{"id":15298,"date":"2019-06-10T05:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T09:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=15298"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:13:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:13:04","slug":"dares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/dares\/","title":{"rendered":"Dares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melvin is in his room, reading The Hobbit<\/em>, when he hears a truck crumbling up the gravel driveway and sees it\u2019s Dwayne and Jarvis, his dead brother\u2019s friends, coming to recruit him for a day of lawn mowing. His brother Art died last summer cliff jumping into the Schuylkill River, and now Melvin\u2019s mother and father fiddle around the small room, picking through Art\u2019s belongings.<\/p>\n

His father takes a pocket knife from the dresser and fidgets with it while staring out the window. His mother folds an old shirt, adds it to the shirt pile, removes it, folds it again, adds it to the pile. Melvin\u2019s decided he\u2019ll keep Art\u2019s old Phillies hat, since Art had practically given it to him already. Before he snuck out to meet his death\u2014how Melvin thinks of it\u2014Art had flopped the hat onto Melvin\u2019s head and said, \u201cYou can be me for a while, until I say when.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside, the truck\u2019s horn blasts twice, and Melvin jumps from the bed and hurries to put on his sneakers, glad for a reason not to be around his parents\u2019 ritual sorting and unsorting. They began days ago, and they never agree on what items stay or go, and so the piles occupy the middle of the floor, each one shrinking and changing shape and quality, but never disappearing. Melvin refuses to look at the piles, and to him they are shapeless, hungry entities, like amoebas he learned about in biology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere those boys are,\u201d says his father. \u201cMake sure they pay you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey paid last time,\u201d says Melvin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell they\u2019re older, bigger, and meaner,\u201d his father says. \u201cYou haven\u2019t been around them much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last part isn\u2019t exactly true. It\u2019s true that Melvin has only worked with them a few times, but he knows the brothers as Art\u2019s best friends, has seen them smoking just outside of school boundaries for years now, and he knows that they were there the night Art died. Before then, they never really gave Melvin their attention, though he secretly craved it, and though they\u2019d never said so, he figured recruiting him was their way of showing condolences. And besides, his few friends are away on vacations or at camps.<\/p>\n

Melvin, being scrawny in comparison to Dwayne and Jarvis, is made to sit in the middle of the bench seat. As soon as they are down the lane and on the road, they turn left\u2014not in the direction of the boys\u2019 house where the gassy-smelling lawn mowers and weed whackers and hedge trimmers are kept.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we taking the scenic route?\u201d says Melvin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking the scenic route,\u201d Dwayne says. The scenic route, in Melvin\u2019s experience, is what older kids call illicit beer runs or errands involving tobacco or firearms or pornography.<\/p>\n

On Melvin\u2019s left, stubbly-faced older Dwayne jams in a tape while steering with one arm resting over the wheel. He shifts into fourth, banging Melvin\u2019s knee with the stick, and there is nothing to be done about it because there is no room, and Melvin scoots right, but Jarvis nudges him back towards Dwayne saying, \u201cGet off me, Jerktard.\u201d Dwayne, keeping one arm on the wheel, uses the other to scratch his ribcage through his sleeveless Megadeth t-shirt, remove a tin of dip from under his baseball cap, pinch a wad, and stuff it between his lower lip and gum.<\/p>\n

From the right, the younger Jarvis says to Melvin, \u201cI\u2019ll bet you still have wet dreams, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Jarvis\u2019 favorite joke at Melvin\u2019s expense, an open ridicule of his private life, and the fact that he is younger and less developed.<\/p>\n

Dwayne spits into an empty soda can, the sides dented from use, the top covered with brown tobacco scum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll bet so,\u201d Jarvis says. \u201cHaven\u2019t whacked, jerked, rubbed. Not once. Do you even like girls?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarvis, two years older than Melvin, claims his member is like a rampaging sea lion and needs frequent release.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal men do it once a day,\u201d Dwayne says to sound intelligent, tongue-shifting his tobacco wad to his right cheek and stepping on the gas to barrel down a straightaway. Hot wind blows old receipts and candy wrappers about the cab. Jarvis grins yellow teeth at Melvin. His left eye is cocked outward from a BB gun injury, and Melvin can\u2019t always tell where he is looking.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdmit it,\u201d Jarvis says, and here Melvin is not sure what he\u2019s supposed to admit to, so he says nothing and hopes his silence will kill the joke.<\/p>\n

