Pebbles on the Strand

Over the Edge and into the Wind

Over the Edge and into the Wind — David W. Berner

The heels of his brown boots dug into the rocky edge of the bluff, the scuffed tips pointing out over the rim and into the cool open air. Michael tilted his body toward the wind and the vast empty space before him, arms stretching out from his shoulders like Jesus on the Cross. Tony’s right hand clutched the tail of Michael’s denim shirt, his left arm hooked around the branch of a juniper tree. The only thing between the end of Michael’s nose and the dry creek bed below were 300 feet of mountain air.

Isn’t that freakin’ amazing? Tony said, laughing. Feel it, man? Feel all of it? It’s as free as you’ll ever get. Ever!

Michael closed his eyes and leaned all his weight into the abyss, flapping his one free arm as if he were about to take flight. My … GOD! This, this is … unbelievable! Tony snatched Michael from the cliff’s edge, and they wrapped their arms around each other in celebration of shared adrenaline.

Holy shit! Michael hollered into the canyon. The two of them jumped in the air, slapping each other on their backs.

Tony rushed to the edge. Do it for me, he said, pulling his tee shirt over his head and throwing it to the ground. Grab my belt loop.

You serious? Michael asked, questioning Tony’s trust.

Put your fingers through it and hang on, man. Tony inched the toes of his shoes just over the edge of the bluff and bent into a crouch. Michael stuck the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the belt loop of Tony’s jeans. Tony stood, reached his hands around his head, and clasped them behind his neck the way criminals do on those TV cop shows, and shifted his weight into the broad chasm.

This is what life should always feel like! I never, EVER want to die! Tony howled.

It was earlier that morning when the shadows were long that Tony saw Michael hitchhiking along the highway outside Santa Fe and offered him a ride.

Michael leaned into the open window on the passenger side of Tony’s car, an old Mazda, the color faded by the sun. Where you headed? he asked.

You know, man, Tony said, smiling. I’m not really sure. He tapped the steering wheel with the palm of his right hand and then his left, as if striking a snare drum and its rim. But I’m pointed west and if that’s where you’re pointed, we can keep each other company.

Michael grabbed his canvas backpack from the gravel of the road’s shoulder, threw it into the car’s back seat, and jumped into the front. He had spent the night sleeping on a bench outside the Deming Airport. He had been out for a couple of hours on a stretch of Route 549, starting at just before dawn, walking and thumbing. It seemed like hundreds of cars and trucks had whizzed by him, throwing exhaust and dust into his face. Someone in a U-Haul truck slowed down and pulled over, but as Michael ran to the door, the driver hit the gas and sped off. It was just a few minutes later that someone else in a convertible, some expensive car, an Audi he thought, gave him the finger as he zipped by yelling, Get a job! With five days of stubble, his hair pulled back in an uneven ponytail, and a day-old wash-up in the dirty restroom of an old Shell gas station somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Michael didn’t look much like a man after a job.

Michael wrote poetry. He returned to New Mexico two years earlier, hoping to find a reason to keep writing. He spent a few years in St. Louis in a third-floor studio apartment with two old friends from college. One was a painter, the other a dancer. Michael worked part time at a tiny independent bookstore. His roommates also had part time jobs. One was an attendant at a small fitness center in Uptown, cleaning locker rooms and wiping away the sweat left behind on treadmills and elliptical machines. The other was a cashier at an adult video store on a highway just outside town. Michael knew he needed a change when his roomies started buying more dope than food. But he knew it wasn’t just a matter of roommates and apartments. His reasons for leaving were bigger. Michael’s father still lived in New Mexico, outside Las Cruces, and although his friends believed he was returning to be around family, Michael knew that was far from the truth. Any interest Michael may have had for reconnecting with his father had faded like his friends’ dreams. Michael was hoping New Mexico might give him emotional familiarity, a good place for a fresh beginning, a place to jump-start his writing, bring back old memories from a childhood when his mother was alive, and his father was interested. Maybe the desert would remove him from other temptations, help him find his voice. During his time in St. Louis, he had one poem printed in a college poetry journal and another in a former student’s online start-up literary site, but mostly it had been a time of unanswered submissions and uninspired writing.

