Firemelon Therapy
It was two in the morning, and I was drinking beer from the tailgate of a pickup. My life was going places.
This is the point where a reasonable person would try to protest, ‘Context!’ I won’t do that. I can’t.
The only context I had to offer is that it was a school night, we were trespassing, Shane was driving, he was drunk, and he’d brought his gun. Context was not on my side.
The wind rattled in the trees, stripped the last of the leaves from their perch. The wind was the kind of wind you only got in fall, dark, thick with the smell of old hay and heavy spice. The kind of wind that started up in the Appalachian peaks, wound down through the valleys, and promised a chill after a hot summer.
One of those leaves, thick golden oak, skittered across the ground, danced through cracks in the stone, and slapped against the back windscreen of Shane’s truck. It glued itself to a faded Calvin and Hobbes decal, and I plucked it from the glass, folded it, felt the flesh of the leaf crumple around its veiny stem. I sat on the bed of the truck, next to a pile of cantaloupe and twenty-four pack of beer, and watched the sky.
The quarry was empty and quiet, but for the rattle of the leaves over the ground, and the low drone of the wind as it whipped along the open earthworks. The lights of the city were a dim glow on the horizon, key-holed through the black peaks of the mountains. Landen wasn’t much of a city, and this far out, the stars were brilliant. The sky was clear, the moon bright, so we could see without cranking up the headlights. Which was good, because what we were doing was almost certainly illegal.
Shane squatted along the edge of the quarry, thirty feet past the truck. He grumbled to himself as he worked, his cigarette bobbing red against the black sky with every muttered curse. He fumbled with a cantaloupe, tried to get it to stand still, atop a little throne of piled dirt. In the night, he was a cut-out against the blue mountains, a solitary figure between the single, gnarled old oak and the yawning quarry pit.
“Five percent!” I called down to him, then took a swig of my beer. Shane brought the drinks, so they were domestic. With each sip, all I could picture was Peter making faces every time he tried to drink it. That was the kind of guy Peter was, though. If he’d seen us, he’d have been mortally offended that we’d dared to drink something that wasn’t microbrewed by blind Benedictine eunuchs, holy men fully versed in the dark arts of malt and barley. Shane, though? Shane was happy if beer fizzed, tasted like shit, got him drunk, and had a flag stamped somewhere on the can.
“Five percent what?” He asked.
“You gotta be five percent smarter than the fruit.”
His response was a one-fingered salute. The moonlight glinted from the metal stud below his knuckle. He always wore those stupid fingerless gloves - the kind with weights in them, just in case.
Yeah, context really wasn’t my ally, here. At least I could claim I was only here to support my friend. Bro code. Was that a valid defense?
Shane swaggered back to the truck, hands cupped over his mouth as he lit another cigarette. He stopped at the edge of the truck, leaned over the side-panel, and fished through the half-empty beer case. The cans were just beyond his reach, but he stood there, for a good five seconds, futilely running his fingertips along the edge. I pushed the case over, and he snatched a can, with a muttered, ‘thanks’. I saw the glint of car keys in his off-hand.
“Shane, don’t-” I protested.
He didn’t listen.
With Shane, whenever there were two ways to do a thing, he always went with the more asinine one. With one quick motion, he drove his keys into the base of the beer. There was a gasp of pressure, and he ripped the keys free. Before the beer could spill, he tossed his head back, popped the top and slammed the beer sideways against his face. He chugged, like a goddamn alcohol vampire. In an instant, the beer was gone. He pulled it free, the foam still dribbling from the jagged cut, and belched, loud enough to echo through the hills. He tossed the can over his shoulder, let it clatter onto the pile of empty cans in the bed of the truck, the tin mountain that surrounded the dozen cantaloupe he’d strapped to the back. Finished, he gave me his, ‘you see that?’ grin, and took a pull on his cigarette.
“You could try… I don’t know… drinking your beer?” I suggested. To demonstrate, I took a civilized sip from my can.
“Sometimes it ain’t about the ride, Jase. It’s about the destination.” Shane answered. He snagged another can from the bed. This one, he drank like a normal person.
We passed the time in silence, me, sitting on the tailgate, and Shane, leaning on the rear wheel. Other than us, the quarry was dead empty. Just a truck, a tree, and a line of cantaloupes at the pit’s edge. The place hadn’t been used in years. The city still kept it pumped and dry. Maybe they hoped that the mining companies might come back to town. Of course, until then, the pumps were just yet another red-text drain on Landen’s bottom line. If there was one thing this town was good at, it was wasting money on stupid shit. If there were two things, it was that, and desecrating Indian burial grounds. The town could put in on a postcard. ‘Landen. We bulldozed two of these fuckers, and we ain’t haunted yet!’ Actually, that made sense. I bet even vengeful ghosts took one look at Landen, decided they had standards, and fucked off towards the coast.
The thought made me laugh, nearly choke on my beer. Shane glanced at me, but I waved him off.
“Nothing, man.” I said. Shane wasn’t one for bashing his hometown. He’d fought people for less. Which was kind of sad-funny, cause Landen had done him absolutely zero favors.
Shane shrugged. Most people, they would have asked what was so funny, why I laughed. Not Shane. He took everything at face value. If I said, ‘nothing’, then it was nothing. Done. End of story. Shane didn’t pry. He just changed the topic. He said, “Almost done with the Camaro. Finished up the transmission.” He pulled down a gulp of beer, punctuated with a belch. “It’ll handle the horse.”
