The Falls of the Wyona

by David Brendan Hopes

  The line to the exhibit was long. Folks at the front were taking their time, handling things, talking in whispers. You could hear people back toward the door slipping in the puddles and stopping themselves, or failing to stop themselves, from saying “shit.” Thunder rolled overhead so continuously that you paid attention when it stopped or slackened. After one tremendous crash the lights flickered and briefly went out. There was, but for the wind and rain, silence. When the lights came back on everybody laughed. Disaster averted. Tilden had gone to the bathroom, but now he was back, cutting the line to be with us.

  “Bad planning.”

  “What is?”

  “Having Coach’s wingding on such an awful day.”

  “Blame the ladies. This is their day.”

  “They didn’t say the right spells.”

  Tilden had probably always been witty, but we didn’t notice it until he was a college man. It was sweet to see him tone it down around Vince, who was clearly fragile in some way neither of us quite understood. No cussing. No name calling. Only the gentlest wisecracks. When we were growing up I thought I was the smart one of the group. To find out different was a relief, actually. Vince had always been the good looking one, the athletic one. I guess that left me the Solid One. The Foundation. That was all right.

  We stepped a step closer to the front of the line. Vince said, “Do they blame me?”

  “Does who blame you for what?”

  He gestured with his shoulder toward Mrs. Herman, hovering over her memorial and under the quilt her ghost daughter and she had made, smiling her almost-old-lady smile, yet an icon of sadness, a smile pasted like a mask on a heart that would never again be whole.

  “Shit no,” I said, lying. Even I blamed him. He didn’t push Judy off the bank, maybe, but—

  Tilden leapt in and said, “I hear you’re coaching up north.”

  “Yeah. College didn’t work out—”

  “You can always try again.”

  “Yeah, I can try again. I’ll come down to Duke. We’ll be roomies.”

  “Hell yes,” Tilden grinned.

  “School didn’t work out. I . . . uhm . . . moved around a little. Someone in Gallipolis had heard of me. Knew somebody who knew somebody, you know.”

  “Like everything.”

  “Like everything. They were shorthanded, so they tried me out. I’m doing OK. There’s a college over in Marietta. Might try that in a year or so. Might get a teaching degree.”

  Tilden grinned from ear to ear. “Hey, do you remember Nancy McWhirter? The teaching profession has gone downhill since her—”

  Another crash, another flicker of lights. A big knot just ahead of us had apparently looked their fill, and it came our turn. Mrs. Herman had done a really excellent job. The permanent display inside the cabinet honored kids from the school, but around about stood a circle of tables on which she had placed artfully various things she had gathered from the river. When she discovered the owner or the circumstance, she made a file card and laid it beside the item with the information printed in an exquisite old-timey hand. When nothing could be learned, the object sat by itself in eloquent silence. For a while it had been the custom of the town girls to throw a doll off the bridge when they got their first period, the end of childhood and all that. Maybe they still did; I didn’t know. But on one table sat a sizeable tangle of dolls, battered and hairless, their painted eyes, when they weren’t gone altogether, staring and bewildered. It was hard to take it all in. Some of the people one knew, or had heard of. I was musing on Clarence and Timmy Hansen when I saw Tilden’s hand dart toward an object on the next table. I looked at him before I looked at the object. His eyes went wide. I knew from his expression that he wouldn’t be able to resist his own colorful vocabulary, and in half a second out of his mouth came, “Motherfucker.”

  Of course everybody turned to look.

  The object was an old knapsack, or small backpack. The buckles and rivets were rusted, and the whole thing was probably ten shades paler than it had been when it was new. But the thing was—I knew it—I recognized it without being able right away to say how. Tilden turned it over in his hand. The back of it was sewn with embroidered patches, some of them still amazingly vivid: Boy Scout patches, a golden fleur-de-lis, a couple of hiking patches, a big one from a dude ranch in the desert. Vince and I hit the same spot at the same moment. We knew that backpack. We could fill out Mrs. Herman’s file card for her. It was Glen’s.

  For a moment I thought, as I had at the bonfire, that the moment might fade harmless and without incident into memory.

  But Vince let out a terrible cry. He grabbed the pack from Tilden and covered his face with it. It looked like he was trying to sniff it, but he was using it to cover a countenance contorted with grief.

  Oooooooo, he cried, oooooo ooooooo.

  It was terrible to hear. People backed away from him.

  “Vince . . . Vince . . . maybe he just—”

  Vince retreated into the hall with the bag. He had no place to get away, to hide from the crowd, but in the corridor he found a corner where he could diminish to just side and shoulders. There he shook like a leaf.

  “Vince it’s OK. It’s—”

  “I KNEW WHERE HE WAS, SUMMERS. I KNEW AND I DIDN’T COME FOR HIM. I PROMISED TO COME FOR HIM. I PROMISED TEN THOUSAND TIMES THAT I WOULD NEVER LEAVE HIM. HE WAITED. I DIDN’T COME—”

  Tilden on the other side said, deep under his breath, “What the fuck is he talking about?”

