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 protest, “Context!” I won’t do that. I can’t.
The only context I had on offer was that it was a school night, we were trespassing, Shane was driving, he was already drunk, and he’d brought a gun. Context was not on my side.
The wind rattled through the trees and stripped the last of the leaves from their perches. This wind was the kind you only got in fall: dark and thick with the smell of old hay and heavy moss. It started up in those Appalachian peaks and wound down through the valleys, closing the final door on a long and hot summer.
A single leaf—thick golden oak—skittered across the ground, danced through cracks in the stone, and then slapped against the back window of Shane’s truck, hard enough to splatter me with the remains of the day’s rain.
I sat on the pickup’s bed next to a pile of cantaloupes and a twenty-four-pack of beer, and I watched the sky.
The quarry was quiet but for the rattle of the leaves and the low drone of the wind as it whipped over the earthworks. The city’s lights were a dim glow on the horizon, a keyhole through the black peaks of the mountains. Landen wasn’t much of a town to begin with, and this far out, the stars were brilliant, except for the dim spotlights up on the Starlight Mound. Other than that unpleasant glow, the sky was clear, the moon was bright, and we could see without cranking up the headlights. Which was good, because what we were doing was definitely illegal.
Shane squatted at the quarry lip, thirty feet past the truck, and grumbled as he worked. A cigarette bobbed red against the black with every muttered curse. Shane fumbled with a cantaloupe and tried to get it to stay still atop a tiny throne of piled dirt. His shadow cut against the blue mountains as the last, lonely figure between the gnarled oak and the yawning pit.
“Five percent!” I called down.
“Five percent what?” Shane asked.
“You gotta be five percent smarter than the fruit.”
His response was a one-fingered salute, and I caught the moonlight shining against the metal stud below his knuckle. He always wore those stupid fingerless gloves—the kind with weights in them, just in case.
Being here was stupid, but at least I was here on behalf of a friend. The bro code had to count for something.
Shane swaggered back towards the truck, his hands cupped over his mouth as he relit his cigarette. He stopped at the edge of the bed and leaned over the side panel. He fished, blind, through the empties. The fresh cans were just past his reach, but he never asked for help, just kept reaching in the dark for something he’d never find.
I pushed the case over, and he grunted out a muted “Thanks.” As he straightened, I caught the glint of car keys in his off-hand.
“Shane, don’t—” I protested.
He didn’t listen.
If ever there were two ways to do a thing, Shane always went with the more asinine. In a swift motion, he drove his keys down. There was a pop of metal, a gasp of pressure, and Shane ripped the keys free. Before beer could spew out onto the pickup, he tossed his head back, popped the top, and rammed the cylinder sideways against his face.
He chugged it like a goddamn vampire.
In an instant, the beer was gone. Shane pulled the can free, foam still dribbling from the jagged cut, and belched loud enough to echo through the hills, before tossing the empty over his shoulder and into the bed beside me, where it spun to rest among the dozen cantaloupes.
“Hey, Shane?” I asked. “Have you ever tried just… drinking the can?” I demonstrated with a civilized sip.
“It ain’t about the ride. It’s about the destination.”
That was the opposite of how that quote was supposed to go, but I let the argument drop. Shane met me in the rhetorical middle and drank the next one like a normal person.
A long while passed in silence. I sat on the tailgate, and Shane leaned against the driver’s rear wheel, both of us watching the stars above and the blurry lights atop the old Indian Camp on the far hillside. Other than us, this quarry was as abandoned as the last dozen times we’d been out here. The place hadn’t been used in years, but the city kept it pumped and dry. Maybe they hoped that the mining companies would come back. If there was one thing this town was good at, it was wasting money on forlorn hopes. If there were two things it was good at, it was wasting that money and desecrating Indian burial grounds. I raised my can in salute towards the distant spotlights and drank a mocking toast. The town should have put its talents on a postcard: “Come visit historic Landen. We’ve bulldozed two of these suckers, and we ain’t haunted yet!”
In one way, the lack of poltergeists made sense. Even vengeful spirits would take one look at this place, remember they had standards, and fuck off upstate with the rest of them.
That made me laugh, and I nearly choked on my beer. Shane glanced over, but I waved him away.
