Craig Davidson - Cataract City

I slumped at the base of the tower, racked with an exhaustion that was almost comical. Maybe Duncan could roll me up like an old carpet and carry me over his shoulder.

“We could chuck rocks at the dish,” I said at last. “Maybe there’s a sensor that trips an alarm when it’s wrecked.”

The dish was over a hundred feet up. Could either of us heave a rock even halfway? Duncan hacked wetly; blood burped out of the needle. “Come on, Owe,” he said.

I barely heard him. I was thinking about the plastic vent on the side of my childhood house, the one that connected to the clothes dryer. In the winter, I’d come home after tobogganing and see white plumes coming from the vent. Crouching beside it, I’d rub my hands in the warm air. It smelled the way my mother did in dreams: of fabric softener and dryer sheets. The basement window sat next to the vent. One time I’d seen Mom hiding Christmas presents above the heating ducts, something that had made me sad: I hadn’t believed in Santa — Bovine had spilled the beans about the jolly fat man on the playground, ruining everything — but still, I wanted to believe.

“Get up,” Duncan said roughly. “We got to keep going.”

“In a minute.”

“No minute, man. Now .”

“Jesus Christ, Dunk.” I hated the timorous, whiny sound of my voice. It reminded me of when we were younger, how I’d always buckle to Duncan’s subtle commands. “I’m not fucking ready, okay?”

“If we don’t keep moving we’re going to seize up. Do you want to make it out of here today or not?”

“Where the hell are we? You said we’d be out of here in a few hours.”

“I said four, maybe five.”

“You see that swamp ? Pretty sure it’s the same one we dragged our asses through as kids! Weren’t you thinking the same thing?”

“It could be a different one.”

“Oh bullshit , man. Bullshit. Look, I’m not putting this on you—”

“Really? ’Cause it’s sorta sounding that way.”

I stood. If this was going to happen, I needed to be squared up, looking my old pal full in the eye.

“I’m not putting this specifically on you,” I said. “The decision to leave the van, I mean. If we’re miles from safety — and yeah, I think we are — well, hey, that’s on me, too. I made that decision with you. But the fact that we’re here in the first place …”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t give me the fucking thickhead routine, Dunk. I’ve sweated out smarter guys than you. I’m saying this whole thing with Drinkwater. This vendetta you’ve got against him.”

“I’m sorry? Weren’t you raging about having to bury his dog?”

“I want him, yeah. But you’ll chase him to Siberia.”

Duncan held his hands out as if presenting me with a fragile gift. “Don’t I have good reason, Owe? Eight years , man. I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it. And this whole thing — you helped set it up!” He fixed me with a baffled, pleading expression. “How is this not both of us?”

“Because it wasn’t both of us, was it?” I said, my eyes feeling hard as stones. “Never has been. You make it out like there’s some kind of equality between us. Maybe you even halfway believe it. But the order’s always been pretty clear: first you, then me.”

I knew I was charting dark territory here — old resentments burbling up. “What was your big idea, Dunk? Hop on the skidoo, chase Drinkwater down and what, drag him back to the sheriff? We fly off into the night, driven by your all-consuming need for … for what? Justice ?”

Duncan ran his hand through hair that was oily-slick, matted with the residue of burnt radial tires. “Just … fairness, man. That’s it.”

“Fairness? Oh, for fuck’s sake. Fairness ? What world do you live in? Doesn’t the situation we’re in right now — doesn’t the sum total of your life —hasn’t it taught you that there’s no such thing? Fairness and luck are for other people, man.”

“You’re wrong, Owe. I’ve been very lucky in my life.”

I could only stare at him, gape-jawed. “Oh, really?”

“Not as lucky as some, but … we got lucky the last time we were out here, didn’t we? We’ll get out this time, too.”

“And that’s just it, isn’t it?” A terrible calm settled over me. “You’re always just so … so fucking sure of yourself.”

Duncan said, “You didn’t have to come, man. You could’ve stayed put. I wouldn’t have blamed you. So why come?”

My pulse beat in every broken inch of me. This was the deepest part, wasn’t it? The part I could hardly bring myself to contemplate, let alone voice.

“Maybe because of … I don’t know, my anger at you all these years, that I thought was buried … Maybe I let you hang yourself that night on the river.” It was my turn to hold my hands out, a wretched, out-of-place smile on my face. “I can’t say for sure, Dunk. I mean, how well do any of us know ourselves? You paint a picture of the man you hope you are and pray that circumstances never challenge it. And I mean, if I did , if I let you walk right into it and did nothing … what does that make me? You’re my best friend.”

“It wasn’t on you,” Duncan said after a long pause. “Over the years I thought about it and I followed it back, too. You gave me fair warning. You painted the picture. I just didn’t see it, or didn’t want to.”

“If your friend’s got his neck in a noose, you don’t kick the chair from under his feet.”

“I kicked it myself.”

Suddenly I was flooded with immense gratitude. I wanted to reach out and touch Dunk’s face. But it was impossible — impossible now to find the effortless touch of our twelve-year-old selves who’d slept with our bodies pressed tightly together, spooning like young lovers, perhaps on this very spot.

“Want to know what I was thinking about?” I said. “The dryer vent at my old house. I used to crouch beside it on winter nights. It was warm, smelled nice. This one time I saw my father smoking in the basement. He’d promised Mom he’d quit, right? He smoked with quick little puffs, waving madly at the smoke, then dropped the butt down the flood drain. It was strange seeing him so worried, so rabbity. It was my dad , y’know? The toughest man in my little universe. But now every time I see him he looks older, frailer.

“There’ll come a day when he slips in the shower and won’t be able to get up. He’ll be ninety, I hope to God, but it’ll happen. And it will shock me, because I’ll remember him in times when he was so strong. And all that strength will be gone, and he’ll probably be angry and confused about it. So I’ll need to be there for him. I owe him that. Mom, too. I’ve got to be there to pick them up when they’re too weak to do it themselves, like they did for me all those years ago when I fell on my butt as a baby.”

I shouldered the shotgun. “We’ve got to get ourselves out of this, you get me?”

“I get you,” Dunk said.

The daylight held out longer that evening. The sky was low with a hazy sheen, the sun buoyed by heavy clouds. It hung above the horizon, a diffuse orange ball, edging the trees with a persistent mellow light. Every so often a noise bubbled up from behind us: the stealthy crack of a stick or a distant crazed holler. Drinkwater was back there somewhere, tracking us.

Just before dusk the heavy throb of helicopter blades washed over the landscape. The sound swelled, swelled … then steadily receded. It was probably the sightseeing helicopter that lifted off from the roof of the downtown Hilton; the Falls were especially beautiful at dusk, although I’d never seen them from the air.