Divers

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Dept. of English
Humanities Building
SUNY at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5350
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State University of New York at Stony Brook

Site Designed by Melissa Bishop/DoIT Last Modified 06/21/2004 12:20:34 PM EDT

We were all pigs then, the whole lot of us. Billy and Ruiz were more drunks than pigs I guess, but close enough. I was a worse kind though, the

worst

kind: a college pig. Worse than

that

, I was a private school pig. A wannabe Ivy League pig. An Ithaca pig.

So it made sense that the first thing we wanted to do on Marquez’ last night in town was stuff our faces. We sat there in the King China Buffet, the four of us, scraping and clawing and stabbing big hunks of General Tso chicken like it was the last meal we would ever enjoy. But that’s wrong. The three of us ate like slobs. Marquez was different.

Basic training had given him manners. He ate like a robot, stiff. Billy and Ruiz giggled with their mouths full of lo mein, half drunk off the Coronas I had been sneaking them for the better part of an hour. But Marquez ate silently, politely. His fork didn’t make any unnecessary detours through the air, didn’t hang around. It went straight to his mouth. It never rested in his hand; it reported directly back to the plate. He never wiped his mouth until he was done chewing. The shoulders stayed straight. You couldn’t hear him breathe.

“They whipped you up pretty good,” I said, trying to joke.

Marquez chewed. I waited. He wiped his mouth.

“It’s hard to shake.”

“Like shakin’ shit off your ass,” Billy said, noodles smeared to his teeth.

Marquez laughed without smiling. “Yeah.”

“You had to do crazy stuff, right?” Ruiz, between swigs.

“Like run fuckin’ eight miles before breakfast?” Billy.

“Hike fifty miles for dinner.” Ruiz.

“Sleep under barbed wire.” Billy.

Marquez saw the stampede coming.

“I got used to it” was all he said. The words came out quick, between scheduled bites.

“Got used to it?!” Billy was stung, and he pushed his eyebrows down into his nose. “Yo, I’ll tell you what, if they even tried to make me do that shit I woulda been like ‘Yo, f

uuuuck

this shit I’m goin’ to get a fuckin forty!’

”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Ruiz roared, celebrating with a gulp of beer. “They would be like ‘Yo you’re outta here buddy’ and I would be like ‘You can’t fire

Uncle fuckin’ Sam ‘cause I just fuckin’ quit!’”

I laughed because they were drunks. Billy and Ruiz laughed because they were drunk. The little waitress who took care of the smoking section shook her head and muttered something in whatever language she mumbled things at customers. Marquez wiped his mouth.

We all lit up cigarettes, the three little piggies. Marquez sat with his arms folded and his back against the chair. His arms looked hard, like tanned wood. His chest had gotten muscular, more efficient, and his belly had evaporated. I looked at my own belly, hard with fat and pushing tight against the buttons on my shirt. It was a history major’s gut, a wannabe Ivy League gut. It belonged on a spit. I felt like quieting down then, but Billy and Ruiz were on a roll.

“They’re gonna… drop the bomb,” Ruiz said, punctuating his inside information with a hiccup.

“The fuckin’ big one,” Billy said.

“The A-bomb.”

“The

-bomb.”

Billy had one upped him.

“Are there any more letter bombs?” Ruiz asked.

“No,” I said, the voice of authority.

“Bullshit!” Billy said.

Ruiz was puzzled. “Which one’s that?”

“The N-bomb,” Billy answered. “The neutron bomb.” Satisfaction spread over his cheeks in red blotches. He forked a pepper, dragged it around in gooey sauce. He didn’t eat it.

“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “That’s the one.”

“I don’t think they have those,” I said.

“Says who?”

“I learned it in my class,” I said. “My professor used to work for the military. I think.”

“Oh.” Ruiz seemed satisfied with my answer. Billy frowned with disbelief but didn’t say anything. He just took a drag off his cigarette, looked up at the paintings on the wall.

“So where you gettin’ shipped off to next?” I asked Marquez. “Ruiz says Virginia.”

“I was,” he said.

“Where you goin’ now?”

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?”

“They haven’t told me.”

“Haven’t told you?”

