Flamingo Man and the Abundant Chasms

Everything falls apart, and we should have known the world would, too. Back when the chasms were just tiny cracks in asphalt, Izzy and I would go out for long walks, stepping over the jagged lines in the street as a game. We were out there on a pretty fall day, leaves floating down from the tree branches in a slight breeze, and Izzy asked, “Where the hell do these cracks come from?” She was around five then, but it was the weekend, and correcting her language was weekday parenting.

What could I do? Tell her the world was going to end? Did the planet tell itself it was tired of these humans and then split apart in slow motion?

Should I have told her, “Don’t bother learning those letters because all your words will fall between the gaps between us when we’re all living on our own little islands.” Of course not. So instead, I said, “Giants crawl out of the ground at night and stomp all around. Them big old feet splinter the ground apart like that.” As if that was any better.

She hopped over a crack and looked up at the sky, her face contorting as if accepting this new, horrifying fact. That evening, when her mother asked if she wanted to sit on the porch, Izzy said, “No thanks, Mom. I don’t want to be eaten alive by monsters.” The stare I got from my wife took a few months off my life.

The ground quaked once a month, each time making the cracks bigger until they got to be two feet wide and twenty feet deep. One day, on my way to work, my truck fell in up to the bumper. I had to wrap the truck’s winch around an oak tree to pull it out. Trust me. You wouldn’t want to fall into one because ain’t nobody was going to pull you out for a while. Tree roots jutted into the open spaces between and curled back into the dirt like stationary worms.

I was a line worker back when electricity was working before, and those smart boys over in Washington got us stitching the ground back together since we were used to working with tight metal lines and heights. Just had to learn to climb. We rappelled down into the cracks, drilled a long screw with a hoop sticking out of the wall, and looped a cord through made of this fancy new metal. Then, we spun around to the other side to do it over and over. The plan was that someday, when we were all close to finished, they’d tighten these lines, and the tears would come together like sewing back the seam of your favorite jeans. Or so they said. Keep in mind, these are the same folks who couldn’t decide if coffee makes you live forever or gives you cancer. I heard that day was coming soon when they’d start tightening. Real soon. Which was good because we couldn’t wait much longer.

I was getting ready for work one day, and my wife, Mary Beth, was still lying in bed well after the sun came up, just staring at a picture of herself from years ago in an elegant dress, a banner reading “Miss Marrion” wrapped around her shoulder and diagonally across her chest, and a tiara on her head. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

Heading downstairs, I stepped over where our home split down the middle. When the crack was small, I strapped duct tape across it, creating one long gray line dividing the house down the floor, up the wall, across the ceilings, but by then it was so big you had to hop across to get to the living room. There was no point in fixing nothing since it’ll just get worse. The wall along the stairs, where we’d use to have family pictures, was bare from the quakes flinging them off the wall, shattering them on the ground. Ain’t no reason to put them back up over and over again. Too much work. The sofa teetered over the crevice.

On my way out the front, Chaz was waiting in the yard. He was a small man, looking like an emaciated Ken doll snatched up right out the box. I wasn’t worried about old Chaz, he’s just my old lady’s pageant coach. Fellas like that ain’t a real threat to stealing your woman, if you know what I mean. He had a rope wrapped around his shoulder with a grapple attached to the end, and he had a long board next to him that most folks carry around as a bridge.

“Mary Beth’s still in bed.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“What’re y’all working on today?”

“Beatboxing.”

“That’s a talent that’ll get the judges' attention. I’ll be getting along now, Chaz. You get in there and make us a champion.”

She’d gotten this idea in her head that when the world was fixed, she could get back into pageants. Except for, you know, older ladies. She wanted to hold onto her youth, cling to it really, even though God’s got an egg timer set, and with every tick, he just sucks up a little beauty back from her to give to someone else. Somebody younger. Still, she’s pretty. When was the last time I told her? Can’t remember. Long time.

Farther out in the front yard, Pinkie was missing. It was this plastic yard flamingo, bleached white from the sun, small hints of pink hidden underneath the folds of the fat feathers that you can only see if you know what you’re looking for, like a secret. There were black flakes still on the orb of eyes that I’d sometimes chip off with a thumbnail to spur on its albino state. It was the last thing I had from my brother. If the Gators won, then I’d have to have it in my yard. If the Bulldogs won, then he’d have it in his. Now it’s supposed to be up near my mailbox forever, like a tombstone.

Back at work, I strung up the lines in the chasms as usual. Most days were normal, but this time, I was working on the line, and there was a big shake. One of the chasms splits right at the edge of this house, and the side wall crashed down into it. I swear to God, a hundred cats poured out, so many of them that they was spilling down into the chasm, around the edges, up the sides of the wall, up to the roof. Everywhere. Like ants. Then this old lady came out in a little purple nightgown, peered over the edge, and her face said she might just jump into the hole herself. I tracked down one of those little furballs and brought ‘em back to her. “Sorry fella,” I whispered in its ear.

