A little farther downstream, a few guys are putting together a rope swing that looks pretty damn sketchy. The rope’s a little too frayed and the branch could stand to be thicker. That said, I’m not one to turn down a rope swing.
Hardly slowing my stride, I snag a can of beer from the massive blue cooler we’ve been keeping down here for the past few weeks—some sort of beer fairy keeps stocking it, and I keep drinking it.
The first swig’s smooth and crisp.
“Damn, what do we have here, fellas?” I sidle up next to Red and watch Denny give the rope a good tug to test the branch overhead.
“Denny feels like breaking his neck today,” Red says, kicking a pebble around with the side of his bare foot.
“As long as you let go over the water, it’s fine. There’s a big pool right here. The river’s deep as hell.” Denny’s hands slide higher up the rope so he can pull his body off the ground. Still, the rope holds. And he gives his onlookers a smug look.
Jackson shakes his head. “He wants another excuse to visit the clinic.”
“We’ve moved to house calls, my guy.” He shoots his brother a finger gun before gripping the rope and scrambling to the top of a boulder.
Standing above us and staring out at the water, he glides his palms along the tattered off-white rope. With a yip, Dennyswings forward and lands in the frigid water. He hasn’t even surfaced yet, and I’m chugging the rest of my beer, darting forward to catch the rope on its limp swing back toward shore.
My bare feet burn as I hobble over the rocks to the same place Denny swung from. Looks like a decent distance to drop, but he survived, so it’s probably safe enough.
“You guys wanna see a cannonball pro at work?” I call out.
They must not have heard me, because nobody answers.
I go for it anyway. Raising my hands as high above my head as I can muster to grab the rope, I leap from the smooth boulder and fly through the air. It’s so reminiscent ofGeorge of the Jungle,I have to remind myself out loud to let go before I swing back and smack into the rock face.
The water chills me to the bone instantly, washing the salty sweat from my skin and easing the deep ache woven into my muscles from long days in the tractor. Finally surfacing, I inhale lungful after lungful of air.
To my chagrin, within minutes of stepping onto the rocky shore, I’m fully dry and my body temperature is skyrocketing. I nudge Denny and gesture for him to swing again. It’s way less fun if I’m the only one doing the rope swing repeatedly while everybody else sits around drinking beer.
“Bet you can’t do a flip.” I know Denny’s kryptonite. He can’t turn down a challenge.
“Fuck you, I can’t. Hope you’re prepared to lose that bet.” Denny’s already clambering toward where the rope’s hanging limp from the branch of a towering pine tree. When he notices the other guys looking, he says, “Best flip competition. Who’s in?”
“What does the winner get?” Red asks.
“Uh…” Denny scans the shoreline. “Rest of the beer in the cooler. And the loser has to…”
“Grow a mustache!” Kate yells, hands cupped around her mouth, from her lounge chair upstream. She gives herhusband a little shove on the shoulder to encourage him to participate, which he reluctantly accepts.
“Hell nah, I’m not growing a mustache.” Red strokes his clean-shaven jaw. “This shit grows in fuckingorange. And I don’t need my girlfriend thinking I’m any uglier than she probably already does.”
I give him a thumbs-down and a loudboo. “You only gotta keep it for, like, a few days.”
Five minutes later, we have the rules set up, Red willing to participate, and the women agreeing to judge, when Denny takes a crack at it.
And wouldn’t you know it, he can actually do a fucking flip.
The girls and kids cheer. Who knows what their scoring system really is, but they each hold up nine fingers.
Jackson does some kind of twist in the air that secures him straight tens from his kids, but a two from his own wife. He storms the beach, wrapping his wet body around Kate and tossing her over his shoulder while she laughs hysterically. He submerges both of them in the water, and still she comes back up laughing and swatting water at his face.
Distracted by the commotion in the water, my brain hardly registers three figures emerging from the tree line at the top of the riverbank. Betty barks, and I turn to give her hell when I lose my ability to speak or think in one fell swoop.
Blair. Jonas.Whit.
I swallow hard, reaching blindly for my can of beer—anything to calm my nerves and cool the sudden rise in body temperature. I train my eyes on a set of stacked rocks being lapped by a small current of water.
Wow. Great rocks. Really cool pattern there. Is that quartz?