Then, at the same time Billy started some ramble with

fuck that…

, Marquez told us.

“I’m going active duty. I signed up today. Three years.”

I didn’t understand at first, or didn’t catch it because all I said was “Really?” I said it conversationally, the way I would say it if someone told me they won $20 on a lotto scratch off, or if they saw a new Bruce Springsteen video on MTV. I had missed it. Billy missed it too; he was looking the other way, blowing blue smoke at the waitress eyeing our table. Ruiz looked for a lighter. But when everyone was quiet, busy doing nothing, I looked across the trashed table at Marquez and saw that no one was behind him. The restaurant was empty. We were the last ones there. And when I heard that nothingness, when all I saw was yellow lights and blank chairs and the little waitress that wanted to go home, what Marquez said broke out in my skull. It bounced around like a wrecking ball snapped from its tether, and everything I ever thought I knew came flying out in jagged shards.

“Three years,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Marquez looked right at me. “Yeah. Three years.”

I looked down and picked a cigarette from my pack. When I lit it, I made sure not to blow the smoke towards Marquez. Then I put it out after just a drag or two. Billy and Ruiz looked back and forth between me and Marquez, listening.

“So you don’t really know where you’re going?” I asked, my head surging with blood.

“No.”

“No idea at-“

“No. Maybe Germany, maybe Turkey. They don’t tell us.”

“When do you get to come back?”

“They don’t tell us that either.” He looked right at me when he said it.

“I think they want us out of here,” Billy said, butting a cigarette.

“We’re the last ones in here,” Ruiz said, butting his own. They were trying to rescue it, rescue the night and all that food we just shoved into our bellies and all the words that had spilled over the table. But they were just drunks and by then me, probably Marquez, had both stopped listening to them. If we ever did at all.

And instead of dragging the conversation out, we all gave up and pushed our chairs out and headed for the door. It was hot that night, humid and cloudy and insulated so that all the heat from the pavement just bounced back onto itself. We piled into Marquez’ destroyed old Beretta and waded into the darkness of Amsterdam, unsure of what to do with ourselves. Billy and Ruiz were in the back seat babbling about tattoos and some half forgotten party. I was in the front with Marquez, plunging the air with my hand as it sped by, feeling warmth. I was unsure what to think so I tried to think about absolutely nothing. But it didn’t work. I thought about exclusive video of bombings in Israel. I thought about interviews with dictators that you would only see on one channel. I thought about bullet tracers that glowed green in night vision cameras. I thought about how I watched too much news. I thought about gas masks. I thought about Hiroshima, the rape of Nanking, Pol Pot, Hitler, Marlon Brando and

All Quiet on the Western Front.

I tried to think about nothing.

But for a while the ride put me at ease, cars always did, and we traced the city like a scar, weaving down the Guy Park Avenue and flying up the highways to see what was going on. We passed a party on Milford Avenue, drew some looks with the Spanish reggae tape Marquez had blasting from the stereo. It was late, but the city didn’t seem to be sleepy. No one in the car seemed ready to head in for the night, either. Especially Marquez. He kept quiet for the most part, occasionally telling Ruiz who the singer on the tape was. He wouldn’t say it but I knew he wanted to see how far the night could stretch out, how long he could ride it for. Home meant sleep. Sleep meant waking up.

So it made sense that Marquez made the decision that night. After we stopped at Nice N Easy for a few cases of beer (“Whatever’s cold,” was Billy’s only instruction), he pointed the Beretta west down Route 5, along the Mohawk. I knew where we were going because there was only one place we ever went down there: Devil’s Hole, a big pool that lay under these giant stone cliffs in some creek no one knew the name of. We went there in the summer, on days like that day had been. It took you forever to get up there, some of the rocks were fifty feet up, but once you did, once you jumped, it was the only thing you ever wanted to do again. And it was a nice night, hot for the beginning of June and hot for near midnight. I certainly wasn’t going to object. Billy and Ruiz stayed in the back drinking and joking, watching the night go by without yawning or nodding off. Nobody wanted to go home.

Marquez glanced the Beretta through the one street light in Fonda and pulled into the little dirt lot on top of Devil’s Hole. I grabbed a case of beer, Marquez grabbed one too, and we followed Billy and Ruiz as they spilled down the rocky path towards the water.

