The Scene at Blue Pine Ridge
a short story

“Where do bad folks go when they die?”
— Meat Puppets, “Lake of Fire”
Rolling the heavy-duty tires onto crunching dirt at the side of the road, Pepper Slate kills the engine of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. In the passenger seat, Jasper Duvall lets out a rumbling sigh that slowly twists itself into a groan.
“Can’t believe I forgot a towel.”
Pepper yanks his keys from the ignition, twisting the lanyard around his pinky finger. “Suck it up. It’s eighty-something degrees. You’ll live. You’ll drip dry.”
He pops the driver’s side door open, emerging into a welcome shower of late August sun. Jasper follows suit, slamming the door with gusto. A buzzing gnat immediately dives into Pepper’s bleach-blonde coif, making itself at home.
“Ugh.”
Leaning towards his reflection in the drivers’ side window, he scrapes the pest out of his thick hair, pausing to adjust his Ray-Bans. He wipes the guts on his basketball shorts and trots around the Jeep to meet Jasper.
“So…can I use your towel?”
“What are you, kidding me?”
Jasper’s emerald eyes flash with mischief as he runs an unsteady hand through his curly brown locks. A drop of sweat rolls from the bridge of his nose down his neck, coming to a rest a few inches above the crucifix on his tanned chest. “Dunno, Pep. Thought you might be in a charitable mood for once.”
“Okay, what else you want, then? You need money? You want to rideon my back through all this?”
Pepper sweeps an arm towards the thick trees lying ahead of them. Sunbeams playfully peek through gaps at the edges of the trees, illuminating muddy cigarette butts on the windy path. The rusted gate, broken through long ago by Baldwin High students, marks the beginning of the crusade. From there, it’s easy — just follow the trail stamped out by generations of keg-lugging high school kids and clamber up the natural boulders until you reach the height of the bluffs.
It’s a hell of a hike to get to Blue Pine Ridge. Those brave enough to make it to the peak are rewarded with a stunning view of Lake Guillaume, a backdrop for numerous Instagrams over the past few years. There’s a small clearing on the cliffs, space for about three or four skinny high schoolers to sit.
No one seriously goes for the view, though. It’s all about the rope swing.
It’s the stuff of Baldwin High legend, its origin debated since it was first “discovered” when Pepper’s older brother, Spencer, was in ninth grade. Pepper was too preoccupied with the ducklings hatching in Miss Evason’s third grade classroom — he wanted to name one of them Jeter — to notice Spencer sneaking out of the house on that May afternoon. The day the ducklings hatched, Spencer and three of his friends were picked up by New York state troopers as they attempted to climb over the gate. Lake Guillaume Estates, a private community, protects the woods as an environmental preserve. No one — not even those pay to live in the magnificent McMansions erected nearby — is allowed over that gate. If they were older, Spencer and his gang of snot-nosed hooligans would have landed in jail for felony trespassing. As it were, they were released into the custody of profoundly irritated parents.
Half the thrill of Blue Pine Ridge is the threat of being snagged by state troopers as you make your way over the gate, glancing over both shoulders, and take off into the woods. A handful of Baldwin High students have been picked up by staties, most let off with tickets. But if you’re over eighteen, the local statutes apply differently. You’re an adult. You’re handcuffed and thrown in a cruiser.
Then you go to jail.
Then you become a legend.
Take the case of Malcolm Lutz— a senior when Pepper was a freshman. Malcolm and his buddies went through the gate with a thirty-rack for a harmless night of smoking and drinking at Blue Pine Ridge. No one was in danger. No one was driving. They were staying the night at a friend’s house in the Estates down the road. That night, the staties happened to roll through on a random check, leading the terrified boys to scatter. Malcolm was the only one who couldn’t get away, snagged by a buckthorn shrub as his friends scampered off into the cover of night. He served six days in jail for second-degree criminal trespassing — and missed graduation.
Pepper tries to push Malcolm out of his mind as he slides his limber body through the gash in the gate, careful not to let the rusty tendrils pierce his skin. The last thing he needs is to explain to his mother why he’s going for a tetanus shot a few days before the beginning of senior year. Once he’s through, tumbling into the tall grass on the other side, Jasper follows, sliding under the gate with a greater degree of ease. He taps lightly on the sun-faded tin sign hanging off the gatepost with a grin.
“This isn’t for us, right?”
POSTED: NO TRESPASSING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. VIOLATORS PUNISHABLE BY NY STATE LAW.
