The Quarry Page 2

side of the top and bottom, giving the illusion that the suit's integrity is as slippery as a tied shoelace (never double knotted), but actually offering the option of pinching the sides vertically as circumstances allow, making for some very pleasant fundamental changes in the way the little thing flows.

  Pennington turns back to me, his right eyebrow arched a little. For once, I've hit a jumper over him. Turning, he orders to his disciples, "Let's hit it!"

  "Richard?" I hear, as we start for the cars. Sure enough, Mother is standing right behind us. "Where are you going?"

  "Swimming," I tell her, in a you-don't-want-to-know sort of way.

  She takes a hard look at me, a questioning one at Anneli, and then a frightened one at the wild cars and wilder boys. She knows maybe she's supposed to know more, but not whether she really wants to, and shakes her head resignedly on her way back to make her report. I feel a little ungrateful.

  A half-hour later, the dirty dozen of us are on the far west side of Racine, cruising three across up the two northbound lanes of Green Bay Road in a Datsun 510 and two modified Bugs. Sharing our breakfast of orange Hostess cupcakes and a quart of Kraml chocolate milk, Anneli and I are crammed into the back seat of one of the Bugs—the one cruising half onto the left shoulder. She's anxious just to get there, and I'm just anxious about everything, so over the 8-track player's destruction of the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," she hollers, "Any progress on the dad front?"

  Sore subject. Normally, she wouldn't bring it up out of the blue like this—I get that she's just looking to distract me from the quarry and the driving and my frantic search of the roadside for cops. The "dad front" is about college. Father, his brother, and several of the Andersson Klan before them, are proud alumni of Wheaton College, and so it's darn well good enough for me, he says. Father uses worse language all the time, but never when referencing dear Alma Mater Evangelica, as if an ink stain only ruined the whitest of shirts.

  I've been there. It's like being in a Ronald Reagan movie from the 50s. In the real world, hundreds of thousands of people are dying in a vicious, stupid war! Tens of thousands of those are my own American brothers! Today, tomorrow, and every day, a shipment of napalm rolls out of the Dow Chemical plant in Torrance, California, for a ten mile ride to the port of Long Beach, bound for an eight thousand mile away rendezvous in hell. People are resisting. Kids are getting their heads busted for saying "no more." So much going down, and what are the immediate concerns of Wheaton College? They want me to promise not to dance or play cards.

  Me! A Crusader? Not in a million years!

  I'm going to Illinois. I've used some of that initiative again, Pop. I've even got the financial aid lined up, thanks much to my aunt, who is now divorced from my hypocrite of a cheating uncle, and is tickled pink to be my fake parent, including co-signing student loans. Anything to tick off the Anderson brothers and keep her favorite nephew away from the witch hunt she got shoved into, herself, some twenty years ago. I'll work for the rest. I had all the paperwork sent to her apartment—the university doesn't even know my parents exist. Oh, sure, Father can put the kibosh on the whole deal by introducing himself to the admissions folks at U of I, but I'm telling him it's this or nothing—either way, he's out of it, and there's only one way I'm still in school. He gets an ultimatum this time. Soon, I'm telling him all this. Soon. For real.

  "You have to tell them soon, Richard," Anneli says, as if my thoughts are lit up on my forehead like a Times Square news crawler. She can read my thoughts at times—I know that. She knows I know that, and I know she knows I know that. She's just looking to soothe me with the sweet sound of her voice, and it works.

  We pull into the half-grassy lot for the park that isn't a park. It's still early, but with this heat on, there's a whole mess of people arriving along with us. We ditch the cars, and as we walk across the flat lot I can see we're nearing the edge of a big void between us and some people scattered around on rock formations on the other side. What I can't see is the bottom of those formations—they just keep extending down as we approach. My stomach begins to tell me to hold up.

  And then the whole scene is suddenly spread out in front of me, and I just want to lie down and grab something before I get sick. Our side is an unobstructed, sheer drop to the water, a couple of hundred yards long and I could tell you how high if I could get close enough to the edge again to add it up, which I can't. I turn to Pennington in shock.

  He's kicking off his sandals. Twenty feet to the left, some freak walks up to the edge, extends his arms, and then calmly disappears.

