The pack of them had met up on the trails and now sat astride their bikes at the top of the Widowmaker. No one remembered who had named it that and no one so far as they knew had ever died on that short, steep hill. One of the trails that led into the woods was flat and featureless until it wrapped around a monstrous elm tree and plunged down to a dry and rocky creekbed. The change in pitch was so sudden that one’s front wheel often left the ground and both bike and rider seemed to be in freefall until they arrived at the bottom, rubber side down or not.
Dillon and his older brother John owned matching BMX bikes with heavy silver frames and orange decals and bright blue tires that they rode without helmets. The dirt trails weaved apart and back together through the forest of spindly pines and broad oaks, skirting brier thickets that housed rabbits and deer.
John’s voice rang out. “Hey hey hey. You gonna ride this bitch or are we gonna sit here with our dicks in our hands?”
Over the years, John and each of his friends had at some point gripped their handlebars and pedaled forward and made the drop and remained upright, some with more nerve and style than others. Few found success on the first attempt.
Should the front wheel be held up off the ground, the better to let the more stable rear wheel land first? Should the rider force the handlebars down, the bike frame vertical, so that both wheels stayed in contact with the dirt? There was no failsafe method, and riding the Widowmaker was the condition of induction into their no-name neighborhood club.
Standing at the bottom and looking up at the drop, it didn’t seem daunting, nothing to fear, maybe ten feet. Perched at the top, however–as Dillon found himself, egged on by the goading of some boys and the quiet encouragement of a few others–it was an abyss. John remained in the back of the group, one foot on a pedal and the other on the ground, arms crossed, eyes boring into the back of Dillon’s head. It hadn’t been his idea to give Dillon a shot at joining the club.
John spoke out again over the pack. “Let’s GO. If you’re ever gonna.”
Dillon peered over his front wheel. The creek bed seemed a mile below. He torqued the handlebar grips as if he were revving the throttle on one of the stripped two-stroke hotrods that he’d seen guys ride to jump over canyons and buses and bonfires. Right foot on the pedal, he pushed off the dirt with his left and leaned forward tentatively as his front tire met the lip of the drop.
Dillon squeezed the grips as the handlebars plunged down. He was weightless while the bike fell away from him, his feet drifting up off the pedals as he now faced the creekbed. The world zoomed up at him as the front wheel struck rock and the handlebars stopped dead and Dillon’s face kept going and his forehead struck the crossbar of the handlebars with a jarring impact. The right wheel twisted among the rocks and Dillon thought he would crash headfirst in the creekbed but the back wheel landed and he hit heavy on the seat and stomped down on the right pedal and wrenched the handlebars to free the front wheel from the rocks. Instead of ending up beneath his bike, wondering which bones he’d broken, Dillon grinned as he ground his way up and out of the creek bed, forehead throbbing, the pack above him hooting and cheering.
They took the long, easy way down to the bottom and all pulled up facing him. He’d done it and he was in the club! The stab of adrenaline from the short and terrifying ride ebbed and was replaced by a warmth from within and Dillon turned and looked back at the Widowmaker and smiled again.
John spoke up from the back of the pack, nodding as if this had been his idea after all. “Well, that’s done. I guess now we take him to the Tombs. Let’s go.” The other boys looked at Dillon and nodded and a couple of them smiled with encouragement. They swung their bikes around and everyone followed John deep into the woods down single-track trails treacherous with roots hidden by the fallen leaves. Dillon thought he knew these woods well but didn’t remember riding this trail before and it was so faint that he looked for landmarks so he wouldn’t feel so lost. He looked up from time to time when not watching the ground in front of him for obstacles and saw the occasional red X spray-painted on tree trunks here and there and realized that the riders were following these beacons rather than a path through the leaf-covered forest floor.
The trail swung out to the left, then quickly down and back to the right and revealed a deep fold in the landscape that couldn’t be seen from the direction they’d come. The boys all dropped their bikes down in the leaves at the bottom of the trail and Dillon wanted to turn around and ride his bike up the hill and be a part of the club just by riding the Widowmaker and not do whatever it was they did in the Tombs, but nonetheless he dropped his bike in the leaves with a confidence he did not feel as if he had broken this ground and blazed these trails himself.
