A Hard and Heavy Thing Read online

  These things can happen to anyone.

  But of course, you already know that.]

  They dragged Eris under a canopy of trees on the sidewalk, and the illumination from the stars and the streetlights disappeared. Cars whooshed past. For a brief moment of darkness, their mess felt invisible to the world.

  “Levi,” Nick said. “We cannot keep taking drugs.”

  Levi had nothing to say to that. He had nothing good to say about their small town hemmed in on all sides by bluffs, rivers, and coulees. He was dissatisfied with their small shows, their uneventful lives, and his boring conservative family. He felt the drugs were the only excitement in his life so he said, “It’s the only excitement in my life.”

  After a few more cracks in the sidewalk, they were back under the streetlights. A maroon Park Avenue slowed; the silver-haired driver stared at them stumbling beneath the streetlights, and then he moved on.

  Levi used his free hand to grab her shoulder and shake her. “Hey, wake up.” With the hand that was on her back, he grabbed a handful of wet flannel and bra strap. He pulled and snapped the strap. “Help us out here.”

  Eris was a small girl, but the work was taxing for both of them. Levi could see the blond fuzz of Nick’s upper lip collecting sweat. With Eris sandwiched between them—her arms slung over their shoulders—they trudged the final block to the auto-opening doors of the hospital. Drops of sweat pooled on Levi’s forehead, slowly growing until they swelled to critical mass and had no other avenue but to travel down, plopping from his eyebrow to his lip, where he grabbed the drops with his tongue to feel their salty wetness.

  Eris, on the other hand, had stopped sweating, or she had never been sweating to begin with. Maybe her clothes and hair were only wet from the shower. Levi didn’t know. He put a hand to her cool, dry face. He urged Nick on and pleaded for him to walk faster; act cool; don’t act weird.

  They set her in an empty wheelchair, which they found by the elevator. Levi checked her pulse with his fingers on her neck. He stuck his forefinger in his mouth to wet it and he held it under her nose.

  “Oh God, is she still alive?” Nick said.

  Levi pushed the wheelchair. “Of course she’s still alive.”

  Eris opened her eyes, rolled her bobbing head around, and closed her eyes again. Her chin dropped onto her chest.

  “Chip off the old block, huh?” Levi said. Her dad was long gone and her mother spent a considerable amount of time at the Hazelden Rehabilitation Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

  They followed the hallway to reception, where a large fleshy lady sat back in an oversized office chair, her feet on an upside-down wastebasket. Levi stopped the wheelchair so Eris faced away from the desk. He turned and stood between the woman and the wheelchair, and he put both hands on the desk to show that if he was anything at all, he was serious. “This lady needs to see a doctor.”

  The woman dropped her feet off the basket and stood. She moved to her left, leaned over the desk, and looked at Eris’s soaking wet clothes, the black hair plastered against her face, and her unresponsive limbs dangling by the wheels of the chair. The woman said, “Ma’am?” All this was to say nothing of the not-so-slight smell of vomit emanating from Eris’s clothes, a smell that Levi was just now noticing in the sterility of the hospital. “Did you drag her out of the river or something?” the woman asked.

  “Mmm,” Levi said, nodding his head. “Yes. Exactly. Fished her right out of the water. This ox right here probably saved her life.” He pointed at Nick, who looked up from the floor, mouth open, eyes wider and blacker than before.

  “Oh my,” she said. She lowered herself back to the edge of her chair and rolled slightly from the desk. “This is Labor and Delivery. She needs to go to the Emergency Room.”

  “This is Labor and—?” Levi looked around. There were no doctors bustling. No one sat waiting in the wide chairs. Down the hall, two nurses casually whispered and sipped from oversized mugs. Levi smacked his forehead with a palm. He pointed in the direction of the hallway from which they came. “So then the emergency room is—?”

  She pointed in the opposite direction.

  “Of course.” Levi flashed a smile and grabbed the handles on the wheelchair.

  The woman picked up the telephone on her desk. “I can call someone to come get her. Let me call someone.”

