He burst into the room in a flurry. [This is a cliché he would have hated, but it literally was like a flurry with much movement and papers seeming to fly around him at all times like snowflakes. He also would have hated the shifting points of view, these constant regressions into the colloquial first-person, and that’s what he would have called them: regressions. I’m almost certain he would say I was unsure of my own authorial voice, that I was uncertain of my own narrative authority. And did I really need to intrude into the story using brackets like hugs? And did I need a hug because I lacked confidence? To which I now reply: If I sound unsure of myself, it’s because I am.] He shouted that he was tossing the syllabus because in light of recent events, it was no longer needed.
Dr. Jackson pointed at some mousy girl in the back. “Do you remember when Kennedy was shot?”
She shook her head. He asked the same of all the eighteen-year-old kids in the room and everyone shook their heads no. Finally, he came to Louise, a nontraditional student who looked old enough to be Levi’s mother. “How about you?”
She pulled a streak of her gray shoulder-length hair from her mouth. “A little. I was in kindergarten. I just remember they took everyone to the cafeteria and we all watched the television. It was a big deal.” She put the hair back in her mouth.
Dr. Jackson clapped and hopped up into the air. “Exactly. Everyone was crowded around the television. Everyone can say where they were. Everyone can remember the images—you know, Jackie climbing over the back of the convertible to pick up pieces of her dear husband’s brain.” He paused. A respectful silence. “Do you at least remember those images from the day? I know you’re a young lady, but do you remember the footage on the news of the president being shot?”
Louise lifted her eyebrows in rapt attention and nodded.
“Oh, so can I,” said Dr. Jackson. “I can remember it so vividly. The breaking news. The color video clips––blue sky, Jackie in her pink Chanel suit. The gruesome home video of the president’s head just—” he put his hands together and pulled them apart, fingers splayed.
He shook his head and looked around the room. “Except you all remember it the same way I do. It’s fake. Artificial. I didn’t even have a color television screen. They didn’t show footage of the president being shot that day. And the Zapruder film with the clearest depiction of the assassination wasn’t shown to the public until twelve years after it happened, when Geraldo Rivera showed it to the world on Goodnight America.” He bent his knees and looked around with his eyebrows up, waiting for reactions.
Levi looked around. Some people stuck their tongues in the corners of their mouths and furrowed their brows, pressing their ballpoint pens into their composition books as they doodled. Some people chewed on their pens and looked out the window. Some chewed their gum with the bored look of cows on pasture.
[This is our generation: Here we are; now entertain us.]
Dr. Jackson stood up, disappointed. “I’m lamenting here, people. No one can even tell the difference anymore between what they remember from that day and what they remember from a decade later. Isn’t that a tragedy? And now, with the constant news and the World Wide Web and all of that, it won’t take a dozen years to corrupt the collective consciousness, I’ll tell you that for free.”
No one said a thing.
“Hemingway famously said it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an airplane that burns. He also said there’s no rule about how soon one should write about it. Apropos for this week, no? So use your imagination. Imagine yourself in one of those airplanes or one of those towers. Or the Pentagon. Or a field in Pennsylvania. You have ten minutes to write as many carefully chosen words as you can on The Attacks. And make it personal. Ten minutes. Ready and—” he looked down at his watched and waited for seconds to tick off. “Go.”
[We had not been trained as writers and we had not crashed in burning planes, but Dr. Jackson paced through the aisles assuring us that we would definitely want to keep what we were writing. This would be our shield against the false memories created by the shifting landscape of media. This would ensure that we created our own consciousness instead of falling victim to the collective consciousness, thereby enabling us as writers to help create the collective consciousness rather than be manipulated by it. And five, ten, or twelve years from now—when other people finally got comfortable writing about this stuff—novelists would be writing about nothing more than news clips and iconic photographs, e.g., poignant images of men walking out of the ashes and ruffled men in suits jumping to their deaths, instead of anything they actually experienced. Or even worse, they’d all be writing about how they should have felt or what they were supposed to be feeling rather than what they actually did feel. But what we were doing, he assured us again, was our inoculation against all that. What we were doing—he stamped his foot again—was creating something that could last generations.
No one told him he told lies.
No one spoke up and said that what he proposed was inappropriate and opportunistic. Revolting and immoral. No one told him we were too far away while real people were too close. No one told him it’s a sin to create drama where there is none. It’s a sin to steal the stories of those who have earned them.
No one told him these weren’t our stories to tell.]
Levi attempted the exercise, but he had already been corrupted. He had not one original thought. As he closed his eyes and tried to think of something personal to express about what had happened, an image from some Internet news site kept obtruding. It showed the parallel lines of a building’s windows running from the top left to the bottom right of the image. The visible part of the building in the lower half of the picture was clean and light gray, but a jagged and diagonal swath of flame split the image in two, leaving the upper half of the photo a black, charred, and smoky ruin. Yet, it was not the orange flames cutting across the building or the smoke that obscured the bit of sky visible in the top right of the image that drew Levi’s attention. It was the shape of a falling man, clothes rumpled by the wind, spread against the sky, suspended in the lower left of the image and backdropped by those perfect lines that ran parallel to gravity. The only image that spoke to him personally was the photograph of someone in such deep despair that jumping remained the only option.
