Jumping (20 page)

The relief on his face is evident to all.

Monica speaks up next. As she stands up, she switches her journal from hand to hand, wiping the alternate hand on her jeans. She isn't usually nervous. She takes a deep breath, shrugging her blonde braid off her shoulder, and begins.

“A leap into the Void is free floating into the Universe, in search of meaning,” she says, and tells a short story of totally surrendering and being turned inside out by an experience she imagines of jumping. It's over before I have time to get into it, but when she finishes, I see tears gleaming on her cheeks in the lantern light. Some piece of it got into her.

I look around and see that Nathan has stepped up to the edge of the blanket to read next. He is tall and stands straight, and the light polishes his dark skin. His short dreads bob as he talks, both hands gripping his journal.

“I feel as if I know the Void, as if I've already jumped,” he begins. I'm arrested by his first words.

“I see the tunnel in the dim light, the walls decorated here and there with graffiti or maybe rock art. The feel of the fall is with me, along with the time to think that falling grants you. I get a sense of other tunnels, other falling bodies.”

I'm chilled, hearing Duncan Robert's descriptions come from the mouth of this boy. This kind of detail wasn't in Babe's article, because it had to be kept shorter. How can this be that he describes the fall in almost exactly the same way?

“I land on a ledge,” Nathan reads, “on the side of the Void, and an angel comes to visit me, from out of the dark, hovering like a hummingbird. This stereotypical angel, with flowing robes and giant wings, extends his hand to me, urging me to take it, to come with him.

“Most birds either soar, relying on neighboring winds to move them in the air, or flap, creating carrying winds themselves, to get somewhere and then land. But not the hummingbird. It can hover at will, with or without wind, staying exactly where it wants to be, neither being in flight nor having landed. The angel is the same.”

I think about what I know of hummingbirds. Their shoulders trace a horizontal figure eight in the air, over and over, a sign of the balance of the up and down lift they achieve. Some birds have to leap to fly, but the hummingbird is able to lift itself straight up. It's not hard to imagine the angel, hovering near the ledge, extending a hand to the boy. I can easily imagine this happening in the Void, and I'm shaken by the vision of it, transported by it. Nathan's voice calls me out of my reverie.

“I'm afraid that if I go with the Angel,” he concludes, “I'll never be able to return to the clearing at the Void, to my life. It'll be like dying. I back away, refusing the angel's hand, and I slip off the ledge. I start falling again. I fall and fall, and the next thing I know, I wake up, here at the Void, as if I had been dreaming. But I know I wasn't.” A look of wonderment still sits on Nathan's face.

There's a moment before the next reader steps up. Maybe the two students left find Nathan's story a hard act to follow. I would. Lonnie steps up, leaving only Donal.

“I've always been afraid of heights,” he says. You'd never guess it by looking at him. He exudes a compact strength. He's dark and muscular, shorter than Nathan and Kevin by a few inches, but more physically powerful. His eyes are almost gold, and they flash in the light.

“I've been plagued by that fear all my life.” He flashes a smile. “It's probably good I didn't jump freights like the other kids, but I still didn't want to be known as the kid who couldn't. And I didn't outgrow it, as my parents promised. It only got worse as I got older.

“My senior prom was held at a big hotel in the city. I went with this girl in my class, Colleen, knowing I would score that night.” His face turns a little red, but he keeps going. “I had reserved a room at the hotel and everything, like a lot of the kids were doing. I was feeling grown-up, on top of the world. But then it turned out that my room was on the 9th floor. I'd never been in a hotel, so I didn't know that when I got up there my fear would kick in and I wouldn't be able to move away from the wall farthest from the row of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down on the pool. I was literally paralyzed. Colleen had to shut all the drapes, which helped only a little because I was sure I could feel the building swaying. I guess you could say I was unable to perform that night, and I was eternally grateful that Colleen had gotten too drunk to remember. She was so sure we had done it, she told all her friends.” He looks at us and laughs, shaking his head.

