The Falls

The Falls

The Falls melted over the edge of the cliff seeming to solidify at the precipice, as if there were massive hands manipulating an orchestra behind the ever-changing water. It’s music naturally ingrained in the molecular structure inaudible to the human ear.

I looked out over the man-made railing onto the house size boulders below, the mist disguising tears. It was hard to imagine music splaying the boy on million-year old rocks like a dirty dish rag left to harden into a fragile, jagged shape on the floor.

His hands were wet bear traps and I touch them in the air, in the mist, in the wake. His eyes were fully open as if they were an extra arm reaching for me. I coaxed him to hold on. His shirt as yellow as his eyes. I asked him to ask God if I understood this predicament correctly…

The boy, holding back fear, his nerves a steel dam… said with as much clarity and courage as a boy can muster:  “my momma always said find salvation and the world will understand.” he let go of my hand as well as his body. He fell with the sound of a wet pancake hitting wet tile. The sound was transcribed and written for percussion fitting in perfectly with the symphony already in progress. As if it had been written for that moment and that moment only.

A crowd circles mother, father and me with their arms outstretched, invisible veins of emotion try to penetrate as I leave my body. His mother reaching out over the metal almost following her son as I rise up…his father a speck molting into her and wrestling her back from suicide. Although suicide is the writing on his face.

This mouth that I have does not hold a word. The music is still there, haunting the wisps of water circling this community. The mother convulses silently into her husband’s man-made arms. I imagine her reveling in watching the boy grow from baby to child to kid and watching her thoughts move ever more worrisome as the world grew bigger around him.

His father is a picture of stoic manhood. A steelworker, maybe from the Buffalo area, maybe just recently laid off and taking his family on a small vacation as his worries move toward how he is going to pay for his son to go to college.

Maybe to let go of their son is their way to salvation. I’ve heard that God works in those kinds of ways; however I’ve also heard that no parent should ever have to bury their child.

Who buries the children with no parents?

I am just a silly man who happened to be consuming oxygen in this place at that time wanting nothing more than to listen to the natural harmonies of churning water. Now on my knees, leaning against a graffitied piece of rock I watch lives dissolve into the spray, including my own.

Police show up three minutes after the fall. They try to talk with me, but my mouth does not hold any words. I say to them with my eyes.

“His hands were like jellyfish stinging me again and again and again. His eyes were holding ghost notes…virgins not yet played in the symphony. My hands were not strong enough to conjure him back. He was already dead when he met me. “

The police peel the mother from the ground and I witness the aging, the heartache and wonder, confusion and anger. I can see it jump between mother and father like a swarm of never-ending fleas biting open-ended wounds. They are carried away, trying hard to float so they won’t have to think.

There is an optical illusion that happens with this water. Just before it hurls itself over the cliff, it seems to slow down, like one could jump in at the right place and stand in the glowing, pulsing fluid and conquer it.

The water stops. Like it were glass and you were the hammer and you could crash into the energy, collect it in a bag and sell it in a trinket store at the border.  You almost want to jump in, you almost want to go over….and it’s not so much suicide as a union with the creator. You want to conduct the symphony.

I had a conversation once with my mother about salvation, she handed me a Bible and told me that all the answers I would ever need to know about life were in that book.

I said I wanted an Oreo and slapped the book out of her hand.

The truth is she was absolutely correct. Salvation is in that book, and also in that Oreo, and in that fat ladies camera taking a panoramic of the scene. Salvation is a mist in the air, it’s not tangible, it’s not real.

I look back over the railing and see that the yellow shirt had turned a slight brownish color. I wondered how they would pick his body off the rocks.  Am I going to come back in a year and see a brightly colored set of bones on said rock? Will that boy slip back into mineral?

The authorities had no use for me. The caution tape lifted, random tourists can’t hear the music, yet they marvel at what they see. I stand on unnatural legs, blowing a kiss to the Falls as I walk away to ask my mother if she still has a Bible.