The Rest Is Illusion

by Eric Arvin

  At the top of the trail stood the entrance to the college: two pillars made of limestone from a nearby quarry. Beyond the pillars, people were greeted by the sight of the giant trees, meticulously-kept lawns, and proud architecture of the school. The pillars still stood, though no longer needed. They had survived tornadoes and the fickle hand of progress and remained now a nostalgic artifact of a time long past. An almost forgotten gateway, a glanced-over monument.

  Dash walked in between these pillars as he made his way off the college proper to the beach below.

  He descended down the overgrown path. Brush and roots grabbed at his backpack and jeans, but he paid no heed. A few times, he lost his footing on the loose stones and roots of the trail, yet even that did little more than cause his heart to step up an extra beat. With each steep footfall, he felt more at ease with the idea of being away from all the restlessness of the campus, the madness of a pointless college night.

  The scenery reminded him of day trips with his father, hikes through the hilly, narrow terrain of numerous state parks and reserves. Feeling his strong arms helping him over fallen trees, the powerful hands holding his as they traversed creek beds and running streams lain with moss-covered rock.

  “This is your world, Dashel,” he had said once as they stood hand in hand, overlooking another not dissimilar river valley. Though Dash knew now his father was speaking of a more metaphysical world, he couldn’t quite grasp the enormity and depth of the statement at the time.

  A quarter of the way down, Dash finally felt relaxed enough to look up and take in the surroundings. Leafless trees and desolate thorn bushes creaked and snapped in the breeze. For the early part of the night at least, the trees and vegetation would be the only living things near him. And still they were all dormant and asleep. They would not disturb him. He was alone with the sleeping hill and silent ghosts of the college’s past, alone to try and sway some of his own thoughts to rest.

  At last reaching the beach, Dash found a dead tree and decided he would settle there for the night. It was small and near the base of the bluff, but offered a keen view of the strong, cold river. He took out some of the snack food he had packed. He hadn’t eaten his breakfast in the Campus Center and wasn’t in the mood to eat after the attack earlier. Now, though, his stomach was rumbling. He spread out his sleeping bag to sit, then made short work of an apple and bag of chips.

  Besides the crunching of the food, the only sound he heard was the gentle lapping of the river. It hadn’t frozen over all winter and still flowed, but sounded slower. The abandoned barge sat forgotten in the distance, an anchored traveler full of rusting regality. Later, he would go look at it closer and share in its despondency. There was plenty of time for sightseeing. He had the rest of the afternoon and evening.

  When he was through eating, he rested his head against the trunk of the tree and fell asleep quite by accident. One moment he was staring at the pebbles and sand near his sleeping bag, the next he had been lulled by the sound of water. It was a brief, dreamless sleep. No visions of trees or giant birds. No comforting confusion upon waking. Instead, it was tiny pricks of chill on his nose and eyelids that woke him from his nap. It was snowing. Giant, starlike flakes. Lacy stars falling from the afternoon sky. They had collected all about him, some fading forever into the lining of his temporary accommodations.

  He dusted off his sleeping bag and looked at his wristwatch. It had been a couple of hours. The morning’s sick spell must have taken more of a toll on him than he had guessed. He gathered his things about him and got up to find some kindling for a fire. He didn’t know how long he could stay without freezing.

  “I’m probably stuck down here anyway,” he said to himself. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to climb that path in the snow.” He would have rather stayed under the bluff and been covered by the snow than return to campus and see Wilder. Dash had become too involved in his own reclusiveness.

  As he looked around at the stretching river, the far banks, and the old barge, a frenzy of familiarity and relaxed intimacy broke out, racing through him. The flakes descending about him made him feel he was in the midst of something more lovely than he could ever have imagined. Experiencing a sudden rush of freedom, Dash sprinted out to the edge of the beach, and he howled. It was as if madness had overtaken him, yet he had never felt so in control, so completely like Dashel Yarnsbrook, so completely himself. He doubled over for the second time that day, but from sheer exultation and clarity of mind. He howled until every last drop of sound was wrung out of his lungs. His voice echoed the extent of the river valley, ricocheting off hills and skimming the placid water like a flat rock thrown.

