As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth Read online

  A movement caught his eye. He followed it and saw that Del was climbing up the side of the windmill.

  “What are you doing?” he called out. Meaning, Why are you doing it? He flashed on what Everett had said about going rock climbing with Del. “When the rope is attached to Del,” he had said, “I tend to think of it more as a leash.”

  Del hauled himself along the braces under the decking, then pulled himself up and over the railing onto the deck.

  “It’s my favorite thing to do on windmills,” he said over his shoulder. He jumped up onto the railing and walked along on it with his arms out to his sides, like a tightrope walker. It was kind of funny: Del didn’t want the windmill to be forced to perform circus tricks, but he didn’t mind doing them himself. Now he grabbed onto one of the giant blades as it rose swiftly beside him. He was lifted into the air. The part he grabbed was a crossbar of wooden latticework. He shifted the position of his hands once or twice as he rode up and around to maintain a comfortable angle, a good grip.

  He did it the way he did everything, as if he did this every day. As if it were the easiest thing in the world. As if any sane person would do the same.

  He hung gracefully from the turning blade by one arm as he turned to step lightly back onto the railing when it came within reach.

  The railing was wooden and it was old. Maybe not hundreds of years old, maybe it had been replaced at some point, but not lately. The expression on Del’s face as it gave way beneath him was one of surprise.

  His eyes met Ry’s as if to say, “What the heck? What just happened?” His arms and legs went slowly spinning in a weird echo of the blades still spinning behind him, but in the opposite direction. As he fell through the air he began the movement of pulling into a tuck, but this was a trick he hadn’t practiced. The timing was off. He met the Earth before he was ready.

  For his part, Ry watched Del fall as if he were the pitch, the shuttlecock, the ball in some sport Ry had never learned how to play. What was he supposed to do here? Catch him? Before he could figure it out, there was, almost all at once, the thud of Del reaching the ground and the snapping sound of cracking bones. And Del lay there, his limbs all wrong to his body.

  Ry ran and knelt beside him. Del’s eyes fluttered open and shut, and then stayed shut. Ry put his fingertips to the place on the neck where you can feel a pulse. Without opening his eyes, Del said, “I’m not dead, but I think I might need a doctor.” His voice vibrated in Ry’s fingertips. Ry pulled his hand away, startled. Then someone else’s fingertips were on Del’s throat, a woman’s. Ry looked up to see one of the tourist ladies kneeling on Del’s other side. The whole group of tourists huddled a few yards off, along with the miller, each one holding a brown paper bag. It was like an advertisement for brown paper bags. Except that with the expressions on their faces, it was more like a warning against brown paper bags.

  Ry glanced down and saw something protruding from the skin on Del’s leg. He realized it was Del’s bone. Everything sort of disappeared then and went black, until he felt the doctor’s warm hand on his cheek, turning his head for him. Her voice said, “Just look at his face for now.” So he did.

  The doctor said, “Is he your father?”

  Still looking at Del’s face, Ry wondered if he only imagined a smile moving through it.

  “No,” said Ry. “He’s my friend.”

  When the ambulance arrived, it was a taxi, a minibus of a manufacture Ry hadn’t seen before. The driver jumped out and peeled off the magnetic TAXI signs on each side. He replaced them with signs that said AMBULANCE, and then it was an ambulance. There was even a light on the roof.

  The driver hurried over with a bag. Ry was apprehensive, but the guy was not inept. He took one look, then went back to the minibus and returned with a human-sized board with straps on it. Somehow he and the doctor and Ry gently maneuvered Del onto the board without altering his arrangement too much and secured him there. Ry and the driver carried him over to the minibus and loaded him in through a door in the back, sliding him along the aisle between the seats.

  The doctor rode along to the hospital. The road was not smooth. With every bump, Ry and the doctor (and Del, no doubt) winced. They looked back and down at Del. His eyes were still closed.

  The doctor said to Ry, “Does he often do things like that?”

  “Yeah,” said Ry. “He kind of does. But I’ve never seen him fall before.”

