by David Wiltse
Kom's head began to swim and he grabbed at the hand at his throat.
Just then Becker lost his toehold and felt himself sliding toward the edge. Pain streaked through his broken leg as it dragged across the rock. "If you struggle, I can't hold you," Becker cried.
"They loved me," Kom said. "They did it for me."
Becker's belt buckle caught a flaw in the stone's surface and he was checked for a moment, then gravity prevailed and he was dragged ever closer to the edge.
"I can't hold you," Becker said. He was surprised by the calmness in his tone. Kom, too, seemed perfectly controlled, as if they were both living between the spaces of time where a second was a lifetime and there was no reason for hurry or panic.
"You're my friend," Kom said. "You can save me, John. We're friends."
Becker's arms began to buck uncontrollably from the strain of holding on.
Kom's eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back in his head.
"This is how it feels, John. Isn't it good?"
Becker released his hold on Kom as the lightning flashed once more. He saw Kom's face a last time as he began to fall into space, the eyes gleaming. More than anything, he looked triumphant.
After the lightning the darkness seemed even darker. Becker heard the first collision of flesh with rock, and then the second, a hollow, cracking sound as Kom's skull hit stone. The rest of the sounds were drowned out by the crack of thunder.
EPILOG
The searing August sun had begun to bake the land and the floods of spring were gone and forgotten. Sere cracks appeared in ground that had been under water only two months earlier, and the level of the reservoir sank, uncovering sloping sides as traced with fissures as shattered glass.
Tee and Becker stood on the bank at the spot where Tee had walked into the water a month earlier.
"I just stood there, up to my neck," Tee said, pointing as if expecting to see his footprints still there. "Just stood there, playing with my toes in the mud."
Becker shifted his weight uncomfortably. The cast on his leg made it difficult to stand in any position for very long and underneath it the skin itched. There was a constant ache in the mending bone as well, but he had come to accept that as a constant. The itching bothered him more.
"What was the point?" he asked.
"Damned if I know. I guess I had to cool off-in a lot of ways."
"Don't tell me it worked. Don't tell me I should have been practicing total immersion all these years."
"I wanted to kill her," Tee said softly, after a pause. "I almost did it."
Becker nodded, not looking at his friend. He watched the little ripples on the water. On a lake this size, the surface was never smooth. There was too much life to agitate it.
I 'You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" Tee asked.
Again Becker nodded, smiling ruefully. In the middle of the reservoir a kingfisher plunged headfirst into the water.
Tee insisted, needing absolution. "It's so close, it would be so easy to step over the line."
"Yeah," Becker said. He shifted his weight once more so that he was looking across the road and back up the hill to the precipice. From his angle the rocks on which Kom had landed were obscured.
"That was different," Tee said, following his gaze. "That wasn't voluntary,"
Becker thought of Karen's face when he found her in the bathtub after Kom had tried to kill her. He thought of her dangerous concussion, of her subsequent nightmares, of her crippling headaches.
"You were in danger," Tee continued, trying to help. "You had no choice."
Becker remembered the moment when his hand had disengaged from Kom, the brief brilliant burst of total release he had felt, as if all his pain and cares were now in the charge of gravity. He remembered Kom's last words. "Isn't it good?" It was not a question. It was a curse.
Becker looked at Tee's big, earnest face, and saw that he still wanted to believe that a temptation denied meant the battle was won. Becker decided to be a friend. He would not share. He patted Tee comfortingly on the shoulder. "Yeah, that was different," he said.
A crow swooped down onto something flattened on the road and pecked at fur.
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