Wild Stacks

Wild Stacks / Issue 1 / December 2010

CHASING WATERFALLS

By ANDREW HOOK

Julia loved the twins.

Platonically.

At least, she did at the beginning. Then, just as the twins’ zygote had divided to form separate embryos, so Julia’s affections had also split in two. Often she was the only person who could tell them apart. As time went by she found it increasingly harder to hide her feelings. Until the moment that everything changed.

***

Carl and Ralf were at work in their garage in Buffalo. They lived in the white-painted colonial house that previously belonged to their parents. Three stories high, the building rose in stages like an oriental pagoda, with the twins spending most of their time either in the topmost room, which overlooked Colvin Avenue and from which they had a good view of anyone approaching the building, or within the garage. Their pick-up was usually parked out front, as the garage was filled with all manner of equipment that only they seemed to know what to do with.

Julia always found them building stuff. Whether it had anything to do with their twin sensibilities or simple sibling connections she was perpetually fascinated that they never had to instruct each other what to do. One would pick up a screw, the other the screwdriver, as though a simultaneous action. In the same way, whatever they were building was gradually constructed. Without plans or – in many instances – purpose. Often when they finished they just looked at it for a few days before taking it apart again.

When Julia knocked on the side of the garage that morning the sun was shining and the sounds of the twins humming filled the air. At first they were so absorbed in their work that they didn’t hear her, and she held back from knocking a second time so that she might observe them.

To describe one would be to describe them both. They were identical twins, the fact that Carl had been born a few moments before Ralf was almost all that separated them. Six foot tall, short blond hair, rugged features, awkwardly handsome, bright blue eyes. They usually wore blue denims and checked shirts and today was no different. Julia saw them bent over some kind of cylindrical object, smoothing the surface down. It could have been a giant bullet, or maybe a cannon. Carl was closer to her. She never knew quite how she could tell, but she could. In many instances, it was always Ralf who seemed to be further away.

She rapped on the side of the garage again. A squirrel that was on the roof leapt up onto the first floor balcony of the house. As its paws touched the polished wooden floor Carl and Ralf looked up at Julia. Both of them smiled.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

It was Carl who spoke first, with Ralf’s identical remark almost like an echo between them. They often spoke simultaneously, although it was only the standard phrases that tended to be identical.

“I’m fine.” Julia smiled. “What is it you’re building today?”

Ralf grinned. “We haven’t got a name for it yet, but it’ll sure be something.”

Carl nodded. “It has a purpose too,” he said. “We know exactly what we’ll be doing with this one.”

Julia entered the garage, her eyes adjusting to the darkness in comparison with the bright sunlight outdoors. The object was at least four, maybe five feet long. It could have been a metal barrel, yet there was something about it that meant she knew it wasn’t an ordinary container. The twins had been sanding down the sides, making it as smooth as possible. It looked sleek and exciting. Then she saw a similar object standing upright in the corner.
She tilted her head in its direction. “Another one?”

Carl nodded. “That’s the second one. This is the first.”

“Watcha going to do with them?”

Ralf tapped the side of his nose. “That’s for us to know and for you to find out.”

Julia walked around the other side of the work bench. The garage walls were festooned with a wide variety of tools and materials, all in very specific places. It was the tidiest, yet busiest, garage she had ever seen.

“It’s a lovely day out there. No one wants to go for a drive?”

She knew that Carl would look at her first. Not straight on, but out of the corner of his eye. He hesitated, but then Ralf beat him to it.

“We have work to do.”

So I see. But it’s such a nice day.”

Carl looked at her directly then, holding her gaze. “Ralf’s right, Julia, we have work to do. We’ve got plans.”

Julia jerked her head backwards, made a sniffing sound. She pretended she was upset at being snubbed, but really she had expected no other answer from them. Inside her, deep inside like a mudskipper waiting rain, she knew that eventually her time would come. She’d lure Carl away from Ralf and they’d be happy together. It was just that Carl didn’t know it yet, but as soon as he realised it, he’d be all hers.

Not that she didn’t like Ralf. But his existence seemed to interfere with that of Carl’s. She felt that in some way Carl was diminished because of him. Not quite original. Yet she knew she’d think the same of Carl if it were Ralf she was in love with. However that wasn’t the way. Carl had the spark meant for her and Ralf didn’t.

She let them get on with their work.

***

Julia cycled down Elmwood Avenue and passed Starbucks, sticking an imaginary finger in the air, before stopping and leaning her bicycle against the outside wall of Caffe Aroma. She went inside and ordered a latte. The staff nodded at her. She was a familiar sight, usually meeting up with Laura who worked there some afternoons. One of them called through into the back and Laura emerged with panini-dust on her fingers. She told Julia to wait outside, before returning to the back room and cleaning herself up.

