John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

“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.

He looked up at the terraced cliff. If he’d been guiding events by religious conviction, Cody would signal from above with a pebble. There was only the wind in the trees, the flow of the river.

When he couldn’t sit still for the disquiet he felt, he balanced the bike on its wheel, held its handlebars at chest level, and pushed it in front of him.

It was hotter than it had been. He drank some water. By the first switchback his arms already ached from their outstretched position. He moved his right hand to the saddle. His limp finger bounced with every bump. Occasionally in dust or manure he could make out a scant set of tire treads. This didn’t mean Cody hadn’t ridden past, only that on such a skinny trail their paths had overlapped.

He inched uphill, scared to have rounded such impossible bends. The trail never remained straight for more than a few feet. At one point where the route veered acutely left, he couldn’t see how he’d made it past without dismounting, unless the canyon was an illusion after all. Nor did he recall this particular arrangement of spires whose crows cawed as if to say, Getting warmer .

He scrolled through his odometer to find that his maximum speed had been an unimaginable twenty-nine miles per hour.

He’d ridden downhill in closeted superstition and survived, but Cody had ridden an atheist and now lay dying.

To shout Cody’s name brought only his own voice echoing in ever fainter reply. He shifted positions and walked in front of his bike, pulling it like a plow. He drank the last of his water. Scenes played out in his mind of finding Cody at the trailhead, screaming at him about this dirty trick. He teared up to imagine the sheer relief. He pictured the ranger at the morgue, saying to Cody’s desolate parents, “If only your son’s friend had admitted that he was down there.”

If she hadn’t stolen his wheel, he would ride back down and change his story, have her radio in for help. It’s that bitch’s fault, he was telling himself when he spotted a second set of treads.

Heart racing, Hunter propped his bike up against some sagebrush and followed the tracks to where they trailed away at a shale slab.

A few feet farther, two sets picked up again, but of course below here he’d retraced his path and there would need to be three sets.

It was time to pray. I’m sorry for being unkind, he chanted in mind, trudging uphill again. If his mother wished for Christian Science treatment, she could have it. His lack of empathy had killed Cody. Be generous, and the universe repaid you. He vowed to call from the first pay phone and drop his emancipation suit. He was responsible for his own acts and felt ashamed of them all. Fall in love with the world, and you quit trusting in God to guide you through it. I trust, he chanted, I don’t love the world, until he rounded the final bend to face a uniformed Buck, arms crossed, asking, “You and your friend like the ride?”

Back when Hunter was friendless, before Cody first lent him a spare bike, there’d been nothing but TV. He’d gotten to be well-versed in the tropes of drama, such as the hurt son who abhorred his deadbeat dad. On TV some teenage boy was always shouting “You ruined my life!” to a father he barely knew. “How dare you show your face here?” Hunter didn’t wish to be a kid like that. What if Emily had lied, and the tea and lingerie had come from another man? What if Buck didn’t know he had a son? Tempting as it was to bellow curses, Buck might not grasp their meaning, in which case Hunter would feel ashamed for years to come. Too thirsty to speak anyway, he walked past, to the van. He opened the cooler. Only when cold water had flooded the dry cavities in him did he consider how suggestively Buck had enunciated friend .