CHAPTER 8

THE H2’S DOORS slammed shut. Seatbelts clicked. Judas’s foot mashed the pedal to the floor and they were off. Judas, Charlie, Roheed, and Jonathan headed like a speeding bullet straight back to where they had met several summers before. Jonathan was riding shotgun, or “shotty boom ba lotty” as Judas had referred to it, and his emotions were riding a roller coaster. His heart ached to be back at the Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club, to smell the smells and stomp once again upon his former stomping ground. His brain told him that it would not be the same—it would never be the same—without Bill. Jonathan would never work at the pool again, he supposed, and that made him sad. But he was excited to visit one more time. Also he was drunk.

Speaking of drunk, Roheed was intoxicated for the first time in his life. He thought it was pretty cool. He had abstained until that evening because he knew that nothing good could come from ingesting alcoholic beverages, but that night was going to have to be a mulligan.

Charlie sat in the backseat with Roheed, wondering if Roheed was going to barf or yak or ralph or call dinosaurs on the big white telephone. He also wondered if Judas was too drunk to drive.

He leaned forward and asked, “Are you cool up there?”

Judas scoffed. “I was in a fraternity, it would take a keg of moonshine and an elephant tranquilizer to slow me down.” But still he slowed the Hummer slightly as if Charlie’s question had worried him just a bit.

Even though Charlie still lived in Yellow County, he hadn’t been to the pool since the Tri-County Relay Race. Jonathan had been fired and humiliated, sure, there were concrete reasons why he wouldn’t want to return to the club, but Charlie couldn’t pinpoint why he couldn’t bring himself to go. If only for an afternoon in the summer when the sun was scorching, a dip in the clear blue of the pool’s over-chlorinated water would be mighty fine. The thought of walking through the big green metal doors and past the lovely older gentlewoman who signed you in and rented ping-pong paddles and balls and stepping out into the too-bright sunlight, blinking because your eyes had already adjusted to the dimness of the men’s locker room, made Charlie feel sick. It made him feel as if a stranger was giving him a tour of his own childhood home but the furniture was different and there were photographs of a different family hung about the walls and maybe even where his bedroom used to be was a locked door with strange noises coming from behind it. But like Jonathan, he wanted to go that night with those friends.

Judas’s H2 roared into the Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club parking lot. He parked diagonally across all of the disabled person parking spots. Judas, Jonathan, Charlie, and Roheed got out and gazed in awe at the club.

“I haven’t been here since I last left,” Jonathan said vaguely, as that could really be said about any place at any time. But they all knew what he meant.

“Me neither,” Charlie agreed.

“I was here a month or two ago just chillin’,” Judas said obliviously. “They’ve really stepped up their game since we worked here. I come here all the time when I’m in town during the summer; it’s awesome now.”

Charlie shook his head. They approached the pool.

Judas wouldn’t shut up. “Much, much, much better than before . . .”

The next few hours were a blur, mostly due to the booze, but also because they were in and out of the water, laughing at times and silently enjoying the club at times. Judas popped champagne immediately as they broke the threshold from the men’s room. They all drank straight from the bottle. They stripped to their undergarments. It was no surprise to anyone that Jonathan was wearing a Yellow County Community College swim team speedo as underwear.

Judas ran and did an impressive flip into the three feet, a big no-no, but no one was there to bench him for his dangerous behavior. Roheed, brash because of the alcohol, climbed up the steps of the newish high dive that had replaced the old soldier. He fearfully walked to the edge of the board, looked down, and decided he was absolutely not going to jump. He turned to retreat back down the steps, with their strip of scratchy black tape that during the summer gripped the wet feetsies of those brave enough to climb them. Charlie was there on the board with him. Roheed’s mouth opened, and Charlie smiled and pushed Roheed. He fell into the water with a satisfying sploosh and a moment later popped to the surface spluttering and laughing. Charlie dove in after him. Judas answered the call of nature and peed down the light blue waterslide. Later he would forget that he had peed down the slide, slide down the slide, then remark how warm the water slide water was, and how it smelled like an outhouse.

As the boys frolicked, Jonathan sat in one of the tall guard chairs, just watching. He took his red lanyard and whistle from around his neck and spun it around his finger one way until it wrapped itself up, then the other way to the same result, and repeated that. It was calming, methodical. He did that for quite some time, sort of in a trance, maybe meditating in his own way. After a while, he calmly climbed off the guard chair, and while Judas and Charlie were throwing Roheed back and forth in the water between them like a sack of sweet potatoes, he walked to the snack bar and let himself in.

He hit a couple of switches on the fuse box and the snack shack sprang to life. With a hiss and a poof, the gas grill flared up. And Jonathan went hog wild. Frozen burger patties hit the hot metal with a satisfying shhhh as if they were saying, “Shhhh, don’t tell anyone we’re cooking, eat all of us yourself.” He made a pyramid of perfectly grill-marked hot dogs, he put on a fresh pot o’ cheese for nachos, he gave a bag of frozen French fries a bubble bath in hot, golden oil, and he even made a couple of chicken quesadillas, as annoying as they were to make.

Charlie, Judas, and Roheed passed around a bottle of Fireball, which to the uninitiated is a deceptive drink that tastes like an old-school cinnamon jawbreaker but wreaks havoc on your insides and decision-making centers. When the bottle was done, they had thick saliva, sugar headaches, and drunk munchies. The smell from the snack bar wafted down to where they were. They floated up the steps between the chipped dark green-painted handrails like they were anthropomorphic wolves in an old Saturday morning cartoon, being led by a giant hand giving them the come-hither finger motion. Roheed flung open the door and they saw the spread of snacks that Jonathan had prepared.

It was glorious.

They partied and ate until the sun shot out his first warning rays of “Hey, a new day is about to begin, bros!” They stumbled out of the snack bar with ketchup-stained fingers and imitation nacho-flavored non-dairy cheese substitute flecks in their facial hair. Judas left a stack of bills in their wake to pay for the foodstuffs and the extra chemicals that would potentially have to be used to rebalance the pH of the pool.

It was nearly daytime when they packed it in and slunk back to Judas’s H2. They drove away just as the off-season pool manager at the time, Devon Wilkenshire, pulled up to open the gate so that the early morning gentlemen’s fall volleyball league could get in and play. Devon thought he recognized the crew of apparent trespassers, but then thought, Nah, no way it was those four dudes.