The Long Fall

Twill had a small scar under his chin, a blemish from a tumble he took as a toddler. I often thought that that little protuberant flaw made him even more perfect, telling the world that this handsome representation of a man was human too.

“How’s it goin’, Twill?” I asked.

“Can’t complain.”

“You see your probation officer this week?”

“This afternoon. He said I was doing fine.”

Twill always looked you in the eye when speaking.

“Any girls on the scene?” I asked.

He hunched his shoulders, giving away nothing.

Twill didn’t call girls hos and bitches, as many of his friends did; not that he was outraged by that kind of language.

That’s just the way people talk, he once told me. I don’t do it ’cause it don’t sound right comin’ outta my mouth, that’s all.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“It K sihinis what it is, Pop.”

Ê€„

9

The setting of the dream changes slightly over time but in essence it remains the same.

I’m in a burning building, running through a maze of blazing hallways. In this particular nightmare I come to a staircase and wonder if it’s worth trying to get down that way. But when I arrive at the door, flames vomit out at me. I run through an office door into a burning room. I run from room to room, breathing hard, choking on the smoke and hot air.

I come to another stairwell but it is blocked by smoldering timbers. I try to move them but orange embers burn my hands, sending me reeling backwards. I stumble and right myself again and again, running in between the stagger. All of a sudden I see a window at the end of a long, flame-licked hallway. I take a step and the floor under my foot gives way. Shifting my weight to the other foot, I spring forward, vaulting over the gaping hole in the floor. The walls and floor and ceiling are all flame now. At every step the floor gives way behind me. I keep on moving toward that faraway window, certain that I won’t make it. I’m running. Smoke is rising from my clothes. My senses become confused with each other. I see the concussive cracking of flame and hear the bright heat. My mind is burning and it is my soul more than any other part of me that is racing for the liberation of the window.

Suddenly I am standing on a solid floor before the huge plate-glass frame. The window is occluded by smoke residue. There is no mechanism to open it. I rush back into the conflagration to retrieve a burning timber. And though I am being burned I batter the glass, again and again. It cracks and buckles, weakens and finally gives way.

As the window falls I am faced with the most beautiful blue sky I have ever seen. Below, the broken pane and flaming timber are still falling through thousands of feet to earth. Fire and heat pulse behind me. The day beckons. The wind is bracing, and the choice . . . no choice at all.

I don’t remember jumping, just the sensation of falling through the frigid atmosphere, the cold wind freezing my burnt skin, clean air excavating the tar from my lungs. I expected that falling through space would be quiet, like the last moments in a film when the sound cuts out while the hero is being shot down protecting the town from a gang of bandits.

This fall is loud, however; it roars in my ears, a jungle beast hungry for prey.

The ground is racing toward me with deadly indifference.

I STARTED AWAKE, gulping for air, with my hands thrust out in front of me to stop the deadly fall. The television was droning on about some kind of new abdominal exercise machine. Katrina, who cannot sleep without the company of her precious TV, was unconscious there next to me.

Like a sprinter at the end of a race, I needed many deep gulps of air before I could breathe normally. My chest was hurting and I wanted more than anything to scream. I was shiveri Nep ng and cold, sweating too.

I never dreamt about my victims, but their memory is the mortar and stone of that burning building.

The alarm clock on my side of the bed said 5:06.

I couldn’t bear the thought of another meal with my half-family and pretend wife.

I knew full well that Katrina was being so nice to me only because she had faced the real possibility of being set adrift in life at middle age. If she met a new Andre Zool tomorrow she’d be gone by the end of the week.

I rolled out of bed and went to my den, where I always kept a change of clothes.

Down on the street I lit one of Ambrose Thurman’s Camels and walked toward Broadway. At a kiosk on the corner I bought the Daily News, which I started reading right there on the street. I might have made some headway but raindrops hit my nose and left thumb.

That’s Jesus kissing you with his tears, my mother whispered from the grave. She loved my father unconditionally but never accepted his atheistic ideology.