by Eric Arvin
“The world has to hide its magic now, in deep valleys and dark forests. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you chance upon the honesty of the natural world.” He led her farther down the creek bed. “Mostly, though, the magic of the world lies hidden under the brush and bramble of human misgivings and harsh imaginings that we associate with reality. It makes me sad.”
“Here’s the old wall,” Ashley announced as they approached a stone fence in the middle of the creek bed. It ran through the center of the creek, dividing it. The structure was very old, possibly acting as a dam at one point, but worn through years of running water and neglect. The center had been knocked down and old stones were missing, carried away by water or hand.
“I’ve always wanted to know about this wall—why it’s here, its history. It goes up farther. That’s where we’re headed, where my spot is.” Ashley pointed off into the distance. “It can’t have been just a dam. There’s something else to it.”
He climbed onto the wall and helped Sarah up. There wasn’t much snow where they were, deep in the otherworld of the college’s property. The trees had stopped most of it from reaching the valley. Sarah and Ashley walked along the wall until it stopped suddenly at a prominent hill. A narrow, steep trail led upward.
“This is it!” Ashley whispered. The quiet of the vale was still listening, its eyes still watching. Sarah did not question nor complain as they headed up the trail.
Nevertheless, it was a toilsome climb. They panted from their exertion as they reached the top. There, they found even that pinnacle was at the bottom of everything, still far below the rest of the world and the campus that went on above them. The trail leveled off and the snow thickened, having snuck through unguarded branches and broken trees.
Sarah held Ashley’s hand tightly as they traversed the narrow passage. A drafty breeze blew in their faces, like a window had been opened and crisper air let in.
“Here it is.” Ashley stood behind her as she gazed at his most admired spot in the world. The narrow trail had led them up to yet another creek bed, or at least it looked like a creek bed. But instead of the brook running on through trees and boulders, there was a drop. It was a waterfall.
“I had no idea there were falls behind the school,” Sarah said. Ashley didn’t answer. As she edged closer to the cliff of the falls, Ashley reached out to grab her, a warning to be careful. It’s slippery.
It was a long drop. Far below, the rocks were jagged and angry, like sharks waiting for a meal. But beyond, the trees in that deeper vale were even more asleep than the ones they had just passed. Everything about it was more ancient. Secret, untouched, honest. The trees much older, their roots digging up out of the ground or rummaging through the creek bed like varicose veins. She saw the creek below went on for a ways, then turned behind a bank and was gone from sight.
“Where does it go?” she asked. Her breath went up in wispy sacrificial plumes to the magnificent forest, the cathedral.
“Probably the river. Everything leads to the river,” Ashley intoned, still whispering. The heavy silence was everywhere. It didn’t feel right to say anything too loudly in what was clearly a spiritual place.
“If this isn’t real, Ash… if this place is a dream, I never want to wake up.” Sarah sighed.
“It’s not a dream. It’s the truth. Maybe you’ll see them tonight, the spirits of the real world. They’re just as curious about us as we are about them.”
“You think we might see something?”
“Sure,” Ashley replied. “Just keep your eyes… and your mind… open.”
“Well, I must tell them when I see them,” Sarah said, “they have a lovely place.”
DASHEL WAS kept in the hospital for observation for a few hours, but by that evening, he had signed himself out and left amidst admonishment from the doctors and nurses. Dash hardly heard their protests. They couldn’t do anything for him. No miracle cure had been spontaneously discovered. What modest pain relief there was, Dash had in pill form by his bed.
Doctors had kept his father in the hospital for weeks, only to send him home depleted of energy, unable to even walk very far without a rest. Dash had watched as his father became a medical guinea pig, poked with needles and filled with drugs that proved useless in the end.
“Don’t you worry, Dash,” his father had said one day as the nurse drew a large syringe of blood from his forearm. “It’ll be okay.” His eyes said otherwise. Dash couldn’t help but give her a dirty grimace. They were draining his father away, drawing him out pint by pint, for their tests.
