The Heavens Rise

FROM THE JOURNALS OF NIQUETTE DELONGPRE

Last night he asked me to drive him to the Luling Bridge, and I said yes, even though I knew the risks were high. It’s possible someone could have recognized him, although he more closely resembles what he looked like as a teenager than the man they’ve been showing on the news constantly since the accident.

It’s funny what he remembers, and as much as Ben and I have tried to outline some logical process to figure out which memories are returning first, we can’t seem to identify one. The guilt over keeping him a secret from his family started to go away when he didn’t recognize any of his brothers in the photographs we showed him. That’s part of why I agreed to take him to the bridge, because I knew it meant he wanted to see the ships on the river. Another memory returning.

The bridge feels monumental for being so far from a densely urban area. At its height, you can see the entire sweep of Jefferson and Orleans Parishes to the east, and the great black bowl of Lake Pontchartrain to the north. The river banks directly below it are sparsely populated, lined by a smattering of grain docks.

It was the middle of the night and he leapt from the Jeep as soon as I slowed down, even though he was shirtless. Dressing him isn’t the easiest. He is almost seven feet tall. And there are some other concerns. By the time I stopped the Jeep, I realized what he was about to do. By the time I called out his full name, he had leapt up onto the railing and the wings at his back had extended, two smooth flaps of flesh with slender, exposed ligaments securing them to a ridge along his spine that inflated almost like parachutes as he dropped over the side and into the darkness.

Of course, I’d seen him fly before, but never by dropping from such a great height, and my heart was in my throat as he shrank in size, plummeting toward the dark river. There is much of Anthem in him, but this split-second, wordless impulsiveness is entirely new. Or at least it’s not the Anthem I remember. That Anthem announced everything he planned to do, and often didn’t do very much of it. There are aspects of this creature, this being that are entirely different. And then there’s the physical. The impossibly perfect muscles. The incredible height. The idealization of his teenage features.

It was not just my words that created him—my hero, my God, my angel. It was the marriage of those words and the collective images they inspired inside his imagination each time I whispered them to him over the years. And in that fateful instant on the old push boat in Madisonville, my words met the history of his dreams, and he was reborn.

By the time I saw him rising up from the darkness, it was too late for me to move, and in a dizzying instant, he had taken me in his giant arms and we were rising up alongside one of the bridge’s massive copper-colored towers, until we had passed the blinking red light at its very top, and I could see New Orleans aglow on the dark, watery horizon. And as my screams turned to laughter, I thought of Ben and the work he and Marissa would begin soon.

He has asked me to help, and even though I have asked for time to consider it, I know I will say yes for one reason. I have learned that magic withheld gives birth to nightmares, and so I have no choice but to stand back, open my heart and let the heavens rise.