The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page B

vomiting in the bathroom.
    A delirium of sleep washed over him like filthy frothy water. In The Falls X 37
    the confusion of a dream he believed he might have murdered the woman whose name he couldn’t remember. Lawfully wedded wife. Death do you part. He’d snapped her neck. Smothered her in the smelly bedclothes. Pounded and clawed between her legs. He was trying to explain to his father, and to his friend D. whom he’d betrayed. He could not bear it. Never again.
    Run, run!
    Crossing the plank bridge above the rapids. His bare feet in leather shoes were hurting. He’d dressed hurriedly, carelessly. His zipper had jammed. A voice lifted in his wake—“Hey, Mister? Tickets are fifty cents.” Someone was calling after him. Fifty cents! G.
    didn’t so much as glance back. He’d had a reputation, he’d prided himself in his reputation, at the seminary, for being rather aloof, even arrogant. D. was his only friend, D. was truly Christly, good. D.
    would understand his desperation and forgive him even if God would not. He hadn’t a penny for a ticket. Where he was headed, proudly he had no need for a penny. And possibly it was the Devil who teased him in the guise of a gray-haired gatekeeper. As it might be the Devil who teased mankind by placing “fossils” in the earth. Tempting him to turn back. Tempting cowardice. But G. in his headlong plunge would not succumb for G. had vowed to see this through. To God he’d vowed. To Jesus Christ (whose salvation he repudiated) he’d vowed.
    In a dead hour of the night before dawn, by his gold Bulova watch nearing five o’clock, he’d knelt on the painfully hard mock-marble tile floor of the bathroom. Steeling himself to endure the woman’s odor.
    Vomit, sweat. Odor of unclean female flesh. He’d bared his soul to his maker, that it be extirpated by the roots. For he had no need of a soul now. This act would be his crucifixion. A man’s death and not a coward’s. D. would see. All the world would see.
    D.’s heart would be broken at last. The world’s heart would be broken.
    And no possibility of survival.
    38 W Joyce Carol Oates
    Behind him the gatekeeper shouted. Barely G. could hear the man’s voice over the roaring of The Falls. At his left hand the Niagara River was wild, deafening. You would think, as local Indian tribes had thought, that it was a living thing that must be placated by sacrifices.
    A hungry river, and insatiable. Its source must be unknowable. And the massive falls ahead. The Falls stretching in a horseshoe curve, as far as the eye can see through curtains of rising mist and spray.
    (Winking flirtatious little rainbows appeared and disappeared amid the spray. Like bubbles, or butterflies. Tempting the viewer to stare in surprise, admiration; tempting the viewer to smile. Such useless beauty, amid such destruction!) Scarcely could G. see but he knew The Falls were ahead. It was a site called Terrapin Point he sought, knowing by the map that it was the southernmost tip of the little island. The Falls were so loud now as to be mesmerizing, calming. Flying spray blinded him but he had no need any longer to see. Damned glasses sliding down his nose. Always he’d hated glasses, diagnosed with myopia at the age of ten. G.’s fate! In a gesture of which he’d never have been capable in life he seized his glasses and flung them into space. Good riddance! No more!
    Suddenly he was at the railing.
    At Terrapin Point.
    So soon?
    His hands groped and closed about the topmost rung of a railing.
    He lifted his right foot, a slippery-soled shoe, nearly lost his balance but righted himself, like an acrobat positioning himself on top of the railing even as a part of his mind recoiled in disbelief and bemuse-ment thinking You can’t be serious, Gil! This is ridiculous, you graduated top of your class, they’ve given you a new car, you can’t die . But in his pride he was over the railing, and in the water, swept instantaneously forward with the rushing