Murky Waters

On a cool autumn afternoon, four boys mysteriously drown in the Schuylkill. A terrible accident? Foul play? Eight months later, police and the neighborhood are still battling over facts, meaning and the truth.

We heard about drug dealers from the neighborhood   harassing the boys. There had been some threats, a few blows. Some say maybe they forced the kids into the water at gun-point- a bullet leaves a trace and a drowning doesn’t. But that’s not their style. And they knew that none of these could swim? How, then? I don’t know. "So now the parents are like, You should be finding this and that out. But I ask: Is there information the family members didn’t give the police-about the boys’ habits and all? I wonder. Maybe there’s some self-guilt, ‘Maybe I could have prevented this.’ How much control can a person stand to lose? Me, I’d love to blame somebody for this. A real bogeyman. We looked at everything. We even talked to a psychic. But you can’t go people’s conjecture. The families say there’s foul play. Well, how do they know? I don’t. You can’t create facts to appease somebody. If I don’t have a witness telling me this happened, then it’s like religion. Believing in things you can’t see."

SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER he dreamed of Sean, Justin Bovell dreamed of Domel, the baby of the group. This time there was no setting;  Justin and Dontel were nowhere., displaced from time. Domel was walking quickly. "Come back," Justin called to his friend. "Tell me what happened to you."

"Can’t talk," Dontel whispered over his shoulder.

"Come on," Justin said. "Nobody can hurt you now."

 "Can too."

 "Who?"

"The mouth," Domel answered. "The mouth down at the river that swallows boys."

AT THE OLD Keystone oil refinery at 49th and Botanic, an enormous tear in the fence mesh leads to a narrow space filled with oddities: a blond tuft torn from a wig, a broken mirror, a soiled rubber glove. The work shed built against the wall is half-collapsed, its green plastic-sheet ceiling casting a sickly light the same color as the river’s oily sheen. Inside there’s a warm, fertile smell: rats. Both in and out of the shed, thin concussive sounds-the crunch of gravel, a stick whacked against a piece of tin-are magnified, while the sound of a voice dissipates in the wind. A scream would accomplish nothing. Down at the river’s edge, gasoline spills from a rotted fitting into the water, where it pools glassily on the surface. The sharp smell of it is everywhere, like a warning. Still, something here-the seductive sense of trespass, the challenging maze of climbable pipes studded with gauges and spiraled metal wheels-must have thrilled the boys.

The rock-slanted, crumbly, precarious -is the only way into the water. Along the rest of the banks is a thicket so dense even a cat couldn’t get through. The skin of the water is taut and green by the where the air is still, and dark and £limed our in the depths. Just beneath the surface the rock face levels, into the murk. The bottom seems beach- as if you could wade up to your neck if you like. That’s not what happens. About three feet out, where it’s too murky to see, there’s a dropoff. Years ago this site was dredged to accommodate oil The rock protrudes over the edge of a retaining wall, the top of which is just to be invisible. It seems impossible, but the river bottom here is 50 feet down.

That ledge,it turns out, has a rounded lip whose underside  extends several feet over the top of the bulkhead, presenting the possibility of a real horror. If someone jumped in, he’d he at least three feet under the surface-and enveloped in blackness. If he then paddled up and back to the shore, he’d bump blindly, face first, against the underside of the lip.