by Rick R. Reed
She placed her head on his chest and let it rest there for a while. The warmth and the pressure was a comfort. Jack looked to his window and saw, through the slats of the blinds, the sky turning to that shade of gray peculiar to dawn. He touched his mother’s hair, surprised at its softness. He couldn’t remember the last time she—or anyone, really—had held him like this.
He wanted to tell her. He didn’t want to tell her. For to let her know the contents of his dream and the memory they signified would be a way of bringing it to life, making it an ugly, vile third presence here in the room. He swallowed around the dryness and the lump in his throat, remembering fists coming at him. Seeing the brick pavement of the alley rising up—too fast—to meet him as he fell or was pushed to its icy surface. He could see Doc Marten boots coming at him, kicking at his face and his gut, hurting, wanting to kill.
The car, rusted, beat-up, a relic from the 1980s, had been waiting in the alley, engine idling, ghostly faces peering out the window. They’d followed him down from Capitol Hill, where they’d seen the kiss he and Beau had exchanged. They couldn’t stand that kiss. They couldn’t abide seeing the love. Not between two men.
So they followed him home, intent on stomping out, beating free, the thing in him that dared to kiss another man.
Don’t you see, he wondered to himself, that by stomping it out of me, they stomp any chance of it out of themselves. “They didn’t want to kill me,” he murmured, stroking Maisie’s hair. “They wanted to kill it.”
She nodded into his chest. She sniffled, and he knew she was crying. She shifted a bit so she could look up at him. “You were—”
“Bashed. Beat up. A victim of a hate crime.” The words were so simple, and revelation was easy. He wondered why it had taken him so long to release the fevered demons from his brain. He smiled gently down at his mother, suddenly finding himself in the role of comforter, when no one in the world needed comfort more than he did. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what happened.”
She gathered him tighter. “Oh, my sweet boy. How could they hurt you? How could anyone?”
Jack wanted to cry, but his eyes remained dry. The pain of the physical—the broken bones, the concussion—those things healed eventually, leaving scars. But the real pain was the loss of himself, the hurt and the fear that crippled him, that stole from him any chance of love.
He wanted to walk once more to the river opposite Beau’s house.
And fling himself into its dark and watery embrace.
Chapter 22: Morning Has Broken
Jack simply walked, fast, the sky lightening as he made his way down to the river. Once he got there, he stumbled down the weed and litter-choked bank to its pebbled shore.
He stood at the water’s edge, looking out at its turbulent surface. The air was still warm, but the wind had picked up, creating whitecaps on the water as it flowed, currents furling and unfurling as it made its way to the Mississippi and eventually the ocean.
Jack thought he didn’t want to live in a world as ugly as this one. He didn’t want to live in a place where others tried to hurt, maim, and kill people simply because they loved someone or something they couldn’t understand.
He noticed how the water’s surface in this dim gray light, under the cover of heavy clouds, looked almost black. It took him back to his dream, where the shadows in the alley adjacent to his building were living things, capering, waiting for someone to come along they could claim as one of their own.
And then he breathed in, breathed out, and viewed the water a different way. As an escape. More—as an embrace, an erasure. The water could take him. After a moment of cold, maybe even a moment of panic and pain, the water would claim him.
And all would be calm and serene.
The pain—gone.
The memories—gone.
The need to hide and to mourn everything he lost that night—erased in a few difficult moments as he breathed in the river water and let it fill his lungs.
All he needed to do was put one foot in front of the other, repeat, let the water rise up over his feet, his ankles, his calves.
He looked up to see a few rays of the sun, diffuse, pearl gray, slanting down through the clouds. Was it a sign? Was something bigger than Jack encouraging him? Welcoming him to a place that was free of pain and suffering?
He took a step closer to the water. A ripple of it reached up, splashed onto the rubber toe of his sneakers, then retreated, leaving a little brown and silty residue.
“Why don’t you just do it, then? Get it over with. There are lots of good reasons to walk into the water, ignore its icy cold, farther and farther until you’re too far from the shore to swim back, until maybe a strong current drags you under, putting you out of your misery once and for all.”
One of the main reasons was his mother. She would be sad, of course, devastated, because she had built her life around her boy.
And that was just the problem. He was a burden. He kept her chained down just as surely as if he were made of links of iron instead of flesh, blood, and bone. Yes, he’d lost his own life in his panic, confusion, and pain, but he’d also dragged her down with him.
In what universe was that fair? To give love—and give and give and give—only to find that nothing was reciprocated, that there was only emptiness in the wake of your giving.
If he stepped into the water, that fishy-smelling water, he could free Mom. She was falling for Beau’s dad. He could see it in their eyes. It was the first time in a long time she’d allowed herself a brief respite of joy. With Jack gone, she could follow that joy, be truly free to love someone who could love her back, who’d return her warmth, compassion, and gentleness of spirit in kind.
He took another step into the water and felt it soak the canvas of his shoes. He gasped. The water was so cold it hurt. Its iciness, even through a sock and a shoe, felt like needles greedily penetrating his skin.
