About a Mountain

by John D'Agata

  His name was Levi Presley, the Vegas papers said.

  Sixteen years old and from the north edge of town.

  I tried to call his parents but their number wasn’t listed.

  I tried to go to his funeral but his service wasn’t public.

  I even called an ad that I had found in the yellow pages: Venus Investigations. A private investigation firm for “sensitive local cases.”

  Venus had a smoker’s voice, a barking dog and screaming kids, and Jeopardy in the background.

  Four hundred dollars cash, she said.

  For “vital information.”

  I sent the money wired.

  Five days later Venus called with Levi’s middle name. She told me Levi’s parents had first met in Arizona. She told me Levi hadn’t ever committed any crimes. She told me where they lived, and then she said, “And there’s a tape.”

  “A tape?” I asked.

  “A security tape.”

  Every incident in a hotel in the city of Las Vegas is recorded by thousands of cameras that are embedded in the ceilings.

  “So if someone’s cheating at cards,” Venus said over the phone, “or if there’s a fight somewhere, a murder, any kind of shit, the hotel can edit together all the relevant footage and send it to the Vegas police. It limits their liability.”

  “And they made one of these of Levi?”

  “That’s what I’m hearing, man. Yeah.”

  “I wonder if I could see it.”

  “Now why the fuck would you want that?”

  Levi liked going to Applebee’s.

  In-N-Out.

  A place that’s now out of business.

  He wore a lot of white.

  Sometimes a silver chain.

  And purple-tinted glasses.

  He liked a girl named Mary.

  Also Eminem.

  Was called by his mom “my little booper.”

  His Chrysler LeBaron was “Goose.”

  He said that he was sad.

  I asked about what.

  He said some stuff.

  I asked like what.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Why not.

  Just sucks.

  Hung up.

  I sat beside the Presleys on a green leather La-Z-Boy sectional recliner with the ceramic black urn of Levi’s ashes in my lap.

  We were beneath their cathedral ceiling.

  We were watching TV Land.

  We had nuts and we had Triscuits and we had spinach dip and Coke.

  We ate soup and then a salad and then chicken and then brownies.

  We looked for several minutes at his art in their new den.

  We drove across the valley to Tae Kwon Do for Kids, the studio Levi practiced at and coached others after school.

  We sat in his coach’s office among piles of trophy pieces.

  We helped screw the golden kickers into braided sequined pillars and then dark wooden bases that read ACHIEVEMENT on their plaques.

  We learned that Tae Kwon Do only has nine levels—there is white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, red, and brown, and then a whole series of advanced black belts, each with its own complexity of reticulated levels, nine tiers of nine grades in nine stages without end—because Korean culture does not believe we can be perfect.

  We agreed this was significant because he fell for nine seconds.

  I also learned that God resides in the ninth order of heaven.

  That before he could receive the secret meaning of runes, Odin had to hang for nine days on a tree.

  There are always nine Muses alive at any time.

  Always nine maidens in ancient Celtic myths.

  Always nine floors in sacred Buddhist temples.

  If a servant finds nine peas in a pod and places that pod on the floor of her kitchen, the first man who comes in and tramples that pod will be the man she marries.

  Possession, they say, is nine tenths of the law.

  Nine people, says the Bible, will be stoned on Judgment Day.

  Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again to make up nine is how Shakespeare’s three witches guaranteed Macbeth’s charm.

  For nine, said Pythagoras, is that which brings completion.

  I think we knew, however, that he really fell for eight.

  Drove back to where they lived.

  Made plans for dinner soon.

  Kissed and hugged and waved goodbye and said we’d be in touch.

  I left Las Vegas five months after Mom and I arrived.

  At some point it came clear while I was visiting the Presleys that in fact I had not spoken to their son the night he died.

  It was clear as I left Vegas that some other boy had called.

  Clear that if I point to something seeming like significance, there is the possibility that nothing real is there.

  Sometimes we misplace knowledge in pursuit of information.

  Sometimes our wisdom, too, in pursuit of what’s called knowledge.

