Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

“I don’t know.”

“They’re real, all of them.”

“Even the Wendigo?”

“Especially the Wendigo. It’s probably out there right now, watching us.”

“No,” says the younger boy. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Chuckling.

“You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Will you be scared when it comes time to jump?”

“Jump where?”

The thirteen-year-old points at the threatening dinosaur shape of the double dock. “Off there. Off the top pier.”

Suddenly, the younger boy looks very frightened. All their father’s stories are real to him, the monsters and the imaginary boys who live in the woods and eat children. It is a warm night, but the little boy stands there shivering, his pale chest pimply with gooseflesh and his teeth chattering like a rattlesnake’s warning. He looks white, too white. Almost transparent. The older brother thinks, Ghost.

“Climb the stairs to the top,” instructs the older brother, “then take a deep breath, run, and jump off.”

“Jump,” parrots the younger brother, the uncertain tone of his small voice bending the word somewhere between a statement and a question.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

The younger brother shakes his head.

“Then climb up and jump. I’ll hold your towel.”

“First?”

“First what?”

“You want me to go first?”

“Unless you’re too scared. Unless you’re a chickenshit.”

“Don’t say that,” reprimands the little brother, though his voice is too weak and trembling to sound imposing. “Don’t say that word.”

“Shit,” repeats his brother. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Stop it.”

“And fuck, too,” says the older brother, lowering his voice. This is the forbidden word, the word of all words. Biblical in its mystery and strength. “Are you a fucking chicken?”

The little boy looks like he wants to cry.

“You wanted to come out here,” says the older brother. “If you’re not scared to do it, then do it.”

There is much hesitation. Paradoxically, just as the older brother is about to club him on the shoulder and tell him to sit in the weeds and be quiet, the little brother hands him his towel and takes off his sneakers.

The brazenness surprises the older brother—had the situation been reversed, he’s unsure whether or not he’d be able to summon an equal amount of courage.

The younger boy steps around the shrubs in bare feet, leaving little prints in the mud, and proceeds to climb the staircase leading to the upper pier. His climb slows midway, where he glances down at the ground, and then he continues until he reaches the top. He is just a black blur, an outline in the darkness. The moon is distant and covered by trees and clouds; the night is as dark as the basement of lost dreams, and the older brother can hardly see him.

He whispers to him, “Be careful.”

The little boy’s small, frightened voice comes back to him: “I will.” There is the sound of a deeply inhaled breath.

He’s really going to do it, the older boy thinks.

Small, hurried footfalls race along the planks of the upper dock, the sound like a distant train rattling a wooden bridge.

Wow, he’s really going to do it. I don’t believe it.

Then silence as the little boy reaches the end of the pier and leaps into space. Somewhere out there, suspended in the black.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .

The older boy anticipates the splash—he can hear it and feel it before it even happens.

But it doesn’t happen.

There is no splash.

There is a sound, though—a harsh, sickening thud from the water. It reminds the older boy of baseballs slapping the hide of a catcher’s mitt. No splash. He calls his brother’s name, and there is no answer, either.

No splash. No answer. Just that sickening thud that froze his marrow and paralyzed his feet to the ground…

“All right, son,” said Detective Wren, placing a doughy hand on my thin, quaking shoulder.

Tears blurred my vision, and my chest hitched with each sob.

“It’s all right. Calm down for a minute, and we’ll keep going when you’re ready.”

A small floating dock—no bigger than a twin mattress and covered with a panel of slate two inches thick—had broken free of its moorings earlier that evening. It floated unanchored and unobserved for several hours, making its way up the river and toward the bay. By the time Kyle leaped off the upper pier of the double dock, the floating barge was directly below him, invisible in the darkness.

The sickening thud I heard was the sound of Kyle’s head opening up on the slate before he rolled, unconscious, into the river where he sank like a stone and drowned.

CHAPTER TWENTY

At seventy-seven, Earl Parsons had a face like an old bloodhound who’d been scolded one too many times for rooting around in the trash. His body was of the long-limbed variety, like an orangutan or a tree sloth, and he came packaged in pale blue polyester slacks, a checkered flannel work shirt, American flag suspenders, and a bulky nylon ski jacket with a faux fur collar that looked like something a sheriff might wear in the mountains of Colorado. His graphite-colored hair was unevenly parted and plastered to his scalp with what must have been several handfuls of camphor-scented liniment. It was my assessment he didn’t often comb his hair. Yet he arrived with such an air of genuine appreciation and country pleasantness that I couldn’t help but like him immediately.

“This is great,” he said. “I mean, I really appreciate your time, Mr. Glasgow. If I had to write one more article about Mora Chauncey’s cocker spaniels, I think my head would cave in.”

We were sitting in the living room, Earl leaning forward in a cushioned armchair while I sat across from him on the sofa. Jodie was perched on the sofa’s arm beside me, beaming. Sheila the librarian had probably mentioned to him that I was married—I remember saying something about my wife to her that day at the library—so he arrived not only with his spiral-bound notebook and a camera slung around his neck but hoisting a bouquet of wildflowers, which Jodie graciously accepted and put into a vase.

“I’m just flattered you think I’m newsworthy,” I told him.

“Not to downplay your accomplishments as an artist, but anything louder than a fart around here’s newsworthy to me,” he said, then glanced at Jodie and looked horrified. “Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry. I’m just a tactless old fool who spends too much time alone. My apologies.”

Jodie waved him off. “Please. Do I look like some debutant who’s never heard a fart before?”

He smiled, his teeth nicotine stained and choppy, and growled laughter at the back of his throat. “I guess you’re a woman of the world, all right.”

“Well said.” To me, she said, “I like this old man. Can we keep him?”

This sent Earl into a fit of laughter that reminded me of gravel crunching beneath car tires, his eyes tearing up and his big, rough hands slapping his knees so hard I feared his legs would crumble to powder. The laughing jag lasted several seconds and was contagious; by the end of it, we all felt like old friends.

“Before we begin,” he said, removing a paperback from his coat pocket, “I was hoping you’d scribble your John Hancock in this for me. If, of course, it’s not too much of an imposition.”