  Nick spoke up. “No, no. That’s fine. No need. It will be faster if we do it. We can do it. You can put down the phone.” He spoke rapidly, and he chewed on his tongue after he stopped. His jaw worked, and he looked from Eris to the receptionist, from the receptionist to Eris.

  “Is he okay?” she asked.

  Levi shrugged and started moving. “You’ll have to pardon him; he’s had a bit too much to drink.” In that town, a town where the bars outnumbered houses, such an explanation wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

  She raised an eyebrow. “He has?” She started punching in numbers. “And what’s with you? What’s with the earmuffs?”

  “Huh?” Levi said. “Oh these?” He stopped, pulled the earmuffs from his neck and held them out to look at them. “Tinnitus,” he said. He put the earmuffs over his ears and yelled out, “Experimental treatment.” He once again grabbed the wheelchair and started down the hall. “Walk faster,” he told Nick. “I think she’s calling the cops, man.”

  Nick gripped Levi’s forearm. “Hey, what are you planning here?”

  “What do you mean what are we planning? We’re dropping her at the emergency room.”

  “And then what? Leave her there?”

  “She’s underage. We’re underage.”

  Nick lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yeah. This is bad.” He nodded as if realizing all of this for the first time. “Plus we’re on drugs.”

  Sometimes Levi wondered if Nick was really a cop.

  “But we can’t just leave her here.”

  Levi turned a corner and stopped. “This is a hospital, Nick. I think we need to step back and appreciate that we’ve got a lot going on here.” He lowered his own voice to a whisper to match Nick’s. “We were faced with a situation; we made a decision, acted with some poise, and saved the day, right? I mean, really, we’re doing the best we can here. I’m going to drop her off at the emergency room where the professionals can handle it, and then you and I skedaddle.”

  Nick shook his head no.

  “There’s no sense lingering here.” Levi looked around and started walking again.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. There’s no sense in waiting for the cops. We had nothing to do with this.”

  Nick stopped again and grabbed Levi’s T-shirt.

  “Look, buddy. Do you trust me?”

  Nick nodded mutely. His teeth chattered together.

  “I’m as freaked as you are. Really. I am. But let’s be rational. We’re in a hospital. Let the professionals handle this. We’ll push her to the emergency room, and then you’ll follow me out the door. We’ll act natural, and we’ll just walk down the block. Then we’ll call for a ride home so we can avoid any further discord as we ride this thing out.” He patted one of Nick’s cheeks and dropped his hand onto his shoulder. “You tracking?”

  “We can’t just dump her off.”

  “Can we pump her stomach? Can we give her the medical care she needs? If she gets taken to jail, can we bail her out if we too are in jail?”

  Nick shook his head. “I’m staying.”

  “Suit yourself.” Levi dropped his hand and pushed Eris down the hall. They took a few more turns. Nick reached out to touch the wall as they walked, his finger tracking the horizontal line where the teal paint met the purple. His finger jumped each time they passed a doorway. They followed signs and ended up at a crossroads.

  A set of doors in front of them led outside. A set of doors to their left led to the emergency room reception desk. Levi pointed outside. “Wait for me out there.”

  “I’m not just going to—”

  “Nick. Trust me. Just wait f
or me outside. Find a pay phone. Call someone for a ride. Just go outside.”

  Nick hesitated.

  Eris opened her eyes again. Levi put his hands on her shoulders and bent down to look at her face. “Hey, hey. You doing all right?”

  She pushed his face away and staggered up out of the wheelchair. “Outta my face,” she said. She took a step and stumbled into the wall in front of her before turning to face him.

  “What the—” Levi could not believe what he was seeing.

  She made like she was going to slap him across the face, but she was slow and her fingers just grazed his cheeks. It felt like flirting. “You just gonna leave me, asshole?”

  “What did you take? Did you take anything? Are you just drunk? Are you faking?” Levi turned and paced back and forth in the hallway before stopping in front of her again. “Have you been faking this entire time?”

  Nick’s eyes went wide. “Oh thank God, thank God, thank God. Thank. God.”

