SPRING LEAPERS by David Lawrence Morse
The village of Hiram, nineteen miles southwest of Iamonia, the county seat, forty miles to the district line, the Omanockee River flowing like a thick ribbon of mud, and the villagers astir in their cabins, busy about their yards, already climbing onto their roofs – for it is the first Sunday of spring, and it is Leaping Day. Newlyweds Octie Bogue and his wife Magaline will leap clasped together, hoping if one is obliged, the other will be, too. After all, how could they find a mate in heaven better than the mate they’ve already got? Magaline can’t help but find Octie endearing, with his ribald oaths of love, his quick and cataclysmic orgasms, his ropes and belts and buckles with which he will bind them breast-to-breast for to take their leap. “I love you like a house on fire,” says Octie. “I love you like a bleeding wound.” “I love you, too, Octie Bogue,” says Magaline. Octie has acquired from the blacksmith a harness, fashioned according to special instructions, a double-wide wrought-iron seat like a flat banana which they both straddle, facing each other, with ropes around the waist and over each shoulder. They stand together on the roof of their one-room broadaxe log cabin, making preparations for their leap, strapped into the harness. “Not like that,” says Octie. “This is uncomfortable,” says Magaline. “Bend your legs,” says Octie. “Can’t we just hold hands?” asks Magaline. Octie makes some adjustments to the ropes around his waist and hers. “Put your legs over mine. I’ll hold up the both of us,” says Octie. “No,” says Magaline. “Why not?” says Octie. “Because it’s lewd and vulgar,” says Magaline. “Damn right,” says Octie, pawing at her legs. “Stop it,” says Magaline. “Come on, let’s put the devil in hell.” “Not on Leaping Day,” says Magaline. “Why not?” says Octie. “Because it’s lewd and vulgar,” says Magaline. Octie has managed to pull one of her legs up over his but she withdraws her leg and withdraws herself from the harness. Octie experiments with the harness for a few minutes. “All right,” he says. “We’ll sit the other way, like a horse.” They try sitting the other way, like a horse, first with Magaline in front, then Octie. “There,” says Octie. “This is embarrassing,” says Magaline.
Beulah Duckett no longer leaps on Leaping Day but this is not true of her husband Esco, who has broken his ankles or a wrist or leg every year leaping for the last eight years but still plans on leaping this morning; he has already bathed in the bucket tub and donned his striped wool suit, with the unhemmed trousers and rumpled billcock hat and plantation tie askew. “What are you so awful bothered to leave us for?” asks Beulah, referring to herself and three kids, who are not yet old enough to leap and are frightened by their father’s falls. Esco has just invited inside the Reverend Colonel, making the customary rounds on Leaping Day, and he nods to the reverend and says to Beulah, “Haven’t you ever in your life had the desire to take on a life with God?” “What’s God want with those old broken bones of yours?” “Curses on your tombstone heart,” says Esco. “Great God pardon the day I wed that tombstone heart.” God might pardon the heart, the Reverend Colonel explains to them, or he might not, it was not his place to say. All he could offer was his usual meager blessing, a waggle of his staff and sprinkle of dust, and – if they seem in need of inspiration for leaping – a short parable. And lo, two soldiers took a long walk in a great field. And they came to a village, and one soldier said, ‘Shall we stop here?’ And the other soldier replied, ‘No, we shall keep going.’ The Reverend Colonel waggles his staff to indicate he is finished and Esco says how he loves a good parable, and Beulah asks what the devil does it mean? But the Reverend Colonel does not respond, only hobbles on his way, over the village’s grassy paths and cobblestones with his wooden leg – the original was lost to a cannonball in the war – which he claims prevents him from leaping on Leaping Day, and the village grudgingly agrees. History has shown reverends are no good at the business. Most every right-reverend left the village after only two or three years, unable to bear the scrutiny, the rumors, the criticism, their faith and authority each year on Leaping Day subject to proof. And the villagers were glad to see them go: if their own reverend was not called to God, then what hope for the rest? Prior to the Reverend Colonel there was the Reverend Whidden, who protested that his work was on earth, God’s got no use for a reverend in heaven, but Wiley Cooper scoffed, “Somebody better notify Jesus – I think he’s still up there,” and Reverend Whidden left town soon after, his spine permanently awry from three years’ collisions with the earth. Only one reverend had ever been obliged by God, but that was years ago, and some claimed he was never sighted rising to heaven but most likely beat a hot escape through Old Lost Hollow when no one was looking. Others like Old Aunt Myra doubted whether anyone was ever obliged; like a few other deep-timber seclusionists, she never took to leaping. “Well, now, I know there’s a God somewhere,” Aunt Myra liked to say, “because men couldn’t do this business of living alone. But I’ll never believe they go flying up there off the roof. God didn’t intend that at all. You can tell a story about anything, but is it true?” You can tame everything but the tongue, said the villagers of Hiram, and they brought her pig feet and corn pone, and they told her about the most recent villagers obliged. Sometimes it was the thriftiest villager, or the most pious, this was no surprise. But then there were the anomalies, like Darlie Sewell, the village tart, wearing those button shoes and gingham dresses, a widow, and kissing Monroe Gibbs at the candy pulls, and she obliged only last year. The villagers each leaped their own way, but all laughed if caught in the hand of God, rising into the white skies, obliged. Ticklish, ridiculous laughter, and the villagers on the ground standing mouths agape, averting their eyes from the sun, remnants on the earth.
