High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel

by Scott Cheshire

  Sarah asked if she could stay at the house for a couple of nights, because it was a waste of time going back and forth on the trains. It would just be for a day or two, because Nikos’s conference was over; he had other business, but not much, left. I said of course. We’d pretend like it was normal and comfortable. I think it felt, for both of us, like a way to fully bury our past. She slept in my old room, on a bare mattress on the floor. I slept downstairs, on the living room sofa where I’d been from the start. Sarah went and sat with Dad at the hospital, and he never said a word to her. He just lay there in his semiwakeful state, eyes closed, alpha waves ebbing on the EEG. I was happy to have a break from the hospital, because I don’t like hospitals. There’s nothing so strange about that. Amad told me he’d fainted at the hospital before even arriving at their inaugural Lamaze class. The doctor talked to me about refeeding syndrome, and the possibility of cardiac arrest and coma. We had to sell the house.

  That second day, we both stayed home and cleaned, staying out of each other’s way, mostly, and not owing each other a thing. It was like living together again but without the relentless loan and debt of love, or even good conversation. And I finally made a clear and deliberate decision, one I was sure she’d made a long time ago about me. I decided it would be healthier for me if I just didn’t want to want her anymore.

  * * *

  I was sitting beside Dad, one morning at the hospital, marveling at the mysterious thing an eye can become when it sees. I asked him if he could see me. He never answered or moved his head. He just looked. I was flipping through the channels, when I looked up and saw the ghostly face looking down at me. I jumped to my feet, approached the TV. It was Issy. I don’t know how else to say it, but I saw his angelic baby face up there on the TV screen, his name in white graphic letters, Ismael “Issy” Demundo. I looked around for Sarah because I wanted someone else to see. Does anybody see this? But she was back at the house.

  The anchor said that recent information had come to light regarding Issy’s disappearance, maybe even a possible suspect, whose identity was still completely unknown. A bartender had come forward and described a conversation he’d overheard twenty-five years before. He said the man had a mustache and wore a dirty white T-shirt. The man talked about the missing little boy from Richmond Hill, said he was the one that took him. And all of this would probably not have gotten the attention of the news if not for the fact that the latest episode of a detective show called Cold Capers was based on Issy’s story, on the resurrection of Issy’s case, which had long gone cold but now had a fresh new lead. The photo was the same as the one from our family album. I noted the date and the time of the episode.

  Later that afternoon, I read a piece in the Daily News on Issy’s case, and the perceived epidemic of disappearing children in the 1980s. The article claimed it was most likely media coverage that had changed, and the proliferation of access to the coverage, but that things were no better and no worse, back then, before, or since.

  That night, I watched the Cold Capers episode while Sarah was on the phone, on the porch. I decided I didn’t want her to see Issy after all. I didn’t need her to see his face to make it any more real than it was, and I wanted to be alone. The show was disappointing, anyway. They were trying to re-create and make visible his disappearance through interviews with the neighbors and his grade school teachers, and through a not very convincing portrayal of his mother. They tried to condense Issy’s most essential earthly moments into fifty-nine minutes, including commercials. The show was followed by some local news coverage. The reporter showed Issy’s block, interviewed the neighbors, even spoke with some childhood friends. No sign of Havi, though. Or me, come to think of it. The neighbors wanted details, to look at the ghost if they could, and to play a small part in the drama. Even I did, because the death you never see is your own, so we pay close attention to the others. Earlier that morning, I’d read a short piece on Issy’s mother online, about how she’d spent the subsequent decade devoted to finding her boy, every last dollar, and in doing so tried to assimilate every last moment in scrapbooks. The cuts on her face had settled into scars. She had that conquered look of a junkie who’d finally stopped because she had a sadness even drugs couldn’t fill. How was it I had no idea of her search? She had seventeen scrapbooks filled with photos, news articles, report cards, and the ripped pages of coloring books. I definitely understood the impulse and temptation to think every living moment deserves its own eschatology. But that’s just no way to live.

  That next evening, after a long day of cleaning, Sarah and I sat on the porch where it was cool in the shade of the roof, our legs and feet brilliant in the sun going down. Boys were playing handball across the street. We ordered Chinese and drank wine and I told her about growing up in the neighborhood. She asked if I was still running and I said yes, and that I dreaded the idea of ever stepping on a treadmill again.

  She laughed.

  And for one brief flash we glimpsed the old love for each other, but then we also felt a longing to be somewhere else, with someone else. I thought I saw in her face the suggestion of a playful smirk, but I knew it wasn’t for me.

  Half joking, I said, “We should go upstairs and see if we still got it.”

  She laughed, slapped my back, and went inside, leaving me alone.

  That next morning the bell rang, and we both jumped, excited to allow another force into our brief afterlife together. It was two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a man and a woman, and Sarah and I watched them through the curtains like we were hiding from a couple of trick-or-treaters. I thought vaguely of Bart and Gerard, and how it was not entirely impossible that I would see them again. Then the hospital called. Dad had finally opened his eyes. I asked Sarah to come with me. I insisted. Dad would love to see her.

  She said no, better not. It felt like the right time to go, plus Nikos was waiting.

