by Lenzo, Lisa;
At first I climbed carelessly, without a plan, simply enjoying the feel of moving upward. But soon heaviness slid into my arms and legs, and though I wasn’t cold, I began to shake—the truth is, I’m afraid of heights. My hands closed around branches as if trying to fuse with them. I felt my sweat growing cool, though the day was mild and there was hardly any breeze. I continued to climb, trying to ignore what was happening to me, but finally, as I always did, I stopped and just stood there gripping the tree, feeling the rough bark against the skin of my palms. “This is silly,” I said to myself. “I’m scared. What am I trying to prove?” But then I told myself, Go on, just a little higher. And I kept going up—hand over hand, foot after foot—until soon my thoughts had drifted, and both my high and my fear had left me, as I’d known they would.
I was wearing an old sweat suit and my red low-tops—perfect climbing clothes, perfect clothes for jumping. Feeling light and keen and extremely alive, I climbed higher with incredible confidence, but also with incredible care. I was a long way from the ground. When the trunk thinned so that I could span it with my hands, I stopped and looked down at my brother and his friends and the girls. They looked very far away. I could see they’d stopped passing the pipe. They were all watching me, faces lifted and motionless.
I looked across to the nearest tree, another pine. It had very few lower branches, and so its higher branches were easy to see from the ground. I’d jumped to that tree before. That day I chose a different branch. I looked at it for a long time, studying its angle, its roundness and thickness, its flaky, brownish-gray bark. And then I leapt.
It feels like this:
First a singing, close-to-screaming joy and fear in my throat and gut and every bit of my body. An indescribable moment of touching nothing. Then the relief of feeling rough bark gripped by my hands, solid wood underneath. Only this time the wood wasn’t solid, and the branch I grasped held at first but then snapped cleanly with my weight, and as my feet continued their upward swing, I dove downward, head first.
I watched tree limbs passing me as if they were falling and I was holding still, and then the branches seemed to slow, and I did, too—almost to a stop, it seemed. I floated downward, trees upside down all around me. Something punched my shoulder, hard—a branch—but it didn’t hurt. A wonderful, dreamy spinning turned slowly in my chest and throat and head. I felt more awake and alive than I’d ever felt. I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t stop what was happening, and I didn’t want to.
Afterwards, I was bitter for months, a seemingly endless amount of time because until I stopped being bitter, I didn’t know if I ever would. There was a span of days when I really lost it—I just cried and stayed in bed. But I didn’t want to die. So I had to get up. And I went back to school, I began playing harmonica again, and my life became worth it again. And the fall—well, the fall became amazing again, as it was when it was happening.
I told all this once to a reporter I’d gone to high school with, and she did a pretty good job of getting it down. But her editor said that the story was too frightening for his family magazine. He said he could run a story about my recovery, but not about my fall. “The description after the moment of impact is too terrible,” the editor said, “and I don’t see any way around it. You can’t write about the fall without saying how it ends. You can’t leave the guy up in the air.”
⊙
I sprinted the length of the block once more, reaching far back on my push rims and thrusting forward, flying past shop fronts and parked cars. Then, without pausing a beat, I stroked around to the alley and sprinted down its length, passing our camper, which was giving off an amber glow—we’d left a light on, as usual, to find our way back in the dark. After slaloming around some trash cans, I popped a wheelie up the single step of the Blues Jam’s rear entrance and maneuvered through the kitchen, saying, “How’s it going?” to the cook, who answered, “Not too bad.” Then I glided out into the dining room. Claudine and Lucy were gone. I wanted to race out of the café and see if I could find them—in our camper, packing a bag for the road, or maybe Claudine was already hurrying down the street with Lucy in her arms. But even if I caught up with them, I knew I couldn’t prevent my hard-headed wife from leaving, if that’s what she wanted to do.
Usually, even if Lucy is asleep, Claudine waits to put her down until after my first set, so I sat at our table hoping they’d only gone to the washroom and would come right back. But it was a bad sign that Claude had taken all of their stuff—Claudine’s sweater, Lucy’s little hoodie and her binky and stuffed dog.