“It’s nothing. Just swallowed wrong,” I lied. Shane wasn’t one for bashing his home. He’d fought people for less. That dedication was kind of sad-funny, because the town had done absolutely zero favors for him.
He shrugged. Most people might have asked another question. Not Shane. He took everything at face value. If I said it was nothing, then it was nothing. Done. End of story.
He changed the topic. “Almost got the Camaro done. Finished up the transmission.” He drank again and let that stand as punctuation. “It’ll handle the horse.”
He’d worked on that Camaro since high school. I didn’t know much about cars, but Chris assured me that Shane had built a monster. The two of them argued about it constantly. It was always “supercharged sixes” this versus “full block eights” that, but knowing Shane, he wouldn’t be happy until he had crammed the most physically absurd block of steel under the hood and convinced it to run by sheer willpower.
The problem was, I knew Shane wasn’t here to talk about the car.
He took another drink, tilted the can vertically, and poured the beer down his throat. There was no way he tasted it. “She left me,” he admitted.
“That sucks, man,” I said. Those words were the universal duty of friends. “That sucks” didn’t carry the squishiness of “I’m sorry”, but it was more meaningful than just agreeing. “That really sucks,” I repeated. I emphasized my point with a drink.
“Yeah,” Shane said. He drank in silence, his eyes locked on the silhouetted hills. Even in darkness, I could see those dangerous gears turning under his cowboy hat. Finally, his course set, he passed me the dreg-filled can and intoned, “Hold my beer and watch this.”
That was a hillbilly red flag. Bad decisions were imminent. With Shane, those bad decisions were multiplied.
He stepped away from the truck and fiddled with his belt. I worried he might start an actual pissing contest, but his right hand went to his hip instead of his fly.
With a quick tug of his shirt, Shane produced the revolver.
Its steel shone under the moonlight, gleaming silver against the dark hills. He 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 down 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.
BOOM!
The quarry lit like a flashbulb. I could see every branch of the twisted oak and every cut on the rocky ground. The autumn air was spiced by cordite. Downrange, the first of the melons burst, vomiting its pulp over the quarry lip, and then followed its own guts into the black. All I could see was the exploded fruit, the single tree by the cliff-face, and the wooden fence along the edge. My night vision faded back, and I watched Shane bring the revolver down into line. He squeezed the trigger again.
BOOM!
Another cantaloupe burst and fell into the abyss.
In the Old West, cowboys shot one-handed to keep control of the reins of their horses. Shane shot one-handed so he could keep drinking.
He turned back towards me and held out his empty hand. I passed the can back. He grinned, took a swig, and steadied his aim. He said, “Now watch this…” He nudged the nose of the gun like a pointed finger and guided my vision downrange. There, by the jutting roots of the tree, 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, across the little red flame--
FWOOSH!
There was fire in the night, a jet of blazing heat that arced over the quarry and plunged into darkness. The falling seeds burned like meteors. Even on the truck, the fire’s breath pressed across my nose and cheeks. It stank of gasoline and rotted fruit. A searing ball clawed for the sky even as its molten innards rained towards the earth.
When the blast faded, flames licked over the barren ground. Singed leaves twisted on the branches of the oak, tugged along by the sudden draft. Torch-like chunks of dim-burning melon littered the ground.
Shane let out a war whoop and hurled his empty past me into the bed.
“Jesus Christ, Shane! What the hell was that?”
“Firemelon!” he cried.
“What the hell is that?!”
“I filled a cantaloupe with gasoline! Firemelon!”
“Why?”
“Because watermelons cost too damn much,” he answered as if it were the most reasonable thing in the universe.
“Goddamn, that burned good!”
“Jesus Christ,” I repeated, this time as a whisper. I took another drink and glanced back at the melons piled behind me. They were arranged, oh-so-carefully, with little black plugs on each one. I hopped off the truck and gave them a healthy distance.
“Aw, yeah,” Shane said. His grin grew wider as he fished into the bed for the next set of melons. He carried them to the edge of the pit, stopping only to punt 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, leaving the staged melons each with its wick alight. He took a drink and returned to his stance.
The quarry lit with each shot, empty ramps and old tire tracks carved from the shadow by the rising flames.