The earth was hard-packed red clay in places, verdant black topsoil in others, from which grew an unusually piquant variety of onion that enjoyed widespread regional popularity, irritating Lawton Dickey, the village literate, who never ate them and complained the air was permeated with the taste. For the villagers, Lawton reads the odd piece of mail and writes epistles, as well as modest, epigrammatic epitaphs for those who die before successfully leaping. He carries a coin-purse full of candy mints and sucks on one at all times. Now he sucks on two: one he rolls on his tongue and the other he holds in reserve in the pouch between cheek and teeth. He is nervous, he must make a fateful decision: will he leap off the tower or no? He stands at his window looking up at the tower, which carries about it an air of disintegration, an air of terror, hugging close to the ramshackle church to which it has been haphazardly attached, looming over the benign river village like the forlorn rampart of some forgotten castle along the Rhine. Lawton’s father had intended the tower to be freestanding, in the village green, a height closer to heaven from which to leap. But the reverend had suggested the project might find favor from the Lord if the tower was built attached to the church, and so it was, though Lawton’s father found no favor when he leapt from it twenty years ago – that was how he died – and no one had leapt from the tower since. Few sons are like their fathers, the villagers would say, most are worse, and this was true of Lawton Dickey, who was not the leaper his father was: when he leapt from his roof each spring, he landed in a heap and cried out in pain. He limped for days afterward, though no bone was broken, joking how God had forsaken him, but that was all right; it happened to the best of them, even Jesus. “What do you mean, Jesus?” his sister said. “On the cross,” Lawton said. “They nailed him up and whipped him with hot lashes.” “Jesus was the first leaper,” she said. “Jesus leaped to heaven on the wings of the dove.” Lawton lives with his sister, who doesn’t appreciate jokes about Jesus, or about leaping, or their father, synonymous with the sanctity of the everlasting God. The village has corrupted the practice of leaping, stumbling drunk off their rooftops and falling helplessly like half-wits onto bales of hay. “Leaping’s not meant to be a good time,” she would say. “It’s the way to prove your faith.” She has trouble with the rheumatism and so she keeps her skin oiled with pine oil, looking to Lawton malignant and content and greased as a spit pig. On this morning she is preparing everything for Lawton’s big leap, already she’s beaten the soles of his shoes with a persimmon stick, boiled the snakeroot tea, pressed their father’s overalls with a hot stone. Lawton watches her. “If you’re all fired up to leap,” he says, “you go throw yourself off that tower like a damn fool.” “You’re calling our father a fool?” Lawton rolls the candy mints over his tongue, watching the tower from the window. “First time was courageous,” he says. “Second time’s foolish.” “Someone’s got to set an example to these idiots,” says Lawton’s sister. “Then do it yourself,” says Lawton. “No one pays attention to a woman,” she says, and adds, “This is the legacy father left his son.”
The village of Hiram is alive with leapers. Some emit involuntary yelps. Some stumble. Some throw their arms and legs wide. Some turn somersaults. Some require a push. Some are solemn. Some leap again and again. Most fall onto the hard-packed red clay earth below, but then there is a shout of joy and there is Narcissa Moon lifted for all to see. Laughing ticklishly, she blows kisses at some boy but no one is sure who, could be Roland Crisp, possibly Jule Shellnut, who takes inspiration from Narcissa’s leap and climbs to his roof to leap after her. Only the roof was shingled decades ago by his father Harv, who by all accounts did a lousy job, two-foot shingles showing sixteen inches to the weather, and the rotten shingles give way beneath, and the rotten sheathing, and Jule Shellnut falls through the roof, landing in the bucket tub on top of his father Harv, who, everyone agrees, gets what he deserves. Selvin Webb shouts “Huzzah!” leaps off his roof, and lands in a pile of hay. His family watches from the roof – they all moan good-naturedly and each take their turn, Selvin’s wife then son then daughter, and each time they hit the hay the family moans good-naturedly. “Maybe next year,” they say, “God’s will be praised.” Remaining on the roof is Selvin’s uncle, who insists on leaping from the opposite side of the house, where there’s no hay. “Fools!” he shouts at them all. “God don’t honor the faith of the faithless!” and he closes his eyes and leaps as high as he can – but not high enough, for he falls to the earth with a cry. Still this is no surprise; he picks himself up and limps inside, where he will set the break himself.