Melvin watches banks overgrown with walls of sumac and poison ivy fly past them on both sides. The road bends sharply, and the truck does not slow enough, and Melvin is thrown again against Jarvis, and the tires screech. Ahead, shocked vultures explode off an animal smear, leaving behind a few zigzagging black feathers. Hills with corn, cows, silos, and here and there a puttering tractor, disappear in the rearview as they reach the base of Hawk Mountain. The truck\u2019s insides smell sour and intimate, like jockstrap.<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually you\u2019ll do it,\u201d Dwayne says, shifting into second for a hill, again jamming Melvin\u2019s knee. \u201cYou have to, if you don\u2019t want to get sick. Christians will never admit it, but doctors recommend boys do it at least once a day.\u201d This is another joke, that Melvin\u2019s parents are avid church goers, and Dwayne and Jarvis\u2019, while members of the same congregation, are not.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d says Jarvis. \u201cWe won\u2019t tell God if you need to step into the bushes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only a few hairs sprout around Melvin\u2019s privates. He\u2019s kept count for weeks. Jarvis\u2019, as Melvin saw the other day behind a tool shed, is like a small elephant trunk growing out of a wig. Jarvis had unexpectedly whipped it out during a break from mowing and pissed on the shed wall. Melvin assumed he should be impressed, so he said, \u201cWhoa.\u201d Then Jarvis zipped up his pants, and that is when he started calling Melvin “Jerktard.\u201d<\/p>\n

They pass a stone farmhouse with a white, wrap-around front porch. Melvin can smell the sweet lilac bushes blocking the house from the road. Angela Millenowsky is outside, mid-stride, gardening in the cutoffs she wore to the Fourth of July picnic\u2014short enough to show she has a birthmark on her inner left thigh. After the picnic, while his parents packed up the minivan, Angela asked Melvin to swing with her. They\u2019d jogged side by side to the swing set, and he pretended not to watch her legs pumping as she swung, the muscles contracting and stretching beneath smooth skin. Melvin tended the image of her birthmark that whole night\u2014shaped like Australia, or a partially chewed piece of toast\u2014and he rubbed one out into his underwear. Hot, slimy, tingling. Stars in his periphery. Guilt. Then his fluids dried and cemented him to his tighty whiteys. He hid the underwear under his mattress and later burned them while his parents were out food shopping. Jerking it, Art once told him, was fine but never as good as the real deal. The shower was convenient and practical. Did he want mess? Did he want Mom or Dad walking in? The toilet worked in a pinch but killed some of the ceremony. Plus, Art said, multiple toilet trips raised parental eyebrows.<\/p>\n

After the house, they turn right onto Hawk Mountain Road.<\/p>\n

\u201cNice legs!\u201d Jarvis hollers out the window.<\/p>\n

\u201cShut up,\u201d Melvin says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake. Me. To-the-ri-ver!\u201d Dwayne sings with the cassette player.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to the river?\u201d says Melvin.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the song, genius,\u201d says Dwayne. \u201cBut yes we are. But not really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t bring a bathing suit or towel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense,\u201d Jarvis says, \u201cwe are<\/em> going to the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense, we\u2019re not,\u201d says Dwayne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why\u2019d you say we\u2019re mowing lawns?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cElementary, my dear Wilson,\u201d says Jarvis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Winston, dummy,\u201d Dwayne says. \u201cWinston is the Sherlock Holmes sidekick. And because mowing lawns is shitty prison labor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you rather work?\u201d Jarvis says. \u201cThere\u2019s a little place called The Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere Art died,\u201d says Melvin, and the hot wind fills his mouth and nostrils, and neither brother says anything.<\/p>\n

