been beaten by a pissant Single A team? The fact that we’d won by only one point was to them clear evidence that we’d bribed a referee, at the least.
I didn’t give a damn what they said, but for some reason Adam couldn’t endure their incessant ragging. This got my attention, because my brother was the most unflappable guy I knew. And somehow, before I understood what was happening, Adam had accepted a challenge for a hundred-yard sprint along the road beneath the tower. One minute we were a group of griping drunks, the next we were lined up along the asphalt in the beam of the IROC-Z’s headlights, smashing bottles and waiting for the starting gun.
Joey Burrell kept a pistol in his car, a little .25. He fired it into the sky, sending us all blazing down the road with adrenaline, alcohol, and cannabis roaring in our veins. I ran so hard I thought my heart might burst, but I only came in fourth place. Adam won the race, beating Paul by half a step. Trey Matheson was third, then me, and finally Dooley Matheson, the complainingest son of a bitch I’d ever met. All the way back to the cars, Dooley bitched about Adam and Paul getting a head start.
We should have stopped then, but when we reached the foot of the tower, Dooley demanded a chance to get his own back. He didn’t want to do it on foot, though. He wanted a drag race along the levee road. This was preposterous. Their IROC-Z boasted a hundred more horsepower than Joey’s 280ZX, but nevertheless I soon found myself sitting shotgun in the Nissan while Dooley and his brother revved the big engine of the IROC-Z. Adam sat in the backseat behind me, his seat belt cinched tight, while Paul angrily took the backseat of his cousins’ car to keep the weight distribution even. The finish line was a grain elevator at the end of Port Road, roughly two miles away. After Joey and Dooley shouted a mutual countdown from five, we were off, blasting along the levee, watching the taillights of the IROC-Z as it vanished like an F-16 ahead of us. That Camaro beat us so badly that by the time we reached the grain elevator, the Mathesons were lounging against their car drinking beer.
At that point, we should have quit while we were behind, but the drag race only sparked further madness. We were boys, after all, and the testosterone was flowing. After handing out the embarrassing loss, the Mathesons insisted on giving us a chance to “win our pride back.” I didn’t know what they were talking about until Dooley pointed up at the electrical tower standing two miles back at the starting line. At six hundred feet tall, that tower—and its twin on the Louisiana shore a mile away—supported the high-voltage transmission lines that carried electrical power across the Mississippi River. I knew a few guys who’d claimed to have climbed that tower, but I’d never believed them. Nor could I see how climbing a six-hundred-foot-tall erector set represented any kind of winnable contest. But as the drunken discussion progressed, it became apparent that this was more of a test of manhood than a contest.
Once again, I was shocked to see my older brother buy into this idea. On any other night, Adam would have laughed at the absurdity of the dare. But that night, he let himself be baited. As subtly as I could, I tried to stop him. I wasn’t scared of much back then, but heights I did not handle well. That tower was as tall as a fifty-five-story building. Even standing with both feet planted squarely on the ground, I felt the soles of my feet tingle as I looked up at the metal beams and struts silhouetted against a moonlit cloud.
By the time we’d driven over to the tower’s massive base, the Mathesons had imposed a penalty for chickening out. Anyone who didn’t make it to the top would have to streak stark naked down six blocks of Main Street at dawn. Great, I thought, picturing myself sprinting down Main with one hand over my cock and balls. Just getting up to the main ladder proved difficult. First we had to park a car beneath a tree that grew near one of the tower’s four legs. Climbing onto the roof, we managed to grab the lowest limb on the tree, and that ultimately took us to a point