Goodbye from Hades Part 2

Goodbye from Hades PART 2 of 3

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SARA

As John's thoughts seesaw between serenity and grief, they flash back to the first little kink in his life--that single step on his thousand-mile journey astray. The scene develops with reverberations from 25 years before, as his mind reveals low rumbles from the west on a sultry Missouri day. He recalls how fast the booms increased their promise, while wilted leaves rustled in waves from left to right, as if in a surge of whispering the portent: relief from 105 degrees and 90 days of ruthless oppression--but maybe the last day of clinging to life--ripped from sustenance just when deliverance was at their door.

As the first fat raindrops battered the asphalt, flashing off almost with a hiss, John had walked out the front door of his frat house and under its sprawling veranda. Stark white against the roiling clouds, his new residence rose Victorian proper behind a swath of lawn victimized by a watering ban. The porch was a perfect spot to stand sentinel on the looming grand spectacle, to reel under body-blow reverberations and buffeting blasts of freshness. It was going to be hard, he knew, to resist the urge to hop like a schoolboy at the flash-bang of a really close strike.

Glancing to his left, he saw Sara's Firebird parked across the street. The windows were down a few inches. Miranda hasn't brought her back yet, he thought. Then, as the rain pelted harder he remembered the car had crank windows. He could run over and roll them up. I'm gonna get soaked. He vaulted the railing on a mad dash, while his mind played out the result of his chivalry: "Ohhh, you're so sweet!"

The thought slapped him to his senses and sent him lunging back across the railing: I don't need a nice-guy reputation here like I had back home. Girls love that, but then they think of you like their brother or father or something. When that happens, you're toast. Once safely back to indifference, he tilted back his head and ran fingers through long, dark, dripping hair. Besides, the windows aren't open that much. Most of these things blow right over. It'll be fine.

As he finished, though, torrents came as if dumped from an ocean in the sky. Hail shredded leaves and detonated on the pavement. Lightning spiked, one bolt stunning another. But instead of hopping, he just stared across the street. Oh, God!

By early afternoon the next day, the drizzle tailed off and lingering clouds cleared the horizon. John strolled out to the veranda. Wow! How can she even be real?

Across the street, vibrant under the brawny sunshine, Sara mopped up her car with a bath towel, bending every now and then in her Daisy Duke cutoffs. With confession on his mind and ready to take his lumps--"She's got a wicked punch," Zeke had warned him--he quick-stepped over behind her.

"Quite a storm yesterday, huh?"

Startled, Sara banged her head as she stood to face him. Hamming it up with an "Owweee!" she rubbed her head behind a blonde-and-orange bun, as a few locks fell across her lively air.

She stepped slowly around the door, raised her arms, and with a "Woo!" slammed it with a thrust of her hip. She tossed her head to the side, leaving her hands dangling like palm fronds as she slowly lowered and hid them behind her back.

Switching from that sultry performance to her perky persona, she started in with: "I knew my windows were down while I was at the mall with Miranda, but she told me: 'Oh, I'm sure John'll see it's open an' run over an' wind 'em up, even if it's already pouring.' She told me you were neighbors back home an' you were always doin' stuff like that."

He looked down the street, then stared to the pavement. "Well, I, uh..."

"I know," Sara scrunched her face and flicked a backhand across his arm. "I told her, Are you kidding? That's something my dad would do."

"Miranda exaggerates a bit," John accused, covering up his caring side. "She's got the greenest eyes I've ever seen." He felt his face redden. Why'd I say that?

"Yeah..." Sara continued, seeming distracted. She leaned back on the Firebird, showing off her rippled midriff. "Hey, tell ya what. I'm done here. I'm gonna take a shower then go have a beer. Wanna come along? Not the shower, I mean!" John's ears warmed. After a few unspoken seconds, Sara hoisted her dripping towel and glanced from it straight to his eyes: "Unless you have a couple of dry ones."

DECISIONS

Riding in his Taurus, John brings his attention back to the present as he realizes that the soothing is trying to sneak in though his memories, and he's not about to fall for it. Alternately slouching and straightening--each switch made wincing from the debt collection--he grabs ahold once more of reality and the promise of another terrible day.

