Portrait of a young con artist
Chapter Five:
The Quarry
"Just a few more feet," Kenny said, shouting back over his shoulder as his long figure crawled along the top of narrow peak, a strip of stone and dirt that marked the ridge line between steep drop offs.
To one side, the land slanted down, thick with falling trees and tuffs of shrub. To other, the cliff face dropped straight down, a cracked contenance of chiseled stone, so stark and sharp it could only have been created by human hand.
This wall stood 200 feet high in spots, depending upon where a person peer over the side.
On most days, Kenny and Dave climbed "the safe" side up from Valley Road, clinging to the trees while stepping over stones, broken beer bottles and expired condoms.
Even an old car sat on that side, as if someone had driven it half way up before the motor had given out, left it for the elments to finishing killing. Its rusted bones looked much like a brown skeleton, eye sockets where the lights had been. Near the bottom, but not so far down at the road, square blocked human‑sized boxes stood, made of concrete, in which the owners had stored explosives for blasting those part of stone pick and shovels could not loosen.
But the boxes lacked life now as much as the car did, both having ceased useful purpose since the quarry had ceased operations well before either boy was born. Dave's father, when inspired by an extra bottle of beer, liked to talk about the tales Paterson workers spread about the quarry masters, how people laid bets as to whether or not operations would dig good deep or use too big a charge and send the whole cliff down onto this side of Paterson.
"Smoke, black as coal, used to rise out of that hole," Dave's father used to say, his voice filled with those notes reserved for fire side tales. "I was a boy then. We boys down in the mills always wanted to try and climb that mountain and see what the fuss was all about. But we were too scared. We all figured we'd get ourselves arrested by the county sheriff, and have to explain to our father's why we were trespassing. Were we trying to get ourselves killed, or what?"
Danger was part of the reason Kenny led Dave here.
Something had changed in Kenny since his coming back to his grandfather's house in South Paterson, and the boy was constantly looking for these opportunities to break his neck.
"Are you crazy?" Dave asked so often it had become a mantra between them, with Kenny staring over his shoulder to say, "of course."
Which was why Kenny prefered the steeper or dangerous side. He seemed to love the challenge of stone, testing the grit of his fingers to keep him clinging to the face of the cliff even when the weight of his body tugged on him to fall.
They boys could reach the cliff side by walking straight up the drive from Valley Road the trucks used to take, even though this cracked surface was nearly as overgrown with weeds as the mountain side was with trees. A gap stood in the mountain about fifty feet wide, like a gate to an amazing place few of the mostly newer population below suspected, a boxed canyon cut out of the mountain by stone cutters with four walls forming a space as big as a football stadium. No seats here. Just flat surface and the perpetual challenge to club, with cracked spaces where the elements had divided the earth over time.
The boys rarely had trouble climbing either side, always managing to find finger holds, and foot holds and spaces where they could rest.
But Dave always struggled getting down the steep side, something Kenny almost always insisted upon once they made the top no matter which side they rose.
"I can't go down like you can," Dave always protested.
"That's crazy."
"It's not. I can't see good and when I look down, I can't see places to put my feet."
"You don't look where to put your feet, you feel for them."
"I'm no good at that either," Dave protested.
But as much as Dave protested, Kenny still insisted, and they lowered themselves that way every time, Kenny always coming to the bottom first and shouting up at Dave to hurry, and Dave always taking his time and feeling his way, always desperate for that next step he was certain would not be there.
Most times, the two boys made their way up the thicker portion of the wall nearest Valley road, not trusting the extreme section nearest the gate.
Stuff still fell off that particular prepice, partly because changing weather over the years had worked its fingers into that space the most often and drawn it apart, easing into its softer interior to create even wider cracks. Both boys believed that if they crawled too near the edge of that wall nearest the gate, they would set something loose in the earth and that whole section would fall into the quary.
Yet on this day, Kenny insisted they crawl out to that very spot, telling Dave that he knew of something Dave would want to see there, and that the edge of the wall was the only place in the whole quarry where they could see it all.
"All what, Kenny?" Dave asked.
"You'll see," is all Kenny told him, and egged him to follow.
Both boys had heard reports from kids who had crawled out that far, about how the wall shook a little where it grew narrow, a vibrating almost to the breath of those who dared to crawl there.
"I can feel it shaking," Dave called out from behind as Kenny moved ahead of him along the narrow ridge -- a strip of yellowed grass testifying to ability of life to spring up in nearly any environment. It was to this grass that both boys clung as the wall narrowed.
"That's just your imagination," Kenny called back.
"It is not! I felt it shake again."
"Will you just come on," Kenny snapped back, pausing long enough to give Dave a good stare. "If you're chicken, say so, and I'll go on by myself."
"I'm not chicken, I'm just scared."
"That's the same thing."
"No it isn't," Dave insisted.
"Then come on and stop talking about it. If you don't hurry, the thing will be over and we'll have wasted our time crawling out here like this."
"What thing?"
"You'll see. You'll see. But they won't stay there forever."
"What if they're not there now?" Dave asked, having no clue as to who `they' were. "Then we'd have crawled all the way out to the edge for nothing anyway."
"They'll be there if we hurry," Kenny said. "They're always there on Friday."
Kenny began to crawl again, leaving Dave to make up his mind as to what he wanted to do, go or stay behind and miss the event of a life time.
The wall shook harder, and Dave halted again.
"Maybe I shouldn't," Dave said finally. "My father always told me this was too dangerous to..."
Kenny turned and glared, brows folding together in that look Dave hated, one that mocked and scolded at the same time, a look Kenny used when he particularly disapproved of Dave's behavior.
