Breakheart Hill

CHAPTER 16

SOMETIMES IT COMES BACK TO ME ON WORDS THAT ARE themselves ominous: Did you hear what happened to Lyle Gates? But at other times they are ordinary, inconsequential words, and said outside the context of my later memory, they would hold no portent at all, as when I suddenly hear Miss Carver’s voice rising out of nowhere: Now we are moving toward the end.

It was late spring when she said those words, and much of the approaching summer’s later radiance already colored the mountainside. She had raised the window of the classroom, and I remember that it had groaned a bit before it opened, as if trying to hold on to the sense of stopped time that had hung over us during that long, cold winter.

She’d turned back toward us when the job was done, slapped her hands together with a smile and announced, “Well, spring has now officially arrived at Choctaw High.” A few of the students had smiled back at her, and seeing the looks of anticipation on their faces, she’d added, “So as far as the school year is concerned, now we are moving toward the end.”

Moving toward it, yes, but we had not reached it yet, as many of our teachers made clear that same day. Mr. Arlington sternly reminded us that we all had to complete a research paper before the end of the term. Other teachers pointed out similarly unpleasant realities. As for Miss Carver, she announced that the school play would be Romeo and Juliet, then assigned the last book of the year, Ethan Frome. There was a copy of that book on the shelf in Miss Carver’s room when I visited her for the last time. Her own doctor was on vacation, and so the hired companion who lived with her called me in his place. “I heard she taught you when you were at Choctaw High,” she said in explanation when I appeared at the door.

I nodded, and the woman led me through the corridor to the back bedroom, where Miss Carver lay in her bed. Her hair was long and white, but very thin, so that I could see the pink flesh of her scalp as I leaned over to check her pulse.

“She had a rough spell last night,” the woman told me. “I was afraid she’d come down with another stroke.”

“Has she been sleeping long?” I asked.

“About three hours, I’d say,” the woman answered. “She raved a little last night, too. Crazy talk, like she does sometimes.”

I nodded and prepared to take her blood pressure.

The woman shook her head. “Poor old thing,” she said. “Don’t hardly nobody come to see her.”

It was then that I remembered Miss Carver as she’d appeared on that spring day in 1962, smiling to a group of students she’d finally won over, breathing in the fresh warm air, mentioning the school play to Kelli as she’d headed out the door at the end of class, You’d be just right for Juliet.

They had become rather close by then, and years later, as I kneeled at Miss Carver’s bedside, it struck me that Kelli would have visited her often during her long illness, would have relieved her loneliness, made a soup and fed it to her slowly, read to her in the evening from some tale of doomed love, and thereby brightened days she did not live to brighten. And thinking that, it also struck me that some people are not merely brief points of life, but textures within life itself, and that when we take such a person from us, we take not just him or her, but some small piece of everyone they knew or might have known. And I know that years ago if I had been able to sense just that one fragile truth, grasp that single sliver of redeeming light from the smoky darkness that was gathering around me, Kelli would still be with us now.

BUT I COULD NOT GRASP ANYTHING BUT MY OWN CORROSIVE pain, and so, as the days passed, I grew increasingly remote, even sullen. Kelli noticed it, of course, and she made gentle attempts to find out what was wrong. My answer was always the same, a quick shrug, followed by “I’m okay.”

But I was not okay. I was in romantic agony. Every thought of Kelli simultaneously inflamed and chilled me. I could not sit in the same classroom with her without being overwhelmed by the most terrible sense of worthlessness. I thought of her constantly, and was constantly in pain. At times, when we worked together in the basement, I could feel the air thickening around me, dense and suffocating. It was an agitation that electrified every sight of her, lent a charge to every sound she made. Everything was either utterly barren or inexpressibly piercing. I could not stand her voice, or even the sight of her in the hallway, and yet, at the same time, I yearned for every glimpse of her. In her presence, and particularly when I drove her home each afternoon, I felt as if I were bleeding from every pore, and there were moments, when she would glance toward me and smile quietly, as if urging me to tell her what was wrong, when I wanted to pull the car over to the side of the road and set out across the open field, reeling and bellowing like a stricken animal. It was beyond description, beyond consolation, beyond hope.

It was also in almost perfect contrast to the way Kelli lived during what Luke has forever insisted upon calling her “last days.” For as I became increasingly more sullen and enclosed, biting down on my pain, she became livelier, more self-assured and expansive, casting off the last vestiges of her “new girl” status. She talked eagerly to whatever student approached her, became more aggressive in her classroom comments and even kidded the small knot of “tough guys” who smoked in the parking lot after school. She wrote the story of Breakheart Hill and Mr. Arlington reluctantly told her that it was good enough to meet his research paper assignment. She also wrote two new poems, both of them somewhat less ominous than those she’d previously written, less guarded and unsure. “She was blooming,” Luke said to me years later, “like the spring.”