  “The wood was rotten,” she said.

  Ry was grateful that she didn’t say it was a stupid thing to do. She just said her name was Shirley, and that Del would be okay. Eventually.

  “He’ll be laid up for a while, though,” she said. “No wing-walking for a few months.”

  Bump. Ba-da-bump.

  IN THE HOSPITAL

  The hospital was a low building of whitewashed cement. The driver had been talking on his phone to the staff there, so at the instant they pulled under the drive-through carport, the doors opened and two people emerged with a gurney.

  Shirley was off the bus in a flash to meet them behind the minibus. She spoke with them while they hauled Del back out. Ry could hear her American English and their island-accented English going back and forth through the opened door. They all spoke quickly, but softly and calmly; more routine than urgent, but also more urgent than routine. Someone must have made a joke while Ry was coming around back, and they all laughed.

  Then Del was rolled inside and the doors closed. Shirley took Ry by the arm and they went inside, too.

  There were forms to fill out. Information was needed. Ry and Shirley did the best they could with what they could find in Del’s wallet, brought to them after his pants were cut away from his off-kilter limbs.

  “KerHodie,” said Shirley, reading Del’s last name from his driver’s license. “What is that, Dutch?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ry. “I think so.”

  “Sounds Dutch,” mused Shirley. “Looks Dutch. He looks Dutch. But maybe it’s just because I’m on this Dutch island. Maybe it’s just that windmill.”

  When they had finished with the forms, Shirley turned to Ry and asked, “Is your family nearby?”

  It seemed like a trick question.

  “Yeah, they are,” said Ry. “Why?”

  “Well, maybe you should call them,” said Shirley. “I need to get back to my own family.”

  “Oh, right,” said Ry. “I will. You should go—I mean, thank you for coming here. It really helped a lot. I wouldn’t have known what to say. What to do.”

  “I’m sure you would have figured it all out,” she said. “But it’s easy for me, it’s what I do, so I’m glad to help. Well, take care, then.”

  They shook hands and said good-bye, then Shirley was off, down the hall, around the corner. Maybe the ambulance became a taxi again. Ry stood in the hallway, irresolute.

  Absentmindedly, he flipped open Del’s wallet, which he was still holding. Del’s face looked out through a scratched acetate window. There was a folded piece of paper sticking out that Shirley had opened, glanced at, then refolded and replaced in one of the credit card slots. Ry took it out now and opened it up. He had seen it before, but it was different now. It was the poem he had found in the typewriter that first morning he woke up in Del’s house. There was the blob of Wite-Out he had applied, trying to conceal his nosiness.

  But the poem had been revised. The revisions were handwritten, in pencil and in pen. The poem wasn’t about interplanetary gravity at all. It was about Yulia. Yulia and Del. A title, “For Yulia,” had been written at the top, in blue ballpoint:

  For Yulia

  Try as I might,

  I can’t escape your gravity.

  My orbit is elliptical:

  I fling myself far and I think I’m free.

  Who am I kidding?

  Invisible forces, and visible ones, come into play:

  A stranger comes to town, someone goes on a trip.

  Leaving and staying away

  Is as eas
y as falling off the face of the Earth,

  But who would want to,

  Anyway?

  A stranger comes to town, someone goes on a trip. That would be me, Ry thought. The invisible force.

  The hospital was small. It didn’t take long to find Del. He was on a bed, and a nurse was hooking him up to an IV bottle. Del, despite being in obvious pain, watched her closely. Like next time he might just go ahead and do this part himself and he needed to know how. When he saw Ry, he seemed relieved.

  “Call Yulia,” he said, “and tell her where I am.”

  “Do you know her number?” asked Ry. “I don’t even know her last name, to try to look her up.”

  Del rattled off the number as if it was one long word. “Tell her what happened,” he said, “and ask her to come.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ry, searching around for a pen. He found one on the clipboard on Del’s bed. “Okay, what?”

  Del said it again and Ry wrote it on the back of his hand.

