by Ray Cluley
“You have the same inclination.”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t real to them until you.”
Bobby did not play the gay scene. He went to the clubs, made a lot of friends, but resisted the casual sex with a strength Terrence only had because he’d been there and done that. Terrence used to worry they’d met too soon upon Bobby’s arrival. Taking him to Castro, fresh from the ferry, he’d thought that Bobby would want to experiment, live a little, like he had at Bobby’s age. But Bobby didn’t want to live a little. Falling hook, line and sinker for Terrence, Bobby had written him a copy of Gunn’s “Tamer and Hawk” to prove as much, sticking it on the fridge with an alphabet letter the morning after they’d sealed their love (omitting the final stanza, Terrence learnt later). Not long after, Bobby had moved in.
His family did not approve.
Terrence scooped noodles to his mouth, then speared a prawn for Bobby.
“So they don’t mind that I’m just a lowly fisherman?”
“Nah, Christ was a fisherman so they’re good with that. Your lack of religion, though . . .” Bobby tut-tut-tutted.
Terrence had grinned, chewing his food. “Means you’re the only one going to Hell.”
Looking up at the bridge, buffeted by a chill wind and rocked in the chop of an irritable sea, Terrence hoped there was no such place, but he knew there was because he was in it most days. Those gathering at the prow only proved it. Laura, Matt, and now the shin-splintered Lee holding himself up by the gunwales; Terrence had pulled all of them from the water over the last year, pulled others out after, and none of them would leave him alone.
The three stood, as best as they could, looking out at the bridge they had jumped from.
The Golden Gate Bridge was once the world’s longest suspension bridge and was declared a modern wonder. With the exception of London’s Tower Bridge, it was the most-photographed bridge in the world. It was also the world’s most popular suicide spot. “From the golden gates to the pearly ones,” Bobby had joked once, back before his own dive from its heights. “People come from all over to do it. A permanent solution to their temporary problems.”
Statistics varied. One jumped every two weeks or thirty jumped per year, and Terrence had read somewhere else that every month saw as many as five people drop to their deaths. The only thing that didn’t vary was the fact that from that height, three hundred feet or so, hitting the water was like hitting concrete. Some survived, but not many. And usually not for long.
Terrence only ever found the dead ones.
Except Bobby.
S
“You should write something that’s more you.”
Bobby was struggling with a new poem. A new poem about one of Thom Gunn’s poems.
“Like ‘Fisherman’, you mean?” He screwed up the piece of paper he’d been scratching away at and threw it behind him. It landed nowhere near the trash can, rolling to a stop among brothers of balled up paper sitting in crumpled crowds around the lamp stand.
“Fisherman” had been a flop, according to Bobby, which only meant his buddies at the open mic didn’t like it. They didn’t like it because it offered them no familiar landmark to comment on, no reference to another poet with which to expound their knowledge, display their intellect like birds spreading feathers to attract a mate. They’d loved “In Praise of Our City” because of how it played with Gunn’s poem, personifying the city into the masculine without losing any of the eroticism and altering the sense of entrapment. “Fisherman,” on the other hand, had been all Bobby and it was beautiful. Perhaps it was too personal for critical appreciation, but Bobby had told him poetry was all about sound, and “Fisherman” had turned his words into music.
Terrence loved it.
It would be useless to say as much with Bobby in one of his moods so he only watched as Bobby mouthed words quietly to himself, testing their shape and texture, tasting them without quite swallowing like an expert judging wine.
“Which one are you using this time?” he asked eventually. He knew it would be another Gunn.
“‘On the Move’,” said Bobby, confirming it. “Problem is it isn’t going anywhere.”
Terrence laughed. Bobby scowled, deciding whether to be hurt or not, then leaned back in his chair and laughed with him.
“Let’s go out for some dinner,” Terrence suggested when the laughter subsided.
Bobby’s laugh became a smile which became an apology. “I can’t. I need something for tomorrow night.”
