Falling for June: A Novel (10 page)

David sighed. “I’d love to feel what you described. All my life I’ve been carrying around this weight. And I don’t mean this few extra pounds, either. I mean the weight of everything you mentioned. You know, regret and guilt and all that. Anyway, it’s been so long I can’t even remember what it was like before, without it.”

David was propped up on both elbows, with his arms on the grass, and June reached out and laid her hand on top of his.

“You’re on your way, David. You’ll find your freedom. I know you will.”

It was a simple gesture, and a simple statement, but it somehow made David choke up.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s just so hard to let some things go.”

“No,” she said. “It’s holding on that’s hard. That’s why it hurts so much.”

They fell silent then, and David realized just how quiet it was. All of the hippies and most of the students had drifted off, presumably to bed, or maybe to other more private places to do what young people do. Others were napping or just watching
the fire, lost in their own thoughts. The moon was full, and David and June sat together watching it rise above the treetops. He could have sat there like that for a slow eternity—June’s hand on his where it lay on the soft grass, the dwindling fire warm in front of him, the night air cool at his back. But moments are special because they don’t last, and she eventually rose and took up her ice cream tub.

Before she left the fire, though, David saw her walk over to Sebastian and whisper something in his ear. Sebastian got up and followed her away toward the house. David couldn’t explain why, but he felt a sudden and profound sadness. He had no right to feel jealous if they were an item. He should just be happy to have friends, shouldn’t he? A man like him. He wasn’t entitled to find love. Not dumpy old David Hadley.

He was suddenly aware of a throbbing ache in his leg; the painkiller was wearing off. And it was Sunday, so he had missed an entire week of work already. He had been planning to call in sick again, but now he thought he’d get up early and leave. He didn’t need a certificate from stunt school anyway. Who was he kidding? A little late for a midlife crisis, isn’t it? he thought. Then the old voices came back. “And here you are acting like a jealous schoolboy at the age of fifty-one. Grow up, David.” His mood had changed so fast he had whiplash.

He rose from the dying fire and walked back to the bunkhouse feeling more alone than he ever had. Which he thought was odd since he was sleeping beneath the same roof as a dozen other aspiring daredevils, even if they were half his age. But David didn’t want to feel alone any longer, and he did something that surprised him, something he hadn’t done since he was thirteen. Before he climbed into his cot, he knelt down beside it and said a little prayer. He wasn’t a religious man, per se, and he wasn’t sure Who he was even praying to, but he did it with his whole heart.

“Dear God, Whoever You are, wherever You are, please help me let this feeling of being a failure go. I don’t need it, and it has never done me one bit of good. Just show me what I need to do, if You would. Just give me a sign. Thank You. Oh, and please tell my mom and my dad that I say hello. Also, please look after everyone in this big old world and make sure they’re safe. At least for tonight. And I know I’m supposed to forgive my enemies so I forgive that damn prehistoric bird that
You
made for what worldly purpose only
You
could know. Thanks. Hallelujah and amen and all that.”

Then he crawled into his bunk and pulled the old wool blanket over himself. He must have fallen fast asleep too, because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake in the dark by June. He couldn’t see her, but he somehow knew who it was just the same.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up in his cot.

“Keep your voice down,” she said. “Put your shoes on, grab your coat.”

He did as he was told. He could see her crouched near him like a shadow as he sat on his cot in the dark, tying his shoes.

“Where are we going?”

“Shh . . . no talking,” she said. “The others are sleeping.”

When he was ready she led him from the bunkhouse out into the moonlight. It was bright enough to see without the aid of her flashlight, which she carried but didn’t turn on. June glanced back over her shoulder with a conspiratorial look on her face and the moonlight sparkling in her eyes. She looked like she was seventeen. And he felt about the same age, in a good way.

The bonfire had been built back up with fresh wood, and David saw Sebastian silhouetted against the flames as he stoked the fire with a stick, sending swirling clouds of embers up into the night. He thought the fire was where they were heading, but
June passed it by. She passed the house by too, taking him over the creek on a wooden bridge. When they entered the trees she switched on the flashlight and shone the beam ahead of them on a path into the wood.

