“We used to play the old landing of the plane game with me making motor sounds and swooping in with a full spoon. For a while, it was the only way he would eat.”
Motor, swoop, land.
Motor, swoop, land.
“When I wasn’t paying attention and the spoon missed his mouth, I’d smile and tell him that Daddy crashed. Pretty soon, even that was a game. He’d beg me to do it, yelling, ‘Daddy Crash’.”
Oh, God, please let this stop. Of all of the streets in the city, why had I chosen to walk this one?
“I felt so cool when he said that. So in charge.”
Didn’t I know it? Drugs could make you feel that way. Like an earthbound God, your every movement was an attempt at release, because you know that if you were ever freed, you could become part of existence itself.
“That morning I ignored his cries. I kept telling myself just a few more minutes then I’ll get up. Just a little more sleep was all I needed. I remember rolling over and wishing he’d stop making such a racket. Then I heard a real crash.” He giggled. “I thought he’d tipped over a glass or something.”
I closed my eyes.
“Funny thing. He’d never seemed to notice the windows before. He didn’t even realize what a tremendous view we had. I mean, seriously. Four bedrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows are what most couples dream of. My wife loved the view.”
My own wife had begged me not to drive that day. She told me I was fucked up and I remember smiling at her, admiring the way the purple and yellow hues swirled just beneath her skin. She was so beautiful with the psycho-paisley addition. I remember reaching out to touch the electric colors, not in fear of her voltage, but looking forward to an electric sting. To this day, I could swear I was using just one hand, but when she screamed and I looked down, I noticed I was using both of them.
I remember wondering who was driving the car. The doctors and the police and the judge insisted it’d been me, but I told them, How could I have been driving when my hands weren’t even on the wheel?
“When I heard the third crash from the living room, I finally pulled myself out of bed. Like always, the Little Man was in his walker. He was in the living room and when he saw me, he laughed and screamed, ‘Crash’. Jericho had gotten to the point where he was almost ready to walk, you know? He’d stand up in the hard plastic walker and boy those little legs could move. He’d propel himself from one side of the house to the other like a little Mario Andretti with a death wish. I was wiping the sleep from my eyes when I noticed the cracks in the living room window. I just couldn’t move fast enough, you know? He headed straight for it laughing and screaming ‘crash’ the entire way, you know? This time, he went right through. I ran and fell to my knees and leaned out, watching him fall the last five stories. I watched as he struck the pavement and bounced. It seemed like such a huge bounce. I remember my screams as he hit again. That time his bounce was so small.”
They said I’d driven our Mazda off the fourth story of the parking garage. They said that my son and I were lucky to be alive. When I rolled my wheelchair into his room that night, I no longer felt lucky. It’s a terrible thing to be condemned by a ten-year-old and the glare of blame and hatred he sent my way was too much—probably the reason why I didn’t fight when my mother-in-law took me to court for custody.
“And do you know what’s really funny?”
Life is.
“My first instinct was to spank him. Can you believe that? I was going to spank my dead son!”
The suddenness of reality throws us all off track.
“Our priest told us that my little boy is in Heaven now. The doctors said that he never felt the bounce...that he was unconscious before he hit the ground. I think the both of them are clueless,” he said, an edge shading his tone. “I still remember Jericho’s screams...and I remember when they abruptly stopped. And there is no Heaven, either. If there is, then why is my boy’s soul still here?”
I jerked my head up and stared.
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling his answer was somehow important.
“You ever been to a Civil War battlefield? Ever notice how quiet it is, as if the birds and nature itself is somehow subdued. Battlefields are somber places. It’s almost as if you can feel a certain heaviness about them. The reason’s simple, really. When people die, their souls remain in place. They don’t enter a fucking white light. They don’t transcend. Hell, nobody even comes back as a silly Hindu cockroach if their karma is all skewed. People die and their soul stays where they die. Simple.”
“So then graveyards?”
“Are nothing more than a place for the living. I betcha people all over the world know this, but it’d be crazy as hell if there was a headstone in every place a person died. Imagine that. Why, the interstates would be fucking impassible.”
His words had a certain logic. During my peyote days, I remember some of my Navaho friends telling me about their belief in what they termed A Sense of Place. I remember driving through Arizona and New Mexico and seeing shrines all along the roads; each one a crazy syncretic mixture of Catholicism and Old-Time Religion—each one a place where someone had died.
“So when I die, it means that there will be no great reunion where all of my family greets me at the Pearly Gates. Wherever I die, I’ll be alone, unless of course some other poor schmuck died in the same place. What would your choice be—spending your death with a stranger, alone, or with your family?”
People were beginning to make their way to work. More than a few passersby gave us strange looks—glances of domesticated reason I hadn’t seen since my days of psychedelic roaming. Even more cursed our impediment to their paths. High up on the building the sun was winking off the glassy surfaces of the windows. The man squinted as if he was seeking one window in particular.
“Funny thing about death, something I never in a million years would’ve guessed. Even if it’s your fault, the dead forgive you. Like it’s a rule or something, you know? When Jericho speaks with me he never mentions my mistake.”
The words speared me.
When Jericho speaks with me...
The man shook his head as if it was still unbelievable and backed down the stepladder. He folded it, gripped it sideways, and turned toward me, standing as straight as if the burdens of life had been lifted from his shoulders. His face, previously a blend of sad reminiscence and happy insanity, was now stoic with determination.
“Hold this, will you? I’m not going to be needing it any longer.”
I stood there, gripping the rough wood as he entered the building. I imagined him almost whistling as he pressed the UP button on the elevator. This stranger had solved the equation I’d spent the better part of my life trying to figure out. This man understood...as my own son understood. No longer would I ask the empty heavens why.
Two years to the date of the accident, I’d received a call from my mother-in-law. For some peculiar reason, I was sober, acid-free and only experiencing the second day of a cocaine glide—coincidence, really.
“It’s all your fault,” she’d screamed.
I thought she was talking about her daughter, again. I thought she was going to lay some more blame on me for killing my wife, but it was a terribly different message. Amidst her tears and raw rage I heard the very worst.
My son had committed suicide.
At sixteen, he was dead.
My sweet boy had taken the elevator to the fourth floor of the parking garage that had changed all of our lives and leapt to join his mother.