The
central-locking system shuts down in its controlled and stifled minidrone;
Brother Skunk and deleted name step away from the car into the audible
mist, crossing to the tourist-crowded pathways running alongside what Skunk’s
memory fails him as to its inclusion in the world’s Seven Wonders.
Skunk:
Is this a Seventh Wo- no no... Is this one of the Seven Wonders?
deleted
name (not having heard): What’s that?
The
mist takes on volume the closer they get.
Skunk:
Isn’t this one of the Seven Wonders, the Niagara Falls?
deleted
name: No no no, they’re all, the Seven Wonders were all structural things,
man-made...
and
pointing
deleted
name: this here is not the work of any man, though the electrics have a
hand in it now, I guess. You know, this really...
They
stop for Skunk to tie his shoelace.
deleted
name: I remember when I was a really little kid, being here with my
grandparents, and my whole family of course. I was very very small
Skunk:
Uh-huh.
deleted
name: but it’s a lovely memory for me because I remember being very close
to my grandfather at that time. I just remember leaning over the rail
Skunk:
Over here?
deleted
name: Yep. Right here, right where we are, looking over at the falls with
my grandfather beside me.
Skunk:
Uh-huh.
deleted
name: And it’s just a really warm happy memory. I came back here a couple
of years ago, just on my own that time, but even on my own it was just so
nice, it all came back. These memories from so long ago. My father took some
home-movies of it too, so we always had them.
Skunk:
Was this when you were with, when your, your parents were still together
at that stage yeah?
deleted
name: Oh yeah. I was very very small.
Skunk:
And do you remember what you, apart from thinking back on it as a lovely warm
moment, did you think “Holy Christ!”
deleted
name: Oh I was very impressed, and I told you that one of the things
that really, I really remember that stood out was all the talk about the
barrels.
Skunk:
Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah, I can understand that that would be eh
deleted
name: And there used to be some kind of statue of a a plastic guy on
a tightwire...
laughs
deleted
name: ..and now that I think of it I don’t think it was over the falls
because that doesn’t make any sense. You know, how would they have strung it
up?
Laughs.
deleted
name: I think it was in the town. I think it was over a street or
something.
Skunk:
Right. Right.
They
keep walking, in and out of all the other people.
deleted
name: The other thing I like about being here is that you know where you
are, too. It’s... Niagara Falls, you know? It’s just one of those places on
earth where you know where you are. If you’re here, you can’t be
anywhere else.*
Skunk
(lacking real comprehension): Like the pyramids, or something?
deleted
name: Yeah, yeah.
Skunk:
Oh Jesus, I’m about to have one of those “I-am-this-size” moments.
deleted
name (imitating tourist): “Ya know honey, I can’t see a goddam thing for
all this fucking water.”
Laughter.
Skunk:
Oh. Ohhhh. Oh that looks... queer.
deleted
name (laughing): I really think that we should jump in and just go over. I
think we’d make it.
Skunk
has a mad smile all over his face. There have been moments, not many, where
either on the telephone or now, when he is here in his actual presence, where
he has simply wanted to call him dad.
deleted
name: Hey. It’s not like the olden days. We’d make it. For one thing we’d
be rescued. At no small expense to the public.
Skunk:
This is the Niagara Falls. This is them over the edge... Oh no, it’s a
horseshoe isn’t it? What are, what are seagulls doing here? What is the point?
This gives me the creeps.
deleted
name: Why?
Skunk:
I don’t know, I don’t... It’s so elemental. Do you understand that? You must
do... I mean, don’t you just have an urge to jump in?
deleted
name: Yes. Wait to you see it from the other end though.
Skunk
clings onto the railings, staring through at the churning depth of water that
to him looks as if it is locked into a permanent cycle of self-vomiting,
churning in and over and out of itself in an almost obscene hurry to get to the
drop, or avoid it.
Skunk:
I swear to God whenever I’m in a place like this or I’m, you know, up in, I
think my centre of gravity kind of steps out of my body and hovers directly
over any kind of terror or drop or, just waiting there for me to catch it up.
Look that’s just the very lip of the eh, do you know what I mean, that’s where
all the, that’s the
deleted
name: The edge of the earth.
Skunk:
Exactly. There’s no escape from there on out. Once you’ve passed that you’ve
got no chance.
weaving
their way in and out of the tourists.
deleted
name: I’d be very nervous about bringing children here.
It is
out and said and nothing, nothing until he turns to speak again and only then
marks the absence alongside. He turns back, and Skunk is standing paces
distant, head bowed and tight into himself, his arms straight to white-balled
fists and vulnerable, lost, even here. He is shaking, weeping, the tears not
running his cheeks but dropping fast from his eyes to the pathway as his lips
twist agonisingly in and out between his teeth.
*Several
weeks later, and with his short-term memory obscured by the quantity intake of
alcohol, Brother Skunk will have forgotten this to his cost: that at a time
when you are doubt-filled as to where you are, get yourself to the place where
you can be nowhere else.