Shane cackled. He tossed another empty can atop the aluminum mountain and cradled the revolver. With a sure, gentle flick, the cylinder swung free. Shane plunged the rod, and spent brass coughed into his waiting glove. He reloaded with practiced ease, unbothered by the dark, puffing on the cigarette between his teeth as he worked. When he pushed the cylinder closed, he tested it with a wiggle, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Shane was the kind of guy who kicked tires, jiggled locks, and tested doors. Something could work perfectly, a thousand times, and he’d still check it on the thousand-and-first.
The cylinder was snug. It fit. But Shane scowled and stared into the darkness. Unable to find an issue with the cylinder, he settled for glaring at the black-stained vents on the muzzle. More to himself than me, he admitted, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked. I already knew, but I still 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 sudden speed, he snapped into firing stance.
BOOM!
The firemelon failed to ignite.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM! The melon vanished in a blazing jet, even as the last two slugs tore it apart.
Shane lowered the smoking gun and let out a hiss. “Then she left.” He cradled his wrist and massaged it. “Why?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know,” I answered.
“Come on, Jase. You know something. Aub talks to you, and you’re good with this shit.”
That was a joke to anyone but Shane. If I had a penny for every 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 misused copper.
“You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Shane kicked at a rock. “Bullshit. Aubrey tells you everything.”
Well, that much was probably true, but not in the way Shane thought. Sure, we talked, but not like that.
Aubrey and I were cool. We’d been friends since that stupid summer camp, but nothing more. Trying to turn that into something else would be betraying Shane, betraying her, and probably somehow betraying myself. Then I’d have to explain the entire mess to Peter, while also trying to justify dating his sister. There were awkward scenarios, and then there was… whatever that would be. As far as I was concerned, she was a cloistered nun. End of story.
“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 and contended, “I’m pretty simple.”
“Maybe it’s some Mars-Venus shit,” I deflected.
Shane gave me a look as if I’d just started speaking elvish.
“It’s just an expression,” I said. I tried to rack my brain, think up any particular reason why Aubrey might’ve left him—this time, at least. “Did you fight?”
“No!” 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. He stared hard past my shoulder, then whispered, “Someone’s here.”
I turned back. Across the quarry, on the far side of the pit, a pair of dim headlights crested the access road.
If it were the cops, we were so screwed. Drinking, driving, firearms, and whatever felony the firemelons turned into? We needed to go. Immediately.
I tossed my can and leaped from the tailgate. As quickly and as quietly as I could, I pushed the gate closed and bolted for the passenger seat.
It was only once I was inside the cab and the door shut behind me that I realized I was alone. Shane stood frozen at the rear of the truck, squinting into the distance. Oh, hell. I leaned across the center console, the gearshift wedged in my side, and I pushed open the driver’s door. With just my head poked out, I whisper-screamed, “Shane! We gotta go!”
He glanced back, shook his head, and whispered back, “They’re goin’ into the quarry.”
“Why is anyone going into the quarry?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he said. “I’m gonna find out.” He started towards the pit.
I cursed, punched the console, and wiggled past the gearshift to drop onto the dirt.
I hurried after.
I crouch-ran, tucked below the plane of white that streamed over the quarry lip, moving as fast as I could manage without rising into the light. I scrabbled across the burnt earth, past smoldering and sticky-sweet melon chunks, and past the oak and its jutting roots, until I came to the “fence” that guarded the cliff. Two rows of warped and dried planks threaded through half-rotted posts, and beyond that final warning, the ground fell away. Light blazed from the pit, reaching up to swallow the autumn night.
I dropped to my belly and crawled under the barricade to follow Shane.
The soles of his boots blocked my view as he inched towards the abyss. I crawled up beside him, the stink of old dirt, decayed leaves, and wet stone pressed against my nose. I stopped when I felt the updraft, the push of mineral-laden wind from below.
Four inches past my face, the earth gave way: a sheer plummet of hewn stone down to the quarry basin, a cratered and tiered maze of stagnant puddles and bone-white rock. Between those cut boulders, a black SUV was parked, doors open and trunk hatch lifted. It had those blue-white headlights the rich kids loved, the kind that blinded you on the highway at noon, but it also had a light-bar and a rack of fog lights that blasted the same cold blue into every corner of the quarry. That light cut canyons from the shadows and gleamed over the stilled puddles. In the radiance, three men hustled, nearly running, dragging crate after crate from the truck to the quarry wall.
