He and Maggot were passing a handle of gin between the front and back seat, another last-minute save from Hammer’s truck. If he’d started it that morning, I was impressed to see Hammer conscious. Maggot was putting a good hurt on the remainder. I mostly passed, on principles. Being the driver. Best to keep the blood alcohol in the mid to upper teens.
I don’t think they saw the dark clouds up ahead, in any full sense. I was steering us into combat. Hammer’s case was clear-cut. Fast Forward stole his woman, and disrespected the goods. And he’d not even seen Emmy after Atlanta, he had no real idea of the damage. I’d go to my grave with the picture in my head of those half-naked girls on their filthy mattress, like somebody’s thrown-away Barbie dolls. Not even human. Whatever happened down there had knocked the shine off Emmy, maybe forever. Her and June both. Emmy was never my girl, I was not the avenger here, but even still I was getting an itch in my fist, for a certain cocksure jaw.
That itch grew by the mile. The woods got deep and the road narrowed and I was gearing down and accelerating both at once, to take the steep uphill snake of curves in this rutted gravel track. Driving took more concentration than I had, but my brain was still bouncing around. Fast Forward at Creaky Farm. Squad inspections. That bully getting up in the faces of Tommy and Swap-Out till they nearly pissed themselves. And me acting like I didn’t see. He was never anything but a total rectum to either one of them, and Tommy was so tenderhearted, feeling it all. Taking the stick for our so-called protector, every time. That self-centered prick. Making me his bitch. The goodness of Tommy, even after all that, the friend he was to me now. With any luck we wouldn’t find Fast Forward. Because if we did, there would be blood.
We weren’t dressed for any category of damn Sunday frolic in this pounding rain, and were cursing each other out from the time we got out of the car. I told Hammer to leave the rifle, on the argument of it getting rain damaged, in actual fact more concerned over the homicide aspects. But Hammer was not parting from his everloving Marlin 336C. I pressed the point, and he yelled at me that it was waxed and blued and what the hell did I think the pioneers did whenever it fucking rained? Maggot took a couple steps backward, to see our golden retriever boy go all fierce like that. Shit. Hammer on crank, tiger in the tank.
It turned out we hadn’t parked in the best place. We walked maybe a mile up a dirt road before we even got to the trail for Devil’s Bathtub. I was debating between this being a flirtation with disaster or just an ignorant goose chase leading to three baked guys getting sopping wet. And then we saw the Lariat. Parked at a steep tilt up a bank, nobody’s idea of a parking spot, as close to the start of a trail as a vehicle could get. None of us said a word.
Hammer led the way on the trail, and I went last, watching the rifle barrel nodding over Hammer’s shoulder and the ponytail straggling down Maggot’s back. (His haircutter Martha was long gone.) Suddenly it felt some high percentage of insane to be out here in the woods on this half-cooked Fast Forward bear hunt. I walked back in my brain to where the day turned: Rose Dartell. Pizza delivery to East Jesus freaking Woodway? It had to be a setup. She always knew where Fast Forward was, and it was easy enough to know where I was. It looked purposeful, Fast Forward using his lackey Rose to lure me to this place he knew I never wanted to be. To what purpose, was the question. Hammer and his Marlin 336C getting thrown into the mix, that was nobody’s plan. We needed to turn around.
But Hammer was walking fast, less drunk than I thought, or a lot more cranked. My knee was hurting like the devil. Messed-up bones get aggravated by unsettled weather and walking on uneven ground. Jackpot. We came to a creek with the trail running straight through it. No way was I wading through rushing water over slick rocks on my wobbly legs. I yelled at the guys that I couldn’t do this. Hammer laughed and splashed right in and yelled back that this was crossing number one, there were ten more. Maybe thirteen. “Make like you’ve got the ball and run for the end zone, star man,” he yelled, and I thought: He has been pissed at me for years, and holding it in. Pissed at the whole lot of us bad boys and adult-avoiders that let him do the hard part.
I pushed myself into the water.