  It felt good for him to flee, to be a coward just this once, and be free.

  Chapter Three

  For being as drunk as he was, Tony made it through the maze of people gathered in the second-floor hallway of Sigma Gamma with relative ease. He’d had several years of experience. It was dark except for key mood lighting, and music blared from each room of the house. A separate party happened in every doorway, every room spilling its participants into the hall, partygoers yelling at one another in excited tones above the music. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke choked the air.

  The tequila shots Tony had taken part in earlier in the day had been a bad idea. It was early in the evening, but he could already sense he might need to find a place to rest soon. He had been in various rooms of the house, chatting here, a drinking game there, a quick card game in another, when he remembered his goal for the evening had been to hang out with Dash. He was getting so tired, to simply sit and hang out with someone seemed an extremely appealing notion.

  Finally, elbowing and squeezing his way past others, he found his way to Dashel’s room. With a stagger and a blink to clear his eyes, he entered. The lights were not all off as they were in every other room. Only dimmed somewhat. A string of lights in the shape of bell peppers hung heavily from the ceiling. Ashley was behind his wooden bar, leaning over it and talking with Sarah Coheen. On both of their faces was a hint of concern about something. Otherwise, Sarah looked completely at ease with Ashley, her arms folded comfortably on the bar top.

  Other people were crowded into the room as well. Frat brothers and their girlfriends. Tony passed a group of freshmen girls who smiled and whispered drunken greetings as he slid by. He smiled back, remembering to slip the fake aura of heterosexuality over his drunken persona, and made his way to the bar where he saw Ashley mouth the word “Hello.” The music was so loud, though, Tony heard nothing.

  Sarah leaned over and yelled in his ear. “Hey, Tony, what’s up?” Tony didn’t know her well. He didn’t know either of them well, but he gave her a pleasant smile.

  “I’m looking for Dash,” Tony yelled back. “Have you seen Dash?” He couldn’t even hear his own voice. Only the vibration from his throat told him he was speaking. He felt himself sway and almost topple over from drunkenness. Ashley caught his arm and steadied him. Tony noticed a streak of red now wisping through Ashley’s green hair. No, not wisping. Screaming. The red dye screamed through the green forest on the top of Ashley’s head.

  “No, man. Sorry.” His expression of concern became more pronounced. “We haven’t seen him since this morning. Might be at the library working on his IS.” He stared blankly at Ashley for a moment, but then was distracted once again by the red streak in Ashley’s hair. Tony nodded and smiled, then left, avoiding eye contact with the young ladies he had passed before. He was disappointed but hoped Dash might be in another room of the house. Maybe he was working downstairs in the kitchen or the study room. Maybe that’s what Ashley had said.

  Again Tony bumped his way through the dark hall, buddies starting up conversations of short length and girls flirting with him as he went.

  “Tony!” someone yelled. He turned to see Gabriel Herring ushering him into a room. Tony wiped his eyes in confusion. Gabe looked to be wearing silver wings with glitter on his bare chest, shoulders, and face that glinte
d in the sparse light of the hallway. A golden laurel crowned his brow.

  Tony shook his head no, but Gabriel would not have it. He reached out and grabbed Tony by the shirt, pulling him into the room.

  “Let’s bong some beer!” he screamed over repetitive beats and lyrics. His look was so innocent. Such pleading. Tony reached for Gabriel’s wings with inebriated curiosity.

  Gabe smiled. “I’m an angel,” he yelled. “You know, like the one in the story about Mary?”

  Before Tony could say anything else, the other ballplayers in the room grabbed him and pulled him deeper into their midst. The room was filled with a heavy blue light.

  “Bong!” they yelled in varying degrees of intoxication.

