Ca-racked

for Michael Badouin

“Well, what’re we gonna do now?” Jameson Blinker Frederickson balanced on the edge of a massive ledge, his back to the river snaking through the Lower Lizard Wilderness Area some five hundred feet below.

His right arm was raised, bent at the elbow. In his hand was a 9mm Glock, the barrel pressed hard against his right temple. The pressure kept his hand from trembling.

Dale looked at him from a few feet away. Sweat beads formed on his forehead and crept down his face. The breeze was steady, but not strong except for the occasional gusts. It came with the scents of acacia and dusty creosote.

Of course, given his friend’s current position on the ledge, the wind gusts were a whole other problem. It added a new dimension, a second choice that was actually a lack of choice. Would Jameson die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound? Or would a sudden gust of wind remove his right to change his mind? In that case he would die as the victim of an unfortunate accident. Would that make big enough headlines in his warped little mind?

Maybe Jameson hadn’t thought of that. “You know, don’t you, the wind’s been gusting. I mean, it could suddenly erase your chance to change your mind about all this. Then your death would be ruled accidental.”

Jameson pressed the barrel of the gun a little harder against his temple, as if to reiterate a threat. “I’m not gonna change my mind.”

Dale raised his arms, dropped them to his sides. He tried to keep his voice from flattening into a monotone. “C’mon, JB, you don’t wanna do this. I mean, is that what I’m supposed to say? What am I supposed to say?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the white pickup parked some twenty feet behind him. A slight grin curled the corner of his lip as he looked at his friend again. In his best used-car salesman voice, he said, “Whadda I gotta do to put you in that nice clean pickup today?”

The attempt at levity had little effect. Again Jameson adjusted his grip on the pistol. He drew his lips into a grim, flat line.

A hint of frustration crept into Dale’s voice. “Jesus. Look, we came out here to have a good time, man.” Despite the fear coursing through his nervous system, or maybe because of it, once more a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He pointed at Jameson. “An’ you, my friend, are gonna totally screw that up.”

“A grin? You grinned? And you’re makin’ jokes? So this is fun for you?”

Dale’s hands were suddenly animated, waving off the accusation. “No no no! C’mon, man, you know me. I grin and make jokes when I get nervous. That’s all it is, hey? Just nerves. C’mon, man. C’mon.”

Jameson shook his head. “Well see, now there y’go. There’s your good time right there. How many people can say they’ve seen a guy do himself and then fall five hundred feet into an abyss? That’ll be a chuckle a second, won’t it?”

An abyss? Seriously? “An abyss? So what, this is all for dramatic effect?”

Jameson frowned. “What?”

Dale put his hands on his hips. “Look, I’m just sayin’, a guy who’s about to kill himself doesn’t say words like ‘abyss.’”

Jameson glared at him. “Now exactly how in the hell would you know? How many people have you seen kill themselves? An’ by the way, if the answer’s greater than zero, that probably says as much about you as it does about them.”

Yeah. It says I’m a nutcake magnet. Frustration filled Dale’s voice. “None, okay? I haven’t seen anyone kill himself. Or herself. Whatever. Again, all I’m sayin’ is— Wait. ‘Greater than zero?” What’s that, integer practice?”

Again Jameson frowned. He lowered the gun for a moment. “Dale, what in the hell are you talkin’ about? Here I am about to do myself and you’re crackin’ wise?” He held his arms out to his sides, the gun still in his right hand. “What the hell?”

As if suddenly feeling the weight of the pistol in his right hand, Jameson turned his head in that direction, then brought the barrel to his right temple again.

Dale said, “What?” A grin burst across his face. “Oh man, you gotta stop. I mean, can you hear yourself? I know this is supposed to be all serious, but—” Dale burst out laughing.

Rather than trying to rein it in, he allowed it to run its course. As he laughed, in bits and pieces he said, “First, you referred to the river gorge as an ‘abyss’!” He laughed some more. “An’ then you said ‘greater than zero.’” His laughter redoubled.

Jameson thought for a moment Dale was going to the ground, he was laughing so hard. This wasn’t at all how it was supposed to go. This was a serious situation. That his impending suicide was serious, not that his idiot friend cracking up was serious.

As Dale gasped for breath, he said, “An’ then just now, for the second time, you said you were gonna ‘do’ yourself.” Again a grin worked its way across his face. “Remember, I’ve seen you in the shower, buddy.” He paused, then said, “An’ you don’t have the equipment!” Again he burst into laughter. He reached up one hand to wipe tears from his eyes. “An’ then on top of all that, you asked if I’m ‘crackin’ wise’.” Again he burst out laughing, and he actually bent almost double.

