twice as fast as it had been a moment before. I’ve read this in books, but I’ve always shied away from using the expression in my poems. It doesn’t seem like organs should really work that way. But my pulse is certainly racing forward right now at a speed it wasn’t before this moment. Maybe there is meaning in certain catchphrases, just like there is good in certain evils, truth in certain lies.
It’s important that I don’t panic. What happened on Monday was close to panic, and the outcome was less than fruitful. I have to keep my wits about me. Be calm, I command myself. And then, with a familiar retort, Don’t repeat Nashville.
It’s my own stock phrase (we all have to have them) for moments of too-intense emotion. Don’t repeat Nashville. Had I never gone there, never ventured out to see the music scene and taste a culture I’d never known, I’d be a happier man. But I went. Curiosity is a hard cat to kill. I went, and I heard the music, and I saw the scene. And I discovered Jaegermeister, as well as the tolerance I thought I had for Jaegermeister. My closest friend at the time, Greg, should have known better than to let me drink the way I did; but Greg had also simultaneously discovered Jaegermeister, so we were sort of together in the proverbial boat.
The boat tipped when Greg’s stomach turned inside out. That’s how I remember it: not just vomiting, not just retching. It was as if his stomach simply inverted itself. In a single instant, what had been inside was out – and it was everywhere. Disgusting, and everywhere.
I was sure that Greg was dying. Stomachs aren’t supposed to do that. The quantity and the suddenness were unbelievable. Everything was tinged a surreal brown from the drink, and that didn’t help; but in the amalgamation of it all I simply lost my wits. I panicked. I started to perform CPR on him after he fell to the floor, and had to be ripped off his chest once everyone else in the bar convinced the bouncer this wasn’t a good idea, as Greg hadn’t lost consciousness or stopped breathing. I, however, was in a panicked frenzy. I punched at the bouncer, on impulse I suppose, but this was an even poorer choice of action than the CPR. The fist that swung back at my head was like an iron cannon. I can still see the lights that flashed through my vision as I planted my face into the wet, wooden floor. None of the shake-it-off-and-swing-back magic of action films. One punch and I was levelled. Levelled until consciousness returned. When it did, attention had shifted entirely away from me and was focused on Greg, who seemed to be tottering on his feet in the midst of a huddled crowd. I can’t explain why (I’ve tried so many times, for years), but I was convinced the whole bar had surrounded him, to finish the upheaval of his flesh that his drinking had started. They weren’t there to help him: they were going to hurt him. They were menacing beasts, that’s how I saw it. My Jaegermeister vision. So I crawled up onto my knees, then my feet, and snuck to the back room to a payphone and called the police. My friend was being assaulted. Violently. They were trying to kill him. Get here quick. I read the address off the typeset note behind the plastic sheath of the payphone.
The police arrived a few minutes later with guns drawn. Two shots were actually fired, thank God not at any people but as warnings into the floor when the bouncer and an associate, charged up on emotion and surprised at the sight of firearms, initially lunged at the intruders. But the badges that the officers held high stopped them before real damage was done.
Greg was fine. Sick as a rat, and had to have his stomach pumped; but I was jailed for the first time in my life. A fucking monumental overreaction, dipshit. If you can’t hold your liquor, stay the fuck out of a bar. That’s how the booking officer put it. Not wrongly. I still cringe when I think of it.
I cringe right now. I’ve already charged into the police station over this boy. I’ve already run around the park accosting elderly couples. Overreaction. Stop it. Don’t pull another Nashville. But there’s a force inside me, the same, perhaps, that possessed me on the floor of that Southern bar. Don’t stop. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
I peer down at the ground beneath my feet. The parallel lines of heel scuffs I’d noticed two days ago are still there, though slightly less distinct now. Mud doesn’t hold shape for long. The only witness to the something that I know I saw is fading. Soon there will be nothing left at all. No testimony. No—
I can’t finish the thought, and it’s not for overemotive speculation. There’s something else, there in the mud, something I’ve only just spotted. Less distinct than the fading trails, but there. Footprints. Little ones, the size a child’s shoes would make. Right there, following the same path as the trails.
And more importantly, the footprints are pressed on top of the trails. First they point forwards, out to the water; then back, towards the trees.
I squeeze my hand so tightly around the stick that its rough edges begin to cut into my palm. I’m shaking. I don’t know why, but I’m instantaneously certain. The boy has been back. He’s come back here, and he’s left me his stick.
In the next seconds I try to figure out what this could mean. Why return at all? It certainly hasn’t been at his usual times; I’ve been here every day. And he’s never before left anything behind. Not until—
They say realization ‘hits’ you, and I know exactly what they mean. It comes at me like a two-by-four straight across the eyes.
He’s come back to leave a message. He’s reaching out to me.
There is no reason I should think like this. Part of me knows immediately that it’s illogical. Spectacularly unlikely. When I’d called out to him before he hadn’t responded, hadn’t shown any sign at all he’d heard. Yet maybe he had. Maybe my voice had reached him and in the midst of his – I struggle to find an emotion to apply to his consistently emotionless visage – in the midst of his whatever
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