The Falls

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Since he’d grown out of his awkward adolescence, Chandler had become a lanky, lean-muscled young man with a look of perpetual vigilance. He moved quickly like a tennis player confronted with a superior opponent, but not prepared to concede the game. His face remained boyish, somewhat undefined. He was easy (he knew!) to forget. His hairline had begun to recede when he was in his early twenties and his fair, feathery silvery-brown hair lifted from his temples as if lighter than air. His eyes were sensitive, moist. A girl he’d known in college had said of his eyes that they were “ghost-eyes”—“old-young eyes of wisdom.” (Had she meant this as a compliment?) Chandler wore tinted glasses that gave him an offhand, sexy counter-culture look, but his counter-culture heroes had been the Jesuit Berrigan brothers, and he’d never dressed in any remotely radical way. If his hair grew long and curled over his shirt collar, it was out of neglect, not style. Chandler would never let his hair straggle to his shoulders and fasten a braided headband around his forehead, as Royall had done; Chandler was mystified by his younger brother’s physical ease, and Royall’s sense that others should be drawn to him, and were naturally drawn to him. Not that Royall was vain: he wasn’t. But if girls or women fell in love with him, how was he to blame? I don’t make it happen. It isn’t me, it’s them. By contrast, Chandler was astonished if a woman appeared to be attracted to him; he couldn’t help but doubt her sincerity, or her taste. He saw himself as a spindly-limbed boy of thirteen with watery eyes and blemished skin and a perpetual snuffle whose exasperated mother was forever chiding to stand up straight, to brush his hair out of his face, button his shirts correctly, and—please!—blow his nose.

  “Almost, Chandler has become handsome,” Ariah said not long ago, staring at him in surprise. As if she were seeing her elder son anew, and not entirely liking what she saw. “Don’t let it go to your head, Chandler!” She’d laughed, with that Ariah-air of teasing and chiding, that made you wince even as you understood it was meant affectionately.

  Why? Because I need.

  Need to be of service. Somehow.

  Always, it felt to him like a privilege. An unknown wish, granted.

  Today he’d been directed to a factory on the east side, on Swann Road. Not a part of the city Chandler knew well though probably, when he saw Niagara Precision Humidifiers & Electronic Cleaners, he’d recognize the building. Chandler Burnaby had been driving the grim grid-patterned streets of Niagara Falls all his adult life. Sometimes it seemed he’d lived a previous life here, too.

  Ariah had once said to Chandler, mysteriously, at the time of her hospitalization for gallbladder surgery, when she’d been frightened of what might lie ahead for her, “Dear, I do love you! Sometimes I think I love you best. Forgive me.”

  Chandler had laughed nervously. What was there to forgive?

  Today was a bone-chilling late-winter day like wet, dissolving tissue. Wind from the east, that metallic-chemical odor that coats the inside of your mouth. An asbestos sky, snowed-in yards, filthy sidewalks and curbs. Snow covered in soot, snow in mounds spilling out into the street. Snow-slush, snow-and-ice. Chandler’s heart had begun to beat more quickly, in expectation of what lay ahead.

  He’d forgotten to call Melinda, to tell her he might be late that evening.

  No. He hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t had time.

  No. He hadn’t not had time, he might have asked one of his colleagues at school, a friend, to call for him. But he had not asked.

  Sometimes, just approaching an emergency scene, Chandler felt his vision begin to darken at the edges. That strangest of neuro-optical phenomena, tunnel vision. As if at the periphery of what’s visible the world itself was disappearing, sucked into darkness. It was a phenomenon common to firefighters. Though Chandler’s crisis work was rarely physical, nearly always verbal; earnest counseling, giving advice and comfort. Often just listening, sympathetically. Talking a desperate man or woman out of suicide you come quickly to sense how the soul of the other is on your side, wants to be saved and not to die. It’s the individual, blinded by despair, you must convince to continue living.

  We all want to die sometimes, exhausted with the effort of living, but it passes. Like weather. We’re like weather. See the sky? Those clouds? Blowing over. Between the lakes like we are, everything blows over eventually. Right?