Julia sat in a metal chair on the outside patio, overlooking Bidwell Parkway. It was Farmers Market day and the place was heaving. Julia watched the hustle and bustle before her, wondering if she’d spot anyone she knew in the crowds. Just as that morning, when she had observed the twins for a few moments before announcing her presence, she liked to watch people without them knowing they were being watched. They seemed more real that way, without adopting any kind of persona for her benefit. She preferred people to be pure.

Laura came and sat down beside her. She was holding a glass of wine and a Cajun chicken wrap.

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing much.” Laura took a bite out of her wrap and continued talking. “I finish work at five. What are you up to?”

“Nothing much, either. Just tried to get the twins to take me out for a drive, but there was nothing doing.”

Laura laughed. “You need to take me along with you.”

“Why’s that?”

“One of them fancies me. I’m sure of it. They were here during the week, Wednesday I think it was, and one of them was looking at me funny. As though he were about to say something.”

Julia sipped her latte, looking at Laura’s eyes over the lip of her cup. “Which one?”

Laura laughed again. “You tell me,” she said, “they both look the same to me.”
Julia forced a smile. “You make it sound like they’re Chinese.”

Laura bit into her wrap again. A sliver of chicken made its way out of the tortilla and slid down the left hand side of her chin. She wiped the snail-trail mark with her napkin.

“You don’t have to worry,” she said. “I’ll check with you first before I sleep with one of them.”

Julia looked back towards the farmer’s market. She had never told Laura about her obsession, but she guessed it was somehow obvious. She sipped her coffee again. The day was bright. It felt like a day of happenings, yet at the same time there was something quiet about it.

She wasn’t religious, but sometimes she thought that the act of praying might make the impossible conscious. To allow the possibility that something might happen seemed better than assuming it would never happen.

“Which one?” she said again.

“I told you, I don’t know which one.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean which one do you think I fancy?”

Laura laughed again. She washed down the last of her wrap with the wine. “I just told you. I dunno. They both look the same to me.”

***

The following Saturday Julia headed up Colvin Avenue again. The weather had turned slightly. Big drops of rain hit the wooden-roofed buildings like the percussion section of a deaf orchestra. She turned her bike straight into their drive and whizzed under the cover of the upturned garage roof. The squeak of brakes on wet tyres disturbed the twins. Even in the split second that they were distracted, Julia could tell that Carl was the one standing closest to her.

“Hi again.”

“Hi.”

“Watcha doing today?”

Carl gesticulated towards the object on the worktop. “As before,” he said.

Julia flicked her eyes over to the corner. The first object stood there, buffed silver and gleaming. The object on the worktop was only halfway identical. Same shape and size, but yet to be perfected. She knew there was an analogy between Carl and Ralf just waiting to be explored, but for the moment she pushed it out of her mind and said: “So, you got a name for this yet?”

Ralf grinned. “Sure have,” he said. “It’s the Penguin Fu Fat Machine.”

Carl grinned too. “Yep,” he said, “that’s what it is alright.”

Julia sighed. She suddenly realised she was still straddling her bike, her feet touching the floor on tiptoes both sides. She spun one leg over the handlebars, and leant the bicycle up by the wall.

She was used to the twin’s talking in their own language, although they did it less now than when they had all been growing up together. The words meant nothing at all, yet they also meant everything. She wasn’t going to take any nonsense now.

“Explanation please.”

Carl was the first to speak, beating Ralf by a whisker. “Spam.”

“An email?”

Ralf nodded. “The title of an email I got. It just seemed to fit.”

“So it’s meaningless?”

The twins shook their heads simultaneously. Carl spoke: “No. It was meaningless. Now it has meaning.”

Julia swept a hand through her hair. “You sure about that?”

“Sure as sure,” Ralf said.

“So what will it do?”

The twins looked at each other. Julia could almost feel something pass between them. Carl didn’t need to shake his head to indicate that he didn’t want to tell her, but Ralf overrode his decision and they went with it anyway. It was still a few moments before either of them spoke, then Carl shrugged his shoulders and spoke in a low voice: “We’re going over the Falls.”

***

Julia had only been up to Niagara once in her life. She had taken the trip with her parents when she was close to ten. It had horrified and bored her. The noise was tremendous – both from the water and from the tourists. In a way, each was as never-ending and fluid as the other, and she wasn’t sure which of them repulsed her the most. But once the shock of it passed her, all she wanted to do was to go home. Her parents were amazed. Everyone loves the falls. Julia didn’t.