“Let’s move, Jasper. We’re burning daylight.”
With a glance over his shoulder, confirming the coast is clear, Pepper slices surreptitiously into the well-worn path. Jasper catches up to him with a huff, curls bouncing.
“Burning daylight? Who are you, Bear Grylls?”
He busts into a fit of laughter at his own joke. Pepper’s eyes narrow, still fixated on the muddy swath cutting through the forest. It’s classic Jasper, really, voice booming, clearly undisturbed by the threat of a ranger wagon’s backseat.
“Do you wanna talk to the staties, Jasper? The quicker we get there, the quicker we get outta here. And then we won’t have to worry about them getting us. They only come here at night. That’s what Lucy said. And she’s done this, like, a million times. And, that reminds me, we gotta go quick. I gotta pick up Tillie from day camp at three-thirty.”
Jasper doesn’t respond immediately, hurdling a small boulder and sticking the landing a few steps ahead of Pepper. Pausing to knock the mud out of his left Birkenstock, he grins up at his friend.
“Oh, well, if that’s what Lucy said — “
“Oh, shut up.”
“No, Pep, you’re right, we better get going. Wouldn’t want you to miss the chance to bond with Lucy over how you’re both on the run from Johnny Law. Wait — ” Jasper pauses in the middle of the path, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He turns around, revealing sparkling teeth bright enough to burn Pepper’s eyes.
“Wait. You jackass.”
“Can you at least keep moving, dude? We gotta — “
“Doesn’t Lucy work at the camp? She’s a counselor, isn’t she?”
Pepper nudges an earthworm with the toe of his flip-flop. “Ya’know — “
“You offered to pick up Tillie. You sly guy. Using your little sister to get to know her counselor. Don’t bullshit me, now.”
Pepper blocks Jasper’s smile with his middle finger as they turn to trudge on. Winding into a darker corner of the woods, they nearly trip over a hefty, fallen limb splayed across the forest dirt. Jasper pauses, arms crossed, as Pepper leans down to break off a branch.
“Just because I talk to Lucy doesn’t mean I’m, like, in love with her or anything,” Pepper finally mumbles as he twists the branch back and forth between his hands until a part of it snaps. The innards are still green. “She’s a cool girl. That’s all. And she’s not on the run from anything. The cops don’t even know the weed was hers.”
He pulls out a tiny penknife — a prize from an arcade claw machine in Lake George — and begins to scrape the bark off one end of the stick with painstaking precision. Jasper collapses onto the ground, admiring his friend’s carpentry work.
“Pep. Don’t be a moron. You know the weed was hers. You know she pinned it on Rhonda because her parents would kill her. But who cares? Yeah, she’s dumb for bringing weed to junior prom, but she’s still really hot…so…do you really care? Nah. And you should totally take a shot. She’s gotta be into you. She texts you back so quickly. I’m, like, an expert, believe me.”
Pepper peers up from fashioning his walking stick to take in Jasper, shirtless, sprawled out in the dirt, rolling an earthworm between his thumb and pointer finger. His green board shorts are coated in mud.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re an expert.” He strips off the bottom twigs and twirls the stick in his hands. That’ll work. “Okay, up. We’re bouncing.”
Jasper springs himself up with one hand and jogs slightly ahead of Pepper. “So, where even are we right now? Do you actually know how to get there? Between Spencer and Lucy, that’s a ton of Blue Pine Ridge experience. Some of it must have rubbed off on you. Although, if we’re talking about Lucy and rubbing —”
“Shut up, Jasper. Yeah, the boulders start in, like, ten feet. Let’s go.”
Clawing at a bite on his shoulder blade, Jasper jumps into step alongside Pepper. “God, I’m starving. Do you think there’s any berries or anything around here?”
Pepper cracks a grin, slashing absently at the weeds ahead with his walking stick. “I wouldn’t eat anything you find in the Lake Guillaume woods, champ.”
“What if it’s, like, figs or something? In the bible, they found fig trees all over the place.”
Pepper rolls his eyes. “Dude, that was in the middle east. And it was two thousand years ago.” He pauses for a second, gripping his walking stick again, before adding, “…and stop pretending you know anything about the Bible. You’re not holy.”
Now it’s Jasper’s turn to roll his eyes. “I know a lot about the Bible, dickhead. Here, I’ll tell you a story about figs — ”
“I’m all set.”