“What the hell?” I whispered. No one used this quarry.
Shane didn’t answer. He snubbed out his cigarette in the dirt and let it sizzle on the rocks. He stared, unblinking, at the movement below.
The first man had reached the wall. He dropped his crate, and it landed with a flat bang, metal on stone. He stepped back and stretched, hands on his back, as if he’d nearly broken his spine. He stood there, holding his sides and scanning the horizon. I felt my breath catch, but there was no way he saw us.
After a moment, his comrades caught up, and he turned to the wall to tap it a half-dozen times.
No, not the wall. He was tapping on a door’s keypad.
Why was there an electronic lock in this quarry? No one used the damn place except local idiots like Shane and me. Hell, we’d been down there this summer, practicing bouldering for a misbegotten plan that never came about, and there’d been no door, then!
Yet, here it was: flat metal set into 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 cracked open, and the man pushed it with visible effort.
“I can’t see inside,” Shane complained.
The angle was all wrong. Maybe if we scooted to the east side?
The men pushed the crate through the door, and it swung shut behind them.
“That’s new,” Shane observed.
“Maybe a pump room? I don’t know how we’d missed it, but—”
I was cut off as the door opened, once more. The first man emerged, now moving with purpose. He marched to the back of the SUV, popped the hatch, fished around, and then slammed it shut. He stopped on the quarry floor and glanced up, directly towards our ledge.
Again, my breath caught. We were in shadow. There was no way he could see us.
Shane and I lay frozen.
The man yanked open the side door and fished out a bulky pair of binoculars.
“Move!” I whisper-hissed.
I ducked back, grabbed Shane’s jacket, and yanked him after.
“The hell—” he protested.
“Binocs! He’s got binocs!”
Shane stared at me, dumbfounded. For a moment, there was silence—just the wind from the quarry and the patter of falling dust. Above, the stars shone, and the world was still.
The SUV engine roared from the pit.
This time, Shane ran.
We sprinted. I took the fence in a leap, ducked the branches of the oak, and hopped over the roots. Melon rinds shattered under my feet.
I crashed into the side of Shane’s truck and ripped open the door, ignoring the rusted protest, and scrambled into the passenger seat. The engine revved. Shane gunned it, and the old diesel monster bellowed. The gearstick clacked, and we lunged into motion.
There was someone on the road.
Shane jerked the wheel; his foot slammed on the clutch. I grabbed the “oh shit” handle as my door flung wide, and the cold edge of autumn snatched at my jacket.
Just beyond that open air, a man stared at me, eyes wide and mouth agape.
I yanked the door closed, and we peeled onto the road.
We didn’t slow until we hit the county line, where 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 there, man! We nearly hit that guy—”
“And I bet he wishes he’d worn his brown pants, right?”
I sighed.
Shane laughed. He locked the steering wheel with his knees, took both hands to light his cigarette, and guarded the flame while it caught. Once he’d had a drag and blown his smoke from the cracked window, he said, “We gotta go back.”
“The hell we do.”
He took another puff and blew it out the window. The red tip of his cigarette flared in the cold wind, and he said, “We need to find out about that door.”
“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.”
There were a thousand reasons this was a terrible idea, but I shared none of them. Shane had been raised by wrestling tapes, eighties action movies, and secondhand metal albums from bands that broke up before we were born. His rules worked differently. That door was now a fixation, and until he’d either worked through it or found something dumber, none of us were going to hear the end of it.
Shane said, “Let’s go back tomorrow.”
“Probably not the best idea,” I said. “They’ll be watching for us.”
Shane took a final drag before flicking 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 disagreed. “They didn’t see us.”
I really didn’t want to deal with this right now.
He looked at me, but he didn’t say a word.
Shane had been through one hell of a week. Aubrey left, again. He was short on fuel money, and he’d gotten stiffed on his last two gigs. Most people would have pushed those chips into my face. Not Shane. He’d never.
This meant, of course, that I had no choice.
“Fine,” I agreed. Louder, I added, “But we’re not breaking through the door or anything stupid like that. We can go down there, look around, and then leave. That’s it.”
“Of course,” Shane agreed. Then he reached forward and turned on the radio. Classic rock, as always. With the windows down and the radio up, we sailed through the night and straight towards disaster.
