Paul Harrison stepped out of his truck and looked across the gray-rock parking lot at the aged swinging bridge. The dawn light cast silver shimmers onto the deck of the bridge, which sparkled with a coating of frost. As he walked around to the other side of his truck, the bite in the air took the breath from his tired lungs and sent a tremble up his back. The wet air of the North Mississippi December embraced him, and he bent down to lean through the passenger side window of his truck and grabbed his sherpa-lined jacket. After he pulled it on, he belted it tight around his waist and pulled a red-flannel scarf from the pocket. He draped the scarf over his neck, pulled a black toboggan over his thick mess of curly gray hair, and braced himself against the stiff breeze that whipped between the pines. The Tishomingo County winter was colder than he had thought it would be. The Appalachian Foothills and thickets of tall longleaf pines created a pocket of unusual weather for the state, and the years cold, wet winter only sent the chill deeper into his bones.
He walked over to the bed of his truck and started gathering his things. He checked his hardback hiking bag filled with emergency supplies, a thing he had packed only because he knew he was alone in a place where cell service was but a distant whisper. He grabbed an artist’s kit, a single canvas wrapped in brown paper, and a long wooden hiking stick. He breathed the cold air deep into his lungs and tightened his grip on the hiking stick before he headed towards the frost-slicked bridge. The frost crunched underneath his boots as he took careful steps across the 100 year old swinging bridge, being sure to avoid the worst patches of ice, until he came to the other side and the Appalachian foothills opened up before him. The trail divided into two directions and Paul stood there on the concrete steps of the bridge and thought back to the last time he was in the park, what must have been more than 10 years ago, and then started off towards the right.
The sounds of Bear Creek filled the air as he followed the path. He watched birds go from baren oak trees to still-green pines against a scarlet sunrise sky as the sun forced its way above the hills. He hiked for a long while and only stopped once for water, as the sun broke through the treeline and warmed the air around him enough that he had to peel out of his thick jacket. He tied it around his waist and continued on, his chest heaving under the weight of the pack. He stopped once to hike down to the bank of the creek and sat for a long while, watching as the deep, freezing water poured over rocks and carried pieces of driftwood away. He watched a hellbender slither out from under one rock just within the water line and then disappear under another. Sitting there and taking in what he had yet to accept as his final morning, he whistled out a tune, a half-hearted medley of “Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!” and “Song of the Candle,” as he ate a snack of trail mix and crackers and thought of what was ahead of him. He thought of his patient, tired wife, who he was sure must have found the letter he left on the kitchen table. He thought of what she’d tell their now-full-grown kids, and wondered whether or not his son would tell her to leave it be, to leave him be.
“They’ll be alright,” he said out loud and kicked an old piece of slate into the edge of the creek. He gathered up his things and slung his bag onto his back before he started off again. “They’ll be alright one way or another.” He wondered, as he climbed back up the bluff to the trail, if the birds could hear the doubt he knew layered his words. He whistled again as he hiked along the trail with his mind twisted into an anxious mess.
“You know,” he said out loud again, no longer worried about what the birds might or might not think about him, “In a different world I might have looked into moving up here. Build a little cabin on a plot of land on the Trace and live a quiet life.” He let out a ragged sigh punctuated with a deep down, painful cough. He stopped for a moment to take a drink of water and soothe his pained throat. As he screwed the cap back on his water bottle he choked back another cough and slipped it back into the pocket on the side of his pack. Steeling himself against the task ahead, he hiked on, and after another half-hour the sound of a waterfall began to replace those of Bear Creek, which was now situated below him as he climbed the ridge in the careful switchbacks of the trail. As he climbed up the hill he came to a clearing which crossed a small stream, and at the top, pouring over a rock face, was the waterfall he had set out hunting for. He climbed a smattering of rocks to a flat, dry point near the basin of the waterfall’s pool and dropped his bag and artist’s kit.
“There you are, you beautiful motherfucker. I knew you’d still be here. I knew these floods and storms ain’t a match for that old Mississippi stone.” He laid the artist’s kit on a large, flat piece of stone and took out his easel, which he sat up facing the waterfall. He pulled the canvas from its brown paper and placed it on the easel before pulling a thermos of hot water from his hiking bag and poured it into a small plastic cup, which he rested on the ledge of his easel. He turned to prepare his pallet, a smattering of cool, pastel watercolors, and then stuck a handful of brushes into his back pocket. He turned his attention back to the rushing water and started to paint. The waterfall, invigorated by the previous day’s rainfall, poured over the stone ledge with an uncharacteristic fervor.
