The Fall Line

by Mark T Sullivan

Inez acted astonished. “Am I? I just watch, Collins. You and Page and The Wave are these ones who enjoy the doing. I am just the spectateur.”

  She pressed her hand to the headset, her eye to the lens piece. “Okay. Five, four, three, two, and Action!”

  Page soared off the top of the ice fall in a perfect T: his arms extended wide, skis pointed dead down the chute. He cleared the ice and hung in the air, eighty feet from the ground. Page swung his hands in broad circles as if he were breaststroking through water. Farrell knew the action was designed to retard forward lean, to prevent him from pitching into a swan dive. All he could think was that Page looked like he was praying.

  “Jesus, Matty!” Trent Page cried.

  It was not that Farrell wanted to watch, he was hypnotized, seduced by the sheer gall of the stunt. This was beyond flow. Page had broken through into a level of skill and daring he’d never witnessed before; the thrill seeker as a piece of art, ephemeral and unforgettable.

  On the third rotation of his arms, Page drew his hands back to his hips, brought the tips of the skis up and parallel to the slope. He made a pinpoint landing. The early morning snow popped and flashed as he controlled his speed, instantly making the correct decision to alter the pattern of his turn to the windmills Farrell had used. Page bounced and wheeled on kangaroo legs down the face of the mountain. His upper body slammed over the fall line, dancing out there on the razor. All seemed well until he reached a spot some fifty yards above the exit to the chute. There the spirit of the artist at the height of his powers seemed to spill from him the way air will a child’s inflatable toy. Page withered and slid to the bottom, where he sat very still.

  Trent Page began to run, but Inez stopped him. “He is not broken, only overwhelmed,” she said. Tears ran down her cheeks. “He comes to us in a minute.”

  Page’s father made as if to protest, then fell silent. Page stood finally. His body quivered. He poled his way toward them.

  Inez tapped Farrell on his forearm and whispered, “You hate me before he jumps. But when you watch, you love it, no?”

  Farrell’s eyelids drooped as if he were sedated. He nodded.

  “This I knew,” she said.

  As if in a trance, Farrell turned from Inez to watch Page ski to his father. He decided later that if he wore the camera on the helmet, he was sure the first thing he would have seen was Trent’s tilted, jittery posture.

  “What are you doing here, Pop?” Page said. He didn’t accept the hand his father offered.

  “Thought I’d come to see you … like the old days,” Trent said. His voice sounded like chunks of stone rubbing together. “Thought we might have a chance to talk.”

  “Nothing to talk about,” Page said. He dropped his head away from his father to insert the pole tip in the release mechanism of his binding. “From what I’ve seen lately, things haven’t changed.”

  “You’d have to come now, wouldn’t you?” Trent begged. “When she really did fall?”

  “C’mon, Pop, you can do better than that. You used to be more creative,” Page said. He pulled the pole away from the binding as if he’d decided he didn’t want to be off his skis, as if he wanted to glide away.

  Trent reached out and grasped his son’s forearm. The old man’s cheeks fluttered. “It’s the truth,” he said. “I haven’t touched her bad in two years. I don’t live with her. I haven’t been at the tables in fifteen months. I’m doing right by her. You can ask.”

  Page’s back tensed, but he did not shake off his father’s hand. He stirred snow with the other pole. “She’d lie for you.”

  “Sure she would,” Trent said. “Always protecting me, your mother. No reason for her to lie anymore, Matt. There may not be anything left to protect. I’ve … I’ve got this thing in my gut.”

  In that moment walls were erected. It became their private, sad conversation. Farrell backed away, but not before he saw all of the bluster go out of Page. Suddenly, Page looked scrawny.

  Inez stood off to one side. She knelt and drew lazy circles in the snow, observing the encounter. The tears had stopped. The muscles in her face were as slack as they had been the night outside the casino. Farrell might have mistaken the expression for pity had he not looked at her eyes; in the middle of those flacid ovals, her hazel irises were cradled by whites turned blood red. The orbs darting about the scene with menacing intent.