  WHY

  Levi came home at 2:00 a.m., or he came home at 2:30 a.m. But neither Gail, his mom, nor Levi Senior, his dad, can remember exactly which. This doesn’t matter, though, they both say, because his curfew was 11:00. “We didn’t say anything immediately because he had a tournament the next day, and we knew he needed his sleep,” Gail says. Levi slept for five hours or he slept for four and a half hours, then he woke, showered, dressed, ate nothing, drove to his tournament, stretched, cheered, competed, lost, drove back home, slammed the car door, slammed the front door, slammed his room door, and stayed there. “He was probably in there two hours,” Gail says. Is that unusual? “That’s not unusual,” she says, “but after a tournament I guess it’d be a little unusual, because he really liked to talk about his meets when he came home.” After another hour Gail says she and her husband called Levi into their bedroom and told him that he was grounded for staying out past his curfew and for being at a party to which, they suspected, other kids had brought drugs. Gail says she heard ecstasy. Levi Senior says pot. Levi said Fine, threw his cell phone on their bed, and told them that they might as well take that too. He slammed their bedroom door, slammed the front door, slammed his car door, and drove away. Is that unusual? “That’s not unusual, he’s a teenager,” says Gail. “But then again we had just grounded him.” Levi drove east down Pleasant Plains Way, turned right onto Rainy River, left onto Joe Michael, right onto Shermcreft, right onto Gowan, left onto Rainbow, right onto Cheyenne, south onto Interstate 15 past two exits, then right onto Sahara, left onto Vegas, left onto Baltimore, and right into the parking garage at the Stratosphere Hotel. He found a space on the fifth level, the blue level, three spaces away from the elevator. It was 5:18 p.m. Levi then either walked down two flights of stairs to the third level of the garage, the orange level of the garage, where a skywalk connects parking to the hotel’s registration. Or Levi waited there in order to take the elevator. This was Saturday, however, and in the early evening hours on Saturdays in Vegas the elevators everywhere are slow. Once inside the casino, Levi walked down its red staircase and passed the Group Tours reception desk on his right side and Roxy’s Diner on his left, where a disk jockey plays fifties rock and the waitstaff sings. Because it was a Saturday and early evening at Roxy’s, “the place definitely would have been hopping,” said their featured waiter, Johnny Pot Roast, who thinks he was on duty that night, he said. “And who knows, I was probably singing ‘Greased Lightning,’ ’cause it’s a high-energy number and that’s what we want on a Saturday night.” When Johnny starts singing the waitresses pull microphones from the pouches of their aprons and jump onto the partitions between the diner’s booths. They wave their order pads in the air and shimmy in place while diners lift forkfuls of potatoes to their mouths and Johnny jumps high and lands on his knees and holds his eyes shut as he holds the long ing in the long final high note in “lightning.” Levi then walked past the casino’s 48 card tables and 2,000 slot machines, some of which are named after popular American telev
ision shows—I DREAM OF JEANNIE, WHEEL OF FORTUNE, HOGAN’S HEROES and some of which are named after popular American merchandise—SPAM, HARLEY-DAVIDSON, the board game BATTLESHIP—and some of which are not named after anything at all—MONEY TO BURN, THE NICKEL GAME, PUSH IT PUSH IT PUSH IT—and then Levi walked toward the woman at the foot of the escalator who sells cigarettes and cigars and battery-operated necklaces from a small tray that hangs from her shoulders below her breasts. There is a blue star necklace and a red orb necklace and a yellow cross necklace available for sale, each of which glows steadily or flickers randomly or even can be programmed “to reflect your own mood!” Amy, who was on duty that night, knows Levi didn’t buy anything because she would have remembered a boy buying a necklace, she said. “Usually the guys who buy stuff are buying stuff for raves, and I always ask them where they’re going ’cause I’m a raver, too.” Then he went up the escalator. Levi would have stood in line at the hotel’s ticket booth in order to buy a ticket to the top of the hotel’s tower. Because it was Saturday and early evening, however, there would have been a long line at the hotel ticket booth. Levi would have stood between the fanny packs and the midriffs and the open containers and the flip-flops and noticed the backlit advertisements behind the hotel’s ticket booth for the upcoming Billy Ray Cyrus concert in September or the Heavyweight Boxing Extravaganza in November or the Stratosphere’s New Guaranteed Refund Slot Program, which pays players back 15 percent of what they’ve lost, and then he would have purchased his ticket from one of the