Though it was cold, I slipped out of my coat and stepped out of the vehicle, leaving the lights on and the door open. I followed the headlight beams through a wide path between rows upon rows of luscious willow trees, their leaves tickling my bare shoulders ever so often. In the distance, I could hear the chatter of parents and the giggles and shrieks of children enjoying the festivities, Salem’s favorite day of the year.
I began to sing our song. Donagh once said I sounded like a bird. He’d call me his Nightingale. Sing us a song, Nightingale. I could hear him sweetly in my mind. I continued singing and humming as I twirled and waltzed, imagining Donagh leading me. I laughed as I continued down the long walkway, to the tune of a ballet suite sounding in my mind. I didn’t care that the black-shrouded figure followed closely behind.
At long last, I saw Donagh ahead, perhaps fifty feet away in the middle of a circle of trees. I bound to him, and leapt into his arms and kissed his wooden lips a thousand times. He spun me around and held me from behind as we swayed, just as we used to do! Every ounce of sadness vanished, as the twining from the tree twisted and traversed around my body, starting with my feet, then my arms, and then holding me like a lover. I was still humming when the vines found their way around my throat.
1998
sliding on concrete
Steve Zisson
It was one of those warm Halloween nights, when the temperature hovered above fifty degrees, boosted by the moist air surging up the East Coast from the South. This was before global warming was a thing and we were just thrilled about a night on the streets without being bundled in winter jackets. So, all you needed to wear that night was a hooded sweatshirt, preferably black, and jeans, blue or black; dark, at least.
The three of us were at that in-between age, when we couldn’t get into the bars and galas downtown by pretending to be something hideous, or some superhero, or a Pinky and The Brain character. And, we were too old to get dressed up by our parents to scour the neighborhood for candy in a large group.
So, there we were, Tabby, me, and Ricky. All of us in our sweatshirts and jeans, out on our own, thinking about terrorizing little kids or hoofing it downtown to check out some costumes and drunken partiers, and maybe scoring a bottle.
We were better friends than we were last summer. Still, I remained something of the third wheel.
It was a Saturday, so we could stay out all night, or at least very late.
As we walked along West Ave, Ricky was in the gutter, kicking the wet leaves. A clod of them flopped into the air and splatted on the asphalt.
“What do you want to do?” Ricky asked. He was always wanting, compelled to do something, like he had no focus, like he had hyperactivity.
I never had a really good idea what would satisfy his thrill seeking, so I just shrugged my shoulders.
“We could still get some costumes and go get changed,” Tabby said as she flipped her long blonde hair that seemed whiter in the dark.
“No, I’m good,” Ricky said, looking forward and not at her. How could he not stare at her all the time? He was always taking her for granted.
Across the street, up on a porch, a half-dozen multi-colored Power Rangers were taking turns grabbing three or four candy bars each from a bowl offered by a distracted elderly woman, Mrs. Flynn, and then posing for her, as their parents waited on the sidewalk waving their flashlights. It looked like fun. More fun than we were having.
“Maybe we should find some costumes. It’s better than this,” I said, flipping off my hood. As soon as I said it, I knew Ricky would think I was making a play for Tabby.
“What, are you kidding me? I’m not fucking dressing up,” Ricky said.
I looked at Tabby and she sighed, then smiled.
So it was settled. No costumes.
The Power Rangers on the porch shouted out their ‘thank you’s’ as they retreated to the street, their parents reminding them repeatedly to be polite.
Then Ricky got his big thrill-seeking idea of the night. “Let’s go sliding in the park.”
“At night? On Halloween?” I asked, “There’s no one there. What if—”
“Yeah, that’s the point. It’ll be great. And you’ll finally get that first run of yours, Kenny.”
I glanced at Tabby as if to say, “What you think?” And she just said, “Do you think they have any cardboard left out there to slide on?”
“There’s a pile of it,” Ricky said. “I was just there last weekend, during the day.” Then he paused and turned to me, “Come on, Kenny, this might be your last chance.”
