Ordinary Grace

14

In New Bremen there were three places to swim. One was the public pool which was crowded and loud and the lifeguards were always blowing their whistles at you. The second was the country club but you had to have money or be friends with people who did. The third was an old stone quarry south of town which had been abandoned years before when an underground spring filled the great gaping hole with water so quickly that much of the equipment had to be left in place. Word was that if you swam deep enough you could still make out the vague disturbing shapes of massive machinery like monsters asleep on the bottom. The quarry was fenced and posted against trespassing but no one paid any attention. Though it was a place our parents warned us away from it was one of our favorite destinations on hot summer days. Even Jake so pure of heart ignored my folks’ stricture and always tagged along with the rest of us.

We rode our bikes through New Bremen, Jake, Danny, Lee, and I, past the town limits, and in another mile turned west along a couple of dirt ruts overgrown with weeds. The quarry was on the far side of a line of birch trees that isolated the area even further. The rock that had been taken was red granite and the area around the quarry was littered with great jumbles of red spoil unsuitable for construction. To this day whenever I think of that quarry I have the sense of a place of deep and mindless wounding. When we pulled up I was dismayed to find a black ’32 Deuce Coupe parked near the break in the Cyclone fence which everyone used to access the quarry. The shattered headlights and taillights had been replaced.

“Morris Engdahl’s car,” Danny said.

“He’s probably out here torturing ducks,” I said.

Jake turned back disappointed. “Let’s go home.”

Danny and Lee turned their bikes with him.

“Not me,” I said. “I came here to swim.” I walked my bike to the fence and popped the kickstand down.

Jake opened his mouth then closed it then opened and closed it again and not a word came out. Like a fish trying to suck air.

“I don’t know,” Danny said. He sat astride his bike and looked with great uncertainty at the others.

Lee said, “You’re really going?”

“Hell, just watch me.” I ducked through the break in the fence and walked along a path worn in the weeds, walked slowly. In a minute I heard the sound of the others running to catch up.

At the western edge of the quarry was a large flat table of red rock that stood half a dozen feet above the water and was surrounded by willows that curtained it from view. This was the favorite place for swimming because the water dropped immediately and deeply and you could jump and dive from the rock without worrying about what might be under the surface and when you were ready to climb out there were natural steps and handholds in the face of the rock. I heard music coming from the willows, the tinny sound of a transistor radio on which Roy Orbison was singing Running Scared. We walked silently and in single file along the trail and when we reached the willows I held up my hand signaling the others to stop and I crept forward.

They lay on a big blanket that had been spread over the wide flat ledge of rock. Morris Engdahl in his white swimming trunks had pretty much glued himself to a girl who wore a red bathing suit and had long blond hair. On top of a cooler sat a couple of bottles of beer and the transistor radio which was now playing Del Shannon’s Runaway. While I stood watching from the shadows of the willows Morris Engdahl’s left hand crawled over the girl’s right breast like a big white spider and began to knead the fabric of her suit. In response she arched her back and pressed harder against him.

Though we were trying to be quiet Engdahl must have heard us because he turned his head in our direction. “Jesus, if it ain’t Frankfarter,” he said. “And Howdy D-D-D-Doody. And a couple of Mouseketeers. Getting a good eyeful?”

“We just came to swim,” I said.

Morris continued to lie atop the girl. “Yeah well we were here ahead of you,” he said. “So beat it.”

“There’s lots of room.”

“Let’s g-g-g-go,” Jake said.

“That’s a g-g-g-good idea,” Engdahl said with a laugh.

“Come on, Frank,” Danny said.

“No. We can swim here. There’s lots of room.”

Engdahl shook his head and finally rolled off the girl. “Not the way I see it,” he said.

I gestured to the others to follow me. “We’ll go around to the other side,” I told them.

“I don’t want them here at all, Morrie,” the girl said. She sat up and her breasts in her red suit stuck out big as traffic cones. Her lips were a ruby pout. She reached for one of the beers on the cooler.

“You heard her,” Engdahl said. “Get lost.”

“You get lost,” I said. “It’s a free country.”

“Who are these little creeps, Morrie?”

“His sister is Ariel Drum.”

“Ariel Drum?” The girl’s face took on a look as if she’d just bit into a sandwich made of cow dung. “God, what a skag.”

“She’s not a skag,” I shot back brilliantly, not entirely sure what the word even meant.

“Listen, you little shit,” Engdahl said. “Just because it’s a rich boy putting it to your sister, that don’t mean she ain’t a skag.”

“Nobody’s putting it to her,” I said and stepped toward Engdahl with my hands fisted. I spat out at the girl, “You’re the skag.”

“You going to let him call me that, Morrie?”