“Too bad. So, this was when Jesus and his boys were wandering through Jerusalem, right? And Jesus turns to Paul, or Peter, or whoever, and says, ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ and then, because he’s the son of God, they see a fig tree. But, plot twist! Figs weren’t in season, so the tree was bare. And then Jesus got all annoyed, so he yelled at the tree and said it wouldn’t grow any figs ever again. So then, the next day, when they’re still wandering Jerusalem, for some reason — ”
“Okay, listen, I’m totally invested in this story and all, but these are the rocks.”
Obviously, those are the rocks. It’d be impossible to miss a thirty-foot high pile of boulders, protruding like a skyscraper from dead leaves on the ground. Moving closer to the edge, Pepper glances up towards the top of the bluffs. There’s sunlight breaking through the canopy. Somewhere above his head, the rope swing is calling them.
“This is it. Start climbing.” He clambers on top of the first boulder. A sapling is within reach, which he grabs, hoisting himself to the next rock. Jasper follows suit.
“So, anyway, like I was saying, the next day, they’re still in Jerusalem — ”
“Oh my god, Jasper, I get it — ”
“ — and Peter and Jesus pass the same fig tree, and it’s completely dead. It’s black and burned and whatever. And Peter says to Jesus, hey, is this because the tree didn’t have figs on it yesterday? And Jesus is like, yeah, and I’m Jesus, so I control the trees. It’s actually a pretty great story.”
“Awesome. Maybe you can become a priest one day.”
There’s one last rock to go before the top, slippery with moss. Pepper grips a vine that snakes its way down the sheer rock face, pulling himself up with all his strength. Finally, his momentum carries him through, and he rolls upward, positioning himself on his stomach, staring down at Jasper.
“I made it, come on! Here…”
Pepper extends a hand downward towards Jasper. His friend’s face, screwed with concentration, relaxes a touch as he grips his hand. Pepper yanks upward, feeling his muscles stretch to their breaking point.
“Agh…”
Finally, Jasper manages to grip the edge of the rock and hoist himself upward. He rolls over onto his back, panting like a dog. “My god, Pep. We definitely went the wrong way. There’s no way Lucy can lift herself up here.”
Pepper mops his forehead with the hem of his t-shirt. “She’s, like, deceptively strong. Her upper body strength is insane.”
Jasper snickers, transitioning into a slight cough. “Yeah. Her upper body is definitely insane.”
“You know, I’m just not gonna talk anymore, okay?”
Slowly, Pepper lifts himself to his feet, scraping his palms against the rocks. Head in a fishbowl, he woozily glances towards the direction that might be north, slowly looking downward. The shimmering waters of Lake Guillaume gently lap against the rocks thirty feet below.
“Yeah, this is it. But you’re right, we probably went the wrong way. Okay, let’s swing.”
Still attempting to find his bearings, Pepper turns back towards his friend. “You want me to go first?”
Jasper’s perched in a squat on the edge of the cliff. There’s something wrong with his face. His eyes are bare, swimming in their sockets. The curly locks topping his head are gently swaying in the breeze, and his lips are parted slightly. It’s like time stopped.
“What, dude? Are you sick or something? Did you find some berries?” he jokes.
No response. Pepper kneels down, leaning in closer. His friend’s well-defined jawline is pulsing slightly, but his eyes remain empty.
“Dude, stop, you’re kind of freaking me — “
Jasper pants suddenly and raises a shaky finger, pointing over Pepper’s shoulder.
Pepper rolls his eyes, swiveling his head in the direction of Jasper’s finger. “Oh, shut up, you’re not funny. Now — ”
Christ.
The beautiful late August day grinds to a screeching halt, and suddenly, it’s as if a breeze is whipping up, circling the little boys atop Blue Pine Ridge. Pepper feels needles of frost pierce his veins and dive into his bloodstream. His teeth, jackhammering together, draw blood from his tongue. With a scraped palm, he grabs at the dirt beneath him, tumbling in a heap. The ground is solid, but the frost needs to leave his body.
It needs to leave now.
Opening his mouth, he puffs air once, twice, three times. Oxygen sates his brain, and — finally — Pepper can see clearly.
Unfortunately, he can see clearly.
There’s no way to describe a corpse in the wild unless you’ve seen one. It’s not like in the movies, where the music cues give your chest a chance to tighten in anticipation. In real life, it’s like a cartoon. It’s an ACME anvil dropped on your head by the Roadrunner. It’ll frostbite your mind while leaving your mouth with third degree burns.
