Echoes of the Fall

by Hank Early

  “No, course not.” Her hands went to the front of her blue jeans, and she ripped all the buttons on the fly open in one swift moment. The next part wasn’t so easy. She wore her blue jeans tight, and they were wet, so shrugging them off was like shedding a particularly tight skin.

  When they were finally on the floor next to her blouse, she was standing right beside Rufus’s bed.

  “You ain’t never done nothing like this, have you?”

  “No.”

  That made her smile, and he remembered thinking how he’d assumed when girls found out he wasn’t experienced, they would be put off. But not Savanna. He seemed incapable of displeasing her.

  She reached for his hand and placed it against her belly. “Touch me wherever you want.”

  He started tentatively, but she began to grow impatient with him. “That’s not the spot,” she said. “Down there.”

  He moved his hand down and found her center. Her body reacted immediately, and the way she shook and moved in time with his hand was the most wonderful thing Rufus had ever experienced.

  The rest of it happened as in a dream. She climbed onto him, and there was a kind of vicious bucking, her body riding his so fast and hard he almost stopped her because he wanted to slow down to feel her against him, to soak it all up, but it seemed she had other ideas.

  She always had other ideas, he realized later.

  44

  I waited on the wind, standing for a long time, looking directly at the ledge some seven to eight feet below me. When the wind shifted, I didn’t hesitate. I began to run, veering off with each step toward the edge. I took the last step and pushed off into the open air. For a moment the wind seemed to hold me up and I floated, poised like a wingless angel over the ravine. While I was there, I felt a cold regret snaking under my skin, rippling it with gooseflesh. And then I fell.

  There was just enough time to realize I had indeed misjudged the distance across the gorge. I stretched my body to its limits, swimming madly through the air toward the outcrop. My hands hit first, followed by elbows, and then my midsection. My legs dangled below me as I tried desperately to pull my full weight up and onto the safety of the narrow ridge. My hands and elbows were raw and I cried out with pain as I used them to hang on. With a great effort, I scuttled onto the ledge, collapsing face first and closing my eyes.

  I was exhausted and hurting. For a long time, I didn’t move.

  The sun was on my back, and then I felt it shift, and more shadows crept over the ravine. I rolled over and looked up into a dark-blue sky. A large, black cloud hung over the waterfall and appeared in no hurry to do anything but linger. I looked at my hands and elbows first. They were shredded. My palms were raw with blisterlike wounds, and three nails were broken from trying to use them to gain purchase on the rocks. My elbows weren’t much better. They were less skinned up, but my right one ached every time I straightened it. How had I misjudged the leap so badly? Was it simply an optical illusion that had fooled me? Or perhaps the wind had shifted, pushing back against momentum?

  Either way, I’d dodged a bullet. If I’d jumped even a few inches less, I’d be dead right now, crushed on the rocks below.

  Speaking of which, now that I felt steady on my feet, I looked over the ledge and saw nothing but a long fall beneath me. There wasn’t another outcropping or ledge in sight, just the two sides of the ravine, smooth and hard, and the spray of water as it spilled over the lip of the gap, boiling endlessly.

  What had I done?

  I turned my attention to the rock wall behind me. It looked more promising than the first ledge I’d been on, which wasn’t saying a lot. The first ledge had presented nothing I could grab onto or use to push my toes into for balance. On this side, there were a few fissures in the rock face, but most of them were oddly slanted, running almost vertically up toward the tree-lined bluff above me.

  After looking around a bit, I noticed another smaller outcropping about ten or twelve feet above me. If I could somehow make it up to that—

  I froze. Voices filtered into the gorge, quavering beneath the sound of the falls. I melted into the wall, pressing my body flat. I looked across the gorge to the bluff where Heath had hit me with the rock.

  Squinting against the sun and the blinding white of the water spray, I could just make out Randy Harden and Dr. Blevins. Their words were garbled, but I was pretty sure I heard Blevins say the word, “Sister.”

  Neither one of the men glanced in my direction. Instead, they peered straight down into the ravine, as if trying to read the lay of the river or to glean the location of my bones, which they clearly assumed were smashed against the rocks below.

  I didn’t move. In fact, I barely even took a breath while they stood there. As long as they believed I was dead, I held an intrinsic advantage over them. All it would take to disabuse them of that notion was a quick glance in my direction. There was nowhere for me to hide. I was a sitting duck, but so far at least, I was a duck neither of them had noticed.

  Harden said something and put a hand on Blevins’s shoulder before turning and walking away from the edge of the bluff. That left Blevins on the rock, still staring down into the abyss, where by all rights, I should have been lying dead. There was something breathtaking and profoundly strange about seeing him standing there, looking out into the deep gorge, so sure I was dead. For a second I felt like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead at once. Maybe, I allowed, I had fallen to the bottom. Maybe this was the afterlife and I’d be forced to climb among these rocks, jumping back and forth from narrow ledge to narrower ledge, trying to find my way out of this purgatory.

  Blevins looked up, and his eyes fell right on me. For a second I believed he’d seen me, but if he had, he gave no indication. Then, he turned and walked away.