[Now, so many years later, that picture still haunts me, but now the man has one bootless foot covered in a green sock. His pants are unbloused, and he stays like that, weightless in front of the smoke and flames, never falling further than that single moment in time.]
•••
As Levi walked back to his apartment after class, he played the lecture over in his head. He thought of rebuttals, mouthing the words he would have said in response if he would have thought of them at the time, or if he had any courage. He walked past the cracked apartment parking lots, overflowing dumpsters, and back porches in various states of disrepair. The longer he walked, the more his anger dissipated like fog from his breathing. Why should he care anyway? The guy had a few chapbooks and a PhD. What had he ever done? It was a joke.
All of school had been something of a joke thus far, at least in terms of the challenge it presented, or rather, failed to present. Levi spent a lot of time writing, sure, but even thinking about that made him laugh when he was honest with himself. More than writing, he smoked weed and doodled in notebooks. He had probably written more random haiku than anyone in history, but so what? That didn’t exactly give him any moral authority. His righteous indignation had turned him into a phony, and he hated phonies.
After all, what in the world did Levi have to write about? He had no stories of his own, but he could fill books with the things he hadn’t done. Huge sets of World Book Encyclopedias full of stuff he hadn’t done. He hadn’t traveled the country on a wild and reckless road trip. He had never been to a bullfight, never been to the running of the bulls, never acted like a bull in a china shop, never even been to a china shop. He had never gone deep-sea fishing, had never
battled anything bigger than a Mississippi catfish, had never taken a boat or a raft all the way down the Mississippi. He had never gone mountain climbing, skiing, or big-game hunting, had never even gone deer hunting. He hadn’t, he decided, really done much of anything. He hadn’t even had the chutzpa to ask out Eris, the girl he’d been crushing on since he figured out what girls were. He’d never done a thing. Everything he had ever done that was in any way worth writing about could fit in a single red milk carton crate full of black-and-white composition books. If he stuck with his academic plans, he’d end up nothing more than a Dr. Buddy Jackson, purveyor of fine arts and bullshit.
Later, as he lay on his back devouring a book of Denis Johnson short stories, the phone rang. It was his dad again.
“Big change of plans, Son. We’re going to have a funeral service here.”
Levi sat up and dropped his book on the floor. “There? I saw on the Internet that they’re letting people fly again today.”
“Yeah, well, even so, it’s not that simple. The backlog is three days long. But the real problem is your aunt. She’s refusing to fly. She also won’t drive that far because of the blood clots. So, change of plans. Pastor Anhalt referred us to a pastor down here. We’ll do a small service so Aunt Trudy can participate, and then we’ll come home.”
“Grandpa’s already got a burial plot here next to Grandma.” Levi began pacing. This was worse than the body melting in a truck on the tarmac.
“Would you just let me finish? With all the flight delays we can’t get a solid answer on air transport. We could have the funeral home here drive him to Wisconsin, but that’s cost-prohibitive and not exactly practical under the circumstances.”
“Cost-prohibitive? Geez, Dad. Should I write that down for when I plan your funeral? God forbid you die in a different city than Mom.”
There was a long silence. Finally, his dad cleared his throat and continued in his professional, restrained, I-deal-with-scum-like-you-for-a-living voice. It was the voice that meant he was bothered. “After the service here tomorrow, we’re having him cremated. We’ll hand-carry his remains.”
“You’re cremating him?” This is not how Levi pictured things.
His dad finally raised his voice. “Would you cut me a break here, Son? Dust to dust or ashes to ashes, what difference does it make?”
“I don’t know. It all just seems—” Levi wanted to yell at his father, wanted to hang up on him, wanted to tell him this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but he didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound petulant or foolish.
“We’re doing the best we can, okay? Think we’re happy with all of this?”
The silence between them hummed.
“You know how you can help, Son? There’s a box of photos in the attic at the house. One of those big tubs. Has a gray base and blue lid. Call your sister to help you, and pick some photos of your grandfather that cover the years. Make sure there are some of him and Grandma too. We’ll set them up at the reception.”
Levi imagined the pictures on a folding table, everyone talking in hushed tones, heads slightly tilted to the side when they talked—the tilt of the head being the universal body language of sympathy, and before he knew it, he was there.
1.7 WE SURE HAVE BEEN TO A LOT OF FUNERALS TOGETHER
Levi’s parents returned with a cherry-wood urn that resembled a miniature coffin. Before the internment, they had a small memorial at Immanuel with just family and friends. Levi arrived early, and before the service, he hovered by the door of the sacristy where Uncle Thomas sat hunched over his desk. He knocked.
Uncle Thomas looked up and smiled at him. “Hi, hi,” he said softly, his voice raspy and soothing. “How’re you holding up?” He got up and came around the desk.
“I just came to say sorry for last week. Or, two weeks ago. The way I acted in your office that night,” Levi stammered. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t think—well, but, the thing is, regardless of what I think, I was rude and—”
Uncle Thomas grabbed Levi’s right hand, and put another hand on his shoulder. “No, no. Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard worse.”
