Echoes of the Fall

by Hank Early

  I watched as Blevins patted the boy’s shoulder and then removed his hand. The boy hesitated for just a moment and then stepped out of sight behind a large plant in the garden maze. Blevins followed him, and then I was alone, lying on the grass, the blazing sun hitting the back of my neck. I rose up slowly and looked around. Something caught my attention on the second floor. One of the boys was in the window, peering down at me. I stood, dusting my blue jeans off, and then lifted a hand to him. But there was no response. The boy was gone. The curtains were closed.

  Knowing my time was limited, I skirted the edge of the garden, and before reaching the entrance, I hoisted myself up on the stone wall and climbed over. I could hear voices as I dropped down behind a pot of large purple flowers.

  It sounded like Blevins.

  “She’s going to meet you in twenty minutes. It’s out of my hands now. Harden has stepped in.”

  There was no answer. I slipped out from behind the flowers and crept a little closer. A row of small trees separated me from Blevins now. I could see the back of his shoulders, his shiny bald pate reflecting the bright sun. I couldn’t see if he was talking to the same boy or a different one.

  “See,” Blevins said, “this is what I’m talking about.”

  “What?” the boy said, his voice a high whine.

  “What?” Blevins mocked, cruelly imitating the boy’s high pitch. “To be a man, to be straight, you have to believe it first. You can’t believe it if you keep talking like that. Talk like a man. I’ve studied this stuff. How do you think I cured myself?”

  “Okay,” the kid said.

  “Say it again. This time like you’re a man.”

  The kid said what again, this time with a gruffness that was almost comical.

  Blevins said, “Just remember. Think like a man, talk like a man, and men like women. It’s science.”

  There was no response.

  “You got it?”

  “I got it.” The reply was deep, more resonant than before. I could see Blevins’s shoulders relax. He was pleased.

  “You better get on over there.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of course you are. It’s normal. What you’re about to do is the most natural thing in the world. God designed it. God wants this for you.”

  “I heard she gets mad if you don’t …”

  “Don’t think about messing up. Just …” Blevins patted the boy’s shoulder gently. “Look, sometimes I have to get myself started by thinking about …”

  “About what?”

  “A fantasy.”

  “But, that means …”

  “Just try it. Then when you’re ready, you’ll see what you’re missing out on.”

  “Will there really be cameras?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  That was when I saw Dr. Blevins do something that truly disturbed me. He reached a hand to the boy’s face and caressed it like a lover might, his hand lingering near the boy’s ear. It took all I had to keep from charging him right then and there.

  Then the moment was over, and Blevins’s hand was back by his side. “Go,” he said. “I’ll be there with you.”

  A moment later, I saw a different boy walk past me and toward the garden exit. This boy was pudgy and thick. Not fat, not exactly. His belly was flat, but he was chunky in other places—his face, his arms, his thighs. He had ruddy cheeks and light-brown hair.

  He left the garden. I waited, staying perfectly still, listening to see what Blevins would do.

  For a second, I didn’t hear anything and I thought perhaps he was waiting me out too, that somehow he’d become aware of my presence and was biding his time to see what I’d do next. But then I heard his voice.

  “Hey,” he said. “Heath’s on his way.” I looked through the branches of the trees and saw him talking on a cell phone.

  He nodded, listening to the person on the other end. Then he said, “Where? On the big rock.”

  The person on the other end said something else, and Blevins responded with a quick, “All right, copy that.”

  He walked off, heading toward the school.

  I waited as long as I dared and then slipped out of the garden toward the lawn and the forest of trees that would lead me to the waterfall.

  40

  Two Indian Falls was more spectacular than I remembered. I arrived expecting to see someone else already waiting for Heath. I’d stayed off the path and had instead run through the trees, hoping I could get there before Heath did. It worked. I didn’t see him anywhere.

  I stayed in the cover of the woods, keeping an eye on the flat rock, where Blevins had said it would happen. I scanned the area for some type of camera but saw nothing. It was almost as if the entire conversation had been a fake, a setup to throw me off. Was it possible he’d been aware of me? I remembered the kid I’d seen in the second-floor window. Had he somehow alerted Blevins? Had he known all along I was listening to him? What if he’d directed me here on purpose? I felt a chill snake down my spine. It had a strange kind of logic to it. After all, wasn’t this the very spot where Harriet and Weston had vanished? If they wanted to get rid of me, to remove me from the trail permanently, wouldn’t this be the exact place where they’d make it happen?

  I’d almost convinced myself it was all a brilliant trap when I saw Heath emerge from the trees. He stopped about ten yards away from me and looked around, paying close attention to the flat rock poised near the falling water. He seemed perplexed, unsure as to why he was still alone. He looked around, his eyes going right past me, not even noticing my presence.

  I let out a breath and waited.

  He climbed slowly to the flat rock and stood in the middle of it. I couldn’t get over how vulnerable he looked standing there. It was almost as if he were some sacrificial goat from ancient times that had been pushed into the clearing before an angry deity.