“My fear is there all the time, so coming to the edge of the Void was big for me, and I thought I might make a fool of myself somehow. But I felt called to try it. I'm so tired of being afraid—no flying, no high seats in stadiums, no skiing, no hiking, always making lame excuses for it, knowing everyone knows. I came here and much to my surprise, I found it felt friendly! This Void isn't out to hurt me, I knew that immediately. I felt like laughing. I even came to the edge with all of you, for the picture taking, and it was all good.”

He's silent for a minute. “As things got quiet, and everyone started to write, I looked over at the Void, feeling peaceful, and I felt it looking back at me. That's when I figured out that my fear isn't of heights but of jumping! People had tried to tell me that before, but I never got it. I hadn't cared what they were calling it, I just didn't want to have it. Now I could see that the fear of jumping was underneath my fear of heights all along. I always equated jumping with death and that was my real fear—which is everybody's real fear! So now, for the first time, I have a handle on what I'm dealing with and it feels more normal to me. I feel more like you.” He looks at them all with a grin. “Only better!” They laugh.

I don't know how much of that was written and how much he was just telling, but Lonnie is so pleased, I decide to let it go. This is the best he's done all year.

But he's not finished. “The Void spoke to me.”

No one says anything, wondering if he's joking.

“The Void told me that there is no death. Life doesn't end. It just changes. And changes again. And again, more times than you can count. If we can believe that, we'll have no fear of jumping or of anything else. Life was always made for living, not dying,” he says.

His eyes are shining as he looks up at me and says, “I may beat this thing yet.” Everyone laughs. He looks at them seriously for a moment. “After all, I'm not afraid of the Void anymore.” Then he moves back to his place on the blanket.

Everyone waits for Donal now. He centers his journal on his lap and begins to read, without moving up to the front of the group. His thick curly auburn hair shines in the light as he bends his head to the journal in his lap. His large hands rest open on his knees.

“I wish I had brought Brogan with me tonight, so he could jump into the Void.”

Someone exclaims, “No!”

“Brogan was always a jumper,” Donal says, with certainty, “from the time he was little. I remember when he was two and a half, he had a favorite little bench he kept in the living room, at the end of the couch. He would hold onto the arm of the couch as he climbed up on this bench that was maybe ten inches off the floor. He was about thirty-one inches tall then, so we're talking a third of his height. He would face forward, hold out his arms, airplane style, concentrate for a minute, and then jump. He'd land flat-footed, so pleased with himself he laughed out loud, and then he'd do it again. He'd do this over and over—I counted twenty-six times in a row once—before he'd get tired of it. He wasn't doing it for an audience. Usually there was no one in the room but him. I'd be in another room and hear him laugh, and I'd know what he was doing and come to spy on him. It made me laugh, too. I tried to ask him why he did it, and he'd just laugh and say, ‘It fun, Donal!’

Donal looks up at us, love for his brother shining on his clear, honest face. “I loved the way he said my name. He made it sound like a foreign word.” He looks back down at his journal, turning the page.

“When he was four, he would jump off the back fence, which was as tall as he was. By five, we couldn't keep him off the shed roof, easily twice as tall as he was. He still said he did it for the fun of it, and you'd hear him laugh as he did it. The sound of his laughing is one of the best sounds in the world; it makes everything seem perfect. Now he's six, and he's not jumping any more. He's not laughing any more, either. Oh, I know you'll all say, don't worry, Donal, he'll probably jump again, when he gets past this fear he has. Yeah, maybe. But I look around at the other six year olds, and they're not jumping either. They're racing each other or fighting or watching videos, like their big brothers. I don't want that for him. I want Brogan back. I want Brogan to jump. If that's gone, I don't know who he is. Maybe that's crazy. But I heard what you said about jumping.” He looks at me, accusingly, and then they all do.

I look back, feeling a little hollow inside. Why do they think I have all the answers? Did I ever feel that way about my teachers? Maybe I did.

“So, when I sat here tonight, my first time at the Void, I thought this is where I should bring Brogan. I could take him to the edge of the Void and show him he has nothing to be afraid of here. I could let the Void reintroduce him to the idea of jumping. I mean, Duncan Robert jumped and he survived. And he sounded like Brogan in that story—happy, at home in his own skin, glad for each day. I want that for Brogan. Does that make me a terrible person? I'd be willing to jump with him. I could even hold him when we jump.”

