No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

That man, Zachary Wilson. Such a long fall … it would be a kind of soaring, if he’d closed his eyes. No way to live through it, so nothing to dread really. Only open space and gravity, molecules of air rushing past faster than lungs could breathe them in. Maybe he had tucked his limbs in and rolled; maybe he held his arms tight against his body and dove as if he’d meant to do this thing. Or he’d flailed and screamed as if those actions would slow his descent.

  David should go there. Should dive into the wind. Find a place with no witnesses, of course, but … he’d never fallen as far as this man had today. Why not discover how it felt?

  He shook his head. Recovery wouldn’t be worth it.

  He stared at his books and tried not to let his imagination burn pictures into his brain. What his own body would look like after a crash like that. What Zachary Wilson’s corpse looked like right now. He kneaded his jaw and sat forward, elbows on his knees.

  Stupid, stupid children, believing they would never die.

  He couldn’t simmer here in his chair all night. A man had sacrificed himself in search of a rush. Men died worse deaths, though few for more pointless reasons. David stood and left his books behind. He stepped into the backyard barefoot. No point in soaking his shoes.

  He’d sleep out here in the tent tonight, free of walls and processed air. Few things calmed him as well as rain pattering on canvas. He sat on the back steps, concrete chilling his thighs, and peered through the drizzling dusk toward the two-foot pen he’d built against the side of the house, a hexagon of stacked two-by-fours.

  The smell of wet soil filled his senses, and drops pattered in his hair, on his shoulders. Inside the pen, dandelions, hostas, ferns, and strawberry plants bobbed in the soft impact of the rain. Nothing else moved.

  “Fine, don’t come out. Wait until the rain stops, though you’ve much sturdier protection than I.”

  He knew better than to believe in any attachment on the turtle’s part. Half the time she never poked her head from where she hid. Tonight she eased into the open from under an old log he’d set in her pen years ago. She lumbered like a small dinosaur, craning her neck, blinking in the rain. David leaned forward.

  “Good evening then.”

  She pushed up from all four legs, lifting her carapace off the ground, and lurched across the grass away from him. She spotted a surfaced earthworm, and her mouth gaped open and clamped down, ferocious and not in a bit of a hurry.

  “Protein first,” David said. “Now don’t forget a strawberry. Dessert.”

  She clawed at the worm, swallowed it, and then sat there. The rain had nearly stopped, leaving a shine on her shell.

  “Shall we delve into philosophy tonight? Why we’re here, what we should be doing with our time? Or would you rather enjoy the rain?”

  For an hour or more, he watched her. She prowled the pen for a while, found a strawberry to nibble, and then wandered into the concealment of the hostas.

  “You’re no help,” he said to her retreating tail. “I don’t know your purpose either, to be frank.”

  He stayed outside until the dark was thick around him, until the rain had moved on and his bare feet had mostly dried, bits of grass sticking to them. Until he could sleep through the night and wake up in the morning trusting higher ways than his own.

  Then he went inside for his sleeping bag and pillow. He hung his slicker in the closet, changed into pajamas, and padded out into the yard still barefoot. Wet grass tickled between his toes. He unzipped the tent door and ducked inside. It had been pitched so long in the middle of the yard the grass beneath it was dying. That didn’t matter on nights like this, when rain and restlessness converged and would have kept him shut up inside, were the grass too wet to sleep on.

  He laid out his thermal bag and pillow and crawled inside. The flannel lining was soft against his feet, his arms. Exponentially nicer than the heavy coarseness of a bedroll. He closed his eyes.

  The last week of September. He might not get many more nights like this before winter, if most of October was lost to him again.

  He folded his hands on his chest, the old ceremonial melancholy tugging at him. He would die in October, more than likely. No way of knowing if it would be this one or the hundredth from this one. Maybe he’d know when it was happening. If he did, if this was the year for it, he’d call Tiana and tell her about the turtle. Tiana would find a home for the old girl, maybe even keep her. The thought pulled another smile out of him—Tiana with a pet older than she was.

