A Hard and Heavy Thing (8 page)

No one told him these weren't our stories to tell.]

Levi attempted the exercise, but he had already been corrupted. He had not one original thought. As he closed his eyes and tried to think of something personal to express about what had happened, an image from some Internet news site kept obtruding. It showed the parallel lines of a building's windows running from the top left to the bottom right of the image. The visible part of the building in the lower half of the picture was clean and light gray, but a jagged and diagonal swath of flame split the image in two, leaving the upper half of the photo a black, charred, and smoky ruin. Yet, it was not the orange flames cutting across the building or the smoke that obscured the bit of sky visible in the top right of the image that drew Levi's attention. It was the shape of a falling man, clothes rumpled by the wind, spread against the sky, suspended in the lower left of the image and backdropped by those perfect lines that ran parallel to gravity. The only image that spoke to him personally was the photograph of someone in such deep despair that jumping remained the only option.

[Now, so many years later, that picture still haunts me, but now the man has one bootless foot covered in a green sock. His pants are unbloused, and he stays like that, weightless in front of the smoke and flames, never falling further than that single moment in time.]

•••

As Levi walked back to his apartment after class, he played the lecture over in his head. He thought of rebuttals, mouthing the words he would have said in response if he would have thought of them at the time, or if he had any courage. He walked past the cracked apartment parking lots, overflowing dumpsters, and back porches in various states of disrepair. The longer he walked, the more his anger dissipated like fog from his breathing. Why should he care anyway? The guy had a few chapbooks and a PhD. What had he ever done? It was a joke.

All of school had been something of a joke thus far, at least in terms of the challenge it presented, or rather, failed to present. Levi spent a lot of time writing, sure, but even thinking about that made him laugh when he was honest with himself. More than writing, he smoked weed and doodled in notebooks. He had probably written more random haiku than anyone in history, but so what? That didn't exactly give him any moral authority. His righteous indignation had turned him into a phony, and he hated phonies.

After all, what in the world did Levi have to write about? He had no stories of his own, but he could fill books with the things he hadn't done. Huge sets of
World Book Encyclopedias
full of stuff he hadn't done. He hadn't traveled the country on a wild and reckless road trip. He had never been to a bullfight, never been to the running of the bulls, never acted like a bull in a china shop, never even been to a china shop. He had never gone deep-sea fishing, had never battled anything bigger than a Mississippi catfish, had never taken a boat or a raft all the way down the Mississippi. He had never gone mountain climbing, skiing, or big-game hunting, had never even gone deer hunting. He hadn't, he decided, really done much of anything. He hadn't even had the chutzpa to ask out Eris, the girl he'd been crushing on since he figured out what girls were. He'd never done a thing. Everything he had ever done that was in any way worth writing about could fit in a single red milk carton crate full of black-and-white composition books. If he stuck with his academic plans, he'd end up nothing more than a Dr. Buddy Jackson, purveyor of fine arts and bullshit.

Later, as he lay on his back devouring a book of Denis Johnson short stories, the phone rang. It was his dad again.

“Big change of plans, Son. We're going to have a funeral service here.”

Levi sat up and dropped his book on the floor. “There? I saw on the Internet that they're letting people fly again today.”

“Yeah, well, even so, it's not that simple. The backlog is three days long. But the real problem is your aunt. She's refusing to fly. She also won't drive that far because of the blood clots. So, change of plans. Pastor Anhalt referred us to a pastor down here. We'll do a small service so Aunt Trudy can participate, and then we'll come home.”

“Grandpa's already got a burial plot here next to Grandma.” Levi began pacing. This was worse than the body melting in a truck on the tarmac.

“Would you just let me finish? With all the flight delays we can't get a solid answer on air transport. We could have the funeral home here drive him to Wisconsin, but that's cost-prohibitive and not exactly practical under the circumstances.”

“Cost-prohibitive? Geez, Dad. Should I write that down for when I plan your funeral? God forbid you die in a different city than Mom.”