  She got her bag together, gave me a long hug, and closed the front yard gate behind her. She waved goodbye. I watched her walk down the street, hoping she would turn back and wave.

  * * *

  A few days later, the doctors said Dad was as ready as he’d ever be. They’d forgo any psychological testing as long as he was released into my exclusive care and custody. The man still wasn’t speaking. So we made plans for his eventual discharge from the hospital. I asked the nurses for advice on what kinds of serious problems I might encounter taking him home with me out west. And without them, I never would have given thought to all that sand. He’d need his own wheelchair but forget about taking him to the beach. I said goodbye to the lovely Leeann.

  The real estate lady promised it was a one-stop-shop thing with her. She knew plumbers, electricians, whatever. She said definitely keep making repairs but focus on the front yard and porch because this is what sells a house, a porch, and the market was looking pretty strong.

  The doctors said Dad showed plenty of promise, even though he hadn’t said a word. The eyes were open, but he hardly moved, and they wanted to keep him just another day or so. So I should’ve been retouching the walls and scraping rust from the back porch railing, peeling paint flakes from the front porch columns. I should have been increasing our “curb appeal,” and getting ready for his return so we could finally leave. But I was spending time at my father’s computer. It radiated the same bluish glow that colored his face when he was rapt in his own daily online sessions, his hunt for I don’t what exactly except that, hospital incapacitation aside, it might have never ended. I let the computer light paint my face, too. I listened to the hum it made when the moving parts got warm and the fan clicked on. I couldn’t bring myself to wipe his fingerprints from the screen.

  The search history was what you’d expect: Christian sites, online biblical resources, a community blog for dream journaling, some vaguely conspiratorial religious message boards, even a few genealogy searches. Nothing especially fruitful. But then I stumbled onto a site he’d apparently visited a few times. There was an article there about a pla
ce called Beth Sarim (!). It felt like a small mystery was unfolding. I went and got the photo from the coffee table where it lay with the others: “C. Russell and O. Laudermilk.” The article said “Beth Sarim,” Hebrew for House of Princes, was the official name given a mansion in San Diego, built in 1930 by the Watch Tower Society (two separate words, back then). Beth Sarim was to be a welcoming-home place for “the return of the resurrected prophets and patriarchs of biblical antiquity, like Abraham, and Moses, David, and Isaiah.” I was speechless. They’d built a house? An actual house? I sat back in my chair and thought about this. Architects were hired and blueprints were made. A hole was dug and the foundation poured because they were sure the End was just around the corner—and, lo, there would be a resurrection. So confident! Bold, really. I looked back at the screen, kept reading: “The End was to have come crashing by 1914, which would be followed by a resurrection of the faithful, and the Old Testament Princes would lead Mankind while God himself ruled over a new and Perfected Earth from His New Heavenly Kingdom and thus come the final disappearance of Death.”

  1914. My dear God. And when the Great War hit, they must have salivated. What did they do come 1915? ’16? They built a house, for God’s sake.

  I kept reading: “It was then re-predicted that 1925 would ring out the first mortal blow of Armageddon. Beth Sarim would be Headquarters for the Earthly Princes in the End Times and Forever After.”

  1914. 1925. 1975. 2000.

  What next? When next?

  I looked at the Laudermilk in the photo, and it had to be my grandfather, young and handsome, with his whole life unexpectedly and aversely ahead of him. And yet nothing chilled me more than to read the final legacy of Beth Sarim. There on the screen, like an epitaph for that barren place as much as for my family: “Beth Sarim is privately owned now, adorned with tall palm trees, terra-cotta tile roofing, and a lush green lawn. It’s registered with the city of San Diego as official Historical Landmark number 474.”

  * * *

  The agent sold the house just two days after it was listed, to the Sikh temple right around the corner. They were expanding and would gladly pay the full price in cash if I would just please hurry up and leave, and to compensate for any emotional trauma I might experience after hearing their plans to immediately tear the old place down. They would do this as soon as I left the premises. I didn’t really know how to respond except by nodding, sipping my cup of coffee. I called a company about a custom wheelchair. A social worker helped me arrange for Dad’s release. I called Amad and told him I was coming home, that Dad was coming with me. I stood on that porch and watched the neighbors rake the red, orange, and yellowing leaves into small tidy piles.

  It was still dark, before dawn, about a half mile down the beach from home, by the basketball courts. We’d been back in Otter for a week already, and I’d been rolling Dad around town in his fancy new chair, special-ordered, an all-terrain chair rigged for beaches. Large, white, with rubber pneumatic tires. Sky-blue seat cushion. It cost over two thousand dollars, and we were ready for just about anything nature might send our way. I wanted to watch daylight come on with my father.

  Beaches are such a strange place in the dark, and so full of sounds, the rush and hush of water. I pushed the chair along on the concrete until we reached the courts. And when I pushed the chair onto the sand, it was exciting to see the wheels at work. The sand slowed us down, but not much, and we rolled along on the beach. We rolled over the sand to the courts, and we rolled over the courts and the painted lines to the short wall surrounding the concrete. I sat down and pulled the brake on the chair. In the center of the court, between the two poles, was a basketball, set in a recessed drain. There was a steel-wire trash bin filled with empty cans and bottles and partially deflated basketballs. A scrunched-up volleyball net spilled over the side. I centered my father in his seat, because he’d been slouching, his hair long and loose. His elbow was off the armrest, almost touching the fat wheel. I dried his mouth.