It was at that instant that I realized we were always headed to Forest River Park on Halloween night. That Ricky had planned this night all along so he could show off his courage, prowess, and dominance over me in front of Tabby.
“What do you mean ‘last chance’?” Tabby asked.
“I heard they might tear down the slide before winter.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “They’ll never rip down that concrete slide. It’s built into the hillside with giant boulders, steel, and cement. It’s stronger than a bunker. You’d need a nuclear bomb to destroy it.”
Ricky got that distracted, faraway look in his eyes, as if he were searching for Russian ICBMs in the night sky over Salem. “Wouldn’t that be something? If a nuclear bomb hit Forest River Park!” Ricky said.
“You’d never see it. You wouldn’t know about it. We’d all be dead like that,” said Tabby, snapping her fingers.
“But it would be something.”
I usually tried, in vain, to bring Ricky back to reality. I asked, “So, how do you know they might tear down the slide?”
Ricky didn’t answer right away and picked up the pace toward the park, and I knew it was practically inevitable that I would make my maiden run on that huge slide on Halloween night in 1998 in the dark. What choice did I have?
Ricky was humming some stupid speed metal song from one of his favorite bands, Helloween or Anthrax, or whatever. I hated metal, but Tabby tolerated it. Ricky always hummed when he was excited and he knew he had control of us. Is it even possible to hum a speed metal song? Somehow, Ricky did a passable job, I’ll admit that.
“I know because my uncle works in the parks department,” Ricky said finally. “So, you saw how they’re digging up the saltwater pool? And putting in a freshwater pool instead? It’s all for safety reasons. Bullshit. My uncle heard the slide might be next. The city thinks too many people got hurt.”
Tabby groaned. “I’m going to miss that saltwater pool. When they pump in the water from the harbor each day, it feels so natural to swim in it. In a chlorine pool, I feel like I’m swimming at the hospital,” Tabby said.
“Yeah, you’re right. Disinfectant-y,” I said.
“Burns when you swim underwater with your eyes open,” Ricky chimed in.
We were together on that issue, at least.
At the park’s entrance, we ducked under the gate and headed toward the far corner of the park where the pool, and above it on the hill, a concrete slide loomed over the harbor.
Even in the dark, with no lighting in the park, the moon let us see the construction of the pool, or destruction, as it were. Most of the concrete in the deep end had been torn out and piled by the side of the pool. It was a sad sight.
Something even more disturbing for Ricky, but not so much for me, became apparent when we walked up the hill to the slide. Scaffolding was attached to the rock.
Ricky’s uncle was right. Maybe the slide was slated for demolition. This might be my last chance. We examined the scaffolding and for the first time I noticed a small plaque: “Built in 1919, with rock excavated from the construction of the city of Salem’s Forest River Park seawater pool.”
What diabolical engineer even thought up such a monstrous, dangerous design for a concrete slide that could only be used by riding on cardboard? Cardboard. You couldn’t slide on concrete like you could on a metal or plastic slide, on your jeans or shorts. This concrete slide was
a whole ‘nother animal.
What was clear to me then was that the seawater pool, being desecrated and rebuilt into an antiseptically safe chlorine infused piss puddle, had birthed this massive concrete slide. Its mother was being dismembered right in its view. The slide had every right to be angry.
“Look at the plaque,” Tabby said. “This slide is historic. There’s no way they can take it down. I’ll start a petition!”
Whatever the slide’s fate, I knew this would have to be my night, probably my only chance to go for it. I couldn’t choke like I did last summer.
* * *
It was way too hot for sliding even this early in the summer. I tentatively placed my flattened cardboard box on the edge of the four-lane concrete slide and inched my butt onto it, dangling my legs oh-so-carefully in the air, so I didn’t start sliding down when I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready!