The Reverend Colonel hobbles over cobblestones to the cabin of Flora and Lutherly Grist and their son Algie. The villagers of Hiram pride themselves on their cleanliness and thrift, as well as their onions, but of these, only the latter is found at the Grist cabin – onion peels litter the floor, onions hang in bunches from the rafters, the bulbs sprouting unsightly growths and the brown stems withering and falling like desiccated autumn leaves. Flora offers the Reverend Colonel some breakfast and he thanks her kindly but refuses. Flora is frying onions, the onion-pinched air stings the Reverend Colonel’s eyes, as he informs her that he’s come to bless them all for leaping. “Even Algie?” asks Flora, and the Reverend Colonel nods. “Algie can’t leap,” she says. “The wicked thieving brute.” Her son Algie has just turned thirteen the week before – leaping age. He sits in the corner, his chair leaning precariously against the wall, biting into an enormous onion like an apple. He says it will be great fun to go leaping. “No,” says Flora. “But I leap off the ledge at the swimming hole.” “This is different.” “How?” Flora looks to Lutherly to answer, who sits in the opposite corner. Crippled with age, he can hardly see or hear but lives in a comfortable oblivion of memory, recalling the days when they rode sleds down the hills slick with pine needles, and they raided the ducks and carried them to the top of Knob Hill to watch them fly back frantic to the river; but this mischief-making doesn’t compare to that of his son Algie, who breaks windows, who swipes clothes drying on the line, who sneaks into pastures and pushes over sleeping cows, unafraid of the brute-horned bulls; they fall and bellow, the wind issuing loudly from their bowels. He steals dynamite from the mining crews and blasts brook trout out of the water holes, ears ringing for days. He can no more be convinced than can their old tick-hound of the reality of what is not present before him – and he fears no danger, for that reason. As a child he would wail every night when the sun went down, pointing at the sky and shouting. No one could convince him of its return, until the morning, when he would jump from bed and run onto the porch, pointing at the sun and laughing. He ignores all authorities except his mother, whom he adores, and who now snatches at the Reverend Colonel’s staff to prevent him from blessing Algie, from waggling it in his direction. The Reverend Colonel looks at her, genial, indifferent, amused. “Everyone is allowed to leap,” he says to Flora. “The Lord chooses who he must.” The fatback and onions crackle and sizzle but Flora pays the fryer no mind. She agitates easily, she can’t help herself from shouting. “Four children,” she shouts. “I had four children. Eula, Hughie, Herbert, Gus. Eula, Hughie, Herbert, Gus!” She repeats the names until she is hoarse, she shouts the names into the ear of the Reverend Colonel. Lutherly convulses in his seat, clears a log of phlegm from his throat, then falls back to sleep. The fatback and onions burn black onto the pan and the room fills with smoke. The Reverend Colonel’s eyes water, his white curly hair wilts. He withdraws his staff from Flora’s grasp and explains that yes, he sees her predicament, God seems to have been selfish in regard to the Grists, one might indeed be tempted to think it unfair, but this is not so. It shouldn’t surprise her to know that others regard her as lucky, her family blessed. For Flora did once have four children – Eula, Hughie, Herbert, Gus – and at age 13 each of them leapt, and each was obliged. Flora, bereft, believed their virtue was to blame. Late in age, she’d borne Algie, and raised him sin-ridden, too heavy with iniquity to be lifted, repulsive to the hand of God. She never bathed him, never scolded, never required a minute’s work. She cooked whatever he wanted, chicken and dumplings, grape pie, sweet corn pone with wild cherry jelly. She’d slaughter a hog and he’d eat backbones and ribs for days. He has finished eating his onion and picks up an old backbone for gnawing, eyeing the Reverend Colonel’s wooden leg as if it might be next. The Reverend Colonel suggests a parable might be in order. Flora tells him there will be no parables, no blessings, no leaping, no business at all with God and his ways. “You hear that?” she turns and says to Algie. “No leaping!” “Yes mama,” says Algie. “No leaping!” says Flora to the Reverend Colonel, and opens the door, waiting for him to leave. The Reverend Colonel only smiles quizzically and points his staff at Algie, “Even the wicked will not be forgotten on Leaping Day,” he says, and exits the Grist cabin out into the bright damp florescent spring morning, where, on the other side of the closed cabin door, he waggles his staff and sprinkles a handful of dust, to bless the boy for leaping. When he is done, he looks up and sees Algie leering at him from the hillock of refuse behind the Grist cabin. Algie shakes his head and waves his finger as if it is the Reverend Colonel who is naughty, whereas it is he who has just climbed out the window, and he who hurries away as Flora bursts out the back door, calling for him.