The truck bounces along the winding road, and Melvin steadies himself with the dashboard. He\u2019s watched from the riverbank as kids plummeted off The Rock like suicides, and he once swam out to its base and hunted crawfish, but he\u2019s never even climbed to the top and, besides, after Art, his father didn\u2019t exactly make him promise but did tell him it was off limits and that he didn\u2019t ever want to hear about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to jump, Jerktard,\u201d Jarvis says. The command takes a minute to sink in. Jarvis stuffs a pinch of dip in his lip so it juts ape-like. He offers Melvin the mint-scented tobacco.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the taste,\u201d Melvins says.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on,\u201d says Jarvis.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad will kill me.\u201d Which isn\u2019t exactly true. His father, an angry man, did once scream at Art because of dip and then ceremoniously walk him to the property line, where the creek ran, and watched Art dump it, the tobacco blowing away like ashes, and gave him a fast whack on the back of the head, which made Art stumble and catch himself on one hand and knee in the un-mown grass.<\/p>\n

\u201cMelvin\u2019s afraid to jump, Dwayne.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarvis and Dwayne share a humorless laugh and spit black juice into their cans.<\/p>\n

Melvin touches his cap. His head is much smaller than Art\u2019s was, so he\u2019s adjusted the band, giving the hat a mushroomed shape.<\/p>\n

They drive down the back of the mountain, past a place called Pine Swamp Trailer Park, where an obese redheaded boy in camo pants and orange hunting vest chases after them and falls forward, as though pushed by unseen hands. The air is damp and smells of moss and pine needles, and Melvin hears a whippoorwill, and the tree tops make pieces of the blue sky.<\/p>\n

The night Art snuck out to party at The Rock, he and Melvin both lay in their bunks, pretending to sleep until their parents\u2019 snores rumbled from down the hall. Art wanted Melvin to come with him. His brother never invited him to do any big kid stuff. But that night, Art was suddenly insistent that Melvin come. \u201cYou\u2019re thirteen now. That\u2019s when it happens,\u201d he said. \u201cYou start to grow up. You quit the G.I Joes and wizard books and all the daydreaming. You climb out of your shell.\u201d The truth was, while Melvin adored his older brother, he was terrified of big kids, as in his experience they tended to either push him around or make him the subject of their crude jokes. And he was suspicious of Art\u2019s sudden interest, since he\u2019d grown used to his indifference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel like it,\u201d Melvin said. \u201cI don\u2019t like alcohol. I\u2019m fine right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to have to get out a little,\u201d Art said. \u201cYou\u2019re my brother, but you should know that other people talk about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what?\u201d Art said, looming over Melvin then and snatching his book away. \u201cThese monsters,\u201d he said, holding he book just out of Melvin\u2019s reach, \u201caren\u2019t going to prepare you for the real monsters. You think my friends are bad. You just wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Art eased open the window and, before slipping out, placed a hand on his little brother\u2019s shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. It was the first time he\u2019d done anything like that. Melvin wondered about that and about Art\u2019s words. He touched the skin of his stomach to see if it was shell-like. It seemed normal, but now he had nothing to compare it to.<\/p>\n

The brothers are quiet again, a lull Melvin is glad for, even saying a silent prayer: Our Father, who art in Heaven, please don\u2019t let them force me into self-touching, melt Jarvis\u2019 brain, turn Dwayne into salt or give him boils, let him cower as I have, let him know terror, let Jarvis hit his head\u2014not enough to kill him as with Art, but enough to make him forget about the jerking, amen.<\/p>\n

They cross some train tracks and pull off the main road into a pothole-cratered dirt lot, the trailhead marked by a dumpster-sized boulder with a painted red arrow. Melvin\u2019s balls clench. He wishes they\u2019d blown a tire. He wishes one of them would sprain his ankle, have a sudden seizure. He scans the sky for rain clouds. Maybe there will be a lightning storm.<\/p>\n

