by Joe Hill
A few more steps brought him to the crest of the hill. He had settled himself to doing it, so there was no reason to hesitate or be embarrassed. He let go of the cart, grabbed the waistband of his shorts, and jerked them down, along with his underwear, showing the boys down the hill below his scrawny white ass. There were cries of shock and exaggerated disgust. When Ig straightened, he was grinning. His heartbeat had quickened, but only a little, like that of a man moving from a swift walk to a light jog—hurrying to catch his cab before someone else could get it. He kicked off his shorts without removing his sneakers and stripped off his shirt.
“Well,” Eric Hannity said, “don’t be shy, now.”
Terry laughed—a little shrilly—and looked away. Ig turned to face the crowd: fifteen and naked, balls and cock, shoulders hot in the afternoon sunshine. The air carried on it a whiff of smoke from the trash-can fire, where Highway to Hell still stood with his long-haired pal.
Highway to Hell threw up one hand, his pinkie and his index finger extended in the universal symbol of the devil’s horns, and shouted, “Fuckin’ yeah, baby! Lap dance!”
For some reason this affected the boys more than anything that had been said so far, so that several clutched at themselves and doubled over, gasping for breath, as if in reaction to some airborne toxin. For himself, however, Ig was surprised at how relaxed he felt, naked except for his loose tennis sneakers. He did not care if he was naked in front of other boys, and the girls on Coffin Rock would catch only the briefest glimpse of him before he flew into the river—a thought that did not worry him. A thought that, in fact, gave him a gleeful tickle of excitement, low down, in the pit of the stomach. Of course, there was one girl looking at him already: Glenna. She stood on tiptoes at the back of the crowd, her jaw hanging open in an expression that mingled surprise with hilarity. Her boyfriend, Lee, wasn’t with her. He had not followed them up the hill, had apparently not wanted to see what balls looked like.
Ig rolled the cart forward and maneuvered it into place, using the moment of chaos to prepare for the ride. No one gave any notice to the careful way he lined up the shopping cart with the half-buried pipes.
What Ig had discovered, riding the cart for short distances at the bottom of the hill, was that the two old and rusted pipes, sticking out of the dirt, were roughly a foot and a half apart and that the little back wheels of the shopping cart fit precisely between them. There was about a quarter inch of room on either side, and when one of the front wheels shimmied and tried to turn the cart off course, Ig had noticed it would strike a pipe and be turned back. It was very possible, on the steep pitch of the path, that the cart would hit a stone and flip over. It would not swerve off course and roll, however. Could not swerve off course. It would ride the inside of those pipes like a train on its rails.
He still had his clothes under one arm, and he turned and tossed them to Terry. “Don’t go anywhere with them. This’ll be over soon.”
“You said it,” Eric told him, which set off a fresh ripple of laughter—but which didn’t elicit quite the roar of amusement it maybe deserved.
Now that the moment had come and Ig was holding the handle of the cart, preparing to push off into space, he saw a few alarmed faces among the watching boys. Some of the older, more thoughtful-looking kids were half smiling in a quizzical way, and there was worried knowledge in their eyes, the first uneasy awareness that perhaps someone ought to put a stop to this thing before it went any further and Ig got himself seriously hurt. The thought came to Ig that if he didn’t go—now—someone might raise a sensible objection.
“See you,” Ig said before anyone could try to stop him, and he nudged the cart forward, stepping lightly onto the back.
It was a study in perspective, the two pipes leading away downhill, narrowing steadily to a final point, the bullet and the barrel. Almost from the moment he stepped onto the cart, he found himself plunging forward into a euphoric near silence, the only sounds the shrieking wheels and the rattle and bang of the steel frame. Rushing at him from below, he saw the Knowles River, its black surface diamonded with sunlight. The wheels clattered right, then left, struck the pipes, and were turned back on course, just as Ig had known they would be.