Lawton Dickey has climbed with his sister to the top of the tower, an open-air platform fifty feet high without barrier or rail. Lawton can see for miles from here, just above the needles of the pines, the undying country, the alabaster blossoms among the green and vibrant spring, the glimmering blur of a body of water beyond. The sun almost directly overhead, casting no shadows. A silent flurry of gnats, and the occasional hovering bird of prey. The air seems more humid this high. Lawton blinks against the blaring heat but his sister doesn’t blink nor does she pause to admire the view. She has worn her best for the occasion, ankle-length dress homespun from her finest white calico and blooming peach blossom hat and new lace-up shoes all the way from Iamonia, the flesh of her face freshly oiled, and the flesh of her hands and arms. Lawton imagines her basted and baking like a cornish hen. She proceeds fearlessly to the tower edge, surveying the villagers below and their vain and foolish leaping. Lawton says if she leaps first, he’ll leap second. “Me, a rheumatic,” she says. “What kind of leaper would I be?” According to her own calculations, thinks Lawton, this seems beside the point – what kind of leaper was his father, who hardly leapt at all, but stood, twenty years ago, high at the tower’s edge, palms raised to God like a prophet, and he called out something harsh and definitive and inscrutable. He did not leap but dove head-first like a skilled diver, hitting the earth with a smack like the slap of a paddle. Lawton asks his sister what she thought happened to their father after he died. “Heaven,” she says, “where else?” The sunlight shines blinding bright off the oily fat of her flesh. “Then what good is leaping?” asks Lawton. He wears his father’s overalls, which his sister has pressed with the hot stone, hemmed the seams, polished the buckles. The overalls have no need of a belt but he wears one anyway, his lucky belt with the horseshoe buckle, a gift from the smith. He has left his candy mints on the assumption there would be no need but now regrets it, mouth dry and full of dust. “If the dead find their way to heaven, same as the obliged, why the leaping?” “Not all dead end up in heaven, you fool,” she says. “Father did because he leapt from the tower. And that’s the only chance your devil’s soul will ever get – the leap of faith turns sinner to saint. You, reading those filthy letters and writing them, too, prying into every sinner’s business.” And she explains that he is to wait at the top – she will circulate among the villagers and draw their attention to the tower. “Is that necessary?” asks Lawton. “That’s the point,” she says. “An example to others.” And she makes her way stiffly down the stairs. Lawton crawls on hands and knees, careful of splinters, to the platform’s edge, better to observe the leapers, who are leaping off the rooftops. They leap with honest joy and abandon, shouting out to God and leaping, singing the leaping hymns and throwing back the bottle. Lawton watches his neighbor Brace Guthrie take a running start from the ridge of his roof and leap gracefully off the precipice, arms spread like an eagle. Brace’s drunken brother tries the same trick but lacks his brother’s grace. He stumbles and tumbles off the edge, landing flat on his back. He doesn’t get up. The villagers toss infants into the air and catch them. Some linger on their rooftops all the day, drinking and dancing and singing, leaping, then falling, then climbing to the roof to leap again. Even the elderly are leaping. There goes Old Strickly, he sits on the edge of the roof and hangs his legs over and eases off the edge as if into a giant tub. He falls to the earth but soon is on his feet again, dazed, limping. It is just as Lawton’s sister said, even the old folks will risk broken bones for a ticket to heaven. But Lawton wonders, what’s so great about heaven anyhow? The cowbells sound like dull wedding bells from the fields surrounding, an eagle hovers above, the gnats in their crazed agitations, and the isolated shouts and laughter of the leapers. How could heaven be any better than this?