When he’d regained a modicum of composure, he straightened. He was still breathing erratically as he tried to catch his breath. In his best Brooklyn voice, which he’d picked up from Jameson, who had never been to Brooklyn and was born and raised in the desert southwest, he said, “Whaddayou, nuts?”

And again he burst into laughter, complete with tears.

The tears had both a therapeutic emotional effect and a paradoxical pair of physical effects. Aside from those, there was also one immediate benefit. At least for a moment he couldn’t see his crazy friend with the gun. Therapeutically, emotionally, the tears made everything seem cleaner and lighter. Physically, they momentarily blinded him, but afterward his eyes felt washed, clean.

Interesting. Later he’d have to share that observation with Jameson. Well, you know, if he didn’t ‘do’ himself. He almost burst out laughing again. Between the physical aspects and the mental and emotional, and then the overall connotation of the whole thing, they could bat that ‘do myself’ thing around for a couple hours.

Finally under control, the outburst ended, Dale quickly and consciously erased the residual grin from his mug. He gathered his composure and said, “So what, JB, you’re gonna make a grand display of your intelligence just before you drive a three-eighths inch hole through your brain? Do you not see the irony?”

“What? What intelligence?”

Dale shrugged. “Hey, I’m starting to wonder. I mean, you’re using words like ‘abyss’ and phrases like ‘greater than zero’. See, that’s obviously an attempt to show off. But then on the other hand, you keep saying you’re gonna ‘do’ yourself. Are you afraid to use the word ‘kill’?”

“No I ain’t afraid to use—”

“And what’s with the lapse into your Brooklyn character? ‘Crackin’ wise’? I mean, seriously? An’ now ‘I ain’t’? You never use ‘ain’t’ when you’re being yourself.” Maybe he needs a Snickers bar, like that commercial on TV.

“Wait. Is that what this is, JB? Is Joey Bones Salerno gonna shoot you ‘cause you can’t do it yourself?” He held up one hand. “No, wait. That can’t be it. Joey Bones prefers a revolver, right?”

Jameson wagged the barrel of the 9mm in a small circle. “Whoa, whoa. Let’s get back to the basic question here, a’right?”

“Which was?”

“Whadda we— I mean, what are we going to do now?”

Dale shrugged. “About what?”

“What? About— this. The situation. Me, balanced and teetering on­ the edge of— I mean, me standing here with a gun to my head.”

Was he about to say ‘teetering on the edge of eternity’? “Not to drive the point home or anything, but were you about to say ‘teetering on the edge of eternity’? ‘Cause if you were, then—”   

“Yeah, well, no. I wasn’t gonna say that. So here we are, eh?”

Again, Dale shrugged. “Here we are.”

Jameson pronounced each word carefully, as if forcing down whatever character was springing to the forefront. “So what do we do now?”

“Again, regarding what?”

Jameson screwed his face into a sarcastic mask, then sighed. “Regarding me standing here with a gun to my head.”

“Oh, okay. Well, it’s your gun, right?”

Jameson nodded.

“And it’s your head?”

“Yes, it’s my head. Whaddayou, think I took it outta the duffel bag an’ sneaked it off the set after the movie?”

Dale frowned. “What? What movie?”

“Yeah, like you don’t know.”

“No, seriously. What movie?”

“Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag? Wit’ my good frien’ Pesci?”  

“JB, you don’t know Joe Pesci. You’ve never met—”

“An’ you t’ink I what? Glued it on my neck or somethin’? Yeah, it’s my head, a’right?”

“JB, you don’t know Pesci and you are not Pesci. Okay?”

Jameson frowned. “What? Of course I ain’t— of course I’m not Pesci.”

Dale nodded. “Right. So now that that’s settled, just so you know, Joey Bones can’t shoot you. If you really wanna do this, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

Again JB took the gun away from his head for a moment. He gestured loosely with it toward Dale. “How do you know? You don’t know what’s in my mind, a’right? Don’t even try it.”

Dale shrugged. “Never said I did.”

“But you just said—”

“I just said Joey Bones Salerno can’t shoot you. I don’t know what’s in your head, but I know Joey Bones thoroughly.

“For one thing, like I said, he prefers a revolver. An’ if he was gonna—”

“Hey, he can use a 9mm if he wants to.”

