Charles Richard Laing
Artwork by Zakas

Most of them couldn't sit on the pole for two hours without tumbling off it. Before this, the record had been two days back in the summer of '97. This guy was different. He'd been sitting on the pole so long that we never actually thought he'd ever fall off it. He was up there for three long weeks. He looked like he might be up there forever.

When he did drop we just weren't prepared. Most of the others had stopped coming. There were only three of us watching, and we were all pretty drunk at the time. Still, our fuzzy brains remembered our duty. We staggered over to the pickup and fumbled around in the flatbed until we found our machetes buried beneath a stack of old Boy's Life magazines Dennis had scavenged from one of the houses he demolished. Webb cut his hand up pretty good grabbing his by the sharp end, but he didn't let that slow us down. He just pressed the wound up against his sweaty muscle tee to slow down the bleeding.

Adrenaline quickly burned the alcohol out of our system as we walked across the field. He had gotten to his feet, but he was still dazed. It was a miracle he had survived the fifty-foot drop, but he had always been a tough son of a gun. When he saw us coming, he tried to climb again, but we were too quick for him. It didn't take long.

After that he pole stayed empty for two months. Things got dull in our dull little town. Then one day there was a stranger atop the pole. We never could figure out why, but they always seemed to come.

I bought the beer. Andy fired up the grill. Webb made sure there was a nice edge on the blades.

The End