I met Claude on a night like this one, four years ago, at the Raven Lounge in Detroit. I was by myself and kind of down, but I knew I’d feel better once I picked up a harp and started blowing. That’s the best thing about the blues: they take you through your pain and bring you back to joy—if not completely, then at least part of the way.
I noticed Claude the moment she walked into the Raven. I was so blown away by her beauty. Her hair was bouncing up around her shoulders, and she was tall and all curves—even her eyelashes were curvy. And her eyes looked right at me, from head to toe, taking me all the way in. She came to my show the next night, stayed till the end, helped me pack up, and spent the night in my van. Two weeks later, she quit her job and joined me on the road. After our first year together, we got married and traded my van for a camper, and after Lucille was born, we made some adjustments to my schedule. But lately Claude’s been talking about wanting to settle down in one place, and I don’t blame her. I can’t make a living, though, staying in a single city or town, and I doubt she’ll trust me, now that I screwed around with Josie, to travel from gig to gig on my own.
I sat at our empty table—the coffee mugs and water glasses and cream containers had been cleared away—hoping and waiting for Claude and Lucy to return. Ten minutes later, with no sign of them, I started toward the plywood ramp Claude had set against the stage before we ordered dinner.
The ramp lay at a steep angle, with not enough floor area free of tables on which I could get a rolling start, so I approached a man who looked sober and as if he knew how to use his body and told him what I wanted. The man was glad to be of help. He pushed me up the ramp super cautiously, as if he was afraid I might break. I wanted to say, C’mon, man, I already did that, right? But I thanked the guy and turned my attention to my equipment.
Before dinner I had set up and tested my mixing board and amplifier and speakers. I’d leaned my guitars against the back of the stage with their necks up so I could reach them easily, and I’d laid my harmonicas on the far edge of the board all in a row, in the order I wanted. Claudine usually does these things for me, but tonight I’d offered to do it myself, and she didn’t object. I imagined her striding down the street, lugging Lucy on her hip. But most likely they had only gone out to our camper, and I’d find them sleeping there when I was done for the night. I considered going out to check on them before starting my show, but I had three sets to get through, and if they were gone, I didn’t want to know that yet.
Thinking I’d start off with an easy instrumental to get my lungs working and put off using my voice, which I’m always afraid will fail me when I’m not feeling so great, I plugged in my Lee Oskar D, whipped the cord over my shoulder, and blew a riff softly, adjusted the mix and tried again, then a few more times. Finally, I wheeled up close to the voice mike. “Well,” I said, “it’s blues time.”
A dozen faces turned toward me. The room was nearly full, half of the crowd talking with each other or playing with their phones or drinks and ignoring me completely, the other half glancing at me with interest or at least a willingness to get interested.
“Yes, it’s blues time,” I said again. “It’s showtime. I’m Mason Hilliard, and this is a tune written by a friend of mine named Stanley Clarence. The tune’s called ‘Violet,’ and it goes like this.”
I played, listening to myself carefully at first, reaching out to the board and adjusting the mix until it sounded exactl
y right, then letting my gaze roam over the crowd, from the close tables to the booths near the walls and the doorway to the bar. I recognized, or thought I did, two, maybe three faces, though not to call by name. My best local friend was out of town, and another friend wouldn’t be coming till sometime after ten, and maybe not at all—he hadn’t known if he could get away. Thinking of the woman who had thrown herself at me last night and all the trouble that had caused, thinking that I might have to get through three sets without friends and the rest of my life without Claudine, I finished “Violet” with more speed and heat than Fat Stan intended when he wrote it. The crowd clapped with spirit, and a booth full of men shouted and hooted appreciatively, keeping it up after I’d brought my lips close to the mike again, making me wait for them a little too long. I hoped their enthusiasm wouldn’t turn into a roaring appreciation of their own drunkenness. I don’t like an audience to listen to me as closely as to a symphony, but I like it even less when they don’t connect with me at all.