  Enough. He wasn’t going to die next month and had no reason to imagine otherwise. He tried to mute his thoughts and tune his senses to the rain, imagined every drop that hit his tent and slid down into the ground around it. Drops that joined creeks that joined rivers, drops that evaporated into new clouds to fall on the earth again and again.

  TWO

  I’m sorry.”

  Tiana stood on the customer side of the counter, feet apart, shoulders pulled back. She looked as if she expected a mountain to fall on her and planned to try her best to hold it up.

  He wasn’t that menacing. Or that heavy. “Why should you be sorry?”

  “Jayde’s my friend. I vouched for her.”

  “I interviewed her,” David said. “I hired her.”

  “I hounded you into it.”

  Really? He cocked one eyebrow at her.

  “David, the first four times I brought it up, you said we didn’t need a third person and you had no intention of hiring one. Ever.”

  The one person alive whose opinion of him mattered, and she made him sound like an ogre.

  Tiana paced over the wood floor as the bell above the door jingled and a woman bustled into the store, leading a girl by each hand. Neither of them could be more than six years old, each wearing blond pigtails that curled at the ends.

  “Hello,” the woman said.

  David nodded to her. “Morning.”

  “There aren’t many children’s books in the window. How’s your selection?”

  “Oh, we just got in a ton of them.” Tiana led the woman to the first row of shelves. “These three shelves, and one more down at the end if you’re looking for anything teen.”

  “Not yet.” The woman smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Ask if you have any questions.”

  Tiana marched back to the counter and faced David again, her stance no less defensive. “This isn’t like her, really it’s not.”

  “When did you call her last?” he said.

  “About ten minutes ago.” She crossed behind the counter and snatched her phone up from its cubby, hidden from customers. “She didn’t answer my texts either.” She held the phone to her ear and waited.

  A fortysomething man entered the store, nodded to them, and walked back to shop as if he’d been here before. Had he? David should remember. He tried to place the man, the black leather jacket with Western fringe that shouldn’t be forgettable.

  “Maybe he’ll buy something this time,” Tiana said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he was in here on Friday and browsed for like an hour and then left. Remember?”

  “Right.” No. David’s hand clenched at his side, out of sight behind the counter. Normal for this time of year, but he hadn’t expected it quite yet.

  How he pitied old minds. So many experiences lost.

  Tiana’s phone burst into an Adele ringtone, and she snapped it up to her ear.

  “Where in the world are you?” She paced again, listening, then pressed a hand to her forehead. “Well, I hope you called the cops on his useless butt.”

  His shoulders tensed, and Tiana made a palm-down gesture at him that had to mean, Chill, David. He nodded.

  “What are you talking about? Jayde, that man never did a thing for you. You’ve got to stop—that’s not going to work on me, and you know it.”

  A pause, and then Tiana lowered the phone to her side and stared at him.

  “She’s not coming to work,” she said.

  “On whom is she ca
lling the cops?”

  She walked behind the counter, slid her phone into its cubby, and released a sigh. “Nobody.”

  David motioned her to one of the foot-high children’s chairs that had been left near the front. She gave a chipped laugh as she dropped into it. He stepped out from behind the counter and looked down the rows of shelves. No customers in sight. He turned back to Tiana and tipped his head. They both knew she had to tell him.

  “That loser she’s with.”

  David grabbed a second kid chair and sat next to her. “How many times, do you know?”

  She blinked at him, something she always did when he skipped to the end of her story without waiting to hear the middle. “At least two other times I know about.”

  “Does she need medical treatment?”

  “She won’t be getting any, but she’s not coming in, so …”

  An icy needle punctured his chest and sent slow coldness outward into his limbs. “And she would if she were able.”

  Tiana ducked her head and hid her face behind her hands. “She isn’t the type to call in.”