Dashel had always been suspicious of hospitals and doctors, his father’s experience never fully from his mind. As he lay on the familiar-looking bed, he forbade the hospital from calling his mother or the college. His mother was his concern. She was not to be contacted, not to be bothered. She had suffered through too much already and would have to deal with his death too soon. Dash decided he would spare her what anguish he could in the time he still had left. The only call made was to the fraternity.
Ma Toots drove through the deep snow in her monstrous truck to get Dashel. He was one of her boys. She loved her boys, and she didn’t trust doctors. “I can take care of you jus’ as well as those fucks can,” she said in her raspy voice over the phone. “You jus’ hang on, and your Ma will be right there, baby.”
He smiled as he heard her coming down the hall, swearing at the attendants and nurses to get out of her way. The hospital quaked with fear. As she walked into the room, Dash was on the edge of his bed ready to leave. A young man tried to stop Ma by standing in front of her.
“Ma’am, you have to sign in,” he said loudly. He was what Ma would have called “too big for his britches.”
“You’re gonna lose somethin’ if you don’t git!” she said, staring into his face unblinking. He moved aside. “Ah, baby,” Ma said, turning her attention to Dash. “It was that Wilder again, wadn’t it? That stinker! Well, let’s not think about it right now. Come on. Let’s go.” And they went.
So, he was back in Sigma Gamma. The quiet deportment of the guys he passed on the way to his room told him they all knew something had happened. Dash nodded at them, and they smiled in return. Soft, compassionate smiles. The kind reserved for the attendees of funerals.
He was surprised to find his door unlocked. Ashley usually locked the door. Flipping on the light, he saw Tony sitting at the paper-filled desk. The football star’s head was bowed as if he was praying, but then he looked up slowly, weakly, to Dash. His eyes were red and scared. Something was definitely wrong. Or rather something else was wrong, for the day had been filled with stumbles.
Dash paused for a moment, then closed the door behind him and waited, standing in front of the doorway.
“I should have listened to you,” Tony finally said quietly. His voice quivered. “I should have watched my back.” Dash’s heart immediately quickened. He knew Wilder had done something. Who else could cause Tony’s look of apprehension?
“What happened, Tony? What did he do?” Dash said, sitting on the bed beside the desk. His stomach still hurt. He already had a large, bluish bruise where the snowball had hit.
Tony swallowed uneasily. His eyes started to moisten. “He got me,” was all he could say.
They sat for a while, each pondering what had happened to the other. “I’ve been in here all day. Since this afternoon,” Tony said, breaking the sick tension. “After Wilder hit you, and the ambulance took you away, I went to confront him. I don’t know why. I felt so angry. I couldn’t control it. I just wanted to beat him till he was a bloody smear in the snow. But he knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he? And he got me.”
“How?” Dash asked earnestly. He sat hunched over with his hands between his knees.
“Don’t ask that. I can’t tell you. I don’t want to tell you,” Tony said pleadingly.
“Okay… okay,” Dash hushed him. “I don’t need to know.” He glanced up at the poster of David flinging the stone at Goliath.
&
nbsp; “Can you turn out the lights? Can we just sit here, you and me, in the dark?” Tony whispered, looking again like he was praying with his eyes closed and his head bowed. “I need quiet and dark.”
“Why don’t we go somewhere instead? I’ll take you somewhere. The dark may not be the best thing for you right now. Let’s take a walk. One of my favorite places,” Dash said calmly. At first, he thought he’d take Tony to the barge on the beach. Then he abandoned the notion. He would take him to the old tree, the Old Lady. The barge was too far a hike in the snow. And it had become somewhat more sacred to Dash, a clandestine place flooded with enchantment only visible to those so inclined to see it. Tony would not appreciate it, Dash thought. Not yet. But the Old Lady? They could sit in dependable silence beneath her elongated limbs.
Tony brightened just a bit. He nodded approval at the idea of escaping the fraternity altogether for the evening.
