Trepidation on the High Wire:
Cannibalism and Broadened Horizons

Chapter 1: “Jesus Christ”

The phone pulled me reluctantly out of bed. It was an iron-ore grey morning in October, cold, wet, unremarkable. The rain circumspectly fell from the sky and collected in shallow pools accented by the red and orange of the fallen leaves, monumentally ablaze in final throes of photosynthesis, a decaying yet historical testament to a season now fast fading into memory.

“Hello?” I said groggily into the receiver.

On the other end of the line was my mother – a veteran of five children, a failed marriage, and a lifetime of hard work. Her voice was planar and without emotion.

“Hi. Your father died this morning.”

I sat up. My mom has always had the tendency to cut to the chase. She doesn’t dawdle in pretext or salutation.

“Jesus Christ....What? How?”

“In his sleep. A heart attack. Probably never knew what hit him.”

“Poor bastard, “I said. “I’ll miss him. I guess its good he went in his sleep. He had absolutely no tolerance for any sort of discomfort.”

“I know,” she said. And then: “Things weren’t always the best between you two, but just try to remember the good things. When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. When is the funeral?”

“Sometime soon. Just try to get a flight and come out here as soon as possible. We all miss you,” she said and hung up.

And with that, my day began. It was true that my father and I had not always had the best of relationship. I blamed him for a lot of things, a lot of really bad things. My father was selfish, insincere. He said the right things but never had the courage or intention of following through. I blamed him for my parent’s divorce, I blamed him for my mental instability and I blamed him for making five children and then deciding that fatherhood was a part time job. Most of all, however, I blamed my father for the fact that I woke up every day with a pit in my stomach, feeling worthless and deadpan and vacant.

I got out of bed, sat down at my desk, and looked out the window. It was funny that my mom commented on my oft-capricious relationship with the man I called father. Well, less funny than sad. I have never seen people fight with each other the way my parents did. I can remember being woken up at 2 in the morning to find my dad laying on the ground with his head split open. A victim of one of my mother's infamous sneak attacks, he was spluttering out a string of curses and threats that, even to my inexperienced ears, cut through the air with a mutinous, if not wholly mordant sophistication. I can also remember the night where my father stood over my mother with a bloody phone in his hand – the phone bloodied because he, of course, ripped it from her hands and smashed it on her face. Seeing my mother helplessly lying on the floor – a tangled heap of hair, and tears, and blood - should have awakened the valorous ideals of gallant protectionism. Maybe I should have burned red with anger and come to my mother’s defense; maybe I should have burst into action with a heroic yell and became a two-fisted tempest of youthfully intrepid courageousness. Instead, I prayed for God to save us, or at least, save me. After all, didn’t both my parents deserve this unhappiness, this despondent and violent sphere of life? They picked each other. They didn’t deserve to be saved or forgiven. And anyway, who was I to choose sides? Nature had done that for me: my father was stronger and to him went victory.

But what did I do to deserve this? I was merely a product of the lottery known as genetics, an innocent bystander with the sleep still in his eyes. I was a fucking kid, unable to wrap my mind around the images that played out in front of me. Looking bad, I’m glad that I was the only one of siblings old enough – or perhaps, curious enough – to witness these debacles of bulk domestic pollution.

Unable to think of a more relevant way to mourn the death of my father, I walked over to my desk and sat down. Still in my boxers, hazy and slouching under the weight of the early morning and the almost unreasonable information I had just received, I opened the bureau drawer and began splitting a Swisher Sweet. Carefully, I sliced with my fingernail and gently pushed out the tobacco inside. I licked the savorless casing, the taste of artificial cherry and low quality tobacco flat against my taste buds, and depressed the paper down onto my the face of the desk. I broke up the weed into crumbles of green and red hairs and daintily lined it across the middle of the paper. I folded it over and, using my fingernails, began horizontally creasing the cigar husk. Roll, lick to seal, roll to tighten, lick, tighten, lick. Gently burn the newly formed cylinder and render it finished. Within five minutes, I held the final product in my hand. Rolling it counterclockwise between my index finger and thumb, I lit the blunt. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Repeat. This ones for you, pops. For better or worse, they guy was my father. And despite his faults, I loved him.

After reducing the blunt to an evil smelling stub, I rubbed it out on my desktop ashtray. The smoke grouped and formed a cloud around my ceiling light. I sat back in my office-styled swivel chair and gazed out the window. Still raining, the day was listlessly dull in a comforting sort of way. Cozily uninspired, today was the sort of day meant for mourning. It was seven thirty and the road in front of my house was thick with rush hour traffic. The people on their way to work made me think of my own job: an assistant editor for a trade publication on the flatware industry. While insignificant in scope, it paid the bills. I had long given up on the romantic ideals of importance and prominence and instead settled for the more pedestrian auspices of survival. That’s life, that’s how things work. We can’t all be heroes, right?

Today, however, I would not be going into work. If there is one good thing about your father dying, it’s that you don’t have to go into work. I called my boss, a pudgy middle-aged woman with a southern twang named Suzanne. As far as bosses go, Suzanne wasn’t too bad. She talked a lot and referred to herself in the form of third person pseudonym – she had a tendency to say things like “looks like ole Suze messed the bed on this one” or “I’ll be whipped if Suze didn’t hit the nail on the head” – but other than that, she treated me with an endearing sense of professional reassurance. The phone rang once, twice, three times.

“Hello?”

“Hey Suzanne, this is Michael,” I said in an intentionally morose voice.

Her voice instantly brightened.

“Hi, Mike. What’s up?”

“Well,” I said and let the silence hang pregnantly in the air. “My dad passed away last night. I think I’m going to need some time off work.”

And then, less than punitively:

“I’m sorry about the timing of all this. I know we were going to have to cram for the upcoming-“

Before I finished, she cut me off.

“You don’t worry about a thing. Go home, take some time, do what you need to do. These things are tough to get through. I remember when my mother died, I struggled with it for weeks. Just keep us posted in how long you’ll need and we’ll take care of the work around the office.”

Which was, really, a generous office considering I worked in a profession defined by deadlines.

“Okay, Suzanne, I probably wont need anymore than a week, but I’ll let you know anyway,” I said meekly into the phone.

“Buh bye and good luck with everything,” she said.

I hung up the phone and canvassed the room in my dope-induced stupor. I listened to the rain peal against the window. It was almost rhythmic, rurally beautiful in its subtle manner. I looked over at my bed lustfully, tiredly, and decided to sleep just a little longer. Sure, I had things to do – like make plane reservations, pack, dig out my tattered black suit – but those could wait.

As I dozed off, I could think only of sleep's dexterously majestic ability to put life on hold.

*[This is the first part on an ongoing novella.

Additional chapters will be posted intermittingly.]*