by David Thorne
“We could try tying a rope around it and pulling it over with the ATV,” suggested Seb.
“Then it would definitely fall on us. Besides, we don’t have rope.”
“We could use the garden hose. It’s a hundred feet and the tree is probably only eighty.”
“That’s actually a pretty good idea.”
It wasn’t a pretty good idea. It was an ill-conceived and dangerous one. Seb rode back and collected the hose. He had a can of Coke and a packet of chips while he was back at the house, which I thought was a bit rude. I sat on a log until I heard him returning, then pretended I had been digging rocks out of the path the whole time. We wrapped one end of the hose around the pine and tied a knot, the other to the back of the ATV. Seb rode down the path until the hose was taut, I stood further back and gave him the thumbs up. He revved the engine and moved forward. The pine swayed and creaked but held, rocking back and forth as he released the throttle.
“Try it again,” I yelled, “if you can get it to rock, it should snap.”
Seb rode forward faster this time, reversed, rode forward again. The tree rocked towards us, rocked back and cracked. The idea had gone better than expected; with the tree falling away from us, we wouldn’t have to cut it up and remove it from the path, it would simply roll down the other side of the hill towards the river.
During warmer months, we sometimes jump from the rocky banks of the river - swimming back quickly before whatever’s beneath the brown murky surface tries to eat us. I touched the bottom with my foot once so I always do a kind of ‘safety jump’ now where you spread out your arms and legs like a jumping jack. It’s not quite as elegant as a cannonball but I don’t like my head going under the water. We watched a dead cow float past once.
The tree hit the ground with a crash, bounced a bit, then started to roll. Seb looked at me in panic as the ATV was pulled backwards, his mouth and eyes wide like that painting of the bald guy on a bridge. He gripped the brake lever hard. The large knobbly tread of the wheels fought against the pull for a moment, stretching the hose as far as it could before losing traction in the dirt. Credit where credit’s due, Briggs & Stratton make pretty strong hoses.
“Squeeze the brakes!” I yelled as I chased after him carefully. There are snakes in the forest so I had to watch where I was putting my feet. I realize this could be construed as a priority conflict but, you know, snakes.
“I am squeezing the brakes!” Seb screamed as the ATV disappeared over the summit and headed down.
“Don’t you dare jump off!”
The pine reached the bank and hit a boulder. It bounced over and dropped four or five feet into the river below. Ninety-odd feet up the hill, the ATV was jerked hard. Despite being told otherwise, Seb was in mid-process of jumping off when the shunt pulled the handlebars into his waist. His arms and torso were thrown across the front of the ATV, his legs kicked the air. I watched him fumble for grip, looking up at me in horror as the ATV hit the bank and sailed over. It was exactly like that scene in Cliffhanger except on an ATV and without any mountain climbing equipment or holding hands. At a brisk jog, it took me about ten seconds to reach the edge and look over. Seb was standing chest deep in water looking back up at me.
“Are you alright?” I asked, equally relieved and shocked he wasn’t dead.
“No, I’m wet.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“How the fuck are you not hurt? You just went over a cliff backwards into a river. Where’s the ATV?”
“I’m standing on it.”
Seb felt around with his foot until he located the hose and pulled it up. There was plenty of slack between it and the pine, which had drifted and turned in the current, wedging itself between banks fifty feet downstream. There was no possible way of getting the ATV back up where it had gone in so Seb swam and waded to the opposite bank. I met him there by walking gingerly across the pine. It rolled a bit when I was almost to the other side but luckily the water was only a few feet deep at that point.
“Jesus, that’s cold. Look, I’m soaked to my knees.”
“Are you joking? I went all the way in. I had to swim across while holding the hose.”
“If you’d held the brakes for a few seconds longer instead of deciding to ditch, neither of us would be wet. You’re wetness is due to your decision. My wetness is also due to your decision, not one of my own, therefore my wetness level, regardless of it being a lesser wetness level than yours, warrants a greater degree of concern.”
“Can you stop saying wetness please? Besides, you’re only wet because you can’t balance on a log.”
“Crossing the log wouldn’t have been necessary if you hadn’t ditched. Really, you owe me an apology. And a new pair of shoes. I’ve only had these a month and really liked them. The soles are a bit thin but they are pretty comfy otherwise. You can’t just dry out wet leather shoes, they stretch and are never the same. ”
“I could have died.”
“Not everything has to be about you, Seb.”
With our arms wrapped around the hose, our heels deep in the soft pebbly bank, we pulled the ATV across the bottom of the river. It caught on hidden rocks and branches a few times but Seb waded in and wrestled it loose. He managed a kind of sobbing cheer when the handlebars finally broke the surface, another as the seat appeared.
“One more good pull,” Seb declared, “On three okay? One, two...”
“Ngghhhh!”
I waited on all fours, doggy style, almost an hour for Seb to return with the bottle of painkillers. He’d had a hot shower and changed while back at the house, which is a whole new level of rude. I told him I was going to check if the Gypsies have an age limit. Despite having been fully submerged, the ATV started on the third or fourth try so I’ll certainly buy Honda products again.