While I waited for the rowdies to settle down, I searched the crowd for Claudine. She was nowhere in the room, but my gaze found the reporter standing at the back wall. It looked like she was paying attention and appreciating my show. Maybe she’d write a decent story after all.
I decided to do a song especially for Claudine. Switching harps, I turned up the sound as loud as I dared and started in on one of Claude’s favorites, a 1930s blues classic called “Further on Down the Road.” And so that Claude, if she could hear me from our camper, would know who I was singing to, no mistake, I added some words of my own: “Claude, come with me—Claude, I’m hoping—Claudine, can you hear me prayin’?”
I sang the refrain twice, drawing it out. Then I opened my eyes, willing Claudine to materialize back at our table. No such luck. Probably she was asleep, or else reading her book. I didn’t think she would leave me tonight. But it was starting to sink in that, sooner or later, I’d be going further down the road without her. I looked away from the empty chair where she’d sat tonight and saw this picture in my mind: it’s daytime, and she’s not walking away but on a train, our little Lucy sitting beside her. Claude’s hair is pulled back. Lucy’s wearing a dress and looks older—a little girl, not a toddler. They’re both staring ahead, with faraway looks in their eyes. I’m nowhere near the train; I’m completely out of the picture. They can’t see me or hear me, and even if they could, Claude is done with listening to me.
I picked up my Gibson, mounted a brand-new Japanese harp on its stand, and played “Love in Vain.” At the end of the song, I blew a long improvisational riff. That brought whistles, shouts of appreciation, and a burst of applause. Pain stirred in my chest, then thrust outward and disappeared. My chest still hurt, but with a smoother, slighter ache.
I decided to do another instrumental, one of my own, a fast, wild little tune with a slow feeling buried inside all the motion. “This one’s called ‘Free Fall,’” I said after the crowd had gathered in closer. This will gather you in further, I thought, and I breathed everything I had into it.
It’s a tune that took me years to get right. It’s the tune of my fall, but of more than I could take in while it was happening:
Besides the trees and the whirling, besides the utter sweetness of falling, of floating, almost still, it takes in the sky at my feet, and the gravity of the earth pulling me down, and the people watching me, with fear and with love.
They can’t stop what is happening—they’re unable to save me.
I’m all alone—I’m set apart.
I’m speeding toward them and getting closer.
But I’ll never reach them, not completely. And yet I’m aiming straight for their hearts.
Losing It
Hovering near an oak tree, Thomas peers down at the street—since his death, his vision has rivaled Superman’s, yet he can’t make sense right now of what he’s seeing. Sod has been laid over the asphalt: for the length of a block and from curb to curb. At the center of the sod, burning on top of it, is a strip of coals the size of a bowling lane.
“Do you know what you’re about to witness?” Gerald asks, hovering beside Thomas.
“A huge marshmallow roast—no, I mean a religious ritual?” Thomas guesses, treading air by scissoring his feet. He hasn’t been dead as long as Gerald has; Gerald hovers without effort.
“The practitioners consider it a form of therapy,” Gerald answers. He points beyond the burning coals to a nearby building. “The one I want you to watch is a man named Jeremy Byrd. He’s a nurse who has a terrible problem with his temper. Look—there’s your man now: the big guy with the bronze curls.”
“He looks like a Greek god,” Thomas says, blurting, as usual, the first thing that pops into his head.
“Well, he’s not,” Gerald answers. “He’s just a man, and, other than his looks, his only godlike attribute is his talent for massage. Jeremy’s huge hands can cover a whole small back at once; they can enclose a medium thigh. And reach down, so I’m told, through flesh, fat, and bone to the tight places within the soul. But those same big hands, teamed up with his temper? Well, we’ll get to that later.”
A hundred men and women, Jeremy among them, walk down the stairs of a darkened health club and fan out on the expanse of sod. “What an odd way to play strip poker,” Thomas says, looking the people over. Most seem dressed for a day at the office, except that everyone has stripped from the knees down: those wearing pants have rolled them up, and all socks, hose, and shoes have been discarded.