  The man in the leather jacket rounded the corner. David stood and nudged his chair against the wall. Tiana sprang up and walked away, disappearing toward the nonfiction shelves.

  David rang up the man’s books. Nicholas Sparks and Ian Rankin? Okay then. As the bell above the door announced the customer’s departure, Tiana reappeared. Her mouth pinched less, but she avoided David’s eyes. More to the story. The part she least wanted to tell.

  She would tell him, though. Silence wasn’t in her.

  She lifted her head. “Jayde always says, ‘He puts up with a lot from me too, you know.’”

  He nodded. Same old story.

  “I want to go over there and yell at her. Or drag her out of his apartment and … and keep her away from him for good.”

  “How?”

  “It wouldn’t work. Nothing I do ever works.”

  When he nodded again, she looked ready to smack him. “Tiana, you know you’re right. Otherwise you’d be over there now.”

  “She’d have to be locked in. It’s the only thing that would stop her from going back.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Could we?” The tone was sardonic, but the tilt of one eyebrow said she’d follow him to Jayde’s boyfriend’s apartment for a kidnapping team-up, if he’d lead the way.

  “I don’t lock people in,” he said.

  She rocked back on her boot heels. “Even for their own good?”

  “Even then.”

  She volunteered to man the register, the job he’d hired Jayde for. Of course he let her. He’d hole up with his inventory and continue cataloging the haul from yesterday. But after three years, organizing their growing stock required two people. Despite his original refusal, he wouldn’t have hired Jayde if he didn’t need her.

  He’d been working an hour when Tiana poked her head into the stockroom.

  “Did you see the news yesterday, about Zachary Wilson?”

  David fastened his focus to the box of books in front of him. Boxcar Children, maybe fifty of them. “The daredevil who fell.”

  “And everyone thought he was dead.”

  He shuffled the books into series order. “Not something people could be mistaken about.”

  “Except they were.”

  He marked a tally sheet on his clipboard—title, condition, location in the room for easy tracking later. “Tiana, the man fell thousands of feet.”

  “Except he didn’t.”

  “What was it, a publicity stunt? He really did have a net?”

  “He had an angel.”

  The scoffing sound bounced off the boxes surrounding him. She couldn’t possibly be … He looked up. She raised her eyebrows, pure challenge. Yes, she was serious.

  David set down the books and stood from his crouch beside the box. “He isn’t dead.”

  “An angel caught him.”

  “You believe that?”

  “How else could he be alive?”

  Good question. Tiana held her phone out to him. He took it and tapped PLAY on the news video.

  The anchorman spoke over a video of a helicopter search in the dark, then of a team on foot this morning, tromping around the bottom of the canyon lugging a rolled-up stretcher, water bottles, and more video cameras. Mist hovered around hiking boots. Sun slanted into the camera from the right. The recovery team’s pace was unhurried, but no one seemed to notice the beauty around them. Resignation.

  “Now watch this dramatic moment,” the anchorman said, “as those who went into the heart of a tragedy, hoping to bring back whatever remained of this brave young man, come face-to-face with something beyond their wildest hopes.”

  David allowed his eyes to roll. Everyone was brave these days. No one was stupid.

  “Shut up and watch,” Tiana said.

  In a cleft of the rock above the cameraman, no more than ten feet ahead, something moved. A few rocks slid down, plinked off each other. The man ducked a spray of pebbles, and the camera wobbled then steadied.

  “Watch,” Tiana whispered.

  A blond head seemed to poke out of the rock itself—obviously an illusion caused by the flat lens, but it was an effective one. Zachary Wilson stepped forward and jumped down to the ground, grinning. The camera blurred from his waist down. He was naked.

  “About time,” he said.

  Someone offscreen hollered, followed by a few bleeps from the news station. People surged into the camera’s view, circled Wilson as though he might be an angel himself, and then the camera shut off and the anchorman’s face filled the screen.

