The Heavens Rise

by Christopher Rice

  “And he will rule that the pipeline was built before 1970 and therefore if they have operating information that dates back that far, the law says they can keep pumping as much money as they want through all those poor people.”

  “I understand that. But the plaintiffs have good lawyers arguing that if the information from before 1970 is incomplete, then Hodell Gas will have to reduce the pipeline’s pressure—”

  “And Crowley will rule in favor of Hodell Gas, Marissa. He’s got a history.”

  “I’m aware that it’s a distinct possibility. But I can’t offer you a trade on this, Ben. Not right now. We’re still . . . Everything’s still transitional around here, all right? Let the Lanes get comfortable. Let me get comfortable, and then you can go back to taking all kinds of risks. But right now, this is the best I can do.”

  He bit his lip because it seemed less risky than biting his tongue. The office’s expansive window offered a view of the beautifully restored brick buildings outside. When he’d started work with the paper as a lowly summer intern, they’d been crammed into a decrepit office building in the Central Business District, on one of the last remaining floors that hadn’t yet been turned into a valet lot for the hotels on Canal Street. Now they were in a shiny new office building in the Warehouse District with a high-end spa on the first floor and a chrome water feature in the lobby that hadn’t broken once since they’d moved in. But all of it—the three new full-time copy editors, Marissa’s mahogany desk, even the professionally framed blow-up of her book cover hanging on the wall next to him, were gifts from Peter and Hilda Lane. For that matter, so was Marissa’s promotion to editor in chief, and a lot of the holdovers liked to grouse that the Lanes had vaulted Marissa over folks with more editorial experience because they were smitten by the rave review her book had received in The New York Times.

  “Any idea why the Lanes put the pilots in their sights all of a sudden?” he asked.

  “Peter Lane’s father, probably. Rivalry between the oil companies and the pilots predates this building.”

  “That’s all?”

  Marissa took a deep breath and rested her hands against the edge of her shiny new desk. Ben thought she was going to ask him to leave. Instead, she said, “Hilda Lane’s nephew’s had an application in front of NOBRA for six months. No one’s even looked at it. They think it’s ’cause he doesn’t have an in.”

  “Or they know his uncle was one of the most powerful men in Louisiana oil.”

  “If you take the story you can control it, Ben. Within limits, of course.”

  “You mean keep Anthem out of it.”

  “It’s a valid concern, considering his DUI last year. And that he wasn’t pulled from the pilot’s rotation even once because of it. If I toss this to Leo Pigeon and he turns that up, it’ll be his to roll with.”

  “Not if I get to Leo first.”

  “That’s between you and Leo.”

  “All right. Well, I appreciate the offer, but—”

  “Ben. Come on, now—”

  “Don’t give me another ultimatum. Please. I’ve honored the last one for eight years now—”

  “Ben—”

  “—I never bothered his family. I never followed him to Atlanta after Katrina. Christ, I haven’t so much as typed his name into a goddamn search engine, ’cause I’m afraid you’re gonna fire me if I do. Marshall Ferriot could be dead for all I know and—”

  “Ben!”

  His face felt so hot he suddenly wouldn’t have been surprised if his cheeks had started to blister. Even though it was a good five minutes after Marissa had first ordered him to sit down, he forced himself into an empty chair.

  His outburst had embarrassed him on a variety of levels, not the least of which was the fact that both he and Marissa knew full well why her ultimatum had been so easy for Ben to follow. Deep down, Ben knew that if he ever turned up significant evidence that Marshall had contributed to the disappearance of the Delongpres, Anthem would find out about it and murder the bastard in his hospital bed—that fact hadn’t changed in eight years. Not a fact, Ben corrected himself. A fear. Your fear. And he also couldn’t deny that once the initial burst of adolescent resourcefulness and outrage had subsided, once Katrina ripped the foundations out from under just about everything he held dear, Marshall’s long, uninterrupted sleep and the destruction of Heidi Ferriot’s life as she became his embittered, shut-in nursemaid seemed to Ben like adequate consolation prizes for having to leave the whole truth resting somewhere in the shadows off Highway 22. Especially if the cost of going deeper into those woods was losing Anthem Landry to his own rage.

