Long Way Gone

by Charles Martin

  Don’t listen to that lie.

  Here’s the truth: No matter what happened on the stage tonight, no matter where you went when you drove out of here, no matter where you end up, no matter what happens, what you become, what you gain, what you lose, whether you succeed or fail, stand or fall, no matter what you dip your hands into . . . no gone is too far gone.

  You can always come home.

  And when you do, you’ll find me standing right here, arms wide, eyes searching for your return.

  I love you.

  Dad

  I ran my fingers through the grooves of the stone etching of his name and tried to say what I’d rehearsed so many times, but I could not. The emotions that I’d stuffed for so long began looking for an exit. The wave started in my stomach where it swirled, then erupted, giving me enough time to turn my face. Anger, sadness, shame, and regret spewed across the ancient and silent forest floor. The pain turned me inside out, exited me, and took most of me with it. The wretching lasted several minutes. When finished, I sat back on my heels, wiped my mouth with my shirtsleeve, and realized that I was now twenty-six and fatherless.

  The anchor of my life had been cut away.

  PART III

  31

  The fire dwindled, leaving white-hot coals. My skin had dried and I was shivering less. Big-Big touched my shoulder, then left as quietly as he came, leaving me alone with my memories and Dad’s letter. My core body temperature had started to rise, but I could not control the shivers. I never could. I stared at the water a long time, thinking about my dad dying right there. Drowned due to a heart attack.

  I wondered about his last few minutes. Had he known only the pain of a heart attack, and was he dead before he hit the water? Or had he known piercing chest pain first, followed by the slow pull of the water and the inability to extract himself from the river, followed by the suffocating inability to breathe? Even now, at forty-four, I found that question tough to stomach. Dad had been strong as an ox. If his heart had quit, it quit because it had been broken. Truth was, I’d broken it. And that was the toughest part of all.

  Throughout the night, I read and reread the letter a dozen times. It spoke to questions of the heart in ways that only my dad could, like salve on a burn. It also produced a painful longing to hear his voice just one more time.

  The next morning was Friday. I slept in, showered, spent some time with Jimmy on the porch, then drove to Leadville, where I expected to spend the afternoon. But when I got there, the old man was a no-show. No crowd. No open guitar case. No song in the air. Nothing but soggy cigarette butts on the street corner.

  I stepped into the bar across the street and asked the bartender, “You seen the old man plays guitar across the street?”

  “You mean Jube?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “Died. Week ago. Right there on that street corner. Guitar in hand. Case full of tips. Smile on his face.”

  I turned to walk out, then stopped. “You happen to know where they buried him?”

  He pointed. “Two blocks. Turn left. Cemetery at the end of the road. He’s in the back right corner, up on a hill. You’ll see the fresh dirt.”

  “Thanks.”

  The cemetery was fresh cut. Well maintained. Wasn’t hard to find his headstone. The sun was going down when I walked up. There were no dates. His stone simply read:

  JUBAL TYRE

  LOVING FATHER

  FOR EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS HIS SOUL MADE MUSIC

  "THIS PEOPLE HAVE I FORMED FOR MYSELF;

  THEY SHALL SHEW FORTH MY PRAISE.”

  I stood there a long time. Looking at the words shew forth. King James English with its archaic spelling had always been tough to wrap my mind around, but my dad had preached on that very verse. He was always good with visuals when he taught, so he brought a broom onstage and said that “shewing forth” wasn’t something you did when you were trying to get a dog out of the yard. He demonstrated, scurrying around the stage. “Shoo! Shoo!” He then brought out a twelve-foot stepladder and climbed up to the second rung from the top, where he cupped his hands together like the town crier. He said in his loudest voice, “Shewing forth means to announce beforehand. Declare. Shout it from the rooftops. Without apology.” He paused. Made sure he had their undivided attention. Then he’d add with a sly smile, “Or sing at the top of your lungs!”

  I thought about the old man on the street corner. He fit the job description perfectly.

  When I turned to go from the cemetery, I found a boy standing behind me. Maybe twelve. He was holding a guitar. Resting it on his shoulder like an ax. It was the Gibson I’d given the old man.

  He looked up at me. “Mister, you know him?”

  I slid my hands into my pockets. “We met once.”

  He held up the guitar. “You the man who gave him this?”

  I nodded.

  He stared up at me. “My grandfather said that the man who gave it to him might be the best guitar player he ever met.” He extended it. “You want it back?”

  I studied him. “Can you play?”

  He glanced at the stone. “My grandfather showed me a thing or two.”

  Interestingly, the kid did not seem inclined to prove to me that he could play. Which told me everything I needed to know. The tips of his fingers on his left hand were calloused. Evidence that he’d been playing a good bit.

  I pointed at the mound of dirt. “He give it to you?”

  He nodded. As if the memory was both pleasant and painful.

  “You keep it,” I said.

  We stood there several minutes, staring at the granite staring back at us. Finally I asked the kid, “What happened?”

  He spoke matter-of-factly. “Drunk himself to death. Body shut down.”

  “I mean, before that. Years ago.”