  “We’re taking you now to a live interview with Zachary Wilson, who—”

  Tiana gave a small oh pitched an octave too high.

  David cocked his head at her. “Fan?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fangirl then.”

  “Hush, the man is about to speak.”

  She tilted the phone toward her with one finger as the camera caught up with Wilson. He was sitting on the open tailgate of a black F-150 parked a few hundred yards from the edge of the canyon. The camera crew had jumped on the opportunity for drama, using an angle that set Wilson slightly off-center and included the cliff edge. He was wrapped in a coarse-looking blanket patterned in a Southwest checkering of brown and blue and yellow. His shoulders were bare.

  “You’ve been checked out by the paramedics?” said the artificially red-haired woman holding the mic for him. They were going for urgent here, no small talk for the man who’d plunged to his death yet avoided it.

  “Not a scratch.” That stupid grin again.

  “Mr. Wilson—”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Zac. Please.”

  The woman’s smile bloomed. David glanced at Tiana. “So how many fans does this guy have?”

  “Six hundred thousand followers on his social media accounts. Before this happened.”

  He’d have to process that in a minute. Something about this was wrong. Something other than the angel story.

  “Zac,” the interviewer said. “When you were first rescued, you said you were ‘caught up.’ Could you share that story for us?”

  “Well, most of it’s a blur.” The smile held mischief, but something clouded his eyes for a moment. “Literally, of course. I can tell you I was falling for a long time, and then I wasn’t. Something caught me and I sort of … bounced upward; that’s the only way I can describe it. And a voice said, ‘Not yet.’ And then I was standing on a jutting rock a few feet above the ground, sort of hidden by the canyon on all sides. And I knew I wasn’t dead, that I was safe.”

  Tiana’s hands clasped in front of her. “Wow.”

  “Wow,” the interviewer said.

  David slanted a look.

  “Shut up, David.”

  No cause for the bitter taste at the back of his throat. Over-analyzing, that’s what this was. He should stop it. But Wilson’s story was not true.

 
; “Do you know how close you were, when this happened?” the interviewer asked. “How close to … um, the end?”

  Wilson’s lip pulled. The movement was small, quick, but it wasn’t a smile. More of a sneer. Then it was rinsed away by the warmth of his laugh, which sounded as joyful as it ought to, coming from a man who had escaped death. A chill washed down David’s spine.

  “Honestly, I’m just grateful not to have hit the ground.”

  Lying. And enjoying it.

  “And do you have any explanation for your …” The interviewer blushed. “Um, state of dress when you were rescued?”

  “No, I don’t.” The regret in his face—causing such a scene, having to answer this question—it looked real.

  David could be wrong.

  But if an angel did catch you midair, it wouldn’t likely cause your clothes to vanish. Barring anyone else down in the canyon with him when he’d landed, that meant Zachary Wilson had stripped himself.

  So he was an exhibitionist. All part of this act.

  Or his clothes contradicted his story.

  “What?” Tiana said when the interview ended.

  “It’s a stunt.” There. Identified, boxed up, put away.

  “Angels rescued Peter from prison. Chains fell off, the cell door opened …”

  “You’re comparing Zachary Wilson to Simon Peter?”

  “You know what I’m saying. Have you seen the—the other video?”

  Of course there was footage of the fall.

  “I watched it once, just now, because I knew he was fine. But I never want to see it again. Here.” She took her phone, tapped the screen a few times, handed it to him again, and left the room.

  David watched.

  Wind, a tip, a moment Wilson seemed to regain his balance, and then a flailing plunge trailed by the phone-videographer’s shrill teenage scream. As he disappeared into the canyon, the phone fell too, its owner still shrieking, and then the video stopped. A professional would have been recording the moment as well, but of course this was the version that went viral.

  The fall truly didn’t appear intentional.

  David closed Tiana’s browser and went to find her, keeping one eye on the checkout counter. She was among the teen books, head down, facing the corner.