The Boredom of Gravity

by Stewart Engesser

Hocker got his leg bitten off by a shark of some kind and survived. It gave him a kind of power, and I resented him for it. Nevertheless, there we were, driving to a house in the redwoods where a man I knew made LSD. There were two sheets of blotter waiting for me in those redwood canyons, and if things worked out I stood to make a thousand dollars. But I had forgotten the address. I knew we were going to be late, if we ever found the place at all. I leaned over the wheel, looking for something I recognized, but it was just trees and fog and stupidity.

Hocker held the map, turning it this way and that, as though it were an ancient text that, when held at the proper angle, would reveal the location of the lost palace of the serpent queen. He was telling me about how in the night his missing leg vibrated and tingled, a red-hot burn that radiated from the nothing below his knee.

How can something hurt when it isn’t even there, Hocker wondered aloud.

What a question!

I thought of all the people I’d wept over, when they died, fled or otherwise stopped coming around, but there was no way to get into any of that. I had to concentrate. I could barely see the road in the gathering dark.

Maybe hit the head lights, Hocker said.

I flicked the switch, on, off, because maybe, you never know. Machines sometimes repair themselves in the night while everyone is sleeping.

Of course there were no headlights. I’d been navigating without them for months.

Hocker was a surfer, and a good one, but not anymore. What can I say? He was beautiful. He loved coffee. Narrow shoulders, golden muscled chest, and that stump, that horrible, puckered thing where all his power lived. Women, men, children: they bowed to him because he’d seen what waits on the other side. He bore no malice toward the creature who mangled him. Indeed, he spoke of the shark with reverence, and wore one of the monster’s teeth on a leather thong around his neck.

I will say this: he possessed an aura. He died on the beach three times, and each time a paramedic brought him back. He told everyone that when they revived him it felt like being unplugged from the main frame, like being yanked from the sky and tossed into a cardboard box.

He was beginning to dance around the idea that he was some sort of holy man. Chosen by the Great Spirit for this or that, who knew. Protected and guided by mysterious forces. I just hoped whatever magic Hocker possessed would help me with this deal. It was the last of my money, earned over several wet relentless months gutting salmon in Nikiski, Alaska.

Hocker was my good luck charm.

We drove deeper and deeper into the fog and mist. I tried to remember landmarks that might help us find the house. I’d been there several times, but each time I was a passenger, driven by others, and always under the influence of one intoxicant or several.

We’d been wandering the steep and winding roads for what felt like hours.

What can I tell you about that long-ago time, before smart phones, before the Internet? I was often lost in those days, arriving hours late, or never arriving at all. One day became another, and weeks might go by without ever seeing a clock or my own face in a mirror.

There were all sorts of energies whirling around. One day the world was a gentle miracle, and I floated in its cupped hands like a lotus. Other days, the great harmony of the earth seemed to be one of overwhelming collective murder. We lived in cars, tents, our lives a blur of campgrounds, laundromats, bars and payphones, too much drinking, too many drugs. In the summer I worked the salmon season, in the fall I picked apples.

I wanted to be a bear, I wanted to be a wolf. Instead, this life, and in the middle of it, me: pretending to be water, pretending to be sky.

Where are these people now? Dead, lost, working in finance, rushing through the dark to perform emergency surgery or unlock their bakeries.

It occurred to me that the house we were looking for had steep wooden stairs. Wooden stairs that climbed and climbed through redwood and ferns, always wet, always slick. You parked in a gravel pullout, went through a gate, and climbed up.

Stairs were going to be a problem.

Hocker would never make it up those stairs. But if he waited in the truck, would his good luck follow me or remain with him?

There are some steps at this place, I said.

I have my crutches, Hocker said.

What was he saying? He hadn’t brought any crutches. I helped him to the truck and lifted him in like a child. Then I recalled I was supposed to go back and grab his crutches. Of course I had forgotten. I imagined them, far behind us, leaning against the wall of the public restrooms where I’d left them.

I didn’t say anything about it.

Dark things loomed as we passed, layers of blacks and greens, mouths opening and closing, the road ahead a tongue of darker black.

I drove and knew that I would never get where I needed or wanted to go.

I thought about closing my eyes and giving the wheel to God. 

Perhaps you believe there are rules, and firm lines that distinguish reality from dreams. If that is the case, explain this: at that moment a coyote entered the road, awash in moonlight, and sat.

And there it was. The gravel lot, the cedar gate, the steps winding up into the dark.

I pulled in and the coyote walked away, or disappeared, or perhaps he was never there at all.