Cicadas rattle and gnat swarms materialize periodically in pockets of shade. Horseflies bite the boys\u2019 exposed flesh. Jarvis slaps one, leaving a bloody smudge on the back of his neck.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s where me and Art smoked weed,\u201d Dwayne says like a tour guide, pointing to a sycamore log worn smooth from years of people sitting. \u201cHe coughed so hard he almost puked. Here\u2019s the tree we hid in afterwards, making bird noises at hikers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cArt was hilarious,\u201d Jarvis laughs and spits his tobacco wad into a blackberry bush.<\/p>\n

Melvin lets his mind wander to Angela, whom he\u2019d thrown a wet sponge at in chemistry class. When she\u2019d turned around after the sponge struck her shoulder, her smile seemed to say she knew he\u2019d been planning the move all morning, that she knew he\u2019d rehearsed it in his bedroom, using a bean bag instead of a sponge, worried that the weight of the sponge would make him miss. Jarvis and Dwayne are talking quietly ahead of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t it hurt when you land?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to go spread-eagle once you hit the water,\u201d Dwayne says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about all the glass?\u201d Jarvis asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cHands and feet out.\u201d Dwayne demonstrates with a jumping jack.<\/p>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t there snapping turtles? I\u2019m not cut out for snappers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot cut out for snappers?\u201d Dwayne mocks. Melvin is glad that Jarvis is afraid. He revises his earlier prayer: Our Father, who art in Heaven, let fear cloud their judgment, let them hit the water hard and feel the shock and hurt so that they will caution me against it and then, God\u2014be it with fire, earthquake, or tank battalion\u2014come down and level all high spots above water, dash to bits all boulders, diving boards, rope swings trees or, God, if that\u2019s too much, give me a special ring that allows me to always be somewhere else the minute kids start jumping.<\/p>\n

The Rock looms above the river on the other side, as tall as a four-story house.<\/p>\n

Dwayne says to keep their shoes on as they cross. They drop their shirts on a scrap of beach. Water striders skate in all directions. Downriver, a fat man and woman are grilling burgers, their pink flesh squeezing out around their bathing suits. Beyond them, two naked, tattooed men sunbathe. Dwayne shakes his head in disgust at the men, and Jarvis imitates him. They pass the grillers, whose arms and necks are so sunburned it\u2019s as if they dipped themselves in paint. The woman drinks from a can of beer and smiles, her teeth gleaming. The man grips his spatula and regards the boys from behind wrap-around sunglasses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSwim or jump? Jump or swim?\u201d he says, chuckling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can\u2019t they do both?\u201d says the woman. \u201cYou can come here and do both.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose two queers over there have done neither,\u201d the man says. \u201cWe were here, then they came in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave off, Jerry.\u201d says the woman. \u201cYou boys look like supermodels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn training,\u201d says Dwayne, flexing a bicep.<\/p>\n

\u201cSucculence!\u201d the woman says. \u201cLook at these hard little sluts, Jerry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melvin back-steps. The tattooed men are either out of earshot or uninterested in the conversation.<\/p>\n

The man flips a burger, grease sizzling and spitting. \u201cChrist, April.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one might not make it,\u201d the woman says, looking at Melvin. \u201cEither I\u2019ll eat him or those bikers will. Gnaw on his sweet little bones.\u201d \u00a0She clacks her teeth. \u201cWon\u2019t I, sugar shorts?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got her all lathered up,\u201d the man says. He\u2019s positioned himself between the boys and the woman. \u201cWhat did I say? Jump or swim?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJump,\u201d says the woman. \u201cI want to see them drop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a show,\u201d says the man.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou paying?\u201d says Dwayne. \u201cFive bucks a jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTen!\u201d says Jarvis.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck off,\u201d says the man. \u201cYou\u2019re stomping on our picnic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any money,\u201d says Melvin. Dwayne and Jarvis turn to him with blank expressions.<\/p>\n

The man looks at Melvin again, lifting his sunglasses. His eyes are big and wet and blue. Melvin notices that his face is pocked with ancient acne scars. \u201cI guess we better all ignore each other, then. Verstehen sie? You boys better jump or jack off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth!\u201d says April.<\/p>\n

