Falling

by Doug Lane

Dwayne clips the kid on the sidewalk because he can. Dwayne is carved muscle and attitude, built for moving linesmen the way old steam locomotives were designed to shunt cattle from the tracks. How he hits will get him a full-ride scholarship, a pro career, pockets full of endorsements. On the field or the street, he practices his position without discrimination. You have to stay sharp.

The kid he clips? A scarecrow with glasses. His green t-shirt has some sort of superhero-speak on the front. Dwayne doesn’t get it and doesn’t care. The kid’s wrapped up in gab with friends, his whole body animate with conversation. He never sees it coming. The contact turns the kid sideways, barely practice for Dwayne’s shoulder. Dwayne hears the air huff out of him. He’s surprised the kid doesn’t drop.

Dwayne snort-laughs without breaking stride. He’s got things to do before he hits the books. He’s ten yards along when the shout from behind drags him to a stop. “Hey!”

Dwayne turns. Boggles. The drizzle of a kid is actually trying to stare him down.

Dwayne calls back. “You have a problem?” They almost never have a problem once challenged, but the kid seems to have missed that memo. He stands taller. Tenses.

“Yeah. I do.”

Dwayne strides the distance between them, ready to menace the kid back to his mommy.

As he reaches the kid, the kid bellows in a voice rumbled up from his toes, “Fall forever!” and smacks Dwayne flat-palmed in the forehead.

The small blow tips Dwayne backwards. He tumbles through the sidewalk. Barely has time to register an astonished face looking down from above before it shrinks, smaller and smaller—a bulb, a star, a flicker, until it’s gone from view.

The wind whipping past pulls Dwayne’s screams away as quickly as he produces them. He panics, unable to see his hands in front of him. Everything is darkness. He reorients himself face down, a blind skydiver, and finds the anticipation of witnessing his sudden stop more terrifying than not seeing it coming. He reverts to falling backwards to his demise.

He plummets, stills as it becomes the new normal.

He contemplates the kid. Dwayne hates him at first. Being plunged into nothingness isn’t proportional to being run into. Barely touched, even. He’s expected to play tough, to maintain his rep off the field. Then Dwayne wonders if the kid did it for the same reason Dwayne clipped him: because he could. He imagines the kid’s world. He’s skinny, awkward, tired of being somebody’s playground target every day for years, so he develops his own magical playbook. Maybe he didn’t know it would work. Maybe he’s sitting on the curb, stunned over the whole thing, cops asking uncomfortable questions and him pointing absurdly to a hole in the sidewalk. Maybe he would take it back if he could. Dwayne would certainly take back the clip. He shouts repentance in his wake. Apologies are also magic words. He’s not a bad guy. He’ll change. Just bring him back up, let him prove himself.

Rushing wind is the only answer.

Dwayne puzzles over how to get back up, but there’s no way to unless he stops moving. Fall forever. It’s impossible. Earth is finite. He can only drop so far without coming out the other side, right? If he does, will he keep going, up and up, through the clouds and into space?  

Time passes unmeasured. He sings. He stretches straight, pantomimes the flight of one of the kid’s superheroes to stave off boredom. He loses hunger and thirst and the need to defecate, wonders if it’s another part of the kid’s weird magic.

He replays every football game he ever suited up for in his head, considers where he could have been a better athlete or a better sport. Laments how he’ll never take the field for the Cornhuskers or Cowboys, never win a Super Bowl or rep for Nike or drive a Rolls Royce, and he hates the kid all over again.

He misses his family, even his pain in the ass little brother; his team; Christine from math class. What he wouldn’t give for her smile to light his way back.

He has ample time to pass through the first four stages of grief, but he’s unable to find the path to acceptance because it isn’t straight below him. Could he even see it if it was?

Dwayne falls. That’s the trophy he’s won. He’ll still be falling long after the last person who knew him thinks of him for the final time. He’ll still be falling long after you’ve forgotten his name.