with a large sign of warning: NO TRESPASSING. DANGEROUS WATERS. NO SWIMMING. DO NOT CROSS THE DAM.
Pete stopped at the gate. “I don’t know about this. Is it safe? This doesn’t look legal. The sign says no trespassing.”
They all paused, lawyers thinking about the law and maybe that eighty-foot drop to boot, but then Bill stepped forward and swung the gate wide. “Joe, anybody ever drown out here?”
It had happened, I knew, but not for years. I saw where he was going and thought I’d play along. “All the time,” I said.
“Good.” He winked at me, then smirked in Pete’s direction. “See? We’ll make a man of you yet, youngster.”
Pete folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”
Bill snorted and stepped through the gate. “What is this, fourth grade? Don’t be such a pussy, son.”
It all seemed like a jolly joke, but by the time we got to the other side, I could tell something was wrong with Pete. His face had gone the white of chalk, and he was breathing in shallow little puffs. I sent the other three ahead to wait while he sat on a big piece of limestone, his rod across his knees.
“It’s the heights. I can’t stand heights.” He looked back the way we’d come and grimaced like he’d seen his death. “Jesus. Is there another way back?”
“Afraid not, unless you call a helicopter.”
Pete put his head in his hands, letting himself take a moment just to breathe; his hands were shaking, and for a second, I actually felt sorry for him. Bill, Mike, and Carl Jr. had already made their way down the embankment to the base of the dam and were looking the water over. In a large party, there was always one, and Pete was the one.
“Mother . . . fucker.” He gave his head a sharp shake and looked up, squinting into the light. “Did you mean it, about people drowning?”
“Nah. I was just kidding around.”
“Well, very fucking funny. What was that thing where the water went in? Christ, it was sucking like a toilet bowl.”
He was referring to the wide concrete tube that stuck ten feet or so above the surface of the lake on the upstream side. A series of gates, like the open spaces between rungs on a ladder, pulled water down to the bottom of the dam. Only the top gate was open, but with the water so low, it sat right at the surface, water swirling around it in a whirlpool.
“That’s the inlet tower. It used to draw water down to the turbines, though they pulled those out thirty years ago.”
“Listen,” Pete said, “I probably should tell you I don’t know how to do any of this. The only thing I know how to fish for is a can of tuna at Stop and Shop.”
“I kind of guessed.”
“It gets worse. I can’t even swim.”
“Not at all?”
He shook his head hopelessly. “Something about my body mass. I can do the strokes okay, but I sink like a rock.”
I nodded silently. What was there to say?
“I’ll tell you a story,” Pete went on. “At Harvard there’s this idiotic swim test you have to pass to graduate. The family that built the library lost their son on the Titanic, so everybody has to make it across the pool and back just to get their diploma. Like being able to swim would have helped the poor bastard in the middle of the North Atlantic. Know what I did?”
Never mind that this little story was his way of letting me know he’d gone to Harvard. “You cheated?”
“Swimming the thing was out of the question. I actually had a scheme cooked up to have one of my roommates take it for me. But when the last day for the test came, he said he couldn’t do it. Guy’s all lined up with a big Wall Street job, no way he was taking any chances for me. I went down to the pool, and there was this long line, mostly Asian kids shivering in their skimpy little suits, I have no fucking idea why, but all of them waited like me until the last day. When my turn came, I jumped in and just let myself go under. I just sat on the bottom of the pool and waited for somebody to pull me out. Who fucking knows how long I was down there, but it felt like forever. But then, the lifeguard yanked me