  “I BETRAYED—”

  “You couldn’t have known—”

  “I DID KNOW, ARDEN. I DID KNOW. I—”

  Vince stopped mid-sentence, turned, and with the backpack held to his chest, sprinted for the door. As he opened and vanished through it, the biggest flash of lightning yet shattered the night, as if it had been planned to give Vince a terrific exit.

  “Should we go after him?” Tilden said.

  “And do what?”

  We decided to catch up with Vince at the banquet, after he’d settled down a little. I had a clear picture in my head of Glen standing on the bridge, tossing the pack over, cleansing himself of everything that reeked of us. Vince didn’t have to ask if people blamed him for that, because to those who remembered (and there weren’t that many) there was no one else to blame.

  You could smell the fried chicken and creamed peas and cornbread and whatnot heating up in the church kitchen. The peaches arrived late, and I helped carry them from Mr. Porter’s truck in big industrial cans, which the rain played like snare drums, which needed only to be opened and the contents slopped over some pale cake and covered with whipped cream to be our traditional festival dessert. Three ladies bent over three mixers making sure there was enough whipped cream.

  Sherry saved seats for Tilden and me. Vince had a reserved seat at the head table, with Coach. Sherry thought Coach was an idiot, but she’d done more work on the banquet than anyone else, almost. I didn’t know how to ask her about that, whether it was some sense of female community, that when the festival came along everyone pitched in, no matter what, or whether she had done it for me. Coach was my coach, and even though I too thought him an idiot, I loved him. Loving someone and hating him at the same time is very good preparation for the real world.

  Sherry’s hair was done up in a big swoop with a golden comb in it. It looked very exotic. Beautiful, I thought. I didn’t know whether I could tell her it was beautiful with Tilden sitting right there.

  The room filled quickly. Those without a reserved place jostled for the best seats available. We all watched for Vince. He’d have to be sopping after being out in the rain, and I’d stopped at home for a change of clothes for him. In the past my clothes would have fit him fine, but now he was so thin maybe my dry ones would look worse than his wet. In came the football players with shoulders so wide that everybody bumped into each and wriggled around for breathing room. Though they went or had gone to my school, some of the bruisers I couldn’t remember seeing before, o
r maybe years ago, before they turned into ox-necked giants. Maybe they didn’t take classes, but materialized on the field like so many colossal mushrooms just in time for practice. I had been out for a year and already I too was a stranger.

  Joey Thornton, the MVP from a couple of years before, had come back from State for the evening. Joey had been Coach’s special favorite that year. Beside Joey sat Nick Pettus, Coach’s special favorite from this year. They glared at each other like rival beauties at the opera. Most of us kept Southern time, so we didn’t notice when the clock crept past the appointed hour for dinner to be served. When it crept past almost a full hour, we began to notice, and at that moment Coach and his entourage entered. When he was sure all eyes were on him, he pointed to his wife and said, “We were waiting for her.” Mrs. Silvano smiled and waved, as though she had been paid a public compliment. Coach looked at once pleased and not. It’s hard not to feel good about yourself when a hundred people cheer when you entered the room, but something was pissing him off. Maybe the thing that had made him late. Maybe he’d had it out with Vince.

  Coach sat down with the mayor on one side and his wife on the other. Mrs. Silvano’s gray dress disappeared into the gray chair as though she had planned it that way. The Principal sat beside the mayor, various dignitaries radiating out from them. Coach looked right surrounded by his boys and his boys’ dates and a room full of aftershave-doused Adonises who adored him. Coach beamed down at the crowd with a joy I’d seldom seen on his face before. Something empty in him was almost filled. Something watchful and protective could lie down and sleep for an evening. But still, something felt wrong. When Coach saw me looking, he gestured to me. I got up and ran to his table, taking time to shout “Chicken!” over my shoulder as the server asked for my choice of entrées.

  “Summers.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Quite a do, no?”

  “You’re beaming, sir.”

  He beamed a little brighter. “I never thought anybody would . . . But, you know, I was wondering—” He reached behind the principal and tapped Vince’s empty chair. “I was wondering if you’d seen Vince.”

  “Yeah. At the school.”

  “Oh, I guess he’s on the way. The weather is so fucked.”

  “Do you want me to look for him?”

  He almost said yes, but the air was full of the sound of plates clinking down in front of guests. “Just let it go for now. He’ll be here. I know him.”

  I’d turned back to my seat when a hand plucked the sleeve of my jacket. I thought it was Coach, but it was Mrs. Silvano. She said, “I’m so glad to see you made it.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss Coach’s big day.”

  “Vinny said he had to go find a friend. I thought he meant you, but here you are.”

  Her beef roast settled in front of her, and she stared at it as though it were the most melancholy thing in the world. I got back to my seat and lifted a chicken leg to my mouth.

