Three By Will Mayo

It was a hard cold winter back when the world appeared about to fall apart. When the Ruskies took aim at us with all their atomic weapons and double-digit inflation ruled the land. A time of countless sorrows, yes, but also a time of innocence. And here the cowboy and the latter day hippie stood in the midst of the wilderness, taking it all in as if in moments like these their lives would stand or fall like the waterfall, all frozen over before them. Or so it appeared.

“All right, dude,” said the latter day hippie, in his ill-fitting parka and tie-dyed T-shirt and platform shoes. “We’re here,” taking a long slow toke off his joint. “Now what?”

“Now, we climb,” said the cowhand, taking a sip from the flask at his side.

“Uh…why?”

“Because it’s there.”

“There?! Hey, I can dig that,” replied the would-be hippie to the cowhand.

And climbed they did over a pile of rock and ice that wasn’t really much bigger than the two of them put together but that, in time and with the passing of countless moments, would seem far bigger than, say, Niagara and Victoria Falls combined. The cowboy climbed hand over hand, placing his feet into just the right passages with the ease of a young warrior in his prime. Whilst the man who would be cool fumbled there among the ice and rocks as if he knew what he was doing but really didn’t.

“Hey, Charlie,” called out the hippie.

“Yeah?” replied the youth above him.

“I think I broke a heel.”

Laughter thundered then among the rocks, mixing in with falling sleet and snow. “Sheet, the boy broke a heel. Hold your horses,” he said while continuing to climb.

A short while later, the boy called out to the man (who, in truth, was a couple of years younger than him), “This is some wicked wind, eh?” A pause and then, “Oh, my goodness!”

“There go my glasses! I can’t see!”

“Hang on, we’re almost there,” said Charlie as they fumbled over the final stretch of ice and rocks. Charlie pulled the other boy up onto the top of the frozen falls, saying, “Here, now. Take a look.”

“I can’t see anything without my glasses.”

“Shoot. You ain’t missing much,” replied the cowboy while gazing into the blizzard, his own eyes blinded by the snow and whiskey and Columbian Gold.

“Okay, well then, now what?” said the longhaired, scraggly-bearded young boy beside the man.

“We go down.”

“And why’s that?”

“Why do you think?”

Then the briefest of pauses, followed by: “Because it’s there!” They hugged one another in the way only boys of a certain age can for a minute or two and then started back down the icy face of those falls, laughing and joking and fumbling their way along with the gladness of fools. When they reached the bottom, the longhaired youth said to his friend, “That was fun! Want to do it again?”

“Nope,” said Charlie. “Already done that. Let’s try another.”

And so they journeyed toward the crossroads, countless adventures between them already, many more to come. Until, at last, their paths divided, each headed on a separate road through life. The longhaired boy, whose name, by the way, was John, would grow old and gray and bald and Republican, with stocks in half a dozen banks and a portfolio of ex-wives many would envy. While the boy who once led the way up the Old Broad’s Face (as the falls were known in those days), would tend to his horse ranch in Arizona while taking up the proud cause of Alcoholics Anonymous, leading many a good little boy astray with his righteous breath as he tended his own growing brood of bastard sons and daughters.

One day, it came to pass, John was busy marrying his third wife while divorcing his second and paying child support on the offspring of his first trip down the aisle when he happened to think of Charlie on his mesa out West and remembered that night at the falls when there seemed to mean so much more than ice and snow and rock. A place beyond it all, where their journeys, mutual for a time, never quite managed to reach.

On impulse, he looked up the number and gave Old Charlie a ring. “Charles Montague, please” he said to the mestizo saddlegirl who answered the phone. “Just a minute,” she replied.

He heard the shuffling of sheets and cowbells among the office machinery and then an unfamiliar voice came on the line.

“Hello. This is Charles.”

“Charles, this is John, John Smith in New York. Thinking of you.”

“Oh, yeah, John, what can I do for you?”

“Do you remember that day at the falls? Do you remember there?”

“What?! You some kind of nut or something? What do you mean by there?”

“THERE, Charles. Those rocks we climbed. The life we lived when we were young.”

“Listen, mister, I don’t know who you are or where you’re calling from. But don’t call here again. Obviously, you’re too far gone for me.”

“Charlie…”

Then John heard a click on the line, a sudden dial tone, as he placed his silver handled receiver back in its cradle. He felt something small and remote pass within him as a tear ran down his cheek. No going back. He rose from his seat and kissed his third wife good night and then stood there in the shadows of his mansion, thinking of all the might’ve beens and could’ve beens before settling in deep within the sheets for today. Tomorrow could wait. He made love to his bride with an urgency she’d never seen in him before. From the rocking of the bed, he felt the falls break and overflow the banks. Once more. With feeling.