Engdahl got to his feet which were bare. He was a thin guy and white as biscuit dough but he was a head taller than me and had probably been in his share of fights and he didn’t look at all reluctant to bust my face wide open. In a swift panic of thought I figured I had two choices. One was to run. The other was to do what I did, which was to lower my shoulder and charge Morris Engdahl. I hit him square in the stomach, putting behind it the full force of my hundred and thirty pounds. I caught him off guard and together we tumbled into the water. I came up sputtering and swam fast back to the rock and climbed up before Engdahl had a chance to get his hands on me. I danced back to where the others stood and I spun around expecting Engdahl to be right behind me. He wasn’t. He was still in the water, flailing desperately.

“He can’t swim,” the girl cried at us. She was on her knees, bent low toward the water, and I could see a good deal of her breasts and for a moment that view was far more riveting than the question of Morris Engdahl’s fate. In the next moment Jake was shaking a dead willow branch that was a good eight feet long in my face. I grabbed it and leaped to the edge of the rock and extended the end toward Engdahl.

I yelled, “Grab it!”

His eyes had gone mostly white and his arms beat at the water around him shattering the surface into flying diamonds and he was coughing hard and I was afraid he was beyond having sense enough to save himself. But he managed to grasp the end of the branch. I pulled and the girl grabbed the branch too and pulled with me and together we hauled Engdahl back to the rock where his hands found purchase. He held to the stone a long time with most of him still in the water while he caught his breath then he began a slow climb out. He reached the top of the rock where I stood dripping wet in my shorts and T-shirt and sneakers. All of us stared at him in wordless fixation. His breathing was deep and raspy and his eyes held a desperate look. He brushed the long black hair out of his face.

He sprang forward and grabbed me. He took two big fistfuls of my T-shirt, squeezing the thin cotton so viciously that he wrung out water. His lips were pressed tightly together and I was amazed he could speak through them but he did. He said, “I’m going to kill you.”

I looked into his face, into eyes that were a dark menacing blue and so completely abandoned to anger that there was in them not the slightest glimmer of reason and I knew I was dead.

“Let him g-g-g-g-go!” Jake yelled.

And my friends echoed, “Let him go!”

The girl with the mesmerizing breasts cried, “Morrie, don’t!” When he didn’t respond she stepped close and pushed herself against us both in a kind of wedging maneuver meant, I suppose, to separate Engdahl’s hands from my shirt. It was a surreal moment. Death looked me in the face but all I could feel was the warm press and yield of that girl’s breast against my shoulder. It was as if in the second before dying I’d been allowed to glimpse heaven and I was almost okay with my fate. “Morrie,” she purred in a deep-throated way that spoke to something instinctive and sexually primal in every male there. “Morrie, baby, let him go.”

Engdahl was many things. Crude. Ignorant. Callous. Self-absorbed and at the moment embarrassed and angry. But he was also nineteen and one element of his being topped all others and with it the blonde had him hooked. I felt his fists soften and then release their grip on my T-shirt. He shot out a deep final breath like a horse clearing its nostrils and he stepped back. The girl stepped away too and stood in such an enticing pose that Morris Engdahl couldn’t take his eyes off her.

That was my opening. I charged him again and shoved him brutally. He stumbled back and once more toppled from the rock into the water below. I stood at the edge looking down as he sputtered and splashed and this time was able on his own to grasp the safety of the rock and begin to pull himself out.

I yelled, “Run!” and turned and fled from the quarry with the others at my heels. We raced as if the Devil himself was in pursuit. We pounded the worn path to the fence, squeezed through the breach, leaped onto our bikes, and shot down the ruts toward the main road to town.

“He’ll catch us!” Danny shouted as he pedaled for his life. “He’ll run us down!”

Which was probably true. In his Deuce Coupe Engdahl would be on us within minutes.

“Follow me!” I yelled and veered out of the ruts and bounced through the tall wild grass of the field that lay between the quarry and the road. I made desperately for one of the piles of spoil rock that had been dumped in the empty acreage and I shot behind it and threw my bike down so that it was hidden in the grass. After me came Danny and Lee and Jake all of whom did as I’d done and together we hunkered behind the jumble of stone blocks with our hearts kicking at our sternums. In a minute we heard the roar of the Ford engine from behind the line of birch trees. The Deuce Coupe shot past with Engdahl at the wheel and the blonde at his side. The black hot rod with fire painted along its length hit the pavement, squealed left toward town, and disappeared with Engdahl in pursuit of four boys he would not find that day.

We looked at each other and allowed ourselves at last to breathe and then we began to laugh and fell onto our backs in the grass and howled in relief and triumph. We’d bested Morris Engdahl who was many things. Tough. Mean. Vengeful. And, most important to us that summer afternoon, blessedly stupid.