Rooftop Tales 2 ~Falling Up

A Story by JD Major

"Kenny's gone off the edge, Hammer!"

Short Story ~410 words ...

Vancouver, Canada

Falling Up

Remember Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff, suspended in mid air, then falling into the canyon only after he looked down? Sadly, it didn’t work that way for my roofing crew guy, Kenny.

Kenny didn’t actually look down until he was on his way down … which, strictly speaking, is not accurate, as all Kenny would have seen on his way down was blue sky.

But, how is that possible, Hammer, you ask? Surely Kenny didn’t fall up!

No, not even my tale-spins can repeal the Law of Gravity, but from Kenny's point of view, yes, he fell up.

We were finishing up the McMullen roof, trimming shingled edges, double-checking flashings and capping the peak, which on this two-story house was Kenny's assignment. He started at the peak’s horizontal center, on a knee, as is traditional, nailing each rectangular capping-shingle to either side of the peak, and shuffling backwards towards the roof’s end as he progressed.

... Okay, you see what’s coming, right?

Right, but it wasn’t on the first stretch, it was on the second, when Kenny capped his way right off the end of the peak and dropped thirty feet into a bushy cedar hedge, schlepping him relatively gently on his back to the lawn, in shock, desperately gasping for breath, his arms flailing ...

... and Kimbo yelling, "Kenny's gone off the edge, Hammer!"...

... and this being the horrific image smacking my retinas at roof-edge, me not having yet put together the hedge &gently part, sending me scrambling down the ladder, dreading the worst ...

... hollering, "Larry, call Nine-One-One!"...

... and hitting the ground running, frantically rounding the corner of the house, hunching over Kenny, him inhaling air like a Shop-Vac and me praying to the Roofing gods ...

... and asking, "Can you wiggle your toes, Kenny, and tell me your name, and our current Prime Minister's name?" ... again and again, as swirling grave markers and black umbrellas deluged my mind's eye.

“K-Kenny and G-George D-Dubya B-Bush,” he sputtered after an eternity of seconds, still inhaling spasmodically, but less so, wiggling willfully inside his sneakers.

Kenny, you see, had never been the sharpest roofing nail in the box, and D-Dubya was as good as H-Harper on his best day, and on this his luckiest as he was rushed from stretcher to ambulance to Emergency for his diagnosis.

“All’s well young man, nothing’s broken, just had the wind knocked out of you is all!”

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Checkout Rooftop Tales 2 ~Falling Up

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