If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

TWO

MORNING

The summer of 1999 was, as Gilead had said that morning at Chayne’s house, the hottest, fuggliest summer Russell Lewis had ever known. There was something purifying about it, though, something about pressing through this great fucking heat to enjoy the day, something about the semi sleepless nights where Russell prayed his parents would finally relent and get air conditioning, where the quality of heat sent strange half dreams and tired bodies encountered semi fantasies.

The wind had picked up that night and it was a hot one full of spice.

Ralph said, “You should come back to our place for dinner. Ani’ll be there, I think.”

Ralph meant John and Caroline’s apartment over the store in Little Poland. The days lasted forever and though it was nine o’clock as the crossed the Brigham Street Bridge, the sun had glinted on the broad river making it a sheet of metal.

Anigel was there with her friend Ross Allen who, apparently wa related to Gilead, and this was less of a surprise than it would have been because Princes and Wynns and their relationships were all over the county.

“I go to Saint Alban’s up in Walter.”

That bit did catch Russell.

“Do you know James Nespres?”

“Jimmy?” Ross blinked at Russell. “Jimmy Nespres. Oh, man!”

Ross rolled his eyes and laughed in a way that said he did indeed know Jimmy Nespres.

 

As the sun was setting, they were in Ralph’s room which smelled better than Russell thought Ralph’s room would and Ralph said, “You can smoke it you want.”

Russell was grateful for that, but did not and Ralph said, “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” Russell said, and now he did take out a cigarette because when people asked that question it made him feel nervous and smoking made him feel like a grown up. Ralph passed Russell an old plate with the remains of breakfast to use for an ashtray.

“You like Vanessa?”

“I don’t really know her,” Russell said. “But what I know I like.”

“Good,” Ralph said. “Good.”

He sounded distracted.

“Ralph?”

“We had sex.”

“What?” Russell was unable to not sound surprised.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“About two nights ago?”

“About?”

“Two nights ago?”

Russell was about to ask where, but that sounded nosey and, besides, he was sitting on Ralph’s bed and he was afraid of the answer.

So he asked, “Well, are you alright.”

Ralph laughed like a shocked and tired older man, like Thom,” Russell thought, and said, “Well, I had sex. I didn’t jump off a mountain.”

Russell tried to laugh, tried to feel alright and sophisticated and shrugged.

“Well… was it nice?”

“It was,” Ralph said.

“It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” he continued. “I’m not exactly sure I know what the means. But…. It was nice. It is nice.”

“Oh,” Russell said.

Because that was not enough to end the discussion on, Russell added, “Good. I’m happy for you Ralph.”

 

Russell was not happy for Ralph. He was dizzy and confused and felt like a foolish virgin. He was completely undone by the idea of sex and by how everyone was having it. Weren’t they supposed to wait, and why did he care? He shouldn’t care. Was he jealous of Ralph? Was he….? How did he feel? As he stood under the shower letting the water beat down on him, Russell wished it wasn’t too late to call Gilead, wished that Sharonda wouldn’t pick up the phone and ask who the hell was calling at eleven.

 

That whole night the warm, shifting wind’s moved over Russell’s naked body, drying him and sending strange dreams. They were not dreams of desire but of foreboding, as if clouds had been building up, and though the air had been hot and moist all night, there were no clouds in the sky that day, but since the evening came he’d had the feeling something was going to happen and when Ralph had told him about Vanessa he had thought, “That was the something,” but now, as he woke and looked at the clock with red digital letters declaring 1:00 he knew that was not it. That was not enough.

 

At breakfast, where they all sat eating cereal Patti, frizzy haired with a curl plastered to her cheek slapped the table and said, “Damnit, enough.”

Thom, his usually thick and wavy hair plastered flat to his head blinked at her.

“Call them, Goddamnit. We’re getting central air today. It’s ridiculous the damn Armstrongs and Dwyers have it and we have to look like this all day. What’s the point in having a little money if you don’t use it?”

Thom gave no argument. The heat had taken the fight from him.

The phone rang and Russell, in boxers and a tee shirt semi plastered to his chest got up and answered.

“Hello.”

“May I speak to Russell Lewis?”

“Speaking.”

“This is David Tressler, President of the Upper Class Assembly.”

“Alright,” Russell said, feeling stupid and half asleep, thinking about how good air conditioning was going to be. He had forgotten he was now and upper classmen.

“You know our fellow classman, Joseph Smith.”

“Yes,” Russell said, remembering a kid with a big nose that Mrs. O’Neill had often had to say, “Shut up, Joe” to because he always talked through class.

“Joe and a few friends were in a car crash last night.”

This was the something. How would Joe be? What a way to start a new year, and they would in under a month. What about his other friends? What about Mark Young, the guy that Gilead was so fixated on, or vice versa.

“He died this morning,” David continued.

While that phrase wound its way through Russell, David continued, “The family is making plans, and I’ll be back in contact with you, but I want to make sure that as many members of the our upper classes are at the funeral to support them. So far the news is that it will be at Evervirgin…”

“Yes, yes,” Russell said, “Of course, I’ll be there.”

 

Even twenty years into the future, if anyone dared to ask Marcus Isaac Young how he’d felt that morning, he would have had to cast around for an answer. In months he would understand why people never said anything about death worth hearing, or why they joked about things that were truly awful. No one knew what to say because no one knew what had happened, not really.

