Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
Death births an offspring of silence. Not silence due to lack of noise, but a silence of finality. Like watching falling stars. We marvel at the glow, the brightness in the night sky, all the time knowing the star has long ago faded and burned out.
Death’s silence stands next to us at the ready, dares us to speak. Threatens to smack words out of our mouths and trounce them if we even contemplate uttering a phrase. And so I didn’t. At least I don’t think I did.
When told Sam had finally succumbed to her cancer, I ended the phone call the same as I hoped her life ended. Quiet. Answered. Unabashed. I thought of ogres, drunk with fury, gurgling beneath a bridge as they danced naked for the great god Pan. Saw a tribe of goats hidden behind clay masks mock each other as they hooved the ground and rutted. Murderous crows cawed and blackened the sky.
****
Concrete paths were covered in autumn leaves and except for an occasional maintenance man riding by in a golf cart, Sam and I had Bear Mountain Park to ourselves. We walked through the zoo, but most of the animals were housed for the fast approaching winter. On a wooden bench reinforced with cold steel, beneath the great bronze Walt Whitman statue, the father of free verse eavesdropped on mine and Sam’s conversation.
“So what’s up? What’s the big talk we need?”
“That,” Sam said, as she pointed to a pint of Canadian Club I had just taken out of my jacket pocket.
“Un-huh.”
“That’s all you’ve been doing, lately. Drinking. You’re not you when you do. It’s too much. Too much, now.”
“Un-huh.”
“And you won’t even talk about it. That’s what I fucking hate. You won’t even talk.”
And to confirm her assessment, I said nothing. I returned the bottle to my pocket and we sat in silence. Silence loud, like being sucker punched in the back of the head. As I hoped for some magical words to fall from the sky to break the current stalemate Sam and I were embroiled in, I leaned my head backwards over the bench and saw nothing but Whitman’s behemoth nostrils. Finding no wisdoms there, I said, “C’mon, let’s go see if the bears are out.”
Sam smiled.
We walked to the bear enclave.
Three of the great bruins were outside, one nosing a giant ball around their concrete den. The other two lounged, but sniffed our scent in the air as we watched them from above. Sam loved the bears. She’d ask them silly questions and laugh aloud whenever they looked at her. I was sure the beasts were answering her in a language only she could understand. Only she could decipher. They bonded like kin, and Sam always said her only wish in life was to set free the bears. To devise a strategy—some super-awesome-crazy bear jailbreak—to aid them in their great escape, to see them run wild through the woods of their namesake mountain.
“I wish we had food for them.”
“Sign says don’t feed the bears.”
“Yeah, but I bet everybody does.”
“Think they’d like my whiskey?”
Sam frowned.
****
Sam was right about my drinking, but as I sat alone in the minutes after I had heard of her death, none of that mattered. What really does? So many times in life we are harried, driven to near madness believing some obstacle, some crucible, is going to destroy our world and lay our lives to waste and ruin. Yet time passes, the proverbial dust settles, and we live on. Move on.
Convinced death is the only true constant, and after I further pondered Sam’s demise, I poured myself a long drink. The alcohol was good, but the alcohol also brought on a cavalcade of emotions and unwanted rebel memories.
I felt guilty about Sam’s death. Guilty that I was so angry and selfish she was no longer in my life. Not that she had suffered and died, but that she was taken from me. A great pang of regret and remorse for dismissing Sam’s concerns regarding my drinking palled over me. There were many nights of drunkenness and some cruelty, yet she always forgave. Always stood by my side.
Why hadn’t I stopped? Why did I dismiss her caring love so brazenly? I had failed to open my heart for her, correct my faults, and a roughshod band of demons and saints unleashed a bevy of condemnations on my being. Forced me to ask a torrent of questions I had always avoided, introspection I vehemently refused to acknowledge.
Do our hearts hold our fates, or do they become shattered by societal norms and preconceived expectations?
Do we fail due to the ineptitude of those who were responsible to raise and nurture us— valiant parents and extended family—or do the gods lay all to waste on a whim and destroy those they first made promising?
Do we—some of us—harbor a defective gene, which craves self-destruction and make us act immorally, even as we recognize morality and long to embrace it lovingly?
Why, if we were created in God’s image, do we willingly strive to raze ourselves to a baseless existence of unworthiness?