  “I scared you that bad, huh?” Marissa asked.

  “I’m sorry . . . I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

  “It’s fine. I just wish I had that kind of power over the Lanes, I guess.” After a long silence, Marissa said, “Last time I checked, Marshall was in a long-term care facility in Atlanta. His mother died last year, and his condition was unchanged, so he probably won’t live much longer either.”

  “Just for the record . . . I didn’t ask. That’s not what that was about.”

  “I know you didn’t. But, Ben . . . please. The Lanes were the only offer we had. You didn’t want to work for a blog for free, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “All right, then. Go see what else you can drum up. I’m sure you’ll find something. You always do.”

  She gestured for him to leave, but once he reached the door, she called out to him.

  “Are you in love with him?” she asked.

  “Anthem? You serious?”

  She nodded.

  “Nine times out of ten, I look at him, I don’t see him. I see her.”

  Marissa nodded again as if she were considering his answer, but she’d averted her eyes. He would have preferred if she’d ask him something this personal outside the office, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have the right, not after what they’d been through together: Nikki’s disappearance, her own mother’s death, Katrina.

  “If I lose him . . . Nikki’s gone forever. That’s how it feels, at least. I don’t know. What do you think? Does that sound like love?”

  Marissa shrugged, made a show of rifling through paper she didn’t seem to be reading.

  “Besides, I only date black guys.”

  “Go.”

  “Especially if they’re related to you,” he said as he left.

  “Go!”

  • • •

  That night, the dream came back. It was Ben’s only recurring dream, and in it, he was never alone. Anthem walked beside him and the land under their bare feet was dry, cracked and uneven. As always, Ben was dimly aware that they were traversing the long-submerged bedrock of Louisiana after it had been scorched dry by a nuclear sun. The blackened, tangled trees on every horizon always seemed to be the same vast distance away, tattered fringes of shadow against a cloudless, bloodred sky. Great swirls of paper defied the laws of gravity all around them; propelling themselves through the air like waterborne bacteria. And on every piece of paper the word MISSING screamed out at the wasteland in 36-point typeface. And on every piece of paper there was a photograph of Niquette Delongpre, smiling confidently in her fleecy pullover, a pair of Mardi Gras pearls around her neck.

  And even though they were stark naked, their skin lacerated and oozing from a thousand lashes with origins unknown to him, Ben and Anthem kept walking through the swirls of desperate, pleading flyers. And with one hand held against the small of Anthem’s naked, bloody back, Ben urged them both forward through this wasteland of long-ago fire and perpetual loss. Then at some point, the papers would start turning to cinders the second they touched the scorched earth, and Ben would become aware that the man next to him was muttering something. Not just words but lyrics.

  The Texas sun beats down upon me

  Like the Devil’s smile

  I’d rather be anywhere else but here

  Was it a blinding lack of subtlety or
just a lack of style

  Responding to the ways and means of fear?

  And though it would feel to Ben like he had joined Anthem in song, he was never able to hear his own voice, just Anthem’s, raspy and muffled, as if he were singing in his sleep, his mouth half buried in a pillow.

  Take me back to New Orleans

  And drop me at my door

  ’Cause I might love you, yeah

  But I love me mooooore . . .

  Ben woke from the dream as he always did, with a sense of certainty that comforted him and the lyrics of Anthem’s favorite Cowboy Mouth song cycling through his brain. Sure, the dream was full of blood and apocalyptic set pieces, but its message was always the same comforting incantation. No matter what happened, all he and Anthem needed to be on any given day were just two boys walking, wounds and all, one foot in front of the other, the other ready to reach over and right the other should he stumble.

  The clock on the nightstand said it was 12:30. But the longer Ben stared at the glowing green numerals, the more his sense of peace departed.