  A shirtless and sweaty Wilder held the bong, his dark hair matted to his forehead. He was smiling at Tony, a dribble of beer trickling from the corner of his mouth. Wilder held out the bong to Tony as if it were some kind of initiation. Tony looked at the scruffy and sweat-soaked mass of guys around him in the dark, the glittering angel at the doorway, and Wilder, holding a bong out in token of something as yet undetermined. It disturbed him. Seemed fiendish.

  “No. I can’t.” Tony waved away the bong. “I’ve had too much already,” he slurred out.

  “Come on!” the guys screamed at him. They pulled him deeper into the dark heart of the room. Tony laughed and tried to evade them but soon gave up. He would find Dash after this. He would first have to placate his buddies; then he would definitely find Dash.

  The guys forced Tony down on a couch and gave him the bong. “All right, all right,” Tony said playfully. He put the cylinder to his lips and looked up as Wilder, with searing eyes, black as coal, dumped two opened beers into the funnel. Cheers went up all around. Wilder stood over Tony with his arms folded and sweat dripping. Blue light silhouetted them all.

  IT WAS early evening, but snow clouds had erased any sign of stars in the sky. And the snow fell heavy still. The beach was being covered, though, by the diminished light, Dash couldn’t tell white snow from sand and rock. The flakes had decreased in size, too. They were no longer so large, but there seemed to be many more of them.

  Dash walked with his flashlight around the rusted ruins of the old barge. Most likely it was once used to transport coal from the power plant whose tall stacks blinked with tiny red lights off in the distance. The aged ship had a long flat bed, beer cans and garbage strewn about the great remnant as if the barge had found a new vocation. A new purpose. Or, not so new, as evidenced by the decayed aluminum of several of the cans. Whatever the case, the barge still had a role in the lives of the valley folk. Things that did not die quickly struggled to find purpose in their measured decline.

  Dash walked carefully about the aging vessel with a kind of pitying wonder, scavenging as he always did for anything he had missed the last time he had visited. His last visit had been nearly a year ago. The weather was more pleasant then, less spiteful. He stood tall on the very center of the barge’s bed and looked out onto the silvery river water. It glimmered, running smooth, the night reflection from one bank to the other flat like a roadway.

  Dash noticed small lights flickering behind trees on the opposite bank. People living their own lives, hidden away from him. He wondered who they were. How they lived. What was it about their day that made them keep going, that pushed them up and out of bed every morning. He clicked off the flashlight and crouched down on the empty coal bed. The flakes collected on and around him.

  The night was starless, but the falling snow took their place. And despite the cold, he felt quite warm. His thick clothing kept out the chill, and the night was calm and unruffled without a hint of the wind that had been so piercing in the earlier part of the day. It was just he, alone in the night, covered by a sheet of icy powder in the bed of the Forgotten Traveler.

  Dashel thought again of the lights on the other shore. He gazed on them, intrigued. If he could only walk across the river, he would seek out the inhabitants of the stilted houses in the woods and learn their history. How long had they lived there? Was it a family home? Had it been passed down from generation to generation?

  His gaze passed over the fragments of a wooden post and dock on his side of the river, long ago battered and consumed by water and wind. It was an old ferry crossing, he had been told. Did that family across the river have ancestors who knew of the ferry? Who perhaps worked it? Were they the trusted guides who brought a person, or group of people, from one bank to the other? From one world to the next? Dash’s side of the river was so quiet and decayed and lonely. Was it the same over there?

  Dash crouched there, silent and dazed by thought for a while. His fantasy world overtook him as he invented faces and events, attaching them to a hillside home long ago. He imagined a world into being. He didn’t notice the time pass. He didn’t notice the snowflakes covering him. When he finally came back, he shook the snow off like a dog. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so he didn’t use the flashlight to get down from the barge. He took a hop, and he was back on beach earth.

  His items of comfort were where he had left them under the dying tree. They had been covered by the snow so it was, at first, an excavation to reclaim what was his. He couldn’t stay near the river so far below the campus after all. The storm was worsening. He would have to start back up the hill before the way became too slick to navigate. But he refused to stay in the frat that night. He would go to the all-night coffee house or the lounge in the library or a friend’s dorm room instead. The frivolity of a frat party would destroy the calm and serenity he had found by the river.