  Chapter 19

  FARRELL BARELY HEARD INEZ’S instructions for them all to meet in two days at the Elk Tine Motel in Jackson Hole. Watching Page leap back into his father’s life struck with the force of a forward fall at thirty-five miles an hour in a race course. He thought of his own father, felt worse, and wandered back to his room. He napped. This time he dreamed. He saw Inez on one knee in the snow again, saw her bloodshot eyes and her lazy finger in the snow. Something about the longing that pervaded her actions triggered cramps in his hamstring. He woke to grab the back of his leg, to stop the seizure, unsure why the scene had bothered him so much. He wanted to be furious with Inez, but he could not deny that she had reunited Page and his father. What about it wasn’t right?

  Farrell took a shower. He leaned against the tiles, smiling at the steam that billowed around him. He unwrapped a bar of soap and smelled it. It had a sweet, flowery odor. He closed his eyes, sniffed again, letting the thick scent of the soap mix with the saturated auto spur the unmistakable memory of jungle, the humid air of Guatemala thickened by a spicy sauce of peppercorn, clove, and mustard. The sauce did not bubble in the heat; only the irregular pattern of Cordova’s breathing stirred the night, a painful bellows noise accented by staggering sucks and blows.

  In the minutes after the jet disappeared, Farrell had become accustomed to the dim light and could make out Cordova’s form, sunk against the tree trunk, his legs splayed in a vee. Farrell feared the fat man had had a heart attack. He crawled over, put his hand on the man’s sopping wet shoulder, and whispered: “Jorge?”

  Cordova sucked again, nodding rapidly. He coughed, spit, and sucked again. “A moment! Just a moment.”

  In the distance toward the runway, they heard voices, three men calling as they approached the tree line. “We’ve got to move,” Farrell said. “There’s a bamboo thicket over there.”

  He got a hand under Cordova’s arm. The dove boy struggled to his feet and into an opening in the bamboo just large enough to conceal the two of them. Farrell prayed that whoever they were, they didn’t have dogs.

  They lay quiet on their stomachs. Farrell’s temples pounded. Cordova’s breathing gradually slowed to his regular nasal rasp. The voices never came closer. Another ten minutes, they faded.

  Now the din of the jungle at night, familiar to Farrell from his days in Africa, returned: birds shifted in their rookeries, rodents scurried through the brush, insects droned. An angry mosquito lit on Farrell’s ear to feed. He reached to brush it away and discovered the reason for its interest: what he had thought was sweat was blood dripping from a two-inch gash on the side of his head. He fished in his pocket, found a handkerchief, and pressed it to the wound.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Farrell whispered. “Thought you said this was a business.”

  “A dangerous commerce at times, my friend,” Cordova replied. Bamboo cracked as he shifted. “I’m afraid this could have happened for any number of reasons.”

  “Name three,” Farrell said, struck inexplicably with the desire to cry and pummel Cordova at the same time.

  “It won’t do any good to get angry at me,” Cordova said. “You knew the risks. Perhaps someone forgot to pay the local policia. Perhaps there is some rift between the transporters who use the strip. Or the person we were supposed to pick up had enemies. Who knows?”

  “What if they were going for us?” Farrell asked.

  Cordova snorted. “You take yourself too seriously. Who are we, Jack? Bit players. No, this was something that did not concern us. We were merely caught in the middle.”

  Cordova moved again. His ciga
rette lighter flashed, revealing the dove boy’s upper torso: his skin had paled to gray and was smeared with the green and red pastels of the jungle. His tie hung askew from a ripped collar. His lower lip was split. “You look like shit, too!” Cordova said, and he snapped the lighter shut and smoked. The red amber glowed.

  “What do we do now?” Farrell asked.

  “We sit. Seven hours or so until dawn,” Cordova said. “Then we make our way to La Gomera. You have your passport with you, yes?”

  Farrell did, but couldn’t bring himself to answer. He thought of Lena and knew he’d gone over the edge. He told himself if he lived through this, he’d get out. He hung his head between his knees and fought the sensation of having drunk far too much.

  After a long time, the tremors in his hands stopped. He slept.

  Chattering birds woke Farrell at first light. Cordova had wedged himself upright between two stands of bamboo. His lower jaw working like a bellows as he snored. An unsmoked cigarette lay on his shirt next to his tie. Bits of twig and leaf hung in his matted black hair. His eyeglasses were slightly fogged. A leech sucked on his third chin.