As he talked, he laid the groundwork for his painting, establishing sweeping washes of gray and brown and green, as he looked at the waterfall. “Ol’ Girl, you look different, but you’re here.” The back of the waterfall, eroded from centuries of running water, sat back from the pool in a way that was accessible and dry. On what Paul only knew to call the “shelf wall”, tucked away and hidden from the abuse of the waterfall’s rush, was a smattering of adolescent graffiti. The faded black spray paint, names of kids in love with one another, had been there ten years earlier when he first hiked across the bridge and to the waterfall, but now, Paul saw the faded paint in a new light. He saw it as a somber reminder of the mark people leave on the world they inhabit. He saw it as a perpetual representation of young love left sheltered, the names tagged on the ancient stone sheltered had lasted, but exposed to reality, it would have disappeared in a matter of months. “Love, love, love,” he said as he continued to lay color onto the canvas in calculated brush strokes. His mind wandered back to his home almost an hour and a half away, and he wondered how his family had handled the note he had left behind. He let out a long string of hacking coughs and wiped the spittle from the corners of his mouth. As the coughs subsided, he stretched his ribs to try and relieve the panging pressure in his lungs. The muscles in his sides ached from the past month’s constant coughing and he wheezed as he struggled to catch his breath against the frigid December air.
“Oh Donnie,” he said to the birds above, still laying the watercolors onto the canvas with a patient hand. “I’m sorry I left you to deal with your mother. I can’t imagine the hysterics. I can’t imagine the panic and the demands and the flowing tears you’ve been dealing with. I’m sorry I waited until you came out from your little desert paradise to do this, I really am. But I know of anyone, you’ll understand me. You’ll understand why it came to this. Why I couldn’t face her anymore.”
He cleaned his brush in the hot water and selected a new pigment. This time he chose a washed out, soft blue, and began laying the foundation for the stream that flowed near his feet. The painting began to take form as he worked, and as he neared a point he could call completion, the weight of the day grew greater in steady, bounding steps. His mind wandered back to his poor mother, who had died ragged and out of her mind in her home just five years before Paul had gotten in his car and driven to Tishomingo State Park. He gritted his teeth and kept painting, the image of his mother dead in her bed resolving him to the task that laid ahead, resolving him to what waited for him beyond the canvas. “Oh Soph, I am sorry. I know this isn’t easy for you. I know I’ve left you without our daughter and stuck with my carbon copy. I know Donnie won’t make it any easier on you. Not even a little.”
He cleaned the brush again and this time swapped to a lighter blue. He laid the fringes of the creek and waterfall in flawless brushstrokes, alternating concentrated gazes at the canvas with thoughtful glances at the view before him. As he painted, he thought of the first time he had come to this place. His entire family had been in tow that day, and they had spent nearly two weeks at the park. Sophie’s blonde hair had shone in the soft, spring light in a way that seared itself into his memories. “God I miss you already. I hope you understand. I hope that a miracle touched our house this morning and you read my note and you just nodded and shed a few tears and resolved yourself to let me go.” Paul laid the edges and deeper blues into the waterfall of his painting as a breeze began to whistle through the thicket. He shivered as he cleaned his brush again and shifted towards the deep browns needed to lay the base of the trees.
Another coughing fit forced him to pause, and he doubled over as his exhausted lungs hitched in his rib cage. He wheezed, still half-bent over, after the fit and sucked in the cold air. As he straightened up, he took three shallow breaths and spit a stream of red phlegm to the ground at his left. He went back to his painting and pushed the pain from his chest. As he finished up the trunks of the trees and shrubbery, the weight of the task that lay beyond the canvas increased. The weight of the tool tucked away in the front pocket of his hiking pack, a tool which he had, at different points in his life, called both a toy and a right, felt immense as it worked its way to the front of his mind. He cleaned the brush once again, this time swapping to a pastel black, and began casting the shadows and details of his painting with delicate brush strokes. For the first time since he began, his mind and hand worked in concert. He knew that too much black could ruin the work, so he had to wash away the anxiety and musings that had swirled in his mind since he stepped out of his truck. As he painted with a focused mind, eye, and hand, he didn’t think of the tool in his bag. He didn’t think of the letter he left behind. He didn’t think of his wife and children. He didn’t think of the treatment he was running from. Instead, he thought only of the waterfall.
He peppered in the final shadows along the bank’s stones, and before he knew it, the final strokes of the painting were finished. As the last stone was brought into reality, Paul coughed again and sat down on a large outcrop of stone several feet from the easel. He did not perform his typical ritual of taking in the completed piece. Instead, he had turned his eyes from the canvas as soon as he laid the final stroke. He wheezed out a light cough and spat as he admired the way the towering pines filtered the sky. The weight of the tool in his bag and the terror it was meant to free him from was incoporeal as long as he did not complete the ritual of his art. To finish the ritual, to look at the painting he had completed, would mean he had to move on to what lay ahead. To move on meant that the tool in his bag could no longer wait, that its ethereal, schrodinger-like existence must be decided. “Sky’s too pretty for that right now,” he said and kicked a rock into the stream. He let out a ragged sigh and closed his eyes as the sun broke through the trees and warmed his face. “Oh Soph, I’m sorry. I hope you know that. I hope you’ll be able to feel that. I hope this last gift will be enough. You were always my muse. There’s as much of you in this painting as there is of the waterfall.”
