartwheel crash into the latch on purpose and still nothing. Finally he got pissed off, ran into the Visitors Locker closet and came out brandishing an epee telling the crowd, explicitly to remember, he was showing a fencing demonstration when he accidentally severed the rope latch inadvertently releasing the guillotine blade on a rather fortuitous and random native American guest who was himself performing his interpretation of Injun Joe from Mark Twain.”

 

            Patrick looks at the mole-ridden crevice slope of the back of Allan’s neck, commenting to himself that damn, he wishes he would have seen that. Von Behren looks below, notices the assemblage of more of CLS dignitaries and Varsity Elite standing in the parking lot with their hands stuck in a wounded salute into their brow like visors.

 

            “Only the moment he held out up the blade and muttered something under his breath Marcellus Bucks father Got up and said shit, real slow, waving his arms as if he was trying to stop an airforce jet plane on the runway, addressing Coach M solely by his last name as if he were reprimanding him and had done in numerous times before. He yelled ran up, looked me in the face, and asked Looney if he had no clue what he had here—which of course, Coach M merely pouted, jabbed the saber into the ground and sounded almost like a little kid whose parents were turning off the TV due to the violence and copious sex scenes.”

 

            Patrick continues ashing his smoke, idling his aerial vessel. Von Behren screams out that we need to quit stirring above enemy territory and get our ass home. This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission. Stating that he can only imagine how Lynnford and Hale are killing the time with old Warren and Helen back at Casa McReynolds. Von Behren can feel Patrick’s torso swivel as he turns around and says, dude, enjoy this, Alan’s almost done with his story before snapping off the tip of another ember.

 

            “Marcellus Buck’s father then somehow convinces Coach M that I’m some mascot for Illinois named Chief Illnilick.”

 

            Von Behren interrupts Allan, saying that’s Illiniwek, illinilick is what you call to sophomore thespian majors at U of I experimenting during the weekend at a theatre party. Patrick turns around points his cigarette into Von Behren at close range and comments that’s a good one. Allan simply shrugs, continuing on with his hostage caper.

 

            “Next thing I know Coach M is looking at me addressing me as Chief, rubbing his eyes as if discerning something and then saying by God it is—before he picked up the vibrating phallic shaped microphone that Meredith-Elise reported she saw Bev Pinesol using it as a dildo announced me as, all the way from Urbana-Champaign, performing his own dance of death, I give you Chief Illinilik!!! And the next thing I know I’m being momentarily set free and Coach M pulls me over and tells me that this is my last dance before shoving me out to half-court where the crowd, who obviously knew just a leeetle bit more about the Chiefs antics then did I started chanting his name reeeeeeel slow at first and clapping. I had no clue what exactly to do even though a spotlight flickered right on me and the next thing I realized somebody yelled out dance fucker and I remembered dad slouched in the confines of his throne watching Illinois football games and that they must have thought that I was the mascot from U of I, so of course, I started hammering my limbs up and down and stomping my limbs all over the place, trying to remember the moves Crazy Hoof down the street performs in his back yard after he has just gone mushroom hunting in the nuclear woods.”

 

            “Then what happened?” Inquires his older sibling, still looking at the puerile academy below with a devious smirched stenciled into his lips like he has complete power to create and to destroy.

 

            “So I start doing this so-called esteemed war-paint dance, which, of course, I really have no clue just what the fuck I’m just trying to evade the neck-severing gaping mouth of the guillotine. And the clattering palms of the crowd starts clapping even faster and faster and I keep on pogoing up and down and branching my legs out like a sabre and there are howls and Coach M even starts making an Indian sign that looks more like a Hitler salute than anything and the next thing I know, the Varsity Elite cheerleaders come out to center court and begin shaking their tight-ass booties in every direction and for once I feel like the center of attention.”

 

            “Damn,” Patrick adds, wondering to himself, just how his sibling managed to get lodged out of the spotlight and into the guillotine.

 

            “Anyway,” Allan continues, “I’m flanked by the sweet ass short-skirted chorus of the Commeteers when the song ends so it looks and feels like the whole thing has somehow been choreographed. At the end of the dance I have to admit I got a little carried away with the sudden venerating and started smacking my Native American ass in the direction of Karen Pinesol, asking her who her daddy was?”

 

            Patrick gives his sibling a look indicative of an attaboy. Von Behren gives both of his companions a look indicative of get on with it.

 

            “So the crowd is going out of control and making little tomahawk chops by swiping their arms down in a batting motion and everyone is cheering, wildly, before Coach M once again grapples the microphone shaped like a pecker and starts instituting a chorus of Hail to the chief in a round and the spotlight dips totally on me. I tell you bro, that was one of the highlights of my eight years on this planet, so far.”

 

chief Illiniallan





 

 

 

 

 

Von Behren looses his vision in the swelling sea of blue and brick below.

 

He wishes Patrick would just hurry up and get him back home.