Cliff and Kin
(7-21-08)

“What would you do if if I asked you to jump?”

Billy looks me dead in the eye and he says, “Right here, right now, what would you do?”

Here the air is thick and wet, salty with the sea breeze. The sun is blinding bright and dazzling, glinting tauntingly across the ocean’s surface, thirty feet below. Today the cold Atlantic shivers calm, blue-green, mirroring the sky, or vice versa. The stubbly green-spattered cliff is a sheer drop down to miles of coarse, rocky beach; beach, and the tug of the sucking sea.

Billy’s looking me dead in the eye.

And I remember.

Billy looking me straight on with that rust-coloured hair and bright blue eyes, a child’s eyes then, if they ever were. And he cocks an eyebrow up, and asks, dead serious, “What’s wrong with you, that makes you talk all funny?”

Me, three and a half feet tall, even then lanky, even then pale and blonde and all washed-out, I’m all, “Nothing’s wrong with me, you dummy, I’m from England! From Liverpool!”

“Liver pool?” He grimaces, little face all bunched in around the middle, “Who ever thought of a name like that? Like a pool, of liver? Rank!”

This is my first year in America, and already I hate everyone.

Then Billy, in serious contemplation, goes, “ A pool of liver. Man that’d be awesome!”

I’m looking at this stupid yank like he’s all the way loony, and he slings his arm over my shoulders, like we were mates already, saying, “ So liver boy, what’s your name, huh, new kid?”

I tell him, William, thank you, and Billy smiles huge like he’d planned this all along, or knew it was coming, anyway.

“Well, I guess that makes us brothers then, on account of that’s my name, too! Only don’t ever call me by it. You can go ahead and be Will-or-William, but I’m already Bill-or-Billy around here, got it?”

This kid’s geniality is so contagious I can’t help but smile back. I’m really just this sheepish little dope and Billy’s the first friend I’ve made in months.

By now the bell signifying the end of our recess has rung, and we’re being herded back to class by a pack of fat old women and flaky young mothers. Our teachers, reeking of coffee and smoke breaks, have come to collect us, and right before our paths diverge, Billy yells, “ Hey, Will! Wanna sit together at lunch tomorrow?”

I say, well, sure.

That was third grade, when the teachers eventually gave up referring to us as William H. and William B., and gave in to us being the infamous Bill and Will. Funny how those things tend to stick.

Jump ahead about five years, to Billy and me with a cigarette between us. We’re outside another school, in the cool autumn air, and class doesn’t start for another twenty minutes. My hair’s greasy and long, because Billy’s called and dragged me out of bed so insistently and early that I haven’t had time to clean up. Billy says to hurry up meet him in the alley, and, faithfully, I have.

Now he’s standing here smiling but with his brows all knit up in thought, one hand jammed into the pocket of his flannel, fidgeting. The other hand holds the thing out between us, the lit end trailing thin acrid smoke and pointed toward Billy. I look at him dolefully, “Ah, c’mon, you know I can’t.”

“Why not, because you’ll get caught?” He sneers but his voice doesn’t hold much mock in it.

“Probably,” I say, unfazed, “And also because it’s, you know, gross and stupid.”

Billy scrunches his face up into that grimace from the first day we met, “Come on. Try. I’ll do it if you do it.”

We stare each other down until Billy wins and I grab the damn thing from him, taking an annoyed and exaggerated drag. Billy grins while I hunch over, coughing profusely, and takes the cigarette from me. He lifts it casually to his chapped lips, sucks at it deeply without so much as wincing, and then beams down at me, smoke running from his nostrils and from the corners of his mouth, “ Glad you like it. I’ve been lighting squares for a month already.”

I glare up at him, and gag.

The funny thing is, I’m the one who ended up a smoker. Still am, to this day. Billy quit that January.