A vision of his mother rose up. She was in their living room and the phone was ringing. She hurried to answer, her face innocent and young, anticipating, perhaps, a call from Niles, Beau’s dad.
But it would be the police, calling to tell her a body had been found tangled up in some branches hanging over the river.
He imagined her sinking to the couch, a fist stuffed in her mouth. Her other hand would drop the phone.
It would take a long time, he knew, for her to get over the loss. Could he do that to her? The truth was, and he knew this for sure, she would move on and be better—freer—with him absent from her life. It might take months, years even, but Niles or someone would be there to offer comfort and support, and eventually the pain would cede to memories of her son in a time before he was so damaged.
He took another step, and the water turned the bottom of his jeans black as it rose upward, hungry to claim him.
A barge appeared in the distance, parting the dark water as it moved south. Behind it was a red-and-white striped boat, pushing. Jack could see a man in its tower, just a dark silhouette against the sky.
He stepped back, close to some bushes and hopefully out of view. He allowed himself to squat down to watch the barge’s progress. He needed to be alone. As the sun rose higher, he feared less and less chance of that.
Something, a prickling at the back of his neck, an inexplicable knowing, made him turn and look around, across the road, toward the green house with its garage that he knew Beau lived above.
And Beau was there. He stood at the top of the stairs from his apartment with his pug, Ruth, on a leash. Jack knew, because of where he stood down the bank, it was unlikely Beau could see him, but the vision came at just the right time.
A great whoosh of air escaped Jack, and he plopped down on the pebbled surface of the shore, noticing for the first time all the trash around him that the river had either tossed back or that his fellow humans callously left behind—food wrappers, a used condom, a baby doll, its blonde hair blackened in parts by silt. There was even an old tire at the shore’s edge. But along wi
th these, there were pieces of driftwood, worn smooth and crafted into fantastic shapes by the water.
The barge was past, and Jack stood up again. He glanced back and saw Beau and Ruth, their backs to him, in the big front yard of the house. Beau had let Ruth off her leash, and she was bounding—well, more like waddling—after a stick he had flung for her.
The scene touched his heart.
But only for a moment.
Beau wasn’t looking this way. Now was the time to sink into the river, quick, letting it take him. He would not struggle. He would not splash. He would not make a sound.
And he knew the hurt would only be for a minute or two.
And then he would be gone.
He smiled. He felt resolved.
He felt free.
And he stepped once more into the river’s current.
Chapter 23: Ruth as Guide Dog
One thing about my girl—she’s always been an early riser. Friends told me Ruth would accommodate her routine to mine, and that by the end of puppyhood, she’d stay warm and snuggled in until I was ready to rise for the day. That’s just the way it was with dogs.
What a bill of goods I was sold!
Ruth had certainly never gotten that memo. Like an alarm clock, daylight savings time or no, she was up bright and early every morning right around four thirty. If I dared to still be sleeping, she’d sit next to the bed, those appealing brown eyes staring intently, and make a soft chuffing sound, hoarse, not quite a bark. She had the good sense to at least be gentle about waking me. But if I didn’t respond, another chuff would come, and then, after a pause, another. It was an uncomfortable truth that Ruth trained me, rather than the other way around.
Finally I would roll over and our eyes would meet. “Are you going to lie in bed all day? Don’t make me pee—or worse—on this floor. Come on, you’ve had enough. Let’s go.”
This morning was no different from the others. Except that last night did not bring me a peaceful slumber. No, I tossed and I turned, never able to get comfortable. My legs tingled, craving movement. My mind raced with thoughts of Jack and if he’d made it home okay.
I woke not only to Ruth’s hoarse goading, but to a passel of my own anxieties. I sat up and tried to give Ruth a smile, but the little man behind my eyes, the one with the ice pick, made a smile an exceedingly hard thing to muster up.
I sighed and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “Yes. Yes,” I said, prompting Ruth to get up on her four legs and waddle to the front door. She got to where her nose was almost touching its wooden surface, then turned to look at me with those eyes that could be both beseeching and accusing at the same time.
I didn’t know how she did it.
“Okay.” I let out a big sigh to let her know I wasn’t happy.
“Hey, don’t give me that,” Ruth said. “Do you see what time it is? I let you sleep.”
I glanced at my phone on the nightstand and saw it was a little after six. “Wonder of wonders,” I told her. “To what do I owe this gift?”
“I knew you were having trouble sleeping, so I cut you a break. But come on. Let’s go before I bust a kidney here.”
“Charming.” I rooted around on the floor and grabbed sweats, a T-shirt, and a pair of wool socks. I allowed myself a moment to sit down on the bed and dress. It felt weird. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been awakened by Ruth when the sun was actually up. What a difference the light made! I felt more energetic and more rested, ready to take on the day.
“Come on, stinkbug,” I urged Ruth once I was dressed and ready to head outside.
“You wanted to go somewhere?” she asked me. She had resumed lounging in her bed, head resting on her paws. She looked up at me with what I perceived as annoyance.
I shook my head. “You know you need to go out. And you did not rouse me out of a sound sleep to just go back to bed yourself. Let’s go! Hop to it!”