This is the point where a reasonable person would protest, “Context!” I won’t do that. I can’t.
The only context I had on offer was that it was a school night, we were trespassing, Shane was driving, he was already drunk, and he’d brought a gun. Context was not on my side.
The wind rattled through the trees and stripped the last of the leaves from their perches. This wind was the kind you only got in fall: dark and thick with the smell of old hay and heavy moss. It started up in those Appalachian peaks and wound down through the valleys, closing the final door on a long and hot summer.
A single leaf—thick golden oak—skittered across the ground, danced through cracks in the stone, and then slapped against the back window of Shane’s truck, hard enough to splatter me with the remains of the day’s rain.
I sat on the pickup’s bed next to a pile of cantaloupes and a twenty-four-pack of beer, and I watched the sky.
The quarry was quiet but for the rattle of the leaves and the low drone of the wind as it whipped over the earthworks. The city’s lights were a dim glow on the horizon, a keyhole through the black peaks of the mountains. Landen wasn’t much of a town to begin with, and this far out, the stars were brilliant, except for the dim spotlights up on the Starlight Mound. Other than that unpleasant glow, the sky was clear, the moon was bright, and we could see without cranking up the headlights. Which was good, because what we were doing was definitely illegal.
Shane squatted at the quarry lip, thirty feet past the truck, and grumbled as he worked. A cigarette bobbed red against the black with every muttered curse. Shane fumbled with a cantaloupe and tried to get it to stay still atop a tiny throne of piled dirt. His shadow cut against the blue mountains as the last, lonely figure between the gnarled oak and the yawning pit.
“Five percent!” I called down.
“Five percent what?” Shane asked.
“You gotta be five percent smarter than the fruit.”
His response was a one-fingered salute, and I caught the moonlight shining against the metal stud below his knuckle. He always wore those stupid fingerless gloves—the kind with weights in them, just in case.
Being here was stupid, but at least I was here on behalf of a friend. The bro code had to count for something.
Shane swaggered back towards the truck, his hands cupped over his mouth as he relit his cigarette. He stopped at the edge of the bed and leaned over the side panel. He fished, blind, through the empties. The fresh cans were just past his reach, but he never asked for help, just kept reaching in the dark for something he’d never find.
I pushed the case over, and he grunted out a muted “Thanks.” As he straightened, I caught the glint of car keys in his off-hand.
“Shane, don’t—” I protested.
He didn’t listen.
If ever there were two ways to do a thing, Shane always went with the more asinine. In a swift motion, he drove his keys down. There was a pop of metal, a gasp of pressure, and Shane ripped the keys free. Before beer could spew out onto the pickup, he tossed his head back, popped the top, and rammed the cylinder sideways against his face.
He chugged it like a goddamn vampire.
In an instant, the beer was gone. Shane pulled the can free, foam still dribbling from the jagged cut, and belched loud enough to echo through the hills, before tossing the empty over his shoulder and into the bed beside me, where it spun to rest among the dozen cantaloupes.
“Hey, Shane?” I asked. “Have you ever tried just… drinking the can?” I demonstrated with a civilized sip.
“It ain’t about the ride. It’s about the destination.”
That was the opposite of how that quote was supposed to go, but I let the argument drop. Shane met me in the rhetorical middle and drank the next one like a normal person.
A long while passed in silence. I sat on the tailgate, and Shane leaned against the driver’s rear wheel, both of us watching the stars above and the blurry lights atop the old Indian Camp on the far hillside. Other than us, this quarry was as abandoned as the last dozen times we’d been out here. The place hadn’t been used in years, but the city kept it pumped and dry. Maybe they hoped that the mining companies would come back. If there was one thing this town was good at, it was wasting money on forlorn hopes. If there were two things it was good at, it was wasting that money and desecrating Indian burial grounds. I raised my can in salute towards the distant spotlights and drank a mocking toast. The town should have put its talents on a postcard: “Come visit historic Landen. We’ve bulldozed two of these suckers, and we ain’t haunted yet!”
In one way, the lack of poltergeists made sense. Even vengeful spirits would take one look at this place, remember they had standards, and fuck off upstate with the rest of them.
That made me laugh, and I nearly choked on my beer. Shane glanced over, but I waved him away.
