The Indestructible Man Page 14

  But he never returned, and no body was ever found to signal his fall. The people of his village decided he must have made it, that heaven was too beautiful to leave. As the news spread, other villages interconnected their own ladders to form a giant wooden web, stretching from the fields of the Midwest all the way into space. People left their homes by the hundreds attempting to follow where the man had gone.

  I remember watching the first lunar landing on our old black-and-white Zenith, snuggled next to you in a green leather beanbag, your leg twined around mine so your ankle hooked my calf. We watched nervously as the astronaut stepped onto the lunar surface, drew his blocky land rover up to the ladder and checked for footprints. You nearly crushed my hand in yours as you stared into the screen, breathless, hoping he would find evidence that the man from the legend, that anyone had made it. But as he looked round the base of the ladder his voice broke over the radio static: “Nothing here,” he said, voice crackling. “No sign of life.”

  A few years ago you showed me an article from a science magazine claiming that, with proper equipment and a goodly supply of oxygen, it is theoretically possible to climb the ladders all the way up, above the networks of catwalks so vast that airplanes have to plot courses around them, to the final set of rungs that reaches all the way into space. When I laughed, you bet me a hundred dollars someone would eventually make it. Many have tried since then. You followed their progress religiously, checking the paper daily for news of their whereabouts. Most gave up after several thousand feet, angling their way back down to the jeers of onlookers; some were discovered months later, shrouded in remote cornfields, bodies crumpled beneath the overhanging catwalks. Or they lost their nerve, stopping just below cloud level and clinging desperately to one of the ladder struts, only to be pried loose and carried down by the Caretakers who spend their lives patrolling the ladders and crossways. But for every one who falls or is carried down, humiliated and sobbing, over a Caretaker’s shoulder, there are a dozen others determined or maniacal enough to try.

  Many climb for the sense of adventure, leaving jobs and families behind to scale ladders and catwalks thousands of feet in the air, their concerns reduced to anthills. We used to call them cowards and traitors, and tried to forget them. Some finally descend, telephone their loved ones from truck stops and gas stations hours away, hitchhike back to their lives as if nothing happened at all; others disappear for good. When Fred Millman interrupted his morning jog to climb up and away from his wife and children and mortgage, the whole neighborhood spoke of him in whispers, as if he were an adulterer or compulsive gambler. And when the Whisks’ son Eddie dropped out of college to escape into the night sky you insisted we stop speaking of him altogether—out of respect for Edith and Abbott, we agreed—as if he never existed at all.

  At the newspaper we run a “missing persons” section every Sunday; as I look through the pages I read each snippet and sigh: missing for three years, five, last seen near the ladder in Galena, the one just outside Sycamore—so many names to strike from conversation, almost too many to remember.

  My fear of heights is no secret; I cannot stand changing light bulbs or cleaning the gutters—not out of laziness, as you like to suggest, but because I become dizzy and nauseous even at the top of a stepladder. So I have never understood the charm of climbing a ladder many thousands of feet high. The key, you insisted, is to avoid looking down, no matter what—to concentrate only on where you are going, not on where you have been. You found it exciting, even romantic—climbing up into that web of wood and metal against the objections of gravity, not knowing where or even if you would come down. In another life, you used to say, if arthritis were not slowly stealing your wrists and ankles, it might even be you up there.

  I should have known I would lose you to it then. Or later, when we stared out our kitchen window to the empty field behind our house, covered in knee-high grass, at the wood and metal struts stretching toward the void above. In the streetlight glow, teenage boys from the high school would pull up to the edge of the field in their beat-up cars, sucking back warm beer bought with fake ID’s at Roscoe’s. At first some would stumble across the field, jokingly climb the first few rungs, then jump back down into the grass; others discovered courage after two or three more pop-top cans and begin to climb—ten feet, twenty, a hundred—their friends below urging them to go higher. Usually self-preservation won out and they would reverse direction, hands and feet negotiating each rung with extra care on the way down. But once in a while their good sense did not return, and in the dim orange light we saw figures in sweatshirts and khakis spiral down, land in crumpled heaps in the grass. We used to run out to help, or at least to comfort the panicked children until the ambulance arrived. But it was almost always too late, and we could only watch the paramedics cover the twisted bodies of our town’s children with white cotton sheets, flop them onto stretchers like dead fish, and haul them away.

  Some want to take chainsaws to the ancient struts and send our town’s ladder crashing to the ground, or douse it with gasoline and set fire to it. They argue that, for our children’s protection, it must be done. But three years ago, during the town meeting to discuss the “ladder problem,” Edith and Abbott Whisk begged us not to destroy it—as long as it stood they could hope that Eddie might climb back down into their lives. It was the first time Eddie’s name had been spoken publicly in years; you cried, and even I held back a tear or two. In the end the town council voted not to tear it down—some grudgingly—to give Edith and Abbott the benefit of the doubt. When the final vote was tallied most sat silently, a few applauded. I was not too misty-eyed to notice you were one of them.