Ruth, as was her custom, took her own sweet time. I suppose I could learn a lot from her—about living in the moment, about living life on your own terms, about being contrary—and doing it to charming effect.
We headed outside.
Spring was truly in the air. Although the breeze was damp and had an undercurrent of chill, there was something there, a smell, a little warmth, that hadn’t been present throughout my long and snowy first winter back in Fawcettville. It was as though hope had come to town and was subtly making her presence known.
Ruth and I trotted down the stairs, she before me, as was her custom. She was the alpha in our little pack. She knew it. I knew it. And though some celebrity dog trainers might take issue with me for allowing this, I was okay with it.
What choice did I have?
Ruth did her business in short order and then looked up at me. “Wanna play?” she asked. Her stump wagged rapidly back and forth.
I smiled. “The extra sleep did you some good this morning too, didn’t it?”
In response, Ruth trotted over to a patch of grass in the distance where a big stick had fallen from a maple tree. It was always hard to suppress a laugh when she ran, which was more like a waddle combined with a hop. She had no fear of being kidnapped for the dog races.
She came back with the stick and trotted around me a couple of times, head up, not letting the stick drop.
“I thought you wanted to play.”
She stopped in her tracks and then looked up at me over the stick. She blinked. And then she dropped the stick at my feet, daring me to pick it up.
Lightning quick, I snatched it up, because I knew from past experience where this game was headed. If I showed any hesitation in bending down to reach for the stick, she’d grab it and trot away, expecting me, stupid human, to give chase. Oh, the merriment!
But I was too fast for her for once and pitched the stick a good hundred yards away. “Not a bad arm,” I whispered to myself. Ruth dashed after it.
That’s when I turned to look toward the river and saw him.
At first I almost did one of those things where you shake your head and blink your eyes, believing your vision is playing tricks on you. Seeing Jack out of the usual habitat of his bedroom was becoming increasingly common. And the fact that I still harbored feelings for the man, despite his problems, could be the reason for my seeing him—a kind of wish-fulfillment thing. Of course he wasn’t really there.
He wasn’t really wading into the river…
My heart sped up as I realized what he was doing—and this was no figment of my imagination. A semi roared by on the road, obscuring my view for a moment. I moved to the left a little to get my view of Jack back, hoping, praying that my eyes were in fact playing tricks.
But he was still there. And he was about knee-high in the water.
I gulped and found my mouth had suddenly gone completely dry. This wasn’t August. Jack wasn’t taking a leisurely dip. It was freaking cold in that water, and Jack was entering it completely clothed.
There was only one conclusion I could draw, and it crushed me. I began running toward the road and beyond, the riverbank.
Ruth followed. I stopped for just a moment, and in the loudest, firmest voice I could muster, I shouted, “No! Sit!”
I resumed running across the road. Ruth came with me. I told you she was alpha.
I scrambled down the bank, almost losing my balance, with Ruth in hot pursuit.
“Jack! Jack! No!” I cried.
He turned to look at me. I believe he was so absorbed in what he was about to do that he didn’t even hear me noisily slip-sliding down the riverbank or Ruth’s gruff barks.
In an instant, I could read three things on Jack’s face—anguish, despair, and determination. His face was also wet, and I knew it wasn’t with river water. He turned back around and slogged a couple more steps farther into the water.
“Jack, Jack! Please, let’s talk.” I was almost compelled to add “Don’t make me come in there after you” but resisted the urge. This wasn’t about me. And if need be, I would go in
after him. I realized, heart beating even faster, I would do just about anything for him. I wasn’t there for him the night whatever horror befell him, but I could be here for him today.
“Just stop,” I pleaded. I glanced down to see Ruth at the water’s edge, staring out at him.
He waded farther. He was now almost thigh-high in the water. I didn’t know how he could stand it. He could get hypothermia, I thought. That water had to be numbing his legs.
And maybe things like that were exactly what Jack had in mind.
I went in after him. The water’s first touch to my legs made me gasp and cry out. It hurt! “For the love of God, Jack, don’t do this.”
I girded myself against the icy river and forced myself to slog out to him. I grabbed his shoulder, and he peered back at me. There was something strange in his eyes, almost as though he’d gone somewhere else in his head. He looked down at the hand on his shoulder as if it were an alien thing or something he’d never seen before. He eventually turned back to the horizon and the river before him. He shrugged my hand away.
His expression worried me. It crossed my mind that he could easily and far too quickly turn and dive into the water, going down, down, down. My mind’s eye conjured up an image of still water with a few bubbles breaking the surface.
If he dove in, I knew I’d be forced to do the same. The result would be that neither of us came out of the river’s frigid embrace alive. But I couldn’t leave him here.
I said softly, “Jack. Jackson. Can we start again?” They were simple words, but the message they carried conveyed more. Missed opportunities. A willingness to be there.
For a moment I thought the words I spoke didn’t matter. I was terrified he’d continue on his relentless march toward suicide. And I felt helpless.
But he turned back to me. His expression, once confused and vacant, now had some life. I swear there was new light in his eyes. Hope? Or just the slant of the sun? He said, “Why would you want to?”
I didn’t have to think about it. I opened my heart, and the word came. “Potential.”