  12:31. The change of minute roused him suddenly. And then he realized what had awakened him, because he heard the noise a second time: the creak of a floorboard nearby. His apartment was one half of an old town house; the warped hardwood floors were sensitive. But this noise was too close to his bed.

  He sat up, planning his next moves. First he’d pull the gun from his nightstand drawer, then he’d turn on the light. But before he could do either, a wave of darkness passed over the entire room. His first thought was that a plane had flown low over the house, but there was no way a plane could have blocked out the streetlights; everything inside the room—every shadow, every dull glare from outside—was suddenly gone. It felt as if the darkness itself had claimed him from within.

  And then it was over. And the streetlight’s tree-branch laced halo on the floor near his bed seemed preternaturally vivid, the result of having been blotted out entirely for several impossible seconds by . . . he had no idea what.

  He pulled the handgun Anthem had forced on him for his birthday one year, firing-range lessons included, from the nightstand drawer—If you’re gonna be gettin’ up in people’s faces, you’re gonna need to protect yourself, Benny—then he turned on the lamp and swung his feet to the floor, gun leveled on his yawning bathroom door. The worst part was drawing back the shower curtain, but there was nothing there except his enormous collection of body washes.

  In the living room, he found the front door locked, the lock undamaged, every piece of unopened mail exactly where he’d left it on his desk. The kitchen sink’s usual mountain of unwashed coffee cups hadn’t been disturbed, and the window just above was still locked. No impressions in his humble collection of IKEA furniture.

  His apartment was empty, the doors and windows locked, the only sound the slight, steady rattle of the AC vents overhead. But the conviction that he wasn’t alone was like a second heartbeat inside his chest. And he knew there was only one way to be rid of the feeling, and it didn’t come from inside a bottle. It came from his phone. Or at least that’s where it started.

  The app had become a punch line among almost every gay man he knew, but it was effective, and within a few seconds of settling down onto his sofa, Ben was paging through semigrainy photos of other gay men like himself, most of whom were only a few blocks away, doing exactly the same thing he was. He swiped through a few familiar faces and lots of bare chests. Camera phones had shown the world there was no end of dehumanizing poses the male form could be contorted into before a bathroom mirror.

  After a few minutes of searching, he hit on a potential target. A broad-shouldered linebacker type with the right dusting of hair on his pecs. They chatted for barely five minutes, each individual exchange barely more than a few words in length. No niceties, no flirting; nothing other than the almost split-second joining of two compatible and wildly superficial fantasies.

  A few minutes later, he’d managed a quick shower, changed his T-shirt and boxers and was standing just inside the front when there was a flash of headlights turning onto his street. He’d dimmed most of the lights so he could peer out at his visitor without being noticed. When the guy stepped under the porch light’s bright halo, Ben was relieved to see the guy matched his profile pic; the same brawn, the same five o’clock shadow.

  He’d executed his next moves countless times. Open the door, give the guy a slight smile, nothing too toothy or broad or effusive (or effeminate). Don’t say too much; who knows what turn of phrase could ruin whatever fantasy the guy had cooked up in his head about who Ben was or who he wanted Ben to pretend to be for the next twenty minutes or so? He’d offer the guy a drink, let him work his way toward the bedroom and then they’d be good to go.

  Ben was halfway through this script when he realized that something about the guy was off. He wasn’t sweating or skittery like the tweakers Ben often had to turn away. Instead he was a blend of sullen and tightly wound that set off alarm bells in Ben’s brain. Hand jammed in his jeans pockets, surveying their surroundings carefully, as if he were inventorying the room. And he was big. Anthem big. But when Ben asked him if he wanted a drink, the guy asked for a beer in a breathy, even tone of voice that didn’t have a psychotic edge to it.

  When Ben emerged from the kitchen, Corona in one hand, the guy was gone. The door to Ben’s bedroom was open. It was the only place the guy could have gone, so Ben stepped into the darkness after him. And that’s when the guy hit from behind with bone-rattling, breath-stealing force, sending Ben hurtling face-first onto the bed. The beer bottle flew from his hand and smashed to the floor. Before he could protest, the guy had driven his head into the pillow, one giant hand clamped on the back of his neck.