Shane loved his cars. Might have loved them as much as he loved guns and cowboy hats. He’d worked on that Camaro since high school, collected parts from scrap yards and whatever shop employed him, scrounged funds to buy what he couldn’t scrap. He’d had Chris scour the net for good buys and reputable sellers, because he didn’t trust ‘the devil box’.
Now, I didn’t know much about cars, but Chris assured me that Shane had built a monster. An ugly, fat monster with too much of about seventeen words I couldn’t define. The two of them argued about it, nonstop. It was always “super-charged sixes” this versus full-on “eights” that, but if I knew Shane, he wouldn’t be happy until he had crammed the thickest chunk of steel he could find under the hood.
The thing was, I knew Shane wasn’t here to talk about the car.
He took another drink, tilted the can vertical, just poured the beer down his throat without bothering to taste it, and tossed the empty in the truck bed. “She left me.” He said, his words dead-weight in the night air.
“That sucks, dude.” I said. It was the universal duty of friends to say those words. ‘That sucks’ wasn’t the squishiness of ‘I’m sorry’, but it was more meaningful than just agreeing. It was a statement of camaraderie, of acknowledgment that the universe was pitiless and cruel, and a declaration that you still had their back when they fell under the gaze of the evil eye. “That really sucks.” I repeated. I punctuated with a drink.
“Yup.” Shane said, as he cracked a new beer. He drank in silence, eyes locked on the cut-out hills. After a moment, he lowered his can, and passed the half-empty to me. “Hey, hold my beer, and watch this.”
That phrase was a hillbilly red flag. It meant that bad decisions were imminent. With Shane, that went double.
He stepped back from the truck, fiddled with his belt. For a moment, I feared he might start an actual pissing contest, but his right hand went to his side, pulled his shirt back-
Shane produced his revolver.
The steel shined under moonlight, gleaming silver against the dark hills. Shane balanced it in one hand, tested the weight of the long barrel, and pointed it towards the melons. In profile, I could read the words etched on the side: RAGING BULL. Shane stood, side-on to the targets, and used his thumb to pull back the hammer. I covered my ears. The gun settled into his hand, steadied-
BOOM!
The quarry lit, like a flashbulb. For a moment, I could see every branch of the twisted oak, every cut on the rocky ground. The autumn air was cut with cordite, the rotted-egg-and-hot-metal stench of gunpowder. Downrange, the first of the melons erupted, vomited its pulp over the quarry, and plunged into the black. For a moment, all I could see was the exploded fruit, the single tree by the cliff-face, and the wooden fence along the lip. My night-vision faded back, and I watched Shane bring the revolver back into line. He squeezed the trigger, again.
BOOM!
Another cantaloupe burst, and plummeted into the abyss.
In the Old West, cowboys shot one-handed, to keep the other hand on the reins of their horse. Shane shot one-handed, so he could keep drinking.
He glanced to me, put out his empty hand. I passed the can back. He grinned, took a swig, and steadied his aim. He said, “Hey, watch this…” He nudged the nose of the gun like a pointed finger, drew my eyes downrange. There, by the jutted roots of the lone oak, a dim red light flickered from behind the cantaloupes, a bobbing wick between the melons and the abyss.
“Shane…” I started. I didn’t know where this was headed, but I knew it wasn’t good.
BOOM!
The melon burst, sprayed back, over the edge of the pit, over the little red flame-
FWOOSH!
There was fire in the night, a jet of blazing heat that arced over the quarry lip and plunged into darkness. The seeds blazed like meteors as they fell from view. Even on the truck, I felt the hot breath of the fire, the sudden warmth on my nose and cheeks. It stank of gasoline and fruit, and rode a rolling ball of fire that clawed for the sky as its burning guts fell out-
When the blast faded, flames licked over the barren ground. Singed leaves twisted along the old oak, pulled by the sudden draft. Chunks of dull-burning melon littered the ground like torches.
Shane let out a war-whoop, and chugged his beer.
“Jesus Christ, Shane! What the hell was that?”
“Firemelon!” He cried.
“What the hell?!”
“I filled a cantaloupe with gasoline! It’s a firemelon!”
“Why?!”
“Because watermelons cost too damn much.” He said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the universe. He glanced back, downrange, and hollered, “Goddamn, that burned good!”
“Jesus Christ.” I whispered, and took another drink. I turned back, to the melons piled in the trunk. They were arranged, oh so carefully, little black plugs on each one, where Shane had cored them, dumped them, and filled them full of fuel. I hopped off the truck, and gave the melons a healthy distance.
“Aw, yeah.” He declared, grinning wider than ever. He picked up another set of melons, carted them out to the edge of the quarry. He stopped at the lip, punted the still-burning rinds into the abyss, and carefully set his next targets in their places.
I wasn’t drunk enough for this.
Shane returned, empty-handed. The melons were set in a line along the lip of the quarry, wicks alight. Shane took a drink, took his stance-
BOOM! FWOOSH! The quarry lit, empty ramps and old tracks carved from shadow by fiery orange light. BOOM! FWOO-FWOOSH! The second shot pierced a pair of melons, twin bombs exploded in the night. A final cantaloupe, slicked in liquid flames, rolled from the edge, tumbled into the black beyond-
Light flared up the walls of the quarry, as it burst far below.
Shane cackled. He tossed his empty beer atop the aluminum mountain, and cradled the revolver in both hands. With a sure, gentle flick, the cylinder swung free and coughed brass onto the hard dirt. Another flick, and the moon-clip snapped into position. He pushed the cylinder back, tested it with a little wiggle, his eyes narrowed in concentration. It was the sort of tick he never could shake. Shane was the kind of guy who kicked tires, who jiggled locks. Something could work perfectly, a thousand times, and he’d still test it on the thousand-and-first. Maybe that was how he kept the old cars running.