  The only sound was the water crashing over the falls. The sky was clear and blue, streaked by a single thin V of blackbirds flying toward whatever lay across the gorge. What did lie over the gorge? Was it possible the rocky bluff on the other side led to new life, to redemption? It was hard for me, even now in my fifties, some thirty-plus years removed from my father’s teachings, to think about redemption in any terms other than the sacred. I’d grown up with redemption as a Biblical imperative, and because that imperative had ultimately lost all meaning for me, the word itself had become sort of hollow, a dead word that landed wrong against my ears. But seeing the gap, the churning water that filled it, with the possibility of escape forever foregrounding everything else these boys might experience, I was able to see the word in a new light.

  Escape had been the thing I’d always wanted, and the thing I’d finally achieved. But there had to be more than just escaping a failed system of meaning, didn’t there? That would be like attempting a jump across the gorge and falling to your death. The escape was achieved, but nothing else beyond it.

  When I’d made my jump thirty-some years ago, I’d almost fallen into the gorge, but a small ledge had saved me. That had been Arnette Lacey, the black midwife who’d taken me in. But when I’d left her, I’d fallen again. I’d found life tough and had constantly eased it with whiskey, women, even violence. I fell for a long time before deciding I needed to look for a way to stop the fall again. I faced my father. I won. I vanquished him and kept from falling over the ledge with him thanks to Mary’s outthrust hand. But again, she was just a ledge. The second she stepped away, I was falling again.

  So what was the trick? How could I get to the other side when I was already in the gorge?

  Maybe that was what redemption really was. Maybe it was learning to walk on the air, to levitate, or at least do the hard work of climbing out, hand over hand.

  * * *

  I waited for ten more minutes, just watching Heath standing there. On several different occasions, he appeared to talk to himself as he paced back and forth on the rock. I tried to read his lips, but I was too far aw
ay to have any luck.

  When I decided to leave my hiding place and make my way over to the rock, he was facing away from me, near the edge of the bluff.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Heath spun around, his mouth open in surprise. He held both hands up as if to ward me off. “What do you want?”

  “To help.” I stepped a little closer to the rock. He backed away. “Be careful. You don’t want to fall.”

  “Just stay back, okay?”

  “I’m a private investigator. My name is Earl Marcus. I’m here investigating the death of Weston Reynolds. Did you know him?”

  Heath lowered his hands a little. “Yeah. There’s only sixteen of us. Well, fifteen now. We all know each other.”

  “Mind if I come up on the rock with you?” I knew I was taking a risk because there really might be a camera, but I felt like it was worth it if I could get the kid to talk.

  “Yeah. No. Stay right there.”

  “Okay. Mind if we talk?”

  “We can talk, but don’t come any closer.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  He cocked his head to the side, the way people do when they’re trying to focus on a distant sound. He seemed to hear whatever it was he was listening for and lowered his chin, meeting my eye.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Where is who?”

  “Sister.”

  “Who?”

  He cocked his head again. Listening. That was what he had to be doing, right? What else could explain it?

  “Sister,” he said. “I don’t know her real name. People say she’s somebody’s sister, maybe Harden’s. But she’s terrible.”

  “Have you had to meet with her before?”

  He hesitated, as if unsure how much he should say.

  “It’s okay, Heath. No one is here but us.”

  “I haven’t met with her. But … but, sooner or later, everyone has to.” everyone has to.”

  “And what happens when you meet with her?”

  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was serious. “You haven’t gotten too far on the case yet, have you?”

  I had to laugh. “I suppose I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes.” What I didn’t say was I’d been slowed down by the investigation of my own life. That I sometimes had a hard time handling more than one mystery at a time.

  “They also call her Evangeline.”

  “But I thought you didn’t know her name.”

  “It’s not her real name. It’s a nickname. A handle. Evangeline, as in Evangelist.”

  “Why would people call her that?”

  “Evangelists save people. They convert them. She’s their go-to. If all else fails, they send us to her.”

  I was finally starting to understand, and the realization sickened me. It was nothing less than institutionalized rape. “You don’t have a choice?” I said, wanting to pull the words back as soon as I’d asked them, because it was dumb to ask questions you already knew the answer to.

  “They tell you there’s a choice, that it’s all aboveboard. It’s voluntary therapy, they say. They wait until you’re eighteen. If they still think you’re gay, if their therapy hasn’t worked … well, you get an appointment.”

  “What was the talk about a camera?”

  He cocked his head, yet again, squinting in concentration. “I signed some consent, saying I didn’t mind being filmed. I don’t know where the cameras are. I also don’t know where Sister is.”

  As he spoke, I’d gradually been moving closer, picking my way up the rise, rock by rock. I was nearly to the flat rock now, and I could see he was shaking.

  “What happens if you say no?”

  He looked around again, his nervousness on full display. His eyes settled on something behind me, high in the trees. I almost turned around to see what he was looking at, but then he met my eyes. “I think I’ve already said too much. It’s all legal. I signed a paper. I want to get better.”

  I did turn around then, because I was sure someone must be behind us. What else could explain his sudden change of tone?

  There was nothing behind us but trees. So what had changed?

