Spiders pull while angels fall

“There are monsters in this world, Ben. And they are real.”

After high school, after Europe and my college diploma I moved. I think my arms wanted to forget what corn silk felt like. Part of me still wanted to hold on to those I feel I affected. A close friend from high school, who now I can no longer find no matter how hard I try, once said to me,

“We live a warrior’s life. Our parents work in factories and for security companies. It’s the new war. And we can’t lose.”

To me, not losing meant going to college; learning. And moving away from a town whose collective mind was comprised of assimilated identities and bigotry. For my friend, not losing meant disappearing.

After I left home, for good, I immediately felt it. The magnet’s pull. I pictured that my town was this spider web; a web that wouldn’t break. As I drove away I pulled a strand with me. Not taut enough to snap me back but enough to lead me home.

And then, like spiders, the emails started. Followed by phone calls. Post letters. People wanting to know how I was doing. They were asking about holiday visits and summer breaks. Tugging at the silk around my waist.

I know why I fought it initially but I don’t know why I resisted for so long. After my first few visits home, I realized how easy it was to leave. Come home and return. Eventually home stopped being home and my longtime friends became part-time friends.

Every town is a web with roots and constellations and its residents are fibers and ancient cartographers.

It was in these interludes that I found my footing, my enjoyment in returning. Not to wax egotistical, but it is nice to return and see people smile a smile they haven’t in months. Their smile for you. It is warming to know that you have the power to affect people. I have those new smiles for other people. I instill that power in others.

Since I have little to no blood-family back in Indiana, I learned to stretch my arms around all of the fringe characters in my life. To some I was a party-boy and to others I was a sage. And to one, I was a protector. A brother. When she walked she fell into my footprints. Made decisions that I made without ever knowing that I had made them before her. She reveled in my stories. I, in turn, delighted in her process of forming an identity. Many found her to be pesky, and I did too. But in that same vein, she was like my sister. Her laugh annoyed me, but brought me comfort. After spending a year away from home I could return and still grit my teeth in reaction to her giggling the same way I did before college.

Within her, though, I thought there was also a kindred spirit. She had loftier goals than most of my friends. Aspersions aside, it is often hard to connect to old friends when what you do and who you know continues to contrast more and more.

Regardless of our paths in lives it is impossible not to be jealous of each other for one aspect or another.

When she switched majors her first semester of college, my college, my heart sank a little. When she dropped out, I was disappointed, but mostly in myself. I have never recommended higher education as a way of life. As someone who is deeper in debt year by year, I can not push tuition and enormous loans onto anyone, especially if there hearts desire doesn’t reside there. I was trying to hold onto my web around her too strongly.

People won’t be pulled in a direction they aren’t inclined to. If you do, you should know it is against their will.

But when I found out she had returned home, lost her job, moved in with her mother and apparently had “taken up with the wrong crowd”, I knew it was time for me to shake the ground. I returned home for the holidays and prepared to face her demons with her.

With over two feet of snow on the ground and a plead from her mother (“Ben, you talk to her. Use what you have. She listens to you.”) I confronted her.

“You’re better than this shit,” I said. “Look at me and tell me you are happy? Look at me and tell me this is what you want.”

She bit her lip and giggled in nervousness. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Well then what are you doing? Look I may not be succeeding but at least I’m floundering somewhere else. Somewhere that has opportunities. Somewhere that people think like me. You used to think like that. Like me. Now you are just too busy trying to think like everyone else.”

I knew my words were hurting her because she could only giggle in agreement.

“I am pissed at you. I am so mad at you, you could not even imagine. How many people? How many people older than you have you seen come back to this town and lie down and die. These people become statues. And you have to be different.”

This is the place where spiders feast and tree roots wrap around to pull you down.

“I will be proud of you as long as you are doing what you want. I am your angel and I will protect you, no matter what. All I ask is that you are always trying and never settling. Do that and you will be safe.”

This is where identity freezes in the winter and rots in the summer. Months and a year pass without so much as a phone call. Impossible promises seem possible because you are never called to duty. You never have to keep your word when things are far away.

“Ben, you gotta call me. Tonight. Things are…things are. God I hate this place.”

This is the place you distance yourself from and you name it failure.
This is the town where returning to live means picking out a coffin.
Where people have to work to die peacefully, digging their own graves while raising kids and embalming themselves while paying taxes.

“I’m sorry I keep missing you. I hate playing phone tag. I hope everything is okay. Call me.”

It is towns like this where the monsters breed and rise because they are tired of catacombs.
They pull their webs, cast them over others, because part of them hates the fact that they live in a graveyard.

“I was at party. On a lake.”

Where things can only hit close to home because that is all that it is comprised of, homes. A birds eye view reveals rows and rows of white houses, painting cemeteries on the horizon. Graves that look like suburbs.

“I had told him no.”

Knight’s armor rusts and zombies stroll naked to remind us we are human.

“I had a concussion. And no one heard a thing.”

And now you have been so many places and escaped so many times that your spider silk has tangled, twisted around trees and street sign, Christmas-light-bulbed together. Pulling it only tightens the knot making release impossible.

“It’s okay. I’m not pregnant. And another girl has stepped forward. I might have a case.”

And I tell her she is a fighter. I tell her she will be alright. I tell her she doesn’t deserve this. I tell her she isn’t worthless and I tell her that it is okay if she woke up crying and pissed in her bed.

All the while she is giggling. Nervous I guess.

This is a town where victims are born. Not made.

I knew him. He had been in my English class. We used to eat lunch in the cafeteria. Someone you knew but did not influence and likewise.

***

We keep our demons at bay because it is easier to sequester than admit that angels live with devils. And they breed and intentions mix and one day we will all be messes. Graveyards spring up in any town and every metropolis is a mausoleum for someone. We are pulled toward what feels like home when are securities are diminished.

I used to say people are so complex they are beautiful. But sometimes they are so complex that they are awful. Devils. Sometimes people do things that make you wish you didn’t believe in a god. People do things that force you to break promises you could never really keep in the first place. Beautiful messes.

And there are those things that I cannot help but think. If she had stayed in college. If she had moved to Chicago. If she had listened to her mother.

But I have seen the gun barrel and I know it does not matter. And if I was an angel I would wish that my wings were soft enough for her to sleep and my tears salty enough to heal her wounds. But I am not.

For the moment, I can only believe that if I had gone home to die, to dig my grave, then I would have saved her.