“It’s nothing. Just swallowed wrong,” I lied. Shane wasn’t one for bashing his home. He’d fought people for less. That dedication was kind of sad-funny, because the town had done absolutely zero favors for him.
He shrugged. Most people might have asked another question. Not Shane. He took everything at face value. If I said it was nothing, then it was nothing. Done. End of story.
He changed the topic. “Almost got the Camaro done. Finished up the transmission.” He drank again and let that stand as punctuation. “It’ll handle the horse.”
He’d worked on that Camaro since high school. I didn’t know much about cars, but Chris assured me that Shane had built a monster. The two of them argued about it constantly. It was always “supercharged sixes” this versus “full block eights” that, but knowing Shane, he wouldn’t be happy until he had crammed the most physically absurd block of steel under the hood and convinced it to run by sheer willpower.
The problem was, I knew Shane wasn’t here to talk about the car.
He took another drink, tilted the can vertically, and poured the beer down his throat. There was no way he tasted it. “She left me,” he admitted.
“That sucks, man,” I said. Those words were the universal duty of friends. “That sucks” didn’t carry the squishiness of “I’m sorry”, but it was more meaningful than just agreeing. “That really sucks,” I repeated. I emphasized my point with a drink.
“Yeah,” Shane said. He drank in silence, his eyes locked on the silhouetted hills. Even in darkness, I could see those dangerous gears turning under his cowboy hat. Finally, his course set, he passed me the dreg-filled can and intoned, “Hold my beer and watch this.”
That was a hillbilly red flag. Bad decisions were imminent. With Shane, those bad decisions were multiplied.
He stepped away from the truck and fiddled with his belt. I worried he might start an actual pissing contest, but his right hand went to his hip instead of his fly.
With a quick tug of his shirt, Shane produced the revolver.
Its steel shone under the moonlight, gleaming silver against the dark hills. He 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 down 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.
BOOM!
The quarry lit like a flashbulb. I could see every branch of the twisted oak and every cut on the rocky ground. The autumn air was spiced by cordite. Downrange, the first of the melons burst, vomiting its pulp over the quarry lip, and then followed its own guts into the black. All I could see was the exploded fruit, the single tree by the cliff-face, and the wooden fence along the edge. My night vision faded back, and I watched Shane bring the revolver down into line. He squeezed the trigger again.
BOOM!
Another cantaloupe burst and fell into the abyss.
In the Old West, cowboys shot one-handed to keep control of the reins of their horses. Shane shot one-handed so he could keep drinking.
He turned back towards me and held out his empty hand. I passed the can back. He grinned, took a swig, and steadied his aim. He said, “Now watch this…” He nudged the nose of the gun like a pointed finger and guided my vision downrange. There, by the jutting roots of the tree, 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, across the little red flame--
FWOOSH!
There was fire in the night, a jet of blazing heat that arced over the quarry and plunged into darkness. The falling seeds burned like meteors. Even on the truck, the fire’s breath pressed across my nose and cheeks. It stank of gasoline and rotted fruit. A searing ball clawed for the sky even as its molten innards rained towards the earth.
When the blast faded, flames licked over the barren ground. Singed leaves twisted on the branches of the oak, tugged along by the sudden draft. Torch-like chunks of dim-burning melon littered the ground.
Shane let out a war whoop and hurled his empty past me into the bed.
“Jesus Christ, Shane! What the hell was that?”
“Firemelon!” he cried.
“What the hell is that?!”
“I filled a cantaloupe with gasoline! Firemelon!”
“Why?”
“Because watermelons cost too damn much,” he answered as if it were the most reasonable thing in the universe.
“Goddamn, that burned good!”
“Jesus Christ,” I repeated, this time as a whisper. I took another drink and glanced back at the melons piled behind me. They were arranged, oh-so-carefully, with little black plugs on each one. I hopped off the truck and gave them a healthy distance.
“Aw, yeah,” Shane said. His grin grew wider as he fished into the bed for the next set of melons. He carried them to the edge of the pit, stopping only to punt 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, leaving the staged melons each with its wick alight. He took a drink and returned to his stance.
The quarry lit with each shot, empty ramps and old tire tracks carved from the shadow by the rising flames.
