The Middle of Somewhere by J.B. Cheaney Page A

name, out of the blue: “RONNIIIIIE!” Not a voice from the sky, but you probably already guessed that. The likely scenario was that Gee had slipped away from Pop—who didn't yet understand what “watching him” meant—and pushed through the narrow door leading to the boom. I turned around, expecting to see him clutching the guardrails halfway up. But the steps were empty And the noise was still going on.
    When I finally spotted him, it felt like the air had made a fist and punched me in the chest. There he was, a little boy in a red T-shirt, clinging to an I-beam jutting out from the metal wall, about fifteen stories off the ground. The only way he could have got there was by shinnying up the support post rising from the platform, just outside the door. He'd had to climb almost six feet to reach the horizontal beam, which he'd wrapped himself around beforelooking down. Then he panicked, having set a personal best for not-looking-prior-to-leaping.
    And by now he had a lot more attention than just mine. An older couple and a dad with two kids were staring up from the ground, pointing or wringing their hands. One of the teenage boys came out on the stair landing and yelled, “DUDE!” Pop squeezed by and staggered in shock when he saw where Gee was. I pounded down the stairs to meet him, and we had a little discussion.
    POP: What the @#$! is wrong with this kid?
    ME: Gee, stop screaming! And don't look down.
    TEENAGE BOY: (through the door) Dude! Hey, Brad! Come look at this!
    Pop is a man of action, but climbing poles umpteen dozen feet off the ground is not exactly his kind of action. He tried to reach Gee by hoisting himself up on the platform railings, but when he put one foot up and tried to raise the other, his face turned the color of biscuit dough and he broke out in a sweat.
    “Hey, man. Let me give it a shot.” The other boy, Brad, had ducked through the little door. Brad was about six and a half feet tall, which turned out to be very useful in a situation like this. He stepped up on the railings, balancing his weight between them, and when he stood up straight his head was level with Gee's. “Hey, little buddy, how's it goin'?”
    I wanted to say,
Hold on tight, Gee
! But of course he was already holding so tight he was frozen. Brad had to reassure him about a dozen times before Gee loosened up enough to let go of the I-beam, edge around the verticalpole, and clamp on to the tall guy's shoulders. Brad carefully stepped back down onto the platform and delivered him safely into my arms.
    We didn't stick around. After shaking Brad's hand, Pop hustled us down to the parking lot without even stopping in to say good-bye to the gift-shop lady.
    I thought he might explode when we got to the RV, like Mama does sometimes:
Don't you ever scare me like that again!
But his color still wasn't quite right, so maybe he just wanted to forget the whole thing as soon as possible. I took over the parent part while checking Gee's seat belt: “What were you
thinking
?”
    He stuck his thumb in his mouth. I knew the answer anyway—once he'd got out on that platform, all those pipes and rails overwhelmed his reasoning power. “One good thing,” I told Pop while moving up to my own seat, “every time he does something like that, it puts the fear of God into him for at least a week.” I couldn't tell if Pop was especially reassured, but when we got back to the highway we were still headed west.
    A couple hours of driving got us to a campground southwest of Wichita that happened to have a pool and a Jacuzzi. Everybody felt better after their preferred water therapy. Pop may even have harbored a little guilt for failing to rescue Gee when he had the chance—whatever the reason, he played Grandpa to the hilt that night. After I helped Gee to write his first postcard, Pop even sat down to play Go Fish with us, but after two rounds he said, “Let's play a
real
card game.”
    Then he taught us poker: five-card draw and seven-card