  I was truly alone now. Just the ravine, the falls, and the spirits of those who’d come before me, those souls who’d found this place as a beacon to their pain, or perhaps their escape from it. Or maybe, for some of them, it had been the place they made a new start. Endings and beginnings were always tied together intrinsically, like two strands of rope spliced into a single cord.

  The dark clouds worried me. Rain looked inevitable, and a thunderstorm was a real possibility. I’d be exposed to the elements out here on this tiny ledge. Not to mention that a good wind could make things difficult for me.

  I needed to get moving before the storm blew in. I faced the wall, running my hands across its maddeningly smooth surface, searching for a tiny nook or fissure that would accommodate my fingers. There was nothing.

  I stepped back for a wider view. There, over to the right, I spotted an almost invisible niche in the rock. If I could reach it, I could use it to pull myself up to what looked like a small ledge about seven or eight feet above where I stood. The problem was, the niche I needed to get a hold of was a good three feet from the right side of the ledge. I was long enough to reach it, but I’d have to lean out over the gorge to do so. It I didn’t grab it properly, if my fingers slipped or the rock crumbled under my weight, I’d fall to my death.

  I pulled out my phone again and considered calling for help. The problem was anyone who came to help me would inevitably alert Harden and Blevins to the fact I’d survived the fall, jeopardizing everything I’d worked so hard for. That was part of the reason I didn’t call, but I swear there was something else too, a feeling, an urgency I found hard to put into words.

  Being inside the gorge, trapped between the two rock walls, was like being in a different world, one simultaneously less real and more real than the one I’d always known. What happened here happened on two levels, both moving me forward in the real world and somehow instructing me and readying me for my return to it.

  I was ready. I stretched as far as I could stretch, leaning sideways out over the gorge. I couldn’t quite reach the handhold. Standing on my tiptoes still wasn’t enough. I tried leaving one foot on the ground and lifting the other toward the wall, digging the toe of my boot into the rock a
nd finding just the tiniest bit of purchase. I pushed myself up, straining and reaching with everything I had. The fingers on my right hand found the small divot, and I held on for all I was worth as I continued to haul my weight upward along the rocky face. It felt almost as if I’d performed some kind of magic trick. I might have believed I was levitating if not for the way my entire body trembled, each muscle stretched to its limit.

  Sweat poured from my forehead down over my eyes, burning them. I tried to blink away the sharp sting, but it only made it worse. I closed my eyes and reached with my other hand.

  I felt nothing. The ledge I’d been heading for seemed to have disappeared.

  Worse yet, I heard the first low rumble of thunder in the distance and lightning somewhere in the direction of the school.

  45

  I was going to die.

  The realization hit me about thirty seconds after the rain started. I couldn’t see. Rain pelted my face and filled my eyes every time I tried to look up. I couldn’t find the ledge. It was up there, I was sure of it, but no matter how many times I reached for it with my free hand, I found nothing but smooth (and now wet) rock. And to top it all off, I felt my fingers slipping from the small divot.

  As the rain intensified, thunder boomed through the gorge, seemingly shaking the whole bluff. My fingers ached with the kind of pain that would have normally caused me let go instantly. But I still hung on. I had too.

  One more time, I decided, forcing my eyes open against the onslaught of hard rain. I kept them open, searching the rock wall for the ledge I’d spotted earlier. Once I had it in my sights, I understood the problem. I’d been reaching high enough, but I needed to reach farther to the right.

  With this new understanding, I swung my free arm up again, hoping to grab it and at least relieve some of the pressure on my right hand. I never found the ledge. Before I could grab it, the toe of my boot slipped down the wet rock, and the sudden shift in my weight was too much for my tired fingers.

  I let go.

  The inevitability of gravity hit me immediately. There was nothing I could do. I was going to fall.

  I was already falling.

  The only thing I had left was the ability to control how I fell. I pushed my body backward, as if doing the backstroke through water, and closed my eyes, bracing for impact.

  Or worse—the lack of impact, which would mean I’d missed the ledge.

  The impact came, this time on my side, and I rolled with it, coming to a stop on my stomach. A piece of the ledge broke, falling away into the expanse below. I watched it—my eyes finally clear from the rain now as I looked down—as it fell for a long time before landing on a rock and bouncing off into the river. It disappeared.

  I pushed myself away from the side again, toward the safety of the wall. Once there, I huddled against it, wrapping myself in a tight ball, and didn’t move for a long time.

  * * *

  The storm grew worse. Thunder rolled through the gorge, a continuous drone. Lightning decorated the dark canvas of the sky, and the sound of wood exploding from above filled my ears as trees splintered and broke. At one point, I glimpsed a tree light up with a pale fire before splitting into thick shards and falling into the river. It floated away on the fast-moving water.

  The rain soon flooded the gorge. I watched in amazement as the river spilled out onto the rocks, eventually erasing them beneath murky waves. Still, the rain continued. I forgot what it was to feel dry, to not hear water and taste it, to not shiver under its constant assault. The afternoon washed itself into oblivion.

  With the darkness came clear skies at last. It wasn’t cold, but the storm had sucked up all the day’s heat, leaving the temperature tepid enough to make me feel a chill in my wet clothes. I stripped out of all of them except my underwear and laid them out carefully on the ledge to dry.