He looks at me again, and I feel a little nauseous. I take a minute to breathe, trying to stop the picture in my head of a child jumping, and the feeling of being responsible for it.

“Donal, I bet you were a lot like Brogan when you were his age. Look how you've turned out. Is that so bad? It looks pretty good to me. You've told an incredible story.”

Donal slumps in his position on the ground now.

“He's better than me. He's got more good.”

I'm at a loss about what to say next, and suddenly I wish Babe was here. She'd know what to say. Somebody needs to say something to this dejected boy.

Then a voice wafts out of the darkness.

“That's how I feel about my brother.”

Donal turns to look at Carrie Jean, and she moves to his blanket, putting an arm around him when she gets there, smiling at him. He leans against her, though he's easily twice her size, and cries softly, quietly. She just sits and lets him, without saying another word. Brothers are being comforted, I think. They're all getting and giving things they didn't get and give at other places and times, with other people, living and dead. I'm so moved, I hardly know what to think.

The last writer has read. They pause, and it feels as if the night pauses with them. I look at them, sitting cross-legged on their blankets, some of them holding hands, leaning against each other. They've somehow all moved closer together. We all need a break, so I suggest that before we move on. They look at each other and laugh, stretching arms and legs and voices, chattering. They get up and move to ice chests and picnic baskets, distributing water bottles and thermoses with hot tea and coffee. They pass around bags of cookies and chips, really hungry suddenly, which is not at all unusual after an emotional purge, I know. It's as if we've literally cleared the way for food. I'm hungry and thirsty myself. And they'll soon be tired, too. So, I ask them to settle in with their food and drink, so that we can wrap things up quickly.

I ask them my questions, and they talk. They had to come, they tell me—they were already disturbed by what's been happening at the Void. Coming is better than not coming. Lonnie says it's like hearing footsteps outside your door in the middle of the night—you want to open the door, to settle it one way or another, but you also want to get under your bed or put your head under the covers. Your heart pounds in your chest either way. The difference, you realize, is that part of you wants to be alive, to find out, and part of you wants to be dead, to never have to know. He wants to know.

Monica explains her position. “It's like the time, a couple of years ago, when I witnessed a car wreck on the freeway, right in front of me. I mean, we're all doing at least 65 miles an hour, and a pick-up just nudges the Volkswagen Beetle next to it, as it tries to change lanes, and the next thing I know, the beetle is flipping over in mid-air, and I'm not knowing where it's going to land. All I can do is hit my brakes and try not to have to veer into anybody near me. All of us come to a stop, the Volkswagen is upside down, one lane over, the pick-up has finally fish-tailed to a stop. Cops come almost immediately, and one comes to my window to ask what I saw and who I am. Though nothing has happened to me, I don't have so much as a scratch on me, I'm upset enough that I can't remember my phone number or address. I'm doing good to remember my name. The cop reassures me that this is pretty common and not to worry, they have enough witnesses, and to call if I remember anything more. All I know is, I'm messed up in some way I can't lay hold of but is very real. That's how I feel tonight. The Void hasn't done anything to me, but the possibility of it doing something seems very real. Does that make any sense? I mean, it's not going to grab me, but it's like it has somehow.” Others nod. She adds, “That feeling stayed with me for a while after the wreck, and I think the Void feeling will, too.”

Carrie Jean says, “At first, I couldn't help but wonder if my brother was in there, right? Like, is that what it's for? Is that where people go to die? Is it like the path to heaven or hell? But as I laid there in the grass, I suddenly knew that my brother had gone on, not down into some hole in the ground, that this Void wasn't like some mass grave that had my brother.” She gave a little laugh. “Doesn't that sound like a movie—
The Void That Ate My Brother
? But I just felt my brother's freedom, and it made me feel free, too.” She laughed again. “Does
that
make any sense? Probably not.”

Much of the sadness has left her face. The smile that's forming there doesn't seem so foreign anymore.