I can remember very well when he said it. We were driving home from Miss Troy’s funeral, its somberness still reflected in Luke’s eyes.

“One thing has always bothered me,” he said. “Kelli didn’t have a thing with her when she got out of my truck that day.”

I nodded, but said nothing.

“You know how she always had something with her,” Luke added. “A book, I mean. Always.”

“Yes.”

“But not that time, Ben,” Luke said. “And that’s always made me think that Kelli had something in mind when she went up there that day.”

As he spoke I saw the black wheels of the car as they ground up the old mining road, snapping vines and crushing twigs and blowing leaves behind them until they finally came to a dusty halt at the base of Breakheart Hill.

“But why would she have gone up there?” Luke asked.

I saw the car door swing open, two feet lower themselves onto the dusty rut, pause a moment, then move forward determinedly, step by anguished step.

“Of course, Sheriff Stone always thought that she’d gone up there to meet somebody,” Luke added. “Somebody who had a reason to hurt her, I guess.”

The feet disappeared into the green, but I could still hear them rustling through the thick undergrowth, moving more slowly now as they mounted the upper slope of Breakheart Hill.

“Who did he think that might be, Luke?” I asked coolly.

Luke’s eyes drifted away from my even stare.

“Who, Luke?” I repeated, this time more insistently. “Did he say who he thought it was she was going to meet that afternoon?”

Still Luke did not turn toward me, and for a single chilling instant I believed that he was actually going to spin around suddenly and say it to my face, You, Ben. He thought she was going to meet you.

But he didn’t do that. Instead, his eyes drifted back to me slowly, almost reluctantly. “I don’t know,” he said. He shook his head, as if trying to drive the mystery from it. “She was blooming, like the spring,” he added. “You could see it in her eyes.”

Her eyes appeared to me instantly, and I saw the same luminous energy that Luke had spoken of so clearly that for a moment I found myself unable to imagine them in any other way, and certainly not lightless and uncomprehending, floating without direction, vacant and disengaged, as they had been when they’d looked up at me for the last time.

But even more impressive than the immense energy that flowed from Kelli that spring were the varied uses she found for it. She helped Sheila Cameron begin work on the prom, tutored Noreen in algebra and even submitted a few line drawings for the final issue of the Wildcat. “Just something I thought I’d try,” she explained as she handed them to me.

But most surprising of all, Kelli decided to heed Miss Carver’s request and go out for the part of Juliet in the upcoming school play.

The audition was held in the auditorium, and several girls, including Mary Diehl and Sheila Cameron, showed up to try out for the part. Earlier that morning, Kelli had rather pointedly asked me to go with her. “I’d like you to tell me how I did,” she explained. I didn’t want to do it, but I could find no way out that would not have ended in a frantic and probably tearful confession of wounded love, so I took a seat near the center of the auditorium and glumly watched as each girl recited various lines from the play.

Mary went first, her long, dark hair pouring over her shoulders as she recited Juliet’s balcony speech with an undiminished southern accent. Miss Carver had arranged to have a spotlight narrow in on each of the contenders, and I remember that Mary looked oddly imprisoned in it, a hoop of yellow light encircling her delicately, but confiningly as well, so that, had I been all-knowing, I might have glimpsed her future in an instant of foreshadowed doom.

Sheila Cameron came next. As she recited Juliet’s death scene, the same spotlight that had tightened around Mary like a noose appeared to hold her in a warm embrace. Her blond hair glowing in its light, she let her arms sweep out and reach for her imagined Romeo, calling to him softly but with the kind of inner strength that suggested those depths of character and endurance her later life would prove.

At last it was Kelli’s turn. I noticed that as she walked across the stage, Miss Carver leaned forward slightly, watching her intently, and with a sense of anticipation she had not shown for the other girls.

Kelli stopped at the center of the stage, turned and looked out over the nearly empty theater. The spotlight opened around her, and for a moment she stood in silence, taking a single dramatic pause before she began.

As it turned out, she had not chosen one of the more famous of Juliet’s speeches, but a relatively obscure one, given to a friar, and which ended with a few words I have read a thousand times since then:

Or bid me go into a new-made grave,

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud,

Things that to hear them told have made me tremble …

When she’d finished, I got up and eased myself into the center aisle. The auditorium was nearly empty, but as I glanced back toward the door I could see a single figure, seated in the far right corner of the room, slouched uncharacteristically low in his seat, his football jacket hung loosely over the chair in front of him. I nodded toward him, but he did not see me. His attention was focused on someone else entirely. At first I assumed that he’d come to see Mary do her recitation, but as I watched Todd’s eyes follow Kelli off the stage, then up the aisle toward where I stood waiting for her as patiently as ever, I was not so sure.

