Free For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun by Keith Soares Page B

at the forklift, slamming his head into one of the metal tines.
     
    We watched as Walter’s forehead partially caved in, then shifted around the tine. He pulled back and did it again, and again. We could see that the impacts were doing damage, but each time his head quickly healed. And his failure to hurt himself threw him into an even darker rage.
     
    We rocked back and forth, back and forth. The pipe ignored us.
     
    Walter did anything he could to hurt himself, but nothing helped. “Stop the noise! Stop the noise!” Walter repeated it until the words blurred together.
     
    Still we rocked. And, then, unexpectedly, with no warning, the pipe came free and we fell over. We rolled to get out of the shadow of the dangling pod.
     
    Seeing our movement, Walter scrambled back into the forklift. No, onto the forklift, up the front lifter mechanism, to the pod hanging above.
     
    He got his hands on a corner of the pod and pulled himself up to its slanting metal top, then set about trying to dislodge it, to send it down upon us.
     
    In terror, we rolled and rolled, trying to get free. The tape twisted and frayed and fell from our arms, leaving the pipe clanging behind. And we heard that gritty scraping sound again. But the pod was moving away from us, toward the roof’s edge. Walter’s weight had shifted its balance. In fact, the entire forklift looked to be leaning precariously now.
     
    Glancing up, I saw Walter give a startled look as the surface he stood on angled too sharply for him to remain on his feet. He slipped to the edge of the pod, dropping to his knees and scrambling for some kind of hold.
     
    For a moment, the whole thing — man, pod, forklift — teetered on the edge.
     
    And then Walter Ivory lost what little grip he had and fell, off the pod, over the side of the building, down eight floors to the pavement below.
     
    I had a split second to think of Bobby’s own fall, and how Walter might have survived.
     
    And then the pod gave in to gravity and slid off the tines and over the edge, following Walter’s descent. To add insult to injury, the forklift, now completely off balance, tipped off the roof as well.
     
    Below, we heard the devastating clangs and crashes as first the pod and then the forklift hit the ground and, presumably, Walter.
     
    Immediately I fell to the rooftop in pain, hardly noticing that Bobby had done the same. Somewhere inside me, there was a screaming. A horrible, pained screaming, like knives stabbing into my ears, only the pain and the sound weren’t actually in my ears. I held my hands to my head in vain. It seemed like it lasted forever.
     
    And then the sound disappeared. It didn’t fade or die out. It was cut off. One instant it was and the next it was not.
     
    Like coming out of a dream, I looked around and found Bobby. He, too, seemed to be waking up from something. He stood, slowly, then staggered to the edge of the building. “He’s gotta still be alive, right?” Bobby asked in a quiet voice. “I mean, nothing was hurting him before. He’s alive under there.”
     
    “I don’t think so,” was all I said, looking over the edge. I didn’t know why, precisely, but I was sure.
     
    Somewhere below, Ike and Izzy began to bark, and Mr. Gerald called out, “ What the hell is going on around here? ” We heard the elevator start to move. The sound of the crash had boomed and echoed through the building, enough to pull Mr. Gerald away from his stories for once. He would be headed to the ground floor, to the source of the commotion.
     
    “We need to get outta here, Johnny,” Bobby said. “Unless you like being grounded for the rest of your life.” But we both hesitated, looking at the wreckage, waiting for some sign of life that didn’t come.
     
    “We could go to jail,” I said, nodding toward the scene below us.
     
    Bobby’s eyes bugged out. He turned and ran toward the stairwell. I followed, and together we raced down eight floors and out the back