  I said, “The water is right there ahead of us. It’s hard to see, but you can hear it.”

  The sky was dark and deep, and a whole new day was waiting for us. I wiped saliva from his mouth. He wasn’t speaking, not because his tongue or his brain had failed him, I think, but because he was exhausted.

  I’d quit smoking for good when I got back. The tricky thing with smoking I figured is that you really want to smoke—as in, I really wanted to smoke. But then I just no longer wanted to. It happened when we got to California, on the shuttle bus to Otter. I’m not saying it’s always this easy. I’m not saying I discovered some secret, I’ve figured out the cure for lung cancer: Just stop wanting. I’m saying I gave it a lot of thought.

  I asked him if he was hungry. “Are you thirsty? Is it okay us sitting like this?”

  I thought of that parable of houses built on sand. When the rains come falling and the floods come rushing, the houses on rock do fine. But the houses on sand are in for a shitload of trouble. Maybe that’s why southern California seems forever destined for trouble, earthquake, fire, drought. I asked him if he remembered the parable.

  I said, “Just look at all that water.”

  I stood up from the wall and walked toward the surf, where the ocean crawled along the horizon like a shadow you could see in the dark. It spat up and sloshed on the shore, coming up at me, and then falling back, like a tease. Think of a river, a long and meandering thin map line of a river, and its delta mouth fanning out and into the ocean. I was staring from the mouth of some great river, at the mouth of some vast unknowable and shapeless thing.

  And then Dad called out: “Josiah.”

  I turned.

  I wasn’t sure if I was only hearing things in the wind maybe: a seagull, or someone else on the beach. I looked around. But then I saw his mouth move. He said again: “Josiah.”

  I jogged back over the sand, almost manic, tripping in the catch of the sand. I couldn’t get to him fast enough, afraid he might never speak again. I didn’t want to fail him.

  He was slouching there like a skinny little boy on phone books, a blanket over his legs, getting smaller by the second. I said, “Look at you, you’re alive.”

  He nodded once, affirmative.

  “How you feeling? Are you cold?” I was shocked, and trying to work through my shock. I set him straight in his seat. The dune grasses rubbed and shushed in the breeze. There was singing in the distance. He looked over toward the singing.

  “I hear it, too,” I said. “You been ignoring me? Something tells me you’ve been hearing me fine all along.”

  He said, “You sleep well?”

  I said, “I couldn’t really sleep. How about you?”

  “This chair is ridiculous.”

  I laughed. “I know, I know.”

  The singing was more than one voice. We saw a fire down the beach, a small fire, a flaring match head from where we sat. He asked me if I had dreams.

  “As in last night or what do I want to do with my life?”

  “Last night.”

  His voice was clear and firm, but low. He cleared his throat. He sounded like a man who’d been biding his time until he had something to say.

  I said, “Last night, I don’t remember. But I have dreams. Look at you, all talkative.”

  He breathed a great, big, wearisome sigh.

  I said, “Sometimes I have nightmares, bad ones. But not as much as I used to.”

  He faced me as much as he could. “I’m sorry to hear about that.”

  “Not a big deal.”

  We listened to the singing and watched the match head bob down beach.

  He said, “What about?”

  I heard the voices of children. I said, “The usual. Death. Hell. Murder.”

  I laughed, and so did he.

  I said, “I have this one, a recurring one like outer space. No light or stars. But there is this one light, a white pinprick of light. I think it’s supposed to be me. And it gets bigger and whiter until it takes every
thing over. And there’s a screaming happening the whole time. Not like a voice, more like a low-flying plane. And it’s louder and louder until I can’t hear or see anything else at all. And I’m gone. Then I wake up with a hard-on.”

  “That’s terrifying.” He laughed while he said it.

  A small group was coming up the beach.

  He said, “I think my heart is slowing down.”

  “What?”

  “Every day gets a little slower.”

  “It’s slowing down right now?”

  He smiled, patted my hand.

  They were out there now by the waterline, Boy Scouts in army-green shorts, red handkerchiefs around their necks. A dozen of them, ten or twelve years old. Their pack leader had a torch, and they moved slowly, probably looking for air bubbles and crabs hiding under the sand. They were singing and I knew the song, or at least I knew part of it. I knew the first verse, the chorus. They sang: “As I went walking that ribbon of highway, / And saw above me that endless skyway.…” It was lovely. I looked at my father. He wasn’t quite asleep but it seemed he’d already fallen back inside himself.

  “Dad?”

  The group stayed by the water; they’d probably found a jellyfish. Their singing was petering out, and attentions were elsewhere. But a few kept singing, and I wanted them to sing because I wanted to hear the rest of the verses. How did the rest of it go? I actually knew nothing about this song, and yet I must have heard it a hundred times.