Before it Goes Black

Don’t scratch you head, fool. Don’t even try. What you lookin at? Keep walking. I don’t even get to face the voice before a…

Sudden push in my lower back – doesn’t feel violent at all, more like being hit by a pillow – jars my head towards the sky. A cloud of crows explores all possible shapes and arrangements in a 1000 cubic foot space about eight feet above my head. I hear the crunch of dying insects and the dull flutter of feathers.

A horn blasts. I scurry across the street and onto a strange sidewalk dotted with tiny round tables decorated with renditions of famous painting – Trafalgar Square, fluorescent Marilyn Monroes, Mona Lisa flashing her golden grill, embedded television screens play loops of jaunty astronaut steps and captive goldfish alternately.

Ahead I see steam pouring out of a doorway. Hissing commences from some place behind me. Green and red awning, to me, means the possibility of pizza, spaghetti, cured meats so, for a moment, I smell onions, oregano, and starchy water.

“Why?” My voice sounds strange, like it’s hitting my ears through a speaker system and not a larynx.

“Would it make a difference to know it or anything at all, for that matter? Can you tell me?” asks a handsome man standing underneath the awning. He didn’t come from the restaurant. His greased hair shines in the sun, as do his sky-blue eye even though the sun does not strike them directly. My jaw dangles like a cooked lasagna noodle. Have I gazed at this man’s eyes in photographs, book covers, album jackets? He seems put-together from pictures of pictures, an idealization of what I wanted to become before… something happened. I feel that figuring out what will answer and fix the problem at the same time.

“Here and now, buddy. Quick!” he says. I look into his eyes again. Their sparkle and intensity would take my breath away but his friendly hand on my shoulder keeps me steady. As he begins to speak, I realize that I am more focused than I have been in… I don’t know how long. It’s frightening.

“Don’t be scared. I’ll tell you the answer: No. None of it matters as much as she. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

In a puddle in front of a flower shop, a tall crane shakes dry.

“C’mon! See her!” I don’t care that this stranger yells at me as much as how he could possibly know who she is. I don’t even know.

The crane stretches its neck and pecks towards the sun as if drinking its honey.

“How could I forget her?” I ask.

The man smiles. “You don’t know where you are, do you?”

“Where am I?” Seems like a reasonable question. Why don’t I know already? Strange that I am not more anxious. Everything seems to glow with its own inner light, like this man’s eyes. I cannot cal him strange, even though he hasn’t told me his name. He would probably tell me that I already know it or that it doesn’t matter.

“Where it begins and where it ends. Ha! Ha!” He claps his hands and slaps his knees then steps into the daylight. Behind him I see overgrown grass in a vacant lot bordered on three sides by brick wall and sandy alleys. I hear the clip-clop of horses in the distance and smell fresh dirt.

“Anyway, you’ve got it, or her, I should say.” The crane flaps its wings enough to lift itself off the ground just nine inches before falling like a giant banana leaf. Its feet make a crisp splashing sound, like biting into a fresh apple.

Suddenly, I see her side profile, her eyes closed to protect herself from the her she shakes on a late spring day. Her neck and nose look birdlike. I told her so that day. We could smell the tree flower ululating in the breeze outside the window of the classroom. My new – or old? - friend knows I see her face; he nods.

“April Hebron,” I say. The name echoes so loudly that a bell hanging across the street hums. The crane leaps into the sky and vanishes.

Wondering how I could ever forget her makes me sad. I begin to shake and I can feel my heart rate climb. My friend tells me that everything will be okay.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“How matters much less than the Now and you know this, Henry.”

Again, I hear the echoing. This time it reverberates so intensely that my eyeballs shake and the bell chimes a clear E then fades into a hiss.

When I close my eyes I see April. She rests her chin in her hands, her elbows sunk into the soft earth of the hillside overlooking the river. We used to meet at this place on instinct to get high or just watch the sun sink behind the wooded hills. “What animal do you want to be?” she asks.

I know the answer and the fact that it doesn’t come to me right away frustrates me more than finding myself in yet another place when I open my eyes.

The hissing becomes the roar of a waterfall. I’m on the edge of a giant boulder, looking downward at its relentless, yet gentle violence. It startles me and I fall onto a natural stone seat. For thousands of years the water has fallen here, making pock marks big enough for a man’s forearm. Mist brightens the green until it seems almost electric, like the sign in a pub window. Vines hang from the conifers and sway like loose strands of Christmas lights in the middle of the natural amphitheater. Branches bobbed with the weight of hundreds of black starlings that all seem to be watching me.

Yeah, this is another spot; one we haunted later, after leaving and returning. I don’t recall black starlings, or even any birds at all. It was always night when we came here together.

I wonder if I can creep into the little cave just below this spot? Jutting rocks on the step embankment make precarious steps. April once laughed at the crunch of pine twigs. “They feel like burlap,” she had said, and I hear it again. Now the dirt feels like a loose sheet when you smooth the wrinkles flat.