She was mighty grateful, and I could tell by her grip that the poor cat weren’t never going to leave the cage formed by her liver-spotted fingers.

For weeks after that, it rained every day. Hot as hell, too, and all those cracks in the soil leads to lots of mosquitos that make my skin crawl as they pass by my ear just to let me know that the blood tax collectors have arrived. After getting back home, I rummaged through the closet, making lots of noise, on purpose, like a dumpster panda going through all our stuff.

“What’s all that racket?” Mary Beth asked.

“Honey, you seen Pinkie? It ain’t in the yard no more.”

“Stop, you’re making a mess.”

“Well, I got to find it.”

“I threw your stupid flamingo down into a chasm.”

So I yelled at her. Lots of hurtful things. Things I meant but didn’t mean, too. She did the same back. We built a two-sided mirror of hate tonight. I slept on the teetering couch in the living room that night when the ground shook with another quake. In a way, we were blessed that the house was already split in half.

#

We used to have partners rather than working solo, but the Washington boys got tired of us complaining. Sitting there watching wires while the other guy did all the work was so boring. Besides, we covered more ground split up. Sometimes it was just me and Toby Keith hanging off over the edge, none of that new country music written up by pop singers that ate at a Cracker Barrel once.

The chasms weren’t always so deep, neither. Maybe twenty feet. You could see the bottom, easy. But other times, it stretched down to the abyss, and a cool breeze rose, chilling you to the bone, like Satan was blowing you a kiss.

Anyway, this one time, I was getting to work down in a chasm where a stream used to be, near a small bridge with a big crack down the middle, which would fall apart any second. A commotion stirred on up there, but I could barely hear it because I was singing along (...I ain’t as good as I once was...), when sirens shook me out of my work.

A man, with a greying beard so patchy it looked like it was splitting apart, too, stood at the top of the bridge and looked down into the chasm like he dropped his wallet down in it. This was one of those bottomless cracks straight to the bottom of the Earth. A police officer shouted at him through a megaphone, while another one walked up to him on the bridge. The man mounted the bridge’s rail like a rodeo cowboy climbing atop a bull before the gate opened.

I couldn’t hear my music with all this going on, so I turned it off and yelled, “Do a flip, you little bitch.” I’d felt bad as soon as the words came out. A pit formed in my stomach that I done my best to ignore.

It got quiet. Real quiet. You could hear Satan’s kiss whirling up from below, progressing from a simple smooch to something a little more French. A row of onlookers now lined up at the railing, and I didn’t think they even realized I was down there until I hollered at ‘em. One of those cops looked awful mad, probably wondering how he could lock me up. But he couldn’t because I ain’t done nothing wrong. Legally wrong anyway.

Finally, the fella smiled at me, climbed down off the rail, and walked safely off the bridge. The officer with the megaphone glared at me and shook her head.

“You’re welcome,” I said before turning music back on. How do you like me now?

I still should have picked my words more mindfully with that man hanging on the edge like that. I’d done it before with my brother, a fact that ate him up from the inside out, after he shot someone.

He was a damn good shot, too. We went out to Skip’s Indoor Range once, and he unloaded a whole clip into the “Mr. Bad Guy” target silhouette. I swear to God, there was only one hole in it. He had Robin Hood’d, bulls-eyed it twelve times.

Love for his country drove him to the service, but he wanted to kill bad guys, too. So, you can imagine how disappointed he was to get stationed on an island in the Pacific rather than a combat outpost, though the rest of us was happy about that. Then one day, this was before the chasms, he’s stationed at the checkpoint outside the base, lots of people walking around, and a truck came barreling toward the gate. They trained for this, y’know, vehicles filled with explosives and whatnot, so he aimed his rifle. Bang, bang, bang. All his shots missed high. He hit this lady holding her baby girl’s hand instead. Truck slammed into the guard house. Turned out to be severed brake wires. Freak accident.

After a few months, my brother called me with a cocktail of whiskey and Ambien in his belly, talking about how even if he’d shot straight, he would have killed somebody innocent. How killing the driver might’ve made him feel better, like at least he was good at something. “You need to man up.” That’s the last thing I said to him. That fall, driving home for Thanksgiving after a deployment, he crossed a little bridge while driving over a creek when a chasm opened up underneath. The bridge fell apart, and a swirling abyss sucked his whole car down to the bottom. The divers searched for three days and only found a pink flamingo.

#

Returning from work early, feeling like I had done my part to save the world for the day, and the house was awful quiet. Upstairs, my bedroom door was still cracked open. Inside, Mary Beth was in bed with Chaz, both snoring, their clothes piled on the floor, like she’d wanted me to find ‘em. I felt like I was supposed to be mad, you know we seen all these movies and TV all our lives that teach us what to do in a moment like this. But I wasn’t angry. Just cold inside.

