Page 9 of Raise Up, Heart
He sleeps until the car stops and he’s at his father’s house.
The waterfall isrestorative. He sits by the edge, watching the roaring slash of the water, feeling the mist against his face. The birds land in the trees around him and then take flight, black, undulating waves of them headed south.
At first, he does what he used to do to get by. He thinks of nothing. He makes himself focus on the blades of golden autumn grass, and he concentrates on making sure that he doesn’t allow any threat of thought to run through him. Observation, he can handle. Thinking often hurts too much.
Finally, as he feels his body acclimate, adjusts down from the heightened state that he’s been in since the prior night, and he lets himself turn his mind onto the subject itself.
There is a man. Or he believes there is. A man who pushed him out the path of the car. A man who sounds like Damon, and smells like Damon, and—no, I don’t believe you—looks like Damon.
“Damon is dead,” Cole says aloud. He’s said it before, and he’ll say it again. “Damon is dead.” The water spills from the height of the waterfall, and he rubs his eyes with his fingers. “You imagined it,” he says.
The emotionless sky stares down at him without comment. The pine trees shuffle in the breeze, their needles rubbing out strange, whispered disagreement. A crow screams from across the mountain.
“Who called the ambulance, then?” he asks, and the crow caws again.
“Who’re you talking to, son?”
Cole stiffens, before turning to face his father, the autumn sun backlighting him through the canopy of trees, so that his father is a shadow of blue jeans and a flannel shirt emerging from the trail.
“Myself,” Cole says, and turns back to the waterfall.
Dad is warm from the walk as he sits on the rock next to Cole, and their shoulders touch. Cole leans into him. He smells his dad’s sweat, and the scent of musty books, and he smiles, becausethisis four walls and a roof, even if the door is always open and people are always flowing in and out.
Though Cole knows that his dad’s open-door policy with women caused the problems in his parents’ marriage, he’s always felt like safety to Cole. He’s always protected Cole and let him be who he needs to be. When he came out, his dad just said, “Okay, son. Thanks for telling me.”
And that was that.
“Rosanna called to tell me that you told the EMTs some pretty wild things last night,” Dad says, plucking a piece of dry grass, and twiddling it his fingers.
“Oh, yeah?” Cole says.
“Yeah. Something about Damon being there.”
Cole nods, his lips already twisting to hold back the tears.
“Son, I know things have been—difficult is an understatement. But I need you to be honest with me now. Right here. Just the two of us. Have you been thinking of hurting yourself? Are you feeling suicidal?”
Cole can’t stop the tears, and he lets out a puff of air and shakes his head. He’s only just gotten himself back together, and a few sentences from his dad have him blown apart again. “No,” he says.
“Cole,” Dad says, gently. “What happened? You were doing so much better lately. What’s caused this setback?”
Cole can’t seem to answer that question. Doing so much better is relative. He’s been through cycles before where he feels like he’s able to ignore the hole in his life, and he moves ahead, and everyone around him breathes a sigh of relief.This is it, he can feel them thinking.This is when Cole finally gets it together, and we can all move on from this terrible tragedy, and Cole will be happy again. He hates feeling like he’s letting them down.
“Nothing,” Cole says. “I was fine. I mean, I am fine.”
Dad sighs. “Son, you’re not fine.”
“I know,” Cole agrees. “I’ll try to do better.”
“It’s not about doing better, Cole. Listen—you do everything just fine.”
Cole shrugs. A flock of crows goes up in a chatter of noise. He watches them swirl in the sky, before pointing their beaks toward warmer weather.
“Tell me what happened last night,” Dad says, clearly trying to take another tack, to come at this from another side. The most important side. The one that is relevant.
“I was walking home from Southern Grace,” Cole says, and he can feel his dad holding back from making a comment on the intelligence of that particular exercise. “It was dark; the cars probably couldn’t see me well. I don’t know.” Oh, he knows. He knows so well what he was risking. “A car swerved. Someone pushed me down, and I fell into the ditch.” Cole touches the bandage on his forehead. “Hit my head. I remember saying that I didn’t need an ambulance.”
Where’s your phone? You need to call for an ambulance.
