Dust Devil (19 page)

There’s
no such thing as chance;

And
what to us seems merest accident

Springs
from the deepest source of destiny.

The
Death of Wallenstein

—
Johann
Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

The
partylike atmosphere at the quarry was still going strong when Sarah
and Renzo finally dressed and crept back to join the others, knowing
it was doubtful their absence had been noticed amid the crowd and
noise. They were by no means the first couple ever to slip away into
the woods. Still, feeling as though, like Hester Prynne, she had a
big scarlet letter on her chest, proclaiming her sin to the world,
Sarah kept her beach towel wrapped tightly around her and lived in
fear that someone would suddenly point at her and announce she had
slept with Renzo. She could smell the musky, male scent of him on
herself, feel his semen damp between her thighs. She wanted
desperately to go home, certain her face bore such a guilty
expression that anybody looking at her would know what she had done.
And that anybody looking at Renzo—his drowsy eyes raking her
lazily, a satisfied smile curving his mouth— would know who she
had done it with, as well.

But
everyone was drunk enough by now that they had embarked upon the
dangerous dare for which the quarry had for years been notorious, and
before Sarah could voice her thoughts aloud to Renzo, he was dragged
away by his friends to join in the dire contest. Although she would
have done anything to stop him, Sarah knew instinctively that Renzo
wouldn’t back down from the challenge, not even for her; that,
like the rest of those reckless enough to be involved in the
terrifying game, his male pride was at stake.

So
she could only watch helplessly, silently, biting her lower lip
anxiously as, powerful muscles rippling in his bare arms and back, he
boldly climbed the first of the abandoned quarry’s infamous
rocks.

While
even Sarah herself had dived from the lowest level, to go beyond that
was considered both perilous and foolhardy, because nobody knew for
certain how deep the quarry was—and what was known was
sufficient to give anyone with any common sense at all pause. When
excavated, the quarry had been cut at odd angles, so that beneath the
water’s surface, craggy stones jutted out jaggedly from the
wall, in such a way that the higher one dived from the platforms, the
greater the risk of hitting one of the treacherous rocks that lurked
in the turbid depths.

So
that, of course, was the fiendish dare, with the person who dived
from the highest point winning. Most of the girls rash enough to take
part usually chickened out after the second level; it was the guys
who brazenly continued upward, steadily winnowing out their meeker or
more sensible opponents. But Sarah, sick to her stomach with
certainty, knew Renzo would not be one of those to drop out. Her
mouth went dry; her heart thudded horribly in her breast as he
ascended each subsequent level, only to fly from it like an arrow
shot from a bow, arcing through the air to vanish beneath the water.
And each time, feeling as though she would vomit, she thought he
would not reappear.

With
nerve-racking intensity, the contest dragged on, until it became
clear to even the drunkest of spectators that something beyond the
terrible dare itself was at stake. Sonny Holbrooke—being a good
deal more conservative and levelheaded than his brother, Bubba, and
so having in the past always retired from the game after the third
level—had this afternoon instead gone on to the fourth and was
even now hauling himself up to the fifth. It was equally plain that
the cause of this was Renzo. Although the music from the car radios
was so loud that no one below could hear what he was saying, it was
obvious from Renzo’s derisive, flashing smile and the angry,
fiercely determined expression on Sonny’s face that Renzo was
taunting him, goading him ever onward. Nobody present had to think
any further back than prom night, when Sonny had run over Renzo’s
Harley, to guess the reason for Renzo’s behavior.

He
and Sonny dived from the fifth level, and then the sixth. Panting
hard, they crawled from the water to lie upon the grass, each
attempting to catch his breath. Then, after a long moment, Renzo
dragged himself to his feet and stood there, bent forward, hands on
knees.

‘
'Scared
yet, Golden Boy?” he jeered at Sonny, grinning mockingly.
“Ready to give up? Or have you got guts enough to go on, after
all?”

“
Don’t
listen to him, Sonny!” Forrest Pierce said sharply, scanning
the crowd for Bubba, wondering why he hadn’t stepped up
himself, either to take Sonny’s place or to put a halt to his
foolishness. But there was no sign of Bubba, or of Evie, either, for
that matter. They were probably off in the bushes, banging their
respective companions, Forrest thought. “Even Bubba won’t
dive from the seventh level. Cassavettes won’t either. Nobody
will. He’s bluffing you, man. Call it a draw and forget it.”

“
That’s
right, Sonny.” Drew Langford spoke up. “You don’t
have to prove anything to Cassavettes or anyone else here. You’ve
deep-sixed the sixth, buddy! And that’s more than most of us
can say. Leave him alone, Cassavettes! You know good and well he
didn’t mean to run over your damned bike!”

“
Well,
I’ve got ten bucks that not only says he did, but that Renzo
has guts enough to do the seventh—and that chicken-livered
Golden Boy there don’t,” Dante Pasquale, Anna Maria’s
brother and Hard Road’s bass player, drawled insolently.
“Everybody in town knows it’s big, bad Bubba who got Old
Man Holbrooke’s brass balls. It sure as hell ain’t sissy
Sonny! So what do you pansy, ‘Rat Pack’ Anglos say, huh?
Either put up, or shut up. That’s the Italianos’ motto.”

“
You’re
on,” Sonny said quietly, struggling to his feet.

“
Don’t
be a fool, man!” Skeets Grenville snapped. “Only an idiot
would take that bet, and the last time I checked, you had a lot more
brains than Bubba! It’s like Drew said—you don’t
have to prove anything, Sonny, especially to a bunch of sorry
Dagotown dirtbags. So why don’t you scum get lost, go do your
diving in whatever toilet bowl you ever crawled out of! ”

Dante’s
hands clenched into fists at his sides. He took a threatening step
forward, so it seemed for a moment as though the argument would erupt
into an all-out fracas, with blows being exchanged right and left.
But then, realizing he and the other Italians present were largely
outnumbered, he evidently thought better of it, restraining his hot
temper and forcing himself to laugh scornfully.