And then there is Octie Bogue and Magaline, who stand at the edge of their roof, strapped, straddling the harness, Magaline holding onto Octie’s back. “When I say leap, we leap,” says Octie. Magaline glances at the small crowd that has gathered in the scrap-and-grass enclosure of their yard. She waves and calls out hello, then hisses at Octie, “This is silly!” “Don’t you love me?” asks Octie. “Why can’t we just hold hands?” asks Magaline. “When I say leap, we leap,” says Octie. They practice simultaneous knee-bends. Octie shouts “Leap!” and he leaps, only Magaline doesn’t leap, and Octie tumbles off the roof roped to the immobile Magaline and she tips over with his falling weight and tumbles after. Some in the small crowd gasp and others guffaw but they don’t guffaw for long: the couple is caught as if by an invisible hand and lifted into the sky, until their rise is halted. “Hell-fire!” shouts Octie. “Octie!” shouts Magaline, as they hang suspended thirty feet high, clasped together and dangling for all to see, like mythical figures caught in the act of illicit congress and made an example to the world. The villagers have seen plenty but they’ve never seen this and they quickly come running. “What’re they caught on?” asks Wiley Cooper, the beekeeper.
“Caught on nothing,” says Grady Merkel.
“Somebody get my lasso,” says Wiley, “and we’ll haul them down.”
“Can’t haul down somebody obliged,” says Grady.
“That’s not obliged,” says Wiley. “That’s stuck.”
“Could be obliged,” says Grady. “Just taking longer than ordinary.”
“Hello?” calls out Wiley to Octie and Magaline. “Can you hear?”
“Hell-fire!” shouts Octie. Octie and Magaline kick and grimace, they wag their arms as if to fly, hanging there neither sinking nor ascending but dangling in the sky as if on a string. “Somebody tell us how we’re supposed to do this!” shouts Octie.
“Get the reverend,” someone says, but the Reverend Colonel has already arrived, has been watching for some time, his arms crossed on his chest, unimpressed by even this, and they ask what should be done and he offers another parable: Two soldiers are both killed in battle and go to heaven. One sings for joy. The other weeps. ‘Why are you weeping?’ asks the one. ‘It’s not what I expected,’ says the other. Meanwhile a villager has retrieved Wiley’s rope. They form it into a lasso and hurl it towards the couple but it’s not long enough and someone strikes out in search of another. Magaline says to Octie she will not be roped and hauled down like a heifer. Octie asks what else can be done.
“Undo the buckles,” says Magaline.
“Magaline!” says Octie.
“Undo the buckles!”
“Hell-fire!”
“Octie, this is humiliating. And uncomfortable,” and she pulls at the buckles. Octie tries to stop her but she pulls the buck knife from his back pocket and savagely cuts at the rope holding him to her. He tries to turn in the harness to stop her but he is bound facing forward and she cuts through the rope. She cuts the last rope and the harness suddenly falls and Octie falls, too, while Magaline lingers in the air. Octie snatches hold of her foot but she is seized with the desire for rising. “Forget it, mister!” she shouts, kicks her foot free, and rises heavenward. She laughs, tickled, as Octie cries out one last time, and the crowd cheers and clears the way for Octie’s fall.
Thus far several have broken bones and a few have been obliged: Jeptha Sanders, Maude Shope, and little Rob Echols, son of Sheldon Echols, just four feet tall, fourteen years old. Esco Duckett has heard of these villagers obliged and is all the more ready to undertake his own leap, having arranged to negate his heretofore broken-ankle luck by rolling a neighbor’s rotting buckboard full of hay underneath his roof to provide cushion in the event of a fall. He stands on the edge of his slope roof and Beulah sits on the roof ridge leaning against the chimney holding one of the little ones. Beulah says, “Thirty-six chickens. Six acres onion. Four head cattle. Three bawling mouths to feed. And you have no shame.” “Don’t you fear for my ankles, I told you about that wagon.” “You don’t have the luck to land in a wagon.” “And you don’t have the good sense to leave a husband be. Ever heard of Jonah? A man knows when his God is calling.” “Which is it I’m supposed to hope for? Esco broke another ankle, or Esco gone to God?” “Maybe my wife showed a pinch more piety, God’d better respect my efforts.” “Can’t you find some other way to play at your prayers that don’t ruin your farm and family?” Esco removes his rumpled billcock hat, bows, and says, “Beulah, take care of yourself.” He replaces the hat on his head, turns back to the roof’s edge, confirms the buckboard underneath, and swings both arms, rocking forward and calling to God to sit up and take note, here comes Esco. Then he leaps, with his swollen belly and flapping arms and fine striped wool blazer blowing out in the breeze, leaping desperate and ungainly like a lamed barnyard fowl trying to take flight, only noticing once it’s too late the scalawag Algie Grist crouching behind the buckboard. Algie springs up as soon as Esco’s feet leave the roof and he gives the buckboard a shove and it rolls off down the hill. Esco hardly manages to gain any height by virtue of his own leaping strength. There is no arc at all, plummeting to the earth as he has always plummeted and landing on his heels, stiff as a plank, and he jackknifes and crumples to the ground, clutching his ankles and howling in pain. The Reverend Colonel hobbles over to the wounded Esco, rolling in the dirt and howling in pain, both ankles broken. The villagers are accustomed to such and pay him no mind. “Sure now,” says the Reverend Colonel, “don’t you worry. Those ankles will heal up smart, soon as the tillage is done,” while Beulah climbs down from the roof, bawling quietly into her threadbare shawl. The Reverend Colonel offers to help Beulah carry Esco inside but she refuses. “Shush,” she says to Esco, howling in pain, “You better shush,” and she pulls him up by the arms and drags him inside limp like a slaughtered calf. Flora arrives breathless and sweating, chest heaving, looking for her boy Algie. The Reverend Colonel shrugs. Beulah hears Flora outside her cabin and comes charging out; still bawling, she marches up to Flora and slaps her. “Don’t I have enough hard luck?” she bawls at Flora. “Don’t I?”