Dash patted Tony’s shoulder. “Let’s get our coats then,” he said.
“WILDER, YOUR father is just a very busy and important man. You know that. I’m sure he’ll call you back as soon as he’s out of the meeting.” The voice was remote, devoid of any perceptible feeling. But that’s how it always had been. Wilder could not remember his mother ever emoting. Her speech had no arches in midsentence, no exclamations at the ends of statements, no sighs of happiness or aggravation. Even her questions had a robotic efficiency. As if she didn’t care about the reply. She was simply there, breathing, and indifferent verbalizations would sometimes slip out between intakes of air. Wilder was not even sure if he felt anything for her other than a cold, casual acceptance. That was certainly all she had ever offered him. He had come from her, yes, but he was not of her. Even the nurses and nannies that had been hired to tend to him as his mother drank her martinis on the back lawn were rather callous.
“I’ll tell him you called,” she said. Whatever minuscule measure of emotion she might have conveyed to Wilder got lost through the air and along the line. By the time her voice reached his ears, the words had been stripped and strangled to their most basic. They were just words falling out of the open, words that could have been written between the lines on a dull white page in perfect block lettering.
Wilder heard the familiar sound of his mother hanging up a little too soon, before he was quite through. No exchange of love or pleasant good-byes. Just a solitary, apathetic click, like a light being snuffed out. Interaction concluded.
Wilder put down the phone quickly, so as not to let himself see his own need. Disgust boiled up in him, hatred for the weakness of need. His own mother’s muted, static voice had dredged up in him a want. A desire to be wanted. Maybe not by her. After all, she was a glory past her shine. But by someone like her. A parent.
Wilder paced across the stale room. It was dark outside. Pacing was how he spent his life. He’d strode his youth across the floors of out-of-the-way rooms in haunted wings of college dormitories. Still, he knew he was stronger than everyone else, had more purpose. At least his father had given him the strength to rise above weakness.
He stopped pacing and looked out his window, peering stubbornly into the night outside. Transfixed in thought, he didn’t catch the reflection of his own eyes in the window. If he had glanced into his own soul’s image, he would have certainly been appalled and angry. For as Wilder thought of his father, of a life where his father would be proud of him, where his father would cultivate and guide him, his eyes grew soft. Not the counterfeit softness he could feign to get his way, but real leniency and true mourning. They were the eyes of the young man he was supposed to be before he found the monster inside of him.
The ring of his cell phone pulled him back to his solitary little room. He snatched it up as his stoic mask reappeared once again, completely unaware of the compassion that hid just under the surface.
“Yes?” he demanded sharply, his voice hitting the stale room air like a sledgehammer. He listened to the voice on the other end and smiled a handsome, flawless grin, watching himself as he walked to the mirror. “Good girl, Maggie. You can go back to your room now,” Wilder said condescendingly.
“Tony, you stupid shit,” he said into the mirror.
Wearing his thick black coat, he strutted from the room as cool and collected as the son of a slick politician who could get away with anything.
DASH LED the way through the hushing snow and stern darkness. He walked as if unencumbered by the clustering balls of snow at his feet. He stared straight ahead at all times, not bothering to look around or down. His mind had already arrived at his destination. It was merely waiting for the rest of him to catch up.
Tony followed faithfully, unquestioningly. Dash had become a beacon, a lantern, a light to guide Tony through the dark. Only Dashel’s onward march kept him from falling like lead to the ground.
Through the snow they journeyed, two silent travelers each requiring the other’s help out of bleakness and solitude. The clouds overhead parted as they reached the grand old tree that peered forlornly, always lonely, down into the valley. The night took on a pristine presence as a regal sphere of moonlight shone. Lambency took over the valley, gently brushing it like an old mother.
Dash waited by the tree for Tony to trudge up alongside him. It was heartrending for Dash to see him like this. His image of Tony up to that point had been the stereotype of the lighthearted but strong jock. He saw now how premature that opinion was.
