Low-wire act
Friday, July 11, 2008 at 10:23AM Twenty years and a few days ago, I was standing in front of the Gillum’s family reunion in my underwear. It wasn’t easy, being just shy of fourteen, but dropping my pants was a mild sacrifice for the comfort I’d receive.
I’d just run into a barbed wire fence. My friend’s aunt, one of the reunioners, was a nurse and the large cut on my left leg needed attention. It would be a couple of years before I’d want to talk about making little shrieking noises in my underwear at a crowded summer potluck, but the pain of pulling fabric from a deep cut was ridiculous.
The gash on my leg ran about six inches across my thigh. If I were to hit the fence today, it would dig into my knee, and I’d hate to even think what the barbs that ripped my chest and arm would damage. That would be particularly bad because in order to clean out the openings, Dr. France gave me shots directly into the wounds. He might have been a little rough, as to take care of me, we had to go to his house and ply him from his bed. Not only that, but just as he doped me up, another patient came in. He was worse off. He was on a motorcycle when he hit a fence.
It could be the official pastime in North Park, running into fences. Boredom is the most common cause. I knew a girl who was riding on an inner tube being pulled by a truck. It took a sharp turn. Helpless as a baby seal, she clutched her rubber cushion and gracefully whipped into a wall of rusty wire. I came back from college and saw a high school classmate whose face was a mess. I asked him if he’d been attacked by a tiger. No, he said, he’d been riding a snowmobile and smacked into a barbed wire fence. You have to know deer and cows love this stuff.
My accident was not boredom related. It was fear. Terror, really, and the hitch of it is still today no one believes that in the dark of the night in the desolate woods of Gould, CO, Robert and I heard the yelping howl of hungry werewolves. It might not help that two years later, while working out for football, I’d run into the same fence again, but that was a fluke, and the wolf people were the real deal.
Robert’s grandma, Ann, owned a cabin in Gould. For the bored Ewy children Ann’s grandkids visiting her cabin was the greatest event on the planet. We’d get to see other children. To expedite our seeing and touching and relating and otherwise frightening other, young people with our enthusiasm, from our house we’d cut all the right angles of driveways and county roads, and walk “through the woods” to the Gillum’s grandma’s house. Yes, to grandma’s house we go.
We had the route down pat. Leave our house due north, angle left and away from Suicide Hill—one of the best sledding hills ever. If you went down the hill you’d end up following the river to the rental cabins along the highway. This left you vulnerable to attacks from the cabins’ owner about taking too much time on the phone. Later he’d complain about the dust we’d kick up when we sped by his tourist dump, but in the early days the shared party lines made for much irritability. So past the hill you’d follow old logging roads. After they dissipated, the forest opened up and bigger landmark trees made it real hard to get lost. Although I did, and often.
On the night of July 2, 1988, Robert and I were wary of my father’s presence. He loved it when my friends came over. He’d use them for cheap labor. I tried to explain to my dad that the distance from Walden made it difficult to get friends over in the first place, let alone his tossing them a shovel as soon as they got there. My objections only fueled his resolve to crush our summer spirit.
Knowing staying at my house could mean waking early to work for our room and board, we headed through the woods to the cabin, a real weekend retreat for sane people who didn’t live at 9000 feet year round.
We’d made it most of the way when we heard the noise.
There’s not many places on the planet as dark as Gould; no street lights sprinkling cones of illuminated comfort, or rows of car dealerships and their obnoxious fluorescent glare. At night, light in Gould is what the moon might give you, and on this summer’s day the clouds weren’t having any of it.
Coyotes would have been one thing, and wolves just aren’t that common in Route National Forest. What we heard, as Robert would explain to me in a panicked voice, was “like a human and a dog!” And then he’d take off. I quickly followed. Tree branches showed up in line of sight just in time to avoid them. I got pretty absorbed in my dodging ability. Robert yelled at me. He claimed I was going at too much of an angle. I was about to protest when I stopped. Well, I didn’t stop. Something stopped me. Robert kept running until he heard me scream. Worried, he ended his run on his own volition. And then a horse whinnied and he shrieked and was gone.
It really is strange hanging from a fence in the dark, your brain rushing through its files to figure out what in the Hell happened. I had just stopped. I was the cartoon imprint on the brick wall. When I realized the fence’s role in my discontinuation, I was horrified, wondering what must be lopped off and/or bleeding. I peeled my arm leg away from the wire and yelped for my friend.
He’d already made it to the cabin and alerted his rollicking elders that I hadn’t listened to him and went at too much of an angle. As he explained the consequences of such a geometrical failing, I limped out of the woods and into the light of their bonfire. I don’t think anyone there had predicted their evening would end with a blood-covered teenager in his underwear. But it did, and I didn’t care. Pantless, I sat on a padded tree stump fashioned into a kitchen chair, while Robert’s aunt Susie cleaned me up for the trip to the doctor.
We went to Walden and rousted its only physician. He would retire and move soon after, as we weren’t the only ones who stalked him for medical attention. Alcohol and tractor related accidents had him up at all hours. His job, for the most part, was to comfort the patient for the hour-long ride to Laramie. I wasn’t so bad, but the other guy, the motorcycle fence guy, well he needed more attention. So while he moaned in pain, I looked up at the ceiling and wondered who the bigger idiot was; the guy speeding on the motorized vehicle or the one on foot.
The motorcycle guy could definitely get boner points for driving recklessly, but someone simply running into a fence sounded like the true idiot. What am I, a frightened animal? Who runs, I mean literally on their own two feet, into a fence?
My mom and I got back from Walden and she decided since we were up we might as well join the drunks for a pop. We stopped at the Cookhouse and regaled the patrons with my evening’s adventure. I met two other guys who had, without motorized assistance, run into fences.
In the 8th grade it might not be healthy seeking solace in a bar, but it was there where I found company in an exclusive club. Exclusive, yes, but the initiation is a bit rough.
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