Echoes of the Fall by Hank Early

Author:Hank Early
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

36

I dreamed of a sky filled with nets and moons, and each moon was a pale version of the future, hanging on unseen strings. I was lying in Ghost Creek, looking up, baptized by the future and the past, lost to the present.

Lightning cracked the cloudless sky, and when it did, I saw all the strings, crisscrossed along their competing trajectories, like a dense net, and it lay over top of the world, transparent yet still heavy. Each moon could be me or Rufus or Harriet, but then I looked again and saw there were some moons that had become fully realized and shone bright enough to shred the ropes of the surrounding nets.

And then I woke, throwing my covers off, believing momentarily I was submerged in Ghost Creek. Goose, who was in the bed with me, snuggled his warm nose into my naked underarm and whined. I stroked his head with my hand and wished for a simpler mystery, but there was no such thing.

* * *

The tatters of the dream stayed with me as I made coffee, scrambled eggs, and fed Goose. By the time I made it to Ronnie’s, the sun was almost up and the dream had been replaced by Claire’s knowing eyes. How had she intuited that the article was off? It was something to meet another person with an intuition that matched your own. Sort of like looking into a mirror and seeing someone else who shared your features but wore them differently, with a kind of grace you believed you lacked.

Ronnie was still asleep, so I let myself in and sat down next to him on the couch. He was lying with one leg propped up on the back of the couch and the other on the floor. A thin sheet lay across his body. He was snoring.

I asked myself what I was doing. What was the plan?

The simple answer was that I was going to talk to Edward Walsh about Weston Reynold’s death. The more complicated one was that, somehow, I wanted to see the falls again, the gorge, and the possibility of making the leap across. I wanted to stand where Rufus and Harriet had stood, to see if there was some entry point into the mystery of Rufus’s unfinished story.

Was taking Ronnie even necessary? I wasn’t sure. I had the sudden urge to just get up and leave, to go it alone this time. To live or die, sink or swim, fall or climb on my own merits. No Mary, no Rufus, no Ronnie.

Still, I hesitated. Ronnie had helped bail me out of so many binds in the past. Was there truly some benefit to doing it alone, or was I simply trying to play a game with myself, trying to manipulate my own consciousness into believing I’d found redemption at long last?

I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was this: I was stepping into enemy territory. The chances were good I wouldn’t come out unscathed. But, most importantly, I didn’t believe I could live with myself if something happened to Ronnie again.

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