The Bite

The Bite

By: Dave Woehrle

I work at a special needs summer camp. A couple weeks ago, on the bus, waiting to go to the pool, a kid clawed my neck, pulled me towards him, and bit my left upper arm. A quarter-sized bruise welted up. It hurt. But it was more shock than pain. It was the surprise, the realization that it’d been years since biting someone to show dismay was even an option.

            After work, I had an afternoon nap. I have insomnia, you see. Anxiety shows up every night to dance the dark ballroom of my mind. Thoughts that happen at three in the morning are not good thoughts.

            Post-nap, I had dinner. I saw a summer storm coming in.

            I noticed a missed call on my cell phone from an old friend of mine.

            I dialed him up and stood barefoot in my parents’ garage. The garage door was open, and I watched the tree leaves in the front yard go silver as the wind upturned them.

            My friend, a writer, a farmer from Iowa, said “Hey, what are doing?”

            I said, “I’m watching a storm come in.”

            “That’s good,” he said.

            His voice was wrong, not his.

            He told me that a mutual friend of ours had committed suicide.

“What?” I asked, needlessly.

“Yeah, he’s gone. I’ve been lying on the floor and crying for most of the day.”

            I was speechless. I stood with my cell phone to my cheek. I watched warm rain flood the street in a single sudden surge. It was a short roar, a few seconds of heavy downfall.

            My friend on the phone, he said our friend got a hotel room in Colorado, a gun, and, well, that was that.

            I paced the garage, smelling the rain, feeling helpless.

            My friend on the phone, responding to my silence, said, “I know. I don’t know, either, man. I just thought I should tell you.”

            The storm outside shifted and a double rainbow appeared in the sun. I’ve never seen a double rainbow after hearing about a suicide. God is an asshole sometimes.

            Because I didn’t know what else to say, I told my friend on the phone about the double rainbow above my neighbor’s roof across the street.

He said, “I wish it would rain here, so I could see that. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen that.”

            After a while – after I walked in circles in the garage, randomly squeezing tires to estimate air pressure for no real reason – we exchanged memories of our lost friend: he’d written a short autobiographical fiction piece from King Kong’s perspective called “Correct Me If I’m Kong.” He’d played Debussy beautifully on piano. He was once in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in college. After the show, a professor said, “You know, he was the only up one up there that seemed to be having a good time.”

            That’s how I’ll remember him, the man who knew more than most of us ever will, the guy who saw the Big Joke and the Big Beauty.

On the phone with my friend, we agreed we had to look out for each other, to call, to catch up, to remember that the ones we love have to live every day just like us. After awhile, it was clear we’d made each other feel better just by being there, by being and continuing to be, which is so much harder than anyone admits.

            My left shoulder ached suddenly from the bite after I hung up the phone.

It was the pain. It was the realization of the ways others choose to show dismay.