The second crossing was faster and deeper than the first, and on from there it went. Maggot said he’d never seen it like this before. Normally it was a trickle, this was a flash flood. I had to go on hands and knees at times, feeling for footholds in the rushing water, everything slick and wobbly under there and me in my soaked, heavy jeans. The bones inside my knee were grinding like a bad transmission. Hammer and Maggot waded ahead of me with sturdy strides, or they balanced and hopped from rock to rock, and it choked me up to watch them use their bodies that way, without a thought. Something I’d probably lost for good.
I yelled and yelled at Maggot to wait up, but he’d taken his shirt off and wrapped that and his ponytail around his head like a turban, for reasons only a Maggot brain could know, and didn’t hear me. Hammer I couldn’t even see anymore.
I started looking for an escape hatch from all the water, but options were slim. Drown, or fly. Cliffs rose on both sides of the trail, walls of layered rock like giant sandwiches piled with their hard black ham and cheese. Down here it was all woods and creek, and up on top of the cliffs, more woods, deep and dark. Pines and laurel slicks, poison mushrooms, pillows of moss.
I would have turned around then, if not for two guys that came running down the path towards me. Not Hammer, not Maggot. They were shirtless and shoeless, carrying their bundled wet clothes and running in that dicey crisscrossed way people do over rocky ground, whooping. At each other or the rain or the windmills of their minds, whoop-whoop. I recognized them from the days of dragging Main and Fast Forward trotting me out to meet his former General brothers. One had the praying hands tattoo on his shoulder. They stopped whooping and yelled at me that my friends were up ahead. Thanks, guys. I thought they might have raptured.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Is Fast Forward with you?”
“He’s still back at the waterfall,” the one said, and Praying Hands clarified that it was two of them still back there, Fast Forward and Big Bear. And I said, Where goest the QB, there goes his left tackle, and they laughed and said, Yeah, still married, those two. Praying Hands was squinting at me through his wet eyelashes.
“I’ve seen you on the field, right? You used to be like a backup receiver or something, years ago. Cornerback?”
I didn’t have the heart to go into it. Plus, this bee was in my brain about it being a trap laid by Fast Forward, versus pure accidental nightmare pileup of bad choices. I asked what made them come swimming on a day like this. They said four guys with shit for brains are stupider than one, and laughed like that was the best joke ever, which it wasn’t. It’s a well-known fact. Signs pointing to accidental nightmare pileup.
I couldn’t get a lot more out of them. Only that Fast Forward was still messing around at the waterfall, wanting to climb some ridiculous rock face. First he’d stripped naked and said he was going to dive in, which was madness, it was too much flood for swimming. Then he started climbing the cliff. They got fed up with him peacocking his ass around and were going back to the truck where they had dry dope. Fast Forward stayed, and Big Bear wouldn’t leave him. Ever-faithful Big Bear. They invited me to come with them to the land of dry dope, and believe me the call was strong. But Maggot and Hammer were out in this mess. I’d spent half my life trying to save Maggot from his nonsense, and now we’d gotten Hammer tangled up in it. I was the responsible party.
I finally caught up to them, even though it came down to scooting on my butt. The last stretch of trail was no more than a slick, butt-wide track in the damn cliff face above the roaring creek. Then it took me a second to understand this was it, I was there. Maggot was sitting on the bank ahead of me, rocking, holding his big wet shirt-wrapped head in his hands. Hammer was screaming. Standing on a rock with the water roaring around him like some type of Moses shit, the rifle still slung over his shoulder aimed at the sky, not a person, thank God. But Hammer himself was cocked, ready to go off. I saw nobody else around, no Big Bear, no Fast Forward, and couldn’t get why he was screaming his lungs out at this roaring bathtub of hell. Of all the tubs I’d feared in my day, none came close. This was a giant round hole carved out of smooth rock, maybe forty feet across, with water pouring in. A long, high waterfall at the back end was spraying at us full blast down a long stone chute like a freaking waterslide. But water also flooded in from the sides and roiled around in the hole like a giant washing machine. A rope swing dangled above the roar, suggesting happier times where this was a place to swim. Right now you wouldn’t wish it on your dirty clothes. And into that madness, Hammer was pouring all the hate he could get out of his lungs, Fucking asshole you’re not good enough to touch a hair on her head you don’t deserve to breathe the same air you fucking animal.
