Fox Tooth Heart by John McManus

Author:John McManus
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941411148
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2015-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

All the way up US 180, over blasting Metallica, Cody shouted into the predawn dark that they would be devirginizing the canyon. Not until they veered around the shut gate through a stand of pinyon pines did he quiet the music and fall silent as if in uncharacteristic reverence. A glorious sunrise was igniting the canyon prongs. “It’s surreal,” Hunter said, full of a strange unease, as if his mother was right, and his survival on the ride down depended on faith that the land was make-believe.

“Yes, another lovely painting this morning,” Cody said. He was masking his awe, thought Hunter. He didn’t want to admit that the world could seem too beautiful to be real.

“Think we’ll be arrested?” Hunter asked in the empty trailhead lot, pouring water into his bottles.

“Everest used to be off limits to climbers, too.”

“Is that a no?”

“It angered the gods. I say fuck that.”

He almost wished Cody would fear arrest, so he could pull out Buck’s card and say, Here’s how I know we’re safe. If he mentioned Buck out of context, it would seem like he needed to talk about him.

A solitary hawk was circling as they aired up their tires. They loaded their saddlebags. Hunter led the way into a stand of cliff-rose. The leaves of those twisty trees pricked him and made him shiver in the warm air. He wheelied over a fallen pine. Barely had he landed again before the world fell out from under him and he was soaring downhill, almost too fast to control.

To keep from flying over the bars, he hung back with his weight behind the saddle. The path narrowed to the width of his tires. Before him gaped miles of empty space. He leaned hard left. Over the wind Cody’s screams sounded like thrill-cries, changing in intensity so many times that Hunter paused at a wide place in the trail in case it meant something sinister.

Straddling his bike, he counted mesas that rose between him and the snowy North Rim. All part of the illusion, he was musing when Cody came careening around a bend. He skidded halfway to a halt before knocking Hunter over.

“What the fuck?” Cody said, as Hunter untangled himself from his bike.

“You screamed like you were in trouble.”

“You were winning again, dickface.”

“I’m only riding,” he said.

“Quarter mile ahead without trying.”

Cody was right, Hunter hadn’t been trying. “Go in front then.”

“No, Death Wish, you’d be riding my ass.”

Cody wasn’t smiling. “I don’t have a death wish,” Hunter said, startled to realize his friend’s attitude wasn’t just a shtick.

“Well, I do. I’d rather die than lose to you again.”

“I didn’t realize we were racing,” he lied.

“Last night on that butte, middle of nowhere and you still wouldn’t let me win. You flew right over my head.”

“I’m sorry,” Hunter said, honestly surprised.

“‘I didn’t realize we were racing,’” Cody repeated in an effeminate whine. “Like mother, like daughter.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You think you win races because it’s not real. It’s all your fantasy, and in your head you deserve to be champion.

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