  The kid shrugged. “He loved my grandma, but he loved the road more. Momma says one of her first memories was standing on the curb watching him climb on that bus. Grandma called it the jealous mistress. He’d stay gone for months at a time. Send postcards. Make promises. Sometimes he’d send money.” The kid paused. “When my mom left for college, Grandma disconnected the phone and burned all his clothes. He came home to an ash heap and a key that didn’t fit. So he climbed inside a bottle and never climbed out.”

  I nodded and mumbled to myself, “Some people wear their shame.”

  He glanced at the scars on my neck and hand. “You wearing yours?”

  I nodded. The kid was smart, and I liked him. “Yes.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I was young and full of myself, so I turned my back on somebody who loved me a whole lot. Fell in with some bad people when I got where I was going.”

  “You ever turn back?”

  I chuckled. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “When I got home, my dad was dead. That was eighteen years ago.”

  “Did you love your dad?” The kid’s eyes were round and bright and pure.

  I nodded once. “Still do.”

  He shook his head. “I never met my dad.”

  I turned toward the kid. “That’s his loss.”

  “That’s what my mom says.” The space between his eyes narrowed, and his expression became one of curiosity. “If you had thirty seconds and could say anything to your dad, what would you say?”

  I didn’t answer. “What would you tell your dad?”

  He shrugged. “I’d tell him that we don’t really like bologna and that when it gets toward the end of the month, Mom adds water to the milk. That when it gets cold I steal firewood from our neighbors and don’t tell Mom, but I think she knows because she doesn’t look at me when I walk back in the door. I’d tell him that I won the talent contest at school three years in a row. That I make good grades. That I can read at a college level. And I’d tell him that Mom cries some nights after I’ve gone to bed. I can hear her through the wall.” He glanced up at me. “I’d tell him stuff like that.”

 
; I squatted down, putting me closer to eye level with the kid. I sucked between my teeth. “I’d tell mine I was sorry.”

  The kid nodded, turned around, and started walking off.

  I called after him, “You need a ride home?”

  He shook his head and pointed at a shack up on the hill. White smoke rose out of the chimney and a woman stood on the porch, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, watching us. He’d walked a few steps farther when I said, “Hey, kid?”

  He turned and looked at me.

  “What’s your name?”

  He pointed at the headstone as if the answer were self-explanatory. “Jubal.”

  It was after dinner when I pulled into Riverview. Mary was in bed. Dozing. I scooted up next to the bed and watched her sleeping. After a few minutes her eyes opened and one eye focused on me. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “How long you been there?”

  “Few minutes.”

  Without warning, she grew animated. “Oh—”

  She tried sitting up. I helped slide her up and propped a few pillows behind her back. The ammonia smell told me her diaper needed changing.

  “You hear the news?” she said.

  “What news?”

  “Daley’s playing the Falls.”

  “When?”

  “Few weeks.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “That video of you two at the Rope went viral. I still can’t figure out how come I wasn’t invited.”

  “It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “That’s no excuse. Anyway, she got to this casino and started playing a bunch of new songs nobody’s ever heard before. Just her and her guitar. Like really great stuff. Her shows started selling out. They’re recording a live album at the Falls. Bringing in a choir.”

  I knew what was coming next.

  “You’ll take us?”

  “Us?”

  She waved her hand up and down the hall. “Us!”

  I chuckled. “Big-Big too?”

  “Of course.”

  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be alive in a month. But I squeezed her hand. “Sure.”

  32

  Tums, Pepto-Bismol, and Alka-Seltzer had ceased providing any medicinal benefit, and the shock of cold-water submersion remained the only remedy for the ticking inside me. My episodes were becoming more and more frequent, the acrid taste seldom left my mouth, the rushing in my ears was constant, my appetite was pretty much gone, and the amount of time required in the water to stave off the impending rupture had become longer and its effect shorter. In short, my options had dwindled and what few I had didn’t do much.

  Given this, I stayed close to home. Close to the creek. Given the acidic nature of coffee, I quit drinking Honey Badgers and started sipping some sort of herbal peppermint-ginger concoction with honey. I snacked on Nilla Wafers and bananas, drank milk, and reread my father’s letter. I napped a lot, but never more than an hour at a time because I had more control over the outcome if I was awake.

  On Friday I drove to town, parked along the tracks, and ran a few errands. I walked into the beauty shop and paid Mary’s hairdresser to make a house call Saturday morning and do something special.

  Then I visited the town attorney, where I made sure Mary would be taken care of. I left money for Frank to pay his bills, with enough left over to allow him to quit skimming and take his wife and daughter to the islands while there was still time. At my request, my attorney had researched Jubal Tyre. I started a college annuity for him and left his mom enough to buy more than bologna for the rest of her life. It would never replace an absentee dad, but it would help. Everything else went to Daley.

  I picked up my new dark-blue suit at the tailor and some mail-order black Allen Edmonds dress shoes at my PO box, and paid my remaining bills. Then I walked into the barbershop and got my first real haircut in twenty years. When the barber asked me what I wanted, I smiled. “I need to look respectable. Or at least presentable.” When I walked out without hair down to my shoulders, I felt naked.

