Chapter 11:

Ashes

Shortly there after,, Nathan continued telling the story of Michelle. “After I jumped out of the truck, I ran up to my school, a good six or seven blocks. I didn’t run to the school on purpose, that’s just the direction I took,” he said.

“The school has this massive playground, far better than the park, with these massive swing sets that were a good twenty feet at their pinnacle. I climbed on a seat, shimmied up the chain, pulled myself right on top of the frame before I really thought about it. For a long time, I sat at the pinnacle, staring at the gravel below me, fearing what I knew I must do next. I had to know if I could get hurt—which isn’t exactly right. I had to know if I could stay hurt. My friend, James was always getting hurt when he did the same things I did—but I always figured he was simply a bad lander. He couldn’t jump off of anything without twisting an ankle, or banging a knee. Now, after my own bad landing, I wasn’t so sure I was simply gifted with a knack for soft landings—so I decided to throw myself off the swing set. Not that I couldn’t land it. That would be easy. But I was going to botch it. I figured if I twisted on the jump, I wouldn’t be able to correct. I knew this should hurt. I knew this would hurt,” he admitted.

“I was insane, mind you. This wasn’t about scraping myself up, this was risking serious injury. I could die. But I kept thinking about the truck, about how much it hurt at first. About how much it should still hurt. Indeed, I smashed my head on the trailer hitch, yet I didn’t even have a headache. I felt great! How could that be? So I leaned forward, tucked, and dropped off the frame of the swings. I twisted as I dropped. I knew immediately I was in trouble. I landed in the gravel on my shoulder, and God it hurt! I was an idiot. I figured I broke my back.

“Yet, as quick as the pain came, it dissipated. I was lying in the gravel feeling as good as ever, better even! I opened my eyes, and let out a shout of triumph; this savage howl. That’s when I saw her standing over me. She was playing under the jungle gym and had witnessed the whole dang thing. I don’t know how I didn’t see her—but I saw her now as she stared at me in shocked horror. She was this skinny, dark haired girl with the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen.

“I’d seen here at school before. She was in my grade, though we’d never been in the same class before. Anyway, she stood over me, her eyes teared up. I jumped up and let out a whoop. She didn’t know what to make of that. She simply stared at me. ‘I’m fine!’ I told her, and spun around with my arms out. ‘See?’

“At the time I didn’t know her name. I saw her at recess, at lunch, during assemblies, and whatnot. But she didn’t like baseball, or bugs, so I had no reason to talk to her. Maybe we were fated to meet at such a strange moment. Years later, I told her it was preordained. Our meeting that day on the playground was destiny. She loved to hear it. I don’t know that she ever agreed, but she loved to hear it nonetheless. I think she thought I was simply being sweet.

“I remember just standing there, grinning at her like a fool. She was so skinny and frail. I don’t know what she thought about me, but she smiled as I smiled. I thought I should go home. I figured my mother would be worried. I figured that Mr. Lambert told her about my accident by then. I imagined them all searching for me, including the Widow Lorenz. That’s when I realized I couldn’t go home just yet.” Nathan shook his head. “I couldn’t go home. I simply couldn’t do it. Instead, I asked Michelle if she wanted to race, because that’s what you do at that age. I was always good at racing and this seemed like the perfect time to show this raven-haired angel that I was okay, and to show her I was fast to boot.

“That’s the beauty of love at that age. You seek attention and admiration by pulling hair, throwing rocks, and winning foot races. So we raced across the park. She beat me by a good twenty or thirty feet. I thought that was so cool, this skinny little girl beating me in a foot race. When boys beat me, which was rare—mind you—chances were I’d punch them. If I wasn’t faster, I was stronger. When she beat me, well, its the first crush I ever had that wasn’t a woman that was far too old for me, far too mature. I took her hand and asked her if she wanted to get ice cream. We held hands all the way to the grocery store where I bought her an ice cream sandwich in exchange for her word that she’d never tell anyone about my swing set stunt.”

Davies smiled. He liked the idea of childhood crushes holding sway over a grown man, that such things were important factors in personal identity. He liked when people realized that childhood was more than a precursor to adult life, that the events and relationships of adolescence carried as much importance as relationships developed in adulthood.

Of course some people get it wrong the other way around, and Davies wondered if perhaps Nathan was one of those sad cases where childhood held too much sway, where one couldn’t let go of the past. “I remember my first crush,” Davies stated. “I threw a Hot Wheels at her so she kicked me in the ‘nads.”

“How sweet,” Nathan answered.

“I was five at the time and still confused hitting with flirting,” he shrugged. “So, is this girl the one that got away? Did you marry her and regret that you never got to talk to any of the other pretty girls?” he asked. “Do you wish you married her because the other pretty girls turned out to be harpies?”

“Now there’s a fictional bird I’d prefer not to hunt,” Marvelous smiled a sad little smile. “No. She was taken from me.”

In the silence that followed, Davies pondered several scenarios that would fit this overly simple explanation. He imagined another boy, one better looking, more emotionally open, a talkative bloke, that stole her heart in college. He imagined her moving with her parents the final year of high school, a week before senior prom, to far off Rhode Island, British Columbia, or possibly Kyoto.