three ticket booth attendants for four dollars rather than eight, because he was a Las Vegas resident, and finally he would have begun to walk toward the tower’s elevator at the other end of the Stratosphere’s Tower of Shops Mall. Past Flagmania. Past Alpaca Pete’s. Past the Fabulous Las Vegas Magic Shop and the Great Wall of Magnets and Goldfather’s, a kiosk that sells gold chains by the yard. Levi walked past Aqua Massage. Häagen-Dazs. Temporary Henna Airbrush Tattoo. Past Perfumania, Leather Land, Gifts Plus, Arcade. Past COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION ANOTHER EXCITING SHOP. Past Stitch It On’s hat embroidery kiosk. Past Vegas Candle’s HUGE BLOWOUT SALE! Past Wetzel’s Pretzels, Cleo’s Fine Jewelers, and CJ’s Casino Emporium, which sells “vintage 1991” slot machines for $4,995. Levi walked past Breathe, an oxygen bar, where you can “revive your body, renew your spirit, relax your mind, and feel more alive” for fifteen dollars per fifteen-minute dose, which includes your choice of one of eighteen complimentary oxygen aromas, such as Nirvana, Watermelon, Clarity, Peach, Sublime, Capuccino, Synergy, Dream, Chocolate, Eclipse, Revitalize, or Tangerine. The girls at Breathe don’t remember Levi stopping by the bar that evening, but they do recall hearing about his jump once it occurred. “All I want to say,” said Jenny, who manages the bar, “is that it’s awful that it happened, but I know for a fact that he wasn’t on O2 when he did it.” Then Levi reached the end of the mall and walked down a ramp to wait in the next line. Because it was Saturday and early evening, however, there would have been a long line wrapping around the roped corrals four or five times and stretching back into the mall. Harold, a security guard, eventually would have asked Levi if he had any metal in his pockets, and, because he did, Levi would have emptied his car keys into a white Stratosphere slot machine coin bucket, walked through the metal detector, picked up his keys, and walked into a narrow hallway to wait for the elevator to the tower. Because it was Saturday and early evening, however, the group with which Levi had waited in line would have had to wait in that hallway even longer. It would have been crowded and hot and yellow-lit that night, and for the long meanwhile during which Levi waited he might have glanced over the railing and seen below him the Stratosphere’s amusement area that’s called Strat-O-Fair, a passageway of carnival games beside the hotel’s pool. There is the softball-throwing game called “Cat Splat” and the ring-throwing game called “Orb-a-Toss” and the ride-at-your-own-risk mechanical bull that’s called “Vegas Cowboy”: “Warning! This mechanical bull is designed to simulate the motion of a live bull. Therefore, there is a high probability that the rider will be thrown from, and/or struck by, this mechanical bull. This mechanical bull is a heavy duty machine that will violently, erratically, and unpredictably spin and rotate the rider at high speeds. You must be at least thirteen years old to ride this bull!” Then he entered the elevator. Inside, Levi would have been greeted by a young woman, perhaps Caroline, who would have worn black pants and a pink-and-teal Stratosphere polo shirt, and who would have announced, once the doors had closed, that Levi and the elevator’s other twenty-five-maximum occupants that night would soon be traveling 1,858 feet per minute to the top of the Stratosphere tower, even though they would only be traveling 857 feet to the top of the Stratosphere tower, together, in a double-decker elevator in which they would have been so closely arranged that it would have been impossible for them to have counted themselves, some of whom might have been drunk, some of whom might have been talking over the elevator operator’s narrative of their ascent, and some of whom might have interrupted the operator to ask her, several times, on the same trip, while giggling, how many times each day she goes up and down the shaft. Then Levi would have exited and walked into the blue-lit hallway of the first level of the tower’s two-level observation deck, past a closed gift shop, past a closed snack bar, past the picture-paned radio station that had broadcast nothing for years, and into the carpeted round enclosure of the deck, whose floor-to-ceiling windows slant inward toward the ground so that visitors, while looking down at Las Vegas, toe-to-pane at the windows, might experience what pre-opening hotel press releases called, in 1994, “free-fall.” Then he walked upstairs, outside. It was Saturday and early evening and there were many people around. Some kids running around the paved deck of the tower. Some adults looking through the coin-operated telescopes, making sure they wouldn’t work before first depositing a coin. Some older people holding on to the inside chain-link fence of the deck, readjusting their grips each time a copter flew by. Levi