Levi had read in his horoscope once that guilt was his Achilles’ heel, and too often, that was true. Despite his best attempts to break out of his shell and exhibit just a modicum of intellectual honesty, to explain that he didn’t have all the answers, his parents didn’t have all the answers, Nick didn’t have all the answers, Uncle Thomas didn’t have all the answers, the church didn’t have all the answers, and he sure couldn’t hear God giving him any answers, Levi still felt guilty for leaving Uncle Thomas’s office the way he had the night of The Attacks. He had dreaded this moment, but felt it necessary to apologize, to show some deference to the older man who had always been there for Nick, for him, a kind of surrogate father figure for both of them. The pastor’s gratuitous kindness made him want to apologize all the more. “No, but really I had no right. You didn’t say anything spiteful and I should have been more—”
Uncle Thomas squeezed his shoulder. “All is forgiven, my boy. We can talk another time if you need to, but don’t worry about it today. Okay?” Levi nodded but left frustrated because he couldn’t explain himself. As he ushered Levi out, Uncle Thomas said, “You make sure you take care of your parents today, okay?”
After the service, as they waited for everyone to arrive at the cemetery, Levi’s mind drifted through memories of his grandfather. They rose and fell, swelled and diminished like the small waves behind the wake of his grandpa’s fishing boat. He pictured him spitting over the side of the boat as they rocked by a bridge, a big bulge of tobacco in his cheek. He’d always wink and say the same thing, “Don’t tell your grandmother.” When Levi grew older and stopped in to visit between school and drama practices, his grandfather would sniff the cigarette smoke on him, and Levi would wink and say, “Don’t tell my mother.” His grandpa would smack him on the side of the head, but he would never tell. Levi felt the urge to cry, but he chewed on his lip to keep himself from breaking.
His dad stood straight with his chin held high. The wind whipped his overcoat, and the brim of his fedora fluttered, but his eyes didn’t water. Levi looked across the open grave at his brother Paul, who stood at ease and chatted in a low voice with a rarely seen great-uncle named Gilbert.
Nick stood like a stoic, nodding at Levi as if to say, “Hang in there, buddy. You can do it.”
And yet—
It was not late autumn, but most of leaves had already fallen. The maples stretched out black and skeletal against the ashen sky, which drizzled a frigid rain that soaked the cemetery turf but refused to freeze. The bluffs towered over them as colossal shadows in the mist, reminding them of the earth’s longevity and their own mortality. No day had ever been more perfectly funereal; no day had ever been more perfect for crying.
Uncle Thomas spoke a few more brief words at the grave, reminding them all of the Resurrection to come while the small contingent rocked and shivered. The men blew into their hands and the women pulled their hands into their sleeves. With great reverence, they each placed a single flower on the table next to the urn, which waited for its descent into the earth.
When the crowd left for the parking lot, everyone headed over to Immanuel’s grade school gymnasium to eat sandwiches and drink the bottled water Nick had meant for New York. Levi’s father remained by the table with the ashes and photos. Levi hung back like a voyeur. His father reached out his hand and touched the wooden box. He took a deep breath and his slumped shoulders betrayed great sadness. He pulled his fingers along the visible grain of the heavily lacquered and impossibly smooth wood, as if to determine its finite nature. He patted it and slowly turned. Levi expected to finally see tears, but his dad’s eyes weren’t even moist. He looked surprised to see Levi hovering there and he turned his mouth up slowly in a reassuring half-smile. He put his arm around Levi and walked him to the parking lot, their feet squishing in the wet grass over all those dead bodies.
; 1.8 WE JOINED IN A FIT OF YOUTH
That was it. Levi’s parents went back to work. Paul went back to DC. Elizabeth went back to juggling her fledgling catering business and her new responsibilities as a mother. Levi and Nick went back to school. Life went on with one less person in it.
With each day at school, Levi grew more claustrophobic. His restlessness only grew. But in early October, something changed. Levi and Nick sat in their living room and watched America strike back. The war entered their small apartment in the same way The Attacks had: live and in color. There was tension when the news report started, but unlike the shock and nausea brought on by the spectacle of September 11th, the night of October 7th sparked a strange satisfaction, gestating an abstract, but visceral blood lust.
The satisfaction grew into a sense of wonder and then jubilee at certain victory as the video kept streaming in. Dim and shaky footage filled the screen for several seconds before light from Tomahawk cruise missiles illuminated formidable battleships and aircraft carriers. Warplanes fired their afterburners and flew off of massive floating cities owned by the United States Navy. Mountain ridges filmed with night-vision settings exploded into a wash of emerald light before dimming again as the differing shades of green smoked and smoldered. Red, white, and blue meteors streaked across the sky in massive displays of American firepower.
Levi poured shots of Captain Morgan rum, and the two of them toasted the victims of 9/11. They toasted the brave pilots dropping their bombs. They looked up Afghanistan on the Internet to find out where it was and what it was like, and then they toasted the Special Forces troops sneaking through caves and mountain complexes. They toasted any other GI Joe who was over there to roll up those terrorist fools.
A Hard and Heavy Thing Page 6