If He Fell by Kathryn Kulpa

Once there was a boy who fell off a mountain. An accident, or not-accident; a leap into air. Did he wait for someone to catch him?

Help me understand, that boy sang to me once, strumming guitar, and I was young enough to believe it was a song he wrote, just for me. That boy didn’t look like anybody else, or maybe he looked like people from a time I didn’t know, a past that lured by its absences, its gaps: French new wave films, bootleg records in mylar wrappers with hand-written stickers: RARE! UK ONLY!

Help me understand, he sang, and I wanted to.

We rode the bus to the city and drank cappuccino, free-read for hours at the bookstore downstairs before buying one book each: me, poems by Patti Smith; he, plays by Sam Shepard; walked down the street pretending to be them, who we imagined they were. Saw a Humphrey Bogart double feature at a revival theatre, two of us alone in the front row, together in the red velvet, the silver celluloid hush. My parents have no idea where I am right now, I thought with a thrill, not quite of fear. And when Bergman lifted her lips to Bogart I slipped my hand into his and he squeezed it, dryly, briefly, his face intent on the screen.

I don’t know what you want from me, I told him once, and he said: It’s not the obvious thing.

Love meant more than holding hands, his song said. I knew that too. We worked best when we were together but not alone. Had long conversations on steps outside closed banks while across the street, by the noodle restaurant, truck drivers unloaded pallets of Mountain Dew. We looked for neighborhoods whose rough edges hadn’t been sanded down. Found pockets out of time, places only we knew, like the wig shop where we both tried on the pink pageboy. It looks better on you, I told him.

Then, the usual ruptures. Parents’ divorce. Relocation. I heard he dropped out of college. Heard he was working tech on a Broadway show. Years passed. More obvious boyfriends came and went. Once I tried to find him online, thought surely some connection would pop up, but there was nothing. Only the obituary, years later, a few bare lines, not even a photo. HIKER FALLS TO DEATH.

When he fell—if he fell—the world stopped. Time turned backwards like old filmstrips we watched in biology class, bored teachers making dinosaurs crawl back into eggs, men devolve into monkeys. A boy in a black t-shirt and dagger earring strummed a guitar and waited for a hand, finally, that he would hold and keep holding.

Kathryn Kulpa is a New England-based writer with stories in Boudin, Claudine, Fictive Dream, Flash the Court, Ghost Parachute, Moon City Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf. Her work has been chosen for Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions and nominated for Best American Short Stories.