They wade into the Schuykill\u2019s tepid flow. The Rock is covered in graffiti: curse words, an American flag, a black peace sign in the middle of a rainbow circle, \u201cAnthrax\u201d in jagged red lettering. They slog through the silt-covered river bottom until the water is up to their necks, and they swim. <\/em>Melvin, afraid it might happen at the top where he will be visible, releases a hot piss underwater. Blackbirds watch from the treetops. A bullfrog honks. They climb a slippery, leaf-strewn path.<\/p>\n

They stand dripping at the top. Dwayne and Jarvis discuss the two tattooed men. Dwayne describes what he imagines they do to each other, in private, in a garage or basement, probably, bent over the seats of Harleys. He opens his mouth wide and pumps his fist in front of it, eyes crossed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisgusting,\u201d Jarvis says. Melvin\u2019s not sure how they are certain that the two men are gay. Didn\u2019t guys skinny-dip? Though he\u2019s never skinny-dipped with anyone, the way older kids have described it to him with an air of triumph has made him think of swimming naked as a special rite. An honorable thing to do. Daring. Alike in awesomeness to jumping off The Rock. Should he laugh? He knows he is supposed to, but he also thinks it would hurt the two men.<\/p>\n

Melvin fakes a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looks scared,\u201d Dwayne says, pointing at Melvin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should be,\u201d Jarvis says.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimbing here the other day, this chick climbed with me,\u201d Dwayne says. \u201cSkirt on. No panties.\u201d He simulates climbing posture, looking up, Melvin assumes, the girl\u2019s skirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurry kerbongers right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarvis nods his approval. Melvin can\u2019t visualize a kerbonger, much less a furry one. He wonders if all women have kerbongers.<\/p>\n

Dwayne walks to the edge of the Rock and sits with his legs hanging off. Jarvis joins him. Melvin sits on his haunches off to the side of them, a good five feet from the edge. He feels a slight vertigo, and sweats despite the shade. A little stomach acid and breakfast bubbles its way to the back of his throat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where Art fell,\u201d Dwayne says after a few minutes. \u201cIt was night. We were daring each other to jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fat couple on the beach are shouting at each other. The man kicks over the grill and smoke billows up. The woman wades into the shallows and rolls onto her back, half submerged, her belly and the tops of her thighs making pink islands. The tattooed biker men shade their eyes with their hands and watch the boys on the cliff.<\/p>\n

Melvin, for the first time, sees how the two brothers are not copies but echoes of one another. They both have giant Adam\u2019s apples, thick lips, and sunken eyes he\u2019s never sure to be looking inward or outward. Each of them has survived near-fatal accidents. Worm-like scars mark Jarvis\u2019s left leg from a head-on bicycle collision, while Dwayne wears his on his back from when a friend drunkenly ran him over with a golf cart. Their oral histories are full of avoidable injuries, skirmishes with death. Jarvis slit his own cheek with a fishing knife while throwing it at the back wall of a church, and the middle finger of his right hand is pancaked from when Dwayne smashed it with a sledge hammer. Dwayne once urinated on an electric fence and had his nose broken by a falling ladder that Jarvis kicked over. In leaf-sifted light, they sit like statues, foreheads broad, angular, Dwayne\u2019s crooked nose now like it was chiseled out of stone. Melvin wonders how they are alive. How they can sit on this ledge without sliding off. They look as if they should be bolted down or cemented to a building like gargoyles. What if he pushed them? Would they pull an Art and break to pieces on the lower ledge? Melvin imagines they would float down safely on unearned wings, lucky angels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait,\u201d Dwayne says, standing. \u201cWe have to do something first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the edge of the cliff is a path that leads into the woods. Walk a few hundred feet and there is a mailbox screwed to a birch tree. In it is a visitors\u2019 log.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople write stupid things,\u201d Dwayne says.<\/p>\n