  “Tell her I said I could be wrong,” Del said. “And I’m sorry. And then you should go to Saint Jude’s and find your mom and dad. You need to get there today.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” asked Ry. “I can’t sail the boat by myself. And I can’t just leave you here.”

  “Yulia will come,” said Del. “She might not stay, but she’ll come.”

  “Okay,” said Ry.

  “I was wrong about the wood on that railing,” said Del. “I should have noticed that.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” said Ry.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Del. “I was also wrong about the pancakes. Everett was right. You don’t go by the thermostat. Any idiot knows that.”

  “What?” said Ry.

  “And I was wrong about opera music. I thought I hated it, but now I don’t mind it so much every now and then. In small doses. Very small.”

  “Oh,” said Ry. “I get it. You can say you were wrong. That’s great, Del.”

  “Right,” said Del. “I was wrong about taking the air pollution control stuff out of cars, too. It’s pretty important to leave it in there.”

  “Okay,” said Ry. “You can stop now.”

  “I was wrong about being right,” said Del. The expression on his face had relaxed to a goofy half grin. The medications dripping into Del’s bloodstream must be taking effect.

  “I was right about being left,” said Del. He was still smiling, but his eyes were falling shut in fluttering stages. His voice was a loopy drawling singsong.

  “I was left about…” His voice trailed off; his head lolled gently to one side. Ry thought he was out. Then Del’s eyes opened and he said in a clear, normal voice, “…about three years ago, I think.”

  His eyes were not open when he said the last words Ry heard him say that day. Which were, “Her last name is KerHodie.”

  It wasn’t until the nurse came back into the room that Ry realized his mouth was open. He closed his mouth and smiled at her, a slight courtesy smile that his face did out of habit. Then he walked out, thinking.

  Ry called Yulia. He asked the hospital people if he could call Del’s family, and they let him.

  His mind was so busy running through all the things he might say that it took him by surprise when he heard Yulia’s actual voice, answering her phone.

  “Yulia!” he said as if he had met her unexpectedly, on the street.

  “Yes?” she said, not recognizing his voice, but recognizing that he was a “yes” person, not a “sí” person.

  The conversation was short. Of course she would come.

  “He said to tell you he was sorry,” said Ry. “And that he was wrong.”

  “He said he was wrong?”

  “Well—he said he could be wrong.”

  Yulia laughed. “I guess that’s a start, isn’t it?” she said. She said she’d see him that afternoon, maybe not till evening or night, depending on what she could work out.

  “Okay,” said Ry. “See you then.”

  Although he wouldn’t see her then, he thought, or maybe ever. He hung up the phone and handed it back to the person behind the desk.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, he walked down the corridor, pausing only to scarf a couple of uneaten rolls from a rack of dinner trays. He jammed two more in his pockets and walked through the reception area and out the front door. Where he hesitated, just briefly, in the shade of the carport drive-through, squinting out into the brightness that bathed the day. Then, putting one foot in front of the other, he walked in the direction of the windmill and the cove where the boat was anchored. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but this was an island. If he stayed near the shore, how lost could he get?

  NEXT

  The forested old lava cones, the mountains of St. Jude’s, seemed so close. Not so close that Ry could see his father half walking, half running out to the end of a dock, waving what looked like paper packets, manila envelopes maybe, in the air. But from time to time, a gap in the foliage allowed him a glimpse of the buildings of the port town. He remembered from the lighthouse keeper’s map that the town was called Finisterre.

  If he could see the buildings, how far could it be? Far enough to swallow up any sound, even someone shouting, even two people shouting what sounded like, “All right! Yes! Let’s go!” But he could feel the pull of it, almost like a magnet, or like gravity. He had to get there. He had to do it today.

  Magical powers would be helpful; flying, or at least really long jumping.