There was a long silence. Finally, his dad cleared his throat and continued in his professional, restrained, I-deal-with-scum-like-you-for-a-living voice. It was the voice that meant he was bothered. “After the service here tomorrow, we're having him cremated. We'll hand-carry his remains.”

“You're cremating him?” This is not how Levi pictured things.

His dad finally raised his voice. “Would you cut me a break here, Son? Dust to dust or ashes to ashes, what difference does it make?”

“I don't know. It all just seems—” Levi wanted to yell at his father, wanted to hang up on him, wanted to tell him this wasn't how it was supposed to be, but he didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound petulant or foolish.

“We're doing the best we can, okay? Think we're happy with all of this?”

The silence between them hummed.

“You know how you can help, Son? There's a box of photos in the attic at the house. One of those big tubs. Has a gray base and blue lid. Call your sister to help you, and pick some photos of your grandfather that cover the years. Make sure there are some of him and Grandma too. We'll set them up at the reception.”

Levi imagined the pictures on a folding table, everyone talking in hushed tones, heads slightly tilted to the side when they talked—the tilt of the head being the universal body language of sympathy, and before he knew it, he was there.

Levi's parents returned with a cherry-wood urn that resembled a miniature coffin. Before the internment, they had a small memorial at Immanuel with just family and friends. Levi arrived early, and before the service, he hovered by the door of the sacristy where Uncle Thomas sat hunched over his desk. He knocked.

Uncle Thomas looked up and smiled at him. “Hi, hi,” he said softly, his voice raspy and soothing. “How're you holding up?” He got up and came around the desk.

“I just came to say sorry for last week. Or, two weeks ago. The way I acted in your office that night,” Levi stammered. “It doesn't mean that I don't think—well, but, the thing is, regardless of what I think, I was rude and—”

Uncle Thomas grabbed Levi's right hand, and put another hand on his shoulder. “No, no. Don't worry about it. I've heard worse.”

Levi had read in his horoscope once that guilt was his Achilles' heel, and too often, that was true. Despite his best attempts to break out of his shell and exhibit just a modicum of intellectual honesty, to explain that he didn't have all the answers, his parents didn't have all the answers, Nick didn't have all the answers, Uncle Thomas didn't have all the answers, the church didn't have all the answers, and he sure couldn't hear God giving him any answers, Levi still felt guilty for leaving Uncle Thomas's office the way he had the night of The Attacks. He had dreaded this moment, but felt it necessary to apologize, to show some deference to the older man who had always been there for Nick, for him, a kind of surrogate father figure for both of them. The pastor's gratuitous kindness made him want to apologize all the more. “No, but really I had no right. You didn't say anything spiteful and I should have been more—”

Uncle Thomas squeezed his shoulder. “All is forgiven, my boy. We can talk another time if you need to, but don't worry about it today. Okay?” Levi nodded but left frustrated because he couldn't explain himself. As he ushered Levi out, Uncle Thomas said, “You make sure you take care of your parents today, okay?”

After the service, as they waited for everyone to arrive at the cemetery, Levi's mind drifted through memories of his grandfather. They rose and fell, swelled and diminished like the small waves behind the wake of his grandpa's fishing boat. He pictured him spitting over the side of the boat as they rocked by a bridge, a big bulge of tobacco in his cheek. He'd always wink and say the same thing, “Don't tell your grandmother.” When Levi grew older and stopped in to visit between school and drama practices, his grandfather would sniff the cigarette smoke on him, and Levi would wink and say, “Don't tell my mother.” His grandpa would smack him on the side of the head, but he would never tell. Levi felt the urge to cry, but he chewed on his lip to keep himself from breaking.

His dad stood straight with his chin held high. The wind whipped his overcoat, and the brim of his fedora fluttered, but his eyes didn't water. Levi looked across the open grave at his brother Paul, who stood at ease and chatted in a low voice with a rarely seen great-uncle named Gilbert.

Nick stood like a stoic, nodding at Levi as if to say, “Hang in there, buddy. You can do it.”