The cylinder was snug. It fit. But Shane scowled, and stared at the shining barrel, the black-stained vents on the muzzle. More to himself than to me, he said, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked. I already knew, but I asked. That’s what friends did.
“She left. Everything was fine. She said she was fine.” His lips pulled into the hint of something feral. With serpentine speed, he snapped into firing stance-
BOOM!
The firemelon failed to ignite.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM! The melon vanished in a blazing jet of seed and fuel. Shane lowered the smoking gun, let out a howl something between a roar and a cheer. “Then… done!” He cried out. “Why?!” He cradled his wrist, massaged it, and swallowed a curse.
“Jesus, man, I don’t know.” I answered.
“Come on. You gotta know something.” He said. “You’re good with this shit!”
That was a joke. Me? Good with the lady-folk? If I got a penny for each time I’d been told I was ‘like a brother’ or a ‘real good friend’, I think I’d be crushed under the weight of useless coins.
I protested, “Yeah, not so much-”
“Don’t lie. They love you. Aubrey’s always goin’ on about you.”
Well, that much was probably true, but not in the way Shane thought. Yeah, Aubrey liked to talk with me. Maybe I came off as non-threatening? If there was something new in town, I got a call. Try Vietnamese food from a questionable restaurant? Call Jason. Need assistance with a computer? Call Jason. Want to get into ballroom dancing, and need a partner, fast? Jason. Booty call at o’dark thirty? Shane.
That probably sounded more bitter than it should.
Aubrey was cool. A bit flaky, a bit intense, but cool. A good friend. Besides, there’s no way I would even think about hitting on her. I couldn’t look Peter in the face if I were lusting for his sister. There’s awkward, and there’s that shit. As far as I was concerned, she might as well have been a cloistered nun. I think that accidentally made me the nearest thing to the “gay best friend” she could pull off, which was ironic, because, you know, Peter.
“I don’t know, Shane.” I admitted. “I think you confuse her as much as she confuses you.”
Shane shrugged and took another swig from his beer, never putting down his gun. He belched, then contended, “Dunno ‘bout that. I’m pretty simple.”
“Maybe it’s some Mars-Venus shit.”
Shane gave me a look, like I’d just started speaking Martian.
I let it go. Too much to unpack in that little pop-psych tidbit. “It’s just an expression.” I tried to rack my brain, think up any particular reason why Aubrey’d left him. This time, at least. “Did you fight?”
“No! Nothing!” Shane said. “All we did was talk, and then she wouldn’t call me back.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing! Nothing! I don’t get it-” Shane cut off, and stared hard, over my shoulder. Quieter, he continued, “Someone’s here.”
I turned, and stared across the quarry. On the far side of the open pit, a pair of dim headlights crested the access road. It’s the cops. The first thought hit me with a rush of adrenaline. They saw the fire. We are so fucked. Mom’s gonna be pissed. The thoughts came like a panic-firing machinegun. We need to go. Now. I hurled my can away, and jumped from the tailgate. As quickly, as quietly, as I could, I pushed the gate closed, and bolted for the passenger seat.
It was only once I was inside, the door shut behind me, that I realized I was alone in the cab. Shane stood, stock still, at the rear of the truck, squinting into the distance. Fuck me. I leaned across the center of the cab, the gearshift wedged in my side, and I cracked open the driver’s door. With just my head poking out, I whisper-screamed, “Shane! We gotta go!”
He glanced back, shook his head. “They’re goin’ into the quarry.”
“Why the fuck is anyone going into the quarry?” I demanded.
“Dunno.” He said. “But I’m a find out.” With that, he walked the wrong direction - towards the pit.
“Shit!” I spat. I wiggled across past the gearshift, the driver’s seat, and dropped to the dirt, then hurried after.
I never stood. I crouch-ran, tucked below the white light streaming from the quarry pit, the headlight-daggers that caught in the trees. I scrabbled over the burnt earth, past smoldering and sticky-sweet melon chunks, past the gnarled old oak and its jutting roots, until I came to the “fence” that guarded the quarry cliff. Two rows of warped and dried planks threaded through half-rotted posts, the only warning that the ground would suddenly stop. Beyond that worm-eaten post, the light cascaded from below, nearly blinding in the autumn night. I dropped to my belly, and crawled under.
Ahead, Shane did the same, the soles of his boots blocking my view as he inched towards the edge of the abyss. I crawled around him, the stink of old dirt and decaying leaves jammed into my nose, mixed with the watery smell of old stone. Carefully, I crept alongside him. I stopped when I felt the updraft, the push of mineral-laden wind from the pit. I snorted, forced the stink from my nose, and glanced down, towards the light.
Four inches past my nose, the earth gave way: a sheer plummet of hewn stone, and the empty quarry basin, a cratered and tiered maze of still puddles and bone-white rock cubes. Between them, a black SUV parked, doors hanging open, trunk hatch popped. It had those blue-white lights the rich kids liked, the kind that blinded you on the highway at noon, but it had a light-bar, too, a rack of fog lights blazing that same cold blue-white into every corner of the quarry. The light cut canyons from the shadows, threaded over broken ground, and shone from mirrored puddles. In this bath of light, three men hustled, nearly running, dragging chest after chest from the truck to the quarry wall.