Just one more paycheck, though, and the beatings should finally stop.

As John rumbles along mulling his fate, he tops an open ridge revealing the brightening horizon. He soon passes a sign announcing: "Auger Lake Overlook." The water lies ahead in a broad valley off to the right, and just beginning to glimmer. Beyond the overlook rises on two skinny metal posts a green-and-white bewilderment: "Thornton 9," it declares to the left of an arrow beckoning straight ahead. Below that is a competing come-on luring off to the right. Listed beside that is "Echo Point 8," and "Thornton 17."

Decision time.

Actual time: 7:40. He figures that if he veers to the right and around the lake, there is no hope of making it 17 miles to his job at the Thornton Data Center before 8:00. Straight ahead lies the unimaginable, though: driving down that road, past the scene of the accident, on the anniversary of his daughter's death. To the right is another shrill reprimand, complete with flailing arms and flying profanities. There's a reason someone came up with the word histrionics. He knows, though: If I get one more of those, I'm toast.

John pulls ahead and over to the shoulder, then onto the frosty grass. He plants his car in front of the irksome sign, so close he has to crook his neck to read it. Glaring from the sign to his lap, to Wendy, to the lake; but mostly to Wendy lying askew, he burns away a full five minutes before carefully righting her. Shifting to neutral, he guns the engine long and hard, then pulls to reverse. Head shaking, he backs onto the road without looking and rockets straight ahead, full-roaring throttle.

Thirty seconds later he crushes the brake pedal. Another five minutes, this time smack-dab in the middle of the road. Throwing into reverse, he backs into a pull-off and shoots right back to the "Y." There he stops, bangs his head twice against the side window, then stomps the gas while cranking hard left, attempting a spinout but failing badly. Just for that, he judges, he stiffens up and aims his Taurus for three gaping potholes.

Off he goes around the lake and to a bit of workplace excitement--this time likely his last.

THE TRUTH

Rounding a bend a few minutes later, John comes to a busted wooden sign "Echo," leaning on the ground against its post, opposite a lane that dips to the left. He hurtles down the side-road, stones crunching and snapping under his tires, expecting any second a puncture through their thin skins. Coming to the dirt parking lot, just big enough for a couple pickups and a car or two, he cranks and slams, getting the spinout he'd sought, still neither grimace nor smile from him, but maybe just a hint, he thinks, from Wendy.

Creaking open the door, he places one scuffy black boot then another into the ice-rimmed puddle he'd carefully pulled beside, sinking a Big Mac wrapper with his first step, tangling in fishing line with the next. Splashing to edge of the lot, he finds red DANGER tape stretched across the head of a muddy trail. "Hazardous Conditions. Keep Out. $100 Fine," reads a notice stapled to a scrawny birch. Probably some piddly little thing. They think we're such clutzes we'd break our necks just walking down a sidewalk.

John turns and steps backward over the tape, arms flailing and boots slipping in the sticky clay. He paces in reverse until around a bend, a bit guilty for his deception, then spins and saunters through a dark spruce-scented enclave to the shore of an arching bay, meeting no real problem along the way. He looks back up the trail. "Ha!"

The water lies mirror perfect. John stands immobile as the bay, mesmerized by the futility of a reality with roots in upside down illusion. It's just like me. Losing balance, he stumbles back two steps.

The conditions for echoes are perfect.

He recalled when as a kid he would ride his bike down here with his friends and see who could get the longest sentence to come back complete. One day just like this, he had gotten off: "Bobby is a wierdo," then worked up to a staccato: "Bobby and Kenny are wierdos." He'd been here many times since, but had not for a long time enjoyed little escapes like rock skipping, wading, or especially, childish doings like echo making.

He cups his hands and hollers: "SELF LOATHING."

"SELF LOATHING... Self loathing... self loathing," hammers back the brutal honesty.

He plunks down cross-legged on the cobblestones, knees hanging over yellow aspen leaves lining the water's edge. Picking up a dead branch, he thrashes his liquid likeness in a rising frenzy, splashing up and over his head until the stick snaps, leaving a pointy stub that he jabs into his leg. Holding the bony-white fragment up to examine the end, he groans, moves it out a foot, and takes another look. Unsatisfied, he jabs it harder.