Tony only stared at the white snow as he came shoulder to shoulder with Dash.
“Look up,” Dash ordered softly.
Tony lifted his chin slowly, his eyes meeting Dashel’s eyes.
“Look there,” Dash gestured out to the river.
Tony looked where he was told. His expression changed suddenly, almost too faint to see. It would do its work, Dash knew. If they stayed by the tree long enough, Tony might begin to feel more like himself again. The night would leech out the darkness from him.
Dash cleared a space below the Old Lady where they could sit free of the wet snow. Tony sat zombielike, as if in a waking coma.
“I like to come here on nights like this,” Dash said, interrupting the silence. “When no one else is crazy enough… or maybe sane enough… to come out. I get some great vibes here, some real zingers of thought. Do you have any places like that? Places that make you feel… like yourself?”
“No,” Tony replied. It was the first he had spoken since they had left the house.
“Well, maybe you could come here then,” Dash offered. “This old tree, the valley, the river, they help me think. Help me get away and wade through all the crap I’ve cluttered my life with. When you get rid of the clutter, all that’s left is what mattered in the first place.” Dash felt quiet emanating from Tony, the shell of a damaged soul. “You can’t let him take over, Tony. Whatever he’s taken from you, let him have it, but no more. You have to just not care. It might be uncomfortable at first, but in the end, it will be so much less painful. When he realizes he has no control, he loses interest.”
“It’s my life, Dash,” Tony urgently whispered. “My life. He’s going to ruin my life if I don’t….” A branch creaked overhead.
“He won’t win in the end, Tony. It’s all absurdity, anyway. Everything we do, we’re just doing to bide time until we die.”
They sat quietly once more. The clouds that had appeared in the early evening vanished and the moon held discourse with the tree on the bluff over the winding river.
Dash stirred once more, as if awakened from a dream. “See that big limb up there?” He pointed just above Tony. “I climbed up there last spring. I sat up there all night just watching the river.”
“That’s high,” Tony observed.
“Yeah. I kept having this dream I was a bird sitting on that limb. I guess I wanted to enact it for real. It’s a great dream. I still have it. And it has a beautiful ending,” Dash said as his voice took on a silky note.
“How does it end?” Tony asked.
“Well,
I can’t tell you,” Dash teased. “Then it won’t come true. Actually, I really don’t know how it ends. I always wake up before that. But I know it’s the right ending.” He paused and smiled. “The view from that limb is so wonderful, Tony. The river cuts through the hills of the valley like—like a band saw. In the early dawn light, the water sparkles like flashes of ‘hello.’ And then the mist… I swear it, the mist in the morning dances in circles. In circles, Tony. Waltzing with the spirits of the valley, the river dwellers, down the hill to the river. It’s a beautiful dance, though I have only seen it once. But it’s more real than anything I can remember.”
“You think I’m nuts,” Dash said, feeling Tony’s stare.
“No, Dash, I don’t,” Tony said. He leaned his head on Dashel’s shoulder, a moment of tenderness Dash had not expected.
“This is for us,” Dashel whispered. “This is all for us.”
They sat under the shelter of the Old Lady, such as it was, into the first hours of the new day. The moon, naked of the night clouds, hung high in the ancient sky.
THEY LAY together, arms and legs wrapped and tangled. An elegant wisp of haze curled around them as they smoked an herb Ashley had found in the forest.
“It’s good stuff,” he promised. “You’ve never had anything like this before.”
He found a hollowed out husk of an old stump, eaten by time, and lay down in it as the euphoria began to rise. Ashley waved to Sarah to join him. As the late afternoon melted into night and clouds moved into the sky, they lay completely aware of the real world and yet unaware of the world they knew above on campus. That world, they had been assured since childhood, was real and harsh. Yet it proved to be nothing more than some other person’s dream, a madman’s wish of power over others. The truth of how the world should be was all around them. The honest beauty of the forest felt more real than anything they had experienced in the world above.