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?” I asked. I turned but never got a good look at him. The rock in his hand was so large it blotted out the falls, the sun, the whole sky as it slammed into my field of vision and knocked me on my ass.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, standing over me, holding the rock high.

  “No,” I said, not sure what he was doing or why, but I was utterly sure what would happen if he slammed that rock down on me again. I was a goner.

  Then he cocked his head again to one side, and I realized this whole time he’d had an earpiece in his right ear. Someone had been coaching him, telling him what to say and when to pick up the rock. Suddenly I remembered the gentle way Blevins had touched his face. Except now I realized it hadn’t been his face. It had been his ear. Blevins had inserted the earpiece.

  I took advantage of the hesitation on his part and rolled away from him, toward the ledge and the long fall. He came after me, the large rock still raised over his head. He moved slowly, staggering toward the ledge, the weight of the rock throwing off his balance, his arms shaking from the effort. I began to fear he was going to fall.

  “Stop!” I said through my swollen lips.

  But he didn’t stop. He kept coming. I could hear the voice in the speaker inside his ear now, or maybe I just imagined I could. I tried to scramble to my feet, but one of my feet was closer to the ledge than I thought. I stepped into nothingness. The feeling was disorienting, scary, heart stopping. It was worse than having the floor pulled out from under you. It was like trying to stand up and realizing there had never been a floor at all. My other foot, still on the rock, slid back with the weight of the rest of me, and for an eternal second I was balanced perfectly on the edge, the tip of my right boot all that was connecting me to anything solid. The rest of me felt the fear of nothingness grip me, and then the exhilaration, the raw freedom of the fall as gravity ripped me down into the gorge and the toe of my boot scratched the rock and then lost contact.

  41

  The falling was familiar.

  In some ways, I’d been falling all my life.

  It was all I’d known, and all I’d been waiting for. It was my past and my future, and it had found perfect completion in my present predicament.

  As the sky ran away from me, I realized I would find out at last if there was a bottom, or if the fall just continued forever. Honestly, it felt like a relief.

  Instead I felt the jolt of sudden reality as unexpected as a bolt of lightning. There was shock, too. It ran up through my back and into my neck and stuck to the roof of my skull. I expected to feel water or blood or the sensation of my body smashing open against the rocks, but there was just the shock. A single jolt that was somehow more than physical.

  I wasn’t falling anymore. The sky had stopped running away. It was there, growing darker by increments. I breathed. My heart galloped. I lay on my back, and one arm, my left, was free, hanging out over the gorge. The roar of the falls was louder here, like a drumline, thudding rhythmically. I sat up and saw I was on a small outcropping, the same one I’d noticed from my first visit to the falls.

  I slid away from the edge and pressed my back against the stone bluff behind me.

  My back and neck ached, so I tested all my extremities to make sure there had been no permanent damage. Everything creaked with pain, but everything moved.

  Above me, I could hear the faint sound of voices. I couldn’t make out what they said, but I assumed they were talking about me, trying to figure out where I’d landed far below. This ledge was all but invisible without leaning out into the void and tempting fate and gravity.

  The voices eventually faded away. The only thing I was sure of was that there was one male and one female. Heath and Sister. Or was Sister even real? I remembered the earpiece Heath had been wearing. I began to
breathe faster, creeping toward hyperventilation as I realized how close I’d been to dying, how while I’d been falling it had felt like something I’d been waiting my whole life to find. The bottom.

  I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind. Why was I panicked now that I was faced with life again when the prospect of death had seemed almost calming?

  I knew the answer, didn’t I? My life was a derailed train, tipped over into an endless gorge. Death was peace. An end to the falling at last.

  I pushed myself to my feet and studied the wall. It was smooth rock, slick from the spray of the waterfall and covered in a coat of slimy green moss. No way I was climbing up that.

  I tried to keep my mind off what I feared was inevitable. If I didn’t find a way out of here, I’d be forced to call somebody to help me. Once I did that, I would be busted. Harden and Blevins could call Argent and have me arrested for trespassing.

  There had to be a better way. But each time I looked at the long fall below me and the slick, straight wall I’d have to climb to get out of there, the more despair I felt. I’d have to scale at least fifteen feet of smooth rock. That wasn’t happening. Not at fifty-three. Hell, that wasn’t happening at any age. I wasn’t even sure it was possible without some mountain-climbing gear.

  I turned around and lay flat on my belly, craning my head out into the ravine. The drop was dizzying. Two hundred feet or more, if I had to guess. I supposed it was possible for a man to survive that fall if he hit the water just right, but the chances were extremely slim.

  Unlike this side, the opposite bluff was replete with ridges and divots, overhangs and small, dark corridors that might or might not lead to bigger caves. If I could only find a way across …

  As I studied the other side, I noticed a strange phenomenon, something I’d completely missed before. As the bluff grew out of the valley, it leaned across the river, as if it were trying to reach this side, to reattach itself and clog up the waterfall, sealing the river off from the sun. The slant of the other side came to its closest point about eight to ten feet below me. If I could get a running start, I might be able to make the leap to the small ledge jutting out from the opposite bluff.