The animal was Fast Forward. It took me that long to work out there was a waterfall here above the waterfall. And high above that on the cliff stood the spectacle of him, naked, sure enough. The dark wet mop of hair and ripped abs and pubes and dick, that careless showoff attitude of body-flaunting that comes out of years in a locker room. He was a lean, pale slash balanced high over us in the dark woods. Behind him, black trees and sky and thunder having its war around us. I wondered if his friends had run off with his clothes, but no, I saw the jeans and shirt down below in a wet pile. He’d stripped, probably just peacocking like they said and not really planning to swim, and then got excited about something to mount.
Hammer was not letting up. I edged over to Maggot, scared out of my mind. I could lose my footing and slide in. I squatted next to him and leaned close. “What’s going on?”
“Hammer said to get his naked ass down here because he had a crow to pick. And then he said the girl wasn’t worth either of their trouble. He was trash-talking Emmy up there.”
Shit.
Hammer carried on screaming, and Fast Forward ruled in silence, standing above us with his head cocked back in his everlasting question: Is that all you’ve got? I couldn’t see Hammer’s face but his body was shaking, hands and arms. From the cold, from the crank wearing off, from the pin pulled out of the Hammer grenade. Maggot leaned towards me till our shoulders touched.
“Remember that dog Stoner had? How he’d shake meat in its face to get it in a rage?”
“Hammer’s not Satan,” I said. I had to believe it. Frothing at the mouth at this moment, but not a killer. I spoke to him the way I would talk to a dog, saying his name as level as I could, over and over. Hammer. Chill out man. Hammer. He’s got nothing. This will be okay. Hammer. We’re getting out of here. Hammer. But there was so much sound, the roaring falls and thunder. My own blood rushing my ears. I have no idea what Hammer heard. If he heard me at all.
What happened in the next ten seconds is so clear in my head. Hammer looking back at us, then shifting his weight. Losing his balance I thought, but no, just slinging that heavy rifle off his shoulder and lifting it in both hands. Then, the red flag of a shirt appearing out of the woods way off to the right of Fast Forward. A person, big, scared, nowhere and then there, just in time to see the man and the rifle and scream, “Drop! Fucker’s going to take you out!”
The terror in that voice is what did it. Coming from Big Bear, steadfast guard of his blind side. Nothing we could have done would have rattled Fast Forward, not words or even gunfire, but that voice warning him from offsides jolted the naked QB a quarter turn, enough to lose his footing and start to slide. The coordinated body going for its longest shot, center of gravity automatically dropping, arms close in, knees in a half crouch, Jesus, the terrible beauty of it, and then he lost control. As a rolling ball of limbs he could have saved himself, bones and flesh flailing down that slope of rock onto more rock, maybe a branch to break the fall, it would have been ugly and might have worked, but pride in the end made the call. He opened and pushed off in a dive, piked, head down, arms open, a reach for the water, fumbled. The contact sounded not very different from a watermelon on pavement.
After that, I don’t know. I must have tried to get to Hammer and hold him back. Big Bear was still up in the cliffs. And Fast Forward, across the water from us, was a naked nothing facedown on rock. Legs in the water, one thigh-deep and the other slung out, submerged to the knee. An ugly arrangement of limbs he would not have allowed in life. That’s how I knew. All the magic that made him had gone out of him. And Hammer now was yelling at me. His face was a flat wall of shock and he was talking about the rifle, saying he was just going to put it down. Jesus, did he think I was going to shoot? I wasn’t going to shoot, I was laying it down, I was going to climb up there. Jesus, Demon. Saying it was his fault, saying the guy was hurt, sliding in over there, unconscious, we had to get him back from the water. I told Hammer to stay where he was. I could see more of the broken head I think than the others.