walked left, east, away from where the sun had begun its own decline, and leaned briefly against the four-foot-high-railinged fence of the deck while a bride and groom took photographs of each other and then of the view and then of the last 200 feet of the tower above. Then Levi climbed over the four-foot-high-railinged fence, stepped into what Stratosphere security calls “the moat,” a six-foot-wide concrete paved space between the four-foot-high fence on the deck’s inside perimeter and the ten-foot-high fence at the very edge of the perimeter, and then Levi climbed over the ten-foot-high fence and sat down. It was Saturday and early evening and an alarm was ringing in the hotel’s security office. Levi sat on the ledge for forty-eight seconds before anyone on the deck walked by. Now the sun was gone. Saturday was night. And the valley in which Levi had grown up became bright, and it stayed bright, all the way to the invisible black mountains around it, the wall that would keep the city forever the shape it now was. Security officer Frank then approached Levi from the left, the east, and said, “Hey,” or he said, “Hey, kid,” or he said, “Kid, no,” or he said nothing, and it was his presence alone that caused Levi to turn his head to the left, stand up on the ledge, wave to the security officer, who does not appear on the screen of the video on which Levi is waving, and jump.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to those who appear in this essay, most especially Gail and Levi Presley, who generously welcomed me into their home to share their story about Levi. I’m grateful as well to Joshua Abbey, director of the Desert Space Foundation in Las Vegas, Nevada; to Vic Baker, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Arizona; to Lee Clarke, Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University; to Virginia Corning, Emeritus Professor of Climatology, Boulder City, Nevada; to Michael Brill, founding director of the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation in Buffalo; to John Fildes, Medical Director of the Trauma Center at the University Medical Center in Las Vegas; to Ron Flud, former Coroner of Clark County, Nevada; to Robert Fri, Fellow at Resources for the Futu
re in Washington, D.C.; to David Givens, director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies in Tacoma, Washington; to Bob Halstead, Transportation Adviser for the state of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects; to Corbin Harney, Spiritual Leader of the Western Shoshone Indian Nation; to Sandra Harris, former director of the Las Vegas Neon Sign Association; to Dave Hickey, Professor of Art History at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas; to Michael Karnell, director of Otolaryngology at the University of Iowa; to Venus Lovetere, president of Venus Investigations; to Cory Martin, owner of Tae Kwon Do for Kids in Las Vegas; to Louis Narens, Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California at Irvine; to Fritz Newmeyer, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington; and to Aaron Sell, Research Fellow at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In addition, I’m grateful for the help of my friend Jon Wilcox, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, who provided me with the Old English translations that appear on page 128. And finally I am grateful to those other experts who spoke with me at length about the issues in this book, among them Allen Benson, director of Institutional Affairs at the Department of Energy in Las Vegas; Dorothy Bryant, former director of the Las Vegas Suicide Prevention Center; Gregg Ficke, founder of Vegas Action; Linda Flatt, chairwoman of the Nevada Coalition for Suicide Prevention; Frank Hoifodt, Research Fellow at the Munch Museet in Oslo, Norway; Maureen Kaplan, research analyst at the Eastern Research Group; Jerry King, project manager for Yucca Mountain’s Feasibility Study at the Department of Energy in Las Vegas; Elise Lund, press liaison at the National Museum of Norway; Robert Lupton, former county liaison in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy; Lars Mehlum, director of Norway’s National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention; Woody Sullivan, Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Washington; Steve Weeks, manager of the Young Electric Sign Company of Las Vegas; and Claire Whetsel, education specialist at the Yucca Mountain Science Center. I also want to thank the Lannan Foundation for a long and luxurious residency that helped kick-start this project. In addition I thank my friend Joanna Klink for having a better sense of what it was about than I did while trying to write it. I thank my editor, Jill Bialosky, for having endless faith in it. And as ever I thank my agent, Matt McGowan, for his endless faith in me. Finally, I am proud of my mother, Gaetana D’Agata, for not losing faith in Vegas.