As if at a signal, a thousand toes wiggle in the grass, and a murmur rises from the group like a cloud: “Ahhh, oooohhh, mmmm.”
“What planet is this?” Thomas asks. He’s making a joke; he’d seen at once that these were North Americans, the sort of people he’d known all his life.
“It’s Earth,” Gerald answers, missing the humor.
Thomas keeps his sigh to himself, but he can’t help wondering why grim bureaucrats always get to be in charge.
“We’re in Ann Arbor, Michigan,” Gerald continues, keeping his gaze on the crowd.
Ann Arbor! Thomas thinks fondly; during one of his lives, he drove there often to escape Detroit. Thomas remembers playing Frisbee in a park, smoking weed on the street, watching girls walking around without bras. Ann Arbor lay only fifty miles west of Detroit, but it seemed like a world away.
“Watch Jeremy now,” Gerald says. “See that folded-up scrap of paper in his hand? Read it.”
Thomas squints. “It says, I’m afraid of losing it. Of losing what?”
Gerald holds up a finger for silence. “Just watch.”
Jeremy stretches out his arm and tosses the paper onto the coals; all around him other people toss their own folded scraps of paper. “They’re burning their fears,” Gerald explains.
Thomas reads the others’ fears to himself: I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of flying. I’m afraid of the IRS. I’m afraid of my wife finding out. I’m afraid of falling from bridges. I’m afraid of falling in love. The scraps of paper burn and disintegrate into the coals. “In a few minutes,” Gerald says, “they’ll conquer their fear of walking on fire. By doing so, they hope to gain the confidence to master their other fears.”
A fire-walk leader throws a stick onto the coal bed. The wood smokes, then jumps with flame. “Fire’s too hot yet,” Gerald says. “Their feet would burn.”
“Is that why I’m here?” Thomas asks. “To keep Jeremy’s feet from burning?”
“Sweat and faith will take care of his feet,” Gerald says. “You’re here to help him with what he wrote on the paper.”
“‘I’m afraid of losing it’?” Thomas asks.
“Yes,” Gerald answers. “Jeremy has a long history of losing it. Let me show you what I mean.”
The sound comes in before the picture does: a crash like glass exploding followed by a tinkling like crazed wind chimes. Then Thomas sees ceramic shards scattered at the edge of a basement floor. Across the room, a teenaged Jeremy looms over an
electric kiln. Jeremy reaches into the kiln and lifts out what looks like an ashtray or a flat bowl. He turns the object in his hands, studying it as if it is something he has found rather than made. Then he draws back his arm and hurls the failed piece at the far wall. Reaching into the kiln again, he lifts out what looks like a bigger ashtray, or perhaps a dish for a large dog. Again, Jeremy draws back his arm and lets the piece fly.
The tinkling subsides and the scene disappears, replaced by an image of a slightly older Jeremy behind the wheel of a rusting Toyota. A dark-haired girl sits beside him. The girl’s lips are moving, but no words are coming out. “We’ve lost the sound,” Gerald says. “I’ll have to narrate. Okay, here’s Jeremy driving with his girlfriend. ‘Turn left,’ she says, so Jeremy starts turning left.” The car floats in slow motion. Gerald’s voice quickens like a sportscaster’s: “He’s in the middle of the intersection, he’s starting his leftward curve, he’s halfway through the turn . . . ‘No, I mean turn right!’ his girlfriend says.” Gerald falls silent. Jeremy’s fist flies up from the stick shift. A spider web blooms across the windshield.
The scene shifts again. “Here you see Jeremy a few years older but no wiser, attacking the foundation of his house with a screwdriver. You see, he’s trying to replace his Volvo’s alternator, but every time he tries to unscrew it, he gets shocked.”
“Why doesn’t he just disconnect the battery?” Thomas asks.
Gerald shrugs. The setting changes to indoors, a home office, Jeremy pounding on the lid of a printer.
“He seems to have a problem with modern technology,” Thomas says. “Couldn’t we move him to another century?”
Gerald shakes his head. “He’s where he belongs.”