I poured another drink.
It helped.
I cleared my mind and let it wander free.
As free as bears running through wild woods.
****
On the banks of the Hudson, on the opposite shoreline of Bear Mountain, Sam told me she could hear the bears in their den. Could smell them. I told her she was crazy, but the look she gave me was so innocent, so sure, I reconsidered my doubt.
As we stood at the water’s edge, the borrowed sun climbed down behind Bear Mountain. We commanded time to be ours forever. Sheltered among the tree line shadows, Sam and I baptized ourselves Wild Wind and Fire Sky with holy-magic water from the river. Angry, powerful, ancient native names we believed to be so clever and brave.
“We need to find a cedar or birch tree and make a dugout.”
“Really,” I said in amusement and a tiny bit of awe.
“Just like the Mohegans.”
And Sam ran barefoot off into the forest. I stayed behind. She returned minutes later, like an embarrassed school girl caught kissing a boy beneath the monkey bars after recess. She said, “We don’t have an axe.”
And I howled.
Sam was implausibly disappointed and dejected, but I’ve never loved anyone as hard as I loved her at that moment. Her eyes melted into mine and her boundless spirit split me down the middle. I was left positively broken in such a glorious manner.
She wanted so much more than we could ever barter for. Ever buy. She believed our songs and laughter could never be scorned. But when feasted on by the darkness of night, she said she understood we were not worthy for offer, not worthy to share. As blackness engulfed the river and Sam’s haunts of ancient peace, she told me we had to beckon back Wild Wind and Fire Sky. Sam said I needed to prepare. For doing so, would leave our souls nameless and empty, naked and ashamed.
****
During Sam’s late stages of cancer, her boisterous voice, heralded laughter, and unbridled passion broke down daily. Pecked at, eaten away by her sickness. A sickness like buzzards tearing away carrion flesh. My selfishness loomed over the both of us. I began to stay away, visiting her less as she lay dying. I was not deserving of her magnanimous courage, her resplendent light. The truth was I was not strong enough to witness the abominable waste. Could not grasp how the universe allowed this sinful aberration to foster.
I saw death everywhere. In the sunrise and sunset. In school children playing Hopscotch, the old man who walked his poodle. From any words I wrote or read. Darkened images and blackness penetrated my mind. I sought refuge in alcohol. Cursed God. I wept. Lied more to myself. Slowly died inside.
****
We were side by side in the hospital’s chapel. Sam, on her knees, me standing above. She grasped my hand—strong—and tugged. Nodded her head to one side, and silent, asked me to stay with her.
I could not.
I could no longer wait—nor no longer go back—an unnamed trickster in me feigned false absolution. Prayer and hope and faith and the greatest—love—had left me. Laid to waste on a burnt brown battlefield of self-denial and self-imposed faults, I was defeated.
Her eyes welled—she still silent—and I felt my soul splinter, my heart explode into infinity.
I broke from her grasp. I walked away. I know I heard a sound, her words, even though I can’t remember them now. A sob, a whimper, a resignation not lost on heaven or the universe, any pagan gods, possibly on me.
I wanted to turn around and offer an apology. I wanted her warm beautiful hand to embrace mine once again. To have her fingertips touch my face. To offer solace, even if the solace was hollow and corrupt.
I still knew I couldn’t.
If I turned around, the glassman I had become would shatter. Would burst into flames. Morph into a Biblical pillar of sinful salt, forced to stand accused. An eternal orphan left to wander the cosmos.
And then later, I received the phone call.
****
I met my friend at the bar.
He asked, “What’s up with borrowing the truck and tools?”
“The front winch works, right?”
“Yeah, everything you asked for. Bolt cutters, Sawzall, the hooks, the whole kit and caboodle. You plan on robbing a bank?”
“Nah. Jailbreak.”
William Teets is an author and poet born in Peekskill, New York, who has recently relocated to Waterford, Michigan. He immensely misses New York pizza, the Hudson River, and his beloved Mets. He will write. He will survive.nMr. Teets’ works have been published in Chronogram, The Deadly Writers Patrol, Ariel Chart, Impspired, Cajun Mutt Press, Art and Life, as well as in numerous anthologies. He thanks you for your time and consideration regarding his submission.