From: rvacca@vyasa.helios.nd.edu (robert vacca)
Subject: The Human Sail
Organization: Yardsticks for Lunatics
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 09:27:54 GMT

     Nine of us were always there.
     Sometimes more of the neighborhood kids would come along-
Billy Murrmann when he was visiting his father, or one of the
Wray kids, or even Dani the tomboy when her brother let her
tag along.  But whenever a group went to the Dive, and there
were at least nine people, you'd have us: Me, Kevin, Bony Tony,
Justin, Gadja, Beekus, Ben, Jon, and The Pickle.  It had to be
us, after all, we discovered it.
     The Dive was unique.  It was a freak of nature that only
a gang of prepubescent boys could have discovered.
     Indiana is a flat and boring state, so we kids were drawn
to the only non-flat, non-boring chunk of land in the whole of
the neighborhood by instinct.  Baugo Creek feeds into the St.
Joseph river at one end of the old neighborhood, and the area
around the junction is covered with scrubby trees and litter-
faded paper, crushed styrofoam cups, beer bottles, used condoms,
you know the kind of stuff that accumulates in the margins of a
neighborhood.
     There is a bluff, of all things, along the river's edge
where Baugo Creek enters the river.  Over the years, the creek
has worn through the limestone of the bluff, and has cut a
canyon through the middle of it- about twenty feet deep and,
at the mouth, twenty feet wide, making it probably the biggest
canyon in Indiana.
     In the spring, when Baugo Creek was full with meltoff, it
looked like a river itself.  It didn't shrink much in the summer,
either.  You could swim in it, in fact, although the water wasn't
deep enough to dive into from the edges of the canyon.  And you
wouldn't _want_ to swim in it, because it's pretty badly fouled.
Unless, of course, you're a prepubescent boy.
     And that's where the Dive comes in.
     On the south side of Baugo Creek there's a cut in the side
of the bluff, about five feet deep.  The water just beneath it
is pretty shallow, though, and you can't dive there either unless
the creek level is really high.  When it was, though, we did, and
that's how The Pickle discovered the Dive.
     One day, when we were swimming, The Pickle had brought along
a honest-to-goodness piece of sailcloth that he and Bony Tony had
liberated from a boathouse.  It was too small to sail a boat,
although we had tried to build one, but The Pickle knew it had to
be good for something.  Then it hit him just what could be done
with it.
     "Hey guys!" he yelled.  "Let's build a parachute!"
     In those days, we would try to build anything that sounded
good.  A parachute sounded really good.  Privately, I noted that
we never actually finished anything, so I was surprised when we
made our "parachute"- a piece of sailcloth with a rope tied at
each corner, and a loop at the end of each rope.  The plan was to
grab for a loop with each hand, and put your ankles through the
other two.  In case it didn't work, we decided to test it off the
edge of the cut- it was spring.  The water was freezing, of course,
had been since the thaw, but we were avid swimmers so that was no
problem.  The Pickle was, after me, the best swimmer in the lot,
and it was his idea, and he owned half of the sailcloth, and he was
the oldest, so he got to test it.
     We went down to the cut, and The Pickle put his ankles through
the lower set of loops, and grabbed at the higher pair.
     Spring is damned windy in Indiana, and, although we didn't know
it, (or, rather, knew but forgot to consider) will funnel prevailing
winds right down it.  It can get gusty at times.  Like then.  A
sudden gust literally picked up The Pickle, and blew him about ten
feet over the river, whereupon, miracle of miracles, he fell under
the sailcloth and drifted down gently into the creek, the sailcloth 
actually billowing out like a parachute.
     And that was the Dive.
     The nine of us soon perfected the experience.  We'd get four of
us to hold the four corners- two in the cut, and two above it- while
a fifth person would hold on to the rider to be.  When the wind got
good, the fifth person would let go and drop to the ground, the
other four would let go, and the sailcloth would fly out over the
creek, with the rider acting as a mast.
     Naturally, competition soon became a part of it.  Who could go
the fastest?  The farthest?  Do the best stunts?
     It became clear that this was an activity that selected for
two variables: height and weight.
     The taller you were, the better.  Too short, and you couldn't
steer- you had to pull on the ropes without collapsing the sail,
and the less slack you had, the worse.
     Contrariwise, it was the lighter, the better.  Too heavy, and
you'd pull the sail down sooner.
     I was pretty bad at this, because I'm on the short side, always
have been, and stocky.  The best was Bony Tony, as you could guess,
for he was aptly named.  Really tall and really thin.  Beekus was
next, just "normally" stringy.  The Pickle was third, for reasons
of coordination, mostly.  Kevin and Jon were tied for fourth, two
kids of perfectly normal size.  Ben, kinda compact, was next, then
on to Justin and me, the heavyweights.
     What saved Justin and me from utter humiliation was the presence
of Gadja.  Gadja was a fiasco.
     Gadja was _tiny_.  Featherweight, so he could have been good, if
he wasn't so short.  Shortest kid I ever knew, except for Laura Dobson,
a midget in my first grade class.  Gadja would take off at a good clip,
then collapse the sail just trying to hold on, and collapse into the
creek.  After a while, we began to razz him a little, especially me and
Justin, who had the most to gain by keeping him at the bottom.
     Justin was Gadja's best friend, and I was third (after Jon), so I
guess we hurt him more than we realized at the time.  He always tried
so hard to do something spectacular.

