The Changed Man

The Changed Man

by


storyteller

The water tugged hugely at him and he went under again, separated from the sun and sky and cool air for the last time. Though he searched frantically with his feet, the ledge wasn’t there and without it to push against, he could not get back to the surface. Too weak to continue the struggle, he sank deeper into the cold water of the stone quarry. As his life slowly dissolved into the murky water, like ice cubes in a warm glass, his last thoughts were of his best pal, Kenny Davis, and how right this made things.

Roger Harmon woke then with a jolt and he nearly slipped off the couch. This was the first time the dream came in the daylight. But, lately, the dream began over-powering him, took him with its strong current. He floated along like a jellyfish as time rushed back twenty years, until he was fourteen again on that tragic day at the stone quarry. Yet, it was more a returning vision than a recurring nightmare, paralleling the events exactly, except for the ending, on that day more than twenty years ago. The underwater ledge wasn't in the dream and he kept sinking down. He wouldn't reach the flat limestone shore as he managed to do that late summer day. In the dream he was only an instant from death, but he always woke. He wondered why; death did not scare him. He had heard that if you dreamed that you died in your sleep-- you will die in your sleep. But considering his life since that day, it might be the best thing to happen to him.

Roger wondered why, since he could recall that day so vividly, he was having the dream. He remembered Kenny taunting him to be a man and climb almost to the top of the quarry, to a narrow out-cropping of rock nearly thirty feet above the water, to dive off. Roger managed the climb, but his fear of height overwhelmed him and he refused to jump. Kenny had grabbed his wrist and leaped out. Roger's next memory was of pushing off the underwater ledge and making it to the shore, where he lay exhausted by the struggle and fear. He listened for Kenny to break the surface and scream at him for being a stupid chicken-shit and almost drowning them both. But Kenny did not come up. Roger finally sat up and looked around at water calm and rippled only by the warm August breeze that blew through the old, long-abandoned stone quarry.

He pushed himself off the couch and went to the refrigerator for another beer. As he pulled the tab, he walked to the window of his third-floor studio apartment where he could look out over the sprawling city in which he'd lived his life. He hated it, as he hated much of his life since that day. He considered himself a failure, barely making it through high school, flunking out of college, and then his hasty -- and doomed -- marriage to Brenda. Deep inside, Roger knew that he should have died that day, not Kenny; the nightmare was showing him what truly should have happened.

Across the street the neon light of Bill's Place beckoned. Roger drained the can and left.


Despite the hangover, Roger drove south out of town, toward the old trailer court, a place he had not been in more than a decade. There he saw that Dever's Trailer Park had been bulldozed away. The ground was now covered with short trees and weeds, except at the corner where an abandoned used-car lot sat. He slid into the parking lot of Newell Park and left his battered old car under the shade of an elm tree.

The past was still vivid. Images danced and ran together as the memories flooded back; the dilapidated old trailer where he lived, his mother whom he loved, but her whining drove him crazy. His father with complaints of diseases and disabilities that kept him permanently in front of the small TV. Roger was never taken to a ball game, or fishing, or to the zoo. His father just sat in a worn armchair and drank beer and watched tv. Their deaths did not affect him as much as Kenny's. Kenny Davis had been closer to him than a brother, but better -- best friend, confidant and teacher.

Roger glanced across the narrow asphalt road at his car, which seemed safe to leave for a while, so he tried to seem casual as he walked toward the large grove of trees. He would follow the path along the steep banks of Newell Creek to the quarry. Though this path was the longest way, he and Kenny took it most often because of its illusion of wilderness and it was still that way. Roger noticed the odor of wild flowers and fibrous weeds and untouched soil floating in the air. He remembered overturning rocks in the creek and watching the crayfish scoot away, stirring up the sediment along the bottom, and suddenly felt better, less gloomy.

