Chapter Two.
Jasper and the Night Out.
It was early in the morning when the noise suddenly stopped.
If it hadn’t been for the floodlights, it would have been pitch black down on the canyon floor. With everything lit, it could have been two in the afternoon just as easily as it was two in the morning. The excavators at the far end of the canyon were barely visible; they looked like dark, wavering claw marks against the canyon sides. As unsettling as the lights were, though, even more unsettling were the power strips plugged directly into the banking walls.
And above everything was Jasper, sitting on the top of the northern wall, legs dangling over the side, throwing rocks at the southern wall. A team of ambulances hovered near the southern base, eyeing the construction workers warily. Two had already been airlifted out.
I finished the last of the Jack and tried to pretend I wasn’t looking for you. I had almost texted you earlier before I remembered you had left your cell phone plugged into the canyon to charge. And with all the people around, things were a little crazy.
No one seemed to know how to react. Even the excavators didn’t seem that pissed off – they were all night crews from construction sites and would have been working anyway. The language barriers had been a bit of an issue at first until you had decided enough was enough and told Jasper to screw it. Go Babel fish on them already.
After that, things started moving along a lot quicker, though a couple of guys had tentatively asked us if they could go back to speaking Portuguese when they went home the next morning. Jasper said he’d think about it. You glared him. Everything was status quo.