The Constant Heart

by Craig Nova

  “Hold the light,” I said.

  The well was about three feet across, built like a stone wall, and as I went, my father said, “I think there are some copperheads around. They like these old stones.”

  “There’s one in there,” said Sara. “Jake threw one in when we were here before.”

  “Do you think you killed it?” said my father.

  “No,” I said.

  I went down like a mountain climber in a chimney, my feet on one side, my back on the stones of the other. It wasn’t just a hole in the ground, which is bad enough under the wrong circumstances, like a grave, but it was a reminder, too, of other things, as though the deeper I went, the more obvious it was how close my father was to dying, the scheme these men had for Sara and other healthy young women, the way that knife slipped into Bo’s back, as though the entire act had been unavoidable. As I went down, the space below seemed thicker, more viscous; the dark became jelled, and worse, I thought that some dark slime could cling to my naked legs, my arms, and that it would be impossible to get off. Or would suck on me like formless but still black leeches. Is that how you felt when you had been changed from a man with neat, orderly rules to someone who, by necessity, had to exist in that world where what had to be done wasn’t what you wanted anything to do with?

  Never had the stars been so distant.

  Sara shined the light. Down below it made a fuzzy illumination in the well and at the bottom just a bright spot on the water, which got closer and closer, as though I were stepping down into some photo of a star and then when I touched the surface it shattered into curved flecks of light. The water was brackish and to find him I moved my hand around in it as though I were mixing it. I went to the bottom, which was as sandy as a beach. The water came up to my neck; it was dark and had a musty odor, and I didn’t want to put my face in, but it was the only way to reach him. He flopped over, one arm coming out and slapping against the stones. The well was filled with the sound of water that drained out of his shirt and hair. His jeans were tight-fitting, and I had to hold him so I could get my hand into the pocket. But I couldn’t reach in. The wet cloth tugged.

  Of course, I thought, at first, that I was imagining that slow, lingering, and cool touch along the side of my leg, that flow that was so much like a current and yet so entirely filled with my increasing sense of disorder. Was it possible that the darkness had been made tactile, not the lack of light, but the other matters, death and the malignant, and that the snake was here not just as a dangerous creature, but a moral reminder, a black, hose-like monster that was here to give me another lesson in what it meant to have abandoned the stars? Perhaps, just perhaps, if I didn’t move at all, if I held my breath so that even the surface of the water was still, the thing would move into the stones. Was that reasonable? Reasonable? The first hysterical contraction came at the thought.

  The thing underwater moved its entire length along my leg, turned, and came back, now between my legs, its cool slipstream against the inside of one knee.

  “What’s taking so fucking long?” said MD.

  It turned once and slid by my skin once more and then seemed to disappear in the darkness. I began to tremble with a wild hope that it had gone into the spaces between the stones.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Then let’s get a move on, for Christ’s sake,” said MD.

  “It was nothing,” I said. Nothing, down to the core of nothing is what that long, smooth sensation was, every fear, every doomed struggle.

  I pulled Bo up so that I could see better and took hold of the outside of the pocket. I reached in with the other hand, wiggling it a little to get down to the cold metal at the bottom. He rolled over again, his hand seeming to beckon, and he sunk. In my palm I had the keys and a few dimes, a couple of quarters, and a few pennies. They tumbled into the water, the silver disks twisting end over end, flashing and disappearing with a plink. I started climbing back up, the keys in my hand.

  “There’s something else,” said my father. His voice showed that the fentanyl was wearing off. He spoke like an instrument that was losing its tune.

  “No,” said MD. “There’s nothing else.”

  “What else could there be?” I said.

  “Jake,” said my father. “Every duty has its parts.” He kneeled down next to me. The water dripped as I looked down, the drops like mercury in the beam of the flashlight that cut across the top of the well. “You know, we’ve forgotten something.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I was reading someplace the other day about Argentina. Down there they were throwing people out of helicopters into the ocean. And you know what they did? They slit the bellies of the people they were throwing into the water to make sure they wouldn’t float later, when, you know, the . . . gases . . . ”

  “What kind of mind have you got?” said MD. “Jesus.”