“Swimmy swim time,” Ruiz said, letting out a belch.

“Gots to get my fuckin’ dive on,” Billy said in front of me, balancing his way down the rocks with a Bud bottle in his hand. “My motherfuckin’ Greg Louganis on!”

“

Figures you would,” Ruiz said, laughing to himself.

It was black out and I couldn’t see anything. My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet but I knew Marquez was in front of me, so I followed him with the case of beer and didn’t worry about falling. We got to the clearing and heard Devil’s Hole rushing by below us. It was still fat from the spring rain and it smelled like it. Summer was young and there hadn’t been a drought yet so the diving would be good. We worked our way down to the lowest cliff and I set the case of Bud down on this massive shelf of rock that was probably a million years old. Marquez set his down too, and in the same movement whipped his shirt over his shaved head. His shorts dropped to the ground and his socks and sneakers were off a second later, the socks placed neatly inside his Adidas, the Adidas right next to each other so they were touching. Just like that, Marquez was off the cliff, arcing out into a perfect dive and stabbing the water with nothing but his underwear on. I watched him and tried to think about diving. I thought about the Trail of Tears. I thought about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain and Marlon Brando and

Heart of Darkness

. I thought about Mr. Beckle my 18th Century European History professor and the way he limped, about the slide shows he made us watch. I tried to think about nothing. I didn’t think about diving.

“Fuck it,” Billy said, taking a sip of beer, then taking his own clothes off.

“Sausage party it is,” Ruiz said, and his clothes were off, too.

After a few minutes the three of us stood on the cliff, naked except for our underwear and the cigarettes in our hand. Billy was pale and I could see him even in the dark, covered in gaudy tattoos and almost chubby. Ruiz was covered in them too but had a better body for tattoos, skinny by way of his Puerto Rican genes. I blessed the darkness, thankful that the booze brothers couldn’t see the shambles Ithaca had put my body in. But they knew it was there. They didn’t have to see it.

“Holy shit, orca!” Billy said, blowing smoke out into the darkness.

“Fuck you.”

“Jesus H.T.,” Ruiz said, patting my belly. I swatted it away. “Chaz, what they been feedin’ you?”

“What haven’t they?” Billy said, laughing his snorting little pig laugh.

I wanted to tell them that I had gorged myself on knowledge, that I was fat with ambition and purpose. But my gut was huge, or at least it was compared to what it looked like a year ago. Besides, they were drunks and they were my friends and I didn’t want to upset Marquez. He was coming up the rocks after his first dive while we still waited to take our first, dripping with cool water. When he got to the top all Marquez said was “Come on” and we all followed him, cigarettes and beers in hand.

We went up the path, me closest to Marquez, Billy and Ruiz lagging behind me, and skipped over the first few ledges to the higher ones. We stopped between two trees and scrambled onto a rock about thirty feet up. I couldn’t see anything. It was black, thick black like someone took a marker to the woods. It was a little lighter out over the water where the trees cleared back from the rocks, but the creek was farther away, quieter.

“Holy fuck,” Billy said. He had a beer in his hand.

And while we all looked down, watching the water gleam in silver threads below, Marquez sprang between us and threw his arms out in front of him without a sound, and we followed the faint glow of his skin until it splashed down. It was a perfect dive, out and straight down so that all you could see from the top were the bottoms of his feet and his big shoulders. The splash was tiny, small sounding.

“Rican see, Rican do,” Ruiz said, and with a Bud still in his hand, a lit cigarette perched in his lips, he sprawled out into the air in some failed jackknife formation. He landed with a smack, and I could hear water explode all around him. A few seconds later, a shrieking “whoo!” echoed over the water and up the rocks. Billy flicked a cigarette into the woods and downed his beer.

“Later fatty,” he said with a toothy grin, and before I could push him he was out in space, slicing at the air with his pale arms and screaming some indecipherable profanities. He smacked down a few seconds later, and it looked like he landed square on his back from where I was. He didn’t scream. He didn’t feel it, not with all that beer in him. I took a last puff from my Camel and decided to play it safe. I pushed my feet off the rock and tucked into a cannonball, and then warm air was hitting me and I was flying. That was the only time of the night I didn’t think about anything. When I was falling like that, when I couldn’t see what was underneath me and I didn’t know when it was going to end, I couldn’t think of anything. It was impossible to feel that good and think about anything at the same time.

