Six months ago
Pye! The sound of the slap hung in the air before being carried away on the wind.
‘How yuh so fool fool? Eh?’
‘Ow! Yuh never have to knock me so hard.’
‘To blerdnaught! How much time me must talk to yuh? How de blerdnaught you figet de battery?’
‘Me no know.’
Pye!
‘Ow!’
‘Nephew! De backup system work off de battery. How it mus’ work widout it?’
‘Me sorry, Uncle.’
‘Blerdnaught!’
In the fading light of dusk, Nephew looked down from their position at the top of the radio tower at their distant pickup truck parked in the small clearing amongst the trees and overgrowth below. His knees buckled for a moment, and he remembered that he was not supposed to look down, but a curious ambivalence overcame him as he closed his eyes and imagined himself falling, falling, falling, and then suddenly flying as the wind picked him up. The wind roared in his ears, and when he opened his eyes he was momentarily confused as he saw a cloudless blue sky. He could even feel the warmth of the sun on his face.
Pye! Nephew shook his head. It was now dusk, the wind had a cold edge to it, and it had started to drizzle.
‘Nephew! Stop daydream. Is work we a do!’
‘Me sorry, Uncle.’
Nephew cautiously inched away from his uncle, so that he was just out of arm’s length. He pulled up the collar of his blue overalls to protect his neck from the wind and rain, and reversed his white Radio 98.5 FM emblemed baseball cap so that it was not blown away by the wind. As he pulled the cap tighter over his head, he ruefully ran his fingers over the side of his face where he had been slapped. He could feel each finger impression of his Uncle’s hand stinging on his cheek.
‘Nephew! Nephew!’
Nephew looked up to see his uncle gesticulating at him. The wind made it hard for him to hear what Uncle was saying. He held out his arms with his palms up, and Uncle pointed at his own waist, and then at Nephew’s waist. Nephew looked down and then remembered that he was carrying the tool belt. Without looking up, he inched closer to Uncle and unbuckled the belt, flipped it off and held it out. The weight of the belt surprised him, and in order to maintain his balance he had to take his free hand off the stanchion, but his non-regulation Nike Air track shoes did not have the necessary grip on the damp metal bar. If Nephew had been a gymnast, he would have been proud of the headfirst flip that he inadvertently performed, but since he wasn’t, and he was one hundred feet off the ground, he screamed in terror as he plunged towards the overgrowth below. The ten feet of slack in his rope harness suddenly halted his descent with an audible thud. It took a moment for the shock to wear off, and the air to return to Nephew’s lungs.
‘Whoa! Whoa! Save me, Uncle! Save me!’ Nephew screamed, as he hung head down, his feet thrashed around as he tried to right himself.
‘Hold on bwoy! Stop panicking.’ Uncle reached for his flashlight that was fastened to his overalls, and shone it at Nephew, in the hope that it would calm him down, and then started to make his way down the tower when he noted that Nephew’s kicking had abated. ‘De rope will hold you. If yuh did wear de boots yuh supposed to wear yuh wouldn’t slip.’
A furious gust of wind blew Nephew violently into the tower, and the shock of the impact caused him to start thrashing around even more violently than previously. By this time, Uncle had almost reached Nephew, and one of Nephew’s flailing kicks landed on Uncle’s knee, momentarily causing Uncle to lose all feeling in that leg. The incapacitated leg buckled, and the pain and surprise slowed Uncle’s reactions, making him a split second slow and a tad too late to grasp the nearest bar as he fell. Remembering his training, Uncle relaxed to lessen the effect of the fall and the recoil of the harness rope, but another kick from Nephew landed on Uncle’s jaw, knocking Uncle unconscious, rendering him helpless to remove the rope that got entangled around his neck, and within two minutes Uncle was dead. Asphyxiated.
‘Uncle! Uncle! Lawd, me a go dead!’ Nephew screamed as he peered down at the limp body of his uncle, ten feet below him. Another gust tugged Nephew’s cap from his head, releasing his short reddish brown locks. His arms floundered about in vain, trying to catch the cap before it started its wayward descent towards the ground below. In desperation, Nephew instinctively pulled a penknife from his pocket, and frantically cut away the rope that was holding him. His miscalculation did not fully register until a split second before his head hit a rock at the base of the tower and broke his neck.