This slide was a killer. I heard all of the stories passed down from the older boys over the years with so much bravado. Like the time Timmy Dolan mangled and twisted his leg behind him on the way down and the bone from his shin spurted through his skin, pulsing a fountain of blood that stained the concrete, and some say, still comes to the surface after a thunderstorm downpour. Or the kid from Beverly on his first run, who broke his neck and never walked again. Or, the scrapes slicing all the way down a leg that took a summer to heal and still left a scar that glowed purple, years later, even through a sun burn. Or, all those concussions and bloodied faces…And the rumored deaths. About the twins, from a family in Boston, who held hands sliding and they flipped over and over until every inch of their bodies were raw with scrapes so deep, we heard they were Med-flighted to a Boston hospital burn unit and never made it out.
I never said it to Ricky and Tabby, but this slide needed to be replaced by something safer, plastic. It was a nightmare; and I’m not just saying so because I’d never had the balls to push off the top. I was thinking about all those other kids in the future.
Afraid to look down, I gazed out over a grass field to the saltwater swimming pool, and I so wanted to be swimming there at that moment, cooling off from a summer’s midday heat, and squealing with joy like all the other kids flailing about in the pool. The pool was so much safer there, with the lifeguards and all.
Instead, I was about to heave my lunch of hotdogs and chips right down this concrete slide lane. Maybe if I blew chunks down the slide, it would be a good thing, and the puke would slow my descent. I didn’t like fast.
Not like Ricky. Already deeply tanned just two weeks since we finished sixth grade, Ricky plopped himself down next to me. So pale, I was envious of his brownness.
“What are you, some sort of baby? Just go. Step off.” Ricky and I were bigger rivals in the summer when we hung more with Tabby.
Staring off toward the haze over the harbor beyond the pool, I said, “I’m not ready. It’s more like ‘sit off,’ than ‘step off,’ don’t you think?”
“You and your semantics, dude. Whatever. You’ll never be ready. I’ve seen you come to this same spot the last three days, and you never go down. I’ve gone a hundred times to your zero. You’re a big zero.”
“I’ll go when I’m ready. Is it fast today?”
“Oh yeah. And it gets faster as the day goes on when the slide gets hotter from the sun and the concrete grinds your cardboard smooth. It’s a rush. One day I’m going to catch it just right and land in the pool.”
“Yeah right.” Ricky exaggerated a lot.
“They should’ve built this slide closer to the pool.”
I glimpsed below. The drop. It looked straight down, almost vertical. There was no way I’d survive that, I’m sure I’d tumble down in somersault fashion, cracking my head open over and over again.
Ricky was right, I had to stop being a baby. I’d have to take the plunge sometime. To prove it to myself and to—
Tabby. Who just happened to be easing into the far lane, and we both took notice of her. Ricky immediately puffed up and didn’t hesitate.
“Gotta go,” he snapped, and tipped himself over the edge, sandpapering down the slide, arms raised to the sky and screaming some triumphant song.
I’d hold onto the cardboard edges!
Even as he slid no handed, Ricky looked back to check if Tabby was watching. He always needed an audience.
But she was looking at me, not that daredevil. “Think you’re gonna go today?”
“Probably. This is my day.”
She was no crazy thrill seeker like Ricky. She had a calmness about her and ice water in her veins. I respected her restraint.
Tabby scooted to the edge on her cardboard and said, “You know it might be easier at dusk, when no one is around and the concrete is cooler and slower.”
“Yeah, that’s maybe a good idea.”
Her out for me was as good a push as any for me to head to the pool, done for the day on the slide. As I got up, I stumbled into a bent over position in the middle lane, and there was Ricky running up for another turn to impress Tabby, and he bumped me. Tabby grabbed for me but I fell across two lanes and the metal lane dividers, which cracked into my ribs.
Then I was sliding on my side and praying all the way down. My right leg stuttered against the concrete and I thought I could smell my own flesh burning. But I couldn’t feel any pain. It felt like the slide was alive. It was biting me but also injecting anesthetic with each chomp from my leg so I didn’t feel anything.
