Daredevils Read Free Page B

though he thinks he’s starting to know: the rules are the rules are the rules, the eternal truths unchanging, but inside the brotherhood of men are passageways and tangents, compartments and exceptions.
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    They leave the freeway and cut south through the desert. Soon the canyon comes into view, a great gray crack in the land. Crowds swarm on the far rim, and behind them a dome of trees cloisters a ranch house.
    The bulge of the launchpad stands at the far end of the crowd, a mound of earth with a metal, spirelike ramp, flanked by TV trucksand a white trailer. Below, the cut basalt walls of the canyon turn back afternoon light at strange angles, silvered here, ashen there. The walls crumble downward into piles of boulder, and then stone, and then earthen slopes of weed and duff at the canyon bottom, split by the heavy, swirling Snake River.
    They turn east, away from town, and enter a line of cars inching forward. Soon they hear the sound of a marching band—the harsh tin of the horns, the thump of drums. Grandpa guns the sputtering engine. To the left, in the hundred yards or so between the road and the canyon rim, crowds mill and clump; motorcycle engines whine. Beyond them is the ramp. Already, there is the Skycycle, the steam-powered rocket ship, cocked toward heaven, in red, white, and blue and with EVEL KNIEVEL spelled in golden letters and the numeral 1 on the tail fin.
    â€œSkycycle,” Grandpa scoffs. “Nothing cycle about it.”
    They come to the gate, and the man standing there with a bulging belly and hands full of bills gives their suits a second look. Grandpa hands him a fifty, then drives in, bumping across the field.
    â€œIsn’t this ridiculous?” he asks happily as he parks.
    Ahead Jason can see tent tops. People have been camping here all week, partying, drinking, fighting, skinny-dipping in the canyon pools, frightening the citizens, and upsetting the chamber of commerce.
    Grandpa waves his hand at the scene. “A lot of this is exactly the sort of thing you’ve got to avoid, now that you’re getting older. Drinking and whatnot. Rowdy nonsense. But you can’t hide yourself away. You’ve got to live in this world, and keep it off you somehow. But”—and here he pats the leather block of scriptures absently, with the heel of his fist—“you ought to have a little fun when you get a chance. This ought to be fun, don’t you think?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œYou guess.”
    Jason blushes. He feels bashful before this strange day.
    They take off their coats and ties, leave them folded on the seat, and head into the crowd. Grandpa veers toward the ramp in a stiff trot, winding past guys in trucker hats and cowboy boots, long-haired kids throwing Frisbees. The crowd tightens as they draw closer, but Grandpa slips through, making a way, until they are about thirty yards from the ramp. The scene looks like something out of
Billy Jack
—shirtless men with long hair and beards, blurry tattoos on their forearms; women in cutoffs with wild hair; the smell of cigarettes and marijuana. It’s like nothing Jason has ever seen around here, where men wear their hair short and women wear their skirts long and most people think Richard Nixon got a raw deal. A couple of guys wearing leather vests carry girls on their shoulders, girls in tank tops without bras, and Jason studies the shift and jiggle inside those shirts. Someone calls, “Fuckin’-A!” and Jason feels embarrassed for Grandpa, imagining that he has not experienced such worldliness or that he may feel Jason has not, and Jason worries that his grandfather might regret bringing him here, might change his mind, but then the noise of a helicopter rises, a growing
thwuk
and drone, and a great cheer bursts forth, and it’s too late to change anything because it’s happening.
    The copter tilts and drops toward the open desert on the