Time doesn’t heal old wounds.
If anything, it slices them open and packs them to the brim with salt. The pain becomes a ritual: round and round it goes, arriving faster and fiercer with each pass around the sun.
April 29th is the black mark on my calendar. I’ve tried to forgive myself, but I still can’t scrub the blood from my hands.
It all went down years ago when the three of us were freshmen in high school: Mickey O’Halloran, Andrey Pavlov, and me, Ben Prentiss. The three of us banded together in elementary school and never looked back until it was too late. Over time we learned a lot about ourselves. We weren’t athletes or band kids or scholars. If anything, we were drifters simply finding our way together.
After the final bell rang on that black mark of a day, the three of us hopped on our bikes and pedaled out of town toward Second Arch, the site of an old bridge and abandoned railroad tracks. It was hot as hell—mid-eighties in April—and all of us voted that a quick dip in the swimming hole would be the best course of action. (Not to mention it’d be the quickest way to rid ourselves of B.O. and ungodly swamp-ass.)
We’d been in a Nirvana kick the past few weeks. Andrey blasted “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from the Bluetooth speaker in his backpack as we pedaled down Route 28 toward our destination.
“Watch it,” Mickey hollered from up ahead. A large chunk of the road’s shoulder had fallen away, so we had to swerve slightly onto the road to bypass it.
A car behind us honked and then sped by, shouting obscenities out the window.
“Fuck you!” Andrey shouted back, flipping them off.
“Relax, you crazy Russian,” Mickey said. “We’re nearly there.”
Mickey was by far the most level-headed of the three of us. The biggest, too, but not in a fat-ass sort of way.
We checked to make sure there was no traffic, then crossed the road toward the unused railroad tracks, sticking to the left-hand side where there was enough room to still ride. We pedaled through the woods, swatting at mosquitoes, and took the bikes in as far as we could go. A downed tree blocked our passage, so we ditched the bikes beside it and hopped over toward the first arch—a small bridge that crosses over a shallow but fast-moving creek.
Kurt Cobain’s screams surged through the serene setting. “You Know You’re Right” was next on Andrey’s playlist. We couldn’t help but sing along as we trekked along the tracks the quarter mile to Second Arch.
The three of us bullshitted on our short hike after Andrey’s phone lost service and iTunes stopped loading. He was the only one who owned a phone, so he was our permanent DJ.
When we approached Second Arch, my stomach turned upside down. I hadn’t thought about how cold the water would be, and I always seemed to forget just how far down of a drop it was—a solid twenty-five feet or so. It didn’t look that high from below, but when you’re standing at the top looking down—or free-falling for those two or three seconds—it’s more than enough to psyche yourself out.
We stripped out of our sweaty clothes and down to our boxers. Without a moment’s hesitation, Andrey took off, running toward the edge. He pushed off like a long-jumper and flailed all the way down to the swimming hole, where he landed with a slap.
“Holy shit!” Andrey exclaimed when he surfaced. He didn’t need to say anything more. I got goosebumps thinking about the frigid water.
“You go ahead,” Mickey said, shooing me toward the launch spot with a wave of his hand. I approached it slowly, careful to keep my footing near the ledge. I glanced down. Large rocks rested almost directly down from my position. To clear them you needed to get a decent running start and a slight push from the ledge.
I stepped back by Mickey.
“Come on, you pussies!” Andrey yelled from below. “We didn’t come all the way here for nothing!”
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach.
Without another word, I bolted toward the ledge, found my footing, and leaped into the air, screaming.
I landed in the water and came up sputtering, trying to find my breath.
“There you go, Benny,” Andrey said to me, instantly putting me in a headlock. I pushed him away with a laugh.
Mickey’s large frame loomed over the ledge. I could sense his hesitance as well, even though we’d all made the jump a dozen times before.
“Ah, I don’t know, man,” he said down to us. “Not sure if I’m feeling it this time.” He ran a hand through his hair.
Before I replied, Andrey called up to him: “Get your big ass down here! Come on, you chickenshit!”
I joined in. “Come on, Mick—you’ve got this!”
We kept heckling him from the cold water for a solid minute. I wasn’t sure if I got used to the water’s temperature or if my body had simply gone numb.
“Fine!” we eventually heard. He reappeared near the ledge to get a final look, then backed away again.
But then it all went to hell.
When he lumbered toward us, toward the ledge, he lost his footing and stumbled. He never jumped, never pushed off. He slipped and tumbled head over heels, flipping, rotating awkwardly. All he said was “Whoa!” before he half-landed in the water and on the rocks, back-first.
