by Eric Arvin
Wilder sneered at him with distressed and tempestuous eyes. “Not empty, Dashel. Full. Full of life, you sick fuck!”
Dash was taken aback. How does Wilder know I’m ill?
“You look like death. That’s how I know,” Wilder said, answering the unspoken thought. “You look terminal. And good riddance. This world doesn’t need you.”
“I might look like death.” Dash regained himself. “You’re probably right. That doesn’t matter. Nothing you say matters anymore. You’re full of nothing at all. Like I said, you’re empty.”
No longer did Wilder seem the beatific charmer. Instead, he had become the snake. Venomous. “Empty, huh? I don’t matter? You don’t know what you’re saying, Dashel. I can still make you dance. I can still pull your strings.”
“Jesus, Wilder,” Dash laughed. “The melodrama! Take your amateur politics and use them on someone else.”
“Really?” Wilder said. “How much is our boy Tony here worth to you? What would you do for him?”
Dash was speechless. Wilder was right. Dashel didn’t want anything to happen to Tony.
“Wilder, no,” Tony whispered, his brow creasing. “Leave him alone.”
“Leave right now, Tony. Never look at Dashel again.” Wilder glared at the football star.
“I can’t.” Tony swallowed.
“You can, because if you don’t, you’ll be outed. You can’t afford to be outed at this small school. And I’m sure your family would never look at you the same way, either,” Wilder threatened.
“He’s right,” Dash said after a few seconds. “You’ve got to do as he says, Tony.”
Tony wanted to say something, but Wilder had them.
“Well, at least you’ll always have the tree.” Wilder smiled wickedly.
Tony clenched his jaw, gave Dash another look, and turned away. Dashel’s eyes misted over as he watched Tony fade from his life just as suddenly as he had come, walking off into the bleak, pale landscape. A strong gust of wind came up from the valley, blasting the great tree and whipping around Dash.
“It looks like I have you again,” Wilder said. “We can pick up where we left off.”
Dash looked at him impassively. “Don’t count on it.”
“Does it still sting, Dash? The humiliation? Have you ever recovered from it? From what I had them do to you?”
“You’re not going to cause any more pain, Wilder,” Dash warned. “Not for me, Tony, or anyone else. And do you know why?”
“Do tell.”
“Because you have no idea how this is all going to end.” He began to walk away, then turned around. “But I do.”
As Wilder was about to retort, one of the last icicles hanging on the limbs of the Old Lady fell to his feet, narrowly missing his head. Its razor-sharp point knifed into the snowy earth at his side. Wilder stood dazed, fixed on the large piece of shaped ice. When he looked up again, Dash was farther off near the quad, already closing in on the chapel in slow, arduous strides.
Chapter Seven
SITTING ALONE in the lobby of her dormitory, Sarah clutched one of the mismatched pillows of the sofa between her arms and stared out the large bay window. The window was like a movie screen on which her mind replayed every slow, dragging moment of her father’s visit. She felt terrible about it, but she was anxious for him to get into his Ford Taurus and drive away. Being the good daughter, the respectable daughter who knew what was expected of her, she waved until his car was gone. She waved as if the visit had been a pleasure, a wonderful surprise. Even when she knew her father was no longer looking, she waved.
Sarah recited every disapproving word and gesture, and every haughty glance in her mind. If God is such a gentle and loving creator, she thought, why haven’t those He has chosen to teach His children picked up on that unconditional kindness? Her father’s love had very stringent conditions and equally exacting punishments.
Memories from years past played before Sarah on the bay window. She’d been raised by parents too contracted to the “love” of God to actually live, forcing their daughter to abide by their rules. No late nights, no dates, no boyfriends, no drinking, dancing, or cussing. Nothing to cause anyone to question her breeding. She was to be immaculate and judgment-free, except to them. They made her choices for her.
But she had disappointed them time and again, starting with the day she said, as fourteen-year-olds do, “Oh God.” Whispering the Lord’s name in vain was at the very forefront of things prohibited. Her parents gasped in unison. After that, the incident with Bobby Denton was almost expected.