Shane cackled. He tossed another empty can atop the aluminum mountain and cradled the revolver. With a sure, gentle flick, the cylinder swung free. Shane plunged the rod, and spent brass coughed into his waiting glove. He reloaded with practiced ease, unbothered by the dark, puffing on the cigarette between his teeth as he worked. When he pushed the cylinder closed, he tested it with a wiggle, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Shane was the kind of guy who kicked tires, jiggled locks, and tested doors. Something could work perfectly, a thousand times, and he’d still check it on the thousand-and-first.
The cylinder was snug. It fit. But Shane scowled and stared into the darkness. Unable to find an issue with the cylinder, he settled for glaring at the black-stained vents on the muzzle. More to himself than me, he admitted, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked. I already knew, but I still 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 sudden speed, he snapped into firing stance.
BOOM!
The firemelon failed to ignite.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM! The melon vanished in a blazing jet, even as the last two slugs tore it apart.
Shane lowered the smoking gun and let out a hiss. “Then she left.” He cradled his wrist and massaged it. “Why?”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know,” I answered.
“Come on, Jase. You know something. Aub talks to you, and you’re good with this shit.”
That was a joke to anyone but Shane. If I had a penny for every 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 misused copper.
“You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Shane kicked at a rock. “Bullshit. Aubrey tells you everything.”
Well, that much was probably true, but not in the way Shane thought. Sure, we talked, but not like that.
Aubrey and I were cool. We’d been friends since that stupid summer camp, but nothing more. Trying to turn that into something else would be betraying Shane, betraying her, and probably somehow betraying myself. Then I’d have to explain the entire mess to Peter, while also trying to justify dating his sister. There were awkward scenarios, and then there was… whatever that would be. As far as I was concerned, she was a cloistered nun. End of story.
“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 and contended, “I’m pretty simple.”
“Maybe it’s some Mars-Venus shit,” I deflected.
Shane gave me a look as if I’d just started speaking elvish.
“It’s just an expression,” I said. I tried to rack my brain, think up any particular reason why Aubrey might’ve left him—this time, at least. “Did you fight?”
“No!” 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. He stared hard past my shoulder, then whispered, “Someone’s here.”
I turned back. Across the quarry, on the far side of the pit, a pair of dim headlights crested the access road.
If it were the cops, we were so screwed. Drinking, driving, firearms, and whatever felony the firemelons turned into? We needed to go. Immediately.
I tossed my can and leaped from the tailgate. As quickly and as quietly as I could, I pushed the gate closed and bolted for the passenger seat.
It was only once I was inside the cab and the door shut behind me that I realized I was alone. Shane stood frozen at the rear of the truck, squinting into the distance. Oh, hell. I leaned across the center console, the gearshift wedged in my side, and I pushed open the driver’s door. With just my head poked out, I whisper-screamed, “Shane! We gotta go!”
He glanced back, shook his head, and whispered back, “They’re goin’ into the quarry.”
“Why is anyone going into the quarry?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he said. “I’m gonna find out.” He started towards the pit.
I cursed, punched the console, and wiggled past the gearshift to drop onto the dirt.
I hurried after.
I crouch-ran, tucked below the plane of white that streamed over the quarry lip, moving as fast as I could manage without rising into the light. I scrabbled across the burnt earth, past smoldering and sticky-sweet melon chunks, and past the oak and its jutting roots, until I came to the “fence” that guarded the cliff. Two rows of warped and dried planks threaded through half-rotted posts, and beyond that final warning, the ground fell away. Light blazed from the pit, reaching up to swallow the autumn night.
I dropped to my belly and crawled under the barricade to follow Shane.
The soles of his boots blocked my view as he inched towards the abyss. I crawled up beside him, the stink of old dirt, decayed leaves, and wet stone pressed against my nose. I stopped when I felt the updraft, the push of mineral-laden wind from below.
Four inches past my face, the earth gave way: a sheer plummet of hewn stone down to the quarry basin, a cratered and tiered maze of stagnant puddles and bone-white rock. Between those cut boulders, a black SUV was parked, doors open and trunk hatch lifted. It had those blue-white headlights the rich kids loved, the kind that blinded you on the highway at noon, but it also had a light-bar and a rack of fog lights that blasted the same cold blue into every corner of the quarry. That light cut canyons from the shadows and gleamed over the stilled puddles. In the radiance, three men hustled, nearly running, dragging crate after crate from the truck to the quarry wall.