When I finally hit the creek I knew I left a big splash because all I could feel was water rushing up away from me. I sank down for a while, then clawed my way up through the water. It felt good, a little cool but the night was hot and I didn’t mind it. I felt good. I came up. I gulped air.

“Holy fuckin shit, orca, you ain’t orca no more you’re fuckin’ Shamu,” was the first thing I heard when I came out of the water. It was Ruiz. He was next to a little waterfall and from a few feet away, even in the dark, I could see that his lip was gushing blood.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I asked, treading.

“It was your fat wave that did him in, fatty,” Billy said.

“Well,” Ruiz said. His hiccups were back. “I couldn’t find a bottle opener.”

“And…” I said to Ruiz.

“And I used this rock over here to open it.” Ruiz took a gulp and I could see that the neck of the bottle was broken, jutting up like a blade towards his lip. Ruiz wiped blood away from his mouth. He laughed, and I laughed because he couldn’t feel it, because he was a drunk, because he didn’t care. His neck was covered in blood.

“Put a little Bud on that,” Billy said. “I know about these things.” Ruiz took a gulp. “See,” Billy went on, “there you go. A little Bud’ll do just fine.”

It seemed like a conversation I’d heard before and I wanted a cigarette, so I scrambled up over Ruiz’ little waterfall and walked through the water towards Marquez. He was standing next to the beer, next to the trees, looking down the creek toward where the moon would have been. With his shirt off, I could see that he was covered in muscle. Not big bulky muscle, but real hard muscle, the kind of muscle Ruiz’ Dad had when he got out of jail. I reached to the ground and fished a cigarette out of somebody’s pack and lit it even though I was panting. Marquez stood looking. His chest didn’t move.

“Tired?” I asked him, the cigarette between my teeth.

“No. You?”

“Not really.”

“It’s nice out.”

“Yeah. Warm.”

“You guys don’t want to leave yet, do you?”

“No.,” I said, shaking my head.

“We’ll stay for a while.”

“Yeah.” It was the middle of the night, but I didn’t have any plans the next day. I had no job, no homework, no books to read. Billy and Ruiz certainly didn’t have anything to do but let the days melt into each other. Marquez was the only one with anything to do after we left. I wanted to stay at Devil’s Hole forever, until I was old and gray and I probably could have if I really wanted to. I was a pig. I was going to finish school and learn about dead people and dead battles and dead books that no one read anymore. I was going to get a Ph. D., get an office, get a Mercedes and then get fatter. I was going to lose my hair. I was going to live in the country and drink expensive coffee and smoke a pipe and I was going to be comfortable no matter where I was. Ithaca, Devil’s Hole. It all would have been the same.

“Dive again?” Marquez asked, already leaning towards the path up.

“No,” I said, grabbing a beer out of the case. “Look at me, brother. Pigs like this can’t dive. We just can’t.”

Marquez didn’t ask me what the hell I was talking about. He didn’t raise his eyebrows or frown with confusion. He just laughed. Only a little chuckle, but it was the first real sound that came out of him all night. He laughed and then he turned around and vanished up the path, diluted into the trees and the darkness and the heat. I was going to break off the Bud cap like Ruiz but they were twist off, and I laughed a little myself as I walked back into the water. I took half the bottle in one gulp.

“There you go buddy,” Billy said, floating with his pale belly up and a soaked cigarette in his mouth. “Take a little a that.”

“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “I need to get me another one of those.” His words were slurring together in slow motion. I couldn’t tell if his lip had stopped bleeding. He was half covered in blood.

“Let me open it,” I said.

“Okay, Shammy,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Let me go get that beer. You can open it.”

Ruiz tried to get out of the water but couldn’t find the rocks with his feet. After a minute he gave up, forgot about the beer, and pushed out into the water towards Billy. I watched them float on their backs in the dark, and I couldn’t see Marquez when he plunged through the A.M.