Bone Fire by Mark Spragg Page A

between them drinking a bottle of beer. One girl was smoking, and all of them were watching a black Labrador swimming hard after a floating yellow tennis ball.
    “I’m going to do it today,” Kenneth said.
    “I thought you already had.”
    “I could have, but I wanted to wait till you could see me.”
    “I’m glad you did.”
    They walked out across the backfill to the top of the broken concrete and looked down. Below them the water was green and deep and flat, and downstream the fat twins had wedged themselves among the rocks where the stream turned white and foamy, churning against their shoulders, and they called out again and again as though something unexpected and mildly obscene was happening. “I’m getting a massage. Oh my God, I’m getting the very best massage.”
    “It looks farther down when you’re up here,” Kenneth said.
    “Yeah, it does.”
    “I think I better see how cold the water is first.”
    “That’s what I’d do.”
    The boy climbed down the side of the abutment, where the retaining wall had fallen away in ruin, the rusted rebar showing through, and waded out into the pool. He stood waist-deep, shivering, and McEban tried to imagine what had happened to the bridge and why he’d never wondered about it before. It was already gone when he was a boy, to fire or flood or poor design, and suddenly it occurred to him that he’d taken this, like most of his life, as a matter of course.
    The black dog climbed out of the creek, sheeting water and lunging up the slope between the girls, bracing to shake mightily, and they screamed, turning away and throwing their hands up to shield their faces. All three of them were laughing, and the boy set his beer down and worked the ball out of the dog’s mouth, bounced it once and then threw it in a high arc upstream. The dog leapt without looking, and they all shaded their eyes against the glare to watch him hit the water, go under and come up as the ball smacked down at the head of the pool, everybody applauding and hooting, feeling lighthearted and forgetful of any lesser afternoon.
    Kenneth climbed back up, hugging his sides, then sucking in a deep breath and nodding while McEban stood off to the side. He ran right past him, his face stiff in concentration, and out into the air, his legs still cycling as he dropped, and came up gasping, beating at the surface with both arms. Then he went slack, letting the current take him.
    McEban climbed down to the water’s edge, pulled off his boots and socks, rolled up his pants and walked in up to his knees. The fat boys were jumping in holding hands when his cell phone rang, and he worked it out of his pocket and said hello.
    Kenneth was at the top again, waiting for him to look, but McEban was wading downstream talking angrily into his phone, so he jumped again right away, howling so the other kids couldn’t eavesdrop. After he jumped a third and fourth time and got to the shore, McEban was sitting in the sand pulling his boots on over his dampened socks.
    “We have to go,” he said.
    “Now?”
    “Right away.”
    Someone threw the ball again and they heard the dog hit the water.
    McEban stood up, stomping his feet harder into the boots. “You think this is something you’ll remember?”
    “Sure,” Kenneth said. Then, “What?”
    “Today.” McEban swept a hand toward the abutments. “All the times we’ve come down here. When you’re older you think this is something you’ll remember?”
    “Why wouldn’t I?” the boy asked, but he felt scared. Like he hadn’t jumped. Like he’d chickened out and they both had agreed it was a feat he would never accomplish.
    They’d been mostly quiet on the drive home. McEban said something about the weather, how he preferred the longer days of summerin spite of the heat, and he’d nodded in numbed agreement. His face felt heated, and something seemed to be fluttering behind his breastbone. The only thing that felt fine was his new haircut, beaded with