The attacker’s buddy clocked Jim in the head with a half-full bottle of Coors, cutting him from eyebrow to jaw-line. The man with the bottle screamed as Juan’s switchblade opened up his shirt, carving him from buttonhole to shoulder and deep across his bicep. Jim’s eyes rolled back like they had years before when we were loosening a standpipe bolt on a water tower…

              The Endless Times series, The Path of Kokopelli: Chapter 4, page 36

              Of course, there’s a similar story; didn’t the book say so? Some of this fiction is true, you know.



              We were painting towers in Georgia or Alabama, or was it Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, maybe Florida, perhaps Maryland, Iowa, Illinois, or Michigan? Well, you get the picture; we moved around a bit. Anyway, in some state, Jim and I are loosening a standpipe bolt on a water tower. One hundred and ten feet off the ground, both of us in little bosun chairs facing each other with this big pipe in between. Jim cuts loose with a two-pound hammer, putting too much enthusiasm in it. The hammer bounces back, nails him square between the eyes, knocking him cold. Two things happen in a split second. His hammer falls straight down, in a peculiar slow-motion way, and Jim’s eyes roll back and then clink shut. He starts falling backward after his hammer, so I reach around the standpipe and grab him, blood and all. Getting whacked between the eyes with a two-pound hammer is messy. I lowered us down and made him buy the beer. Hey, I’m the one who saved his bacon!