Flora stands there, stunned. “What’s my boy done?” she says.
“That’s no boy but some kind of animal,” says Beulah.
“What awful thing has he hauled off and done?” asks Flora.
“He comes round here again, he’s got trouble,” says Beulah. “We got four mink traps and two bear traps and I aim to set every one with bait for that animal of yours.”
“You see?” says Flora to the reverend. “He’s got no business leaping.”
“Oh I don’t know,” says the reverend. “Perhaps that would be just the thing.”
Feasting and drinking and merry-making, impromptu fiddle music sounding scurrilously from the rooftops, villagers dancing and cutting steps, even the old gray-heads swinging round to the fiddle music, cutting the pigeon wing. Five leapers obliged, counting Magaline Bogue, giving cause for hope for heaven for another year. Life wasn’t nothing to moan over anyhow, life on the first Sunday in spring, the buds blooming, the fresh sprouts of sugarcane already grown high overhead, sturgeon leaping out of the Omanockee, the loamy sod giving itself to the till – but now here is Lawton Dickey’s sister, with her best homespun calico dress and peach blossom hat and squeaking new lace-up shoes, a sweet-rose cordial in a bootleg liquor hamlet. Isn’t it going to be something to see now, she proclaims, Lawton Dickey leaping from that great height, leaping into the bosom of God, and won’t it be a sight now, everyone best drop your fiddles and come on over to the tower. You’ll see a proof of faith to put the village to shame, my brother Lawton, leaping from fifty feet above. The villagers do as told: they look up straight into the blinding sun and see what must be Lawton, clinging on hands and knees to the tower’s edge. “Hold on, Lawton! I’m coming!” shouts Wiley Cooper. “Is he going to leap or just up there tickling Jesus by the toes?” asks Selvin Webb, and the crowd howls laughing. They’ve been waiting for Lawton to leap from the tower for years, but they’re willing to gather and goad him on, for a good time, even if everyone knows he’ll never do it, and who could blame him? His father had gone too far with that business. They’re men of faith, not fanatics. They wear mud caps and rough denim trousers, the women in sack skirts belted tight about the waist with cord. The fiddlers fiddle a rowdy leaping song and the villagers cut the pigeon wing, the boys leaping from the rooftops for the fun of it, into their father’s arms. Flora Grist returns from her search among the onion fields calling out for her son, pushing through the crowd, until she bumps into Lawton’s sister, and Flora asks has she seen Algie. Lawton’s sister replies that Flora has no reason to worry – God knows where her son is, after all. “That’s what I’m worried about!” shouts Flora. “He already hauled off four of mine.” “That’s blasphemy,” says Lawton’s sister. “Eula, Hughie, Herbert, Gus!” shouts Flora. “They’re better with God than the likes of you,” says Lawton’s sister. “What do you know of God?” says Flora. “God don’t have nothing to do with you – and me neither!” “For God so loved the world,” says Lawton’s sister, “that he gave his only begotten Son.” “He can do what he wants with his son,” says Flora, “but he better keep his hands off mine.” “We must all sacrifice ourselves to righteousness,” says Lawton’s sister. “The only self you aim to sacrifice is your brother,” says Flora. “And that’s not a sacrifice for you at all.” Lawton’s sister flinches, which disturbs the haughty angle of her peach blossom hat. She stares at Flora’s sister then adjusts the hat. “You just watch and see,” says Lawton’s sister. “You just watch Lawton leap off that tower and see,” and she points to the top of the tower, only Lawton can no longer be seen; he has grown dizzy with the height and crawled back to the center of the tower. He would crawl back down the stairs but can’t face the ridicule of the villagers, his sister’s scorn. If he waits here long enough, he’ll get caught in a squall, possibly lightning will strike, a preferable end.
