by Hank Early
24
You can fill in the rest.
When Daphne left, I got serious with the bottle. I quickly lost track of time as I attempted to numb my pain, just me and a night tormented by winged creatures fluttering through the trees, scratching and clawing. They were my sins, my past, all of me that was incomplete, now returned to haunt my present.
I picked up the phone to call Mary at least a dozen times before putting it down and grabbing the bottle instead. In my drunken state, I had a notion I should just tell her, and by telling her I would absolve myself, and by absolving myself, Mary would understand and absolve me too. It had been a mistake, a single moment of weakness. It didn’t change my love for her, and it wouldn’t change her love for me either.
Except, even in my drunken state, I didn’t really believe that.
I wasn’t exactly sure when or why it occurred to me to go to Backslide Gap. In truth it was an insidious thought, one that seemed to flash within my consciousness like lightning, sudden and fierce, but unlike lightning, the thought lingered.
Drinking more made the night go soft around me, like a quilt or a warm bath. Bourbon became some arcane form of magic, Goose my familiar, me the wizard of regret.
I thought again of Backslide Gap. Perhaps it was an indictment of my parents that the one place we played as kids more than any other was the suspension bridge that stretched across it. According my father, an authority on the area and the ceaseless folklore of its geography, Backslide Gap had earned its name when a couple of boys went feral and gave up on their Christian upbringing, choosing to embrace their natural, sinful selves. Maybe that was what drew us to the area. Here was the physical embodiment of what we were all a little too afraid to do, to become. The implicit danger of the place only added to the appeal. We could, in our imaginary games, feel those two boys’ fall from grace without actually possessing the courage to slide away ourselves.
The old bridge was made of ropes and wires and wooden planks that had nearly rotted away from years of rain and neglect. Not content with simply wading out onto the unstable bridge, we soon developed a way to take even greater risks. By carefully twisting the ropes around one ankle, we could dangle headfirst out into the open space, hands free and empty, supported by only the tension of the twisted rope. It was ridiculously foolish, but at one time or another, we all tried it, tempting fate, daring God to take us or to save us, wishing perhaps for some sign from that great “Provider” our parents were so obsessed with. After hanging for a while and realizing no sign was forthcoming, we’d begin what came to be known as the “swing.” Waving our arms to create some momentum, we’d eventually get our torso and hips involved until our bodies swung back and forth like one of those pendulums that never stops. When the momentum was finally great enough, we would be able to put our other foot on one of the wooden planks and reach for the opposite rope with both hands, stopping the momentum and snapping our trapped foot free. It was a neat trick, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who’d been brave enough to do it for the first time, but by the time I was thirteen, it was a rite of passage, something that both my brother, Lester, and I did far too often. When I thought about it now, I wondered if it was possible we’d had some kind of death wish. It certainly would seem that way, but as I grew older and more reflective, I was more inclined to believe it was just the opposite. I believed we had a “life” wish, that it was only in experiencing such vicarious rebellion that we could truly know the potential of living a life without constraints or boundaries.
Maybe when Daddy had promised I’d die there one day, he’d just been speaking in metaphor after all. Maybe I didn’t believe him because I didn’t know how to hear him. The fall was just my life, the flames weren’t a literal hell but something worse, something I carried inside me, something I’d swallowed a long time ago and never been able to expel.
Goose jumped into the back of my truck, and I slid into the cab with two bottles in hand. There was a good chance I’d pass out before I even made it there, or maybe I’d run my truck off into some gully somewhere, sleep it off, wake up the next day and still be in hell. Or maybe I’d make it to the gap, maybe I’d hang off into the breach one last time, feeling possibility, feeling something. And after that … well, I wasn’t sure there would be an after that, and this knowledge did not bother me.
The truth was, I couldn’t imagine going on without Mary. She was my ledge, the one person I’d been able to grab to break the long fall.
I turned the key and the truck roared to life. Goose whined from the truck bed. I slid the gearshift into drive and started down the hill into a night lit by the fires of my past.
* * *
Backslide Gap was unchanged. All these years, it had just been sleeping, waiting for my return. The suspension bridge still held resolutely to the two sides of the gap, like a Band-Aid stretched across a wound it would never quite cover.
I ignored Goose’s whining and climbed out of the truck, leaving the keys inside. I walked on unsteady feet toward the bridge. It rocked gently, blown by the softest breeze. The light was fading, and what was left of it felt strained and empty somehow. Dusk had come again. It was always dusk here. Goose followed me, still whining, and somehow in my drunkenness I wondered at the loyalty and wisdom of dogs. He knew what was happening, and he’d be damned if he let me do it alone. I stopped and patted his head, murmuring that he was a good boy, but he couldn’t go out on the bridge with me.
He wagged his tail and whined again when I let go of him and turned to the bridge. I held the bottle of Wild Turkey in my left hand and used my right to grip the old double-braided rope that served as a guardrail on the bridge. I stepped forward into the gap and felt the bridge already trying to twist around on me. I was keenly aware of the imbalance of my body and the breeze blowing up out of the gorge. When I reached the middle of the suspension bridge, night had come, and I was as blind as Rufus. I knelt on shaky legs, put the bottle down on the wooden planks of the bridge, and stared off into the dark void.
