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by Bill Bernico

“I'll bet you could fry an egg on this pavement,” I said. “It must be ninety-eight in the shade. I told you we should have bought a soda before we got in line for this ride.”

Wendy shrugged. “The line didn't look that long when we got in it, but once you get past the barriers it's too late to turn back. I didn't know there were another five hundred people ahead of us.”

“These amusement parks are all the same,” I said. “They herd you in like cattle and make you wind around a maze of chains and barriers. By the time you get to the ride, you forget which ride you were standing in line for.”

“Next,” the ride attendant barked, herding two dozen more riders toward the thrill of their life.

I shifted feet and leaned against the railing, looking up. There was a metal structure resembling a tower with six sets of seats, each holding four people, ascending two hundred feet straight up into the air. In a matter of seconds twenty-four people were looking down on us from their lofty perch, their legs dangling beneath them. A few seconds later the latches securing the seats let loose and the screaming riders descended in a free fall. Fifty feet from the bottom, the brakes grabbed and the ride slowed down until the riders were back on the firm asphalt.

“Next.”

“Eighty-five seconds,” I said, looking at my watch.

Wendy gave me a curious look.

“Eighty-five seconds,” I repeated. “Eighty-five seconds from the time you sit down until you're off the ride and the next bunch gets on. You spend twenty seconds getting pulled to the top, five seconds paused at the top, three seconds free falling and another twelve coming down that last fifty feet. Throw in another forty-five seconds herding out the riders and seating the next bunch and you got eighty-five seconds between bunches. Call it ninety seconds. A minute and a half.”

“Amazing,” Wendy said. “The sign out front said there was a ninety minute wait from that point. How many people would have to be in line to cause a ninety-minute delay?”

Well, let's see,” I said. “Twenty-four riders per round times two rounds, that would make it forty-eight people every three minutes.”

Wendy jumped in, “times thirty would give you the ninety minutes. So what's forty-eight times thirty?”

I wrote on my invisible blackboard, running my fingers through the air and drawing a line under my imaginary figures. “That's four, carry the two, times…” My mental calculator kicked in. “Fourteen hundred and forty people.” We whistled in unison.

Wendy and I inched our way around the last turn in the maze. There were maybe sixty people between us and the head of the line. All heads tilted skyward again as the next twenty-four nervous riders rose into the sky.

“What's this?” Wendy asked.

“It looks like a service entrance for the ride attendants,” I said, looking at the gate to my left. Past the gate I could see a small gravel path leading to somewhere behind the adjacent attraction. It wound around to the right and disappeared behind a man-made boulder that sported a sign that said Mine Shaft. “Maybe we should have come this way and avoided the other six hundred people,” I said, half joking.

“Wouldda saved us half an hour in line,” Wendy said.

The screams of the free falling riders echoed above us as something caught the corner of my eye. Coming up the gravel service path I could see two men. They approached the gate, looking back and forth nervously as they got closer. One of them opened the gate and they both stepped into the line directly ahead of Wendy and me. The bigger of the two closed the gate silently and stood there looking up at the next set of riders as if he'd been there all along.

The taller of the two looked to be in his mid-twenties with dirty brown hair and a short-sleeved shirt that helped display several tattoos. He wore blue jeans over biker boots. His partner was three inches shorter and forty pounds heavier. The elastic in his baseball cap was straining to contain the fat head beneath it. His tee shirt didn't quite reach his belt and the extra forty pounds he had over his partner hung over his belt like fallen bread dough.

They snickered at each other at the thought of avoiding hundreds of people and an hour in line. They both looked at me as I opened my mouth to say something. The fat one came nose to nose with me, his breath making my eyes water. “You look like you wanted to say something. Do you want to say something?” He held a clenched fist up to my nose.

I looked at him and his partner and then over at Wendy. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble they could cause us if I challenged them so I said nothing and stepped back.

Wendy didn't share my passive attitude. Her eyebrows turned up and her eyes showed rage. “You can't just butt in line ahead of us,” she said, like a little banty rooster. “You get out of here or we'll call the security guard.” She held her ground and waited for a reaction from the taller one. He just laughed at the tenacious little woman.

I turned around and pushed Wendy back away from the two low-lifes. “Forget it,” I whispered. “They're not worth it. We'll get on the ride just as quick and this'll all be behind us in a few minutes.”

“But…” Wendy started to say.

I placed my finger to my lips and shook my head. “Come on,” I said, “the line's moving again.”

“Next.”

We advanced with the surging crowd toward the front of the line. People anxious to get their turn kept pushing and forced us ahead into the fat man ahead of me. He turned around, as I was about to excuse myself for being pushed into him.

“You sure you don't want to say something, pencil neck?” He grabbed my shirt in front and bunched it up in his fist, raising me up onto my toes. He released and pushed me back, still laughing.

I backed up and gave him his space. The last set of riders exited and the next set took their seats on the ride. We were sure to be among the next twenty-four riders and thirty seconds after that, we'd be away from here and the two idiots in front of us.

“Next.”

Nervous giggles followed the screams of the riders as they left the ride in search of other heart-stopping thrills. Our line moved again and Wendy and I moved forward. People scrambled for their seats, trying to position themselves for the best view from the top. The two tuffs ambled toward the ride in a walk that would have made John Wayne look like a pansy.

Wendy and I approached the gate, ready to find a seat for ourselves. The attendant lowered the barrier in front of us. “That's all for this ride,” he said, trying to sound important. “Step back folks.”

Wendy spun me around, “those should have been our spots on the ride. Those two got our spots.”

“Will you let it alone?” I said. “In a minute and a half we'll be up there enjoying the view. Have a little patience, will ya?”

“But there's two empty seats on that ride. We couldda…”

“Shhh,” I said, “You wanna sit next to them? Looks like nobody does. Look up there.” I pointed to the people ascending the tower. Let's just watch their faces and try to have fun. Okay?”

The ride stopped at the top of the tower and paused to let the riders gaze at the skyline thirty miles to the east. The six latches released the seats simultaneously as twenty-four riders free fell toward earth. At the sixty-foot mark, the brakes took hold and slowed five of the seats to a safe, slow descent. The sixth seat, holding the two wise-guy idiots, screeched and scraped and I heard an attendant barking.

“Look out,” he yelled, stepping back.

The sixth car's brakes held enough to keep the seat from disintegrating into the asphalt, but it slammed the ground at a much higher rate of speed than the designers had intended. Several attendants and security guards rushed over to the damaged seat and the two bullies who were now crying out in pain.

Within a minute an ambulance pulled up next to the ride and two attendants in white brought the stretcher over to where the two men sat, waiting to be released from their harnesses. The taller, thinner man was laid out on the stretcher and loaded into the back of the ambulance before it pulled away. A second ambulance took its place and two more men in white hurried over to where workers tried to free the fat bully from his seat.

It took almost ten minutes to free the man from the ride and get him onto the stretcher. By now the crowds had swarmed the area, making transporting of the patient difficult. The attendants slowly inched past us with the stretcher. They stopped momentarily to allow security guards to clear the crowd. Wendy and I looked down at the man who'd moments earlier given us so much grief. His neck was wrapped in a stiff, white collar to help immobilize his head movements. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and tried to open his mouth.

I smiled back at him and said, “You look like you wanted to say something. Do you want to say something?”

The man said nothing. He just winced in pain as the stretcher moved on toward the ambulance. Behind us, the line for the ride had disappeared and several ride attendants looked at the failed ride. Ahead of us two thousand people disbursed into the park. The sun began to drop in the western sky and storm clouds appeared above.

“Ready to go home?” I said, putting my arm around Wendy.