  At some point, I drifted off to sleep, only to be jolted awake by the sound of a wildcat screaming in the night.

  It sounded as desperate as I felt, a lost soul betrayed by its very surroundings, its home, its kin. I lay there, listening for it again, hoping I’d hear its lonesome sound, because it was a comfort to know I wasn’t alone in the world. But it didn’t come. The night passed, its long hours stretching out painfully, relentlessly. I felt helpless, too tired to move, too alone to go to sleep.

  But sleep came anyway, creeping up on me like the master thief it was.

  When I heard the voices, I believed them to be a dream at first. There was laughing and murmured good cheer. Then an outburst of amazement, the boys’ voices tenuous and in awe of the night.

  I turned over, saw the glow of a flashlight from the other bluff. It drifted lazily skyward. I followed the beam, losing it among the stars.

  Sitting up, I squinted into the darkness. I could just make out two human shapes standing on the very rock I’d fallen from. They seemed engaged in some intimate conversation, but try as I might, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The tone of the conversation seemed gentle and good-natured, wild and new, and I let the sounds wash over me so I could be a teenager again, a teenager on the pulse of a forbidden moment, filtered through with a kind of innocence a person can only know once.

  Or maybe that wasn’t true. I felt it again now, at least a little piece of it.

  Eventually, one of them shone their light toward me. Not at me, but in my general direction. They seemed to be discussing something slightly above me, trying to pinpoint it with their light.

  It crossed my mind to shout at them, beg them to go get me help, but I couldn’t imagine them doing that without alerting Harden or Blevins. And once they were alerted, I might as well go ahead and take a leap from this ledge and hope for the best.

  No, I wasn’t about to call out to them. But I did slide out toward the edge of the outcropping for a better look at the place where they’d aimed the flashlight.

  It wasn’t too far above the ledge I’d been trying to reach earlier. What could it be? Some esoteric marking on the gorge wall or even a secret cave, an aperture that would lead me out of this trap at last? I had to hope it was; otherwise, what did I have left?

  One of the boys laughed again, and I turned to see their silhouettes moving closer together. They embraced, and I felt a keen sense of joy, seeing evidence for myself that whatever nefarious techniques Blevins and Harden had inflicted on the boys, they had not worked. The boys—despite all efforts to change them, to make them be who they weren’t meant to be—had been able to retain their identities. Daddy had always claimed the trick to redemption had been to be reborn, to change, but I could see now how wrong he was. Not changing—or at least not letting the world change you—was the real trick. It was more than a trick, though. It was the truth.

  I lay back down and looked at the stars, feeling a strange peace I had not felt since I was a small boy, small enough to be oblivious to the way the world pushed a man places he did not want—or need—to go.

  * * *

  The boys left and the gorge fell silent, save for the constant drone of the falls, but that was so unceasing it barely registered anymore. I thought of Mary and wondered what she was doing. Did she think of me with any regret? Was there any small part of her that wished she hadn’t acted so rashly?

  I couldn’t help but hope there was, even while realizing she owed me nothing. She’d never owed me anything but instead had simply loved me. I’d always seen her love as some sort of spectacular gift, salvation from myself, but maybe that had been the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe she’d just loved me and I’d loved her. Why was that so hard for me to accept, to understand, to believe?

  I scooted out toward the edge of the outcropping and picked up my still-wet blue jeans. I dug my phone from the pocket and pressed the home button, sure it would be dead.

  It wasn’t. The battery indicator revealed I still had five percent battery life. I checked the reception bars, saw there were two, and decided it would have to be enough.

  It was two AM, so eleven or midnight
out in Nevada, I couldn’t remember which. Either way, hopefully not too late for a call. I found her name and hovered my thumb over the call button. She could always ignore the call, right?

  My thumb dropped and the call connected. I listened as her phone rang three times and she answered.

  “Earl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s late out there. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, I don’t think I want to talk to you.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then I’m going to hang—”

  “Don’t. Please? This won’t take long.”

  She said nothing. I took that as permission. Maybe it wasn’t, but at least she was still on the line.

  “I love you,” I said. “I want you to hear that first. But I also want you to hear something else.”

  “Okay …”

  “I screwed up our relationship a long time before I slept with Daphne. That was just … I don’t know, my way of exploding the bomb I’d already set.”

  I waited for a response. There was none.

  “So, I just wanted to tell you, I understand something now. About myself. I wanted you to save me. I thought you were so perfect, so good, so … Jesus, so beautiful, that being with you would be enough to make myself better. It wasn’t, and it will never be. I think you understood that all along.” I swallowed, feeling some doubt creep in. She was being so quiet. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I think maybe I did.”

  “Why did you stay with me then?”

  “Because I loved you, Earl. I knew I couldn’t save you, but that didn’t mean I ever stopped believing you might save yourself.”

  “I’m going to do it,” I said.

  “Save yourself?”

  “Going to try.”

  “Good. I just wish you hadn’t done what you did to figure all this out.”

  “I know.”

  “Earl?”

  “What?”

  “What’s that noise?”