Her chat with the twins had left her equally shocked, but not in the least bored. She knew she couldn’t talk them out of it, once they had decided to do something then they did it. However ridiculous or pointless it might be. She even thought of reporting it, but knew that would sideline her. She couldn’t isolate herself from Carl. He was all she wanted and all she had.

A couple of times she called in on Laura but she couldn’t convince herself to let her know what was happening. Instead she did some research online. She’d heard of the stories, of course, but was still surprised that only fifteen people had ever been known to make the attempt. And a third of those had died. Carl and Ralf had no ready answer to that one.

“It’s just something we’ve decided to do.”

“But you could get yourselves killed.”

“It’s just something we’ve decided to do.”

Charles Stephens was the third to go over the falls and the first to die. In 1920 he got inside an oak barrel and strapped an anvil to his feet for ballast. When the barrel hit the water at the base of the falls the anvil kept going, breaking through the bottom lid and taking Stephens with it. His right arm was discovered still strapped in.

George Stathakis suffocated when his barrel got stuck at the back of the falls and wasn’t recovered for fourteen hours. It didn’t lighten Julia’s mood to know that some of the other deaths weren’t barrel-related - someone had gone over in a kayak, and although Robert Overacker’s parachute was released correctly after he went over in a jet-ski it wasn’t properly tethered to his back. Julia knew those fatalities all had two things in common. The victims were both stupid and dead.

“We want a piece of immortality,” Ralf had explained.

“There’s no twins been over the falls before,” Carl said. “There’s been a co-ed team, but not twins.”

Julia left their house in a faintly concealed rage. She wanted her piece of immortality too. She wanted a baby with Carl.

***

Julia had been an only child, and one with a constant sense of loss. Whether at school, at home, or at Niagara, she knew there should always have been someone with her. As a kid this meant a constant nagging for a brother or sister which – as an adult – led to the desire for a child. She knew it wasn’t the normal maternal instinct. It was something deeper than that. And then she’d discovered the existence of her vanished twin.

Of course she couldn’t prove it, but she knew it all the same. She’d researched twins when she realised that she was falling in love with one of the kids she’d grown up with. Carl Delaney. She wanted to know whether being a twin gave him any disabilities at all, made him something other than a normal person apart from the physicality of his brother. She discovered the term for a foetus which dies in uteri in a multi-gestation pregnancy. A vanished twin. Something partially or completely reabsorbed by the mother. According to the research it could occur as frequently as one in eight pregnancies. Leaving no detectable trace at birth or before, it probably wasn’t even known in most cases. Some hypotheses went on to speculate that children born in such a pregnancy may have some memories of their vanishing twins, and may feel lonely because of this. Julia felt sure it was more than speculation. She believed it to be true.

So it was imperative that Carl survive the falls, unless she could change his mind. He knew it was not only dangerous, but illegal. He knew the possibilities of drowning. And the $500 fine certainly wouldn’t deny them their snatch of fame. But Julia needed to be made whole again. And in doing so, she had to tell him how she felt.

***

Julia held Laura’s hand as they got off the bus and walked up Colvin Avenue. It wasn’t going to be easy to separate Carl from Ralf but she had to tell him how she felt. If he didn’t know then what was to stop him from killing himself. He wasn’t stupid. Neither of them were. It was just that sometimes their collective zeitgeist seemed to work against them.

She remembered watching them one time at school when they went through a stage of getting bullied. Ralf had been in the middle of a group of older boys, getting pushed from one to the other like a basketball. Carl had seen it happening and ran up to the group, but instead of trying to stop it he had allowed himself to be admitted within the circle, and both of them had been pushed around together. It was as though there was an intrinsic desire for whatever happened to the one to happen to the other. This was the source of the fear within Julia now. That she wouldn’t be able to find a way to loosen that bond.

She nudged Laura’s ankle as she began to giggle when they reached the garage. Could the woman not take anything seriously? Then they were both leaning against the side of the building, watching Carl and Ralf put the finishing touches to their machine.

Both sections were on the workbench now, with a piece of metal soldered between them so that the two barrels together resembled the sides of a catamaran. The openings to the barrels faced them, and Julia could see they had padded and reinforced the insides with some kind of spongy-material. Could it really be enough to protect them? Suddenly she realised they’d have to be curled up whilst inside their barrels. From their positioning and the way that the machine was constructed it was inevitable that she saw the object as representing a womb. Would they be born together at the end of the drop, or would they be dead?

