“Dude. Seriously…”
Something in his voice was strange to me: a note of doubt or panic or fear. “What’s the problem, Chance? We’re here, right? Two weeks ’til graduation.”
“Just jump, dude. Make it a jump.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“You know you can’t actually do it, right? You can’t make that dive.” Chance looked embarrassed, turning his hands to show the palms. “I mean … come on. There’s a pattern, right? You talk about it. You stand there. You never actually dive.”
“But you egg me on. You tell me to do it.”
“Because I’ve never once thought you were stupid enough to actually dive. It’s thirteen stories.”
“You think I’m afraid?”
“No.”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
“I think your brother’s dead whether you do it or not.”
The color drained from my face.
Chance didn’t care. “Robert is gone, man. He won’t see the dive or pat you on the back or say, Welcome to the club. He’ll still be underground in that cemetery you hate. He’ll still be a dead hero, and you’ll still be a kid in high school.”
Chance was earnest and worried—a strange combination. I looked away as catcalls rose up the cliff, and someone far below yelled, Do it, you pussy! I found Becky Collins, a slash of brown and white. She was shading her eyes; she wasn’t yelling. “You think I’d die if I did it?”
“I know you would.”
“Robert lived.”
“Hand of God, Gibby. One in a million.”
I watched Becky, thinking of God and luck and my dead brother. The Marine Corps said he took one in the heart, and that it killed him before he felt a thing. A painless death, they said, but I didn’t buy it. “Two years ago I said I’d make the dive. I told everyone down there I’d do it.”
“You mean that everyone?” Chance pointed at the water, where even more kids were yelling up the cliff’s face. “You mean Bill Murphy, who told Becky to her face that you were a loser because your mom won’t let you play football anymore? You mean his lame-ass brother? Fuck that guy, too. He blew spitballs at the back of your head for pretty much all of seventh grade. What about Jessica Parker or Diane Fairway? I asked them both out, and they laughed at me. They’re not keen on you, either, by the way. They say you’re too quiet and that you’re distant and that you look too much like your dead brother. Listen, Gibs, you don’t owe anyone down there a damn thing. That crowd there, those people…” He pointed down. “Empty heads and bullshit and vanity. They don’t know you or want to know you. Maybe three are worth a crap, and they’re the only ones not yelling at you to kill yourself.”
I leaned out; saw jocks and stoners and pretty girls in mirrored shades. Most were laughing or smiling or yelling at me.
Do it …
Dive …
Dive, you chickenshit motherfucker …
They’d rafted up for the best view: a jigsaw of rubber and smooth skin and bits of bikini that looked like colored sails. I listened for a moment more, then studied the sky, the jagged rock, the far, familiar water. Last, I looked at Becky Collins, who, with a single friend, floated apart from the others. She was unmoving, one hand at her mouth, the other pressed across the heart. “You know something,” I said. “I think maybe you’re right.”
“Really?”
“In part, yeah.”
“What does that mean, in part?”
I disliked needless lies, so I shook my head, then turned from the edge, and started walking to the trail that would take us down. Chance followed, still worried.
“Dude, wait. What does that mean?”
I kept quiet, unwilling to share the conviction he’d put inside me. It was powerful and strange, and made me drunk with possibility.
Me alone, I thought.
Me alone when I dive …
* * *
It wasn’t the first time Chance and I had walked the long trail down. We followed the slope east and then switchbacked through the trees, coming out a quarter mile later on the far side of the quarry, where people parked their cars. Walking to the edge of the field, we stood and looked down. Chance nudged me. “She’s on the beach to your left.”
“I wasn’t looking for her.”
“Yeah, right.”
Becky saw me and waved. A squad of guys surrounded her, football players, mostly. One of them saw me looking, and spit on the cracked, granite ledge that passed for a beach.
Chance said, “Come on. Let’s find a beer.”
We turned for the trail that would take us to the water, but saw movement in a shaded place beneath the pines. A man was squatting with his back against the trunk, and his head shifted as he ground a cigarette into the dirt. “I caught your performance. Thought for a minute you might actually do it.” He stood, and moved into the light: black hair and denim and prison-pale skin. “Hello, little brother.”
Jason was five years older, but my size and shape. The same hair brushed the collar of his shirt. The same eyes stared out from a face that was similar in every way but the hard edges of it. “You’re out,” I said, and he shrugged. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, believe it or not.”
A pint bottle appeared from his back pocket. He unscrewed the cap and offered me a sip. When I shook my head, he shrugged and tipped the bottle back.
“You remember Chance,” I said.
“Hello, little man.” Chance bridled at the mocking tone, and Jason stood there looking unconcerned and dangerous and bored. “Why didn’t you make the dive?” I shrugged stupidly, and Jason nodded as if he understood. “It was something to see, though, wasn’t it?”
He was talking about the day our brother dove. Robert had been the kindest and my favorite. “Have you been home?” He shook his head. “You going?”
“After last time? I don’t think so.”
His grin, then, was the first truly familiar thing I’d seen. It had a sharp edge on one side, and the eye above it dipped in a quick wink. If Jason liked you, the wink said, Life is good, I’ve got your back. For others, it was different. Even in high school, grown men would back away from the wink and the grin, and that was before war and death and whatever devil Vietnam put inside my brother. He was calm at the moment, but that could change on a dime. Indian summer. Killing frost. Jason had both of those things inside, and they could trade places plenty fast.
He lit another cigarette, and I watched him do it, hating how much he looked like our dead brother. Were Robert here instead of Jason, he’d have wrapped me up, laughing. He’d have squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe, then he’d have pushed me back, mussed my hair, and said, My God, look how you’ve grown. I often wondered if war had changed him as it changed Jason. Was he harder in those last days? Or was it Robert’s goodness that got him killed in the end, some softness that my other brother lacked?
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know. Hanging out, I guess.”
“Let’s do it together, the two of us. You have a car. I know some girls.” He smiled around the cigarette, then pulled in smoke and streamed it through his nostrils. “Robert and I used to do that, you know. Back roads and cold beers, life before the war. What do you say? It could be like old times.”