Right now it’s just Billy and me up here, a couple feet apart with the damp dirt between us. Looking out at the horizon like we have before a hundred concerts, a hundred wild nights, a thousand lazy days. A current picks up that blows Bill’s shaggy hair out behind him, and smashes my shirt against my chest. Nine years later and I’m six inches taller than Billy; he weighs thirty pounds more than I do, and none of it is fat except for what’s in his head. I’m still that gangly pale; Billy’s sun-kissed tan. I’m wiry flesh and ligament like a bloody racehorse, and Billy is smooth muscle like a wolf. Standing up here, I bet you can hardly tell the difference from below.

It’s been maybe half a minute of us staring out at the sea, and Bill knows I’ll answer in time.

My mind’s wandered back to last year.

Billy, saying, “ Man, you’ve gotta hide her, just for the night.”

He’s standing at my window in the dark, or crouching, rather, because my room’s in the basement, him and this scared little shell of a girl.

Billy’s always had a penchant for collecting broken things, hurt things, and sick ones, too. I’m thinking of the mangy dog, the baby rabbit, the box of old radios, and the iguana. I’m thinking of the ’59 Chevy sans engine, and the dying Venus flytrap, all of which I had to harbor. But then again, I can’t list off Billy’s defective treasures without having to include myself, so I unlatch the window.

Her name is Lana and really, she’s just another thing for Billy to save and shag, but I let her in anyway. She’s got bruises fresh and forming, and I don’t bother to ask what from. I give her my bed for the night, lay myself a pillow down in front of the door, and tell Billy he owes me big for this one. I just hope my parents don’t find Lana, the way they managed to find the dog and the rabbit. I don’t reckon Billy will be too happy with me if he finds out we had to put Lana to sleep.

Up here, I’m thinking of last month, Billy and I chowing on greasy fast food and guzzling carbonated drinks. It’s three or four a.m., and he’s ranting.

“This is our total for sure last free summer ever! Our last run as the infamous Bill and Will before we have to grow up and get careers and go to college and all that shit.”

He’s practically foaming at the mouth. I just sip calmly at my cola, hearing the crushed ice slosh around but coming up dry. Nothing but the empty slurping sound echoing inside a plastic cup, and Billy being excited. I ask him, “Bill, what’s your point?”

“My point is, my point IS, we better live it up! We are two free-legal, hard-working, single sons-a-bitches, and we deserve one more serious adventure!”

Guilty as all hell, I have to tell him, “Bill, you’re gonna have to go it alone.”

He snorts, but when he gets a good look at my expression, his face falls to match it.

“No shit?” he mumbles, carefully, “Why?”

“I’m sort of, well, going back home.”

I know by the look that crosses him that he knows I don’t mean home to my room in the basement. I keep on, “I’m going back to Liverpool, mate, in two weeks,” he looks thoughtful, but doesn’t say anything intelligible, so I go on, “For, uh, for good, I guess. You know, for school. Bad enough my parents and I flew the coop for so long, yeah? My granddad and company would have a fit if I didn’t come back to study with all the same grimy old gold-plated minds as they have, you know? Not much of a choice in the matter.”

Billy looks at me stunned for a few seconds, and then it’s like something in his head clicks. He shrugs and starts to smile.

“Yeah, alright then, I guess that’ll work too.”

He grins full when he sees my evident puzzlement. “I mean, I guess I’ll just have to go with you, right?”

Something like a sigh of relief mixed with a laugh and a scoff slips from me. And I ask him, “You’re serious?” chuckling.

“I don’t see why not,” he barks, “We all know I’m a spoiled rich brat and my ‘rents will send me anywhere as long as I promise to come home with some bullshit degree or other. England does have bullshit degrees, right? That can’t just be an American thing.”

We refilled our disposable cups and toasted to it. To summer. To life. To a couple renegade boys headed back to the old waterfront itself.

And two weeks later, there we were. And two more weeks post, here we are.

And as for the adventures…

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs until they seem to press my chest out from inside.

Billy glances sidelong at me, “Well, what is it then? If I told you to jump, would you jump?”

I tell him, yes.

The air’s so rich and damp it’s like you can taste the murky ocean floor. With the light that flickers everywhere, that early morning sheen, I feel like I’m bathing in fire.

Billy says, “Jump.”