Michael found work as a substitute teacher in Las Cruces and rented a one-room apartment not far from New Mexico State. Even though it was hard not to consider it, he never tried to contact his father. Michael’s mother died when he was just starting college, and after that his dad vowed to never leave the home that they’d shared throughout their 20-year marriage, digging his heels into a life of sullenness, unemployment checks, food stamps, and distancing himself from his son. Michael could understand his father’s sadness, but not his rejection. Michael telephoned, emailed, and wrote letters to his father nearly every week during his first year in St. Louis, then every month, and then he stopped, giving up when there was never a response. The letters came back unopened.

Summer came and the part time teaching job ended. Michael put two tee-shirts, his journals, and a book of Ginsberg poems in a duffle bag and stood along Route 478, hoping to eventually head west. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, but that was the idea. During the school year, Michael wrote in fits and starts, deleting words, lines, and sometimes complete poems from his computer. What he thought New Mexico might offer it hadn’t. It was time to try something different, yet again. Michael now believed he needed to just move, travel, see, and feel new things, abandon recognizable surroundings. Maybe somewhere out there was that one thing in another place and time, a spontaneous experience that would help him finally create what he still believed he could.

It was just west of Deming on Route 418 that Tony stopped to let Michael in his car.

What’s your story, man? Tony asked. He flicked his steel Zippo lighter, the small flame igniting his Winston, producing a red glow at the cigarette’s end. The window on the driver’s side was rolled down a quarter to allow the ashes to disappear into the rushing wind.

No story, Michael said. Just trying to get out of my own way.

Tony took a drag of his cigarette, bluish smoke rushing out his nostrils. Come on, everyone has a story, my friend.

Tony was five years older than Michael and dressed as if he had spent a considerable amount of time listening to R.E.M, the independent rock band from the 1990s — gray t-shirt, black jeans, a thick pewter ring on the middle finger of his left hand, a mix of hipster and hippie. He even looked a bit like R.E.M.’s lead singer, Michael Stipe — thin build, almost gaunt, a shaven head showing the faint outline of male-pattern baldness, two-day growth of beard.

My story, huh? Michael asked, scratching his own whiskers. Do you know much about poetry?

What is it you want to talk about, man? Rilke? Rimbaud? Dylan? Cobain?

Sounds like you have some definite thoughts.

I read a bit. Listen to great songwriters.

Have a favorite?

That’s always tough. Depends on my mood.

Pick one.

Tony blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and then looked Michael up and down. You, he said.

Me?

Yeah, you’re a poet, aren’t you?

Michael smiled and turned to look out the passenger side window. How the hell did you know that?

I could tell. And today, you are my favorite.

For several hours along I-10 through Lordsburg, San Simon, Bowie, Wilcox, and Tucson, Michael and Tony talked about poets, writing, songs, girls, school, and work. Michael told him a little about growing up in New Mexico, but never mentioned his father. He talked about St. Louis, his stoner roommates, and his love of good words and his struggle to write them. Oh, I know about loving something so much, about having a passion, Tony said. And I know what it feels like when you can’t satisfy it, and something, whatever it is, gets in the way. Tony had played guitar in a rock band in Atlanta, but the band broke up when the lead singer settled down to start a family. Tony took a job managing a crew of landscapers outside Birmingham, Alabama, just to get some cash. His silly attempt to forget about music failed and breaking his back hauling dirt and digging tree holes for rich people with big lawns quickly got old. Worked for about a month. And my Spanish sucked. I couldn’t talk to the workers, he said. So, Tony took all the money he had out of his bank account — about $5000 — and started driving. Through Arkansas and Texas and then to New Mexico. Tony grew up in Cleveland. The home of Rock-n-Roll, he said proudly. But I hate that town.

