Death Defying

by Tom Ramsey

At the top of the Hennesys’ driveway, I held a gloved hand over my head, spread my fingers wide, counted them down to zero, gripped the handlebars, stood on the pedals of my Kool Yellow Schwinn Sting-Ray, and hurled myself toward certain glory.

This was the trial run in 1975. I’d have a year to practice and perfect the jump before the Bicentennial when the small town of Vicksburg would begrudgingly toss off the pall of the ignominious July 4^th surrender in 1863, but they never “forgot.”

At nine, none of this mattered to me. Our house celebrated the 4^th that year with the customary, if muted, festivities and a well-advertised demonstration of bicycle jumping. My grandfather had purchased the pay-per-view, and we watched together the underwhelming attempt by Evel Knievel to jump the Snake River Canyon nine months earlier. I wanted to taste that hype, the fame, that adoration that only a death-defying jump could provide.

Ramsey in the Zorro cape

After numerous drafts and revisions, I finalized a poster announcing that Reckless Ramsey would soar over a pool of sharks at Six PM sharp at Glenwood Circle on July 4^th, 1975. Lightning bolts speared in from the corners of the page. A drawing of me astride my bike, mid-air, and surrounded by hungry sharks centered the poster and a chisel-tipped marker shouted my nom de guerre.

JULY 4^th

RECKLESS RAMSEY

Will jump a pool of deadly sharks!

Glenwood Playground

6:00 PM

FREE ADMISSION

With the help of Father’s secretary, I used the law firm’s copy machine to duplicate this broadsheet fifty times and stapled, taped and hand distributed the bill as far as I was allowed to walk before the street lights came one evening the week prior. I explained in exquisite detail this ambitious plan to neighbors who didn’t mind that the cute kid from down the street was interrupting their dinner. I brought comic relief to whatever grim news glowed blue in their dens. By my accounting, hundreds of admirers would certainly attend.

I collected no less than a dozen sharks from my friends’ “Danger of the Deep” GI Joe Adventure Team play sets, and on the big day I floated them in the blue plastic wading pool I placed by the curb on the “little playground” filled with the sun-warmed water from a garden hose. The ramp was a half-sheet of plywood propped on a stack of bricks. I had made this jump dozens of times with roaring success and even started adding flair moves after the landing of skid-stops or wheelies.

Shark not sold separately

My parents had coordinated their cookout to coincide with the show and the playground was dotted with eager fans. I thought briefly about delaying the event so the rest of the crowd could assemble but I didn’t want to punish those who arrived punctually.

I wore my postal-gray Tonka jump suit with the twin yellow racing stripes from my shoulder to the knit cuffs. My helmet was a metallic royal blue with an interlocking “RR” logo painted on each side with British Crimson Testors model airplane paint and the number “1” on the back, just like Evel. The pièce de resistance was my black silk cape my grandmother had sewn for my Zorro costume the prior Halloween.

From my high vantage point I could see that Linda Moss had made a cake.

I pointed the front wheel down the hill and poured on the coal. The wind rushed and roared inside my helmet and my cape flapped and popped behind me. I squinted my eyes to shield them from the speeding air. My mother’s hand rested over her heart. The golden-hour light shimmered around the flat gray eating machines, hungry for the taste of flesh. The hill flattened into the thirty-foot, flat run-up to the street and the ramp. My front tire hit the leading edge of the plywood, sliding it back ever so slightly, collapsing the piled bricks at the far end. The handlebars jerked violently left and the front wheel struck the side of the wading pool, well-anchored by the weight of water. The back wheel and banana seat rose and passed the front, sending me soaring, ass-over-teacup into the shark-infested deep. The chain pulled my cape into the teeth of the sprocket and held me fast against the bike as we tumbled to a rest near the kiddie swings. I heard my mother gasp.

Linda Moss, her blueberry, strawberry, and cream cheese flag cake in hand sighed, “My goodness.”

Father rushed to my side and carefully cut my knotted and stained cape from the greasy sprocket with his Case folding knife and offered me his bandana to wipe the tears, mud, and shark water from my face.

I stood and turned a tight circle as the world spun in the opposite direction assessing the carnage - the pile of bricks, the crumpled bike, sharks displaced from the sea, flopping on the muddy ground, the furrowed brows of empathetic embarrassment, Linda Moss walking toward the house with a cake I no longer deserved.

“I can do it again!” I protested. “It worked yesterday. It was perfect. I swear!”

But my time had passed. The moment of my greatness had flickered.

Father helped me empty the pool and drag the ramp and pile of bricks back to the carport. I gathered the school of sharks and carried them in what was left of my cape.

Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee rang from the stereo speakers across the brick patio and into the terraced lawn. The Earth still orbited the sun. The grill still tempted me with sizzles and pops and the glorious smell of fat meeting flame. Laughter spilled in joy, not in mockery. I changed into shorts and a clean T-shirt and met my grandfather with a glass of lemonade and cold peach.

He peeled my peach, handed me a slice, and smiled. “At least it wasn’t on the TV like the other fella.”

Tom Ramsey, a chef and raconteur, works, boxes, races cars and lives in New Orleans with his wife and three very naughty cats. His work is forthcoming in Gray’s Sporting Journal. His debut novel currently rests in the capricious hands of the publishing gods.

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Also by Tom Ramsey

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Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth, cowritten by yours truly.

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