  Farrell crossed to him and shook him awake. Cordova waved his hands wildly in front of his face, cursing in Spanish at the mist that caked his glasses like glue. Farrell’s ankle ached. He pulled the pant leg of his suit up to find another wound and two of the grayish slugs feeding at it.

  Farrell recoiled. He ground his teeth together, forcing himself to pick at the leeches with his fingers. Cordova tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the cigarette. Farrell touched the ember to the gray slimy flesh, the flinch immediate followed by withering and a fall, one by one. Farrell pointed to the leech on Cordova’s neck, then held the cigarette to it, trying to avoid the odor of his breath.

  “We should hike,” Farrell said when he’d finished.

  Cordova nodded and they made for the airstrip.

  Farrell would remark later that he heard the animal before seeing it. The beast faltered and moaned through the second growth of vegetation at the edge of the tree line. Bushes and vines shook as it plowed through them. The horns appeared first, ears, snout, the massive neck, and after that the pale gray chest.

  The bull shook and stopped. After a moment, it stepped forward into an opening and now Farrell could see the bull’s right front hoof, which hung off the back of its shin by a shred of blood black skin, the stump of bone brilliant white against the clay.

  The bull pressed the bone into the soil, moaned only to step again, revealing the broad flank of its torso. After another agonizing step that brought him into full view, the bull bent its head to a bush and chewed.

  Farrell turned and retched. Cordova grasped a tree for support. It was the bull’s stomach that made the beast cry. It hung out the side of the bull, swollen and pink like a balloon. Gnats and flies buzzed around the wound, which oozed a frothy brown liquid. With every step through the undergrowth, twigs and thorns caught the sac, tugged at it, tore at it; the bull bawled at the torture, but did not stop its progress.

  “Do not move,” Cordova whispered. “He’s probably loco from the wounds.”

  Light rain began to fall, soothing, clean, and sweet-smelling.

  An egret flapped through the trees and landed on the bull’s back, pecking at the bugs in the sparse hair, oblivious to the misery it rode. Another egret alit on the bull’s head between the horns. The animal shut its eyes. Gray ears twitched when the bird’s beak clipped at the skull.

  The bull stepped and faltered again and lowed. Then, as if compelled by a force greater than its pain, the bull bent to a pale green bush to eat.

  “I don’t think it has the strength to do anything,” Farrell whispered, watching as the animal rolled its head left and right to rid itself of the egret.

  Cordova held him back. “You’d be surprised what kind of stamina an animal has, even one suffering like that.”

  They stood still and silent while the bull continued on. It came to some water running into the forest from the pasture and it pressed its blown-off front hoof down into the moisture. The bull extended its tongue, curling its lips to the coolness.

  Twenty minutes elapsed before the bull disappeared. The rain came steadier and soaked Farrell and Cordova. Finally, Cordova signaled that they should move. As they skirted the opening through which the bull had passed, Cordova picked leaves off the bush the animal had fed on.

  “Eat these,” Cordova said. “They will dull your appetite and give you energy for the long walk to La Gomera.”

  Farrell rolled the teardrop-shaped leaves in his hand. “Wild tea or something?”

  Cordova snorted and cocked his head toward Farrell. “You amaze me, my friend,” he said. “The bull may be many things, but he is not stupid. That’s cocoa.”

  They waded slowly into the high grass, examining the far tree line for movement. Farrell raised his face to the rain. He wiped his cheeks and forehead with the forearm of his shirt, which came away further soiled with grit and blood. Cattle milled about, eyeing them nervously. Here and there were the prone forms of dead animals. As they grazed, the living steers and cows gave the corpses wide berth.

  Farrell’s torn black dress loafers made a squishing noise when he stepped out onto the tarmac in the pouring rain. He still studied the far hardwoods where the ambush had been launched. He shivered even though the rain was warm. “This place gives me the creeps,” Farrell said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Cordova tore at the buttons of his shirt until it was open to the waist. He waddled down the runway quick and stealthy-like.

