Hayden, Sean C.

English

SWOSU Digital Commons (Southwestern Oklahoma State University)

Volume 26Issue 1 Spring/Summer Article 66-15-2007The Way StationSean C. HaydenFollow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/westviewPart of the Fiction Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Photography Commons, and the PoetryCommonsThis Fiction is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals atSWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Westviewby an authorized administrator of SWOSU Digital Commons. For moreinformation, please contact phillip.fitzsimmons@swosu.edu.Recommended CitationHayden, Sean C. (2007) "The Way Station," Westview: Vol. 26 : Iss. 1 , Article 6.Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/westview/vol26/iss1/6The Way StationLub dub, lub dub, lub dub, tub dub. That’s my heartbeat, he thought. That 's the sound of the blood in my arteries, echoing in my eardrums. Goose bumps prickled the back of his neck as the sweat he'd accumulated while climbing over the fence evaporated in the cold night air. I feel alive, Chris thought, I feel so frickin’ alive. The sad truth was that he felt more alive in that moment, clinging to the outside of the suicide-prevention fence at the apex of the George Washington Bridge, ready to hurl himself backwards into the endless night, than he had at any time over the past ten years. That was the Catch-22.It’s not an uncommon phenomenon. The family and friends of the chronically suicidal will often re­port a complete turnaround in mood and demeanor during the days before an actual suicide. So much so that those who witnessed it would believe the person to be on the mend and no longer at risk. There is something about the feeling of control that comes with having finally made a decision that invigorates the suicidal and lightens their normally bleak outlook. That paradox of emotion, that life- affirming feeling of self-determination, has caused many would-be suicides to pause in the crucial moment and rethink their course.Christopher Manning, now fraught with that same internal conflict, hung in the frigid wind, clinging with numb fingers to the outside of a fence 220 feet above the Hudson River’s black icy water. He'd hung there long enough for a passing motor­ist to see him and call 911. Long enough for the fire and police departments to arrive. Long enough for the bridge to be closed down. In truth, he was beginning to feel like an ass. How much money, he wondered, is the City of New York spending on me right now? Two paramedics were standing on the bridge on the opposite side of the fence, trying to reach through and fasten a safety line to his belt.“Don’t touch me, or I'll jump,” Christophertold the young paramedics. “I mean it, guys: back off."Chris was surprised at how young they were. Neither one of them looked as though he’d been shaving for more than a few years. They seemed like nice kids, with kind honest faces, and Chris felt bad about bothering them. These poor saps have better things to do than hang around on this bridge in the freezing cold, he thought. What if there's a fire somewhere and these guys are tied up here with me? That giddy feeling of self-deter­mination was beginning to wane, and Chris sud­denly remembered all the reasons he’d wanted to die in the first place. Enough is enough, he said to himself. I’m going. But just as he bent his knees and prepared to leap backward into the rushing wind, another thought occurred to him. What if these guys feel like it’s their fault? What if they blame themselves and can’t work anymore due to the emotional trauma?“This isn’t your fault,” Chris yelled to the young paramedics and hurled himself into the night. The first thing Chris noticed was how over­whelming the roar of the wind became. All other sounds were instantly drowned in the totality of its voice. The second thing he noticed was that minute details now jumped out with amazing clarity. He saw a single bead of sweat standing out, defying the cold, on the brow of the younger paramedic, saw the flashing red lights from the fire tuck, cap­tured and refracted in that tiny, salty jewel. He saw himself reflected in the paramedic’s eye, saw his body growing smaller and receding into the dark pupil, even as the paramedic’s face grew smaller and receded from his vision.It’s true what they say, he had time to think; in the moment before death, you have time to think about your entire life. Falling, spinning through space, he watched his life spread out before him in a panoramic vista. The preeminent themes were70 W E S T V I E Wby Sean C. Haydenfailure, selfish behavior, and weakness of character. It was difficult to put his finger on where it had all gone wrong. There he was as a little boy, happy and confident, and there he was as a junkie who had in some way betrayed everyone he’d ever been close to. He could see no tipping point, no rapid down­ward spiral, just a long series of bad choices.When Christopher Manning’s body broke the surface of the Hudson River, he actually felt him­self bounce, felt his body rising up a full twelve inches above the water before falling again and disappearing beneath the choppy waves. In that moment, between water and air, life and death. New York and New Jersey, Chris remembered a certain fish he’d seen 23 years before.When Chris was just a boy, before his life had begun its slow decay, he’d been fishing with his father. They were in a rowboat on a lake some­where in New Hampshire. His father had reeled in a smallish bass and removed the barbed steel hook. They would scale and gut the fish right in the boat and pack them in a big red cooler under crushed ice. That was how you got the freshest filets. Be­fore gutting a fish, his father would hold it by the tail and whack it once, quick and strong, againstthe side of the boat. As Christopher’s father tried to slap the life from this particular fish, however, he lost hold, and the fish flipped into the air after striking the boat’s side. Chris saw the fish rising, saw it silhouetted against the blue morning sky, saw it catch the morning sunshine on its silvery scales as it fell back to the lake from which it had been hauled. It did not flap the way a live fish will flap upon the floor of a boat. It was more of a stunned, stiff vibration, the way a diving board snaps and quivers when a diver has leapt from its end. Chris watched the fish shudder and twitch as it sank head first, spiraling downward, stunned and dying, struggling to right itself, and disappeared in the murky lake.Chris saw that fish now, as he sank head first through the cold black water. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch," the fish said, still twitching and vibrating, holding Christopher with its round unblinking eye. “I guess I should have thought of that when I went for that fat worm of yours."The darkness eventually gave way to a gray, dreary light, and Chris found himself standing on his feet. He was standing in some sort of room, dimly lit and crammed tight with people. WarmPhoto (detal) by Joel KendallW E S T V I E W 7 1Sean C. Haydenbodies pushed against his own from every direc­tion. Caught in the slow, jostling, forward momen­tum of the crowd, Chris shuffled along, still unable to see his surroundings clearly. It was humid, the air stagnant, and people were sweating. His first coherent thought after hitting the Hudson was: This place smells worse than a packed subway car in August. The crowd continued trudging slowly forward. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, Chris reasoned that he was walking in some sort of queue. Looking up, he saw a sign that said, “'Customs and Immigration Terminal.”Christopher grew nervous. Where the hell am I? he wondered, the word Hell suddenly ringing in his ears. Looking about himself he scrutinized, curiously, the faces surrounding him. There were people wearing strange-colored robes, some in business suits, and still others completely naked. To his left, a tiny man in a grass skirt, who looked as though he'd just stepped out of a Bolivian rainfor­est, whittled a stick with a bone knife. To his right, a man in an Arabian headdress distractedly stroked his bushy black beard with one hand. There was a fat woman in front of him in some sort of African dress, who smelled as though she hadn’t bathed in weeks. Everyone shuffled along in silence. They all seemed to be used to waiting in long, crowded, slow-moving lines. Chris, however, was not. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic. He was about to ask the Arab if he knew where they were headed when he suddenly found himself at the end of the line.In front of him now loomed a large wooden desk, behind which sat a man dressed exactly like the Customs and Immigration officers at JFK Air­port. There was an empty chair in front of the desk, and the officer was motioning for Chris to sit down. Not sure what else to do. he took a seat."Religion?” the officer said w ithout introduc­tion."I'm sorry?” Chris asked, taken aback by his abruptness."Your religion, please."“Oh, right. Well, I guess I don’t really have one.”“Ah,” the immigration officer said with a heavy sigh, “one of those.” He riffled under his desk for a moment, muttering beneath his breath, withdrew a pink form and placed it on the table between them. Chris stared at the pink paper, baffled, not actually reading the words, just looking at the document and trying to make some sense of the situation, when the officer handed him a pen, saying, “You’ll have to pick one.”The document contained a list of words ar­ranged alphabetically. Chris scanned the list: Animism, Baalism, Buddhism, Christianity, Con­fucianism....“Just check the box to the right of your chosen religion and sign the bottom, please,” the officer said, looking more and more annoyed as the min­utes passed. “As you can see, there’s quite a few folks behind you. We really haven’t got all day.”“But I don’t know much about them. I don’t think I’m ready to choose right now. Couldn’t I have more time to consider?”“You’ve had thirty-four years to consider, Mr. Manning. Now check a box and sign the bot­tom.”“Well,” Chris said, “I guess I’ve always thought Buddhism sounded nice...peaceful or something. Do you think that’s a good one?” The officer an­swered the question with a cold hard stare, slowly grinding his teeth. *Holding his breath, Chris looked down at the pink form, paused for a moment, then checked off the box to the right of the word “Buddhism,” and signed his name at the bottom.“Excellent,” the officer said, smiling. “Through the doors, please.” He cocked his thumb at a pair of black double doors behind him. Chris stood on legs that felt like they were made of Jell-o, and walked slowly around the big wooden desk. He glanced back several times at the long line of people, among whom he'd so recently waited in anticipation. No one seemed interested in him. They stood with72  w e  ST v i e wT he Way Stationbored, tired expressions on their faces, shifting their weight from foot to foot, yawning, staring up at the ceiling with its flickering fluorescent lights, or down at their shoes, if they were wearing shoes; many were barefoot. As he reached the rear of the desk and stood behind the officer’s back and be­fore the ominous black doors with their gleaming stainless steel push bars, he heard the officer say, “Next” in his brash monotone.Christopher Manning pushed through the double door of fate, and into the blinding light.Squinting through the white glare, Chris saw only shapes and streaks of color. When he was at last able to open his eyes fully and without pain, he found himself standing in the middle of a lush green meadow, with a cloudless rolling blue sky above him. Wildflowers grew in thick tangles around his feet, and dotted the field with splashes of yellow and red. Several small trees, bursting with snow-white blossoms, broke the horizon. The air was scented and sweet and Chris felt all of his fear and apprehension evaporate. There was no sign of the black doors or the humid and overcrowded Customs and Immigration Terminal through which he had passed.Not far ahead of him, seeming alien in the present surroundings, he saw another desk, behind which sat two elderly Asian men dressed in the traditional red and yellow robes of the Buddhist monk. The monks smiled calmly, apparently wait­ing for him to approach, but unlike the immigration officer, they did not appear impatient. Chris walked through the soft, knee-high grass. He stopped a few feet from the desk. This time there was no chair.