The Book of Joe

easily a four-story drop, and in mid-October the water will be just this side of freezing. And landing in the water at all is contingent on avoiding the large cone-shaped rocks that jut out from beneath the swirling waters like the horns of a giant submerged beast.
    Sean points to a spot somewhere in the woods below. “I was parked down there the night Sammy offed himself,” he says, a genuine look of wistful nostalgia crossing his face.
    “With Vicki Hooper. You remember Vicki Hooper?”
    “Vicki Hooters,” I say.
    “That’s right,” he says with a chuckle. “Vicki Hooters. Tits like fucking watermelons. They were something, all right.”
    He pauses, relishing the memory. “There were a whole bunch of us parked there that night, messing around, and the word got out that someone had gone over. Of course, we didn’t find out until the next day that it was Sammy, you know?
    That he’d gone and killed himself. We just knew someone had gone over. I got myself a world-class hummer from Vicki Hooper that night, courtesy of your little buddy. You know, tradition being what it is around here.” He turns and flashes me a malicious grin. “Anyway, I just thought you should know that I came when Sammy went.” His eyes are wide, daring me to react.
    “Vicki Hooper was a skank.”
    Maybe I see the windup, I’m not sure, but I definitely miss the punch, which doesn’t return the favor, connecting with my chin with the force of a locomotive, and I crumple to the floor like a marionette cut loose from its strings. Not unconscious, but definitely somewhere in the neighborhood. Sean crouches down next to me, shaking his head and smiling.
    “Answer me something, will you?” he says. “You fucked Carly Diamond here too. That’s a matter of public record, now that you gave the world all the juicy details in your book. So what is it that makes my girl a skank and yours not? A fuck is a fuck is a fuck, am I right?”
    “Whatever you say.”
    I roll over and begin standing up. Sean speeds up the process by lifting me by my shirt and holding me up to face him, nose to nose, my back now to the falls, which sound ominously closer than they did a few seconds ago.
    “You know the difference between us, Goffman?”
    “Oral hygiene?”
    Sean smiles and slaps my face, a stinging blow that makes my eyes tear. “Wrong answer.” The correct answer turns out to be this: “Someone pisses you off, hurts or threatens you or your loved ones, you don’t do a damn thing except write about it after the fact. It wouldn’t even occur to you to take some action, to be a man. Your whole book was just you admitting you were too much of a pussy to stand up for yourself or your faggot friends back in high school. I make my living taking action. There’s a building that needs to be de stroyed or a mountain in the way of a road, I don’t sit down at my computer and write a nice little story about it. I blow it up. Demolish it completely. And if somebody does me wrong, I do the same fucking thing.” He tightens his grip on my shirt and takes a step closer to the edge. I think of how Carly grabbed my shirt in exactly the same manner yesterday when she kissed me, and feel a wave of sadness that momentarily overcomes my fear.
    “So what happens now, Sean?” I say. “You’re going to blow me up?”
    “Nah. But right now I’m seriously considering throwing you off this rock.”
    “That’s a relief. Because for a minute there I thought you were angling for another world-class hummer.”
    All of the color leaves Sean’s face and he takes another menacing step forward. I can feel his breath on my nose even as I feel my heels reach the edge of the rock shelf. “You know what?” he says. “I think you want me to throw you off. I gave you every opportunity to leave town, and I think the reason you haven’t left is because you’re a crazy, suicidal fuck like your crazy, suicidal fuck of a mother. You’re just waiting around for someone to put you out of your misery.”
    I look at his face, only scant inches from my own, and try to get a handle on just how much danger I might really be in.
    Despite our world of differences, Sean and I grew up together, were invited to each other’s birthday parties when we were little, and played in countless games of playground basketball together until his position on the Cougars made it unseemly for him to play with boys of my inferior skill. We can certainly hate each other, maybe come to blows,