The Billboard

It was cold that night we climbed up that billboard by the highway. A jacket wasn’t all I should have brought, apparently. Corey berated me for not bringing gloves, too.

“Don’t cry if you have to go to the doctor’s for a tetanus shot. That ladder is rusty. You have to come prepared to do this kind of stuff.”

“You’re the wanna-be graffiti artist. You should have told me.”

Corey just huffed as if this was some kind of insult to his professional standards.

He was taking this so serious. He was all decked out with his scuffed one-size-too-big Timberland boots, black clothes, and a black ski cap. I remember vividly how he looked that night: like a baby ninja. At least Corey didn’t complain that I was wearing blue jeans, I remember thinking. They were dark blue jeans anyway. If Corey wanted me to dress in black he would have to buy my clothes. The dude wasn’t paying me to be his assistant.

Corey was always making me do stupid shit like this, ever since grade school. Corey tapped on my window some nights to get me to prowl around the neighborhood, using me as his look-out while he rooted around inside cars for bits of change, cigarettes, CDs, jewelry, whatever. Most often we just walked around and smoked cigarettes. This was a habit Corey had turned me onto, of course.

It had been a relief to me when Corey started doing graffiti. With graffiti he could act out against authority without victimizing regular people. It wasn’t always illegal either. He started out doodling his skull faces at the skate park where we hung out.

When we first started going there, I skated but he didn’t. He just strutted around bullying other kids. He became fascinated with graffiti art real quick, watching other kids do it.

Everybody did graffiti at the skate park. Kids could paint anywhere they wanted as long as they could afford to buy paint. Once a year the owners would repaint the walls and ramps and the graffiti guys would get their spray cans and go to town, spraying it with scary fanged snakes, blood shot eyeballs with batwings, flames shaped like clawed hands, whatever their warped minds could dream up.

Once he started painting he was absorbed by it. Only once or twice did he try to start a fight after that, saintly behavior for Corey Whitmore.

That night, he had everything shoved into a thick army surplus bag covered with what looked like a black table linen. I noticed how new his clothes looked. Ole Corey was rockin’ those five finger discounts.

We climbed the ladder to the top. Corey went first, dirt from his shoes falling on my head several times. I should have brought a cap too, I thought. His bag hung close to my head, his rolled up stencil rubber banded to it. Something very heavy was in the bag. Corey panted and grunted as he climbed.

The traffic below us was light. We froze ourselves in place and flattened against the steps until the headlights passed. At the top I felt my palms and armpits going sticky. I have never been afraid of heights; of course I had never climbed a creepy billboard in the middle of the night either.

Climbing to the ledge was easier than I expected. The ladder cruised directly through it. The light was better at the top, provided by dusty rectangular lamps along the ledge, three or four of them long burned out. A quick gust of wind almost ripped Corey’s stencil from his backpack. I snagged it.

“Nice reflexes, Ricky.”              

Every step we made clanged and reverberated all over that colossal thing. We had about five feet of ledge. I scouted it out, checking for any holes in the metal that could have been dangerous. It was pretty rusty, wobbling and creaking. Corey hissed at me to stay down, stay between the two burned out lamps so no one would see us.