“What the hell?” I asked, in a whisper. This place had been shut down for over a decade.
Shane didn’t answer. He snubbed out his cigarette in the dirt, let it sizzle on the rocks. He stared hard at the movement below.
The first man had reached the wall. He dropped his crate behind one of the tarped-over generators. It hit with a flat bang, metal on stone. He stepped back and stretched, hands on his back, like he’d nearly broken his spine with the weight of his cargo. He stood there for a moment, holding his back, and scanning the horizon, and I felt my breath catch. There’s no way he saw us. After a moment, he turned to the wall, and tapped it, a half-dozen times.
I’d never seen a door in the quarry. I’d come here a couple of times a year, since I was a kid. Usually with Shane, but, not always. I’d never seen a door. Yet, there it was - flat metal hewn from the stone. It was tucked along the bottom of the basin, just above the standing water, hidden behind quarry rocks and old mining gear. You’d never see it from the county road. You’d never see it at all, unless you were hanging three inches over empty space on the quarry lip.
The door slipped open, and he pushed it, with visible effort.
“I can’t see shit.” Shane muttered.
The angle was all wrong. Maybe if we scooted to the east side of the pit-
The man picked up his crate, and staggered through the door. The others followed, carrying a metal locker of their own. The door swung shut behind them.
“You ever seen that door?” Shane asked.
“Nope.” I answered. “Maybe it’s a pump room?”
“No way, the pumps are over by-”
Shane was cut off by the door creaking open, once more. Lighter, and with urgency, the first man marched to the back hatch of the SUV, and slammed it shut. He started towards the driver’s seat, then stopped, to glance up at our ledge, once more. Again, my breath caught, and my stomach clenched. We’re in shadow. He can’t see us. Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t-
The man reached into the cab, and pulled out a thick set of binocs-
“Move!” I whisper-hissed.
I ducked back, grabbed Shane’s jacket, and pulled him after.
“The hell-” He protested.
“Binocs! He’s got binocs!”
Shane stared at me, as if he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. For a moment, there was just the wind from the quarry, the tinkling of falling stone dust, and the blinking stars above.
Below, came the roar of an engine.
This time, Shane ran.
We sprinted. I took the fence in a leap. I ducked the branches of the oak, hopped over the roots. Melon broke under my shoes, and I slipped along the grass. I felt, before I saw, the cold metal of the truck door. I whipped it open, denied its protesting groan, and I scrambled inside. The engine revved. Shane gunned it, let the old diesel monster grumble and bellow. The gearstick clacked, and we lunged forward-
There was someone on the road.
Shane jerked the wheel, his foot slammed on the clutch. I grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle, my door flung wide, the cold edge of autumn snapped at my jacket-
Just beyond, a man stared at me, eyes wide, mouth agape-
I slammed the door, and we peeled onto the road.
We didn’t slow until we hit the county line, when the hills dropped away to let the light of downtown trickle over the treetops.
“Holy shit.” I gasped.
“Did you see that?” Shane demanded, his shit-eating grin wide as could be.
“I was right fucking there, Shane! We nearly hit that guy-”
“Bet he wished he wore brown pants, right?”
“Holy shit.” I repeated.
Shane chuckled, nodded along. The crazy bastard was proud of himself. He locked the steering wheel with his knees, took both hands to light his cigarette, to guard the flame while it took. Once he’d taken a drag, and blown his smoke from the open window, he declared, “We gotta go back.”
I looked at him, raised a single eyebrow in the best ‘coolly doubting’ expression I could manage.
He took another puff, blew it out the window. He let his arm rest on the frame, the red tip of his cigarette flaring in the cold fall wind. He said, “Yup.”
“Shane, those guys were probably county, checking on the pumps.”
“Nah, wrong paint on the truck.” He countered. “It’s something else.”
“Okay, sure.” I allowed.
“And I’ma find out what.”
This was the point where most people would demand, ‘why!?’, or point out that none of this was his business, it was probably nothing exciting, liable to end in another criminal trespass, and he’d nearly hit some dumb fucker wither his diesel-powered ‘Murica-mobile. I said none of those things, because I knew Shane. He’d been raised by cable television, on a steady diet of eighties action movies and nineties buddy-cop flicks, and his rules worked a little different. To Shane, that door now represented the gateway to a criminal conspiracy, to an ancient threat, or a hidden underworld. He’d mull over it, build conspiracy theories, talk about it night and day, until something new entered his view and he’d lock onto that.
That meant, unfortunately, that for the next week or so, “the door in the quarry” would be Shane’s raison d’etre. We’d just have to hang on, and wait for him to burn out on it.
Shane continued, “Let’s go back, tomorrow.”
“Probably not the best idea.” I countered. “They’ll be watching for us.”
He took a final drag, and flicked his cigarette into the night. He held the smoke in his cheeks, mulled on it, and only let it out when he’d decided. “Nah.” He said. “Don’t think they saw us. We should go back.”
I really didn’t want to deal with this.
He looked at me, didn’t say a word. If I were him, I’d have used a guilt-trip on me:‘Ah, come on! I just got dumped, give me this one thing!’ Most people would lay it on, thick, until I complied. Not Shane. Shane wouldn’t ever say something like that. He wasn’t the type. This meant I had no choice.
“Fine.” I said. Louder, I said, “All right. I’ll go. But we’re not breaking in, or anything else stupid like that. We go down there, look around, leave. That’s it.”
“Sure. Sure.” He agreed, with the satisfied smile of a man at peace with his life.