There was no reason to be in this hospital bed. One moment he and Joe had been silly, had been what they always were and summer nights were what summer nights were and then, in the next instant this. Life had not been serious at all. There was been no signs it would be serious. And then this.

Only one person would ever dare to ask him how he felt this day, and the answer would be profound. Before real sorrow kicked in, or anything else, while he was too stunned to take things in, he felt profound. Something mighty had fallen on him and his friends, and they were seventeen and stupid. Mark was just a leggy track runner with what he knew were good looks who had never had a deep thought in his life, and now, here came this deep thing.

The doctor was a woman. She was kind and gentle, so gentle it had taken a while for Mark to understand that what she was saying was that Joe was dead.

He had seen movies, and Mark saw himself in this movie. He would be the good looking green eyed boy who sat in the hospital bed and cried.

The doctor was there. His parents were there.

Mom said, “Honey, are you going to be okay?”

The doctor said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Dad said nothing.

Mark’s face was stone. His eyes burning. He held his jaw together.

“I’d like to go home,” he said,” looking down at the blanket up to his hips.”

It was the doctor who took the hugh breath everyone wanted to take.

She said, “I’ll get the papers for your discharge.”

 

Later that afternoon, when it was too hot to do anything, Mark Young stripped his tee shirt, put on his running shorts and shoes, too a towel and jogged out of the house before his parents could say anything. He ran through Sandybrook where maybe people knew what had happened and maybe people didn’t, and he ran up North Westhaven and then down Finallay Parkway until he reached Finnalay Park, empty in this hot day and he continued running the path they had used the summer until, baked by the sun and covered in sweet, his eyes stinging, he stopped on the top of a hill, panting, grasped his knees, then, rising for a breath,  threw up his head and screamed.

The funeral was at Saint Mary the Evervirgin. This was his church because his family was well off and lived in a cul de sac. It was familiar to him. Seeing most of his classmates here with him was not. How, after people came to the family people came to him, like a widow, and asked if he was alright, or looked at him from the corners of their eyes, was new and unwelcome.

Mark wore an expensive black suit, white shirt and red tie that was completely different in quality from the shirt and tie and blazer combo he wore to school. He knew he looked like an adult, that he looked handsome. He knew he was goodlooking, but that never really seemed to matter because it never halped him meet the people he wanted to know.

Chris Knapp was there, also looking impressive and they nodded to each other like men. He knew by the look in Chris’s eyes he felt like hell. He would be a pall bearer. It had been decided Mark was too close to the whole thing. He had been in the car wreck. It would be as inappropriate to ask him to carry a coffin as it would be to ask, say, Joe’s mother.

Father Branch, a generally austere Black priest who taught art on the fourth floor and was rarely seen by most students, led the mass and did the sermon. Mark did not remember This was a gentle, but firm man not given over to emotions and so, though Mark did not remember the sermon, he remembered when the priest stopped it to wipe his eyes or catch his breath, unafraid of revealing his own sorrow. Branch was the head of their order. He was not principal of the school, but he did run it, unseen. He was strong enough and old enough to cry in a church full of people. Mark wished he was too.

The communion hymn was All That We Have And All That We Offer. The folk choir of Evervirgin sang it and it was sweet and and high which made it more powerful not less.

 

All that we have and all that we offer

Comes from a heart both frightened and free.

Take what we bring now and give what we need.

All done in his name.

 

Some would rely on their power, 

Others put trust in their gold.

Some have only their Savior,

Whose faithfulness never grows old.

 

Father Branch cried as he lifted the chalice and wiped his face as he came down from the altar with the wafers. Mark would never forget that.

After Communion, Mark did not return to his seat, but stepped out to catch his breath. He had seen Cameron Dwyer here. He knew her informally and appreciated it, but now he was surprised to see her talking to Chris Knapp. I mean, Chris was the quarterback, He was popular, and so was Cameron, but…

He went out into the hot sun and only came back when he heard a sort of terrible sobbing. Coming into the vestibule, he saw that Cameron was holding Chris and Chris was bent over weeping into her arms.

They looked at him and Chris was red faced and boylike and Mark felt tears running down his face and he said, quickly, “I wanna be a pallbearer, alright?”

Chris just cried raggedly and nodded his head.

Cameron’s face was wet and she said, “We better get cleaned up. We can’t go back in their looking like this.”

The two young men tried to laugh, but it was crying.

Mark would never forget any of this.

 

But out of everything that had impressed him that day was what had happened at the beginning, before the mass, when people were still entering. There was that casket, that fucking casket that had the body of a boy in it. That had been open and Mark had wanted to scream at, but now was finally closed. Even closed, most people eyed it and avoided it and then there came Russell Lewis and Gilead Story. Gilead Story. Gilead Story. They were with Ralph Balusik and Jason Lorry and they were less of a surprise. It was a well known fact that Gilead and Russell were antisocial as fuck and hadn’t known Joe at all.

Now they both approached the casket, and like old fashioned Catholics, Gilead, and then Russell went to the kneeler. Gilead had an old Rosary and he prayed on it what must have been a decade of the Rosary, and then, without any kind of shame, he kissed the lid of the casket, rose, and led Russell to where they would sit.

Out of all the memories of that day this was the most precious one, the one Mark turned over and over again, and that would never be forgotten.