In a moment the shopping cart was going too fast for him to do anything but hold on. There was no possibility of stopping, dismounting. He had not anticipated how quickly he would accelerate. The wind sliced at his bare skin so keenly it burned, he burned as he fell, Icarus ignited. The cart struck something, a squarish rock, and the left side vaulted off the ground, and this was it, it was going to overturn at whatever magnificent, fatal speed he was doing, and his naked body would be flung over the bars, and the earth would sand the skin off him and shatter his bones as the turkey bones had shattered, in a sudden, explosive slam. Only the front left wheel scraped the upper curve of the pipe and rode it back down onto the track. The sound of those wheels, spinning faster and faster, had risen to a mad, tuneless whistle, a lunatic piping.
When he glanced up, he saw the end of the trail, the pipes narrowing to their final point just before the dirt ramp that would launch him out over the water. The girls stood on the sandbar, by their kayaks. One of them was pointing at him. He imagined himself sailing overhead, hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, Ig jumped over the moon.
The cart came screaming from between the pipes and shot at the ramp like a rocket leaving its gantry. It hit the dirt incline, and he was flung into the air, and the sky opened to him. The sunlit day caught Ig as if he were a ball lightly tossed into a glove, held him in its gentle clasp for one moment—and then the shopping cart snapped up and back and the steel frame struck him in the face and the sky let him go, dumped him into blackness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IG HAD A FRAGMENTARY MEMORY of the time he was underwater that he later assumed was false, because how could he remember anything about it if he’d been unconscious?
What he remembered was everything dark and roaring noise and a whirling sense of motion. He was poured forth into a thunderous torrent of souls, ejected from the earth and any sense of order and into this other, older chaos. He was in horror of it, appalled by the thought that this might be what waited after death. He felt he was being swept away, not just from his life but from God, the idea of God, or hope, or reason, the idea that things made sense, that cause followed effect, and it ought not to be like this, Ig felt, death ought not to be like this, even for sinners.
He struggled in that furious current of noise and nothing. The blackness seemed to shatter and peel away to show a muddy glimpse of sky but then closed back over him. When he felt himself weakening and sinking away, he had the sense of being grabbed and tugged along from beneath. Then, abruptly, there was something more solid under him. It felt like mud. A moment later he heard a far-off cry and was struck in the back.
The force of the impact shocked him, knocked the darkness out of him. His eyes sprang open, and he stared into a painful brightness. He retched. The river came out of his mouth, his nostrils. He was turned on his side on the mud, ear against the ground, so he could hear what was either the pounding of approaching feet or the slam of his own heart. He was downstream from the Evel Knievel trail, although in that first blurred moment of consciousness he wasn’t sure how far. A length of black rotted fire hose slithered across the liquid earth, three inches from his nose. Only after it was gone did he know that it had been a snake, sliding past him down the bank.
The leaves above began to come into focus, flitting gently against a background of bright sky. Someone was kneeling beside him, hand on his shoulder. Boys began to crash into sight, tumbling through the brush and then hitching up when they saw him.
Ig couldn’t see who was kneeling beside him but felt sure it was Terry. Terry had pulled him out of the water and gotten him breathing again. He rolled onto his back to look into his brother’s face. A skinny, sallow boy with a cap of icy blond hair stared expressionlessly back at him. Lee Tourneau was absentmindedly s
moothing his tie against his chest. His khaki shorts were soaking wet. Ig didn’t need to ask why. In that moment, staring into Lee’s face, Ig decided he was going to begin wearing ties himself.
Terry came through the bushes, saw Iggy, and put on the brakes. Eric Hannity was right behind him and ran into him so hard he almost knocked him down. By now almost twenty boys were gathered around.
Ig sat up, drawing his knees close to his chest. He looked at Lee again and opened his mouth to speak, but when he tried, there was a bitter snap of pain in his nose, as if it were being broken all over again. He hunched and snorted a red splash of blood onto the dirt.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry about the blood.”
“I thought you were dead. You looked a little dead. You weren’t breathing.” Lee was shivering.
“Well,” Ig said, “I’m breathing now. Thank you.”