“I was very much in love with her, and she was very much in love with me,” Nathan continued. “After college, she moved back home to be with me. She was finishing up her masters, and constantly training, of course. I had just retired from boxing and was contemplating what to do next. I spent most of my time looking after her. I was in the newspapers a lot back then. I’d rescued the panda. I’d foiled the assassination attempt on that ambassador…”

“The one from Swaziland?” Davies interrupted, excited that he knew something of the tale.

“Samerikandia,” Nathan corrected. “After that, I served with the police for the shortest stint ever. Then I joined the military, which only lasted six days longer than the police.”

“Really? The military?” Davies asked.

“I was in the army a month and a half before they discharged me.”

“A month and a half?! What’d you do?!” Davies asked, hoping he could duplicate the feat. Nothing would be better than escaping this time sink.

“I was accused of a god complex.”

“I have one of those!” Davies asserted, sure he was as good as out. “What’d you do to get labeled with that?!”

“I jumped on a live grenade,” Nathan noted.

“You what?” Davies stopped walking. He was certain such an act would get him out of the military—in a box—which would do him no good whatsoever. He looked at his new friend. “You want me to believe you jumped on a grenade? Like they do in the bullshit movies?”

“Wasn’t even going to save anyone. I just ran out and dove on it,” Nathan shrugged. “Was a dud. Lucky that, I suppose. I was a bit disappointed to be honest, but now that I think about all that shrapnel, and having to pick it out,” he shuddered.

“Jumped on a grenade and lived,” Davies shook his head. “You are the dumbest, and the luckiest man I’ve ever met.”

“I would have lived,” Nathan assured. “After all, I can’t be killed.”

“That’s impossible,” Davies stated.

“I fell out of space,” he reminded his friend, then shook his head. “I should have been dead a dozen times over. I should have massive brain damage from getting punched by the meanest, toughest men you’ve ever met. I’ve been shot nine times. I got mauled by that panda,” Nathan shrugged. “A live grenade was just another bad idea.”

Davies stopped and stared at his companion. Finally he sighed, “You do realize this is a major letdown.”

“Why?” Nathan asked.

“I was hoping to duplicate your dismissal,” Davies admitted. “But a live grenade,” he shrugged.

Nathan stared at Davies. Shoulders slumped and face glazed over, the soldier resumed his march across the desert sands with his rock in hand. Nathan followed, and after a long silence, asked, “Where was I?”

“You got booted out of the army,” a morose Davies reminded him.

“I was talking about Michelle,” Nathan noted, curious that he should actually want to talk about his late lover—but no, he didn’t want to talk about her—he needed to.

“She was taken from you,” Davies said. “What did you mean by that?”

Nathan hanged his head. “This idiot firebombed my high school reunion.”

“Jesus!” Davies stared.

“43 people died and 194 were hospitalized,” Nathan continued. “It’s funny. They’re only numbers, just silly numbers. People would barely notice if you shifted the digits around, say 34 killed and 419 injured. It’s all apples and oranges, 93 apples and 144 oranges. Bad stuff, that number business. When you know them, it’s a bit different, I suppose, but I’m still inundated by numbers. 4 Gunmen Killed in Bank Heist. 9 Saved From a Traffic Pile-up. 33 Wounded in a Mass Shooting. Its life as a series of numbers, some bad, some good. I half feel I cheated to get the good ones, the ‘saved’, the ‘rescued’, the ‘wins’. I feel as bad about the good ones as I do the bad ones, the ‘hospitalized’ or ‘dead’ or ‘lost’—and the reunion was the worst. These were people I knew, most for years, a few since kindergarten.”

“Did they ever catch the culprit?” Davies wondered if it was Psychoto. He knew the name, but didn't know the story. How was he involved again?

“No, it was Yzal Citehtapa,” Nathan told him. “Just some Latvian expatriate, former demolitions expert in their army, and an avid boxing fan. After I forfeited to Rice, he bombed the school and sent me a nasty note, one final piece of fan mail. In the end, 43 people died because some loon lost 4,000 dollars on the Rice fight, which means that each life was worth a bit less than a 100 dollars.”

“Now that’s bad math,” Davies noted.

“I hate numbers,” Nathan confessed. “If I had known, I would have paid 4,000 dollars a piece. What’s that? Just 172,000 dollars? I’d pay that for Michelle alone! I used to tell myself that I would double that—triple it! I’d come out of retirement and break Rice’s neck to bring Michelle back. I’d donate the winnings from snapping his spine to a children's hospital—all except for 172,000 that I’d hand deliver to Yzal with a framed and autographed 8x10 glossy that read, ‘To my greatest fan.’

“But nothing I suggest will ever bring her back,” Nathan admitted. “I carried her out of the school. I watched her writhe in pain, and pull her final few breaths, unable to do anything about it.” Nathan shook his head. Tears ran from his eyes. Still, he continued. “Michelle was half the school away from the bomb, and I was in the same room. Do you know what happened to me? The blast knocked me down and singed my hair. It didn’t even do this much,” Marvelous rubbed his hand over his bald, tan head, “43 people died and all I needed was a new haircut,” Marvelous kicked at the dirt as they walked. “It shoulda killed me too. 38 of the people that died were with me in the gym...”

With tears in his eyes, Nathan could say no more. For his part, Davies didn’t say anything. What could he say in the face of such pain? He shook his head and stumbled on, assured that no matter how much the desert was torturing him, at least he wasn’t suffering as much as his new found friend.

If you enjoyed this, consider donating, because donating is love.