I sprang into motion, swimming toward Mickey, Andrey right behind. “Oh my God, Mickey, fucking Christ, Mickey,” the two of us clamored as we hauled our much larger friend toward the bank. By that point, we were both covered in blood from a gaping wound in his head. We sobbed as we dragged him up onto the railroad tracks, not thinking about his injuries or the harm we might be causing him by heaving him up in such a fashion.
“What the hell do we do?” Andrey asked through tears as we sprawled Mickey flat onto his back. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.
“Call 9-1-1,” I replied. “You’ve got to run, And, you’ve got to fucking run!”
He dug into his backpack, grabbed his phone, and sprinted down the railroad tracks toward Route 28 until he reached service.
Tears kept coming as I glanced at my hands, chest, and arms—all spattered with small streams of blood. I ran to my clothes, grabbed my shirt, and gently wrapped Mickey’s head. I didn’t know at the time how shot to hell his back was, but I noticed his face losing color quickly.
I leaned in to check if he was breathing, and if he was, I couldn’t sense it. I tilted his head back, pinched his nose, and blew a lungful of air into his open mouth. Then I put my right palm to his breastbone, covered it with my left, and started compressions.
Tears and snot and blood fell all around me, my pathetic, near-naked self. My vision blurred as Kurt Cobain’s voice filtered through my mind. “You Know You’re Right” pounded inside my skull.
“Christ, Mickey, come on man, come on…”
I had no idea why, but I remember seeing the lifeless dummy in Health class, and Mrs. V leaning over top of it, the class snickering, making jokes. She lost it, and started yelling at everyone…
Drums and guitars and old Kurt’s ragged screams ripped through me and
[things have never been so swell]
Mickey’s gone blue, he’s dying, he’s dead, his blood’s on my hands. He fell off the fucking bridge and landed on rocks and it’s all my fault and—
How the hell am I going to tell his mom he’s gone, that I watched him take his final breaths, I hammered on his chest while—
[I have never failed to fail]
Screams and pain erupted from me, a primitive howl, as mosquitoes hummed in my ear.
But then I hear it. A whisper of a breath.
The next thing I knew, someone was rushing down the tracks toward me, not Andrey, some woman wearing blue scrubs. She said something in a hurry. I backed up, fell into the dirt, and tried to speak. Nothing came out, nothing happened, so I wiped my bloodied hands on the ground as the woman sprang into action.
Three years go by. We’re seniors now. Mickey’s forgiven me, tells me he was the one who chose to jump, after all, but the guilt weighs on me always. When he gets tired I push him in his wheelchair from class to class because we share a similar schedule. He’ll never walk again. We’re still close, still great friends, but sometimes when he looks at me there’s a fire there, a moment that burns through me and is enough to rattle me to my core. But then it’s gone, life resumes, and we get back on the tracks.
Andrey went his own way after the day at Second Arch. He dipped into drugs heavily after the accident and hasn’t looked back. His demons are as dark as mine, but he wants nothing to do with me—Mickey, either. We’ve tried to restore our friendship, tried to pull him up out of the darkness, but he’s too busy looking for his next hit.
We all graduate. I’m still seeing my therapist once a week as I pick up a full-time job after high school. Andrey’s still around somewhere and up to no good, I assume. And Mickey’s been gifted a high-tech mobility scooter from a generous scholarship. He becomes more and more independent in his new life—happy, even. We still talk, still see one another, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I go away or he does and all of this becomes a rather fucked up chapter in our lives.
After work one day, in late fall, I turn onto Route 28 and park near the old railroad tracks. A large gate acts as a barricade now, and large yellow “Posted” signs warn others to keep out. I sit there for a few minutes, looking at all the footprints that bypass the gate. Beer cans litter both sides of the tracks.
I wish those kids, whoever they are, wouldn’t go there.
For nostalgia’s sake, I put on some Nirvana, play it low, and gaze through the gate at those old railroad tracks, wondering where the hell we’d all be if it hadn’t been for that devil of a day, April twenty-ninth.
Thank you for reading “Second Arch” today. I hope you enjoyed the story.
I wrote the first line of this one and had no idea where it would take me—turns out, it was a dark and strange place.
If you’re interested in joining our next Fifties by the Fire exercise, please check back in on Friday, May 3rd at 3:00 PM EST when our thread goes live.
Prompt: Write a fifty-word story (fiction, CNF, or poetry) about time slipping away.
Thanks as always to my friend
for providing his stunning photographs.
The way you told this story feels as if it were eerily real. Good work, mister.
Wow that was quite a story!! The way you write amazes me !!