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Radio Flyer

James Hold

    The mysterious disappearance of Rick Enbacker held the public’s interest for maybe five minutes tops. Rick wasn’t an important person in the eyes of the world so if anybody missed him, they didn’t make a show of it.
    That was forty years ago, and why I’m talking about it now is hard to say, other than I heard a song on the oldies station and it all came back to me. Anyway, this is my belated contribution to the matter.
    It would be news to no one to say college kids do stupid things. My buddies and I were no exception. We stayed up late, smoked and drank things we shouldn’t have, and, when necessary, did enough studying to get by.
    This was the early 70s when I attended NTSU. I was neither a good student nor a bad one. I was just marking time, avoiding the draft. It was Wednesday night. Finals were upon us, and I’d taken two exams that day. My next one wasn’t until Friday, which meant I had the next day off. I decided to celebrate with my buddies and some Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. You can fill in the details for yourself of how that went.
    It was around midnight when Rick Enbacker popped in. Rick was a strange character by any day’s standards. He was the scrawniest dude I’d ever seen and had the longest hair on campus. He had sources no one else did and was pretty much on a perpetual acid trip. So we, in our maturity, decided to have a little fun with him.
    “Hey, Rick,” I called out. “What’s up?”
    “I am,” he answered, typical of the time.
    The FM station was playing Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star,” and the record must have been stuck because it sounded like the same stoned-out riff had been going on for ten minutes. Someone else said, “I read in Rolling Stone that the Dead have given up drugs and are getting naturally high through meditation.”
    This was utter nonsense, but Rick appeared to buy it for the moment. “Really?” he asked with a vacant stare. “Like, uh, how do they do that?”
    “Just what I said, meditation, hypnosis, stuff like that. In fact...” my buddy looked over at me and winked; “Roger here’s a psychology major and knows all about hypnosis. I’ll bet he could do it.”
    This too was utter nonsense. I was not majoring in anything at the time. Still Rick fell for it. “Is that true, Roger?” he focused on me. “Can you hypnotize me?”
    “Oh, sure,” I lied, the apple wine doing its work. “I can hypnotize you to be anything you want.”
    So we formed a circle, with Rick and me in the middle, facing one another.
    “Now,” I began, adopting the attitude of a professor everyone was familiar with, “hypnosis won’t work unless you’re willing to cooperate. That means total, complete cooperation. Got it?”
    “Sure, dude,” Rick beamed back at me. “I can dig it.”
    I stalled for time, giving Rick a few commands such as sit up, turn around, sit down, and so on while I tried to think what to do next. I had no idea where I was going with this until the radio played the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and inspiration struck.
    “Rick,” I said, “the only reason you get high is to fly, right?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “So, from now on, you’re a bird.”
    That was as much of a straight face I could keep. I burst out laughing, as did the others.
    All but Rick.
    “Yeah. You’re right, man. I’m a bird.” He got up and began bouncing on the bed, repeating, “I’m a bird. I’m a bird. I’m a bird.”
    I honestly don’t recall much after that. I was drunk and passed out soon after. Some of the guys made it to their rooms, but the rest stayed where they were, curled on the floor. Someone though, realizing it wouldn’t be good for Rick to go wandering off in his condition, had the foresight to lay in front of the door so if Rick did try to get out, he couldn’t.
    That’s about all there is to it. We woke up next morning, looked at one another, and had a good laugh. Until someone said, “Hey, where’s Rick?”
    That was when we saw the open window.
    Fearing the worst, we looked down at the ground, three floors below. But we saw nothing, absolutely nothing, for which we thanked God, Buddha, Krishna, and all the other deities.
    I was curious how Rick got past my buddy whose body blocked the door. But clearly he had, and we gave up on it. Besides, we had finals to take and we trusted Rick to take care of himself.
    It wasn’t until a week later, after someone reported Rick missing and the cops asked questions, that I got to wondering. You see, there was never a trace of him after that night; no body found anywhere outside the dorm. His things were still in his room. He simply stopped showing up and was never seen again.
    Now it’s conceivable that Rick got past the door after we’d passed out. We were pretty plastered at the time and nothing short of cannon fire would’ve roused us. Maybe he managed to descend the window safely. In his stoned condition, he might’ve wandered off and fallen into a culvert. Or he could’ve hitchhiked to California for all I know.
    What I do know is the last time I saw Rick Enbacker he was convinced he was a bird—a bird that could fly. And the only thing stopping him was an unopened window in a third floor dorm.

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