The memories were too weighty. She attempted to get her father out of her mind, yet his voice and face were ever-present, looming as big as the moon.
The thought of the adventure in the valley forest buoyed her, kept her from drowning in clotted thoughts. Sarah felt as if she were coming up for air. She wanted to go back, to take the long walk down to the vale, and then, maybe go deeper into the creek bed below the falls. The ancient gully road. Yes, that’s what she needed. She would get Ashley and Dashel, and they would descend beneath the edges of the campus, to the bottom of everything, the bottom of the world. Maybe Dash would be cured, and they would stay there forever.
Sarah watched outside as young men and women walked hastily, some with and others against the wind. Those who walked against it also had the drifting snow dust kicked up and thrown into their faces. Every so often, a harsh blast would blow and some poor soul would have his breath taken from him. Yet they all kept walking.
As she watched, though, Sarah noticed a change. Most of the students stopped walking against the wind and found alternate routes with the wind. Accompanying it, using the path of least resistance. The routes were longer, but they would get where they were going with less struggle. Only a few still fought against the wind and snow. Only a few took the shorter way, even though it was less comfortable and more fraught with obstacles.
Her cell phone rang. “This is Sarah,” she answered, waking herself.
“Hey, it’s me,” Ashley said cheerfully. It made her smile. “Your dad still there?”
“No, thank God. He’s gone.” She knew she sounded despondent. Alone.
“I’m sorry things aren’t that great between you,” Ashley said.
“Me too,” Sarah concurred and realized she really meant it.
“So, what are you doing now?” he asked. “I mean, are you doing anything important?”
“No. I’m just sitting in the lobby looking out the window. I’m watching the weather harass our fellow Veronans,” she said.
“Ah, perfect,” Ashley said, very pleased. “Well, you stay right there. Don’t move from that spot.”
“Why?” Sarah asked. “What are you doing?”
“Just stay there and keep watching the window. Promise me.”
“Okay, I promise.” Her curiosity was growing. “Where would I go? Have you looked outside? It’s suddenly cyclone season.”
“And good thing, too,” Ashley said. “Just keep watching that window.”
He hung up, and Sarah felt her temper lighten. Her father’s face still loomed, but not as foreboding now. Not as immense and fleshy. She curled her legs up onto the sofa and clutched harder at the pillow, unconsciously grinning out the bay window of the lobby, waiting.
HE FOUND a path that wasn’t so contentious, that did not allow the wind to push and hassle him so. Soon, Wilder was walking with the wind. Alongside it. Parallel. The blown snow still found its way onto his coat and into his hair, but he was no longer struggling for control. He had a definite destination, and the wind and snow could not interfere with his arrival.
The strange wind, the bizarre season, was seeping into his head, annoying his preconceived ideas about the set and designed temperance of the world. The whole situation made him tired. Completely fatigued. He knew it showed, and that bothered him most. His concerns were lessened a little by the confrontation with Dashel and Tony, but it was still not enough. His one-upmanship was exci
ting for a brief time, but another disturbing image kept piercing his thoughts.
That old tree dug its twisted branches through Wilder’s mind, cleaving his brain in two. It was giving him a terrible headache. He needed sleep desperately, but the weather and that tree were forbidding it. Taking it from him. The tree was using its old, withered limbs to reach into his mind and irritate his nerves.
Sleep. Rest. Quietus. That’s what had finally made him come to the coed dorm. He could only think of one way to get some sleep for certain. It had to work. It has to work.
Wilder waited at the main door for one of the residents to exit the hall. The doors were always locked. Wilder’s reputation discouraged most from letting him in voluntarily, so he waited outside on the steps.
A portly little freshman girl, all bundled up to battle the wind, soon came out of the hall. Wilder grabbed the door just before it shut. The chubby little freshman glanced back at him through glasses too large for her face. Her expression of concern passed, and then she went on her way. Wilder crept in like a cat—careful and full of caution.