  So we compromised, built the chain-link fence around the ladder to keep out young children. Slowly everything returned to normal—the Whisks resumed pretending Eddie had never existed, we again struck his name from our vocabularies, and every day terrified parents slapped and screamed their children away from the fence. But many mornings you rose before me, tiptoed into the kitchen and stared out the window at the ladder jutting into the overhanging clouds. I sometimes watched you as you stood at the counter, your neck craned as you searched for the vanishing point.

  Nothing seemed unusual the day you left, nearly a month ago today: a late Sunday morning, cool and sunny, dew still glistening on the grass. You rose first, as you always do, covering me with the wool blanket and tucking the edges under me to keep me from rolling out from under it. You stood at the kitchen sink in your blue nightgown, washing the dishes from the previous night’s dinner; tired and a little sad, you had put them off until morning. My face buried in the pillow, I could not see you, but you seemed happy enough, humming a trilly “Edelweiss” in unison with the radio, keeping rhythm by clinking the plates under the dishwater. You had not done this since we were first married, and I wondered what had happened to change your mood. I felt compelled to creep behind you and grab you around the waist, take your hand, and sway to the music by the sink. But the kitchen has always been your sanctuary in the morning, and I argued myself into staying in bed.

  Then the clinking stopped, the humming faded, and the smell of bacon and scrambled eggs wafted into the bedroom. I waited for you to call for me when breakfast was ready; you have never tolerated interference, slapping my hand away whenever I tried to sample the bacon cooling on the napkin. The sizzling stopped; a plate rattled on the breakfast table, then the house was silent. I finally kicked the sheets away and rolled out of bed, but when I reached the kitchen there was no sign of you—just a platter of bacon and eggs, a steaming cup of black coffee beside it, fork and butter knife neatly rolled into a napkin. I listened for you in the house, thinking you might be in the laundry room or catching up on some other chore you had forgotten.

  I looked out the window, expecting to see you and Edith Whisk leaning on the fence between our yards, chatting in your bathrobes like you often did. But there was no Edith, no sign that either she or Abbott had been in their backyard for days. Then I saw
you, jogging barefoot across the field, powder-blue nightgown blown up around your thighs by the breeze. Every few steps you looked back, perhaps expecting to see me behind you. I thought you had gone mad.

  I slung my robe around my shoulders, grabbed my jacket from the coat rack, and set off after you. I was not in the best of shape, and you had a sizable head start, so by the time I huffed my way to the edge of the field you had already hoisted yourself over the protective fence around the ladder. You waited for me at the base until I had almost reached the fence. Then you craned your neck and stared up into the clouds where the ladder disappeared, took hold of the nearest rung, and began to pull yourself up. The wind billowed around you and blew your nightgown up even farther; I could see the muscles peak in your upper thighs as you climbed, more pronounced than I had remembered. I stood at the fence and called after you, but you stared straight up as if you could not hear. I unfolded the jacket and held it up, told you to come down so I could cover you up and take you back to the house; I would even call a doctor, if you wanted. But you climbed even higher—ten feet, fifteen, up higher than our roof, and I was afraid you might fall and break your neck. At twenty feet or so you finally looked down at me, holding up my jacket to lure you back. You stared only a moment, and though you were too high for me to see clearly, I thought I might have seen your shoulders shrug.

  I think now you wanted me to follow, but at the time I believed you had come unhinged or were playing a joke. I looked around to make sure no one was outside staring—it was enough that we were playing this game at all, to say nothing of the embarrassment of being watched.

  “Are you coming down?” I asked. “Because I’m going back inside.” When you did not answer I shook my head, slung the jacket over my shoulder, and headed back to the house. Though it seems silly of me now—criminal, even—I actually expected that, by the time I reached the back door, you would be following, walking gingerly across the grass, your feet sore from climbing. But when I looked back you had gone even higher, a tiny point on a line that stretched farther than any human eye could see.

  For most of the day I sat in the kitchen and waited, sipping cold, weak coffee, expecting you to come to your senses, to appear at the back door smiling, sore and tired from the climb but otherwise unharmed, satisfied with your adventure. I knew you were capable of fending for yourself, but as daylight faded and the air grew colder I began to worry. Just before dusk I wandered back across the field, carrying a blanket to drape over you, hoping to spot you on your way down. I was afraid I would find you broken and lifeless on the ground inside the fence, but the perimeter around the ladder was empty. When darkness finally fell I headed back to the house, leaving the blanket wound around the fencepost in case you returned during the night. Since then the fence’s sharp edge has left the blanket tattered, but it is still there if you decide to come down and claim it.

  When I called the police, the dispatcher chuckled. “We get a lot of calls like yours,” he said. “Ask me, that ladder’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’m afraid all you can do right now is wait. She’ll probably come back in a day or two. A lot of people do.”