Suddenly it was there, at his right, a couple of acres that looked like a huge bite had been taken from the earth. The layers of limestone, representing eons of time, stripped the sides unevenly. Some of the large areas had been blasted and left step-like ledges around the box-shaped quarry. Sometime during its brief existence, water began filling the hole and the workers abandoned the project. They left behind an isolated swimming hole, hidden by gnarled trees and short tenacious bushes. During the summers that the two of them swam here they never had to share it with anyone else; unlike at the swimming pool across the road. That was the best thing about this place, but the isolation was also its biggest disadvantage because help had been so far away and took so long to get here.

After climbing down the steep rocky path, Roger stopped at the edge of the water and lit a cigarette. The surface was calm, rippled only by the gentle August wind, reflecting the clear, cloudless sky overhead. He regretted that he had not thought to bring along a six-pack.

"God," Roger thought, "How we loved to come here."

The water looked inviting and he squatted, putting his hand in. It was cool, as he remembered, always almost too cool for swimming, but that too had been the magic of this place -- swimming until your teeth chattered, then sunning on one of the ledges to get warm again. Not having a swimsuit had not bothered him as a kid and did not now. He stripped quickly out of his sandals, tee-shirt and jeans and plunged in. The change of temperature was a shock to his system. Roger came to the surface quickly, his breath nearly chilled away, but he did not head back to the shore. This was just as he remembered.

A few minutes of awkward stroking quickly tired him and he allowed his feet to sink and stood on the bottom. Something in Roger's memory clicked; this was the spot in the dream -- where he knew he wouldn't make it back to shore. Except the dream had him farther out, beyond the ledge at the drop-off, not where he was standing.

Looking up and to his right, he could see the spot they had jumped from and saw why it had happened. The ledge was too much into the shallow portion and they couldn't possibly leap far enough out to reach the drop-off. Not together, not with Kenny grabbing his arm and just jumping.

Roger made his way back to shore and pulled himself out. Laying on the hard, uneven limestone to dry in the sun, he was again over-come with remorse. Most of the sorrow was for himself and the failure he had become, but some of it was for Kenny, who should have been the one to live. If he could change only one event in his life, Roger would change that day, that moment.

Warmed by the sun, he grew drowsy and closed his eyes. Suddenly he was on that narrow ledge again with Kenny Davis standing beside him.

"C'mon, Rog, jump!" Kenny yelled in his ear,

"Listen, Kenny, we can't. Please listen!"

"Chicken! Roger's a chicken-shit!" Kenny screamed out to the empty quarry.

Roger clung desperately to the face of the cliff, digging his fingers between the layers of rock. "You don't understand, Kenny! If we jump ... if we jump, one of us will get killed. I know it! God, Kenny, you got to listen to me!"

"We can make it," Kenny grinned, grabbing Roger's wrist. "Heck. I done it lotsa times."

"Not this time!" Roger tried to free his arm from Kenny's grasp. "Let's climb down. I'll ... I'll do it tomorrow, I promise."

Kenny said, "I taught ya how to play baseball, how to ride a bike, and how to swim. Now I'm gonna show ya how to high dive!"

Still holding Roger's arm, Kenny flung himself from the narrow ledge.

Roger tightened his grip with his other hand, but it was easily pulled away.

***

He awoke sweating from the heat of the glaring sun feeling better. This time the dream had been different; it ended with him crawling out of the water alive. Maybe coming here to the quarry after all these years had been beneficial. Maybe the change in the ending of the dream was a portent ... or at least a good omen. Maybe he could now accept what he'd done that day, forgive himself for doing some stupid kid-thing that cost his best friend's life.

He went to his clothes and got dressed, carefully brushing the rock dust from his suit. Glancing around the stone quarry for truly the last time, Kenny Davis said aloud, "I should have listened to you Roger. You said one of us would get killed if we jumped. Somehow you knew, really knew. But I wouldn't listen. I shouldn't have held on to your wrist when I jumped. I shouldn't even have talked you into climbing up there with me. I'm so sorry, Rog. If I could change one event in my life, I change that."

END

word count: 1715