  Against the odds, Ry recognized something about a road that branched off to his right. And, against the odds, it led to the idyllic cove where the Peachy Pie floated, bobbing gently on her tether. He pulled the dinner rolls from his pockets and sat in the white sand, in the shade of a bevy of palms, chewing. He wished he had a little more spit to help with the swallowing, or something wet to wash them down with. There were some bottles of water out on the Peachy Pie, but he hadn’t screwed up his nerve to go out there yet. He waited for the eating of the bread to help with that, but it wasn’t happening. He might have to fake the courage part.

  He paddled the Zodiac, the dinghy, out to the boat, and climbed up into it. Okay. Here he was. He found the water and took a swig.

  Yulia had said one person could sail the boat alone, if need be. “You’ll love it,” she had said. And he had loved it, not right away, not yesterday, but this morning. That was only, like, a hundred years ago now.

  But as Ry moved around the boat, checking lines, reminding himself of how everything worked, he realized that the person who could sail this boat alone was not him. Who was he kidding? Someday he might be that person, but today wasn’t that day. He could help sail a boat, but he wasn’t ready to do it alone, not on the open water. The very deep, very open water. There was courage, and then there was stupidity. He sat on the foredeck and gazed unseeing at the twin peaks of St. Jude’s. What would happen if he didn’t get there today?

  His mother and father would move on; he would not know where. Eventually, though, they would go home. He would call them then, from Yulia’s, where he would sleep on the couch. After the two of them sailed her boat back to San Juan. They would fly Del there somehow. Maybe Everett would help with that. Then Ry and Yulia would visit Del in the hospital, or he would be at Yulia’s, recuperating. In the meantime, though, his grandfather was on the loose with a malfunctioning head. And the dogs—he tried to tell himself the dogs would be okay, but he couldn’t help picturing grisly scenarios. Gristley scenarios.

  And, what would happen if he did get to St. Jude’s, and if he did find his parents? What could they do about any of it? Ry didn’t know anymore.

  “I think they should know about Grandpa Lloyd, though,” he said aloud. If he was found, he would need to be taken care of. Or…

  “They need to know, either way,” he said.

  “I wish there was a ferry,” he said.

  There was a ferry, but he didn’t know that, let alone where it was. If t
here is a ferry and you don’t know it, can it still get you to the next island? No.

  He was roused from this reverie by movement in front of him. One of the other sailboats was moving, motoring toward the mouth of the cove. Ry waved.

  “Hi,” he called out.

  “Hey, mate,” answered the man in the other boat. He sounded Australian. Austrylian. Ry watched the boat head for the sea. The sails went up. Gently, they caught the breeze. Serenely, mildly, the boat eased south.

  “Look,” it whispered back to Ry. “It’s easy.”

  The winds did appear to be calm. The Peachy Pie was a docile sailor, a forgiving boat. He would just go outside the cove. If the wind and the water were too big, he could scoot back in.

  Ry put on his harness and clipped it to a tether. He raised the mizzen and sheeted it in tight, the way Del had showed him. He motored the Peachy Pie slowly forward till she was directly over the anchor. He trotted up to the windlass and winched the anchor up, then ran back to the cockpit and put the engine in gear. So far, so good.

  Motoring out of the cove, he went over in his mind what he had to do next. On reaching the open water, he was relieved to find that the winds really were mild. He would have to put up the biggest jib just to get anywhere.

  Here is where an experienced sailor might say, Why didn’t he just motor the whole way? Why put up the sails at all? It’s not that far. The omniscient narrator does not, in this case, know everything. The best I can come up with is, It didn’t occur to him. They had never done it that way before, and he was trying to do everything just as he had been taught. That was challenging enough in itself, without getting creative.

  Doing the tasks in a methodical way was calming. As Ry raised the sails, his confidence grew. It was a calm day; it was just the one little stretch of water. It could work. If he had looked up from his tasks, he might have seen the whitecaps in the distance. He might have seen how as the Austrylian’s boat moved clear of the headland, out of the shelter of the island, it caught the winds blowing from the open ocean and went roaring across the water. The Austrylian was hollering “Wahoo!” and hanging on for dear life. And that was after he lowered his mainsail halfway.