Outside Tucson, Tony and Michael bought pre-wrapped turkey sandwiches and several bottles of Miller beer at a 7-Eleven, topped off the gas tank, and hopped back on I-10 westbound to Phoenix.

I’m thinking San Francisco, Tony said, unwrapping a new pack of cigarettes. What do you say, man?

The ride had turned out to be a good one. Michael liked Tony. And even though he was hoping for some quiet time somewhere along the road so he might try writing, Michael was enjoying himself. Something he wasn’t exactly used to doing.

Good plan, Michael said. I’ve never been there.

But first, before the city, I need some off-road stuff. I want badlands or something, said Tony. He pulled the car onto the shoulder and opened the map that had been crudely folded and tucked between the front seats. Let’s go here, he said, his index finger tapping the map and pointing to the Prescott National Forest."

Michael smiled. Rock-n-Roll. Let’s do it.

Tony swiftly turned the car from the shoulder and onto the concrete, tires squealing as he zoomed into the left lane of the highway. The Allman Brother’s One Way Out blared from the radio’s speakers, some classic rock radio station he tuned into as he drove out of Phoenix, and simultaneously Tony and Michael rolled down their windows and moaned the bluesy lyrics into the wind, There’s a man down there, might be your man, I don’t know!

Driving north on I-17, Tony and Michael drank their bottles of beer and tried to guess the songs on the radio. Whoever recognized the song first and could yell out the name was entitled to a swig of the other’s beer. Tony was good with songs before 1980, but Michael was a killer with anything after 1990. The decade of the 80s was a toss-up, considering Michael was born in 1985 and Tony was just a kid.

I remember my dad had a David Bowie album, Michael said. It was the first time he had mentioned his father during the ride. That was the 80s, right?

I think. Tony shrugged. Wasn’t Journey big then too? Hate that group.

My father had a Journey record, too, I’m sure, said Michael.

Tony sang out the opening lines to the chorus, the signature lyric from the most famous of Journey’s hit records. But, you know, I like your old man better for his love of Ziggy Stardust.

Michael leaned back in his seat and tossed back what was left of the final bottle of beer. Yeah, I heard a lot of that record, he said, closing his eyes.

Rolling Stones, Tony said, nodding at the radio. I’m thinking, what, 1970?

You got me, said Michael, his eyes still closed. And I’m out of beer, anyway.

Tony laughed. I win, but I lose, right? He turned off the radio. Bet Dad had some Stones albums.

Probably, Michael said, adjusting his seat so he could lean back even farther.

I don’t remember what albums my father had around the house, said Tony. Didn’t pay attention, I guess. Didn’t pay much attention to anything he did. Tried not to.

There were beats of silence and then Michael asked, Ever see him? He opened his eyes and turned his head toward Tony. Ever talk to him?

Not in years.

He alive?

Haven’t heard otherwise. Spoke with my brother about a year ago. Never mentioned him.

Didn’t get along, huh?

Not sure I ever knew him. Tony reached again for the Winston pack on the dashboard. Not sure he really wanted me to.

Haven’t talked to my dad in a long time, said Michael. He just kind of gave up on me. It was after Mom died. Not sure I completely understand it. I guess I gave up on him. Michael turned on the radio again. R.E.M., he said, confidently. Losing My Religion.

Shit, man, laughed Tony. You didn’t even give me a chance.

Michael put a fist close to his mouth, pretending to hold a microphone and belted out the lyrics to the chorus. Tony joined in.

The remainder of the ride north was filled with songs from the radio and dozens of guesses — Neil Young, Metallica, Green Day, John Hiatt, Sublime. But Tony and Michael were no longer keeping count, and with the empty bottles tossed on the backseat floor, there was no longer the reward of a mouthful from the other’s beer. The songs that had once been the answers in a simple trivia game, were now markers in the musical score of two lives, the soundtrack for what they hoped to always remember and some of what they wanted to forget.

Prospectors once panned for gold in Lynx Creek in the Prescott National Forest, adventurers searching for precious stones that would transform their lives, settle their debts, or offer them new and better choices. Today you can still hunt for gold along the creek