He reached forward, turned on the radio. Windows down, radio up, we sailed through the night, and towards disaster.
This is the point where a reasonable person would try to protest, ‘Context!’ I won’t do that. I can’t.
The only context I had to offer is that it was a school night, we were trespassing, Shane was driving, he was drunk, and he’d brought his gun. Context was not on my side.
The wind rattled in the trees, stripped the last of the leaves from their perch. The wind was the kind of wind you only got in fall, dark, thick with the smell of old hay and heavy spice. The kind of wind that started up in the Appalachian peaks, wound down through the valleys, and promised a chill after a hot summer.
One of those leaves, thick golden oak, skittered across the ground, danced through cracks in the stone, and slapped against the back windscreen of Shane’s truck. It glued itself to a faded Calvin and Hobbes decal, and I plucked it from the glass, folded it, felt the flesh of the leaf crumple around its veiny stem. I sat on the bed of the truck, next to a pile of cantaloupe and twenty-four pack of beer, and watched the sky.
The quarry was empty and quiet, but for the rattle of the leaves over the ground, and the low drone of the wind as it whipped along the open earthworks. The lights of the city were a dim glow on the horizon, key-holed through the black peaks of the mountains. Landen wasn’t much of a city, and this far out, the stars were brilliant. The sky was clear, the moon bright, so we could see without cranking up the headlights. Which was good, because what we were doing was almost certainly illegal.
Shane squatted along the edge of the quarry, thirty feet past the truck. He grumbled to himself as he worked, his cigarette bobbing red against the black sky with every muttered curse. He fumbled with a cantaloupe, tried to get it to stand still, atop a little throne of piled dirt. In the night, he was a cut-out against the blue mountains, a solitary figure between the single, gnarled old oak and the yawning quarry pit.
“Five percent!” I called down to him, then took a swig of my beer. Shane brought the drinks, so they were domestic. With each sip, all I could picture was Peter making faces every time he tried to drink it. That was the kind of guy Peter was, though. If he’d seen us, he’d have been mortally offended that we’d dared to drink something that wasn’t microbrewed by blind Benedictine eunuchs, holy men fully versed in the dark arts of malt and barley. Shane, though? Shane was happy if beer fizzed, tasted like shit, got him drunk, and had a flag stamped somewhere on the can.
“Five percent what?” He asked.
“You gotta be five percent smarter than the fruit.”
His response was a one-fingered salute. The moonlight glinted from the metal stud below his knuckle. He always wore those stupid fingerless gloves - the kind with weights in them, just in case.
Yeah, context really wasn’t my ally, here. At least I could claim I was only here to support my friend. Bro code. Was that a valid defense?
Shane swaggered back to the truck, hands cupped over his mouth as he lit another cigarette. He stopped at the edge of the truck, leaned over the side-panel, and fished through the half-empty beer case. The cans were just beyond his reach, but he stood there, for a good five seconds, futilely running his fingertips along the edge. I pushed the case over, and he snatched a can, with a muttered, ‘thanks’. I saw the glint of car keys in his off-hand.
“Shane, don’t-” I protested.
He didn’t listen.
With Shane, whenever there were two ways to do a thing, he always went with the more asinine one. With one quick motion, he drove his keys into the base of the beer. There was a gasp of pressure, and he ripped the keys free. Before the beer could spill, he tossed his head back, popped the top and slammed the beer sideways against his face. He chugged, like a goddamn alcohol vampire. In an instant, the beer was gone. He pulled it free, the foam still dribbling from the jagged cut, and belched, loud enough to echo through the hills. He tossed the can over his shoulder, let it clatter onto the pile of empty cans in the bed of the truck, the tin mountain that surrounded the dozen cantaloupe he’d strapped to the back. Finished, he gave me his, ‘you see that?’ grin, and took a pull on his cigarette.
“You could try… I don’t know… drinking your beer?” I suggested. To demonstrate, I took a civilized sip from my can.
“Sometimes it ain’t about the ride, Jase. It’s about the destination.” Shane answered. He snagged another can from the bed. This one, he drank like a normal person.
We passed the time in silence, me, sitting on the tailgate, and Shane, leaning on the rear wheel. Other than us, the quarry was dead empty. Just a truck, a tree, and a line of cantaloupes at the pit’s edge. The place hadn’t been used in years. The city still kept it pumped and dry. Maybe they hoped that the mining companies might come back to town. Of course, until then, the pumps were just yet another red-text drain on Landen’s bottom line. If there was one thing this town was good at, it was wasting money on stupid shit. If there were two things, it was that, and desecrating Indian burial grounds. The town could put in on a postcard. ‘Landen. We bulldozed two of these fuckers, and we ain’t haunted yet!’ Actually, that made sense. I bet even vengeful ghosts took one look at Landen, decided they had standards, and fucked off towards the coast.
The thought made me laugh, nearly choke on my beer. Shane glanced at me, but I waved him off.
“Nothing, man.” I said. Shane wasn’t one for bashing his hometown. He’d fought people for less. Which was kind of sad-funny, cause Landen had done him absolutely zero favors.
Shane shrugged. Most people, they would have asked what was so funny, why I laughed. Not Shane. He took everything at face value. If I said, ‘nothing’, then it was nothing. Done. End of story. Shane didn’t pry. He just changed the topic. He said, “Almost done with the Camaro. Finished up the transmission.” He pulled down a gulp of beer, punctuated with a belch. “It’ll handle the horse.”