“Good afternoon, Mr. Manning,” the monks said simultaneously. Their faces were tanned and wrinkled, but despite their advanced age, the two men seemed to radiate a kind of youthful vitality. Chris was suddenly sure that he’d made the right choice when he’d filled out the pink form for the immigration officer. He quickly decided that he wanted to be just like these men, to have the same inner peace they seemed to possess, to be imbuedwith the same serenity. Chris smiled broadly and asked, “Is this heaven?” hopeful the answer would be yes. Spending eternity lazing in the sweet air of this meadow, Chris thought, under the benevolent gaze of these tranquil monks, would be no bad thing.“No,” the monks answered in perfect unison. “This is nowhere. This is a way station only. This is in between.”“Are you going to take me to heaven?” Chris asked, still hopeful. If this is just the way station, he thought, heaven must really be something.“You are a long way from completion, Chris­topher Manning, a long way indeed. You must continue the process of birth, death, and rebirth. But don’t be afraid: when you are ready, you will shed the cycle of rebirth permanently, just as surely as you temporarily shed your mortal coil when you struck the icy water beneath the George Washing­ton Bridge.” Chris wasn’t exactly sure what they meant, but his hopes began to flag. The way they said the exact same thing at the exact same time was kind of creepy. He couldn't decide which one he should be looking at when they spoke to him, or which one to address when he spoke to them.“I’m not sure that I'm following you,” Chris said, directing half of his comment to one of them and half to the other.“We’re talking about reincarnation, Christo­pher. You’re going to be born again.”“Bom again?”“Yes, born again.”Chris hadn’t considered this. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong religion after all. Would they send him back as a rat or something? Then again, maybe this could work out okay, maybe in his next life he’d be a movie star or the president. It all seemed like a big risk. He’d really been enjoying the idea of lounging around in the meadow.“Do I have to? Couldn’t I just stay here?”“Christopher,” the monks said slowly, patiently, serenely, and in eerie unison. “You have so much to learn. You couldn’t possibly cross over now.W E S T V I E  W 73Sean C. HaydenYou're going to be reborn as a girl who loses her pet cat to cancer. The pain of that loss will inspire you to become a veterinarian, where you must learn important lessons in compassion which have thus far eluded you.”“But this isn't fair,” Chris said. “That guy in the Immigration Office didn’t tell me anything about this.”“Karma and Darma exist outside the realm of fair and unfair. It is the order of the universe. It’s like physics. Would you say it's unfair for water to boil, under standard conditions, at two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit, and freeze at thirty-two, rather than vice-versa? Would you say it’s unfair that the rate of acceleration for objects falling from the George Washington Bridge is thirty-two feet per second-per second? This is not a question of fairness, Mr. Manning.”“Can I change religions then? I'd  really rather live forever in paradise. The Moslems have something like that, don’t they? With virgins and everything.”“I’m afraid it’s too late, Mr. Manning, but you are free to choose a different religion during your next life.”The monks began to chant. They sang in deep throaty tones, their syllables bouncing, rising and falling in soft playful rhythms. A deep sleepiness stole over Christopher. He watched the monks, justbarely aware of what they had been talking about only moments before. Their lips moved in perfect syncopation, but their songs were completely dif­ferent, yet somehow interdependent.Fat bumblebees tumbled and rose about his head, their thick lazy buzz mingling with the far-off chirping of birds. Sunshine warmed his skin and the grass seemed to be growing softer beneath his feet. Christopher felt himself sinking to his knees, his eyes growing heavier and heavier. The monk’s lilting chant carried him down.The rhythmic chant gave way to a new sound. Something deep and primal and comforting. He felt at once both wrapped tight, as though swaddled, and infinite, flowing and weightless. The sound was like a temple drum, like a marching column, like a beating heart. Yes, a heartbeat. I’m in the womb, he thought, I’m going to be bom again. But even as understanding came, he felt it slipping away. Memory and language began to evaporate like dew drops in the morning sun. For a moment, he struggled against it, fought the fleeting sensation of un-becoming, his sense of self flickering, and then...and then there was only the sound. Con­stant, warm, protecting, and total. The sound was everything, the sound was the universe. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub, lub dub.74 W E S T V I E W

The Way Station

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The Way Station

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