He got to his feet as Kelli and I moved up the aisle.

“You did great, Kelli,” he said.

“I think everybody did,” Kelli said.

Todd shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, Mary sort of made Juliet sound like she was from Gone with the Wind, don’t you think?”

Kelli laughed. “Well, maybe a southern Juliet would be interesting.”

Todd shook his head slowly. “No, it’s you, Kelli,” he said with that sense of absolute certainty that only one who had lived such a life as he had lived could truly possess. “You’re the one who should play Juliet.”

I could tell that something in the quiet respect that Kelli could hear in Todd’s voice had moved her, but I could not have anticipated that it would move her to the offer she almost immediately made. “Well, if I play Juliet, why don’t you play Romeo?”

From the look on Todd’s face it was clear that he had never considered such a possibility. He shook his head. “No, I’m no actor,” he said shyly.

“But you’re perfect for it, Todd,” Kelli told him. She watched him for a moment, then added, “You’re the only boy at Choctaw High who is.”

Todd waved his hand dismissively. “No, I’m no actor,” he repeated. He might have said more, but Mary came sweeping up the aisle and took his arm. “We’re going to Cuffy’s,” she said to Kelli and me. “Ya’ll want to come with us?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve got to go home,” I said.

Todd looked at Kelli. “What about you?”

Kelli hesitated a moment, then glanced over at me. “You can’t go for just a few minutes?”

“No,” I told her, then added an excuse that was a lie. “I have to help my father with something.”

She turned back to Todd. “Would you be able to give me a ride home after we left Cuffy’s?”

“Sure.”

Kelli looked toward me again. “I’ll just get a ride with Todd today,” she said.

I nodded quickly, betraying nothing. “Okay.”

We all walked out of the auditorium together, Todd and Mary in the lead, with Kelli and me walking together behind them.

“What do you have to help your father with?” Kelli asked lightly.

“Something in the store,” I answered.

At the parking lot, we separated, with Kelli walking off toward Todd’s car at the far end of the lot.

“Bye, Ben” was all she said.

For a few seconds, I stood and watched her move away from me, walking cheerfully toward Todd’s waiting car. When she reached it, Todd swept around her, opened the door and let Mary and Kelli slide into the front seat. Then he walked around the front of the car and pulled himself in behind the wheel.

Within a moment, they were gone, and I was left alone in the gray Chevrolet. It had never seemed more dull and dusty, nor more empty.

On the way home, I passed Cuffy’s. Todd’s car was parked out front, and inside I could see Todd and Mary sitting together in a front booth. Kelli sat opposite them, and next to her, Eddie Smathers. Someone must have said something funny just as I passed, because I could see Eddie’s head tossed back in a wide laugh. Although I could not see it, I knew that Kelli must be laughing, too.

When I got home, I found the house empty, my father not yet home from the grocery. I sat in the living room for a time, staring at the dull green eye of the television. Then I walked to my room and eased myself onto the bed, lying on my back, facing the blank ceiling. I could feel a slight tremor in my legs. It moved upward, growing stronger as it moved until I could feel my stomach quake, my chest tighten, my throat finally close in the iron grip of all that I still so desperately wanted to hold back. Then suddenly it released me, and to my immense surprise, I began to cry.

Even now I cannot name all the things I cried for that afternoon. I do know that it was not only for the loss of Kelli, but for all that she had come to represent for me, the promise she’d held out for so long, and then so quickly withdrawn. I cried for a life that seemed beyond me, a love I would never know, a vision of happiness, of growing up and growing old in the steady embrace of something fierce and true. I cried out of pity for myself, for my terrible inadequacy, for the fact that I was locked in a sensual wasteland from which I could see no escape. I cried because I was small and physically inept, because I wore glasses, because the bolder experiences of manhood seemed always to slip beyond my grasp. I cried because I was pathetic and ridiculous.

And it is there that the story might have ended, with an inexperienced boy weeping in a melodramatic moment of romantic grief, but with the promise that he would soon rise from his bed, wipe away his tears, move steadily toward adulthood, find a life that suited him and from there go on to love a woman he could not have then imagined, raise children he could not have then imagined, achieve the quiet dignity of a good and gracious life and finally, perhaps, even recall from time to time the afternoon he’d cried so bitterly, and smile with the comforting wisdom of all that he had learned since then.

And so it might have ended.

But it did not.