“What’d he do?” Terry asked.
“He pulled me out,” Ig said, gesturing at Lee’s soaked shorts. “He got me breathing again.”
“You swam in for him?” Terry said.
“No,” Lee said. He blinked, seemed utterly baffled, as if Terry had asked him a much more difficult question: the capital of Iceland, the state flower. “He was already in the shallows by the time I saw him. I didn’t swim out for him or…or anything really. He was already—”
“He pulled me out,” Ig said over him, would have none of Lee’s stammering humility. He remembered quite clearly the feeling of someone in the water with him, moving close beside him. “I wasn’t breathing.”
“And you did mouth-to-mouth?” Eric Hannity asked, with unmistakable incredulity.
Lee shook his head, still confused. “No. No, it wasn’t like that. All I did was smack his back when he, you know…when he was…” He floundered there, didn’t seem to know how to go on.
Ig continued, “That’s what made me cough it up. I swallowed most of the river. My whole chest was full of it, and he pounded it out of me.” He spoke through gritted teeth. The pain in his nose was a series of sharp, bitter shocks, little electrical jolts. They even seemed to have color; when he closed his eyes, he saw neon-yellow flashes.
The gathered boys looked upon Ig and Lee Tourneau with a quiet, dumbstruck wonder. What had just transpired was a thing that happened only in daydreams and TV shows. Someone had been about to die, and someone else had rescued him, and now the saved and the savior were marked as special, stars in their own movie, which made the rest of them extras, or supporting cast at best. To have actually saved a life was to have become someone. You were no longer Joe Schmo, you were Joe Schmo who pulled Ig Perrish naked out of the Knowles River the day he almost drowned. You would be that person for the rest of your life.
For himself, looking up into Lee’s face, Ig felt the first bud of obsession beginning to open in him. He had been saved. He had been about to die, and this pale-haired boy with questioning blue eyes had brought him back. In evangelical churches you went to the river and were submerged and then lifted up into your new life, and it seemed to Ig now that Lee had saved him in this sense as well. Ig wanted to buy him something, to give him something, to find out his favorite rock band so it could be Ig’s favorite rock band, too. He wanted to do Lee’s homework for him.
There was noisy crashing in the brush, as if someone were driving a golf cart toward them. Then the girl, Glenna, appeared among them, out of breath, her face blotchy. She bent at the waist, put one hand on her round thigh, and gasped, “Jesus. Look at his face.” Her gaze shifted to Lee, and her brow furrowed. “Lee? What are you doing?”
“He pulled Ig out of the water,” Terry said.
“He got me breathing,” Ig said.
“Lee?” she asked, screwing up her face in an expression that suggested utter disbelief.
“I didn’t do anything,” Lee said, shaking his head, and Ig could not help but love him.
The pain that had been beating in the bridge of Ig’s nose had flowered, opening behind his forehead, between his eyes, penetrating deeper into the brain. He was beginning to see those neon-yellow flashes even with his eyes open. Terry sank down on one knee at his side, put a hand on his arm.
“We better get you dressed and back home,” Terry said. He sounded chastened in some way, as if he, and not Ig, were guilty of idiot recklessness. “I think your nose is broken.” He looked up then at Lee Tourneau and gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Hey. Looks like maybe I was full of shit back on the hill. Sorry about what I said a couple minutes ago. Thanks for helping my brother out.”
Lee said, “Skip it. It’s not worth making a big deal.” Ig almost shivered at the calm cool of it, his unwillingness to bask in the appreciation of others.
“Will you come with us?” Ig asked Lee, gritting his teeth against the pain. He looked at Glenna. “Both of you? I want to tell my parents what Lee did.”
Terry said, “Hey, Ig. Let’s not and say we did. We don’t want Mom and Dad to know this happened. You fell out of a tree, okay? There was a slippery branch, and you face-planted. That’s just…just easier.”
“Terry. We have to tell them. I’d be drowned if he didn’t pull me out.”
Ig’s brother opened his mouth to argue, but Lee Tourneau beat him to the punch.