I haven’t received any form of compensation for mentioning Honda’s quality products that have a positive impact on all our lives, so you can trust me when I say Honda believe the Power of Dreams® is realized when we work together to make them real.
As we were on the opposite side of the river, Seb had to ride through a farmer’s paddock and along a main road for a couple of miles or so before he could cut through to our property. Apparently he passed a police car on his way and they waved. I mentioned this to the officer a few weeks later when I was pulled over for riding the ATV less than four hundred feet to our subdivision’s mailboxes, but he still gave me a ticket and made me push the ATV home.
“It’s snowing again,” said Seb, “do you want me to pause the game and push you to the window so you can see?”
“I can see it from here. Sorry we can’t go snowboarding like we planned.”
“That’s okay.”
Did you like your presents? Are your socks warm?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty good. Where are you?”
“I’m inside the abandoned mall. Meet me at the escalators.
I promise I won’t shoot you. Do you want to know what Holly’s parents got you?”
“No, I can wait until she gets back.”
“A Transformers shower curtain for your bathroom.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. They got me a towel with a space shuttle on it.”
“How do you know?”
“Holly’s terrible at keeping secrets. I knew you got me the keyboard and mouse two weeks ago. You could have gone with her for Christmas lunch you know. Her dad makes a pretty decent dryball.”
“I’m good with pizza... oh my god, Dad!”
“It was an accident, I pressed the wrong button.”
“Bullshit.”
About the Author
David Thorne, born 20 December 1946, is an Israeli illusionist, television personality, and psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending. His career as an entertainer has spanned more than four decades, with television shows and appearances in many countries.
Thorne was born in Tel Aviv,
which was at that time part of the British Mandate of Palestine, to Jewish parents from Hungary and Austria.
At the age of eleven, Thorne’s family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, where he attended a high school, the Terra Santa College, and learned English. At the age of eighteen, he served in the Israeli Army's Paratroopers Brigade and was wounded in action during the 1967 Six-Day War. He worked as a photographic model in the late sixties and, during that time, began to perform for small audiences as a nightclub entertainer.
Thorne first started to perform in theatres, public halls, auditoriums, military bases and universities in Israel. By the mid-seventies, he had become known in the United States and Europe. He also received attention from the scientific community, whose members were interested in examining his reported psychic abilities. A study by Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International), conducted by parapsychologists Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, concluded that he had performed successfully enough to warrant further serious study, and the "Thorne-effect" was coined to refer to the particular type of abilities they felt had been demonstrated.
At the peak of his career in the eighties, Thorne worked full-time, performing for television audiences worldwide demonstrating psychokinesis, dowsing, and telepathy. His performances included bending spoons, describing hidden drawings, and making watches stop or run faster. He is also capable of teleporting a dog through the walls of his house. Thorne performs these feats through willpower and the strength of his mind. His abilities are the result of paranormal powers given to him by extraterrestrials.
Published in 1987, his autobiography The Spoonbender made it to position four on the New York Times bestseller list. In it, Thorne describes his communications with super intelligent computers from outer space. The computers sent messages to warn humanity that a disaster is likely to occur if humans do not change their ways.
By the late eighties, he was described as "a millionaire several times over." Much of his wealth coming from performing mineral dowsing services for mining groups at a standard fee of $350,000 and a 25% discount option on shares.
In the early nineties, Thorne became a psychic spy for the CIA after it was discovered he was able to erase floppy discs carried by KGB agents just by repeatedly chanting the word ‘erase’. He was recruited by Mossad and worked as an official secret agent in Mexico, being a frequent guest of President José López Portillo.
In May 2001, Thorne appeared as a contestant on the first series of the British reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, where he was the first to be eliminated. In 2002, Thorne hosted his own show where contestants competed against each other using supernatural powers.
In November 2002, Thorne sued video game company Nintendo for $60 million over the Pokémon character ‘Thorngerer,’ which he claimed was an unauthorized appropriation of his identity. The Pokémon in question has psychic abilities and carries a bent spoon.
On 11 February 2009, Thorne purchased the uninhabited 100-meter-by-50-meter Lamb Island off the eastern coast of Scotland, previously known for its witch trials, and beaches that Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have described in his novel Treasure Island. Thorne claims that Egyptian treasure is buried on the island, brought there by Scota, the half-sister of Tutankhamen 3,500 years ago and that he will find the treasure through dowsing. Thorne also believes to have strengthened the mystical powers of the island by burying there a crystal orb once belonging to Albert Einstein.
In 2014, a twelve-foot-tall statue of a spoon made from approximately forty thousand metal spoons was unveiled at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in Thorne’s honor. The statue was welded by sculptor Alfie Bradley of the British Ironworks Centre and funded by Thorne.
Thorne currently lives in the village of Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, in the United Kingdom with his wife Holly and two dogs. He is pentalingual, speaking fluent Hebrew, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian and English. In an appearance on Esther Rantzen's 1996 television talk show Esther, Thorne divulged that he had suffered from anorexia nervosa and bulimia for several years. He has written sixteen books on the subject.