A patch of ground was cleared down to the bare dirt for a good ten-foot circle at the base of a short wall of granite with diagonal seams of quartz running in thin lines. At the base of the wall were several animal skeletons; a few were so small that they had to be squirrels and Dillon glanced at them with a chill of fear and thought that the others must be possums or rabbits or foxes. The brittle graying bones lay in various arrangements and levels of completion and Dillon’s stomach turned at their sight and he looked up and realized that the other boys had formed a circle around him.
John cleared his throat. “Dillon Travers, is it your intention to become a member of this club?”
Under John’s glare, a wide-eyed Dillon looked to the faces of the other boys. A couple of them gave nearly imperceptible nods. Several had thin mustaches or sparse beards on their pimply chins and cheeks and Dillon reached up to touch his smooth face and felt very young. “Yeah. Yes, I do. I mean, it is.”
“There are two tests. You’ve completed the first one, which is facing the Widowmaker. It’s not a test of how well you ride a bike. It’s a test of your balls.”
Dillon stared back at John but did not reply. He thought back to riding the Widowmaker and couldn’t remember how he’d done it, only that he had taken the drop and emerged from the creekbed in control and upright if not unharmed. He put a fingertip to his forehead and felt the swelling of a horizontal bump over his right eye.
“The second test, which you don’t know about, is a test of trust. Is it still your intention to be a member of this club?”
Dillon’s stomach had clenched up on him and he wanted to run into the woods and use the bathroom behind a tree and then keep running away from the Tombs. He looked around the circle. The faces of all the boys had gone blank and their dead eyes offered him no clues.
Dillon sipped in a wobbly breath and blew it out through clenched teeth and balled his hands into fists. “Yes.”
John looked around the circle at the pack. Unspoken calls and responses seemed to pass among them as they returned his gaze and looked back over at Dillon.
“So be it. Here are your instructions. Close your eyes. Without opening them, pull your pants down. All the way down over your socks to the tops of your shoes. The rest of us will do the same.
“When you hear me say ‘Now you’re dead’, your initiation into the club will be complete. Are you ready?”
Holding back tears, Dillon bit down on his quivering lips and nodded.
John smiled and it was not a pleasant sight. “Good. Close your eyes.”
Dillon closed his eyes.
“Pull down your pants.” Dillon untied the drawstring on his sweatpants and loosened them and pulled them down to the tops of his shoes but did not pull his underpants down at first. He heard the scuffling of feet and thought he heard a whispers and stifled giggles but he did not open his eyes. He held his briefs by the waistband and pulled them down quickly and stood up and as he felt the chilling autumn air on his nakedness he was engulfed by the laughter and howls and catcalls of the other boys. Dillon opened his eyes and looked around the circle, looked the other boys up and down, but none of them had pulled down their pants. They pointed at his hairless, twelve-year-old-boy penis which turtled with cold and fright. John stood with his arms crossed, grinning at Dillon. His eyes burned and brimmed with revenge but for what Dillon did not know.
Dillon covered himself with one hand and stooped to pull up his pants with the other but lost his balance, stumbled, and fell into the leaves and lay on his back and had to bridge up onto his shoulder blades. Laughter echoed off the granite wall and swarmed him. He yanked his sweatpants over his hips and then had to reach down into his underpants to remove leaves that had ended up in them and the other boys laughed harder until a couple of them fell to the ground near him, convulsing with mirth.
Choked by rage and blubbering with shame, Dillon mounted his dirt bike and pedaled up and out of the Tombs, so blinded by tears that he could not see the roots that crippled his progress on the faint trail and he had to dismount and walk his bike back to the section of forest with which he was familiar. He yelled as loud as his lungs would let him as he rode the trails back to edge of the woods and was still wiping tears from his eyes when he got to the house.
He went in through the back door and Mom looked over from the stove as he got a glass of water. She asked what was wrong and what had happened to his poor head and where was John. Dillon said nothing’s wrong and I don’t know and walked past Dad who did not look up from his scotch and rocks and newspaper. He stomped upstairs to his room and slammed the door and kicked off his shoes and threw them one by one against the wall and fell into bed fully clothed and pressed his face into the pillow and cried harder than he had so far.
*****
Brandon Sharp lives in Chapel Hill, NC with his wife Elizabeth, three kids, and two dogs. A chef by trade, he owns and operates three local restaurants. His fiction is forthcoming in Academy Of The Heart And Mind.