# Memoir - Part 6

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Posted by Pete on April 24, 2021 at 04:41:04

"Sure," Jilly said, and led the way up the stair case to the first floor. Hayden whimpered, "couldn't there be homeless people in here?" Jilly spun around and glared at him, "yeah, and so what if there are?" Hayden didn't answer, and quietly followed us up the stairs.

The main level had all its windows boarded up, so it was quite dark, and Dylan was shining his flashlight around, and looked awed, as if he was in an incredible museum, and not an old vacant building. And I guess it was kind of a cool building - brick walls, hard wood floors, tall windows. The kind of place that, if it were in some gentrifying city neighborhood, would be turned into a trendy restaurant with loft apartments. But, since it was not located in a gentrifying city, it sat empty on the edge of our increasingly empty town. The first floor was divided into a few rooms, it looked like the building has contained offices in the past. The phone company had more boxes and equipment stacked around the area. In the corner was one room was a modern looking setup of green electrical boxes stuck on the wall, that must have run the phone lines for the town. Dylan was curious and went over to look at those, and Jilly snapped at him, "don't touch anything! Don't want to f--- something up and have people knowing that we figured out how to get in here!" Dylan turned away, and headed up the staircase to the 2nd floor.

The second floor was completely empty, with no furniture or equipment. And the windows weren't boarded up this high up, and Dylan and Hayden were captivated by the views, able to look down on our little town from above. Suddenly, Dylan said, "guys? There's some trucks driving up the road towards us!" "Huh?" Jilly said, bolting for the window to see for himself. "Sh-t!" Jilly exclaimed, seeing trucks from the phone company climbing up the steep, narrow driveway, "Get down!" We all dropped to the ground so that we couldn't be seen through the window. "I thought you said they didn't come until Thursday!" I said to Jilly. Jilly gave me a nasty look, and I dropped the subject. "Over here," Jilly said, crawling towards one of the side rooms. We followed him in and Jilly swung the door shut.

"What happens if we get caught?" Hayden whimpered. "Nothin'" Jilly snapped, "these guys work for the phone company, do you think they're gonna cook you up and eat ya? They'll just holler at us to get out of here." Hayden still looked petrified, and Cole said, "they're probably not going to come up here anyway. There's nothing up here, all their stuff is downstairs. We'll be fine." Then we heard the front door swing open downstairs, and Jilly hissed at us to be quiet. We heard the men enter the building, and fortunately they had a portable radio that they were playing quite loudly - there was no way they'd be able to hear us over that radio. I tried to make out what they were saying, but I could hear over the radio. We heard them shuffle some equipment around, and make a few trips out and back from their trucks. After a few minutes, it sounded like they carried the radio back outside, and I thought we were alone again. I went to stand up, and then I heard more voices from downstairs, and I froze. "Sh-t's been moved around downstairs," a voice said. "Yeah?" "Looks like kids might have gotten in here somehow." On hearing that, Jilly hissed, "Sh-t!" But the voice downstairs said, "I don't give a sh-t." "Think we should tell the boss? "He don't give a sh-t." A moment passed, "we don't even need half the sh-t in this sh-thole, they should just move that panel outside, put a fence around it, and tear this f-cking building down. Old man doesn't even know what the h-ll's all in here, what do he care if kids are f-cking with it?" Then, we heard them shuffle outside, close and lock the front door, and their pickup trucks start up.

We waited a few minutes to make sure the building was really empty. Dylan did an army crawl on his stomach over to the window and cautiously peered out. "Yup, they're leaving, the trucks turning out onto the main road... and... they're gone!" We all breathed a sigh of relief. Hayden broke the tension by laughing. That got Jilly laughing, "see, kid, I TOLD you we'd be fine!" "Jilly, you said no one would be coming here today!" I reminded him. "F-ck you, Petey!" "Well, can we get out of here now," I said. We agreed that would be a good idea, and headed back down to the basement. Next, we had to figure out how to wrestle the big coil of cable out the tiny window we crawled through. Dylan and Jilly did most of the heavy lifting, then we all climbed out, and Jilly closed the window behind us. "Now listen y'all!" Jilly barked at us, "I don't want none of ya telling NO ONE 'bout this place, ya hear?! NO ONE!" He glared at everyone, especially Dylan and Hayden. Dylan looked at him kindly, "I'm not going to tell anyone, Jilly," Dylan said quietly. Jilly's face seemed to soften a bit. "OK, then, BAHSton, think you can grab that cable and haul it back down the hill?" Jilly would start calling Dylan "Boston" as a nickname, since Dylan was from Boston, but exaggerated Dylan's Boston accent, so he pronounced it like BAH-Stin. "Sure," Dylan smiled, hoisting the cable over his shoulder, and I picked up the other end of the long coil, and we trekked back down to Link's place.

