A Good High Place

Chapter 1

c H A P T e R o N e 1962 The thing about closeness is that you can choose it, or it can happen anyhow. And you don’t have to be friends to be close; a murderer has to achieve an approximate closeness to his victim, after all. ours has been the kind of closeness that results when two people have been taken hostage or suspended indefinitely between floors in an otis elevator. We got close the first time, Kachina and me, when i slipped on the wet plank schoolroom floor and landed nearly in her lap. i could smell her sweat: a musky, sagey, sweet smell. And she, no doubt, got an excellent look up my nose. They say it won’t be much longer, Kachina said last week, her voice on the phone sounding absurdly commonplace like this was news you passed along incidentally. She might have been telling me it had rained yesterday. or maybe snowed, or that she’d burned last night’s dinner. That’s always been the thing about Kachina. How much longer, i said. And she said back, Who knows? is he in much pain? i asked. He says not. He says having your liver and kidneys fail is like having a mild case of the flu. i couldn’t imagine anything worse than perpetual flu and wondered what heart disease would be like. 6 L.E. Kimball What about Topini? i asked. Are you having trouble taking care of her? Marycrowfeatherwatchesherduringtheday,andshesleepshere at Keane’s with me at night, she said, and then she said, When was Topini ever any trouble? She’s fifty-eight years old and still playing with that red ball off in the corner. Kachina was right: Topini hadn’t been trouble for years, had never really been that kind of trouble. So, he’s at home then? i asked. You know better than to ask that, Welly. And i did know better. Keane would have refused to spend even a single night in a hospital. Well, i’m coming, of course, i said. What about your job? i quit that last week. don’t you remember? christ, that’s right. You wrote me you were going to do that. Retirement? How will the stiffs get along without you? only Kachina would talk about stiffs at a time like this. Are you all right? i asked her. God, luella, she said, don’t be a stupid fucking chemokmon. i’ll talk to you when you get here. i started to put down the phone, but the sound of her raspy voice made me put the phone back to my ear. oh, she said, he told me to tell you to bring the fly-tying stuff. He’s got a Hendricks he wants to show you. So i cAMe To elK RAPidS, Michigan, in mid-May. Made a bad decision that morning and wore a light Windbreaker when i should have worn a coat or at least a heavy sweater. There’s an iron bench next to the Johnny Rock, and i sat on it, feeling the curlicue pattern etching itself into my ancient backside through my nylon stretch pants. Why in the hell did they move the rock out of the bay and put it here? i imagined some obscene crane hauling out all eight tons of it, dripping water like giant tears, plopping it ignominiously, albeit ceremoniously, into the park. A GOOD HIGH PLACE 7 You couldn’t have missed it in 1910. it sat out a hundred and fifty yards or so, waves slapping sharply against the sides—igneous rock, i think, granite, maybe, with patches of rose quartz on the side facing north, the side that jutted skyward. A five-year-old kid knew he held the world in his hand if he could manage to swim that far through the inky waters of Grand Traverse Bay. it was a casual, nickel wager for kids over ten. Get there first or cough up. Keane and i had that wager more times than i can remember, and it was a toss-up who’d win. i remember one night near dark. We had no business being out there, the storm hanging offshore a mile or so and the bay heaving four-foot waves in our faces, fighting us every inch of the way. i was close to sixteen that summer, Keane slightly...