  “He’s got nothing to do with this.” Eris smiled and winked at him. A drunk, wide, sarcastic smile. She swayed on her feet like a tired boxer.

  “Are you—” Nick stopped. Scratched his head. “Are you okay then?”

  “Of course she’s okay,” Levi said. “This whole thing here is just her sick idea of a good time. Some sort of cry for help. Isn’t it, Eris?”

  Eris swaggered up to Nick, leaned against him, looked up into his innocent and confused face, and said, “You saved me.”

  [I would have done anything to have heard those words myself. You didn’t even notice.]

  Through the double glass doors of the emergency room, Levi could see two women talking in the hallway. They glanced up at him. He stormed outside and left Nick and Eris, each in the arms of the other. Once he made it to the fresh air, he put a palm against the stone enclosure that held the trashcan. Anxiety and adrenaline washed over him when he left Eris there, fine, but not fine. The ordeal left him lightheaded and weak and furious. He took a deep breath and exhaled through quivering lips.

  Nick helped Eris out the double glass doors of the hospital. She giggled. He walked her over to a bench near an ashtray.

  The entire time Levi had known her, Eris’s crass confidence, tie-dyed Phish shirts, and frayed jeans had all marked her as a girl apart. She was fun. She was dangerous. She was beautiful. She did not fit into the Abercrombie/American Eagle/GAP hierarchy like the private school girls Levi knew. He couldn’t help but steal glances at her constantly, to the point where it wasn’t stealing glances; it was leering. Yet, he found he couldn’t even talk to her. Nick, on the other hand, had developed a theretofore alien aplomb in her presence, and he had no problem talking to her. In fact, here she was now, hanging all over him.

  Levi started across the parking lot.

  He heard Nick running after him. “Where are you going?”

  Levi kept walking away, across the parking lot, and away from whatever cruel joke was going on.

  “Dude, relax. She’s been worse.”

  Nick caught up to him. They walked side by side for a while. The night air felt cooler. It felt better now that the girl was gone and they weren’t dragging dead weight between them.

  At Perkins, Levi used the phone at the cashier’s counter while Nick waited outside.

  When Levi returned, Nick said, “Wish you wouldn’t have done that. We could have walked back.”

  Levi sat on the bench in front of the restaurant.

  “We should go get Eris.”

  Levi lit a cigarette and stared at the drifting smoke. He waved it in front of his face and watched the trails behind the cherry-comets streaming through the maples beyond the parking lot.

  Nick paced.

  They were quiet a moment. Then Nick stopped and said, “So when are you going to call your mom back? You know, about your grandpa?”

  Levi looked up at the sky, which was black, cloudless, and full of stars. All the memories of the man came flooding back to him. The slimy blood from the inside of a rainbow trout. The heavy panting of a young boy trying to keep up. Copper pennies underneath starched white pillowcases and the tonguing of empty sockets where baby teeth once grew. Holding a hand covered in rough scabs and burn scars from long days welding boilers. Gunsmoke, John Wayne, and Bonanza.

  He stood up. “I don’t know.” He stepped on his cigarette butt. “Can you believe the way my mother broke the news? I mean, it’s my grandpa, not some random person. It hath pleased Almighty God? Really?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick stepped on his own cigarette butt. “I mean look at all this.” He spread his arms out to demonstrate the expanse of the night sky. “None of it is an accident. I mean, like, he was sick anyway, right? And was probably going to die anyway.”

  “Just stop,” Levi said. “I know where you’re going, and don’t. Just stop.”

  “But just listen for a second. If he didn’t die when he did, then your mom wouldn’t have called when she did, and if she didn’t call when she did, we may never have heard Eris making noises in the bathtub.” He looked at the ground and started moving again. He waved his hands and spoke more rapidly, as if he were having a revelation. As if his visions were divine and not neurological misfires manifested from chemical reactions to the acid-molly cocktail he had dropped earlier in the night. “If we never heard Eris making noises in the bathtub, we’d still be dinking around in the living room. Who knows when we would have found her? I mean, probably not until we took a shower. If we didn’t find her when we did, we couldn’t have brought her to the hospital, and who knows what would have happened? She could have choked on her own vomit, died in her sleep, or who knows what. I mean—” He stopped and rubbed his big meaty hand over his fuzzy hair again. “I mean isn’t it possible that God took your grandpa at just the right time? For your own good?” Nick stopped pacing and looked at his friend. A hopeful smile played at the corners of his mouth. He lifted his light eyebrows in query above his big, dark, tripping-black, deep-space eyeballs.