I was afraid. Not of jumping and crushing my body against the bottom of the gap, but of falling and realizing too late that there was no bottom, that a man’s fall could last forever and redemption was just a whisper on a long forgotten wind.
I would let God decide. I let go of the rope and lay down on the wooden planks. Without holding on, any disturbance could cause me to pitch over the side and fall. I folded my hands across my chest and looked up at the stars, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
Part Two
The Nets
25
After Rufus and Ronnie baptized me in Ghost Creek, I felt numb, which I supposed was better than feeling miserable. I mostly sat in my front yard with Ronnie and drank coffee, trying hard not to think about anything, especially not Mary. After bringing me home, Rufus had made Ronnie collect all the hard stuff I had in my kitchen, and together they’d poured every bottle out onto the grass. I didn’t try to stop them.
He also told Ronnie to get my keys from the truck and give them to him. That sort of pissed me off, but Rufus didn’t care.
I was sitting in the front yard, my headache finally cleared, when he told me he’d be back to check on me in a couple of days.
“Call Mary,” he said. “You have to tell her.”
I’d already decided to do just that. Maybe some folks would have been able to get themselves together, psych themselves up, and just move forward, letting the mistakes of the past remain there. But not me. I had to call her. Not doing so would have caused me to explode.
“Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”
Rufus cocked his head in surprise. “You do?”
“Yeah. I do. Just give me a chance to figure out what I’m going to say.”
“I’ll check back in a couple of days. We need to talk.”
“About what?”
Ronnie cleared his throat and stood. “Sorry, buddy.” He walked into the house.
“What’s going on?” I asked.<
br />
“Your boy Ronnie told me you were wrapped up with something at that school.”
“And?”
“We need to talk about that.”
“You know something about the Harden School?”
“I do.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Talk.”
He nodded. “Two days. Get your shit together. Handle the thing with Mary. Then we’ll talk.”
I started to argue, but he was already walking away, toward the trees. I shook my head and turned back to face the ridge. It was a gorgeous day, cooler than it had any right to be. It should have felt good sitting outside, being sober, having a second chance. I just wasn’t sure I wanted one without Mary.
* * *
As it turned out, I never had to call her. She showed up the next day. Daphne had been by once, the night before, and I’d done my best to get rid of her. She seemed disappointed but eventually left. When Mary’s car pulled up, Ronnie was sitting with me in the yard.
“Oh shit,” he said when he saw the rental car. “Want me to leave?”
“Maybe just go in the house,” I said.
He nodded and waited long enough for her to get out of the car. “Hey, Mary,” he said, solemnly.
“Hi, Ronnie!” she chirped, obviously in good spirits. “How are you?”
“Making it,” he said, and slipped on inside, leaving me alone with Mary and the slow death I knew was about to begin.
I’d tried to convince myself not to tell her, but the secret guilt of what I’d done would only linger inside me and taint every moment we had together from now on. Only by coming clean did I have any hope of moving on, of living something like the life I’d hoped for. But would she be able to forgive and forget?
“Earl? What’s wrong?”
I stood up. I could feel my face breaking, the tears starting to fall.
She came to me, wrapping me up in her arms. God, it felt good. She was so beautiful, so perfect, and yet I’d been willing to throw away perfection for the smallest salve. I needed salvation, not a salve.
Now I had neither.
I told her about the man in my yard first. I told her about lying to his boyfriend, about the school and what I suspected was going on there. I wasn’t too proud to offer this context before I told her the rest.
She held me tightly as I talked, whispering in my ear. It felt like I was a young boy again and my mother was holding me, telling me it was going to be okay. It felt like I was young enough again to believe her. Is there any secret more potent in this world than the secret that all men seek to find the comfort of their mothers again? The comfort of their warmth and reassuring voice against a cold and viscerally aggressive world, against the evil inside their own hearts? My own mother had been so far from perfect, but she’d at least given me comfort and love. Even in my state of utter brokenness, I was thankful for that.
“There’s something else,” I said, and immediately I believed I felt Mary’s arms begin to loosen around me. She felt my betrayal already.
By the time I’d finished speaking, she’d let go of me completely. The message was clear. I was on my own now. Alone again like I’d been for so much of my life.
I looked at her, tears in my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t either.”
“Who was she?”
“Nobody. Just some woman. She hit me at a moment of weakness.”
“Your whole life is a moment of weakness, Earl. What was her name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Goddamn it, Earl. Tell me her name.”
“Daphne. I don’t know her last name. She moved in on the next ridge down. She’s been back. I turned her down.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed by that?”
“No.”
She stepped back, toward the car. “I came all this way for this? Well, maybe it was worth it. At least I know the deal now. You’re willing to throw away everything for some floozy willing to suck your dick.”
“Mary,” I said, reaching for her. The look in her eyes made me stop short.