  “Bite it, you little faggot,” the guy growled. “Bite it!” The smoothness had left the man’s voice, replaced by a tone as precise and taut as a piano wire. But none of this was what Ben had agreed to do during their chat. He was into quick, frenzied passion, not outright violence. When he yelled, “Stop!” the guy seized the back of his neck and slammed him face-first into the headboard. A ring of fire encircled Ben’s skull, so fierce and brilliant he couldn’t tell what exact part of his head had struck wood. He tasted blood and realized he’d bitten down on his tongue. Then he felt a strange pressure in his jaw and realized some kind of gag was being shoved into his mouth.

  Mouth at Ben’s ear, the man growled, “You shut your fuckin’ mouth, you little faggot. You hear me? You shut your goddamn—” And then his grip on Ben’s neck went slack. His weight lifted off him and the breath suddenly rushed back into Ben’s lungs. The bastard hadn’t finished fastening the ball bag to the band in back, so Ben was able to spit the thing out onto the pillow. He threw himself onto his back, grabbed for the nightstand drawer and pulled out the handgun he’d never drawn on another human being before that moment.

  His attacker was now wide-eyed, slack-jawed and standing a few feet from the foot of the bed, as if he’d been drawn off of Ben by an invisible cord. But there was a dullness to his eyes, a vacantness there. Maybe it was a trick of the light streaming into the darkened bedroom from the living room, carving strange shapes on one side of the man’s face. The gun, Ben finally realized. He’s not looking at the gun. I’m pointing a gun at him and he’s not even looking at the damn thing.

  “You deserve better than this,” the man said, his voice drained of all aggression. “You are beautiful and you deserve better than this.”

  “Get out! Now!”

  “You are beautiful and you deser—”

  “Get out!”

  Ben’s scream was loud enough to wake the neighbors, and in response, the man pivoted on one heel, walked toward the doorway, grabbed the edge of the door frame in both hands and brought his own forehead into the wood with a crack that turned Ben’s stomach. Without flinching or hesitating, he did it a second time. Then a third time. Blood sprouted from his forehead, painting the bridge of his nose.

  “Get
out! Now!”

  The man turned on one heel and headed into the living room. Ben shot to his feet, gun raised and sighted on the man’s back as he headed for the front door, steps steady. Blood from the giant man’s gashed forehead dribbled into a neat trail along the hardwood floor. He left the front door open behind him so Ben moved through it, gun raised.

  His neighbor Elsa lived in the other side of the town house, which meant they shared a front porch. She was a surgical resident used to blood and long hours but she was still given pause by the sight of her tiny gay neighbor in boxers and a T-shirt, holding a shiny gun on a giant, bloody-faced man who was shuffling toward his pickup truck with the casual air of someone who’d left his cell phone inside it.

  “Give him three minutes,” Ben said, his voice shaking. “If he’s not gone in three minutes, we call the cops.”

  “Three minutes,” she responded.

  “Three minutes,” Ben repeated, only now it was a trembling whisper.

  As soon as the man slid behind the wheel of his truck, he jerked as if he had awakened from an alcoholic blackout. Split personality disorder, Ben thought. It had to be. Whatever it was, Ben didn’t give a shit. Whatever it was, it was dangerous and his skull was still singing and he’d fire at the fucker’s kneecap if he made a run at the house.

  The nearby streetlight threw enough dull light inside the truck’s cab that Ben could see that the man’s eyes were focused now, and full of wild hostility again. But there was confusion there too. And for the first time, he seemed to notice the gun in Ben’s hands. Maybe that’s because Ben was now standing only a few feet from the truck’s driver-side window, gun raised, his hands finally steady.

  With the careful enunciation of a kindergarten teacher, Ben said, “Get the fuck out of here. Right now.”

  The truck sped off, giving Ben a glimpse of the Confederate flag sticker and pissing Calvin on the rear window. Once the taillights vanished around the corner, Elsa joined him on the sidewalk, portable phone pressed to her breasts.