Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

There’s not much I want to say about the river, my trip down here. This isn’t a story about that.

Besides doing this for you, Mr. E, and you, dear reader, and for myself, I am doing this for them, so that they have a record of what my first days were like and how I came down to help them. Down to the place whence it came—the sea. They want me to come down, but to come down slowly, a pilgrimage, and in so doing take the time to record my story for them, for you, for you are, after all, one of them, aren’t you? You’re a new-world kid.

Even though I don’t feel the need to describe this trip, for nothing terribly eventful has happened, I do want you to know this: Maggie lies asleep in the front part of this tandem kayak. I’m sure she’s tired of hearing me talk to myself. Know that when the rain comes, which it has every day, and it comes now even as I speak into this, these rainy times are my favorite times. I erect my umbrellas, one for me, one for my dog, I fasten them to the boat in the cup holders next to each seat. I keep paddling, steering really, this current carrying me down. I feel this story come out better and faster when it rains. I’m at ease when it rains. I’ve got my headset microphone on, the recorder in the Ziploc with the map, and I’m just yakking away.

It’s raining right now, droplets hitting the water. You hear it? All those ripples moving out from each drop. Know this too: Though at one point during a rough patch of rapids yesterday I thought I might lose it over the side, I’ve still got my trombone.

And know that I don’t believe in luck.

We sat at the lacquered dining table listening to rain that seemed mad at us. I told him everything that had happened to me from Mount Bonnell on, including the reason why I was up there in the first place, point by point as a witness to my own small history.

A rather cold synopsis, really. I didn’t get into with him what I’ve gotten into with you, how I felt, how I feel, who I miss and how much. I didn’t tell him about Mr. English, my summerdreams, my story The Late Bloomers , the extra-credit essay, none of that. Mostly because he’s a little kid and wouldn’t get it. But also because that other stuff is between you and me.

He had stopped crying and gone stone-faced as he listened. He got lost at times in the narrative, and whenever I broke that spell it put him in, his face tensed up from the slack wonder it had fallen into.

Because he looked exhausted and because it hurt his head to remember, I couldn’t yet ask him what he knew.

Evening came, the rain continued but had lessened to a patter. I told him I was going out to feed the dogs. He nodded and said, “Kevin? I’m not like them, but I am… what I mean is they’ll know I stayed behind. I’m like a piece broken off, and they’ll…”

“What?” I let the screen door close, took a step back into the room. “They’ll what, Nate?”

“They’ll come back. They know you’re here. They won’t be coming for you when they come back. They’ll be coming for me. But I don’t want to go.”

I patted my gun. “Between this gun and all these dogs, I think we’ll be okay. I came out here to find those teens. But instead, I’ve found you and that’s something. Hang tight with Maggie, okay? She likes you. We need these others, so I’ve got to go out here and feed them so they’ll stay around. Understand?”

He blinked and put his hand down to Maggie for her to lick.

I found the dog food in aluminum trash cans up on a foot-high riser at the back of the carport. I filled several big pans for them. Making several trips like a harried waiter, I placed them down and each time the dogs waited until I had walked off before eating. When they did, they did so orderly and quietly, all standing around the bowls, heads down, no fussing or fighting.

When I came back in, I noticed how dark the room was now that the sun had gone down. It had descended faster than I expected here in the hills. The windows were purple and the trees and hills framed within them black silhouettes. I’m in a place I don’t know. As small and simple as it is, once it’s dark, it will become a cave of unknowns.

“Nate?” I called out.

I heard Maggie whine once, close in the room. “I’ll get you yours in a minute, okay?” I said, more to make myself feel better in hearing the sound of my own voice, like whistling past a graveyard.

I called out to her. “Maggie?”

Lingering light allowed me to find Maggie sitting next to Nate who lay asleep on the couch in a part of the room where there was a flat screen and some magazines spread on a coffee table.

“There you are.” Maggie stayed seated. “Nate,” I whispered the first time. “Nate,” I then said aloud. I shook his leg. “Nate,” I said even louder, my voice banking off the vaulted ceiling and tiled floor. He didn’t move. “Maggie, stay.”

Pleased with myself with how quickly I found candles and lighter the owners had laid into the first kitchen drawer by the door, I sang a bit (that graveyard whistling instinct). “ Come on baby light my fire. Try and set the night on… fire… ”

The candlelight lent a gothic cast to my wandering. I needed a flashlight. Badly, particularly when lightning lit up the rooms, throwing unfamiliar objects into relief, gave each a shadow.

Standing in this hall holding this candle, the lightning flash afterburn leaving matters even darker, I was maybe the most scared I’d been yet, even with Nate asleep nearby.

I had to make noise to stave off the fear, so I made busy, opened cabinets and closets looking for a flashlight. Nothing in those cabinets except dead scorpions stuck to glue board traps.

In the walk-in pantry, spaghetti crisscrossed the floor like pick-up sticks among all manner of cereal the dogs failed to eat. Top shelf, there the several flashlights were with packs of batteries stacked next to them. I put four flashlights on the kitchen counter. I tested them, replaced batteries. I lit three more candles and placed them on the bar, on the dining table and one over near Maggie and Nate. Place looked like goddamned Dracula’s castle now, less the cobwebs draping over staircases and the conspicuous lack of mirrors. It was indeed a dark and stormy night, dear reader. Candlelight, lightning flashes, hardened shadows, and, underneath, pulsing quiet.

And it would stay dark because, after all, were the strong, capable people at the power company working on it somewhere out there in the night, with gritted teeth and know-how? Nope.

Maggie sidled up to me and leaned against my leg when I sat down on the couch next to Nate. I tried to imagine his child terror but it wouldn’t form in my heart because whenever empathy kindled, my mind heard their roars and his flange enmeshed within it.

He hadn’t told me anything yet. He slept. I still didn’t know where he came from or even how old he was.

Maggie jumped up onto the couch and curled up next to me. Watching Nate’s diaphragm rise and fall, feeling the rocking of Maggie’s panting next to me, I drifted to sleep.

Thunder rolled down from the hills into my dream. I dreamed of Johnny and me playing soccer together under a low gray sky bringing rain, just knocking the ball back and forth. I wore new cleats. They felt good on my feet, all soft and formfitting. Johnny wore a red Man U jersey. When he turned with the ball, faking out a nonexistent opponent, I saw the name on the back of the jersey curl over his shoulders: Rooney. Johnny kicked the ball high and directly above him, as high as one of the trees lining the field’s chain-link. He did this show-offy twirl, and when his back was to me again, I saw the name wasn’t Rooney, but March, blazing white against that Old Trafford red. He trapped the ball to his feet like it was an egg, just taking it out of its sixty-foot drop and laying it gently at his feet. Johnny was a good player in the old world, but in the dream world, which felt part of the new world, he could do things with the ball that he never could have done in reality.