​Basin Full of Stars

It felt like the world had been condensed into a pin, the weight of the whole dark world. First it had slipped into the smooth clear skin of water, the ripples silently spreading out and out, concentric worlds unto themselves. Then it had sunk deeper and deeper, trailing a jetstream of bubbles, until finally it found the murky bottom and almost bounced with the sort of sonority only fish and dogs could hear. The car went on, the headlights carving through the dark, and Jonathan was watching the little yellow lines jumping beneath the wheels.

The trees came up on both sides, their shadows warping and wavering and twisting with the light. To the left, a ditch ran along the road, then curved up steeply to form an embankment on the other side. Jonathan didn’t know where the road went; he imagined it would take him somewhere he knew. He kept looking at the passenger seat, expecting Julia to be there, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t, but—

Sometimes he’d see her, a phantom trace of her colored macrame hat, or her plaid jacket. Just a glimpse, a single frame, and then she was gone.

On the right, there was a tree-lined hill, which marched up and up, steepening the higher it went, until finally it carved out into a sheer rock-faced bluff. The car went on, and he was listening to it now: bowmp-bowmp-bowmp, it went. Faintly, the radiator hissed; the heat coming through it whushed like a soft whisper. Jonathan opened the window and the air came wuthering in, almost shaking the car.

The side roads were empty and cold and spilling in light. There were lamps, but their black stems were invisible—the only things left were orbs of color, floating. Along one of the roads was a patch of marsh, probably would have frogs if it wasn’t so cold.

The side roads went by one by one, and then they were gone. In the mirror, the lamps were the last to go.

The road went up, steepening, and the car jerked as it shifted gears. Coming up it, the treetops became visible, then they too were gone, and the only thing left was the sky: black, pitiless, and full of stars. Like so many little sequins. Jonathan fiddled with the radio. There was only static. He looked again at the passenger side, but she still wasn’t there.

A mile later, he pulled off onto the side of the road near Sharon McDonough’s old house. The bridge stood there, stolid and opaque and green and jagged, the silhouettes of the trestles drawn-out by the lamps that went along it. Jonathan had the sense that, looking away, the lamps would go out and then the bridge would vanish, and then the only thing left would be the falls below, the tumid current of the river and its thundering dark whitewater. Or maybe not even that. Maybe there would just be silence. He turned the key in the ignition and opened the car door and got out and closed it behind him. Next to the house, there was a short dirt stretch to the bridge. He heard the falls. He turned on the flashlight and started to walk.

McDonough, an old friend of his father’s, didn’t live there anymore. No one had, not for a while: the house was black and empty and the paint had long been coming off. Walking by it, the pickets of the fence were tangled and crooked and faded like smokers’ teeth.

The sound of the falls got closer and closer, resonating and running up the cliff walls. Sizzzzh-sizzzzzh-sizzzzhh-sizhhhhh, what it sounded like. He could really hear it now. On the other side, about a hundred yards away, the trees stretched out bleak and bone-dry and thin as flagstaffs. A murder of crows went between the branches, then landed, their forms indistinct and scattered like black leaves.

On the bridge Jonathan couldn’t hear a thing. The sound of the water was too loud— Sizzzzh-sizzzzzh-sizzzzhh-sizhhhhh. Except louder now—a terrible sibilance, like the sound the swooping black powerlines running across the bridge would make, if only he could hear them. SIZZZZHHHH-SIZZZHHHH-SIZZZZZZHHHH, it sounded like. It roared and roared and roared, like there was some special kind of hell to pay. It roared to nowhere; it roared on like it had a place to be. It was like something had come into his ears and then went and wrapped around his brain. Then there it stayed. There was no making it go. It was the bridge, it was his brain, it was the night. SIZZZZHHHH-SIZZZHHHH-SIZZZZZZHHHH. There was no making it go.

He was in the middle now, the headwaters rushing on right below him, an interminable drop. He kept walking straight on. Then he veered away, going toward the railing. It was cold to his fingertips, and somehow the air near it was colder. It was the wind—that was it. The wind. It made all his hairs stand on end.

Embedded on the railing was a plaque, which read: June 2nd, 1910. Something about honeysuckle, too. Jonathan looked down.

He wondered what was on the river’s bed. There probably weren’t any crawdad or fish or critters or nothing. What it was made of, then. Probably rock and silt and sediment, all swept-up and compacted, turned over and over, somehow made whole again. He wondered how long it would last, with the water eating away at it. Each current a sawstroke. If the bed went, where would the river go? He imagined it would fall away into the dark, glittering, glimmering in pieces like all the little stars in the great big sky. And then what would be below? What would follow? Would there be another basin to catch it, or would it just fall and fall and keep on falling? He half-wondered if that was what the stars were, just things that fell. From so far off, without point of reference, of course they looked like they stayed the same.

Jonathan looked over the railing, held it tight like some mad ravenous lover, feeling something in his throat. His legs were stiff. Then he opened his mouth and vomited. He watched it fall.

He felt pretty awake now. He looked back at the car and the house and the lamplit road. The lights were paler now and a set of head beams was coming down it.