Paul stood up and rubbed his neck, his back still to the canvas. The painting seemed to call out to him as he looked at the reality of the waterfall. The water rushed over top of the broad, beautiful cliff, which stood only a meager 30 feet high, and poured onto the bottom shelf and into a shallow pool. The pool narrowed to a channel of stone and transformed into a stream, which ran down the hill towards Bear Creek below. As he looked, he wondered if the stream had widened in the decade since he last stood at its pool. He wondered if it was a little wider than it had been when his son and daughter had taken turns leaping from one side to the other, slipping in the soft silt banks and sliding into the water, laughing the whole time. He wondered if the stream had been a little younger, a little more narrow, when the sun had hit Sophie’s hair and created a halo around the light of his life. He wondered what the pool would look like when the cough in his chest finally put him in the ground. He wondered, after trying and trying not to, if his painting captured the entire story.
Paul spun on the heels of his boots and held his breath as he walked back to the painting. As he looked at the pastel watercolors that rested on the page in their entirety for the first time, tears rolled down his face. Not because the painting was a masterpiece, it was another of the comfortable landscapes that had made him a local celebrity, but just because it was finished. Another simple painting gone from the tip of his brush, one that might have hung in a gallery in Tupelo or been featured by the Tishomingo Arts Council, sure, but still just a simple painting. His final work, despite the decades of grand ideals, would be a painting of a waterfall. All at once the weight of the horrible tool in his pack fell on him like an anvil. Images of Tishomingo County Sheriff deputies hiking into the trail and finding his painting there rushed to his mind. He saw the easel knocked over in the fray and the canvas soaked and ruined in the shallow creek. Tears streamed as his eyes shifted back and forth from the canvas to the reality. He saw the soft watercolor lines depicting the graffiti on the back of the waterfall. He imagined the canvas splattered with blood and spending months or years locked away in an evidence locker as Rosco P. Coltrane and Barney Fife ironed out the details of what happened. He imagined Sophie taking the canvas with shaking hands and locking it away in their attic out of horror of the faint red marks she knew weren’t paint. The very thought of this boiled his blood, and he brushed his hand over the edges of the canvas, as the possibilities reeled in his mind.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, and snatched at his art supplies that rested on the easel. He shoved them into his kit and then took the canvas and sat it on the rock nearby before he packed the rest of his things. He closed up his hiking pack, the tool that had waited for him inside now a distant whisper in his mind, and slung it over his back. He put his artist’s kit over one shoulder and picked up the canvas. He held the painting out in front of him and looked it over one more time, grabbed his hiking stick, and turned and got back onto the trail. As he hiked he thought of his wife finding the letter and her reaction to it and the longer he thought, the more he worried and the more he worried, the faster he moved. As he hiked downhill, careful to protect the painting as he managed the branches and roots along the way, he fell into a coughing fit. His ribs hitched and he hacked and fought not to collapse to his knees. The fit lasted longer this time. It was almost five straight minutes of coughing, and when he caught a respite, his lips were tinged with clotted blood. He sat down on the cold, damp ground and laid the canvas across his legs. He balanced it there and reached into his front pocket for a handkerchief and used it to clean the blood from his mouth.
He let out a long sigh and rubbed at the back of his neck. He felt tired, and his breath came in ragged gasps. “Oh man I’ve made a mess of things, ain’t I?” He rooted around in his right pants pocket and pulled out the flip phone his family loved to chide him for hanging on to. He opened it and then snapped it closed. “No service.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket and tapped a shaking hand on the edge of the painting. “Ah man, I’m going to get an earful for this.” His mind went back to the tool in his pack and he shook his head. He stood up and pushed the vile thing out of his mind before he continued on towards the bridge. He started to whistle out a tune again, but his tired breath gave out and instead he found himself gasping in a thin, whispering breath. As he coughed against the daggers in the back of his throat, he swore at the air in frustration. Now, unable to coerce his throat into cooperation, he was left to mutter out his own thoughts. He thought about what going back meant, about what he was leading himself back to. He thought of the long hours sitting in the hospital that waited ahead. He thought of the sharp jabs and poisons, and most of all he wondered what his head looked like underneath his mess of curly hair. The pain in his ribs streaked down his sides and he grimaced against the sharp pangs of pain. He steeled himself, halfway-revitalized by his new objective, and pushed forward on the trail. As he did, he managed to hum the tune of Marty Robbins’s song “El Paso,” his feet a little lighter than they had been that morning, his mind a little calmer. As he weaved under limb and over bramble, he held the painting in his hands and protected it from the world that had birthed it. Before long, he found himself back at the steps to the swinging bridge, and from his pocket he heard a single, muted chirp. He grasped the painting with his left hand and dug into his right hand pocket and pulled out his cell phone.
A single text from Sophie waited for him. He flipped the phone open and read it. “I hope you come home.”
With a few presses of the worn, clacking buttons he called his wife, who answered in just two short rings. She spoke with an airy, anxious voice. “Paul?”
“Hey Soph, I’m headed home now. It’ll be a couple hours. Do you need me to pick up anything on the way?”
A haggard sigh whistled through the line. “No, I don’t need anything but you.”
Paul tried to speak, but instead he just smiled as he hung up the phone. He climbed the steps and started back across the swinging bridge, the frost now thawed.