Shane loved his cars. Might have loved them as much as he loved guns and cowboy hats. He’d worked on that Camaro since high school, collected parts from scrap yards and whatever shop employed him, scrounged funds to buy what he couldn’t scrap. He’d had Chris scour the net for good buys and reputable sellers, because he didn’t trust ‘the devil box’.
Now, I didn’t know much about cars, but Chris assured me that Shane had built a monster. An ugly, fat monster with too much of about seventeen words I couldn’t define. The two of them argued about it, nonstop. It was always “super-charged sixes” this versus full-on “eights” that, but if I knew Shane, he wouldn’t be happy until he had crammed the thickest chunk of steel he could find under the hood.
The thing was, I knew Shane wasn’t here to talk about the car.
He took another drink, tilted the can vertical, just poured the beer down his throat without bothering to taste it, and tossed the empty in the truck bed. “She left me.” He said, his words dead-weight in the night air.
“That sucks, dude.” I said. It was the universal duty of friends to say those words. ‘That sucks’ wasn’t the squishiness of ‘I’m sorry’, but it was more meaningful than just agreeing. It was a statement of camaraderie, of acknowledgment that the universe was pitiless and cruel, and a declaration that you still had their back when they fell under the gaze of the evil eye. “That really sucks.” I repeated. I punctuated with a drink.
“Yup.” Shane said, as he cracked a new beer. He drank in silence, eyes locked on the cut-out hills. After a moment, he lowered his can, and passed the half-empty to me. “Hey, hold my beer, and watch this.”
That phrase was a hillbilly red flag. It meant that bad decisions were imminent. With Shane, that went double.
He stepped back from the truck, fiddled with his belt. For a moment, I feared he might start an actual pissing contest, but his right hand went to his side, pulled his shirt back-
Shane produced his revolver.
The steel shined under moonlight, gleaming silver against the dark hills. Shane balanced it in one hand, tested the weight of the long barrel, and pointed it towards the melons. In profile, I could read the words etched on the side: RAGING BULL. Shane stood, side-on to the targets, and used his thumb to pull back the hammer. I covered my ears. The gun settled into his hand, steadied-
BOOM!
The quarry lit, like a flashbulb. For a moment, I could see every branch of the twisted oak, every cut on the rocky ground. The autumn air was cut with cordite, the rotted-egg-and-hot-metal stench of gunpowder. Downrange, the first of the melons erupted, vomited its pulp over the quarry, and plunged into the black. For a moment, all I could see was the exploded fruit, the single tree by the cliff-face, and the wooden fence along the lip. My night-vision faded back, and I watched Shane bring the revolver back into line. He squeezed the trigger, again.
BOOM!
Another cantaloupe burst, and plummeted into the abyss.
In the Old West, cowboys shot one-handed, to keep the other hand on the reins of their horse. Shane shot one-handed, so he could keep drinking.
He glanced to me, put out his empty hand. I passed the can back. He grinned, took a swig, and steadied his aim. He said, “Hey, watch this…” He nudged the nose of the gun like a pointed finger, drew my eyes downrange. There, by the jutted roots of the lone oak, a dim red light flickered from behind the cantaloupes, a bobbing wick between the melons and the abyss.
“Shane…” I started. I didn’t know where this was headed, but I knew it wasn’t good.
BOOM!
The melon burst, sprayed back, over the edge of the pit, over the little red flame-
FWOOSH!
There was fire in the night, a jet of blazing heat that arced over the quarry lip and plunged into darkness. The seeds blazed like meteors as they fell from view. Even on the truck, I felt the hot breath of the fire, the sudden warmth on my nose and cheeks. It stank of gasoline and fruit, and rode a rolling ball of fire that clawed for the sky as its burning guts fell out-
When the blast faded, flames licked over the barren ground. Singed leaves twisted along the old oak, pulled by the sudden draft. Chunks of dull-burning melon littered the ground like torches.
Shane let out a war-whoop, and chugged his beer.
“Jesus Christ, Shane! What the hell was that?”
“Firemelon!” He cried.
“What the hell?!”
“I filled a cantaloupe with gasoline! It’s a firemelon!”
“Why?!”
“Because watermelons cost too damn much.” He said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the universe. He glanced back, downrange, and hollered, “Goddamn, that burned good!”
“Jesus Christ.” I whispered, and took another drink. I turned back, to the melons piled in the trunk. They were arranged, oh so carefully, little black plugs on each one, where Shane had cored them, dumped them, and filled them full of fuel. I hopped off the truck, and gave the melons a healthy distance.
“Aw, yeah.” He declared, grinning wider than ever. He picked up another set of melons, carted them out to the edge of the quarry. He stopped at the lip, punted the still-burning rinds into the abyss, and carefully set his next targets in their places.
I wasn’t drunk enough for this.
Shane returned, empty-handed. The melons were set in a line along the lip of the quarry, wicks alight. Shane took a drink, took his stance-
BOOM! FWOOSH! The quarry lit, empty ramps and old tracks carved from shadow by fiery orange light. BOOM! FWOO-FWOOSH! The second shot pierced a pair of melons, twin bombs exploded in the night. A final cantaloupe, slicked in liquid flames, rolled from the edge, tumbled into the black beyond-
Light flared up the walls of the quarry, as it burst far below.
Shane cackled. He tossed his empty beer atop the aluminum mountain, and cradled the revolver in both hands. With a sure, gentle flick, the cylinder swung free and coughed brass onto the hard dirt. Another flick, and the moon-clip snapped into position. He pushed the cylinder back, tested it with a little wiggle, his eyes narrowed in concentration. It was the sort of tick he never could shake. Shane was the kind of guy who kicked tires, who jiggled locks. Something could work perfectly, a thousand times, and he’d still test it on the thousand-and-first. Maybe that was how he kept the old cars running.