“
Talk!
That’s all you Anglos ever do. Talk, talk, talk. You know what
I say to all your big talk? Big deal, man! That’s what I say.”
He flicked his fingers under his chin, a rude Italian gesture. “I’m
a man of action myself. Ten bucks. Are you taking it or leaving it?”

“
We’re
taking it,” Sonny insisted, roughly shaking off his cohorts,
who would have held him back as he started resolutely toward the
rocks.

Shooting
Dante a hard stare, Renzo followed slowly after Sonny, knowing Dante
had only mixed in the affair to cause trouble, because Renzo wouldn’t
date Anna Maria. She was always ragging her brother about it, giving
him grief. He had simply taken this opportunity to get a bit of his
own back against Renzo, pushing matters to the breaking point. Renzo
hadn’t intended that. He had meant only to yank Sonny’s
chain, because of the damage to the Harley. He was amazed Sonny had
kept on climbing and diving. He blamed himself for his own temper,
for not recognizing sooner that just because Sonny wasn’t a
blowhard like Bubba didn’t mean he lacked courage of his
own—the kind of quiet courage Sarah had. Still, Sonny had to be
scared now. Even Renzo himself was afraid. What Forrest Pierce had
said was true—no one had ever dived off the seventh, the
uppermost level.

For
one thing, it was a single rock, smaller and more rugged than the
rest and set at an awkward angle, so anybody diving from it would
need to push out really hard to miss the other jagged platforms
below. Besides which, Renzo thought as he scrambled atop it and gazed
down at the cloudy water, it was a long drop. Although heights didn’t
bother him, he still felt giddy for an instant, as though he suffered
from vertigo.

“
Look,
Sonny, this really isn’t what I had in mind.”

“
Well,
then, I guess you should have thought about that, before you started
all this, Renzo.” Sonny’s voice was stiff and clipped,
his expression still set, determined—although his face was
ashen. “It was an accident... my running over your bike.”

“
I
know. It’s just that, well, I truly
did
work
awfully hard to restore it, and now, I’m having to do it all
overt again. It made me mad, that’s all. But not mad enough to
make me risk my life over it, that’s for sure. And I don’t
think you want that, either. So why don’t we just forget this,
go on back down, have a beer, eat a hot dog?”

“
Actually,
that sounds like a pretty damned good idea to me. Onward, Watson.”

“
Right,
Holmes.”

“
Good
Lord, you’ve read Doyle!” Sonny exclaimed, obviously
surprised.

Renzo
nodded. “Among several others—most of the classics,
anyway. Being an Anglo doesn’t give you a lock on scholarship,
you know.”

“
No,
I suppose not. Still, not many guys our age read at all these days.
It would be...nice to discuss literature with somebody who was
interested in it, who actually understood it, for a change.”
Sonny made this observation tentatively, not certain, under the
circumstances, how it would be received.

“
Over
espresso and cigarettes? I never have liked carrying on deep
dialogues while perched precariously on top of a rock!”

“
Tomorrow
afternoon, then, at Fritzchen’s Kitchen?”

“
Done.”

In
agreement, each startled but intrigued at this strange prospect of if
not friendship, at least friendly acquaintance and intellectual
conversation, they turned to make their way down.

Far
below, those watching had fallen uneasily silent, so that now the
only sounds at the quarry were those of station K-104 on the FM dial
and the loud report of Junior Barlow’s thirdhand clunker
backfiring as he drove up. Hearing the gunshot-like noise, Sarah, her
heart lodged in her throat, knew that for as long as she lived, she
would never forget it. She would never forget, either, Stevie Woods’s
voice belting out from the car radios that you could try, you could
try, but you just couldn’t win ’em all. That he could
learn how to fly, but it was just too far to fall as, without
warning, Renzo and Sonny plunged from the rock.

Hers
were not the only screams that echoed shrilly above the pounding
music as the two young men fell, seeming to drop forever, turning and
twisting in a macabre mockery of Olympic high divers, before they
each struck the water, disappearing into its murky depths. Tears
streamed down Sarah’s cheeks as she ran toward the quarry,
passed by Forrest and Dante and the others who were racing toward it,
too, one after another leaping into the water, vanishing and
reappearing, in frantic search of Renzo and Sonny.

At
last, after what seemed an eternity, Renzo surfaced, coughing and
choking, to be dragged by the rest to the bank.

Sonny
never came back up—at least, not alive. He had hit his head on
one of the submerged stones and broken his neck. No one knew whether
that was what had actually killed him, or whether he had drowned when
his body had got entangled in a mass of snarled tree roots that
stretched into the quarry, deep beneath its surface. They knew only
that by the time he was finally cut free, he was dead.

“
Goddamn
you! Goddamn you! May you rot in hell. Renzo Cassavettes!” Evie
screamed hysterically as she fell upon him, beating him so violently
where he lay that it took Bubba and her boyfriend, Parker Delaney,
both to haul her off. “You saw!” she cried, glancing
around wildly at the rest. “You all saw! Renzo
Cassavettes
murdered
my
brother! He deliberately pushed him off that rock! Killer! Murderer!”
she shouted, kicking out at Renzo as Bubba and Parker fought to hold
on to her. “You knew he couldn’t dive nearly as well as
you, that you’d manage to survive the fall, and so you pushed
him! You
pushed
him!”