I sat on the corner of the bed near her legs. I had to make a big scene, ain’t I? Kill ‘em both? Throw ‘em down the chasms?

The old picture of her wearing the “Miss Marion” banner sat on the nightstand, and I couldn’t help but think about the first time I saw her in a pageant dress. I served hors d'oeuvres wearing one of those stupid tuxedos, still in high school. I caught her sobbing behind the building while I carried a bag of garbage to toss out. Guess I was bold back then, I popped a squat right next to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” I saw a little yellow badge with “Second Runner-Up” on the side.

“Gosh, it must not be a beauty pageant if they ain’t giving first place to the most beautiful one in there.”

She laughed, smiled at me, and wiped away a tear. That might have been the last time I told her she was pretty.

That was forever ago. Now in bed next to Chaz, her right leg had escaped from under the covers, and on the thigh was something new. A tattoo? I got a closer look, kind of dark in there, squinted at the thing, but it was just a net of blue veins. You can slather makeup all over the outside, but we’re rotting from the inside out with every season. I traced a finger along the outline of that web of spider vein, not thinking they was ugly at all, just acknowledging their existence.

“You’re beautiful.” I patted her leg. “There, I said it.”

She didn’t move, not an inch. She’s a doggone deep sleeper.

So, I left ‘em be just like that, figuring I could go sleep in my truck. The rain was pouring down so hard I about checked for an old man building a giant boat, and someone had beat me to my own shelter. Izzy had the driver seat leaned all the way back, forcing me to hop in the passenger side. “Where the hell have you been?” I asked.

“Around.” Her teenage face had frozen mid transformation between a child and adult, her mom’s face but with my crooked nose slapped in the middle. An unfortunate combination, but it’s not like anybody lets you pick. “I saw Pinkie in one of the chasms not far from here.” Just those words sent a wave of relief through me like that last push out of a kidney stone.

“That’s great. Maybe once this rain lets up you can show me where.”

Izzy nodded and closed her eyes. The peace lasted all of thirty seconds.

An alarm blared over the rhythmic pelting of rain against the glass through the radio. Something I’d never heard before. Then a female voice cut in. Initiate Operation Humpty Dumpty. Then the radio started a countdown to the tightening.

“Dad, Pinkie’s going to get trapped.” I nodded and she knew what that meant. “Follow me,” she said. We could barely see a truck’s length through all the rain. Izzy led me to a chasm and pointed down. Water had begun collecting at the bottom, and in its own puddle was the flamingo with a tree root wrapped around it.

We set up my gear and I repelled down the wall. It was like walking down a wall of mud. The earth literally wept with droplets of water forming in the dirt. My boots slopped through as I guided myself down before a geyser shot out from the wall, pushing mud into my eyes, up my nose. My stomach leaped up in my torso, the tickling sensation merely an omen before my arm hit the hard root wrapped around the flamingo. The pain came quick and a wave of nausea raced down to my belly before I had let loose my insides into a puddle.

There was another earthquake, and the metal braid I had spent years looping through the chasms all around, went taut, then strained. Then something I’ll never forget, the earth moaned, a deep sound that could make your heart stop beating, like we done gave the ground itself a stomachache. I couldn’t tell if it was working, but I wouldn’t be able to climb my way up. My good arm clutched the damn flamingo, while the other dangled at my side. There was yelling or screaming from above, but I couldn’t make out the words, and honestly, I stopped giving a shit the second my arm broke. The chasm closed slowly. The water rose higher and higher. The flamingo was my life float. When I had just about given up, a strong tug on the rope began pulling me up as I slid up along the muddy wall. After being yanked over the top, Chaz stood over me, his biceps tighter than the corded rope he pulled me up by, his whole body summoning up a strength you never thought could’ve been in there.

I could barely say, “Thank you,” before the chasm slowly closed shut.

#

About a year later, I pulled out of the driveway of my new place, leaving behind a white flamingo near the mailbox. I arrived at the old cat lady’s house, which had a temporary wall up where the last one crashed, and dozens of cats stared at me from the closed windows. I hovered in the old bucket truck doing my former profession of getting the lights back on. From a higher vantage point, I stared straight down the line from where a chasm used to be. Different types of grass grew on either side of the divide straight down for miles. The scars would never leave, seams ran through hills and streets, bent and broken. Nothing fit quite right anymore, and maybe it never would.

I made the final connection, and the neighborhood’s lights came on at once. Folks came outside and applauded, hugged, and cheered. The cat lady called me a hero, and I felt my cheeks warm as I shook my head. The good moods were crushed when the earth shook very lightly. A reminder that beneath our feet, the world would always want to tear itself to shreds.