“Ho, ho, ho,” says a voice behind him, “what’s this?” It is the boy Algie Grist. Lawton suspects the boy means to do him some harm – perhaps goad him into leaping or even push him off. There is a wild unpredictability to his gestures, his eyes. A witless brute, a fool’s fool. Still there is something fresh and unaccountable to his face, something brotherly in the freckles and impetuous grin, a turbulent, insectile intelligence. He is a head taller than Lawton. He wears stolen overalls not unlike Lawton’s, only two sizes too small, high above his ankles. This bothers Lawton: not that the boy steals clothes, but that they don’t fit. Lawton tries to casually crawl back from the boy. The boy stands still at the top of the stairs with his impetuous grin. Lawton unbuckles his lucky belt in case he might need it, his only available weapon. “This is my tower,” says the boy. “But you can stay if you follow orders. Know how to follow orders?” “All too well,” says Lawton. “Good.” The boy digs his finger into his ear, thinking, then says, “I can’t come up with any orders. You think of some then I’ll give them to you.” Lawton has removed his belt, but perhaps, he thinks, he won’t need it after all. A simple ruse might suffice. “I guess you came up here on account of you wanted to leap,” says Lawton. “Sure,” says Algie. “Looks like fun.” “Not at all,” says Lawton. “It’s dangerous. Could be deadly.” “Even more fun,” says Algie. “Could be,” says Lawton. “But only if you do it right.” “No right way or wrong way. Just leaping.” “Not at all,” says Lawton. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be obliged.” “That’s no fun,” says Algie. “So listen carefully,” says Lawton, “and I’ll give your orders.” “Hold on,” says the boy. “I’m giving orders.” “Yes,” says Lawton. “I forgot. This is what I want you to tell us to do.” And he gives the boy instructions, while he can hear the shouts of his sister below. She is growing angry, accusing the villagers of a false faith, accusing Lawton as well. She shouts at him to come on out to the edge of the tower, to show himself in his righteousness and the righteousness of their father before he takes his leap. But Lawton does not appear, and the villagers make more wise cracks. Wiley Cooper asks if Lawton wants to borrow his pair of angel wings and they all guffaw. Someone calls for the opinion of the Reverend Colonel, at the back of the crowd, leaning against the railing at LaRowe’s Dry Goods, looking upon all amiable and disinterested like a stranger in need of a favor but with no inclination to ask, his curly white hair and white mustache gone white long before his time, good leg propped on the step so that all his weight is borne unnaturally on the wooden peg, which has the curious effect of making him seem to float, to have little weight at all. He does not move nor seem to address any one of them in particular as he offers another parable: Two great armies faced each other. They fought all day and night, three days and three nights, and lo, when the sun rose on the fourth day, only one was left standing. ‘What will become of me?’ he cried. And he fell upon his sword. The Reverend Colonel stops talking but he does not waggle his staff, only points to the top of the tower, where Lawton, it seems, has finally found his way to the tower’s edge, or the villagers assume it is Lawton. In truth it is difficult to tell, for the sun shines directly above like the white hot eyes of God, and all that can be made of the figure is his shimmering outline, and the tower casts no shadow, as if it didn’t exist. No clouds in the sky, and the tumble-down shacks and cabins of Hiram shimmer in the bright hot noontime light like a mirage, while a figure stands at the tower’s edge with arms extended like a prophet, silent, and the prophet that might be Lawton does not leap but dives head-first like a skilled diver, and the villagers barely have time to stumble out of the way before he hits the ground with a smack like a paddle. The body does not move. The villagers do not move. The body caught in violent contortion like the twisted steel from some mad blacksmith’s forge, face hidden in the spring green grass, blood pooling and seeping into the earth. “Lawton!” cries Lawton’s sister, greased face blazing in the glare of the sun, and she faints and falls. No one moves to help her. Gladys Pitts says to her husband Rufus, “Those your overalls?” “Might be,” says Rufus, and Gladys says, “Some gall. Leaping in another man’s pants.” “Only that’s not Lawton Dickey,” says Wiley Cooper, and just then they hear an abject scream of grief. It is Flora Grist, who has finally fought through the crowd, and she stumbles to the body of Algie Grist and falls beside it. She takes the limp hand in her hands and wails an angry, tearless lament, rocking on her knees over the body. The villagers bump and shuffle in startled consternation if not grief. The men grown stern and earnest, hands plunged deep in pockets, clearing their throats. The women whisper harshly under their breaths; they daub their