  It was the most banal optimism. You could read it on a cereal box. Ariah would laugh, pitying. Yet Chandler believed these words, he’d staked his life on them.

  Burnaby, that name. That’s a Niagara Falls name?

  Maybe adults remembered. But ninth graders did not. Children born in 1963 or later, what could they know of a fading scandal of 1962?

  Chandler rarely thought of it, himself.

  He’d had his chance, he might have left Niagara Falls. You would think he’d be living in some place where Burnaby was only a name. He might have gone to college in Philadelphia. He’d had scholarship offers elsewhere, too. But he hadn’t wanted to upset Ariah at a difficult time in her life. (What Ariah’s crisis of that time had been, Chandler couldn’t now recall.) Nor had he wanted to abandon Royall and Juliet to their temperamental mother. They needed Chandler too, though probably the idea would never have occurred to them.

  Go to hell Royall had told Chandler, and hung up the phone.

  The brothers had been estranged for nearly six months. Chandler had tried to contact Royall without success. It was ridiculous for them to quarrel, they had only each other. Royall had never spoken to Chandler in that way before, and Chandler was left dazed by their exchange.

  It was unfair, Chandler had promised Ariah to “protect” Royall and Juliet at the time of their father’s death, and so he had. He’d tried. All these years he’d tried. And now Royall had turned against him, refusing to understand. Royall had left home, was working for a businessman in the city; living alone, and taking night school classes at Niagara University. Royall, back in school! That was the most amazing news of all. Chandler heard of Royall occasionally by way of their sister Juliet, and then surreptitiously, for of course Ariah refused to speak of her “willful, self-destructive” son.

  Chandler had wanted to ask his mother: how long could you expect Royall not to be curious about his father? And Juliet? Any reasonable mother would know it was only a matter of time.

  “Reasonable.” Chandler laughed aloud.

  Thinking of these things, he’d begun to drive faster. The speed limit was thirty-five, he’d been pushing fifty. No time for an accident. He was needed out on Swann Road.

  I don’t want to be protected, I want to know.

  Chandler wondered how much Royall had learned by now. How much about their father before wanting to know no more.

  Shame, shame! Burn-a-by is the name.

  There were children who’d actually chanted these singsong words behind Chandler’s back. A long time ago, in junior high. He had pretended not to hear. He hadn’t been a boy to be goaded into anger, or tears.

  As he wasn’t an adult to be goaded into emotion. Not easily.

  Melinda had asked him one night about his father, because of course she knew, or knew something, having been born and grown up in the city herself. The name Burnaby was known to her. And Chandler told her frankly that he rarely thought of his deceased father, and out of respect for his mother he never spoke of him. But he would confide in Melinda, because he loved her and believed he could trust her.

  “Do you! Love me, I mean.”

  “Yes. I love you.” But Chandler’s words were hesitant, uttered in wonder or in apprehension.

  Chandler told her what he knew: that Dirk Burnaby had died that night in the Niagara River. Though his body had never been recovered, and for years it was rumored he’d somehow saved himself, managed to swim to shore. “But anyone who knows the Niagara River at that point knows that would be impossible,” Chandler said. “It’s a cruel joke, to suggest.”

  Melinda listened. If she’d wanted to ask had Chandler gone to look at the accident site, she did n
ot.

  She’d been trained as a nurse. She understood pain, even phantom pain. She understood that pain isn’t therapeutic, cathartic, redemptive. Not in actual life.

  The body of Dirk Burnaby had never been recovered, but the man was certainly dead, and an official death certificate had been issued, eventually. After a much-publicized investigation by police it was ruled that the incident had been an “accident”; which Chandler guessed was a euphemism. By tradition, the county coroner’s office avoided a ruling of “suicide” whenever possible. Deaths at The Falls were usually attributed to “accident”—“misadventure”—out of a wish not to further upset survivors, and out of a wish to downplay suicide at the famous tourist spot. Even when suicide notes were found, these notes weren’t always entered into the official police record.

  The most grievous sin. Taking your own life in despair.