To climb the path to the cave – set behind the waterfall – I have to descend almost all the way to the water. The last foothold sink into the mud and startles a black and yellow salamander from its sleep. Its girth commands respect but doesn’t frighten me.

I climb the path and sidestep my way behind a sheet of water. Oil on the little puddles shine rainbow colors. Years ago, I remember my father talking about a mill located somewhere upstream. That might account for the oily puddles and, perhaps, the redness of the dirt in the cave. I can taste the iron. The stream and trees look like a Van Gogh behind the water.

It’s incredible! Never exactly the same, yet always the same things behind the water! If I’m not careful, it could trap my attention and I don’t want to find my way in the dark. All the same, I do want to check out the cave. It looks wider than I remember.

My foot squishes the rusty mud. A fresh whiff of iron makes me nauseous. I a low grumble and rustling of leaves. Then the yellow lights, like angry candles appear and turn orange as the bear stands fully erect.

Take three bounding strides and leap. I notice the sheet of water looks like a painting April gave to me just before I left for…

No splash, but the geese take off and form an arrow pointing west. Its the lake next to her college, the one where we…

We kissed here! I forgot? Seems like I’ve known it forever. I could float if I tried. Getting darker.

Which building is hers… the one that looks like a Lego house. Random specks of yellow and dark blue on blood red signify students studying or gallivanting. No way to tell which.

Next to the building, the red sun sinking behind a hill looks like a picture on a fan I saw at the Chinese restaurant across the street from her building.

Under a street lamp, I can see the silhouette of a man dejectedly smoking a cigarette. Looks like my friend that I met under the green and red awning – how long ago? I don’t even care, I’m so happy to see him. He looks older. Same flannel shirt, but under a worn jacket. A few strands of hair hang over his forehead. Black toenails wiggle through wretched leather work boots. A paper bag crinkles when the fifth-gallon bottle touches the ground.

I tell him to watch out for the campus police. “They frown on people loitering and definitely want drinking behind closed doors.

Seeing me makes him feel better, I think. He smiles and tells me not to worry. He’s catching a bus soon to Iowa, home of the best apple pie and the prettiest girls in the world.

“I’ve got all the time in the world, my friend. You don’t. You’ve got about ten minutes before it goes black. Listen: You have to tell her ‘No,’ but keep her off the road. Take her to the party over there. She might not like it, but your friend Ralph, who lives there, misses you. Take her there or stay in her room. Just don’t drive anywhere.”

With his words hanging in the air like dust, an antique-looking bus appears and he boards, taking a bit from the bottle. Tree frogs are croaking as if crazed for sex or murder, not sure which.

I backtrack to her building and press the button next to her name. She lets me up and give me a long hug as if relieved to see me.

“What took you so long, honey?” She calls me honey? “We have to leave now if we’re going to make the flight.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” I say. About what, I don’t know, though another part of my mind must have a memory of these circumstances. Suddenly, I feel a throb of blood in my head.

“I made this for you,” she says showing me a painting that looks like a grove of conifer trees behind a curtain of water. I thank her and give her a grateful kiss as if it comes natural to me, as if at some point her and I…

“Let’s stay in tonight, April, please,” I say.

“Stay in! How can you say that? You’ve already committed to go. That’s a breach of contract. You can get fined. Plus, you know I was planning on driving home after the airport.”

“I don’t care. I just want to be with you. Nothing else matters and I’m sorry for what happened. Please forgive me, honey. Please.”

Tears splash on black tiles before I finish my plea. I did something wrong, betrayed her and tried to flee. Gratitude – for April, for me blue-eyed friend’s advice, for everything – fills my chest cavity, feeling like a glass of warm milk in my soul. Whatever that is, it feels more real now. No more flights of fancy or escape plans. The only real freedom possible one must grasp and experience in the eternal moment. We cry together and share a perfect embrace. Her smile is so beautiful, it hurts my head.

“Then what should we do?” she asks.

“I haven’t seen Ralph in a while and he’s throwing a party at his house.”

“How did you know about that?” she asks.

I don’t know what to tell her. Can’t say ‘Some guy that I met under the street lamp.’

“It doesn’t matter…. He told me. Please, please can we go. We’ll wake up extra early and leave from his place.”

My friend’s words came back to me like a whisper on a breeze. ‘Anywhere’ means any place a long distance. We just taking the car so we don’t have to retrieve it in the morning.

Another cold throb of blood floods my skull. The evening sky sparkles for a moment. In the car, I see a cloud of crows hover above the first intersection. Only a red residual haze remains.

“Better call and tell him we’re on our way. I can’t wait to tell him about us!” she says.

The words of my familiar new friend echo in the cab of the car. “Don’t drive anywhere.” Next to the pond, a crane takes flight.

My head feels as if dunked in a basin of cold pain when I hear April dial the first number; it sounds like a long E flat. Through my eyelids, I see the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. They get brighter as I feel a thumping pressure on my chest. Someone screams. A final surge of blood, the flutter of wings, the lights slowly fade to nothing.

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