Jumping (21 page)

Donal says, “I thought I might feel the urge to jump, like it might be calling to me to jump. I've heard it has that power. But I ended up feeling pretty peaceful here. Like, it didn't want me, and maybe it even wished me well. It made me feel like everything's going to be all right, including my little brother. I know
that
doesn't make any sense!” More laughter. “The little twerp,” he says, also smiling. “Maybe I
should
bring him here.”

“I thought I did jump!” said Nathan. “I wanted to imagine what falling into it would be like, and I just laid there on my blanket and closed my eyes and imagined it. And it was so real. I just ended up writing what I saw. You know, like you tell us to, with your Dragnet theory—‘just the facts, ma'am.’” I had to explain that reference to them, but now they like it.

So, I ask them, “Is this your story of the Void, then? A happy, feel-good kind of place?”

“I don't know. I still wonder why our town has one, and there isn't one anywhere else. I still wonder what it's here for. Maybe that's why no one talks about it—they don't know what it's here for. Why can't geology explain it? Or archaeology?” Kevin asks.

“No money in it,” Lonnie says.

“What do you mean, no money in it?”

“No reason to spend money on it, to figure anything out. It can't make anybody any money.”

“I think they tried, over the years,” Monica says. “They did some tests, like dropping ropes down, to find its bottom, like they did with Bottomless Lakes. And they couldn't find any bottom. I think they've tried to send spelunkers down, but they didn't see much point, since it seemed pretty featureless in there. Maybe they could do more, now, what with all the technology.”

“Yeah, if there was money in it,” Lonnie adds.

They laugh.

“But why is everyone so afraid of it? Why weren't we allowed near it? Why'd they try to fill it in? Just because people might jump?” Monica asks.

“Because somebody did jump,” Lonnie says. “I remember a story, a long time ago, from my cousin, who is part Algonquin and part Lakota. He said he knew there was somebody who jumped, over a lover's triangle or something. He said the older generation knows more than they're telling. They value their traditions more than they value people. And they try to blame everything that goes wrong on white interference, so you never know what really happened. But he said that's what doomed the Void.”

Carrie Jean looks at Lonnie. “I've heard that story, too.” That troubled look has returned to her face. “Sometimes they even say that's where my mother jumped. But my Granny doesn't say, and I think if it was true, she would have told me.”

The group gets quiet, thinking about this and staring towards the Void. It's time to wrap it up for the evening. It's class as usual next week, and they are to write in their journals in the meantime, look at their pictures, and see what more they might have to say about it all. They pack up, which takes several minutes, and move toward their cars, talking quietly as they go. I'm giving a couple of them rides, so I pack up, too. I'm thinking about the Void and its long history and how I'm about to become part of it. I know I can't tell them that, but I wish I could. I wonder if Babe is still up.

I
N THE WEEKS THAT
follow our visit with Duncan Robert, I find myself inventing a kind of training for the jump, primarily to quell my anxiety at waiting for it. The jump isn't until May, when Spring Break is scheduled, but still, I try to eat healthier foods and exercise more, though I can't seem to quell my addiction to french fries. They're comfort food. The waitresses at Alpine Alley, my favorite café in town, say, “Well, we can fix you a grilled cheese,” when I ask about getting anything vegetarian.

Under pressure from Henry, I finished the article within a week or two of the interview, and he published it as quickly as he could, so that it was out by mid-October. Of course he compressed and cut a good part of the life out of it, but the story line is still there, and the readers know Duncan Robert not only survived his jump into the Void, he survived what he ran into down there, too. I don't know what anyone really thinks of what he ran into because they're strangely afraid to talk to me about it. They say nothing unless pressed, and then they think what I want is a compliment. The best guess I can make is that they want to think I made it all up, like the old newspaper serials. After all,
they
haven't seen Duncan Robert.

