As Terah stood as still as a startled rabbit, his brain processed the sound. It had been loud, but not like a gun. He’d heard a sound like it before, but on television, long ago. Following the sharp crack there’d been a concussion of heaviness. A tree had fallen. The weight of the snow had probably broken a large branch nearby. Waiting for his heart to slow down, Terah felt the cold seeping into him. He thought of Mich’s fire in the basement. He had one more side to cover. Around the corner he couldn’t believe his luck.
It had been a falling tree. That was plainly obvious now. The trunk had been arrested in its fall by the poured concrete of this fortress. Through its naked branches Terah could see a clerestory window. This was his way back inside. It would be, that is, if he climbed trees.
Some kids he knew in his neighborhood scrambled up trees like squirrels. Terah suffered acute acrophobia. He learned this about himself on a childhood trip to Deep Hollow State Forest. In the wooded western side of the state an unremarkable park had been an inexpensive family get-away. Mom would throw together a picnic and pack him and his brothers into the car. Deep Hollow State Forest was one of those places where tall trees grew out of what seems like natural carpet. Undergrowth had been cleared out so there was a playground of pines with foot-beaten paths all around them. Their lowest branches were too high to reach, but there was a fire tower in the center. As his brothers raced up the stairs, Terah hesitated.
“Go on, Terry,” his mom had urged. “Catch up with your brothers.”
Although there was a wooden handrail, Terah could see only the gulf between the rail and the plank steps. The horizontal treads had no vertical closings, like in a house. You could see straight though to the ground. He was higher up than his own head and could think of nothing else but falling. Although not yet mature, he felt his testicles creeping up toward his abdomen. Pure, raw fear gripped him. What if a breeze blew him off? What if he fell? He forced his way up to the first platform landing and dug his fingers into the rail. Splinters from the old wood wormed into his palms. Panic coated him. He couldn’t move.
Mom tried to be patient, but she had to handle three boys alone and two of them were cavorting high overhead where they might break their fool necks. She tried to coax and then began to yell. “Terah Harold Economy, you let go of that rail!” She was pulling his arm, driving the splinters deeper. Petrified, he couldn’t protest. Just clung harder. Frustrated, mom karate-chopped his elbow, releasing his hand along with a siren scream. “Terah, shut your mouth!” She wrestled him into her arms but his lithe little bodies squirmed and kicked in blank-eyed fear.
“Nooo! Let go!” His wriggling worked. He fell to the plank floor, wailing.
“Terah shut your goddam mouth!” He’d never heard her swear before. Her hand came down on the seat of his jeans. His fingers had wrapped around the edge of the floor planks, he pulled his little body down close to the platform, drawing security from the solid base below him. Only later did he realize it had been the first time his mother had ever swore.
That memory came back as Terah’s raw hand gripped a branch to pull himself unto the canted trunk. Now a man who realized what testicles were for, he felt them shoot up tight against his body as he began to climb. The angle was steep and branches that had formerly fought for access to sunlight, now snagged and tore at him. He needed his pack. He was stiffening up from the cold. He had to reach that window. The wind blew, adding to his shivering. At a level of terror he’d never before experienced, he could feel his penis retracting as well—nature protecting his means of contributing to the world. Heart thumping loud in his ears, he hugged the tree like a lover and inched toward the solid wall against which it leaned. His world slid. His weight threw off the delicate balance of natural wood on artificial stone. Clinging, heart in throat, he waited until it settled again. Closing his eyes didn’t help. He had to reach that window.
His palms stinging like those childhood splinters, he gripped the bare branches and forced himself up. The diameter of the boughs decreased the further he crept. Terror fell over him like a rainfall of needles. The clerestory window was only a few feet away now. He’d have to figure out how to open it, but first he’d need to reach it.
The clerestory was eight-sided. Each corner chopped off. This accounted for the unwavering symmetry inside. The waste of space with the cut corners suddenly suggested something. There could be secret passages inside. Passages within what would otherwise be excessively thick corners. He tested his reach for the window.
Religiously refusing to look down, nestled in the thin branches that gave the closest access, he was going to be at least two feet shy of the glass. He had no tools, nothing with which to work. In his pack he’d collected useful bits and pieces. He could always find something in it. But his pack was sealed behind the concrete wall and glass that he couldn’t reach. And he was thirty feet off the ground, emasculated by fear.
Paralyzed, he was a five-year-old boy on a fire tower platform. He couldn’t remember how he’d made his way down. Memory had mercifully poured its veil of forgetfulness over that traumatic ending. Now he had to go up instead of down. Up before he could go back down. Drawing on every molecule of courage that hid in his gut, he slid toward the window, still out of reach. He heard the crack before he felt his body lurch.
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