  "Oh … my … god!" I say … maybe out loud.

  Pen tells me, "Thirty-eight feet, right here. Less than a ten-meter platform. Very doable."

  Okay, there is a need to know some physics in my life. I imagine myself tumbling into a belly-flop at forty-five feet per second, give or take.

  "Uh … no, thank you," I tell Pen.

  "Well," he says, "you can go to the other side and work yourself up to it, but this side is just as sheer under the water as above … a lot safer, for real."

  "For real," I answer, in a doubtful tone.

  "We'll see you when we get back up, then," Pennington says nonchalantly. He's working me patiently.

  "How do you get back up?" I ask him. It's not a long swim to the other side or to one of the ends, but it would take some time.

  Standing at the edge, ten feet away, he turns back with his devil smile.

  "There's a rope to help you climb," he says, and then takes a little hop backwards, and he's gone. As much as I care about Pen, I can't bear to get close enough to see how it turns out.

  I turn to Anneli for support, and she's taking off her cut-offs, a sight I would never have imagined regretting seeing. I look into those determined eyes. She's gonna do it! Crap! How did I get myself into this mess?

  She stops to give me a kiss, and then takes hold of my hand gently.

  "Come watch?" she asks.

  I move with her to the edge, wondering how I'm gonna keep my knees from buckling when she leaves me there. I watch her take it all in, and then she closes her eyes. Her nostrils flare slightly as she takes in the aroma of it.

  "You're not scared?" I ask her.

  "I've done this before," she says. "If you're going to jump, don't look down, point your toes, and put your arms together above your head before you hit."

  And there she goes, in a swan dive, no less. I see her knife into the water, and then pop up more quickly than I would have expected, before I have to back off the edge a few feet.

  Two kids not more than twelve years old come flying by on a dead run and disappear over the edge.

  Double crap!

  I move a little closer again, to see the water. I'm still not close enough to the edge to see the swimmers on our side, so there's no perspective as I look down. The breeze has come up a bit, driving ripples that look for all the world like swells on an ocean ten thousand feet below. This sense of flight is helping a little with my vertigo.

  I can't see the swimmers, but I can hear their voices.

  "Hey, show-off, do you need any help with that?" I hear Pennington shout.

  "You just stay over there," Anneli hollers back, with a playful laugh.

  I'm catching on—there's some sort of bikini failure down there. For this, it's suddenly possible for me to move to the edge. Down there—not so far as I'd imagined—I see Anneli, a minimum of ten guys, and two what must be very impressionable twelve-year-olds, though maybe not any more impressionable than Pennington, at the moment. The water looks very clear.

  To my relief, the problem appears to be minor. She's smiling up at me—how am I going to let her down? I can't let her down. Or maybe I just can't let her down there with Pennington, I don't know, because I'm actually starting to think about jumping.

  "Look across!" she yells up.

  While my brain races to rationalize things like, "There are a lot of people down there to rescue me," and, "Why would I be the one in a thousan
d to screw this up?" I can feel my legs busying a mind of their own—there are forces gathering in my calves and the balls of my feet. A third sense awaits the outcome of those other two calmly, picking a spot in the water before taking a long, last look at life across the way. Not sure why at one moment over another, somebody finds a way to push off.

  Somehow, about halfway down, I realize with great relief that I'm still vertical, and remember to stretch my arms upward. The entry is a sharp little jolt, very suddenly over for all that agonizing up top. I end up more or less in a sitting position, about ten feet down, and I can see Anneli's legs treading water about twenty feet to my left. I take a second, and then surface with a whoop in her direction. I don't remember ever whooping before. My feet sting a little. The water feels great.

  "Goodrich! Way to go, man!" Pennington shouts across the water.

  I reach Anneli.

  "Way to go, man." she parrots softly into my ear.

  We climb back up. Nothing to it. I can't get enough now. A couple more rounds, and then we head off on our own to the other side, where it looks like there are some shady spots for more leisurely activities. By two o'clock, Pen, having inventoried every girl in the place, gets bored enough to round us up, but I take just one more jump before we go … I don't know, maybe just to believe it was really me.

  Much more quietly, and more legally, we make a peaceful retreat for the Illinois border. A