faces with coarse denim bandanas. It was a damn fool idea anyway, that tower, didn’t God tear down Babel for a reason? Flora curses God in her tearless grief. She curses the Reverend Colonel. She curses Lawton Dickey and his cataleptic sister. She curses the village. She looks at them each who will not return her stare and calls them to account for the death of her child. “Well hell,” says Wiley Cooper, “we didn’t push him off or nothing.” “Come on home, Flora,” says Monroe Gibbs. “Come on and let’s get home.” “Home,” says Flora. “My boy was my home.” “Come on,” says Monroe Gibbs, who was kissed by the widow Darlie Sewell, always a gentle way with women. He touches her on the elbow but she does not move. He tries to lift her by the elbow but she does not move, kneeling over her son, who was blessed by the Reverend Colonel but to no good end, his face hidden in the blood-thatched grass. They have ignored Lawton’s sister but now she stirs, peach blossom hat knocked cockeyed in the fall, moaning and clutching her side as if the pain of her brother’s supposed death could be isolated in her ribs. Wiley tells her she’s got no cause for grief, it’s not her brother but Algie Grist that leapt and died. She sits up, leaning back against the rough-hewn log wall of the tower. “Not Lawton?” she says, her shining face blanching white, blond eyebrows vanishing, nothing to hide the heavy livid lidless eyes. Where is he, she demands, her chicken-livered brother, and why didn’t he leap? The villagers say he must’ve slipped away when no one was looking. “Maybe he was obliged,” someone offers. “Not likely,” says Wiley. “I believe God requires you to leap first.” She rises on trembling legs leaning against the wall of the tower before wandering off in search of her brother, the crowd parting for her like cleaved sea waters.
They leave Flora there, kneeling over the body. The afternoon is getting late and nothing more can be done: it is Leaping Day after all. They might be forgiven if they indulge in a bit of liquor; they may not fiddle or sing but they might partake of the griddle cakes and the fisherman’s stew, simmering on the fire for days. They cannot be expected to mourn for the boy, who tormented them with his devilish ways. He was never right in the mind, they say, he had no business in Hiram anyhow. They are not righteous, perhaps, but they are reasonable, and they will pursue their celebrations in joyless disturbed incongruity. And so no one sees Flora Grist rise in the twilight from her son’s contorted body and enter through the tower door and climb the stairs to the top – no one but the Reverend Colonel, who has retained his position at LaRowe’s Dry Goods, and who observes Flora’s movements with the detached abstract wonderment peculiar to such faithless men of faith, who have long since learned the folly of our vanity and toil but cannot help but find some comfort in the witness of it, all human activity one long ritualized compromise between honor and horror. The Reverend Colonel watches Mother Grist climb the tower, knowing what she intends to do. She finds there the ridiculous figure of the literate Lawton Dickey tied with his own belt to the post whimpering like a wounded animal, an onion shoved into his mouth. The belt was Lawton’s idea but the onion was Algie’s, which Lawton protested but which, tied to the post, he proved unable to resist. He cannot think of any worse fate, other than leaping, his mouth filled with the abhorrent inedible onion, like a calcified tumor, teeth clenched into the oily skin, eyes burning so that he could not even see the boy fall to his death, which he knew would remove him from any further expectation of such, the release from that obligation worth even this humiliation. But Flora Grist knows better – when she finds him, bound and apoplectic at the top of the tower, she releases him from his ignorance if not his bondage. She informs him that his life is not worth the fear it has caused him, a body’s no more than bones. And she leaps off the tower into the swelling immoderate darkness not to be obliged but to meet her son in oblivion. Only in the eternal perversity of nature she is obliged, rising into the night against her will, rising as her four children rose, Eula, Hughie, Herbert, and Gus. But the thought of reunion with these brings her no comfort. They have no need for her, and so she is the first in the long chronicle of the obliged to rise not laughing but wailing, which none but the Reverend Colonel is available to witness. “Sure now,” he thinks. “Won’t that make a fine parable, Mother Grist gone to God,” the dark wisp of her figure rising in the dark like ash on the wind. Mother Grist, invoking the names of her four children to hold onto the one child, the scalawag Algie, who stole her heart, who cared little for what heaven might be had in the skies, his joy for the things of the earth, its dirt, its girth.
David Lawrence Morse’s stories have appeared in One Story, Short Fiction, The Missouri Review, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.