Feeling sick with anticipation she said her usual hello. Carl was standing nearest to her, but he didn’t seem quite so shy today. She wondered if it was because Laura was with her. Safety in numbers, perhaps. She also wondered which one Laura thought had fancied her. It wouldn’t matter to Laura, either would do, but it did matter to her.

Julia nodded towards Carl. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Before the twins had time to object, Laura eased her way further into the garage. “She means alone,” she said; then patted the side of the barrel and added, “Now, aren’t you going to tell me what this is all about?”

Julia almost reached out to hold his hand as they went up the steps into the back of the house, but she knew it was too much too soon. She held the door open for him as if it were her own property, the place she had lived in next door before her mother had died and her father had sold up and moved away. She’d never forgiven her mother for absorbing her twin into her own body. It had all come out during one otherwise bright summer’s day just before they realised her mum had cancer. Her timing was impeccable, in retrospect; but she could never convince herself to take the accusation back.

She leant with her back against the kitchen table, watching as he mooched around the room, glancing out of the window in case he could see his brother in the garage. She knew they were rarely apart. If she ever had a moment it was now.

“I’m going to talk straight,” she said. “I don’t want you going over the falls. You’ll get killed.”

His eyes narrowed. She felt sure he knew she’d asked him inside for this.

“So what’s it to do with you?” he said.

“Well, we’re friends aren’t we?” Julia felt herself faltering. Fuck it. “No. No, it’s more than that.” She eased herself away from the table and walked towards him. He took a few steps backwards before hitting the wall behind him. Julia kept going. She reached out for his hand. Took it in hers. Looked into his eyes.

“I love you,” she said.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. There was no resistance, but the simple intimation of all the passion that would come. The passion that was due to her.

“I love you,” she repeated. Her heart was beating as strong as the sun on a hot day. “I love you Carl.”

“I’m Ralf,” he said.

And in that moment she saw he was right, and her hands fell to her sides.

***

It was on October 24 that Julia found herself riding between the twins in their pick-up, the Penguin Fu Fat Machine under tarp blowing in the breeze behind them, as they drove the twenty-three miles to the falls. They hadn’t chosen the day at random, it was precisely one hundred and ten years since the first attempt to go over the falls in a barrel had been made. Surprisingly it had been a woman. And a sixty-three year old at that. Annie Taylor. She had used an oak barrel with inflated pillows and a mattress for comfort, and had been fished out bruised and shaken after falling roughly 170 feet over the middle of the falls. Reportedly she had said, No one ought ever do that again.

Julia wasn’t sure why she was with them. Whilst she held a camera in her hands, she knew there’d be plenty of others there to take photos when the time came. Every two seconds, one million gallons of water plummeted over Niagara Falls – and every month, on average, a similar number of tourists turn up to see the spectacle. Maybe she was there just to see them come out of it alive. Maybe she’d have to drive their pick-up home.

It was four months since she’d declared her love to the wrong man and as far as she knew he hadn’t told anyone. She hadn’t asked Laura what had happened in the garage either. Sometimes not knowing was better than knowing. The truth was, in itself, a vanished twin.

They parked some way upriver, and she watched as the twins manoeuvred the machine off the back of the pick-up. Her instructions were very specific. Once they got inside the contraption she was to make her way to a vantage point as close to the falls as she could. She was carrying binoculars as well as the camera, although all of them knew the chances of her actually seeing them were very small. But it helped, they said, to know she was there. All she knew was that they had no way of stopping the device once it got into the water.

Bobby Leech had been the first man over the falls in 1911. He survived, but fifteen years later he slipped over an orange peel in Christchurch, New Zealand during a lecture tour, and died from complications arising from the fall. Some references had it as a banana peel, but in Julia’s mind she couldn’t see that it mattered. Maybe you didn’t need to fall 170ft to die, but only 6ft. That was how she had to tackle it. It wasn’t the fall that killed him, but the landing.

She kissed both brothers before they entered the machine, not making a distinction between them. Truth was she was no longer sure any more. All her realities were being stripped away. She could feel loneliness at the base of her spine once more.

***

By the time she reached her vantage point they had already gone over. Everyone seemed to know something and everyone seemed to know nothing. Police helicopters searched from the sky. Everyone getting a piece of the twins to talk about to their grandchildren, to pass their fame by association down through all their assorted histories. Julia saw several pregnant women in the crowd. How many of them were carrying twins, or more? How many of them would absorb the unknown back into their bodies, bearing children forever punished to be lonely. She suppressed the thoughts, craned her neck over the side of the safety barrier, and looked despairingly into the water. There was nothing to see. Despite the sheer wonder of it all.


© Andrew Hook. Originally appeared in Midnight Street #11 (Aug 2008). Used with permission