Wax Boats by Sarah Roberts

Author:Sarah Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Fiction
ISBN: 9781894759830
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eagle’s Nest

Will slapped a five-dollar bill against the dropped gate of the pickup truck. He hit it with enough force to knock over Ralphie’s beer can.

“Ain’t likely,” Will said as Ralphie followed with his own fiver.

The men spat into their palms and squished out a handshake.

The five-dollar bet was for Eagle’s Nest. The old pickup truck, the one Ralphie had bought up-island the day of his sixteenth birthday with money he’d made stacking dead batteries in the scrap yard, was idling on the flat at the top of the cliff. The headlights broke into the air above the water in parallel beams and shone out like a lighthouse eye rusted into place.

They’d both jumped off the lower-level Crow’s Nest before. In the summertime the girls sunbathed down on the baby-jump level, while boys scaled the rock, wet and panting, to take a running leap from the middle-point of the granite face, then yell or hug into a cannon ball to make the girls scream.

Usually, as the summer faded into looming September, an adventurous few would climb up to the Eagle’s Nest ledge and peer down at Crow’s Nest below, while the ocean passed, almost unfathomably far beneath them. The kids on the beach would hold their hands above their eyes to block the sun, look up at the brave, half-naked figures and scream that the only way down was to jump.

Which was not true. Because every summer each climber came down by climbing, shamed, like a treed bear finally left to descend alone. No one could remember actually seeing anyone run along the short ledge, push off on the jagged tooth of stone that jutted out the farthest, kick through the air to clear Crow’s Nest and jackknife into the water. But the myth persisted that someone, once, had done it, and someone might do it again.

It was the rock dust from work that led the bet. Ralphie brought Will and the whisky and the cans of Bud to the end of the cliff-top road to discuss Melanie, a flat-chested girl who had told the island that Ralphie was the father-to-be of what he imagined as the ugliest child ever.

“A little dirt won’t kill ya,” Ralphie said. He fitted an empty beer can into the “v” between his forearm and biceps. Then he flexed slowly until the can crumpled. There was no one around to be impressed by this, but Ralphie liked to keep in practice.

“I can’t stand the rock dust,” said Will as he reached back to take another can from the cooler tied into the truck box. “The best part of my day is getting home, hopping in the shower, and scrubbing all that crap off. Sometimes if I’m still hot, I’ll just use cold water. But man, it feels good, getting clean.”

“You’re a loser,” Ralphie said profoundly. He never considered what a shower felt like. He cleaned up after work like everyone else, but it never occurred to him to enjoy it.

Will argued, “You don’t feel nothing, man.

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