“Where are we going?” David asked, still whispering even though they were already a long way from any ears but their own.

“Don’t you like a surprise?”

“No,” he said, “I’m an accountant. I use the map on a box of chocolates, and I always read the last page before I begin a book.”

“That explains a lot,” she said, laughing. “I understand about the chocolates, because nobody wants to bite into one of those orange cream thingies by surprise. But I disagree with you entirely on books. I never read the last page.”

“Then how do you know how things end?”

“That’s the whole point,” she said. “If you don’t read the last page it never ends.”

The path steepened, following the creek up. He couldn’t see it but he could hear it above their footfalls. And what a beautiful sound it was too—water running over smooth stones and two pairs of conspiratorial feet following a flashlight beam up a dirt path into the unknown. His leg was hurting a little, but not enough to slow him down, and when the path leveled off, he came up and walked alongside June.

“So, aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Higher,” she said. “If you can keep up, that is.”

Then she took off jogging. At first, he let her go, watching as the flashlight bobbed in the darkness ahead and assuming she would slow or turn back. But she didn’t, and soon he was walking by himself in near blackness. He was jogging in the dark to catch up, fearing that he had lost her entirely, when she scared him half to death. She was sitting on a stump
beside the path and just when he came up even with her she turned the flashlight on with it pointed up beneath her chin, creating a floating ghost face in the dark.

“You sure gave this old heart a start,” he said, panting to catch his breath, although more from fright than from fatigue. Climbing all those stairs along with this past week at stunt camp had already done wonders for his health, and he possessed more endurance than he even knew. “Where does this path lead?” he asked.

“It leads right to the Center of the Universe,” she said.

“You do know that the universe is still expanding, don’t you?”

“I should hope so,” she replied, an exaggerated expression of seriousness on her still-illuminated face. “But it must be expanding in all directions equally because Echo Glen, which is just ahead, is the Center of the Universe. You’ll have to see it someday. I named the sanctuary after it because there’s a waterfall there that comes down a sheer face of granite and if you call out a wish it echoes it back to you as if it’s already come true.”

“It only works with a wish?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ve never shouted out anything else. Why would you? But right now we’re going up. Way up. Come with me, David Hadley.”

She took his hand and led him off the main path onto a steep switchback. The new path was narrower, the going root-strewn and rough, so David fell in behind her and focused on his steps and his breath. They climbed for what seemed like a very long time, and he could tell they were gaining altitude because the air was getting cooler and the trees thinner. He caught glimpses of the moon between the high branches of wind-bent firs, and when they came up on a high ridge, the moon followed them through the trees like a giant eye seeking them out on that dark mountain, intermittently washing June’s profile with its
silvery light. Oh, the old devil moon, David thought; it shines on everyone equally, but it shines on no one so beautifully as it does on June.

Soon, the trees thinned, the trail widened, and June switched the flashlight off and they walked together side by side in the moonlight. After the exercise of climbing, and with the cool night air on his flushed cheeks, David felt so good he ceased caring where it was they were even going. At least he did until the trail terminated at the edge of a cliff, and he saw the glider there waiting.

It sat perched on the cliff ledge like a giant moth, its pale wings spread out against the dark abyss below, its aluminum frame glinting in the moonlight.

“Whoa,” David said, coming to a sudden halt. “How’d that get up here?”

June stopped short of the glider and turned around. “Sebastian and I carried it up and assembled it for you. And you don’t want to have to carry it back down, trust me.”

“For me? I don’t understand. I don’t know how to fly that thing.”

“That’s why we’re going together, silly.”

“Um, that must be a thousand-foot drop right there.”

“It’s a ramp slope down, actually. The drop comes about thirty feet farther out. And it’s fifteen hundred feet at least. We climbed higher than you think.”

He shook his head. “This is crazy.”

