The Volkswagon bug was crashing through the underbrush of a dry arroyo and my brother, drunker than a hooty-owl, screams out the window, “You gotta hold on!” Well no shit. Easier said than done with a rifle in one hand and an open Coors in the other. We hit a particularly big bump and the contents of my can empty upward, freeze for a second mid-air, then slam into my face drenching me completely. Most of the beer dries quickly in the dessert heat, even at night. And I still hear my brother laughing and hooting as he drives the bug like a 4-wheel drive down the Arizona desert paths.
Nothing new in my brother screaming out a window of a moving vehicle. He’s been doing it for years. Once, in Omaha, years before during the summer after 8th grade, I visited him there. His friend had a pickup truck, a modified army parachute, 300 feet of nylon rope and a large open field. We borrowed all four and decided that while most people need 4-5 people to parasail on land, we could do it with two. So he coils the rope in a large pile at my feet and I strap into the harness. He inflates the chute behind me and jumps in the idling truck, slams on the gas screaming out the window, “you gotta fuckin’ hang on!” I watch the rope uncoiling disturbingly quickly and notice my brother not slowing. I begin to understand fear and inevitability. The rope goes taught. I am jerked off my feet and I sail in a perfect arc through the air 30 feet before I land. I am dragged screaming up and down hills eating dirt for about a half a football field before my brother looks in the rearview mirror. His eyes get huge as I’m sure he’s thinking, “Shit. Dad is gonna be pissed.”
And while this was perfectly horrifying, the time I was most afraid to hear my brother tell me to hang on was when we were spelunking in southern Arizona. We were in the Chiricahua mountains and we had spent the entire day in a crystal cave exploring. Our group was tired and our arms and legs had turned into sewing machines. The last part of the exit-trip was the most technical and I slipped going up it. I was grasping at a rope while below me was a 30 foot drop to a ledge I had just left. Below that was a very dark, very deep black hole. Not inviting. I had stupidly volunteered to go last which meant I had a few of the newbies packs as well as my own, some bottles and an extra coil of rope. This all seemed like a lot as my skinny arms clung to the rope that was leaving my grasp quickly. My brother screamed as I slipped and informed me that he was gonna kill me if I didn’t hold on. I thought this a redundant thought, even in that short moment, but as he and the others pulled up the rope with me still clinging to it I found hand holds along the way and began to see and end. I scrabbled the last few feet, flopped onto my back at the top and began laughing uncontrollably. “You gotta hang on.” . . . no shit.
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