“Are you totally insane?” he said on the drive.
“I hardly feel it,” Hunter replied, still woozy.
The ER doctor, who said Hunter had sliced his tendon in two, sewed the wound up and referred him to an orthopedic clinic. By the time that office opened, Hunter still hadn’t asked for his mother’s consent for surgery. You couldn’t be made of matter if you reflected God’s nature. Afraid the question would erect a wall between them, he let it go. The tendon retreated up his arm, or appeared to, and his finger dangled limply from then on.
“Talk to him?” said Cody, back at the Motel 6.
Hunter held up his journal as if it contained the signature.
“Sweet. What’s Pussy Senior like?”
“Kind of fat,” said Hunter, knowing how quickly Cody lost interest in people who weren’t in riding shape.
“That’s lame. I found us a sick ride.”
“I found a sicker one,” said Hunter, piquing Cody’s curiosity. Where? Who’d told him? His dad? Some wino? A pro cyclist visiting the Center for High Altitude Training? Juli Furtado? Tinker Juarez? Hunter refused to answer until the eleven o’clock news, which confirmed that the US government had suspended its operations, and the entire park system was closed indefinitely to both visitors and rangers.
All the way up US 180, over blasting Metallica, Cody shouted into the predawn dark that they would be devirginizing the canyon. Not until they veered around the shut gate through a stand of pinyon pines did he quiet the music and fall silent as if in uncharacteristic reverence. A glorious sunrise was igniting the canyon prongs. “It’s surreal,” Hunter said, full of a strange unease, as if his mother was right, and his survival on the ride down depended on faith that the land was make-believe.
“Yes, another lovely painting this morning,” Cody said. He was masking his awe, thought Hunter. He didn’t want to admit that the world could seem too beautiful to be real.
“Think we’ll be arrested?” Hunter asked in the empty trailhead lot, pouring water into his bottles.
“Everest used to be off limits to climbers, too.”
“Is that a no?”
“It angered the gods. I say fuck that.”
He almost wished Cody would fear arrest, so he could pull out Buck’s card and say, Here’s how I know we’re safe. If he mentioned Buck out of context, it would seem like he needed to talk about him.
A solitary hawk was circling as they aired up their tires. They loaded their saddlebags. Hunter led the way into a stand of cliff-rose. The leaves of those twisty trees pricked him and made him shiver in the warm air. He wheelied over a fallen pine. Barely had he landed again before the world fell out from under him and he was soaring downhill, almost too fast to control.
To keep from flying over the bars, he hung back with his weight behind the saddle. The path narrowed to the width of his tires. Before him gaped miles of empty space. He leaned hard left. Over the wind Cody’s screams sounded like thrill-cries, changing in intensity so many times that Hunter paused at a wide place in the trail in case it meant something sinister.
Straddling his bike, he counted mesas that rose between him and the snowy North Rim. All part of the illusion, he was musing when Cody came careening around a bend. He skidded halfway to a halt before knocking Hunter over.
“What the fuck?” Cody said, as Hunter untangled himself from his bike.
“You screamed like you were in trouble.”
“You were winning again, dickface.”
“I’m only riding,” he said.
“Quarter mile ahead without trying.”
Cody was right, Hunter hadn’t been trying. “Go in front then.”
“No, Death Wish, you’d be riding my ass.”
Cody wasn’t smiling. “I don’t have a death wish,” Hunter said, startled to realize his friend’s attitude wasn’t just a shtick.
“Well, I do. I’d rather die than lose to you again.”
“I didn’t realize we were racing,” he lied.
“Last night on that butte, middle of nowhere and you still wouldn’t let me win. You flew right over my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Hunter said, honestly surprised.
“‘I didn’t realize we were racing,’” Cody repeated in an effeminate whine. “Like mother, like daughter.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You think you win races because it’s not real. It’s all your fantasy, and in your head you deserve to be champion.”
“Fine, I deserve it,” Hunter heard himself say, as his fondness for his friend dissipated into the enormous emptiness.
“Let’s find out,” said Cody, pushing his way between Hunter and the cliff edge.
After Cody had vanished around a bend, Hunter stood there in a daze, straddling his bike. Emily was sick at home, thinking kind thoughts, while healthy Cody was here living out his hateful dream.
If I’m winning because I believe I ought to, then I’ll fucking win, Hunter thought in belated reply as he pushed off downhill.
He pedaled with all his might. One inch to the right as he accelerated, and he would be dead. One inch left, and he would ricochet off the cliff wall into the open air. But he was in control. He shifted to the smallest rear cog. To lean into curves was exhilarating. His whole body hovered over the chasm. He fell into a trance, exulted, breathed, put his life at risk too many times to count, until his hands were numb from the bumps and the trail petered out by a boathouse on the shore of the Colorado River.
He laid his bike on the gravel beach and stood in awe of the colored canyon wall that rose before him. Except for the rippling water, it was quiet. His thoughts about Cody seemed small to him now. No longer caring who had won, he looked toward the boathouse. Cody must be in there, intending to scare him. Let him have his moment to gloat, Hunter thought, walking over. When he shouted Cody’s name, it echoed back. He arrived at the wooden structure, reached for the door handle. As he did, the door swung wide. “Boo,” he cried out, producing a gasp from a uniformed female ranger.
She dropped the kayak she was dragging. “Help,” Hunter heard himself say as she touched a gun in its holster. Pretend to need water. I’ve wandered for days. But she noticed his bike and moved her hand onto her radio.
“Are you dumb or insane?” was her first question of many. Had he thought about the hikers he might have killed? Imagined that the rangers would vanish at midnight? Had he ridden helmetless in a show of bravado, or had his helmet fallen into the canyon, as he so easily could have done too? Was he aware of the laws she was citing in a rush? No, he indicated with a head shake to each rhetorical question, he wasn’t, hadn’t, didn’t, and so on until she asked for his friend’s last name.
“I’m here alone,” he said, hoping Cody could see what was going on.
“I scared you more than you scared me,” the ranger said, and then she radioed to headquarters.
“Is his bike expensive?” asked a man over the radio.
“Kid, how much did that bike cost?” she said.
“I’m not hurting anyone,” Hunter protested, wishing Cody were here after all. Cody could say, “Know who we are, bitch?” and take off running, whereas Hunter felt knee-jerk guilt to think of this woman as a bitch.
She detached his front wheel and chained it up with the kayaks. “See you up top,” she said, and told her colleague to meet Hunter at the trailhead.
“I want my wheel back,” he said meekly, scared for his friend, even as he feared Cody could overhear him being a pussy.
“You can hike out with the rest of it, or I’ll keep the whole thing.”
The ranger escorted him over to where the bike lay. He dragged it out of her sight behind a stand of mahogany, where he sat down to wait for Cody.
The sun was high overhead now. He grew thirsty and uncomfortable. Half an hour passed by. He wanted his wheel back. The ranger hadn’t even asked how it felt to ride the canyon. Did she not wonder? Was it a thrill she couldn’t begin to imagine? If Cody would just show up, they could mock her incuriosity together, but it was becoming difficult to believe his friend was okay.