  “Was that about Vince?” Sherry asked.

  “Yeah. Mrs. says he went looking for his friend. We should have told him we’d meet him here.”

  “He didn’t give us much of a chance,” Tilden observed, pushing a mouthful of greens to one side so he could talk.

  When we had been allowed to gobble and gab for a decent interval, Principal Auten rose. We knew he was but launching into the program that Sherry had prepared. There was a show on the radio called This Is Your Life, and Sherry had copied that for Coach, making sure all sorts of people would be there to embarrass him in loving ways. I shushed the bruisers at the table so we could listen. The principal stuck to Sherry’s script, pretty much. It was clever. It was funny without wounding. When he realized what was going to happen, Coach’s face tightened a little, but as he became assured it was all going to be in good—and for the most part already commonly known—fun, he relaxed. Waves of guffaws washed in from the corners of the room. People mentioned in the script blushed as the whole room turned to find them in the crowd.

  “. . . and we all remember the time when . . .”

  “. . . and we’re especially glad to have Joseph Thornton back among us, because he will recall more than anybody . . .”

  “. . . it must have been a tremendous relief to Mrs. Silvano when finally . . .”

  Laughter came and went, with extended aaaaah’s when something tender or sentimental was said. Peach drenched white cake levitated in on the quiet feet of the servers as the Principal joked and jibed. Dessert appearing in the midst of laugher at somebody else’s expense—if that isn’t the perfect world, what is? Everyone pretty much had their say, those who loved Coach and those who had to pretend they did. It’s amazing how mellow and dreamy a room can get even without a drop of alcohol. Good Christian people.

  The last miracle was that the cloudburst let up for half an hour while we tried to get into our cars and get home. We barely got the door closed before it started again.

  Tilden said, “Fucking Vinny missed the whole show.”

  Home we went, all of us clustered around the kitchen table rehashing the banquet, at least, of the decade. Tic tic tic went the mantel clock. After a while I read Dad’s tells concerning how, even though he loved chatting with Tilden and Sherry and me, he was about to sign out for the night. The rain hit the roof so hard I wondered if any of us would be able to sleep. All that sugar in the peach cake would help some. The phone rang. Mom answered. She was being a little passive-aggressive, and I barely heard her “It’s for you,” sneaking in from the kitchen. I ran and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Arden? Is this Arden?

  “Yes it is.”

  “This is Maria.”

  “Maria—?”

  “Mrs. Silvano.”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. What can I do for you?” I was very courteous, but my heart was in my throat. Mrs. Silvano had never called our house, ever. Her voice sounded tired and distant. It did not, however, sound particularly drunk.

  “I was just wondering. Vinny is . . . well I was wondering if he was over at your house.”

  “No ma’am. He’s not.”

  “Oh . . . OK . . . it’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?”

  “He’s not here. He’s not been here all night. I’m afraid he’s out there in the storm.”

  I’d never heard anything sadder than Maria Silvano’s voice saying of her only son, “He’s out there in the storm.”

  When I said, “We’ll find him,” I looked up to notice everyone was in the kitchen standing around me.

  Sherry said, “Vinny?”

  “Yes.”

  Mom said, “That boy—”

  Sherry said, “What did his mom say to you again?”

  “Just now?”

  “No, at the banquet.”

  “She said he said he was going to look for his friend. But we were already—”

  Truth struck everyone in the room at exactly the same second. He didn’t mean me. He didn’t mean Tilden. He meant Glen.

  I set the phone down, picked it up again, commenced dialing.

  Mom said, “Didn’t that boy go to St. Louis? Or somewhere like that?”

  But I knew, at that second, as I had not allowed myself to imagine before, that Glen had not gone to St. Louis or anywhere else. Vince knew all along. Glen had gone to the Falls.

  XIII

  Tilden borrowed some of my old climbing clothes and an extra slicker. Dad pulled on his black boots, as every man in the town over the age of thirteen might well have been doing right then. Sherry drove home and back again with her slicker on and her yellow middle school boots with the floppy buckles. When the door opened she took only the merest step in. She stood where the stream of water from her coat would go mostly outside. She said, “Well, aren’t we going?”

  Dad filled his pockets and Tilden’s with extra flashlight batteries and lengths of rope. Mom and Sherry huddled over in the corner talking in whispers about whatever it is women talk about at s
uch a time. We were all moving in slow motion. Anxiety added weight to everything. We were almost ready when a whirl of red came to the driveway, like quiet lightning. It wasn’t lightning. We knew what it was.

  Chief Dadlez was old, but he learned new tricks when he needed to. He probably felt unwelcome in the Summers house, under the circumstances, so he sent two deputies, one a kid Andy went to school with, a few years older, one a cop from Ohio who had moved south for a rest from big-city violence. I don’t think he was getting that rest tonight.

  The old pro came in first. They were dripping wet, so they huddled together by the door so as little water would get in as possible. We were all in the kitchen anyway, so that was fine.