Trust me, I’m not trying to be blasphemous. But many years ago, back in the eighties my BFF sat upon a cross that overlooked Flat top, a hill in the middle of West Richland. You can still see pretty much anywhere in the greater Tri Cities area; the cross not so much.
There was a time in our younger days that we all were a bit too loose with our morals and let stuff happen that of course we can laugh at now that we are older and more or less wiser. Greg was my BFF in 1981. I don’t remember the particulars, but he came to live with us for a time.
Us, I mean my parents and sisters as well as myself. He and I lived in the unfinished garage. At least it was insulated. I used him as a sounding board for the “great American novel” I was busy writing. Obviously, it was more of a futile effort at a crude first draft of high school kids learning to live in a post-nuclear war. The fact that Tri-Cities was within spitting distance of the Hanford Nuclear reservation, was key to the plot’s premise.
Anyway, we both eventually found work doing scavenging work for Frank, a person I characterized in my later books working the landfill and doing any other jobs that needed physical labor.
In the evenings we drove a recently bought Ford Galaxy 500 up to Flat top and would smoke pot and talk about nothing in particular, stoner issues of the time that seemed important to discuss, but most likely wasn’t important at all.
Greg was taller and most likely stronger than me, but I knew I could handle anything thrown at me. He looked up at the cross, the February moon illuminating it and it looked cool in our inebriated conditions.
“Jerry, ever tried getting on that cross?”
“No, I can’t say as I have,” I replied. I admired the cross a bit longer and the pulled another toke from the pipe he offered me.
“Want to go ahead and do it?”
“Do what?” I laughed.
“Climb up that cross and sit on it,” he replied simply.
“Oh, I don’t know. If either of us slips, it is Gonnerville. You won’t stop until your bust-up body is at the bottom of this hill. It’s like three hundred feet down, Greg.”
“Oh, you are just a woos,” Greg chastised me, as though insulting my manhood would make a hill of beans difference. I always considered myself well-grounded and never took unnecessary risks when it came to my well-being. Call it a deep seated but healthy fear of pain. “Come on Jerry. We ain’t gonna fall off!”
“You go first and you help me get up and I’ll do it.”
“Fine,” he answered as he opened the passenger side door and got out. I grudgingly followed suit and he being taller, over six feet, he had no trouble hoisting himself up and looked out over the Tri-Cities at night in 1981. “Okay, Jerry your turn.” He lowered his right arm for me to grasp and up I went, stumbling and doing my level best not to look at the endless darkness below me.
After I was up and settled, Greg loaded his pipe, flipped the disposable lighter and went ahead to smoke on the cross. He passed it to me and I followed suit. “I hope we don’t get too buzzed Greg it’s a hell of a sudden drop before we hit terra firma.”
Jerry Schellhammer 