Kendlin and the Cascade

He woke up next to a waterfall. It was the fifth day. He woke as if nothing had happened, no knot of doom in his stomach, and sat up and looked at the waterfall. The spray was making the rocks wet for ten feet in either direction. By the light it was already nine o'clock. All he could hear was the pounding of the water.

Dimly and slowly now he remembered urgency. He didn't want it to be so. Some part of his brain was very loud in insisting that it wanted none of this to be true, nothing except the waterfall, its normalcy, its wetness, the sense of eternity in the endless cascade. His body hurt as he rolled up and looked around. The spot where he'd lain was hollowed out in the grass and damp. The bag he'd made out of a bedsheet was translucent with wet. The candlesticks showed their form in the thin cotton, jumbled with his knife and the little leather bag. His boots were still on his feet. His coat was still on his body. Sweat stained his shirt beneath his arms and his hair was limp and wet.

He stared hard at the ground, trying to remember whether he was looking for something else. Then he remembered the urgency again. Where was his mind? Why had he slept next to a waterfall? All he could hear was the pounding. If they'd caught up to him in the night, nothing would have woken him. And yet he almost felt as if he'd had a full night's sleep. He almost felt as if he'd dreamed. Why did he wake up, after all? Was he simply rested? Something was tickling at his ear. He stared at the ground harder, until he convinced himself he heard the dog. He was still too stunned by sleep to feel the jolt of fear he'd felt the first time he heard that sound. Now his body was creaking; he stiffly pulled the sack onto his shoulder; now he was jumping heavily into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, stumbling over the slick rocks; the icy water making his muscles jerk, getting in his boots and icing his blistered feet. He felt drunk.

He stared at the muddy bank opposite him. He stared down the thinning, rocky stream. He held for a moment, the thick confusion and indecision holding the door on his thoughts closed for another two seconds, three seconds. There was a great pain creeping up his ankles from the cold of the water. Finally he turned around and lurched at the white wall of water, letting the shock of it all over his body take his attention away from the whole world. That he liked. Then he was in it and thrusting up against rock, and he was in pain. He was waking up.

Why, why was he here? How could the last week be real? When the hunters came into view, he barely had the interest to watch them. Nothing they could do to him could be worse than what he already felt. That was what he thought. His head banged back against rock, the cold sheets of meltwater drove knives into all his skin, and he rocked a little in complete absorption.

There's nothing left. There is no pain worse than this. There is no place other than this. There is no loss other than this. This is all my life. This will be my life. Why? Where are you? Where did you go? What is there left but this?

Outside, the spotted dog was half-jumping through the pool, sniffing over the water. It sniffed at the falls. Kendlin nearly jerked out a hand to grab its collar, pull it under with him... see if he could wring its neck with all the force of everything inside him... but he didn't care. On the fifth day, he didn't care. The dog glanced at the huntsmen, who peered at the cascade. The eternal roar turned everything into theater for the eyes only. One of the hunters, the rangy one, reached in a hand and felt about the rock by Kendlin's side. His fingers were long and fine-boned, white in the odd light. He withdrew his hand and shook it, grimacing. Then he jerked the dog and they were off downstream. The dog half-loped, half-jumped, distracted.

All over was agony, cold and hot-cold. The water coursed down Kendlin and he held it in, didn't scream, didn't cry. This was his. This was all there was of the world now. His mind contracted in a savage painful cramp, the way his muscles were squeezing themselves tight under the freeze of the falls: Why? Why? How could this happen? My love, my love... how could you leave me? Where did you go?

He lasted another two minutes before he became weak, and stumbled out, enervated as though he'd cried for days. He shook like a leaf in spring. Once he sobbed aloud, a wet sound, and then spat into the cold pool. He stumbled up the muddy bank, shivering, hating, bitter on a hundred counts, angry that he didn't even care what prints he left. Angry that he had to go somewhere, that it had to be somewhere other than back. He wanted the falls. He wanted the tears, to be alone with his misery, to have that moment for a whole year and five years. And then in another step he only wanted her back again, and so he stopped and sank to his knees.

The tears reminded his cheeks of heat, and they reminded him of humanity, of the last time he held her. His heart was hot again and the sorrow washed every part of him. He was all by himself. He was Kendlin alone.

That was the fifth day.