“I would prefer you never to touch me again.”
“Mary …”
“How in the hell did you think this would go? Did you really think you could fuck some woman while I was in Nevada taking care of my family, casually mention it to me, and have me forgive you? You probably imagined we’d be having makeup sex about right now, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Of course you did. You’re Earl Marcus. The put-upon, the scarred, the abused kid who just can’t get over his daddy issues. I’ll bet you’ve already forgiven yourself, haven’t you. Probably blamed it on your daddy.”
“Mary, please.”
“Oh, goddamn it, Earl. You blew it this time. You really blew it.”
“Come inside. I’ll send Ronnie home. We can try to start over.”
“You’ve been starting over your whole life, Earl. Seems like just a few years ago you were ‘starting over.’ You were going to make a new life. You had me to help you. Now you don’t. Good luck pulling yourself out of this one with nobody.”
“Please, think this over.”
“Nothing to think about.”
“If you leave me, I’ll be nothing.”
“See, that’s what you don’t understand, Earl. I have to leave you. You’ve spent your whole life looking for somebody to save you. I don’t want to be anybody’s savior. Maybe you’ve got more in common with your father than you thought.”
“Please,” I said. “I’ll be okay if you just stay. Without you …” I shook my head. “I’m not anything. I’m a failure.”
“Once I might have argued with you,” she said. “But not anymore.”
26
Ronnie refused to let me self-medicate. There was no bourbon, and when I told him I was going to walk down the mountain and buy some, he took my wallet and threw it onto the roof of my house, and I didn’t have the energy to climb up there to retrieve it.
I went to bed, slept for six hours, and rose again to find Rufus sitting out in the yard with Ronnie. Twilight again. Eternal dusk, the light lingering, mingling with the invading dark.
Rufus nodded when he heard me coming outside. He still looked about as bad as I felt. The hollows in his face more pronounced, his lips dry and chapped red, his hair standing up in a cowlick that made me think he hadn’t showered in days.
“We need to talk, Earl.”
“About what?”
“About the Harden School.”
“Okay, but so you know, I’m off that case.”
“Since when?”
“Since all this. You do know Mary left me, don’t you?”
Rufus was silent, but I didn’t like the expression on his face. Somehow, it seemed to say he was not at all surprised. But there was more, wasn’t there? He was angry.
“You got something you want to say about that?”
“Yep,” he said. “I sure do.”
“Say it then.”
“I can’t believe it took her so damned long.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Normally I would have punched him over that, but I felt like a hollow man, devoid of energy, just skin and bones holding in hot air, no blood to boil, no muscle to fight.
“It means a woman like that shouldn’t have ever had to hold your old ass up.”
His words hurt me, but I could hardly argue with him. He was right. Somehow I’d lost my way. Or maybe I’d never found my way. It was as if after escaping the clutches of my father and his suffocating religion, I’d been lost to the wilderness of the real world. I’d believed I’d vanquished my father when I’d watched him fall to his death three years earlier, but now I saw that his legacy still haunted me, that it dogged my every step and had imprinted itself upon my very DNA. Damnation had found me, just as he’d predicted.
“Did you come just to ridicule me?” I asked.
“Nope. I came because Ronnie t
old me you’ve been looking into the Harden School. I’ve got some experience with that place.”
“I told you. I’m done with that.”
“The hell you are.” Rufus stood up. I could tell he was trying to locate me.
“I’m right here. You going to punch me?”
“Maybe.”
“Bring it on.”
Ronnie cleared his throat. “Why don’t you two boys have a beer?”
“I’d rather take a drive,” Rufus said.
“We can do that too,” Ronnie said.
“Not you. Just me and Earl.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s got for a ride. You can tell me about how much of a loser I am.”
“Nope,” Rufus muttered. “Going to tell you about how much of a loser I am.”
I hadn’t expected that. Suddenly, the mood changed. The sun seemed to lift a little bit, to return a piece of the afternoon that had been lost. The idea of Rufus making mistakes seemed to offer me some hope. He had his shit together now. He was clearly a force for good in the world. Wasn’t he?
* * *
Once in my truck, I asked him where we were headed.
“Down the mountain,” he said. “Over toward the east side of the county. There’s a farm there. It’s where I went after I left the church.”
“You never told me how you left the church,” I said.
He smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, the kind that could lift any amount of weight from the past, the kind that broke his face in half before reassembling it into something that was pure joy.
“That was a good moment for me,” he said. “A real good moment.”
“I can relate. The day I left the church is still the best moment of my life.”
“Yep.” He laughed again. “Ain’t we something. A couple of old timers reminiscing about the good old days when we stuck it to the man. I thought I was well on my way then.”
“What do you mean, well on your way?”
“Just that I had life by the balls, that I’d stood up to fucking RJ Marcus, and that meant I could stand up to anybody. But that was a mistake. You don’t never take life by the balls. It’s always got you.” He shook his head. “And the world never runs out of men like RJ Marcus. Evil men, you know?”