"And just when did you start listening to that crazy old man of yours, anyway?" Kenny asked sharply. "He's not been in his right mind for years."
"He was when he warned me about this place."
"Are you sure?"
"I...."
"That's what I thought. Come on. You're blowing it for both of us."
But Dave didn't move.
"Coward!" Kenny snapped.
"I am not!" Dave protested. "I just don't want the mountain -- I mean, me to fall."
Kenny stared at Dave for a long moment, as if he had heard only the first part of Dave's statement and couldn't believe the boy feared the mountain might fall, something so secure as this, as solid as the earth -- and the earth, most boys knew, didn't move so easily as all that.
"You are a coward," Kenny said finally. "Just like all the kids as school say you are."
"I don't mean to be," Dave said, sounding pathetic even to himself.
And Kenny, sagging a little as if he understood in some special way that people couldn't always be the way he wanted them, and that many of his friends were like Dave, flawed in some way.
"Look, Dave, just come with me. You'll kick yourself if you don't come see this. Believe me."
"Are you sure it's really what you think it was?"
"I saw them with my own eyes," Kenny assured Dave. "They come here every Friday and stay for hours. Yet, they're not deaf and I've seen them scramble out of there when they've heard someone coming."
"Okay, Okay," Dave said, closing his eyes for a moment, taking in a very deep breath. "Lead on."
"Then you'll come?"
"I said so, didn't I?" Dave hissed back, wishing Kenny would just go away.
"I didn't hear you say if you would or you wouldn't."
"All right, I'm coming. Now are you happy? Will you please lead on."
Kenny glanced at Dave again and then turned his attention back towards the ledge that grew even more narrow as it neared the lip of the gate, like a needle coming to a point. Dave hardly dared to look around, lifting himself up to stand, pushing one foot ahead of him followed by the other, his gaze dedicated to the rough surface.
One loose stone could send him off the edge, he thought.
The edge! That did it. He could not keep his attention from turning towards the huge gap in the mountain the quarry men had left, that square box that seemed straight out of a Jules Verne novel, like landscape from another planet. The walls had been chipped and cracked years earlier, leaving time for weather to reshape face a little, broadening some of the cracks, filling some with dirt so that trees and bushes grew at odd angles from the face of the walls. The floor of the vast space was as bad, gravel and stones, dirt and trees, with a single road in that some of the punks from the high school drove in on, racing their hot rods amid the echoing roar of their engines.
But Dave and Kenny had watched these races many time, and never needed to climb this weak wall out to bear witness to their brutality.
Only something so special as what Kenny claimed he saw could be worth this trip, and even then, just barely.
Dave came to the edge and stopped, but Kenny did not, working his way forward to where the land -- such a razor thin piece of it, too -- descended.
"Well?" Kenny asked when he had taken several steps down.
"You didn't say anything about having to climb down, too!" Dave protested.
"We're not climbing down," Kenny said. "We're just getting closer to where they are."
"Closer?"
"There's a shaft that looks straight down on them," Kenny said. "They can't be seen from on the ground because they've wormed their way into that shaft. But from up here, from a few steps more, you can see it all."
"I'm not doing it!" Dave said, convinced that if he took one more step towards that slippery slope of loose gravel, he would fall.
"Stop being a baby. It's not anywhere as dangerous as you think. You want me to hold your hand, too?"
"No!"
"Fine, I'll go look. You stay here and sulk."
Then, Kenny vanished, easing down into a crack near the edge that seemed to have some kind of natural stair built into it, a narrow secret passage that led to a point where Dave could no longer see him.
"Kenny?" Dave called.
No answer came.
"Kenny?" Dave called a little louder, drawing up Kenny's head again, and an enraged glare. "Are you deliberately trying to scare them off?"
"You mean they really are there?"
"Come look for yourself."
Dave eased foreward against his better judgement, and then down the uneven chipped stone stairs that descended into the crack, finding that he could keep himself secure by pressing his hands against the sides, the warm stone suddenly comforting. Then, the stone ended, and a gap showed at the very end, a shaft sinking straight down, and there, at the bottom, two naked figures, a boy and a girl, squirming in the stone dust, like animals.
Dave giggled and felt the stone give out from under him, a whole chunk of mountain crumbling right under his knees.
"Kenny!!!!!"
The girl and boy below glanced up as a shower of loose stones came down on them, forcing them to grab up their clothing and dash out into the open naked.
"Kenny! I'm falling!" Dave yelled, although the mountain hadn't fallen, just a little dirt.
But Kenny stared after the couple.
"Damn it, Dave," he mumbled. "Now they'll never come back."
Both boys stared after the running naked figures, as they vanished into the landscape nearer to Valley Road. Dave trembled. So did Kenny, but for some reason not yet apparent to Dave.
"What do you think it was like?" Kenny asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What they were doing?"
"How should I know," Dave snapped. "Get we get off this ledge before you start grilling me with questions."
"You think it's like when we do it for ourselves?"
"Do what?"
"You know."
"I don't do that."
"Like hell you don't. You do it all the time. You said you sometimes do it three or four times a day."
"I lied. Can we go back now."
"Are you saying you never do it?"
"Of course I do it. Just not as often as I said."
"Do you think it's the same?"
"How should I know, I've never done it with a girl. Can we please go back."
"Who would you do with it if you could?"
"Stop it, Kenny. I'm scared."
"Of doing it?"
"Of falling. Can we please go?"
Kenny stared again out after the couple that had long since become lost in the trees.
"I wonder if it's the same," he mumbled, then turned to crawl back the way he'd come, glancing frequently towards the distance as if hoping for one last glimpse of their running, naked forms. "I wonder."