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a cheaper backpack and K-Mart boots. Hell, he could have done that with a
bedroll and flip-flops. Wasted money.
Oh, well, live and learn.
The air is cold, as it should be in winter, but Merrik doesn't recollect it
being this cold. He wasn't cold the night before, but then again, he was
wrapped up pretty tight in a down sleeping bag. Perhaps the inner canyon is
colder than the rim. That could be it. Or perhaps-
I'm falling! he remembers.
The wind from the fall must be cutting into his jacket and up his pant
legs, chilling his hairy white flesh. Earlier in the morning, he considered wear­
ing his longjohns, but decided against it. Too many layers to remove if he were
to get hot from the hike down. Now, he wishes he had worn them. The rushing
cold is uncomfortable, and isn't that the final insult? He's about to die, dammit.
Couldn't he at least be warm doing it?
Of all the things to think about while a person's plunging to his death,
Merrik doesn't think about the usual things. How someone about to smack rock
pelvis first even knows what "the usual things" are is a question of cosmic
insignificance. But Merrik's sure they don't think about what he's thinking
about. He's thinking about the score from last year's Super Bowl, though he
can't remember the teams who played. He's thinking about his mother's tiny
feet. The color of Skinny's drunken vomit. The all-time greatest films ever
made, which are, in no particular order: "Smokey and the Bandit," which of
course inspired him to buy the Trans Am, "Friday the 13 th ," because the killer's
a woman who gets her head cut off in slow motion haw haw, and "Die Hard",
because there's no one who can take care of himself better than John "Yippy Kai
Yay" McClain.
John McClain, now there's an action hero and a liver. If he were in
Merrik's two hundred dollar boots right now, he'd come up with a way out of
this mess. Maybe he'd have a harpoon pistol with a nylon rope attached to it.
Maybe he'd shoot it back up toward the cliff edge, the harpoon would hook
around the Wear Your Damn Crampons sign, and stop the fall inches from a pit of
rabid mountain lions. The good guys always win like that. The bad guys die
some outrageous death.
Then, Merrik remembers how John "Call Me Roy" McClain dispatches
the Euro-trash villain, Hans:
He pushes him out the window of a skyscraper.
Hans falls hundreds of feet to his death.
Now, the actor who played Hans must have had a big squishy airbag
to fall into, or some such. Maybe it was space age squishy gel, like the kind in
Merrik's boots. Regardless, Merrik is disappointed that he hasn't had the luxury
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