“No,” he said, almost sharply, and looked up at Glenna with wide eyes. She stared back at him with much the same look and grabbed strangely at her black leather jacket. Then he was on his feet. “I’m not supposed to be here. I didn’t do anything anyway.” He hurried across the little clearing to grab Glenna’s chubby hand and tug her toward the trees. With his other hand, he carried his brand-new mountain board.
“Wait,” Ig said, getting to his feet. When he stood, a bright neon flash burst behind his eyes, carrying with it a feeling like he had a nose full of packed broken glass.
“I got to go. We both got to go.”
“Well. Will you come over to the house sometime?”
“Sometime.”
“Do you know where it is? It’s on the highway, just about—”
“Everyone knows where it is,” Lee said, and then he was gone, billygoating away through the trees, pulling Glenna after him. She cast a final, distressed look back at the boys before allowing herself to be led off.
The pain in Ig’s nose was more intense now and coming in steady, rolling waves. He cupped his hands to his face for a moment, and when he took them away, his palms were painted in crimson.
“Come on, Ig,” Terry said. “We better go. You need to see a doctor about your face.”
“You and me both,” Ig said.
Terry smiled and tugged Ig’s shirt loose from the ball of laundry he was holding. Ig was startled to see it, had forgotten, until that moment, that he was standing there naked. Terry pulled it on over Ig’s head, dressing him as if he were five and not fifteen.
“Probably need a surgeon to remove Mom’s foot from my ass, too. She’ll be ready to kill me after she gets a look at you,” Terry said. As Ig’s head came through the shirt hole, he found his brother peering into his face with unmistakable anxiety. “You aren’t going to tell, are you? For real, Ig. She’d murder me for letting you ride that fucking cart down the hill. Sometimes it’s just better not to tell.”
“Oh, man, I’m no good at lying. Mom always knows. She knows the second I open my mouth.”
Terence looked relieved. “So who said open your mouth? You’re in pain. Just stand there and cry. Leave the bullshit to me. It’s what I’m good at.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LEE TOURNEAU WAS SHIVERING and soaking wet the next time Ig saw him as well, two days later. He wore the same tie, the same shorts, had his mountain board under one arm. It was as if he’d never dried off, as if he’d only just waded out of the Knowles.
It had started to rain, and Lee had been caught out in it. His almost-white hair was soaked flat, and he had the sniffles. He carried a wet canvas satchel over his shoulder; it gave him the look of a newsboy out to hawk some papers i
n an old Dick Tracy strip.
Ig was alone in the house, an uncommon occurrence. His parents were in Boston to attend a cocktail party at John Williams’s town house. Williams was in his last year as the conductor of the Boston Pops, and Derrick Perrish was going to perform with the orchestra in the farewell concert. They had left Terry in charge. Terry had spent most of the morning in his pajamas in front of MTV, on the phone, carrying on a series of conversations with equally bored friends. His tone at first was cheerfully lazy, then alert and curious, then, finally, clipped and flat, the toneless tone he used to express his highest levels of disdain. Ig had gone by the living room to see him pacing, an unmistakable sign of agitation. Finally Terry had banged down the phone and launched himself up the stairs. When he came back down, he was dressed and tossing the keys to their father’s Jag in one hand. He said he was going to Eric’s. He said it with his upper lip curled, the look of someone with a dirty job to do, someone who has come home to find the trash cans knocked over and garbage spread all over the yard.
“Don’t you need someone with a license to go with you?” Ig asked. Terry had his permit.
“Only if I get pulled over,” Terry said.
Terry walked out the door, and Ig closed it behind him. Five minutes later Ig was opening it again, someone thumping on the other side. Ig assumed it was Terry, that he had forgotten something and come back to get it, but it was Lee Tourneau instead.
“How’s your nose?” Lee asked.
Ig touched the tape across the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand. “I wasn’t that pretty to begin with. You want to come in?”
Lee took a step in through the door and stood there, a pool forming under his feet.