Hocker looked surprised. I’ve been here a thousand times, he said. This is Chris’s place, man. I could have just told you.

I know it’s Chris’s place, that’s what I said before we even started out.

We could have gotten here in ten minutes. I mean, we were like, just down there.

Do you think you can get up there without your crutches, I asked. Because I have some bad news.

Hocker did not blame me for leaving his crutches behind, choosing instead to face this new challenge with the grace and humor of a jungle monkey. He refused assistance and hopped up the stairs, hundreds of them, winding away into the clouds, moving without complaint or particular effort, as he accomplished the impossible.

He beat me by a minute at least and was not even winded while I gasped and sweated my way to the doorbell. We were ushered in by a stunning creature who shouted at us in German, but slowly, as though that might help us understand. She gleamed like something polished.

The house was out of a magazine, cantilevered over nothing, redwood and glass, fine art, macrame and potted ferns, decks and fog and a hot tub heated with actual wood.

It was the kind of place where incense always burned. Babies crawled around, forgotten. A woman wearing only a Mexican poncho might be talking to a cactus, or stirring a bubbling cauldron in which bobbed the skull of a deer. Being there made me want to be an innocent child again, loved and safe in the arms of my mother.

We wandered into the kitchen. There were dozens of brown glass dropper bottles. Beyond the sliders, an old, wrinkled man was doing yoga, his naked skin and shock of white hair glowing in the dark. In another part of the house, the blare of trumpets, the barking of dogs. Chris appeared, gliding in from another room like someone on tracks.

Are all those liquid acid, I asked, nodding at the small brown dropper bottles.

No, man, those are herbal extracts, Chris said. They’re my dad’s, he sells them at health food stores. Echinacea, Valerian.

Chris produced a brown dropper bottle and gave it a shake. But this, this is two ounces of full-on outer space, man.

Of course he hadn’t droppered any acid onto any blotter as we had discussed. That was all for some other appointed time, apparently.

Who’s the dude doing yoga on your deck, Hocker asked.

That’s my dad, man, Chris said. Did you think he was the Easter Bunny?

Should I tell you that everything went wrong, that Chris got distracted and left the bottle full of liquid acid on the counter, and that his father added some to a mug of tea, thinking it was echinacea? Should I tell you that the old man ingested enough pure LSD to rocket himself into the cosmos and unwind his DNA, leaving him a slobbering, hysterical imp parboiling himself in Chris’ hot tub?

He looked at us and sparks fell into the bubbling water.

Hocker saved his life. He sat with this man and spoke to him about the creatures of the deep, the interconnectedness of things, the pulse and vibration of the universe and the infinite energy we all will one day rejoin. Chris’ father wept like a child and later attempted to make us pancakes, using a waffle iron, and batter made from eggs, flour and maple syrup. He held his batter-smeared hands out to us and told us he loved us, he loved everything, he loved his son, who took everything and never said so much as thank you. He is an asshole, the father told us, as Chris stood there laughing. He is an absolute waste of everything by any measure.

Later we went out into the dark among the flowers, and Chris’ father told us what each might do for us, and how if we were lucky, we would discover our true path, as he had been lucky enough to do.

Nothing ever worked for me in those days. It was like I was crouching in water, and across the dark lake there was a shore I was supposed to reach, but I couldn’t see it, and I suspected I would never get there.

Of course, I stole the bottle of acid. Within days I was heading east, to New York City, where for some reason I believed I would find happiness. I sold the acid drop by drop, and within a year I owned a derelict farm outside Poughkeepsie.

I may as well have swindled an elf out of his magic beans. If you’d have told me that I would reach this place, perhaps I’d have inquired as to whether you also believed in talking horses, or rats that played jazz. But there is no magic to it, really, unless luck is magic. And of course, it is.

I think of that night among the flowers, how the flowers swayed, and how I had no plan, no chance of getting here. And how that night, and that life, somehow led to this: a warm and settled heart, deep sleep, children, a lovely wife, and horses running in the dark.

Where are those long-ago days that seemed to last forever, yet dissolved without my noticing, as I transitioned from a drifting weightless thing, into a thankful servant to the laws of boring gravity?

Oh, sweet friends, I don’t know. But I do not miss them.

Stewart Engesser lives in Maine. In his free time he monkeys around with synthesizers, putters around in boats, and talks to his dog. One day he's going to get serious and stop all this crazy running around. Recent stories appear in The Barcelona Review, The Forge, Oyster River Pages, Eclectica, and elsewhere.