The cylinder was snug. It fit. But Shane scowled, and stared at the shining barrel, the black-stained vents on the muzzle. More to himself than to me, he said, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked. I already knew, but I asked. That’s what friends did.
“She left. Everything was fine. She said she was fine.” His lips pulled into the hint of something feral. With serpentine speed, he snapped into firing stance-
BOOM!
The firemelon failed to ignite.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM! The melon vanished in a blazing jet of seed and fuel. Shane lowered the smoking gun, let out a howl something between a roar and a cheer. “Then… done!” He cried out. “Why?!” He cradled his wrist, massaged it, and swallowed a curse.
“Jesus, man, I don’t know.” I answered.
“Come on. You gotta know something.” He said. “You’re good with this shit!”
That was a joke. Me? Good with the lady-folk? If I got a penny for each time I’d been told I was ‘like a brother’ or a ‘real good friend’, I think I’d be crushed under the weight of useless coins.
I protested, “Yeah, not so much-”
“Don’t lie. They love you. Aubrey’s always goin’ on about you.”
Well, that much was probably true, but not in the way Shane thought. Yeah, Aubrey liked to talk with me. Maybe I came off as non-threatening? If there was something new in town, I got a call. Try Vietnamese food from a questionable restaurant? Call Jason. Need assistance with a computer? Call Jason. Want to get into ballroom dancing, and need a partner, fast? Jason. Booty call at o’dark thirty? Shane.
That probably sounded more bitter than it should.
Aubrey was cool. A bit flaky, a bit intense, but cool. A good friend. Besides, there’s no way I would even think about hitting on her. I couldn’t look Peter in the face if I were lusting for his sister. There’s awkward, and there’s that shit. As far as I was concerned, she might as well have been a cloistered nun. I think that accidentally made me the nearest thing to the “gay best friend” she could pull off, which was ironic, because, you know, Peter.
“I don’t know, Shane.” I admitted. “I think you confuse her as much as she confuses you.”
Shane shrugged and took another swig from his beer, never putting down his gun. He belched, then contended, “Dunno ‘bout that. I’m pretty simple.”
“Maybe it’s some Mars-Venus shit.”
Shane gave me a look, like I’d just started speaking Martian.
I let it go. Too much to unpack in that little pop-psych tidbit. “It’s just an expression.” I tried to rack my brain, think up any particular reason why Aubrey’d left him. This time, at least. “Did you fight?”
“No! Nothing!” Shane said. “All we did was talk, and then she wouldn’t call me back.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing! Nothing! I don’t get it-” Shane cut off, and stared hard, over my shoulder. Quieter, he continued, “Someone’s here.”
I turned, and stared across the quarry. On the far side of the open pit, a pair of dim headlights crested the access road. It’s the cops. The first thought hit me with a rush of adrenaline. They saw the fire. We are so fucked. Mom’s gonna be pissed. The thoughts came like a panic-firing machinegun. We need to go. Now. I hurled my can away, and jumped from the tailgate. As quickly, as quietly, as I could, I pushed the gate closed, and bolted for the passenger seat.
It was only once I was inside, the door shut behind me, that I realized I was alone in the cab. Shane stood, stock still, at the rear of the truck, squinting into the distance. Fuck me. I leaned across the center of the cab, the gearshift wedged in my side, and I cracked open the driver’s door. With just my head poking out, I whisper-screamed, “Shane! We gotta go!”
He glanced back, shook his head. “They’re goin’ into the quarry.”
“Why the fuck is anyone going into the quarry?” I demanded.
“Dunno.” He said. “But I’m a find out.” With that, he walked the wrong direction - towards the pit.
“Shit!” I spat. I wiggled across past the gearshift, the driver’s seat, and dropped to the dirt, then hurried after.
I never stood. I crouch-ran, tucked below the white light streaming from the quarry pit, the headlight-daggers that caught in the trees. I scrabbled over the burnt earth, past smoldering and sticky-sweet melon chunks, past the gnarled old oak and its jutting roots, until I came to the “fence” that guarded the quarry cliff. Two rows of warped and dried planks threaded through half-rotted posts, the only warning that the ground would suddenly stop. Beyond that worm-eaten post, the light cascaded from below, nearly blinding in the autumn night. I dropped to my belly, and crawled under.
Ahead, Shane did the same, the soles of his boots blocking my view as he inched towards the edge of the abyss. I crawled around him, the stink of old dirt and decaying leaves jammed into my nose, mixed with the watery smell of old stone. Carefully, I crept alongside him. I stopped when I felt the updraft, the push of mineral-laden wind from the pit. I snorted, forced the stink from my nose, and glanced down, towards the light.
Four inches past my nose, the earth gave way: a sheer plummet of hewn stone, and the empty quarry basin, a cratered and tiered maze of still puddles and bone-white rock cubes. Between them, a black SUV parked, doors hanging open, trunk hatch popped. It had those blue-white lights the rich kids liked, the kind that blinded you on the highway at noon, but it had a light-bar, too, a rack of fog lights blazing that same cold blue-white into every corner of the quarry. The light cut canyons from the shadows, threaded over broken ground, and shone from mirrored puddles. In this bath of light, three men hustled, nearly running, dragging chest after chest from the truck to the quarry wall.
“What the hell?” I asked, in a whisper. This place had been shut down for over a decade.