My anxiety drives me to walk in the early mornings, before the sun is up, so I can catch the sunrise, feeling as if the sun feeds me, too. Often my walks end at the Void. I can't say I plan it, but there and back is the equivalent of a good 10K, with a few gentle hills thrown in for added benefit. And it is the source of my anxiety. I find I have to keep moving, re-directing my attention away from the jump and back to more emotionally manageable things, or I tend to stop breathing and become catatonic, staring into space for long periods, a cup of cold tea halfway to my mouth or sweat pants half on or standing in the middle of a room holding an empty envelope. Sometimes I walk twice a day, sunset as well as sunrise. I think I'm trying to walk myself all the way into my decision to jump.

Miles's work as an adjunct professor at the community college keeps him busy—the interminable prep for his classes and always the grading of papers—he keeps a stack in his car, on his desk, and beside his bed. They never seem to diminish. He teaches four classes in writing composition, even though three is considered a full load for a tenured person (who would also have grading help). He likes to give lots of assignments, too, to keep the students writing so much that they can put pen to paper with ease and produce a stream of words with a beginning, middle and end. I envy him his preoccupation with work, knowing there is solace in it for him.

I, on the other hand, am in the worst possible place with work—in between things. I don't know when my next pay check is coming, I don't know what to prepare for, and I try not to think about the fact that I don't have any savings. But I am a writer, that is my craft, and this is one of the few ways I know of to try to make a living at it. I'm not cut out for teaching, like Miles. Watching him only confirms that. He has a seemingly endless supply of patience and a huge reserve of calm, with a mind able to hone the argument in a paper down to its core and know if it is good and why it is good. Or if it isn't good. He has a sure and stable confidence that doesn't second guess itself or let you do so either. I often feel like one more student in his presence, but do my level best to keep this hidden from him, usually through shameless posturing.

Miles is a runner, another reason for me to get in shape. He and Duncan Robert often ran together, on the back roads, to stay in shape for backpacking and skiing. Even so, he's not without vices. He does smoke from time to time, still allowing himself a cigarette or two after dinner, only rarely three.

“What makes a three-cigarette day?” I asked him once.

“Student grades have gone out,” he said.

I laughed.

“I'm serious,” he said. “It can bring out the worst in them.”

“Really?” I can't remember ever having argued with a teacher over a grade, figuring they knew what they were doing, generally speaking, and I deserved whatever they gave me.

“Oh, it's really just a handful of them, but it's the same bad arguing tactics over and over.”

He didn't elaborate, but I know he isn't an arguer. I imagine him calm and sure in the face of those entitled students.

As a newspaper person, I don't argue, either, having learned the hard way that can shut down an interview quicker than most anything. Maybe that's why neither of us has argued about the jump. In that hotel room, after Duncan Robert told us the story of his jump and left us to go back to his world as he would now create it, we had looked at each other calmly and known that we would jump, no question about it.

So maybe there was nothing to argue about—no pros or cons, no cost-benefit analysis, no logic model. Not that we weren't scared; any normal people would be. But before we even heard from Duncan Robert, Miles had spent months after his jump learning everything he could about jumping and about Voids, trying to piece together the whys and wherefores of it all. And I've been building a background in it practically all my life. We've got a familiarity with the Void most people don't have, and we agree on what we know.

Miles has the added experience of knowing a jumper. Duncan Robert is one of his two remaining family members, close as family can get. So close Duncan Robert could tell Miles he was going to jump, and Miles didn't try to stop him. This means Miles is following in a trusted family member's footsteps.

What am I doing? I'm following a childhood call, a hunch, a feeling. Well, that's what makes a good newspaper person, and I'm being that, too. And who am I kidding? I can't
not
do it, no matter how it unsettles my days and my nights and my sense of who I am. I have the peace of knowing I'm doing it.

Duncan Robert came back to talk about it, and for a few weeks I knew people in town talked about it, and the article brought some out-of-town visitors—the curious, the thrill seeking, the self-appointed overseers of such public happenings. While that brought some extra revenue for the local businesses that catered to the tourist trade, some people couldn't help but believe it was for the wrong reasons. Most town people believed they were being laughed at behind their backs, and they didn't like it.