  “He’s right,” said Scott.

  “I don’t understand,” said Sara.

  “He could float up to the surface,” I said. “We don’t want someone coming up here and looking in the well and seeing . . . ”

  “Maybe we could use stones,” said MD. “Weight him down.”

  “And how are we going to tie them on?” I said.

  “Shit, I don’t know,” said MD.

  “You can’t tie them on,” said Scott.

  I sat on the lip of the well, the drops forming on my feet and then, like a mechanism for keeping time, they fell, disappearing in the dark and announcing themselves with a distant silvery plick.

  “Who’s got a knife?” I said.

  “Ah, Jesus,” said MD.

  “Here,” said Scott.

  He reached into his pocket and took out a jackknife with a bone handle.

  “Hold the light,” I said.

  My father put his hand on mine. It was cold but the lingering touch was all that kept me from panic. And panic, of course, is that odd sensation when the fear on the outside collides with the fear that seems to come from the center of one’s self. The ultimate in giving up.

  The rest of them stood back from the well. My father took the light and shined it along the wall of stones. They reminded me of the construction of a farmhouse cellar. No mortar or anything, just the stones, the layers of them going around and around. The water rose in a silvery splash as I reached into it and took hold of the shirt.

  I hoped that the knife was sharp. That, at least, would help. But nothing about MD would be done that way, and as I touched my thumb to the dull edge, the snake appeared over Bo’s shoulder, perfectly illuminated, eyes on mine. It had come for the utter dark and was there to remind me that while I thought I had gotten away from this, I still had the worst part to do. The snake’s head was motionless, eyes touched by light from up above, its glance interrogatory, curious, intense. It left me with that sense of being alone, of being trapped at the bottom, and all the thoughts, all the ideas I had ever had, wouldn’t do me a bit of good. Here I was with a dull knife.

  I pulled Bo forward, since it seemed I could use his weight over the blade, and the sudden movement made the snake strike Bo’s neck, once, and then again, the sound as silent as a needle going into a patient’s arm. No blood. Then the snake moved to one side, a little closer to me. Now, I thought, do it now. The knife went in, but I was left with a steady, trembling motion as I tried to saw. The snake watched, as though it were taking inventory, and that I would not be forgotten, not to mention that it was thinking over what it still might do. Did the first bites mean the venom had been diminished? And was that like saying that the first moral flaw had been coming down here to begin with and that this wasn’t so bad? Then I thought, Careful, careful, if you think like that you are on the way to madness.

  Then I stepped back, to the other side, and climbed, this time not like a mountain climber in a chimney, but like someone going up a ladder, and as I went, I turned back where the snake watched, then tucked its head down, into a crack, and the entire body, one long, thi
n spring, collected in the darkness.

  I climbed back up to the top with the knife.

  “Here,” I said.

  “I don’t want it,” said Scott. “I don’t even want to touch it.”

  It hit the water with a splash, which I imagined as a crown-shaped eruption. It made a watery echo down there on the stones of the well. I pulled on my pants over my wet legs, put on my shoes, and we started again, going through the fireflies and that dusty odor.

  At the river, we burned the last of Bo’s things and had to wait until they were nothing but coals. Sara sat next to me, leaning against me from time to time, trembling. She took my hand, put her lips against me ear, the touch of them so warm and comforting as to seem like a drug. My father sat with us, too, and I gave him more fentanyl and some Sufenta, which we had been told to save for the worst. When it began to work, he rocked a little and said, “Un-huh, un-huh.” I saw the eyes of the snake in the darkness beyond the fire.

  The fire burned to nothing more than a gray-tinted crimson and I got some water in a collapsible bottle that my father had brought and poured it over the last of the coals, which turned black and cracked into a pattern like the one you see on the bottom of a dry lake.