  Chandler told Melinda that he supposed most people who knew Dirk Burnaby believed he’d killed himself. He’d been driving at a high speed (the speedometer was frozen at eighty-nine miles an hour) in a severe thunderstorm. He’d only recently lost an important court case, and he was nearly bankrupt. “There were other things, too. I knew from reading the papers. Ariah never had any newspapers in the house at that time, but I got hold of them myself. I read all that I could, but I’ve forgotten most of it now. Or I don’t want to talk about it now, Melinda. All right?”

  Melinda had kissed him, in silence.

  Shame, shame. Burn-a-by is the name.

  Chandler wondered if Burnaby was a name, finally, that would dissuade Melinda from marrying him. He would have to take that risk, he hadn’t any choice.

  The Crisis Center dispatcher had given Chandler the address, 3884 Swann Road. Past Veterans’, past Portage, and now this stretch of Swann was closed by police to all but local traffic. Chandler showed his I.D. to a police officer and was flagged on. A quarter-mile to Niagara Precision Humidifiers & Electronic Cleaners, a low flattop cinderblock building set squarely in a parking lot. In the driveway were at least a dozen city and county police and medical emergency vehicles. Chandler parked on Swann Road and made his way to the scene as unobtrusively as possible, following the lead of a young police officer. Behind their vehicles and behind Niagara Precision trucks, police officers were crouched as in a suspenseful movie scene.

  Except there was no background mood music here. There were no principal players, there was no script. Chandler Burnaby had been summoned by police but might not be used. The officer in charge would make that decision, but Chandler could have no idea when. He was available. He’d arrived, and was greeted. His hand had been shaken, and released.

  The gunman had entered the factory approximately forty minutes before and at about that time he’d fired his first shots. The first calls to 911 hadn’t been made until some minutes after that, by individuals who’d been allowed by the gunman to leave the building. Chandler could see the part-opened front door of the building and a shattered window a few feet away. The window was oddly shaped, about five feet high and no more than a foot wide. The gunman had been firing from this window, Chandler was told, but seemed to have stopped for the time being. “But keep your head down, mister, O.K.? Don’t take any chances.” Chandler said, “I know, officer. I won’t.”

  As if he’d been rebuked beforehand. A civilian at the scene.

  A bullhorn voice was making the air vibrate. So loud, Chandler almost couldn’t distinguish words. Mr. Mayweather, do you hear me? Release Miss Carpenter at once. Repeat, release Miss Carpenter at once. Show yourself in the doorway without your weapons, raise your hands, no harm will come to you, Mr. Mayweather. We are Niagara Falls City police. We have surrounded the building. Come out with your hands raised, and do not bring your weapons with you, Mr. Mavweather. I repeat, do not—A police captain was speaking on the bullhorn, trying to exude an air of authority and calm.

  At the site, Chandler was recognized by several NFPD officers to whom he was “Mr. Burnaby” of the Crisis Center. A plainclothes detective named Rodwell, whose daughter Chandler had taught two years ago at La Salle, crouched beside him to fill him in briefly. The gunman was known to have at least one handgun and one rifle, and he was believed to be “distraught, possibly drunk and/or on drugs.” After his initial wild demand for “safe passage” out of the country he’d refused to communicate with police except for a few incoherent shouts; he hadn’t picked up the telephone in the CEO’s office where he was believed to be barricaded with a hostage, a young woman receptionist. Mr. Mayweather? Are you hearing me? Mr. Mayweather we are asking you to lay down your weapons and appear at the door. We are asking you to release Miss Carpenter at once and allow her to leave. Are you hearing me, Mr. Mayweather?

  The gunman, white male, approximate age thirty, medium height and weight about two hundred pounds, had been identified as a recently discharged employee of Niagara Precision. Mayweather? There were Mayweathers in the Baltic Street area, and there’d been Mayweathers at Chandler’s high school. This Mayweather had shot and critically wounded a foreman; fired wild shots in the direction of fleeing employees, whom he shouted at but didn’t pursue; originally, he’d taken two women hostages, but released one after twenty minutes, a young pregnant woman, with instructions to tell police he wanted “safe passage” out of the country, by jet, to Cuba.

  Cuba! Not a good sign.

  As if Fidel Castro might give political asylym to a guy who’s been shooting up co-workers.