After some time, he straightens from his slump. Resigned that he'd better get on the road, he stumbles to his feet, waiting out the prickly tingles before trying to walk. Without really thinking about it first, he shouts rapid-fire: "YOU'RE SO SEXY AND STRONG. I LOVE YOU JOHN." Back comes cruel reality--almost, but no cigar: "YOU'RE SO SEXY AND STRONG. I LOVE; You're so sexy and strong I love; you're so sexy and..." tailing off, rudely impersonal.

He kicks a rock. It figures.

But it's the closest he's come to validation in a long time. He cracks a wan smile at the irony--an odd feeling defiling his face.

Then he's crashed again to the ground--a ragdoll petulantly tossed by all the women in his life. This time splayed on his belly, he heaves hot sobs through the pitiless cobbles. Across the bay, someone who finally understands him bawls back after each wail. Comforted, he sputters to a whimper and falls asleep, warming the rocks beneath.

A startling discord of CAW, CAW, CAWs missile in ahead of ravens zooming from skeleton trees across the bay. The reverberations create a racket like a swarm of demons, marauding monkeys sent by the Witch of the West. John jumps up, then cowers and hustles for the car, along the way making up to his corroded companion like a fair-weather friend. Closing in behind him comes: "You're gonna pay! You're gonna PAY!" As he busts through the DANGER tape, the realization hits him: This is why it's here!

Chest heaving, fumbling keys as the ravens land not five feet away--thrusting their beaks this way and that with each brazen stride, sizing him up with beady black eyes--he rips open the door and dives headlong, then lunges and yanks that barricade with a full-body pull, sending a shudder that knocks rusty flakes from the fenders.

Scooting to the driver's seat, he swings his head around and backs up, wrenching the wheel to and fro chasing his assailants. His skull bangs the headrest as he slams a boulder bordering the lot. "Caa, Caa, Caa" sounds like, "Ha, Ha, Ha" as the spirits of darkness flit away, their scimitar-curved toes dangling as they head back to the skeleton trees.

Idling off-kilter, John considers just how close he had come. Recalling his affronts and abuses to the Taurus, he touches the dash and pats, "It's not your fault. It's not. I'm so sorry."

But a few minutes later, sputtering along toward Thornton at 9:25, he's back at it again.

"Nice guys finish last. If this is correct, press ONE!" he vents, pounding the radio's first auto-set button and agonizing for the things he used to have, the person he used to be. No matter how many times he sets that button so it lands between stations, bringing white noise to blank his tunneling mind, it always skips to that religious channel the next time he uses it.

For the first time in front of Wendy he flings his frustration. "Why??? Why am I stuck in this insane LOOP? Why does it seem everything is going to turn out bad? Why do I drive people away? And why can't I HELP IT? I just want it to STOP. I want to stop it any way I can, but I CAN'T I just cry and cry and I can't get out of this AVALANCHE!" I'm EXHAUSTED, beat down... held down."

He breathes in deep with a rising Hhhhh." In a descending "Ffffffff,'" he blows out long through pursed lips and puffed cheeks, waiting for reaction. He cocks his head her way, shakes it gently, then looks to the sky and back to the road. "I just want you to understand me. I know you really can't." Gazing back to her, "I'm so sorry for putting you through that."

Maybe Sara's right. Maybe the doctor's right. Maybe everyone but me is RIGHT! What if I do have PSTD or PTSD or whatever? But it's been eight years now, how could that be?. He searches deep but can't comprehend why this endless loop of rolling tape of that trauma and conjuring such fiendish futures. He simply weeps and wonders.

"Of course, now this," he groans as the headaches come--heaped-up tiers of affliction, each wave pile-driving the previous hard against the back of his skull, sending shocks down knotted neck muscles and tremors across broad, bony shoulders.

End of Part 2

[In Part 3, John's adventurous life flashes before his eyes. Revealed is the incident spurring him to conjure ravens into demons of damning taunts and threats.]