  “Why do you always call Gabriel Mr. Cortez?” Farrell asked while they walked. “You’ve known him since he was a child.”

  “He is my oldest friend,” Cordova said. “But he is still my patron. He and his father saved me from living in that village my whole life. I owe him my respect. It is nothing more than that.”

  Cordova put his hand across Farrell’s chest. He pivoted to look up toward the clouds which hung over the forest. Farrell heard it, too—the hum of an approaching plane.

  “Su madre!” Cordova swore, and for the second time in less than fifteen hours, the dove boy was sprinting again.

  Only this time Farrell could see the patterns in the grass. He surged by Cordova, reaching the trees while the fat man was still halfway across the meadow. Cordova collapsed next to Farrell in the waist-high bushes, gagging, spewing, and coughing.

  “It’s gonna kill me, I have to do that one more time,” he panted.

  A navy blue corporate jet, slightly larger than the one in which they had ridden the night before, broke through the cloud cover at the far end of the opening in the jungle toward the road to La Gomera. It skimmed over the runway before touchdown, spraying a wake behind it.

  The jet turned and taxied toward them. The rumbling of the engines scattered the egrets. Cattle loped south. The jet stopped and the door opened. Two men in white short-sleeved shirts and straw hats climbed out. Each of them held guns. Behind them a third man, dressed in gray slacks and an embroidered smock shirt, emerged. Gabriel followed him.

  Cordova smiled. “I knew he would not abandon us.”

  Farrell and Cordova stepped from the tree line. The two men in the straw hats knelt, their guns trained on them. Gabriel said something quick in Spanish. The third man waved his hand. The weapons were lowered.

  “Your accommodations were to your liking, I see,” Gabriel called as they waded to him through the grass. “The food gourmet, Jorge?”

  Cordova grunted. Farrell didn’t reply.

  “The pilot got the wrong strip,” Gabriel said. “You landed in the middle of a scheduled pickup and the locals knew the jet was wrong. They decided to let you know they didn’t appreciate your presence.”

  “Lucky you weren’t killed,” said the third man. “I’m sorry this had to happen.”

  He extended his hand to Farrell.

  “Señor Farrell, my name is De La Leon, Fernando De La Leon.”


  Farrell took his hand. Farrell’s grip was limp.

  “Let’s get you on the plane and on to our destination,” Gabriel said, grimacing in the downpour.

  There was no reluctance on Cordova’s part. He grabbed the railing to the gangway and was climbing the stairs when the words were barely out of Gabriel’s mouth.

  Farrell turned at the bottom of the stairs and looked out toward the jungle. The bull stood away from the herd. Its head was down. Two egrets perched on its back, pecking.

  “Give me your gun a moment,” Farrell said to one of the guards, who hesitated until De La Leone extended his fingers. The gun was surprisingly small and light in Farrell’s hands; he’d hunted as a boy, but this was a war weapon: different, somehow deadlier.

  “The safety?” Farrell asked. The guard showed him a lever above the trigger guard.

  Farrell crossed back into the tall grass toward the bull. When he got within fifty yards, it raised its head and bawled a weak bawl. Blood ran from its nose and Farrell saw it was near death. The bull saw Farrell and took two halting steps in his direction before Farrell raised the gun, aimed, and shot the animal between the eyes.

  It buckled forward onto its knees. The jaw hit the ground first. Then the animal rolled over into the deep grass, the pink balloon of its belly deflated and plastered into the gray hair. The egret flapped away, squawking. Numb, Farrell walked back to the runway where Gabriel, Cordova, De La Leone, and the jet waited.

  Farrell shut off the shower, recalling how filthy he’d felt on the ride into Colombia. Gabriel had tried to cheer him, but he’d sat by himself. He tried to see his wife in his mind, couldn’t, and he realized he didn’t even know himself anymore. He tried to figure out what he’d have to do to extricate himself. A plan wouldn’t come on the soaring ride south to Colombia with those dangerous men. He did the next best thing—he drank.

  Farrell dried himself off and dressed. He thought about drinking again, but decided it was the last thing he needed. He sat on the bed, looking at his wife’s diary. He opened it, wondering if he had the guts to read how she managed to get out of her own jungle. Farrell steeled himself.