Meanwhile, Miles and I went on planning our jump. We need to prepare our loved ones, and we want to spare them as much shock and worry as we can. We need to tell them as early as possible, to give them time to ask all their questions and get as used to the idea as they can. It helps that we both have small families. Miles has one sister, and I have two, Marla and Kelly. None of our parents are alive, and we're not close to any extended family. Of course, for Silvia this will be the second jump of a close family member, so I wondered about her reaction. I still have a picture in my mind of her looking for comfort at the Void after Duncan Robert's jump, tossing flowers into the darkness, hoping somehow that he knew. But Miles has been to see her, and she seemed to have known before he did that he was going to do it.

As for my sisters, I don't feel good about this. Miles and I weren't each other's opposing voices, but this is where I think my sisters will come in, loaded for argument. Both will think jumping is an act of willful and senseless insanity. And though it occurred more than twenty years ago, my act of jumping will remind both of them of the unexpected loss of our parents, something we never talk about any more, but something we haven't completely made peace with, either. It doesn't seem we can ever stand in a Zen place of complete acceptance of it. I don't mean to make all of us pick that scab again, but I don't mean for it to stop my jumping, either. I'm a rip-the-band-aid-off kind of person, so I want to get the telling of them done.

S
O, THE FIRST THING
I really do to prepare for the jump is to bring my sisters to town, the last of my immediate family, to tell them I am going to jump and to say good bye. I plan the logistics of the visit, but my emotional control feels as thin as paper stretched over sharp objects. For all three of us, our early acquaintance with disappointment in life keeps that feeling at the ready, along with self-righteous anger. I remember one visit with Marla. She felt abandoned by our long absence, but rather than talking about it, we fought fiercely about how she hadn't heard from Kelly in a while. I tried to defend Kelly, and we almost ended the visit screaming at the top of our lungs and slamming doors. But we've held together through a lot worse than that in life, and we have a solid foundation. It's a tie that binds but can still feel tenuous, riddled as we are by our fears about the permanence of any relationship. I know I'll be testing it yet again.

Silvia found us someone's holiday cabin just outside of town to use for our reunion, since I'm still living in the little studio apartment above the bank. I gave them a just a couple weeks' notice, asking them to come a few weeks before Thanksgiving, but my sisters came—Marla, the older one and Kelly, the younger one. I, Babe, am in the middle (in more ways than one, I've always thought). Being the coward I am, I told them in a later email about the jump, attaching a copy of my article, so they'd know the need for a visit now. They haven't had a chance to voice how appalled they are, so I know they've come full of dire admonitions with the intention of talking me out of jumping. I'm prepared for that. I know how crazy it sounds, and I'm sure I'd be doing the same thing, if roles were reversed.

I find I'm inordinately pleased that they've come. I can't help myself. I smile when I see them and rush forward to hug them. They've flown in together and rented a car to drive to the village. They're a little travel weary, unsure of where they actually are and worried about the loss that may be their reward for coming. Their tight smiles betray the fact they've been talking and their guard is up against something unnamable, something that their own sister is making them shake hands with.

I look at Marla, with her pale hair tucked neatly into a bun at the base of her neck and her travel clothes still fitted crisply to her thin frame, and know that she has brought her matching pajamas and robe and slippers; she has brought her own teabags because she always has only tea and toast for breakfast; and she has brought her own pillow, because you can't be too sure. Marla is an art historian, with a master's degree, working as a curator in a history museum outside of Portland, Oregon.

Marla is really a kind of hero of mine, though I've never told her that. She and her husband Cal (her high school sweetheart) adopted two kids. They started as foster parents, going through the state's long and trying process of screening and licensure, and caring for kids who'd been in the state's care since they were weeks old and had been moved dozens of times. These kids stole, hoarded food, had night terrors, and acted out their anger at an uncaring world in an array of unspeakable ways that must have driven my fastidious sister crazy.