Skidding to a stop, I made it nearly to the bottom, but I was left hanging there a third of the way up. Half in shame, but with some pride that I finally went down the slide. Thanks, Ricky, for the push.
I got to my feet and checked my leg. My right calf was really raw, blood pooling up from the scrape. Then the pain kicked in as all the hamburger down my bare leg flowed into one red mass. I took off my t-shirt and tied it around as much of my leg as I could and tried not to cry. I wouldn’t in front of Tabby and Ricky.
Ricky whooshed past me and hopped off his cardboard at the end of the slide’s run out. “Awesome. Never seen anything like it. You just needed a push.”
“It doesn’t count,” I said through my teeth. “Even I know that. I didn’t go down on the cardboard. I didn’t go on my own account.”
“Suppose you’re right. But it was still great.”
He handed me his shirt, too, for my leg. Reluctantly, I’m sure, since it was one of his favorite band shirts, Slayer. Good thing the shirt was red, already.
Tabby caught up and asked, “You going to be alright? I’ll help you home.”
* * *
Ricky was climbing feverishly up the scaffolding to the top, like he was on a kid’s jungle gym. As he ascended, it seemed the slide kept growing higher, just outpacing him. At the top of the scaffolding, he leapt onto the rock side of the slide and went up like an expert.
The slide was not only expanding, but also transforming its concrete surface, almost bubbling up from within, propelled by a hot core, its metal rebar oozing to the surface and reforming into a smooth metal slide. The stones were boiling, smelting right there, adding metal to the slide’s surface.
The slide’s run out at the bottom lengthened and curled skyward like a ski jump.
Tabby and I backed away as the slide grew.
“Don’t do it, Ricky, come back down,” Tabby called out.
“I’ve got to get to the top. I’ll go the farthest and fastest ever. Maybe even down to the pool.”
“Do what you’ve got to do!” I yelled, giving him a little encouragement, like he did to me last summer with that tumble down the slide. I was still not sure if it was accidental or intentional.
Tabby threw me a glance to shut up.
At the top, Ricky jumped up and down, his arms raised, like he just won the Olympics or some medal. Like he was Rocky in that Stallone movie. Tamed for the moment, the slide settled at its new height and a sudden breeze off the water seemed to instantly cool the metal slide solid.
Ricky didn’t h
esitate. He never did. Grabbing the nearest cardboard, he dropped on it and sailed down the slide. He was just a blur, the speed on the now-metal slide was incredible. When he hit the run out that was tilted upward, he took off straight up, like an ICBM on his magic carpet cardboard and roared far above the swimming pool and toward the harbor.
Tabby and I rushed down to the beach, but never saw a splash or heard Ricky call for help.
* * *
We searched for Ricky all over the park, out on the slippery rocks and then wading into the water. We looked behind the tennis courts and in the rubble of the swimming pool. Tabby was quiet and methodical, so we circled the park many times and crisscrossed the wooded picnic areas even though I saw in her face that she knew the search was futile.
After a few hours, once we stopped looking for him, we called the police from a pay phone near the pool but we never told them the whole story, just that we got separated from Ricky in the park on a warm Halloween night in 1998. As we waited for the police, the sky brightened just enough so we could clearly see the slide had returned to its normal size.
Over a couple of weeks, the police interviewed us separately several times but we still didn’t tell them what happened on the slide that night. Search crews never found Ricky’s body in the harbor or anywhere else in the city. We knew they wouldn’t find anything. For Ricky’s parents and families across the city, his disappearance was a big scary mystery, likely some abduction. It was only a little less of a mystery for Tabby and me.
Since that Halloween, I haven’t talked to Tabby about that night and we, most certainly never got together. The only thing we really had in common was Ricky.
Today, I hear the slide is still there, and likely will be, at least until a direct nuclear hit. And you can go slide on it if you dare, but go on it during the day, when there are plenty of people around, and not on Halloween night, when the slide is a totally different being, something like a grown-up angry child who misses their mother.
One Night in Salem Page 23