Shane didn’t answer. He snubbed out his cigarette in the dirt, let it sizzle on the rocks. He stared hard at the movement below.
The first man had reached the wall. He dropped his crate behind one of the tarped-over generators. It hit with a flat bang, metal on stone. He stepped back and stretched, hands on his back, like he’d nearly broken his spine with the weight of his cargo. He stood there for a moment, holding his back, and scanning the horizon, and I felt my breath catch. There’s no way he saw us. After a moment, he turned to the wall, and tapped it, a half-dozen times.
I’d never seen a door in the quarry. I’d come here a couple of times a year, since I was a kid. Usually with Shane, but, not always. I’d never seen a door. Yet, there it was - flat metal hewn from the stone. It was tucked along the bottom of the basin, just above the standing water, hidden behind quarry rocks and old mining gear. You’d never see it from the county road. You’d never see it at all, unless you were hanging three inches over empty space on the quarry lip.
The door slipped open, and he pushed it, with visible effort.
“I can’t see shit.” Shane muttered.
The angle was all wrong. Maybe if we scooted to the east side of the pit-
The man picked up his crate, and staggered through the door. The others followed, carrying a metal locker of their own. The door swung shut behind them.
“You ever seen that door?” Shane asked.
“Nope.” I answered. “Maybe it’s a pump room?”
“No way, the pumps are over by-”
Shane was cut off by the door creaking open, once more. Lighter, and with urgency, the first man marched to the back hatch of the SUV, and slammed it shut. He started towards the driver’s seat, then stopped, to glance up at our ledge, once more. Again, my breath caught, and my stomach clenched. We’re in shadow. He can’t see us. Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t-
The man reached into the cab, and pulled out a thick set of binocs-
“Move!” I whisper-hissed.
I ducked back, grabbed Shane’s jacket, and pulled him after.
“The hell-” He protested.
“Binocs! He’s got binocs!”
Shane stared at me, as if he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. For a moment, there was just the wind from the quarry, the tinkling of falling stone dust, and the blinking stars above.
Below, came the roar of an engine.
This time, Shane ran.
We sprinted. I took the fence in a leap. I ducked the branches of the oak, hopped over the roots. Melon broke under my shoes, and I slipped along the grass. I felt, before I saw, the cold metal of the truck door. I whipped it open, denied its protesting groan, and I scrambled inside. The engine revved. Shane gunned it, let the old diesel monster grumble and bellow. The gearstick clacked, and we lunged forward-
There was someone on the road.
Shane jerked the wheel, his foot slammed on the clutch. I grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle, my door flung wide, the cold edge of autumn snapped at my jacket-
Just beyond, a man stared at me, eyes wide, mouth agape-
I slammed the door, and we peeled onto the road.
We didn’t slow until we hit the county line, when the hills dropped away to let the light of downtown trickle over the treetops.
“Holy shit.” I gasped.
“Did you see that?” Shane demanded, his shit-eating grin wide as could be.
“I was right fucking there, Shane! We nearly hit that guy-”
“Bet he wished he wore brown pants, right?”
“Holy shit.” I repeated.
Shane chuckled, nodded along. The crazy bastard was proud of himself. He locked the steering wheel with his knees, took both hands to light his cigarette, to guard the flame while it took. Once he’d taken a drag, and blown his smoke from the open window, he declared, “We gotta go back.”
I looked at him, raised a single eyebrow in the best ‘coolly doubting’ expression I could manage.
He took another puff, blew it out the window. He let his arm rest on the frame, the red tip of his cigarette flaring in the cold fall wind. He said, “Yup.”
“Shane, those guys were probably county, checking on the pumps.”
“Nah, wrong paint on the truck.” He countered. “It’s something else.”
“Okay, sure.” I allowed.
“And I’ma find out what.”
This was the point where most people would demand, ‘why!?’, or point out that none of this was his business, it was probably nothing exciting, liable to end in another criminal trespass, and he’d nearly hit some dumb fucker wither his diesel-powered ‘Murica-mobile. I said none of those things, because I knew Shane. He’d been raised by cable television, on a steady diet of eighties action movies and nineties buddy-cop flicks, and his rules worked a little different. To Shane, that door now represented the gateway to a criminal conspiracy, to an ancient threat, or a hidden underworld. He’d mull over it, build conspiracy theories, talk about it night and day, until something new entered his view and he’d lock onto that.
That meant, unfortunately, that for the next week or so, “the door in the quarry” would be Shane’s raison d’etre. We’d just have to hang on, and wait for him to burn out on it.
Shane continued, “Let’s go back, tomorrow.”
“Probably not the best idea.” I countered. “They’ll be watching for us.”
He took a final drag, and flicked his cigarette into the night. He held the smoke in his cheeks, mulled on it, and only let it out when he’d decided. “Nah.” He said. “Don’t think they saw us. We should go back.”
I really didn’t want to deal with this.
He looked at me, didn’t say a word. If I were him, I’d have used a guilt-trip on me:‘Ah, come on! I just got dumped, give me this one thing!’ Most people would lay it on, thick, until I complied. Not Shane. Shane wouldn’t ever say something like that. He wasn’t the type. This meant I had no choice.
“Fine.” I said. Louder, I said, “All right. I’ll go. But we’re not breaking in, or anything else stupid like that. We go down there, look around, leave. That’s it.”
“Sure. Sure.” He agreed, with the satisfied smile of a man at peace with his life.
He reached forward, turned on the radio. Windows down, radio up, we sailed through the night, and towards disaster.