He reached for the book in his pocket, a collected volume of poems that was always there, though surely he knew it by heart. Terrence said that he carried the book like it was both his shield and his sword at once, something to hide behind while making his own poetic jabs. Bobby’s eyes had glittered with a smile, and then he’d sulked, claiming later after some make-up sex that he’d been jealous. “You’re poetic without even trying,” he’d explained. Then he stole the line for “Night Fishing.”
“Night Fishing” was Bobby’s poem about the gay scene, his family, his poetry. It was about how hard he found it to fit in; about how he’d looked for lovers and failed; about the hooks his family had in him; about how he’d deliver his rhyming lines fishing for compliments, hoping for applause that was more than polite, and getting it only if he stole from someone else. He was Gunn’s wayward bullet (a metaphor Terrence had never liked), casting his lines blindly in the dark.
“I want to go out,” Terrence said.
“Okay.”
For a moment Terrence thought he’d agreed but realized quickly he’d only offered permission, already lost in bastardized rhythm and rhyme.
Terrence went out, with no idea where he was going.
S
His ghastly crew pointed as one. Nine of them now had been drawn to the boat, stretching their arms as best they could to direct his gaze, gargling salt water and their own frothed mucus to get his attention.
Not a bag this time.
He gunned the engine just enough to turn, then cut it, drifting to where the woman rose and fell with the tide beneath the bridge. As he neared, the dead he carried with him left one by one. Some disappeared into moonlight. Others wavered like reflections on water and were gone. One or two threw themselves overboard, replaying their own end. They were gone before any splash could mark their absence.
Terrence was left with the woman in the water, the skirts of her dress billowing around her like a lily pad, she the grotesque flower. Her stomach was large and round, and he felt his usual horror that she might have been pregnant, but it would be gas. He hoped it was gas. It built up in the intestines, bringing a body to the surface after about two weeks. He’d come to know a lot about it. He knew her skin would be puckered like a washerwoman’s hands. Her eyes would be missing and the softest of her flesh eaten away, but otherwise she’d be remarkably well preserved thanks to the temperature of the water. Bones would be broken from the impact. Sometimes the impact didn’t kill a person, though, and they’d drown. Their violent attempts to breathe would whip the water and mucus in their lungs to a foamy froth, tinged with blood from ruptured vessels. Sometimes the sudden shock of impact and cold gave them a heart attack. Sometimes, paralyzed, they lived long enough to die from hypothermia. If they managed to do it at night, with no one watching.
This one was mottled and bloated, grinning a lipless smile at the bridge above them. In the shadows of its structure her teeth shone bright in a grimace of bitter triumph.
Terrence radioed it in.
There was the usual poor joke about his alibi but they let him haul her out of the water. They knew him well enough now.
He hooked her under the right arm and dragged her close, then leaned over to grab a handful of sodden dress, polka-dotted and clammy as flannel. She was Japanese, or Vietnamese, or Asian anyway. It was hard to tell now. It made him think of Aokig
ahara. With a grunt of effort he hauled her up over the gunwales. There was a wet ripping and a button flew free, ricocheting with a sharp ping! off something behind him, and the dead woman toppled to the deck with a heavy soft sound that was only partly water.
He didn’t want to look at her, but he did.
She lay with her broken legs splayed open at unnatural angles, a gesture all the more obscene for the exposure of her breasts. What were once her breasts. They’d maybe suckled a child at some point, perhaps pleased a number of lovers, but most recently only fish had nuzzled there. If you were imaginative, it was where Death had laid his lingering kisses.
Terrence bent to pull the torn dress closed over them.
A plastic envelope, the kind designed to protect papers in a binder, was folded over and taped to her waist, Scotch tape looped around her body. The tape no longer adhered to her skin but it wrapped her like a belt and the swelling of her flesh had kept it there, something she was unlikely to have considered. Her suicide note was clearly visible inside.