  He collected his belongings slowly, shaking the thick snow from them. It had been good to experience the early evening by the barge at least. Better to have that small amount of peaceful joy than none at all. Still, he wished he could stay longer.

  As he tucked the rolled sleeping bag under his arm, he heard a shuffling behind him. A gradual sound rising from the silence. The hairs on his neck stood on end. Something was with him. He was not alone as he had thought. Slowly, he turned and saw a shadowy shape standing by the barge. It was very thin and seemed to be coming ever closer with slow, graceful steps. Dash was terrified and curious, unable to move, yet wanting to know the identity of the figure.

  As the form approached even closer, Dash realized it was only a deer—a young stag, his antlers grown a bit, but not too proud and reckless. Dash stared with awe at the creature. It stared back at him and came closer. He stilled himself, not wanting to frighten it. Soon the young stag was directly in front of him. He saw its breath mingling with his own in the frigid air. They stood frozen, eye to eye, being blanketed by the snowfall. Dash took a chance and, with a shaky hand, reached for the slender nose. The deer flinched, but that was all. Just a blink and a flinch. Dashel gently caressed the softness of the snout, the stag’s big brown eyes taking him in with kindness and curiosity. The snowflakes caught in the animal’s long lashes.

  “Hi there,” Dash whispered.

  This is all for you, he heard his father’s echo through the night.

  Dash drew his hand away and smiled, hoping to convey some sort of appreciation. It was only an instant; a sweet moment promising what things will be, and then the deer walked away, occasionally pausing and glancing this way and that for other interesting things. Dash stood looking after it, his eyes wet with tears and a warmth radiating from his inner self out into the cold world. He felt he could warm the night with all the happiness he held inside now. For a brief shining moment, he was entirely free of disease.

  As he made his way up the hillside, he slipped a number of times and lost his balance many others. His clothes were wet and dirty. It took him much longer to get up the hill than it had to come down it, but none of that bothered him. All he could think of was a young stag surviving the cold by the river. A young stag with big brown eyes that had nothing but curiosity and acceptance for life’s obstacles. It might be a short life, but it was an interesting one all the same.

 
AFTER A while, Sarah’s ears ached for quieter air, and she decided she’d had enough of the party bouncing on around her. She left the room after telling Ashley she would be back later, possibly after there were fewer people. She yelled it with a playful grin. Ashley stayed at the bar in his room, though she knew he would rather go with her. This time, however, she made the first escape. She turned his mischievous grin back on him as she left the room.

  She sat at one of the tables in the basement dining room, drinking a Dixie cup of fountain water. The lighter atmosphere did wonders for her senses, especially the beer-free air. She could hear the vulgar and rambunctious party above edging ever closer to its disappointing crescendo, that point in the evening when carnal hopes are fulfilled in forgettable fumbles. She savored her time away from the party, yet smirked at the notion that her father was rubbing off on her.

  Sarah thought about Tony. Why had he been so interested in finding Dash? Dash had never mentioned Tony before except for that morning at breakfast. Was she missing something? Was there something going on? She felt herself tighten. A spark of jealousy ignited in her, and she took a sip from the cup, staring blankly ahead.

  Down the stairs came the clip-clop of heels. “Sarah!” Lydia Hallenfeller said cheerfully. “Having fun?” Lydia clearly was.

  “Oh, tons,” Sarah said sarcastically, though she didn’t know why. She wasn’t having a bad time. In truth, she and Ashley had been having a very good time. “Pretty good, Lydia,” she restated her answer. “How about you?”

  “A blast,” Lydia said, drawing out the sentence so it was almost a musical note. “I saw you with Ash in his room, and Tony. Tony is so G-D hot.” Sarah smiled at Lydia’s word usage. Lydia was too religious to cuss. Instead of saying “goddamn” like everyone else, Lydia had to initial it, as if the sentiment of what she really meant wasn’t still there. Sarah thought Lydia a ridiculous person, but she was a considerate roommate, so she tried not to berate her too viciously.