The lobby was empty except for Sarah Coheen. She sat on the sofa talking on her cell phone. She did not notice Wilder steal up to the second floor. He prowled up the steps, climbing each one as carefully as he had snuck into the hall. The few girls on the floor paid him no mind, figuring he must have been let in by someone. They disappeared into their own rooms or went on their ways to other places.
Room 12B. Wilder checked to make certain the hall floor was now empty. That the few girls were out of sight. When he was sure, he rapped lightly on the door. It opened quickly.
“I told you…,” Maggie Parma began in a jovial, playful voice. When she saw it was Wilder at her door, she went pale. She seemed to shrink.
“Expecting someone else?” Wilder asked. He knew how he must look haggard and razzled to her, but that did not matter. It would soon be remedied. He pushed his way into the room. They were alone.
“Wilder,” Maggie said, as if out of breath. “I’m expecting… I mean….”
“Shhhhh,” Wilder hissed.
“Please. Wilder, no, please,” Maggie said, pleading on the verge of choking tears.
“Shhhhh,” Wilder repeated as he shut the door. No one would have heard her anyway.
DASH SAT motionless at his desk. Ashley was gone. He had left the house through the side door as Dashel was returning home. He gazed at a blank page on the computer screen but thought of nothing else to add to his paper. He had no new train of thought he could append, nor any older one he could reword. In fact, all he could think about was the look of triumph in Wilder’s tired eyes.
Wilder’s expression was a biting reminder of things past, things Dash thought were behind him. But now, Tony was at Wilder’s feet. In the end, all the warnings Dash could have given Tony would never have done any good. He was foolish to think they would. Wilder was a snake slithering through cracks in the ground, popping out in whatever manner and whatever space he liked, hissing like that charming serpent in the Garden. Only his fruit was poisoned from the touch.
Dash was at a loss. How on earth could he help Tony? His own reputation didn’t matter. The only power Wilder held over him was the knowledge of his burgeoning feelings for the football star. But Tony… Tony had a whole life to lead, a life that needed secrecy at the present time. Delicate dishonesty for the good of all he knew. At least, Tony believed secrecy was necessary. Dash knew the truth. But he also knew that the inconsequential things had a way of parading about more ominously than true danger ever could.
Dash pushed himself away from his father’s desk. He stood and looked over it all. All the wasted pen and paper. The one-dimensional copy of Bernini’s masterpiece watched over it all, twisting in anguish as he hurled the stone at the behemoth.
Suddenly, a great steel clamp seemed to twist inside of Dashel. He gasped, and his body contorted. The pain was immense. Unrelenting. He fell to his knees, using the chair to steady himself as he grabbed at his gut. He tried to raise himself but fell with a carpeted thump back on the floor. His arm struck a large stack of papers, and they tumbled down over him in an avalanche.
The pain traveled up his entire body; he gasped again. His hands tensed and crumpled some of the papers that had fallen, hands drawing up in the pain his father had known. His father’s hands. And his father’s tears of torment flooded from his eyes.
He rolled over onto his stomach trying to regain footing. Trying to get to the bed so he could writhe on a softer pallet. But another sweeping spasm hit him, and a stream of red came out of his mouth. Bright red. Red like when Wilder had hit him with the ice and snow. Red like the blood on the dinner table after his father’s first attack. It spread out, soaking the white sheets of paper. The blood pool spread before his eyes. Realizing he would not make it to the bed, he rolled over onto his back with his arms held outstretched. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes wide with a pain his mouth could not find the strength to utter.
But then the room became nebulous. Frosted with a dreamlike vapor. The ceiling vanished or was lifted away, and above was a beautiful blue sky. A veil fell away, and everything else around him evolved and shifted. Colors more vibrant. Life more vivid.
He was flying now, and down below was a great river.
SARAH PICKED up the remote off the beat-up wooden end table by the sofa and surfed through the channels on the television. Her attention was elsewhere, however. As she scanned the flickering images of car commercials, music videos, and reruns of decade old sitcoms, she was remembering Ashley’s mischievous promise of something to come. Her father’s stern face was all but gone from her thoughts now.
