Excerpt: Feo

When we came through the undergrowth and out onto the ledge above the water, the edges of the stillness we had broken were still receding, seemed almost within reach. A blue heron was cutting through the air low across the water, making a straight line away from concentric circles spreading just perceptibly from where its feet had been wading seconds before. The walls of the quarry, gray limestone bearing the marks of the cutting and blasting that had created this hole in the landscape , seemed at this moment to swallow rather than echo our voices.
Tug stripped naked out in the sunlight on the edge of the cliff, then took the rolled swimsuit from the pocket of his crumpled jeans and pulled it on. Donny changed a bit more discreetly just inside the shade at the edge of the woods that crowded the rim of the pit. I sat looking out over the water, still dressed.
My brother was deep brown from afternoons at the lake, his hair, light brown fading out to a frizzed near-white on the ends. Tug had what I thought of as the Torso of Apollo lines— his arms, face, and neck dark, shoulders to waist as white as marble and muscled deeply enough to cast shadows even in the full daylight.
“Hey Tug, how far down to the water you think it is?” My brother stepped out of the shade and Tug turned fully toward him, his back to the precipice.
His coughed slightly and replied, “You’ll see on the way down.”
They closed, and though Donny had the advantage of height and position relative to the edge, Tug made the most of a low center of gravity and muscles heavy with late youth and hard work. They locked and pushed, feet farthest from a center where their arms grappled and their heads bent to the task like oxen at the yoke.
I resisted the urge to tell them to be careful. Instead, I kicked off my shoes and began to peel off my socks. By the time I had my jeans off, uncovering the trunks I was wearing beneath, they had worked their way to the edge and, on the verge of toppling, had launched themselves out into the air to clear the cliff face. By the time I had strolled to the edge to look down, they were swimming parallel paths to the shore. A ramp descended into the pit on one side and they made for the bottom of it.
I took off my shirt and stood looking out preparatory to jumping. Now that we had intruded into the space I saw it differently. The green depths were still dark, the sky reflected on the ripples that had now reached far shores and begun to cross and re-cross one another as they returned in the directions they had come, but the birds were flown, the presence of people marked by a few old beer cans floating discreetly in corners, a chip package on the graveled ramp, and of course the top of an old crane sticking above the water, just visible from here at the edge as it had not been from just a few feet back.