And yet—

It was not late autumn, but most of leaves had already fallen. The maples stretched out black and skeletal against the ashen sky, which drizzled a frigid rain that soaked the cemetery turf but refused to freeze. The bluffs towered over them as colossal shadows in the mist, reminding them of the earth's longevity and their own mortality. No day had ever
been
more perfectly funereal; no day had ever
been
more perfect for crying.

Uncle Thomas spoke a few more brief words at the grave, reminding them all of the Resurrection to come while the small contingent rocked and shivered. The men blew into their hands and the women pulled their hands into their sleeves. With great reverence, they each placed a single flower on the table next to the urn, which waited for its descent into the earth.

When the crowd left for the parking lot, everyone headed over to Immanuel's grade school gymnasium to eat sandwiches and drink the bottled water Nick had meant for New York. Levi's father remained by the table with the ashes and photos. Levi hung back like a voyeur. His father reached out his hand and touched the wooden box. He took a deep breath and his slumped shoulders betrayed great sadness. He pulled his fingers along the visible grain of the heavily lacquered and impossibly smooth wood, as if to determine its finite nature. He patted it and slowly turned. Levi expected to finally see tears, but his dad's eyes weren't even moist. He looked surprised to see Levi hovering there and he turned his mouth up slowly in a reassuring half-smile. He put his arm around Levi and walked him to the parking lot, their feet squishing in the wet grass over all those dead bodies.

That was it. Levi's parents went back to work. Paul went back to DC. Elizabeth went back to juggling her fledgling catering business and her new responsibilities as a mother. Levi and Nick went back to school. Life went on with one less person in it.

With each day at school, Levi grew more claustrophobic. His restlessness only grew. But in early October, something changed. Levi and Nick sat in their living room and watched America strike back. The war entered their small apartment in the same way The Attacks had: live and in color. There was tension when the news report started, but unlike the shock and nausea brought on by the spectacle of September 11th, the night of October 7th sparked a strange satisfaction, gestating an abstract, but visceral blood lust.

The satisfaction grew into a sense of wonder and then jubilee at certain victory as the video kept streaming in. Dim and shaky footage filled the screen for several seconds before light from Tomahawk cruise missiles illuminated formidable battleships and aircraft carriers. Warplanes fired their afterburners and flew off of massive floating cities owned by the United States Navy. Mountain ridges filmed with night-vision settings exploded into a wash of emerald light before dimming again as the differing shades of green smoked and smoldered. Red, white, and blue meteors streaked across the sky in massive displays of American firepower.

Levi poured shots of Captain Morgan rum, and the two of them toasted the victims of 9/11. They toasted the brave pilots dropping their bombs. They looked up Afghanistan on the Internet to find out where it was and what it was like, and then they toasted the Special Forces troops sneaking through caves and mountain complexes. They toasted any other GI Joe who was over there to roll up those terrorist fools.

The more they watched, the more they drank, the more excited they got by the war in their living room. “Sleeping giant,” Nick yelled, grabbing the bottle of Captain Morgan from Levi so he could drink straight from the bottle.

“No one messes with the good old U-S-of-A,” shouted Levi. “No one.”

One of the three girls who lived downstairs pounded a broomstick on her ceiling. Nick stomped on the floor. “Didn't you hear, ladies?” He yelled at the floor. “Someone messed with the wrong country.”

“Shut up,” they heard a shrill voice yell back.

Nick swirled the last swallow of rum in the bottom of the bottle. He poured it down his throat and looked at Levi with wide eyes. “Dude,” he said. “Follow me.”

“Idea?”

“Idea.”

Nick rushed out the door, down to the outside of the house, and around the corner to the porch that led to the downstairs apartment. He plowed through the flimsy screen door and kicked the cat's food dish, spilling kibbles all over the floor.

Levi stopped short behind him and held his breath. Nick held a finger to his lips and then pointed at two boxes of Rolling Rock at the back of the porch.