“You told me you wanted to know what it felt like,” she said. “This will give you a taste. Haven’t you ever dreamed of flying?”

“I’ve dreamed of falling too.”

“Oh, falling’s not a problem.”

“It’s not?”

“No. When you’re falling there’s only one thing that can harm you.”

“You mean the ground?”

“Yes,” she said. “And even it can only harm you once. It’s holding on that’s the problem. Holding on will hurt you a thousand times, again and again. I want you to let go of all that fear and see what it feels like to really live. What do you say, David?”

He hesitated, looking at the glider and the cliff.

“I can’t make you do it,” she said. “You have to decide.”

Remembering his prayer, David looked up at the stars and thought:
You
must have some kind of sense of humor because this is not what I had in mind and
You
know it.

“And you’ll be with me?” he asked. “You’ll handle all the controls?”

She nodded. “All you’ll have to do is enjoy the ride.”

“And you’ve done this before.”

“All the time. We teach lessons up here in the spring.”

The moon was right in front of them, hovering out there above all that darkness, and as David looked at it his heartbeat stabilized and his spirit slowly filled with peace. He had stood that day on the roof ready to jump to his death, and now here he was standing on a cliff about to jump into his life. He already felt more alive than he ever had before, and he owed it all to June. If she told him he could flap his wings and fly he should leap off this cliff without question and give it a try.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “I want to fly with you.”

June hopped up and down and clapped her hands. “Hip hip hooray!” she said. “David Hadley’s decided to live today. Come here and let me fit your harness.”

She retrieved a bag from beside the glider and took out harnesses and helmets. She geared him up carefully, using the flashlight to inspect every buckle and clip. Her small, strong hands tugging and tightening the straps made him feel somehow very safe.

Once he was all set, she put her own harness on, quickly and
efficiently, as if she’d done it hundreds of times. Then she led him to the glider and clipped him in.

“Okay, lie down,” she said. “Let’s do a hang check.”

He went prone and let the harness take his weight. It felt similar to flying on the wire, but more comfortable because the harness actually fit.

“You’re locked in,” she said, going through a verbal checklist. “You’ve got a main. You’ve got a backup. Lines are clean. Now my turn. Locked. Main. Backup. Lines. Okay.” She unclipped the glider from the carabineer that had fastened it to the cliff. Then she stood David up beside her and lifted the glider by its guide bar off the ground. “Now,” she said, “just hold on to me and run. I’ll be right here beside you.”

“How far do I run?”

“Until your legs lift off and you’re kicking air.”

“I’m pretty heavy; what if it doesn’t lift?”

“Then just keep running until we run right off the cliff.”

Oh, that’s reassuring, he thought, the sarcasm audible even in his mind. But he didn’t say anything. He just took a deep breath.

“I’ll count three,” she said, “and then we’ll step, step, and run. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said. “But give me a moment first.”

“You just tell me when you’re ready.”

But David knew this was the type of thing for which you could never be ready. It was more like something you did when you had fully internalized “Oh, what the hell!” as a kind of personal philosophy. June was holding up the glider, and David’s arm was around her waist. He laughed to himself. This is a hell of a length to go to just to get your arms around a girl, he thought. He was talking to the teenage boy he had morphed back into as he came up that mountain trail, and he realized that it was the first time he had let himself talk to or even think
of that kid since the accident. And so it was that standing on a cliff clipped into a hang glider with June, bathed in the clean light of a full moon, David Hadley began to heal a wound that had haunted him for thirty-eight years.

“I’m ready,” he finally said. And when he said it he meant more than just flying. He was ready to live again.

“Oh, good,” June said. “This thing was getting heavy. Okay now, just relax and enjoy the ride. Here we go. One, two, three—step, step, run.”

They ran together down the steep slope, a mismatched pair of smiling fiftysomething kids beneath a giant moonlit wing. The glider rose up, the harnesses caught, and suddenly David was running on nothing but air. By grace or by God he didn’t know, but they were flying. They were flying right into the moon.