     This brings me to one particularly blustery May.
     On May 1st, we had a tornado watch, and a high winds warning.
Heavy rains had swollen the creeks and rivers.  Gadja came over to
my house, with Bony Tony, Justin, and The Pickle.
     "Hey, guys, watcha doin'?"
     Gadja spoke.  "We're goin' to the Dive."
     "In this weather?"
     The Pickle said "You afraid?"
     "No."  I said.  "Lemme get my coat."
     The Pickle said "We're goin' swimming, idiot."
     "D'you want me to tell my Mom that?"
     They conceded as how taking my coat would be a good idea.

     It wasn't until after we were on the way over that I found out
that we were it.  Jon, Kevin, and Beekus couldn't get out of their
houses, while Ben just wasn't home.  The Pickle and Bony Tony had
decided against letting Dani tag along, and none of the other kids
who sometimes came along were available.  Justin and I got the sail
out of The Pickle's garage, and we went down to the Dive.
     It was windier than any other day we'd ever been to the Dive
before.  The wind staggered us even when it wasn't gusting.
     The Pickle said "You know, I bet even Gadja could have a great
ride with this wind."
     Gadja spoke up, and it was clear the same idea had been preying
at him ever since he stepped outdoors.  "Lemme go first."
     The Pickle _always_ went first.  But today was special.  Gadja
was going to have a real ride, and he would go first.
     Justin and I took the high positions, Bony Tony and the Pickle
the low ones.  Gadja strapped himself in and waited for the gust of
wind that would forever remove his shame.  Justin and I listened to
the howl of the wind, and let the feel of the wind on our faces tell
us when to tell Gadja that his gust was coming.
     The wind took a new tone to it.  Something ominous.
     "Hey, guys," I called down.  "I think it's going to get really
windy really soon."
     "Cool!" said The Pickle, and Gadja audibly beamed.
     "No, I mean it."  I said, getting worried.  "Like, maybe, an
unsafe amount of wind."
     "Hell, no!" said The Pickle.  "This is gonna be great!"
     I was getting really worried.  "I say scrub it."
     "No way in hell."  said Gadja.  "I'm gonna do it."
     Justin backed me up.  "It does sound bad up here."
     Gadja said, with just a touch of bitterness in his voice, "No
way are you two gonna stop me.  I'm gonna _fly_  I'm gonna be the
human sail."
     At that moment, the wind hit a peak gust, right at the mouth
of the cut.  "BAIL OUT, GADJA!" someone screamed, either me or Justin,
because Gadja, Bony Tony, and The Pickle were too busy exulting.
     "NO W...AAAAH!!!!" screamed Gadja, as the wind tore down the cut.
     The sheer force of the wind flattened Bony Tony, and he lost his
grip on the lower righthand corner.  The sudden pull also caused The
Pickle to jerk his hands back, as he got ropeburn, and he lost his
lower lefthand corner.  Gadja had no spotter, so he sailed out over
the creek, tethered to the bluff only by Justin and myself.  His legs
pulled out of the loops, and the ropes wrapped themselves around his
legs.  The sail turned into something resembling a windsock.
     It seems like Justin and I battled the wind for hours, but it was
probably only a few seconds.  I dug in, but the wind threatened to
pull me off the bluff.  After an agonizing tug-of-war at the edge of
the bluff, I was forced to let go.  Justin, who'd been lying down,
was able to hold on until a few seconds later, but then he too let go,
and Gadja sailed away.
     He flew, tangled it the sail (we had tangled it by letting go at
radically different times, although his own thrashing couldn't have
helped).  He flew fast.  He flew far.  No stunts, though.  Just flew
at high speed, screaming noiselessly, wrapped in the sail, into the
limestone wall across the creek.  He hit, pancaked against it, and,
impossibly, stuck to it.
     Bony Tony and The Pickle panicked and fled.
     I gaped across the creek, at the sail-wrapped figure clinging
to the edge of bluff.  One arm tentatively moved inside the shroud.
     Then the wind shifted, and the air was still.
     Gadja peeled off the wall, fell into the creek, and sank.  Sank
like a stone.  A couple of bubbles arose from the pool he'd landed in.
The bubbles freed me from my trance, and freed Justin as well.  We
bolted down to the creek, using paths only a boy could find.  I lept
into the river, and swam for the pool, just in time to see the bundle
emerge from the depths, get caught by the current, pulled into the
river, and sink again.

     They found Gadja three days later.

---
David Vacca, Just an Excitable Boy.

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