Melvin flips through the notebook. The brothers watch over his shoulder for a few minutes and get bored. They wander off, and Melvin hears the sound of branches snapping, the hollow knock of wood striking wood, theatrical shouts of \u201cParry!\u201d and \u201cThrust!\u201d The log goes back four years. He flips to the year Art died. There are attempts at graffiti-style tags. A note says, \u201cI\u2019ve found Helen AND God! \u2014Steven.\u201d There are a few earnest entries by hikers meditating on ruffed grouse sightings and trees. There is an unsigned note that says, \u201cShit fuck, dick fuck.\u201d Another says: \u201cJerktards U-knight!\u201d Further on, Melvin finds entries from Art\u2019s friends and one from Art. \u201cDon\u2019t know much, but I\u2019ll tell you one thing,\u201d it says. \u201cCandy is dandy. But liquor is quicker. But, seriously, folks. I take my time at things, because right now it seems like time is the only thing I have that is free to take. My little brother, my mom and dad. Have they looked at me lately? Has God? I\u2019m not pissed about it, I just think someone should know, a person lives all the way down inside himself a lot of the time, and aren\u2019t we all just trying to climb up for a few minutes each day? Dinner time chit-chat? All those guys over there, do they have a second self that lives on the outside, so that the other inside one can relax? I worry about my brother. There, I said it. He\u2019s a nerd and he needs to grow up. But is that even my job to worry? Do Mom and Dad know it\u2019s their job? Alright, folks, the guys are chanting at me. Over and out. \u2014Art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all jumped multiple times that night,\u201d Dwayne says, suddenly behind Melvin. He has a scrape above his right eye that wasn\u2019t there before. Jarvis is sucking at a wound on his own forearm. \u201cArt dared all of us, then he went. We kept jumping.\u201d An emotion settles on Dwayne\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d says Jarvis, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you take that book? As like a souvenir?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll get wet,\u201d Dwayne says. The emotion now gone, he brushes his nose with his wrist and looks away.<\/p>\n

Melvin decides to put the notebook back in the mailbox, but not before scribbling his own note next to Art\u2019s. He doesn\u2019t know what to write, so he writes: \u201cThis is Melvin, Art\u2019s younger brother. He died over there, but I\u2019ll bet he\u2019s living outside of himself now, outside his shell, folks. If anyone reads this, don\u2019t you dare steal this book. If you do, I will find out who you are. \u2014Melvin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three boys stand at the back of The Rock.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpread-eagle,\u201d Dwayne says, doing his half-jumping jack and, with a cry, sprints and jumps. A full four seconds later, his splash comes. Melvin hears cheering and applauding from the audience on the beach. Jarvis crouches, runs, jumps, and is gone. Melvin walks carefully to the edge. Dwayne and Jarvis are calling up to him, treading water off to the side of the landing zone, which still ripples from their impacts. The couple is shouting, but Melvin can\u2019t make out the words. The bikers are standing now, all dangly and hairy parts and waving. Spread-eagle<\/em>, he thinks. The air smells of honeysuckle and river scum, and The Rock is the edge of the world. When he starts to run, he thinks of naked skin, of skulls and crossbones and an American flag wrapping two fat bodies together, limbs twisting together, Angela\u2019s birthmark, two men in a garage, Dwayne and Jarvis comparing dicks behind a tool shed, the two piles of clothes and his parents, and Art falling and falling and falling\u2014<\/em>and he\u2019s airborne. The images are whipped away with a rush of wind and the hard sting of his body on the water, and he sinks down further than he thought he would.<\/p>\n

Down here on the bottom, enough light penetrates that, when the air bubbles clear, he sees the silty floor, the cylinders and necks of a sunken glass bottles, and a shape floating above on the surface of the water that looks like a disembodied head, but which he realizes in a sudden panic is Art\u2019s hat. The hat is sinking, and Melvin swims toward it, reaching and missing, kicking up silt, so that everything melds into one inky, terrible darkness before he abandons it for good.<\/p>\n

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They drive down the back of the mountain, past a place called Pine Swamp Trailer Park, where an obese redheaded boy in camo pants and orange hunting vest chases after them and falls forward, as though pushed by unseen hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-cedric-synnestvedt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15298"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15408,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15298\/revisions\/15408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}