He took it without thinking about what he was doing, shuddering at the feel of how her chilled skin moved under his fingers. It loosened in the water, which was why he always grabbed for clothing. Once, in wrestling one of the first bodies aboard by the hand and wrist, he had felt the skin shift under his grip, trying to come away like a glove.
This woman had written only a single page, but she had filled it. The top was little more than a blurry smudge of ink despite the plastic but the rest of it told of heartbreak and dependency and despair. Yet it was spotted with drawings of stars and hearts and had been signed off incongruously with a sun and a smiley face.
Terrence withdrew a notepad and pencil from inside his jacket and copied it down, drawings and all.
S
The note Bobby had left was written on the same paper as his poems and lay folded among them on the desk. Terrence hadn’t noticed it for two days and even then he didn’t recognize it for what it was. He had been looking for a note addressed to him, something explaining where Bobby had gone, why he hadn’t called and wouldn’t answer when Terrence tried. They’d been drifting apart, Bobby growing melancholy and Terrence trying to help but only making things worse. The first day he was gone, Terrence assumed he was in a moody sulk and staying with a friend, but the second day he became worried. Jill and Suzie had put a few calls around with no results. So Terrence looked for a note but found only pieces of Bobby’s poetry, including My Sad Captain. I used to think that obstacles to love were out of date. Much that is natural, to the will must yield, but I’ll resist by embracing nothingness. I regret nothing.
Only when he’d seen his name on the reverse did Terrence realize it was intended for him; the folded crease that was supposed to allow it to stand had failed in its duty, or Terrence himself had knocked it in his hasty search through the papers. Yet even when he realized it was for him he thought it was a break-up letter, a Dear John, thank you for fucking me but I’m leaving you. He didn’t know it was a suicide note until an awful angry phone call from Bobby’s father, who had identified the body. Terrence wasn’t allowed to see it, nor was he invited to the funeral. He was never able to say goodbye.
My Sad Captain. I used to think that obstacles to love were out of date. Much that is natural, to the will must yield, but I’ll resist by embracing nothingness. I regret nothing.
None of the words had been Bobby’s, and in this new context they didn’t even make much sense. Terrence had raged about it in a drunken fury to Jill and Suzie. All the fucking quoting and paraphrasing. The sad truth of it was, Bobby’s poetic homage, his frequent tributes, were derivative and often misunderstood the original work. Terrence hated Bobby trying to write like someone else and Bobby’s family hated him trying to live like someone else. “Bobby was only Bobby when he jumped,” Terrence had said, back when he used to visit Jill and Suzie, before he realized how unfair those visits had become, how selfish. “Couldn’t he just be Bobby? Couldn’t they just let him fucking be Bobby?” And he had barked a harsh laugh because fucking be Bobby sounded fucking stupid, like an old rock ‘n’ roll number, and then he had sobbed. Jill had held him all the while, knowing about the churned waters of death and how there were no set tides, only a draining away that gurgled and spluttered and never really emptied.
There was no reason for it that anyone could fathom. Bobby never got on well with his family, his poetry didn’t take off as much as he’d hoped, and his relationship with an older black man was under some strain (mostly because of those other factors) but none of this seemed enough, not when you knew Bobby. It wasn’t enough to make him both the hurler and the hurled.
Temporary problems, Bobby. Temporary. Remember?
Terrence looked at the woman on his boat. Her reasons didn’t seem all that different from Bobby’s. It wasn’t enough, not to Terrence. Hell, in that case he had plenty of reasons of his own.
He copied her note and replaced it. He would add his copy to the others he had collected. Soon he’d have enough to make a small book of them, Words of the Dying. Like that guy who made a film of them jumping to their deaths. Terrence had seen a part of it on YouTube, The Bridge, and it had been enough. He had been shocked and angered and compelled to watch, which Bobby said was the point. It was supposed to raise awareness, apparently, a grim visual proposal to build a suicide barrier. But such a precaution was deemed too expensive and too difficult, too much of a risk to the integrity of the bridge. Plus it would spoil the aesthetic, not to mention the view, and that would upset the tourists. “Not all of them are people ‘who have come to go’,” was how Bobby put it.