  The town of Buena Vista was buzzing. Posters hung on every pole, national news trucks had parked on Main Street, tall antennae telescoped above the skyline, food trucks had appeared, traveling BBQ pits filled the air with tantalizing smoke, and the hotels were full in every direction for thirty miles. Whatever media marketing campaign Daley’s producer had orchestrated had worked. In my thirty-five years of experience with the Falls, I’d never seen the town swell like this. Buena Vista was bursting at the seams. College kids taking an early weekend break, middle-aged bikers with their wives on mirrored Harleys out of Denver and the Springs, four-wheel drives pulling RVs, hitchhikers, and locals—the town looked like parade time on the Fourth of July.

  I stood at the gas station, filling up the Jeep, and smiled at the traffic jam and colorful crowds walking the sidewalks on what had become a beautiful though brisk fall day. West of the Collegiates, a few snow clouds crept closer, which could make for an enchanting weekend. Daley could not have chosen a better or more scenic venue or time of year.

  I had done my best to slow down everything about me. My movements. My pulse. Even my decisions. “Just one more weekend,” I told myself.

  Though I knew better.

  The ticking was louder. Niagara closer. The angry storm on the horizon of my life now stretched as far as I could see. Soon the swirling world I’d been able to hold at a safe distance for twenty years would be the sideways-spitting fury in the face, ripping my tent pegs out of purchase. Where the lightning struck without warning and set my world on fire. Where no bench would hide me and no strong right arm would scoop me out like an excavator. Stopped at the light, I stared in my rearview mirror and heard the thunder rumbling over my shoulder.

  The light turned green. I drove through the intersection and felt an odd swelling at the base of my throat. I coughed into my handkerchief and stared down at a puddle of bright crimson. The next wave started in my stomach and traveled upward, where the taste hit my mouth and I coughed again, this time spraying blood across the inside of the windshield.

  Life had been reduced to minutes.

  Heading west on 306 toward Cottonwood Creek, I shifted into third and redlined the Jeep above 7,000 rpm. Two miles out, I braked at nearly a hundred miles an hour, turned right onto 361 without flipping, sped downhill, spotted the creek, and aimed the nose toward the water as the roar of Niagara deafened my ears. I veered off the highway, avoided a giant cottonwood, jumped the bank, launched the Jeep airborne, and crashed nose-first into the rushing creek. The thirty-six-inch BF Goodriches dug themselves into the smooth river pebble-and-sand bottom, where the water rolled just beneath the front bumper. Steam rose from beneath the hood, but given the snorkel air intake, the engine idled smoothly. The Jeep settled, I unbuckled and fell out into the creek. The shock to my system stopped my ability to breathe. The water grabbed my clothes, pulled me down, and bounced me gently along the bottom. I waited.

  When my head broke the surface, the water rolled me upright and I began both breathing and choking. The water here was just above knee-high. I bobbed, turned, flipped, rolled, got sucked under an overhanging tree, and then the water widened and the depth decreased to eight or ten inches. I felt my butt and legs drag the bottom, and my shoulder bumped into a large rock a little bigger around than a basketball. I hooked one arm around it and then wedged my foot between two smaller rocks on the bottom so that my body wouldn’t wash downstream and dump me into the Arkansas. If it did, they’d never find me.

  The seconds ticked by. The bank was ten feet away, but it might as well have been a million. My teeth had quit chattering and the needles in my skin had quit stinging.

  Over two decades I’d survived dozens of these episodes. Maybe a hundred or more. I quit counting long ago. Depending on the amount of time required in the water to push back the tide, lucidity would come and go. The trick was to remain clearheaded enough to stay in the water as long as required while still being able to crawl out and get so
meplace warm and dry. Usually the initial shock stopped the hemorrhage before a total rupture occurred. But that was the key. Everything depended on the below-freezing temperature shock stopping the hemorrhage. And all that had to happen before my electrical circuits shut down completely.

  It was a waiting game.

  Something stung my nose and eyes, which were the only part of me sticking out of the water. When I opened my eyes, I realized it was snowing. I smiled. I liked the thought of that. Dying in the snow. Wrapped in a blanket of white.

  The walls began closing in. My last thoughts were of Daley. I would have liked to see that concert.

  Wouldn’t be long now.

  Suddenly my peaceful, silent departure, accented by falling snow and the gentle rippling of subfreezing water, was disturbed by the high-pitched whine of a small engine, the sound of sticks and large limbs breaking, panicky screaming, and finally a big splash and someone thrashing through the water.

  I felt hands under my armpits, and someone was dragging me toward the bank. Water washed over my forehead, but between waves Daley’s face flashed above me, silhouetted against a gray sky spitting snowflakes. She dragged me onto the pebbled beach and cradled my head, slapping my face and screaming at me. And while I could see her mouth moving and read the frantic expression on her face, I could hear very little and feel even less.

  The blood had puddled in my mouth. I coughed, spraying us both in crimson puree, and managed one word. “F-f-f-f-ire.”