  Chandler asked Rodwell how he felt about what was happening, and Rodwell said he hoped to hell the girl wasn’t already dead.

  If the police knew she was dead, they’d go for Mayweather, immediately. They’d toss in tear gas, clear out the building. If Mayweather resisted, he’d be killed. It was a simple scenario, like a Greek tragedy in outline. Chandler knew from past experiences that there were few options for a barricaded gunman, and not one of them was in his favor.

  Except, if suicide was the point.

  The story, pieced together, was that Mayweather, fired from Niagara Precision the previous week, had showed up that afternoon with a rifle, stepping into the front office and demanding to see the CEO who, luckily for him, hadn’t yet returned from lunch; he’d decided to settle for the foreman, with whom he’d had disagreements, but after he’d shot the man he’d relented and allowed him to be carried out of the building by others, badly bleeding, and taken by ambulance to a hospital. Mayweather didn’t seem to know what he wanted any longer, which wasn’t unusual, Chandler thought, in such desperate situations.

  Chandler made inquiries why Mayweather had been fired, and was told the exact reason wasn’t known yet by police. Drinking on the job had been mentioned. Insubordination? Mayweather’s co-workers described him as “quiet, a lot”—“sullen”—“thin-skinned.” The young pregnant woman who’d been allowed to escape had been too shaken to tell police much, and was being treated for shock at a hospital.

  The bullhorn voice continued, tireless. Mr. Mayweather? I repeat, Mr. Mayweather, this building is surrounded—

  Chandler wondered when he’d be asked to intervene. Or if.

  This was the suspense of the trenches during a lull. No shots had been fired by the invisible gunman for more than twenty minutes.

  The air was so acrid here, Chandler had trouble breathing. His sensitive eyes stung. The predominant odor emanated from Dow Chemical close by, former manufacturer of napalm. At the Peace Bridge to Canada, years ago, Chandler had been one of numerous demonstrators against Dow Chemical. Police had arrested a few of the more aggressive demonstrators, but not Chandler Burnaby who’d never been one of those. You wanted to think that individual actions mattered, that there were real-life consequences following from ethical decisions, and maybe that was so. The despicable war had ended. U.S. troops had returned home. Napalm had gone the way of nerve gas. Though Dow had recouped its public relations disaster, and was once again prospering, like much of industrial Niagara Falls.

  Swann Chemicals had been
bought out by Dow in the late 1960’s. A multi-million-dollar sale, highly profitable for the Niagara Falls–based company that had been the target of what was now referred to as an “early environmental” law action. Swann had won the Love Canal case, but times were changing.

  The bullhorn voice continued, more urgently. Mr. Mayweather? We have surrounded the building. We need to know that Miss Carpenter is unharmed. Lay down your weapons, step into the doorway—

  For Christ’s sake, Chandler thought. Let something happen.

  No: he wasn’t impatient. Why, impatience? The point of his being here was patience. He was the “crisis” man; he’d been trained to embrace “crisis”; he wasn’t a professional, so this must be his vocation. He had to admit he liked being anonymous. If he was Mr. Burnaby, the name wasn’t him. Not here, not now. This was a kind of grace, for one who couldn’t believe in God. Ariah wouldn’t know where her son was, and couldn’t be anxious/furious about him just yet. Royall couldn’t know, and wouldn’t be preparing to feel guilty/defensive if something happened to him. Juliet couldn’t know, though if the incident was being covered on TV, and she happened to watch the evening news, she might guess that her elder brother was on the scene.

  And there was Melinda.

  Chandler winced, thinking of her. He should have asked a friend to call her.

  She was expecting him at her apartment, on the west side, sometime between six-thirty and seven. She’d call him, if he began to be late, and no one would answer his phone. They were to prepare dinner together (tonight, chili) as they did frequently. Chandler would play with the baby, turn the pages of a picture book, even help with her bath. Chandler would spend the night if Melinda invited him; if she sensed that Chandler wanted to be invited. Their lovemaking was tender, tentative. They were edging by degrees into a more defined relationship in the way of skaters, excited, apprehensive, edging out onto ice they aren’t sure will hold them.