Sarah Court Read Online Free Page A

over the tailpipe. Screw the trailing end onto
the connecting tube feeding the box. Slide onto the
driver’s seat. Goose the gas. Carbon dioxide pumps
in. Black slivers—possum claws—poke through the
drill-holes roped in smoke.
    Colin would send his mother and I news clippings.
One showed his body laid out as an anatomical
graph. Skinless, as rendered by some magazine’s
crackerjack graphics department.
    The Wreckage of Daredevil Colin “Brink Of ” Hill. Numbered arrows pointed to the bone-breaks and
contusions and pulped cartilage and shorn tendons
and detached retinas and assorted devastation. So
many goddamn arrows.
    1. Brink Of tore his left kneecap off in a motocross
fiasco at the Tallahassee Motor Oval.
    2. Brink Of knocked out seven teeth smashing
though a plate-glass window as Charles Bronson’s
stunt double in Death Wish V: The Face of Death .
    Another time I got a package in the mail. A
video game unit with his game: Daredevil . He’d been
showing up on late-night talkshows. A TV stunt
spectacular where he’d recreated Evil Knieval’s
Snake River Gorge jump. I called him.
    “Daddio!”
    “Where are you?”
    “Partying in Los Angeles!”
    I
visualized
the
standard
LA
pool
with
underwater lights shimmering the surface, the same
pools over the Hollywood Hills so if you were to
observe from on high the landscape would resemble
a luminous coral fan. Bareassed girls, starlets as
they were known, swimming carefree but not truly,
needing their nakedness to be appreciated and the
party given a whimsical theme: Christmas in July;
Holiday Under the Sea. My son far away from the
stink of the killbox and the GM fabrication plant
where radial tire moulds are injection-moulded with
molten vulcanized rubber: that first nostrilful of air
entering Canadian Tire intensified twentyfold. Far
away from the rusted skies over the dry docks where
men bent the blue of acetylene torches to braise hulls
of ships whose prows would cleave the sea places
we never dreamt of going. When the whistle blew
we showered silently, white holes showing through
wetted hair where stray sparks burnt down to our
scalps. Colin achieved escape velocity. Who could
ever hold that against him?
    “Try it, Dad. Try the game.”
    I picked up the joystick. A digital version of Colin
tooled along on a motorbike. His voice came out the
speakers:
    “Yee haaaaaw! C’mon, chicken-guts, give ’er some
gas!”
    The bike went up a ramp, landed badly, tossed
Colin over the handlebars. He skipped along in a
broke-boned jig. A tiny ambulance sped across the
screen. GAME OVER.
    “Ragdoll physics,” Colin said. “How they get me
flipping and flapping. Lifelike! A hit in Japan; they
love me over th—”
    His phone cut out. Or I hung up. I don’t properly
recall.
    The gal , all of twenty, she’s up on the parquet stage
grinding her bits on a brass pole.
    Pageboy hairdo, jet-black and futuristic like
an android’s haircut. Giving us goons that witchywoman stare they must teach at the stripper
academy. Lithe and firm-delted. Could’ve been
a gymnast or figure skater . . . my mind shouldn’t
have gone down that route because I’m imagining
her mother dropping her off at the rink with a pair
of pink skates hung over her shoulders. Eating a
Pop Tart. Now she’s up there in the buff doing the
higgeldy-piggeldy.
    My son’s idea. He’s been making nice with my
neighbour, Diznee. Two of them passing goo-goo
eyes. While I don’t fancy sitting with Parkhurst
along pervert’s row at a ta-ta bar, well, here you’ll
find me. The jugged beer’s got a kinetic glow under
the black lights. Eerie, like quaffing toxic sludge.
    Colin hits the toilet and on his way back sits at
another table with Nicholas Saberhagen, the exboxer and Frank’s son, and a man he introduces as
his client. Colin’s talking about his stunt tomorrow.
Nick says he’ll bring his own son. Apparently Nick
works for American