  We put everything else, fly rods, vests, tent, sleeping bag, into the packs, although I kept the pills out. My father wanted another of the strongest. “It feels warm, Jake,” he said. “Like being in love. If you take enough.”

  AS WE WENT back down toward the road, MD said, “I’m not going to make it. I can tell.” We went on walking, stopping to rest, and even sleeping for a while. I went down to the stream and dipped up some of the black water onto my face. In the middle of the night, the jets came by, close to the landscape, lit only by the crimson disks of their engines, the color of the streaks in the dark like lines made with pink fluorescent ink on a black background. Like the sign on the top of the Palm. Or like the light in those pictures from the Hubble of shock waves and illuminated dust. We turned and went along the stream some more.

  MD and Scott kept looking backward or to the side, or at anyplace that seemed particularly impenetrable. Sometimes they just stopped and stared. Could the cops be up here? Had the pilots seen anything? We stopped, too, and listened. Every now and then a dry rustle came from the brush. Bear, coyote, wolf? They all were interested in carrion, and maybe we still carried the scent.

  THE FENTANYL, HYDROMORPHONE, Sufenta, and Oxycontin sat on the dashboard, their bottles the color of iodine, the pills inside like small pebbles. Like peas you’d shoot through a peashooter. My father woke after an hour and wanted two of each and then two more of each when the first dose didn’t work. I was half asleep when he grunted and touched Sara, who gave him three more of each. Then she leaned against me, her hair against my face, her skin having the scent of that beaver pond where she had bathed, her breath so constant, not sweet so much as exciting, as the scent that came from her underarms and from the neck of her shirt. I let it enfold me, like the most comfortable duvet, and slept against her, too. Then my father’s grunt came and we reached for the pills, the bottles of which cast long shadows, since we had slept for six or seven hours.

  Across the way, MD and Scott slept, too. It was as though something was in the air, since at one moment we found that we were all looking at each other. My father, Sara, and I stared at MD and Scott, who were awake now, too, and thinking things over.

  “Jake,” said my father. His voice was rough, as though he had been shouting, but maybe that was just because his throat was dry. He told me that this was one of the difficulties he was having: Everything got dry, even when he drank a lot of water. He guessed that meant some organ, the colon, wasn’t working anymore and that water wasn’t being absorbed the way it should.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you awake?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s not clear with these guys. What are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You’ve got to get that straight,” said my father.

  “They could say one thing and do another,” said Sara. “They’re thinking right now how to lay this thing on me.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t,” said my father.

  “Why did I ever go to that fucking Radio Shack?” said Sara. “Just think the trouble I could have saved you.”

  “You went because you needed a TV,” said my father. “Where’s the crime in that?”

  “Look at them,” said Sara. She gestured to MD and Scott. “If you think we are unsure, they are clueless. Take it from me.”

  “Yes,” said my father. “That’s probably right. And maybe it makes them dangerous. Jake. You’ve got to think.”

  “I’m a little hazy,” I said.

  “Not like me,” said my father. “Three more. One of each.”

  He swallowed them with the last of the water.

  “Takes about twenty minutes,” said my father. “That’s a long twenty minutes.”

  Sara took a handkerchief from the seat and wiped his forehead, which was very wet now, not silver so much as a sort of wet cement gray.

  “Ah, shit,” he said. “I’m not sure just money would do it. To keep their mouths shut. Sooner or later, they’d run out. And they’d say or threaten to say that you killed him, even though it was me. Then what?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. “I promise you. I’ll work on it.”

  “But what?” he said.

  Sara and I stepped into the afternoon air, which was at once gray-yellow, like cat fur, and warm, too. She ran her fingers over my beard and said, “If you are going to think, then make sure you consider the nasty things. Things you didn’t imagine possible.”

  “I’ve got a different idea about that than I used to,” I said.

  MD was scratched, the lines on his face that must have come from cane thorns looked like strings of small rubies, and his blond hair was greasy and stuck to his head. Scott’s blond hair was showing black at the roots. Sara tapped on the window and MD rolled it down.