When we got there, Link gave us a suspicious stare, but didn't ask us where we found the metal cable. He showed us the trolley mechanism he'd built, and it slid perfectly along the cable. Link's dad said tomorrow morning, he'd drive his tow truck out the old mine road that ran kind of close to the lake and haul all the equipment and tools we needed out there. We'd still have to hike them a way's in from the road all the way to the lake, but it would be a lot shorter walk than if he hiked all the way from our house. So we gathered up all the rest of the stuff we'd thought we'd need - a length of rope, some scrap lumber, hammers, nails, a sledge hammer, and other stuff, and piled it into the back of Mr. Abel's tow truck.

Me, Cole, Dylan and Hayden went back home, and my dad showed us that he had found the final piece of the puzzle - some thick U-shaped bolts, that could be pounded into a tree to securely attach the metal cable to the tree. The next morning all of us, included my dad, headed out to the lake to finally build our zipline. We were all wearing heavier clothes - t-shirts, jeans, socks, and shoes or boots - since we'd have to climb through trees and brush to setup the zipline. Link basically directed the construction, with my dad occasionally given friendly suggestions if Link needed it. When we figured out which tree we wanted to use on the far side of the lake, Link decided that he'd swim across to attach the cable to the tree. So, he waded into the lake fully clothed, including his boots and socks, with a handful of the metal bolts in his jeans pockets, and carrying a sledge hammer and the end of the metal cable. He proceeded to awkwardly swim his was across the lake, somehow managing to avoid drowning on the way. Finally, he made it to the far end of the lake, climbed out, and started to figure out how to climb up into the tree and attach the cable. "Do you need help Link?" I shouted, hoping that he'd give me a reason for a fully-clothed swim of my own. But Link could handle it on his own, and soon enough was swimming back to our end of the lake. Then we worked on attaching the cable to a big tree on our end of the lake, but first pounded some scrap lumber into the tree trunk to serve as a makeshift ladder, then Link climbed up and used the sledge hammer to bolt the end of the cable to the tree. He then attached his trolley device onto the cable, and tied the rope to the trolley, so that we could easily pull it back to the starting point.

My dad inspected Link's handiwork, making sure everything was safe and secure, and gave it the green light. "Well, Link, do you want to take the maiden voyage?" Link, who was standing on the ladder holding onto the trolley, and who was already soaked, agreed, and ziplined his way down the slope, and let go of the trolley as he sped over the deep part of the lake, and splashed into the water. "Seems like it works!" my dad observed, while Link started swimming back towards shore. "Who's next? Dylan?" Dylan didn't need to be told twice, and scrambled up the ladder, grabbed onto the trolley, sped down the cable and splashed into the lake, yelling an enthusiastic "ye-haw!" as he rode down the zipline.

"I'm next!" I announced, and climbed up onto the ladder. "Shoes, Petey," my dad reminded us, and I reluctantly kicked off my shoes before testing out the zipline. And it was well worth all the effort of building it. I have no idea how fast it really went, but it was quite a thrill! I swam back to shore and met up with Dylan. "How was it?" I asked him. "Awesome!" he answered, but then his face turned sheepish, "but I forgot to take my shoes off," he laughed nervously while he pulled off his soaked shoes and socks. "Oh... Well, they'll dry soon enough." "I hope so, before my parents pick me up, or I'll be in deep sh-t!" "Relax BAHSton!" Jilly playfully chided him, "we'll turn you into a barefoot West Virginian hillbilly yet!" Dylan laughed. "I guess Jilly likes me now," Dylan observed to me, when Jilly was out of ear shot on his turn down the zip line. "Yah, he's a little different," I shrugged.

We spent pretty much the whole day up there playing with the zip line, or just swimming around, and then trudged back home for dinner. My mom demanded that we all shower before we sat at the dinner table, and as usual it felt good to change into clean, dry clothes. Dylan set his shoes outside in the sunniest spot in the yard, and hoped they'd dry - he pointed out that he did have a pair of dress shoes with him, but those weren't ideal for the kind of adventures we had been getting into!

At dinner that night, my mom asked everyone how our day was, and everyone talked about how great the zipline was. "I am SOOO sore though," Dylan groaned, stretching. "Well, you've done more work in the last 2 days than you have all year," Hayden teased him. Dylan scowled at his brother, then perked up and said, "but I got a new nickname, so that's a good thing, right?" "What are they calling you?" my mom asked him, sounding a little nervous about what he might answer. "BAHSton!" Dylan said, poking fun at his own exaggerated accent. "Oh? And who gave you that nickname?" "Jilly did!" "Well that's good, Bahston!" my dad smiled at him, "when folks around here start giving you a nickname, it means they've accepted you, and they like you." Dylan beamed, apparently proud that he'd manage to earn Jilly's friendship. "Yeah," Cole said, deadpan, "that's why everyone calls Peter by his real name. Because we don't accept him and no one likes him." Cole's rare showing of humor impressed even my mom and dad, who laughed at his joke. "And just when exactly did you grow a sense of humor, ADAM?" I challenged him. At the sound of his 'real' name, Cole's smirk instantly changed into a scowl and he shot me a nasty glare.

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