  “And a lot don’t,” I said. I had lived here long enough to know.

  “Well, that’s true, sir,” the officer said. “You just never know. But she’ll turn up. Probably call you from Galt or Nelson tomorrow morning wanting you to come get her.”

  “I hope so,” I said. Were I ten years younger I would have jumped up and down in frustration.

  “I hope so too, sir,” the officer said. “We’ll keep a lookout.”

  When I went to bed I half-expected you to be there, curled up under the sheets and thumbing through some old paperback you’d read half a dozen times. But the bed was empty, the sheets as crumpled as I had left them. All night I listened for a rattle or knock on the storm door, watched the lights of every car going by, fearing the red and blue flashers bringing news that you were beyond rescue.

  I have heard there are places, far up in the web of wood and iron, where one can sleep—narrow walkways no wider than I am tall, some even covered over by protective canopies built by the Caretakers, where climbers can rest from their journeys. The Caretakers allegedly supply bins of blankets, plastic-wrapped sandwiches, bottled water, even condoms. It seems difficult to have sex three thousand feet in the air on a narrow plank, or through the rungs themselves, but I suppose it can be done. I wonder if you have accepted some brief prodding and thrusting from a convenient stranger before you continued on your way. In any case I hope the Caretakers’ kindness is real, and that you are safe.

  After ten days you still had not called from some remote gas station as the officer said you might. I tried to return to work, hoping my daily routine would distract me for a little while. But Dr. Richards, publisher of the paper, ordered me away from the office and sent me home to rest until you could be found. With no responsibilities, no accountants or ad salesmen to order around, I looked for other diversions around the house. While washing dishes I banged the coffee cups together underwater, severing the handle from your favorite mug and breaking the bases off the champagne flutes—a small retribution for your leaving. I reduced your nightgowns and delicates to wrinkled lint in the drier, then heat-blasted them some more until they receded into crumpled balls. Tired of sitting round the house all day, I drove from one end of town to the other, back and forth past the bars, looking for the seediest one. I finally stopped at a place called Cracker Jack’s—where the bar and tables are coated with grime and the air stinks of body odor and urine—to down shots of cheap scotch with the steelworkers. Three hours later I fishtailed home and stumbled in the door, listening for the beep on the answering machine, a signal that you’d finally been found, safe but homesick, and were waiting at the police station. Since there was no such message I fell face-first onto the bed, waking the next morning with my nose buried in the drool-soaked pillow.

  And still every morning I wandered out to the ladder, looking for any sign that you might have returned. I hoped at least the blanket would be missing, or folded neatly into a compact triangle at the base of the ladder, a message that you had not given up completely on home, that you were only taking a short break and would quietly sneak into bed in the middle of the night.

  Yesterday, Edith Whisk came to the door, knocking quietly, huddled in the door frame to avoid being seen.

  “Here,” she whispered, handing me a white cardboard box, slipping it to me like a sharpened file to a prisoner. “It’s pecan pie.” She looked from side to side, afraid of being watched.

  “Thank you,” I said, tilting my head out the door to see what she was looking for.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I understand. About Gloria, that is.”

  “Thanks,” I said again.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.” She backed away quickly. “Please don’t tell Abbott I was here,” she said, shuffling back to her house, her purple canvas sneakers softly scraping the pavement.

  I ate the pie in one sitting, scooping out chunks of nut and caramel with my fingers; it was good and I wanted more, so I went to the supermarket and bought one from the day-old shelf, and ate until I belched chewed-up pecans. After a while I grew tired of the pie taste in my mouth and the sugary residue in my throat, so I drove to Cracker Jack’s to dilute it with whiskey.

  When I sat down a very large, fat man from the mill who wore his beard in a braid and smelled of sweat and sulfur, and who I knew only as “Georgie,” sat down next to me.

  “Jesus, you look like shit,” Georgie said, and reached for an abandoned beer mug with a cigarette butt floating in it.

  “I try,” I said.

  “Thinkin’ about the wife again?” he asked, and took a sip. He sat there with the beer in his mouth for a second, debating whether to swallow, then spit the beer back into the glass. “Christ, that’s disgusting,” he said. “Can’t believe I did that.”

  “It’s been over three weeks,” I sa
id, and tried to reconcile the taste of the scotch with the corned-beef-and-Swiss sandwich I bought from the bar.

  “If it was my wife up there I’d chop the damn ladder down with her still on it. Bitch could fend for herself, for all I’d care.” I did not dignify his proclamation with a response; he looked me over and shrugged. “You probably ain’t the type to do something like that, though, since you miss her and all. I guess it’s just as well you don’t chop the thing down.”

  “Just as well,” I said. I bought another scotch, drank it down, and vomited a pinkish-brown sludge of corned beef and pecans across the bar.