  “We didn’t mean anything up there,” he said. “Bo was always a little high-strung. You know, he was always going to the resource room when he was in school.”

  “While he lasted,” said Scott.

  “How long was that?” said MD.

  “Eighth grade,” said Scott. “Then they let him fall through the cracks. And not a moment too soon.”

  “I guess,” said MD. “See?”

  “See what?” said Sara.

  “The guy was fucked up,” said MD. “Doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Who was holding me down?” said Sara.

  “Look,” said MD. “I’m going home. Maybe talk to a lawyer. See? Maybe you’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t try it,” said Sara.

  “We’ve got to consider our options,” said MD.

  “Maybe I’ve got a story to tell, too,” said Sara.

  “I didn’t do anything,” said MD. “I’m pure as the blowing snow.”

  “Driven snow,” said Scott.

  “Whatever,” said MD.

  The engine in his truck turned over and caught. The ATV was still up in the woods someplace, and soon, I guessed, it would look like the farm equipment, that harrow and harrow seat, up there by the well, rusted, being absorbed by the earth. MD rolled up the window, turned on the air conditioner, and pulled out of the parking lot, hitting “home” on his GPS device. Even through the closed door the voice of the device was one of an Australian woman, who sounded drunk, which I guessed was right, since in Australia they measure distances in six-packs: one six-pack down the road, two six-packs down the road.

  MY FATHER’S HANDS were cool, but not cold, although he had obviously made that sound, like the clerk in the Radio Shack, and so I didn’t have to hear that. All I had to do was hold his hands and feel them get colder. It had a time-lapse quality, as though he had a fever and the fever broke and then he had
a chill that turned into that coldness that just couldn’t be warmed, no matter how hard I tried, no matter if I held his hands in both of mine and put my face against them, too. After a while the coldness began to pull on me, to leave me with the facts: At least that cement color was gone, his skin pale now and with a bluish tint, like a shadow in the snow. As I held his hands I knew there was no way, not even to myself, to describe what it is like to hold the cold hand of a man you loved, none, aside from the sense of how large and empty the universe really is, and how you think of small things, like the way he liked to make tacos for me.

  He passed them over, in a napkin, and gave me a bottle of RedHot sauce.

  I put my arm around him and pulled him close and then just sat there, hoping that my arm and chest would warm him up, but they didn’t. Sara knocked her head against the window.

  Let those of you who think you know what grief is consider the touch of the cold hand of a man you loved.

  I rolled down the window.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” said Sara.

  “I loved him,” I said.

  “Oh, Jake, I can see why,” she said.

  I didn’t want to call an ambulance and so we drove to the nearest town, Barkerville, one of those mill towns that seems to exist in spite of itself, since mostly it was a collection of brick buildings with broken windows and brick walls covered with graffiti, like Knifer-201, The Monster’s Monster, and other things that seemed all bluff, although I wasn’t so sure. Sara covered my father’s face with the fleece blanket.

  As we got closer to Barkerville, the clutter was more intense, but somehow more dull, too, since my father wasn’t there to see it. He always said that Barkerville had that name because it was a dog, but of course, he said, right after that, “You know I’m just joking.” It didn’t seem like a joke anymore.

  At the emergency entrance of the local hospital, where two glass doors in an aluminum frame looked like they were ready to open, Sara and I got out of the car and took the fleece away and picked the bits of grass and twigs, leaves and leaf clutter off his clothes and his face and then Sara took a handkerchief out of her pocket and licked it with the tip of her tongue and cleaned those streaks of dirt and dark marks, which could have been from anything, tree bark, oil from the ATV, or just that odd dirt that seems to come from no place when you have been fishing for a few days away from a house or a road. She put the handkerchief into the water that ran from my eyes and used that, too, to scrub at some of the marks on his face, and then when he was clean, or as clean as we could make him, we went inside and told a nurse, in a starched uniform and a big hat, that there was a problem outside. The nurse looked at Sara and me, and said to a man in some green scrubs, “There’s a dead body outside. Call Jack.”