Arthur Hailey - Overload

The tower, like others in the camp area, was surounded by a protective chain link fence. Later it would be learned that Danny had surmounted the fence by climbing a tree and dropping from a low branch. Now Wally Talbot reached the fence and leaped. With what seemed a superhuman effort he grabbed the top and scrambled over. As he landed inside it could be seen that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. Then he was on the tower and climbing fast.

Breathlessly, tensely, the hastily assembled group of spectators, reporters and others watched from below. While they did, a trio of workmen from Wally's transmission line crew arrived and, after trying several keys, unlocked a gate in the chain link fence. Once inside the enclosure they, too, began climbing the tower. But Wally was far ahead, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the small redheaded boy.

Fred Wilkins had reached the base of the tower; he was winded and trembling. Briefly he moved as if to climb also, but someone restrained him.

All eyes were focused on the two figures nearest the top-Danny Wilkins, only a foot or two from the transmission lines, and Wally Talbot, now close behind.

Then it happened-so swiftly that those watching could not agree afterward on the succession of events or even precisely what they were.

In what seemed a single moment, Danny-perched, it seemed, within inches of an insulator which separated the tower from a transmission line conductor-reached out with the aluminum pole in an attempt to snare the kite. Simultaneously, from just below and slightly to one side, Wally Talbot grabbed at the boy and pulled and held him. A pulsebeat later both appeared to slip, the boy sliding downward, clinging to a girder, and Wally losing his grasp. At the same time, Wally, perhaps instinctively to maintain a precarious balance, seized the metal pole as Danny released it. The pole swung in an arc. Instantly a great ball of crackling orange light erupted, the pole disappeared, and Wally Talbot was enveloped in a corona of transparent flame. Then, with equal suddenness, the flame was gone and Wally's body sagged limply, motionless, across a tower support.

Miraculously, neither fell. Seconds later two of Wally Talbot's crew reached his body and began easing it down. The third man pinned Danny Wilkins to a girder and held him there while the others descended. The boy was apparently unhurt; he was sobbing and the sound could be heard below.

Then, somewhere on the other side of the camp, a siren began sounding short, sharp blasts.

The cocktail bar pianist switched nostalgically from Hello, Young Lovers! to Whatever Will Be, Will Be.

"If he plays manymore of those oldies," Harry London said, "I'm gonna start crying in my beer. Another vodka, pal?"

"Why the hell not? Make it a double." Nim, who had been hearing the music too, now listened to himself objectively. His speech was slurring at the edges, he observed, which figured. He had already had too much to drink, and knew it, but found himself not caring. Groping in a pocket, he took out his car keys and pushed them across the small, black-topped table.

"Take care of these. See that I get a taxi home."

London pocketed the keys. "Sure thing. You can stay at my place overnight, if you want."

"No thanks, Harry." Soon, when the liquor had dulled his perceptions further, Nim intended to go home, in fact wanted to. He wasn't worried about appearing there drunk-at least, not tonight. Leah and Benjy would be asleep and wouldn't see him. And Ruth, with her compassion and sympathy, would be forgiving.

"Testing, testing," Nim said. He had wanted to bear his voice again before using it. Now, satisfied with his coherence, he told Harry, "Y'know what I think? I think Wally'd be better off dead."

London took a swig of beer before answering. "Maybe Wally won't see it that way. Okay, so be got burned had and lost his pecker. But there's other . .."

Nim's voice rose. "For Chrissakes, Harry! Do you understand what you're saying?"

"Take it easy," London cautioned. Others in the bar had glanced their way.

He added quietly, "Sure, I understand."

"In time . . ." Nim leaned across the table, balancing his words the way a conjurer might stand a plate on edge. "In time the burns will heal. They'll do skin grafts. But you can't order a new penis from the Sears catalogue."

"It's true. Can't deny it." London shook his head sadly. "That poor benighted bastard!"

The cocktail pianist was now into Lara's theme and Harry London wiped away a tear.

"Twenty-eight!" Nim said. "That's how old he is. For God's sake, twenty-eight! Why, any normal man that age has still got ahead of him a lifetime of. . ."

London said curtly, "I don't need a diagram." He finished his beer and motioned a waiter for another. "One thing you gotta remember, Nim. Not every guy's an all-star cocksman like you. With you, if you lost out the way Wally has, I could understand it being the end of the road, or you thinking it was." He asked curiously, "You ever kept score? Maybe you could get in the Guinness Book of World Records."

“There's a Belgian writer," Nim said, his thoughts for the moment diverted,

"Georges Simenon, who says he made it with ten thousand different women.

I'm not up to that many, or even near it."

"Leave out the numbers, then. The point is, maybe his dong was never as all-fired important to Wally as yours is to you."

Nim shook his head. "I doubt it." He remembered the times be had seen Wally Jr. and his wife, Mary, together. Nim's finely boned instincts told him the two of them had a good thing going sexually. He wondered sadly what might happen to their marriage.

The beer and double vodka arrived. "When you're coming back," Nim told the waiter, "bring the same again."

It was early evening. The bar they were in-the Ezy Duzzit, smallish and dark, with a sentimental pianist who was just easing into Moon River-was not far from GSP & L headquarters. Nim and Harry London had walked over here at the end of their working day. The third day.

The past three days had been the worst short period of his life that Nim ever remembered.

On the first day, at Devil's Gate, the sense of stupefaction following the electrocution of Wally Talbot Jr. had lasted only seconds. Then, while Wally was still being brought down from the tower, standard emergency procedures went into high gear.

In any big utility company, electrocutions are rare but inevitably they happen-usually several times a year. The cause is either momentary carelessness, nullifying costly and rigid safety precautions, or a "thousandth chance" accident such as that which happened so swiftly while Nim and others watched.

Ironically, Golden State Power had an aggressive publicity program, aimed at parents and children, warning of dangers when kites were flown near overhead power lines. The utility had expended thousands of dollars on posters and comic books devoted to the subject and distributed them to schools and other agencies.

As Fred Wilkins, the red-haired technician was to disclose with anguish later, he knew of the warning program. But Wilkins' wife, Danny's mother, didn't know. She tearfully admitted having a vague impression that she might have heard something of the kind, but had forgotten when or where, nor had the memory surfaced when the kite-a birthday present from grandparents-arrived with the morning mail and she helped Danny put it together. As for Danny's climbing the tower, he was described by those who knew him as "a determined boy, and fearless." the hooked aluminum rod he had carried aloft was a gaff his father used for occasional deep sea fishing; it was stored in a tool shed where the boy had seen it often. None of that was known, of course, when a trained first-aid team, alerted by the camp siren, rushed to administer help to Wally Talbot. He was unconscious, had been badly burned over large areas of his body, and breathing had stopped.