But Hammer was having no dead men here. He couldn’t let that be. He said it three times, maybe four, I’m not letting a man die, and then he was in the water while Maggot and I screamed no and no and no. No to all of it. Hammer in that white roar like an explosion and the rest of us losing everything, time, hope, our frothing wrecked minds. He was close to these rocks he’d jumped off of, and then he wasn’t. His head and shoulders bobbed up out of the water, went down, and came up again, once I saw Hammer’s eyes open wide, straight at me, he came up and then he didn’t. We heard thunder, far away. And then Big Bear was there with us, he’d gotten down the slope and across some way, he must have run back downstream to a place he could get over because now he was here, panting like a wild animal. All of us making those kinds of noises, howling at the water and death and Hammer, begging him to show up again.
He did, on the rocks downstream. I saw his white T-shirt down there, the broad back, legs pummeled by the current. The push of the water was slowly turning his long body like a compass needle, from sideways to straight downstream, aligned with its terrible force.
The other body didn’t move. The naked one. I made myself look, and it must have scarred my eyes because I can still see every goddamn line of it, the unnatural angle of arm, the smooth, hard quads, glutes like a pair of onions. The well-oiled machine he’d worked so hard to keep, a long time after it really mattered. What a waste, a dead body, with most of its parts still ready and eager to work. The final humiliation of a man, that last layoff.
There was no arguing about who would go for help. Maggot and Big Bear could pound the trail and the crossings, double time. There was somebody’s phone in the Lariat. They could drive out and find a signal. The emergency rescue team that arrived, because in time it did, close to nightfall on the longest of all my days, would bring three stretchers. One for each of the bodies, one for me. I was reported among the casualties. I did the hard part, staying behind.
As soon as they were gone, I edged myself over to the Marlin and kicked it down the devil’s damn throat. It sank like the carbon steel pipe it was. All the careful hours Hammer spent waxing and bluing that piece, what a waste. I actually thought that. A blown brain will reach for any sideshow to dodge the main event. The rifle had played no real part, but a weapon hanging around these situations never helps, so. I kicked that one down the road.
With the Marlin drowned, I scooted back down the cliff path to a spot where I could crab-walk over boulders to the other side. Then made my way to the gravel shoal where I could drag Hammer onto dryer land. All I could see were the years that body still had in it, should have had. For all the people that counted on his help. For finding some sweet girl to have his kids. He would have been the best imaginable dad. All the Hammer I could see, backs of his arms, hands, the back of his neck, was the color of carbon steel. I made myself feel his wrist. The flesh felt too hard, not human anymore. Like if a pulse had even been in there, it wouldn’t get through. Dead bodies are nothing new to me, I kept telling myself. This is no hill for a climber. My mom in her white casket. Dori in our bed. I’d sat alone with Dori for over an hour before I let the rest of the world come. But however heartbroken I’d been that day, I knew Dori was where she needed to be. Hammer was not. This was a body robbed of all its righteous goods.
I hauled the waterlogged bulk out of the water, then stopped to take off my shirt and slip it under his head because I didn’t want his face sanded off by the dragging. Mrs. Peggot would have to see him. June, Ruby, all of them. I had to save his face. Eventually I got him over to the same stone ledge where the other body was. Hammer’s enemy. I hated them being on the same rock, once I had him there. By no means laid out side by side, still ten feet apart, but even that was too close. It felt like the one might contaminate the other. Different materials.
I didn’t have the guts to turn them faceup. I knew their eyes would be open, and it felt possible they might watch me huddled up on that ledge, choking out pieces of lung, it felt like, such was my rage and grief and stupid regret. I think I knew, even then, such things are not survivable. For any of us. Nobody could have seen what was coming next for Maggot. But I’d spent enough seasons on the field to know what Big Bear was in for. The peace he might never make with himself. All because he had to take a piss. He’d gone up into the woods and got lost. Beat around the laurel hells, then emerged at a crazy wrong moment. Followed his best instincts to the worst of all possible ends.
I should have been the one to jump in the water. If it had to be done, then me, not Hammer. I’ll never believe anything else.
It’s the one good promise I ever got. Not drowning.
59
