The Day We All Went Underground

He was ten feet off the cave floor, bike and rider stretched and twisted in the old-school BMX trick that was called a "Judge" and a "Leary" before settling into the modern appellation of "lookback". Then he disappeared down the backside of the jump and we all heard the thump echo back across two hundred feet. The two thirtysomething men who were pedaling back up to the rest of us in the staging area dropped their bikes then broke and ran in that direction. Silence fell as the chattering children to my right picked up on their parents' vibe, shut up, and turned to face the incident. Three, four empty seconds and then there was a loud cough. After thirty-three years behind the handlebars of a BMX bike I can hear blood in a cough and this time I heard blood.