All the bridge needed was a net. There’d been one when it was being built, saving the lives of steelworkers who fell (the Halfway to Hell Club they called themselves) but there would never be a net now that it was complete. The only nets they found themselves in, other than whatever tangled one led them to jump in the first place, belonged to Terrence as he dredged their carcasses from the sea.
He wouldn’t make a book, of course. They weren’t his words to use, and the notes were private. They were the explanations and goodbyes he’d never had.
Terrence shook out a large blue section of tarp and draped it over the body, weighting it with coils of rope. She looked cocooned, ready to change into something else, though he had no idea what. Maybe something with more hope than she’d been allowed in this life.
The tarp moved. Terrence thought he’d imagined it. Thought his brain was still playing with the cocoon image. When the arm flopped out from beneath, banging hard against a rail then resting out over the water, he told himself a sudden move of the boat must have done it, one of the moves he was used to and hadn’t noticed. But as he watched, her fingers curled until only one was left pointing. And she sat up.
There was a sequence of clicking sounds, a slow crackling as she rose in an effortless sit-up. She lurched to the right. Maybe to aid the pointing gesture, maybe because of the shape her spine was in. The sockets of her slackened face turned his way and he saw a darkness in them not very different to the one he saw each day in the mirror.
She opened her mouth and seawater came instead of a voice, draining from her skull in a slobbering splash against the tarpaulin, a brief loud sound in the quiet morning. A string of something dark was caught in her teeth. They came together with a sharp clack sound when her head lolled suddenly down to her chest, unsupported.
“I’m not going home yet, am I?” Terrence said.
The woman brought her arm in close and broken bone slid from the flesh of her elbow, disappearing back inside when she straightened the arm again to point.
“Alright. Okay. I’m going.”
As if exhausted, the woman slumped back down, her head knocking hard on the deck. Her arm remained outstretched, moving like the needle of a compass as Terrence steered their course. He wondered if this time he had a suicide pact
and he turned the boat around, feeling like the boatman on the river Styx as he steered into the mist creeping across the sea.
S
The Pacific is the largest body of water in the world. Its name means peace, but Terrence wondered how many had actually found any in its depths. How many would he have to fish from the water only to have them beckon him later to find more?
He had escaped the ebb and flow of it tides only once, and then not for long. He had gone to Aokigahara. There had been mist then, too, low and clinging, clutching the trunks of trees but torn to tatters by his moving feet. Before then, the closest he had been to Japan was the Japanese Tea Garden. He had been there with Bobby lots of times. When he went to Aokigahara, though, he went alone. Bobby was dead, and Terrence was seeing others like him. After the fourth, and the tests, and the fuss, he had gone to Japan to see if he saw them anywhere else; the Golden Gate Bridge was number one, but Aokigahara was the second most popular place in the world for suicide. It was a forest at the west base of Mount Fuji, also known as the Sea of Trees. Terrence had simply swapped one ocean of death for another.
There hadn’t been much to see. The forest was famously absent of wildlife and the wind-blocking of the tall trees meant there was nothing more than shadows, an eerie quiet that had scared the crap out of him. Not like the sea which, even quiet, had an abundance of background noises. Terrence would never walk among those silent boughs again. There had been no sound, and no bodies. No rock-scraped corpse walked the woodland. Nothing dripped its blood from the branches, pointing with a tangle of intestines the path it had travelled down to get there. Considering ubasute was once practised in the woods of Aokigahara—the abandonment of the weak, the old, the infirm—Terrence had expected the forest to be a stumbling ground for aged Hansels and Gretels, frail with cold or starvation, looking for a way back to the community that had given them up. He saw none of this.