  Nick had been so focused on his revelation that he couldn’t have seen Levi’s demeanor grow dim. He couldn’t have seen Levi clench his fists. And when he looked up hopefully, he couldn’t have had time to register the right jab coming at his face.

  Levi’s fist connected with Nick’s nose as soon as he looked up from the ground. He felt Nick’s nose crack under his knuckles.

  [This was anger.]

  His much-larger friend fell to the ground without even drawing his hands to his face or dropping them to the ground to brace his fall. Nick looked up from the ground with his forehead folded in confusion. Blood streamed from his nose, over his mouth, and down his chin.

  Nick put his hand up to his chin, touched the blood, and apologized.

  “I’m sorry, Levi,” he said as he looked at the blood on his fingers. Nick wiped his palm across his mouth and chin. He wiped his bloody hand across his jeans.

  Levi wanted to scream down at Nick that he was naïve, he didn’t understand, didn’t know how Levi felt. But he couldn’t say any of those things because they weren’t true. If anyone knew the pain of losing someone, it was Nick. Instead of making things worse, which is all he really wanted to do, he walked away.

  He walked aimlessly for several blocks before he returned to the hospital. The fluorescent lights in the hallways burned his eyes. He found the chapel and walked into the dimly lit room. He contemplated walking to the front to say a prayer at the altar. He had seen people do that in movies. He sat down in the back pew.

  [This was bargaining.]

  From the vaulted ceilings high above the red carpet and wooden pews hung fixtures with amber globes that dimmed the light shining through them. He thought of taking a candle from the altar. He could touch the small flame to the ornate paraments until flames engulfed the entire place for all its false hopes and unanswered prayers.

  The night before his grandpa left for Arizona, where the weather was supposed to help keep him alive, they drank beer together and pissed in the backyar
d of the house his grandparents had just sold. Grandpa said, as he always said, “Don’t tell your grandmother.” That night, the generation gap narrowed. It seemed like a small crack in an old sidewalk; spiders could touch both sides. But now, with a head full of acid, Levi clearly saw that his current mess of a night reflected the aggregate of his life. A Technicolor map of mazes with no ends. Realizing this, he saddened. The generation gap now seemed huge, like the great Grand Canyon. Nothing could touch both sides.

  He folded his hands and bowed his head and tapped his toes until the restlessness grabbed him around the throat and squeezed and forced him to get up and move.

  Levi dropped his pink earmuffs into a trashcan outside the door of the hospital. He breathed in the fresh air of late summer, and he felt the cool breeze from the river on his face. He began walking back to the house that held his upstairs flat.

  He stopped only briefly to decline a ride from a truck driver looking to spread the Gospel. The man scared Levi as he pulled up, engine roaring. He hung out the window, leering. His wrinkled face, pushy demeanor, and evil smirk were all incongruous with the collared shirt and tie he wore inside the cab. “Need a ride?” he called down before spitting a line of tobacco through the gap where his front teeth should have been.

  When Levi shook his head no, the man called out, “Been saved?”

  “Not interested.”

  “You should be.”

  “Move along old man,” Levi said as the man’s trailer-less big rig crawled along beside him, out of place on the nearly deserted residential road.

  “Suit yourself,” the man said before closing his window and driving ahead.

  Levi squinted against the sun that was just beginning to rise. He walked through town under streetlights. Each one seemed to turn off at the moment he passed. He walked through the bar districts, playgrounds, and parking lots. When he reached home, he kept walking. He didn’t want to go inside and explain to Nick—who wouldn’t understand—where he went and why he went there.