The only other problem was Dash’s sickness. She wanted to ask him about it, but she didn’t know what he’d do. She’d intentionally not called him. Even when Ashley was with him earlier on the phone, she had kept her questions to a minimum. She didn’t understand his willingness to leave without a fight. He had seemed so content with dying and leaving her. She was furious at him for it. So angry, in fact, she could not comfort him for the time being. She would not be able to shoulder any part of his pain. Thinking of Ashley was simpler and much more pleasant. It was the safer thing to do.
Lost in thought, she had ceased flipping through cable. The TV was on, but she was watching rather than seeing, hearing without listening to the public broadcast channel’s presentation of Puccini’s Gianni Scacchi.
As she looked blankly at the screen, she saw something pass by the large bay window. It wasn’t much, just a hastened flash. A blur. But it was enough to nudge her out of her own fugue state.
Half-interested, she rose from her comfortable position and walked to the window, the pillow still in her arms. She peered out in the direction in which she thought she had seen something vanish but saw nothing except cold walkways, shrubs, and snow.
The music from the opera floated throughout the foyer.
Sarah was puzzled. She was sure she had seen something, maybe being blown about, so she remained at the window.
The wind gusted harder, whipping the yet unmelted snow into tiny sparkling cyclones that danced up and down the sidewalks. There were no students now. They had taken shelter. Just the wind dancing with the snow.
And then she saw it. Sarah saw him. Her eyes widened in delight, in sheer audacious joy. Ashley was on skates, wearing silver wings and being blown so hard by the wind that he could scarcely keep his equilibrium. His arms were outstretched, and his chest puffed proudly like an eagle. The wind caught hold of his wings and pushed him along the salted sidewalk on the skates.
Sarah let out a shriek of girlish excitement and surprise. She squeezed the pillow and laughed, completely indifferent to the accepted noise level on campus. Not since she was a baby girl had she so carelessly thrown away any thought of what other people might think. Not since then had she allowed her voice to reach as high. As high as the moon.
She felt an embracing warmth come over her. A great acceptance.
Mio Bambino Caro…. The aria began on the program….
She waited for him to come by again. And again. And again. She cackled with a righteous laughter that filled the room to the brim. Her joyfulness raced down the halls and up the stairs, it slid under doors and passed through vents. Other girls came to the lobby, called there by a mysterious need. Before they even saw Ashley pushed by the wind, they were smiling, then chuckling and laughing. The sheer will of joy had taken hold of the entrance hall. It permeated the old wooden beams and supports of the room, it seeped through the used and torn furniture, and it sunk deep into the hearts and souls of the girls. It was sunshine on a summer day, water to quench the thirst.
When they at last did see Ashley, they joined Sarah to form a great chorus of happiness. Girls who had never had dealings with one another stood together in exultant unity. They stood together as if warding off the blows of a merciless foe by the sheer volume of their laughter. It was purity without judgment. Some held hands. Some cried. Some, like Sarah, felt a release. A forgotten self-love.
Ashley circled the building continuously, each time a different pose for his enthralled audience. The warmth emanating from each body inside the dorm hall was enough to melt the snow to the farthest edges of the campus.
HE THOUGHT it would work, but his eyes were wide open. There was no release. Even while he was on top of Maggie, he felt no thrill. That usual spark was not there. Nothing about the act had aroused him. Wilder felt drained of all energy.
So, he slid off in midthrust and eyed the ceiling, smelling the overly perfumed air of Maggie’s room. Lilacs. That was what it smelled like. A whole cluster of lilac bushes. It was nauseating. Will I ever sleep again?
Maggie had curled up into a ball at his side, muffling her sobs with fisted hands.
“Shut up,” he said viciously. “Shut up!” His mind was stuffed with noises and images—the smell of lilacs, the sound of weakness in a girl’s sobs, melting ice, and the old tree. The tree that was dissolving his mind even as he bucked on top of Maggie, impeding his life, voiding the design and rules of his world almost.