“What the hell?” I whispered. No one used this quarry.
Shane didn’t answer. He snubbed out his cigarette in the dirt and let it sizzle on the rocks. He stared, unblinking, at the movement below.
The first man had reached the wall. He dropped his crate, and it landed with a flat bang, metal on stone. He stepped back and stretched, hands on his back, as if he’d nearly broken his spine. He stood there, holding his sides and scanning the horizon. I felt my breath catch, but there was no way he saw us.
After a moment, his comrades caught up, and he turned to the wall to tap it a half-dozen times.
No, not the wall. He was tapping on a door’s keypad.
Why was there an electronic lock in this quarry? No one used the damn place except local idiots like Shane and me. Hell, we’d been down there this summer, practicing bouldering for a misbegotten plan that never came about, and there’d been no door, then!
Yet, here it was: flat metal set into 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 cracked open, and the man pushed it with visible effort.
“I can’t see inside,” Shane complained.
The angle was all wrong. Maybe if we scooted to the east side?
The men pushed the crate through the door, and it swung shut behind them.
“That’s new,” Shane observed.
“Maybe a pump room? I don’t know how we’d missed it, but—”
I was cut off as the door opened, once more. The first man emerged, now moving with purpose. He marched to the back of the SUV, popped the hatch, fished around, and then slammed it shut. He stopped on the quarry floor and glanced up, directly towards our ledge.
Again, my breath caught. We were in shadow. There was no way he could see us.
Shane and I lay frozen.
The man yanked open the side door and fished out a bulky pair of binoculars.
“Move!” I whisper-hissed.
I ducked back, grabbed Shane’s jacket, and yanked him after.
“The hell—” he protested.
“Binocs! He’s got binocs!”
Shane stared at me, dumbfounded. For a moment, there was silence—just the wind from the quarry and the patter of falling dust. Above, the stars shone, and the world was still.
The SUV engine roared from the pit.
This time, Shane ran.
We sprinted. I took the fence in a leap, ducked the branches of the oak, and hopped over the roots. Melon rinds shattered under my feet.
I crashed into the side of Shane’s truck and ripped open the door, ignoring the rusted protest, and scrambled into the passenger seat. The engine revved. Shane gunned it, and the old diesel monster bellowed. The gearstick clacked, and we lunged into motion.
There was someone on the road.
Shane jerked the wheel; his foot slammed on the clutch. I grabbed the “oh shit” handle as my door flung wide, and the cold edge of autumn snatched at my jacket.
Just beyond that open air, a man stared at me, eyes wide and mouth agape.
I yanked the door closed, and we peeled onto the road.
We didn’t slow until we hit the county line, where 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 there, man! We nearly hit that guy—”
“And I bet he wishes he’d worn his brown pants, right?”
I sighed.
Shane laughed. He locked the steering wheel with his knees, took both hands to light his cigarette, and guarded the flame while it caught. Once he’d had a drag and blown his smoke from the cracked window, he said, “We gotta go back.”
“The hell we do.”
He took another puff and blew it out the window. The red tip of his cigarette flared in the cold wind, and he said, “We need to find out about that door.”
“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.”
There were a thousand reasons this was a terrible idea, but I shared none of them. Shane had been raised by wrestling tapes, eighties action movies, and secondhand metal albums from bands that broke up before we were born. His rules worked differently. That door was now a fixation, and until he’d either worked through it or found something dumber, none of us were going to hear the end of it.
Shane said, “Let’s go back tomorrow.”
“Probably not the best idea,” I said. “They’ll be watching for us.”
Shane took a final drag before flicking 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 disagreed. “They didn’t see us.”
I really didn’t want to deal with this right now.
He looked at me, but he didn’t say a word.
Shane had been through one hell of a week. Aubrey left, again. He was short on fuel money, and he’d gotten stiffed on his last two gigs. Most people would have pushed those chips into my face. Not Shane. He’d never.
This meant, of course, that I had no choice.
“Fine,” I agreed. Louder, I added, “But we’re not breaking through the door or anything stupid like that. We can go down there, look around, and then leave. That’s it.”
“Of course,” Shane agreed. Then he reached forward and turned on the radio. Classic rock, as always. With the windows down and the radio up, we sailed through the night and straight towards disaster.