It was a woman. She is a woman. The worn rope that took generations of high schoolers from the cliffs to the icy waters is looped around her neck. Loose waves of auburn hair shade her face. She’s wearing a tank top and shorts, as if at any moment she’ll shimmy down the well-worn tree to take a dip in Lake Guillaume. The breeze twirls the body like a spit-roasted chicken. The air is soaked with rotted skin, sweat, and the sound of Jasper puking.
Finally, Pepper finds his voice. “Dude. Dude…”
Jasper looks up, pale as a sheet, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “Dude. She’s…dead. That’s a dead body, dude. We have to call the cops.”
The frost creeps into Pepper’s skull again. “Hang on. We can’t.”
Rocking his body back and forth, Jasper’s eyes pop out of his sockets. He licks his lips. “What the hell do you mean, we can’t? This is…this is…I don’t know what this is…but we can’t deal with this.”
Pepper grips Jasper’s shoulder, pulsing his sun-sprayed skin with small white dots.
“Are you nuts? Think about what you’re saying for a second. Think about where we are. We will go to jail for this — prison. Like Malcolm. Do you want to go to jail? No one is supposed to be up here. This girl, whoever she is, she came up here for a reason. She didn’t want to be found. She didn’t want anyone to know where she went, dude. We can’t…”
He trails off, turning his head towards the glimmering lake. A man in a rowboat is the only soul on the water, a good three hundred yards away, thirty feet down. Rod and reel in hand, he’s fixated on his line bobbing beneath the waves. Pepper ducks down behind a thicket of thorn bushes seeping out from the edge of the cliff, hand still grasping his friend’s collarbone.
Jasper chokes on thin air. “You’re something, huh?…You’re a…you’re a psycho. We’re gonna leave her, huh? We’re gonna leave her here?” The clip of his voice slowly raises to an anguished howl.
Pepper’s fingernails burrow into Jasper’s shoulder. “We have to get out of here. We have to get out of here now. You know we do.”
The breeze is picking up. Behind them, the loose ends of the rope flap against the branches of the tree. The sound of twine against bark brings Pepper’s stomach into his throat. Beneath him, Jasper cradles his head in his hands, eyes frozen to the ground.
“I can’t believe you. I can’t.”
Pepper’s voice, a whisper. “What? What are you talking about?”
“This girl…we’re gonna leave her here?”
“You said that already…”
“We need to call the police. Pepper. We need to…”
Slowly, Pepper lifts himself to his feet, turning his head and letting the breeze wash over him. Avoiding the sight in his peripherals, he fixes his eyes on serene cliffs to the north. Jasper’s still crumpled at his feet, breathing at random intervals.
“Jasper, come on. Are you kidding me? How are we gonna help her now? We can’t help her now…We can’t. She’s…she’s dead.”
Jasper friend slowly lifts his head, drilling his eyes into the dark, scratched glass of Pepper’s Ray-Bans. “What if that was Lucy?”
“Stop…it’s not Lucy…so…”
The sound of the rope slapping against the tree drums into Pepper’s skull again.
Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
Jasper springs to his feet, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Not the point. You know it’s not the point. Pepper. It’s a human. It’s a…she’s a person.”
Pepper blinks into the breeze and leans closer, digging both hands into Jasper’s skinny shoulder blades again. Tiny droplets of blood dribbling from tiny, crescent-moon slices in flesh crawl down his friend’s back. “If we get caught up here. Do you know what happens? I can forget Cornell. You’ll get…you won’t be able to get into college. We’ll be in jail. Like Malcolm. And our lives will be — “
The words catch in his throat in a spout of breath as two fists jab into his stomach. Losing his balance, Pepper tumbles backwards, only saved from going over the edge of the bluffs by the serendipity of a buckthorn bush. His Ray-Bans tumble over the edge of the cliff into the gently lapping lake. Jasper rounds on him, curls flying backwards in the breeze, paws clutched in alabaster fists, scraped up with thorns. Pepper’s breath catches again, gripping the walking stick tightly in his hand.
The wind changes directions, and Jasper gives into it, crumpling backward to a seated position on the bluff’s edge. Hunched over, he runs a shaking hand through his curls, a ball of flesh and tears, as Pepper feels his own chest, checking off all his vital signs.
Jasper chokes out a strained laugh. “It’s funny. You know…you know what’s funny?”
Pepper’s lips are sealed.
“Pep? You know what’s funny?”
Opening his mouth a millimeter, Pepper exhales toward the trees. “Wh…what?”
“She looks like…Christ.”
Seconds float by. “What? She looks like…who?”