“Yeah, I know. But he wouldn’t use a Glock. He doesn’t like Glocks, remember? An’ he’s not wild about nine millimeters either. If he was gonna use a pistol at all, it’d probably be a .22 an’ he’d shoot you like six times. Or if it was just to put you to sleep, he’d pick a .45 and put one in the back of your head.”

“Okay, so I’ll just pretend this is a .45. An’ I’ll have—”

“A .45 Kimber.”

“What?”

“A .45 caliber Kimber. Joey likes Kimber quality.”

“Okay, a .45 caliber Kimber. Whatever. An’ I’ll have Joey Bones sneak up on—”

“Hey! Hey! Joey Bones don’t sneak!”

“Right. Right. I’ll have Joey Bones come up behind me an’ put one right through the base of my skull. That sound right?”

“Perfect. Well, there is one thing.”

Frustration crept into JB’s voice. “What now?”

“I was just thinkin’, with that scenario, the blast’ll probably knock you forward.”

“So?”

“So you don’t get the big final act. The swan dive. The drop into the ‘abyss.’” Dale grinned.

“A’right, let the abyss thing go already, okay? Anyway, I see what you’re sayin’.” JB paused for a moment. “So I guess I gotta turn around. Only... I don’t like heights. I mean, I’m kind’a afraid of heights. So—”

“Wait. You’re about to whack yourself in a way that you’ll end up fallin’ over five hundred feet, but you’re worried about seein’ that you’re up that high?”

“That’s right. Is that all right with you or does that present you with a problem? I suppose if you were gonna kill yourself it would go just perfect, Mr. Perfection.”

Dale shrugged. “Just seems to me maybe you’re worried about the wrong thing, that’s all.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait. I’ve got it. The wind’s been gustin’ pretty regularly, right?”

“Yeah....”

“So you put the pretend .45 up behind your head, ‘cause after all, Joey Bones is holdin’ it an’ he’s behind you, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, so you put it up behind your head and you hold it there. You wait. Put tension on the trigger though, and then when the wind gusts, blam! You off yourself. Then the gust will blow you backward into the aby— into the gorge.”

JB frowned. “You really think that’ll work?”

“Sure it’ll work.” He paused. “What, you’re not sure?”

“I just don’t know that the wind gust will be strong enough to—”

“Oh Jesus H. Christ on a swizzle stick. Tell you what, Jameson. If the gust isn’t hard enough and you fall forward and you don’t roll or otherwise fall into the gorge, I’ll throw you in myself. A’right? We good now?”

For the first time, JB grinned. He nodded. “You’d really do that for me?”

“You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to do—”

“Okay okay, we’re good.”

“All right. So go ahead.”

“Okay, here I go.” Jameson Blinker Frederickson dropped both hands to his sides. He craned his neck left, then right as he shook both arms, trying to relax them. When his warmups were over, he raised his right arm, extended it, then slowly bent his elbow.

He brought the gun up behind his head. “I think I’m gonna have to turn my head to the left. Otherwise, I can’t—”

“I don’t think Joey’ll mind.”

“Goodbye, Dale. You’ve been a great friend.”

“Yeah, except I couldn’t stop you from killing yourself.”

JB dropped his arms again. He looked exasperated. “You know what I mean. Why you gotta spoil it?”

“Sorry.” Dale zipped his forefinger and thumb across his lips, then nodded. Out of the corner of his mouth he said, “Go ahead.”

JB nodded. “Thanks. Okay. Goodbye, Dale. You’ve been a good friend and—”

“Wait a minute. A second ago I was a great friend and now I’m only a good friend? Is that because I interrupted you?”

JB’s eyelids went flat. “It didn’t help. Look, it was just an accident, okay?”

Dale nodded and again zipped his lips.

“Okay, goodbye Dale you’ve been a massively, wonderfully great friend and I’m truly thankful to you for that. Okay, so adios.”

He turned his head to the left and quickly moved the gun up behind his head.

But too quickly.

The barrel caught the side of his head, which caused the gun to twist from his fingers and drop over the side into the aby— into the river gorge.

For a long moment, he just stood there. Finally he raised both arms to his sides, then let them drop. “Well, hell. That’s that, I guess. So what’re we gonna do now?”

“Last time over here I found a great Mexican food place in town. You hungry?”

JB grinned. “Ahh, now see? That’s what you say to get a guy into a white pickup.”

* * * * * * *