“No, no. She looks like Christ, dude. Jesus Christ. On the cross.”
Turning his head up once more to glance at her, Pepper sees that he’s right. Stomach lurching, he eyes the woman’s right arm, extended perfectly straight, resting lightly on the thick branch below the rope. Swallowing heavily, he traces her collarbone until his eyes reaches her other arm, bent backward at an awkward angle against the trunk. Her feet, close together, sway gently in the breeze. A few stray pine needles — and a twig — crown her instead of thorns.
He gulps down a mouthful of bile. “She does…yeah. She looks like…Christ.”
And after that, the boys fell silent.
The sun, slowly slipping from the edge of the sky, left every ripple of Lake Guillaume with a shimmering afterglow. Miles away, Pepper’s mother, Tillie in tow, returned to their two-story raised ranch from the day camp pickup site.
“It is finished.”
Pepper, whose eyes had glazed over, fixed on a trout jumping in the lake, shudders with a start. “What do you mean?”
Jasper’s face is streaked with mud.
“Pepper, we went to CCD together. You know what I mean….or you should. It’s what he said. When he died on the cross, after they stuffed his mouth with a vinegar sponge and forced his mother to watch him bleed to death. After one of the thieves — they killed him next to two common criminals, I hope you know that part, at least — one of them asked for a spot in heaven, and the other one laughed and he just hung there for hours on the hill. It’s John, you know, the gospel of John. ‘Jesus said it is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.’ Something like that.”
Pepper tears bark from a the stick still clutched in his hand. “I don’t remember that. I never knew you were paying attention, you know? I was too busy, I guess…I wasn’t even doing anything important.” His lips are cracked and dry, and he suddenly realizes he hasn’t had water in hours. “I should have listened. I really should have. It’s…it all matters now, I guess” he finishes, train of thought ending against a brick wall.
Lying on his back, Jasper holds up a forearm to block the setting sun. “It’s always mattered, I guess. I never really thought about it before now, though. I just remember wanting to get out of that room. I never understood why our parents sent us there, anyway, I thought it was torture. And my stomach never felt solid on Sundays — I always ate too many Pop-Tarts for breakfast, remember?— so I’d sit in there and try not to hurl when they’d talk about the blood dripping from his palms. I could see it in my head, and I could see those Romans watching him, and the crazy part? They thought they were doing the right thing. It never even crossed their mind — hey, maybe we just killed the savior. They didn’t feel a thing. They watched him die there. Didn’t feel a thing.”
“I don’t know,” Pepper finally responds, still working on the end of the stick. “I don’t know. Judas killed himself, didn’t he? Maybe…maybe they knew.”
Jasper clambers to his feet, arms stretching outward, and rounds on Pepper.
“Oh, so…you remember some things after all,” Jasper smirks, emotion crossing his face for the first time in hours. “What’s good…you remember what’s good and what makes you feel better.”
“No, Jasper, come on, dude, that’s not fair…”
The plea trails off in the air, drowned in a series of foreign splashes. Pepper squints across the lake to see the fisherman’s hooked something. Struggling with his rod and reel, the old man grips the edge of his canoe for balance, raising himself to his knees. A grimace, barely legible from this distance, cuts into his face as he raises his catch from the black. It’s a trout, about the size of his hand. Disgusted, the fisherman tosses his wriggling prize back beneath the waves, which are soon sliced by the return of his line.
Pepper’s tongue darts from his mouth to wet his lips. “Jasper, seriously. You gotta understand. We can’t…we can’t risk this. You know. You know I… We…we have too much to lose. We gotta go. Our parents are gonna wonder where we are. It’s gotta be past five. Plus, my Mom’s gonna be so pissed — I never picked up Tillie. I’m a dead man walking.”
Jasper’s still facing the fisherman, hands buried in the back pockets of his green board shorts. Sucking in briny air and letting out a deep, rumbling sigh, Pepper’s friend turns back to face him.
“You’re right. Obviously, y’know, you’re right. I s’pose.”
Three days later, the fisherman reported the scene at Blue Pine Ridge.
He’d been out on the lake, searching for dinner, when he spotted the twirling body from the ropes. Thought it was a scarecrow, he said, or something left behind. Maybe a senior prank from the Baldwin High kids — they always caused trouble up on the bluffs.
Moving closer, he glimpsed the second body.
Then the third.
The breeze that floats above Lake Guillaume didn’t provide any answers.
Author’s Note — Shoutout to all my friends who patiently read the drafts I forced on them. Also, blame them for any errors.
