"What am I doing here?" Ezra Standish whispered to the heavens above him.
Sitting behind him and on a slightly higher level, Josiah Sanchez regarded him carefully. It was the dead of night -- 3:42 A.M., to be precise. The sky was littered with stars, constellations filled in with extra points of light, and most of them brighter than could ever be seen in any city. There was not a cloud to be seen, and if it weren't for the eerie brightness of the nearly full moon, the Milky Way would probably have been clearly evident, trailing across the sky in a pale, translucent band. Instead it was washed out by the brightness of moonlight, which cast the rocks and scrub around them in enough of a glow that distinguishing features could easily be made out. Spread out before them in a vast masterpiece all its own, in a sort of counterpoint to the splendor of the sky above, was the Grand Canyon, yawning and silent. The peaks and pillars of the interior were cast into a shadow of varying shades of grey, fading to an almost blue in its deepest places. Nature around them was busy yet silent, only the slightest of noises -- the brush of wind in a tree, the skittering of some animal or insect nearby -- cut through the chill of the night.
"You've been at the Grand Canyon National Park with me for three days," he answered quietly.
In any other situation, if anyone else had asked, his answer would have been different -- more philosophical, about trying to find a place of inner tranquility mirrored in the surroundings, perhaps. Actually, he'd have to remember that one -- the best turns of phrase always seemed to come when he didn't have anything to write with. But here, now, this was the answer to give. Ezra had, after all, asked the question several times before.
Ezra turned around to face him, and Josiah resisted the temptation to take the younger man closer, draw him away from the edge and into the warmth. But there was nothing he could physically do -- they were far from the guardrails, and Ezra had a sweater somewhere. He'd seen it yesterday. But right now the only field he was on was the physical, the external. So he sat back and waited. He had spent three days waiting for Ezra to say something, give some sort of hint to the internal struggle that had driven him to such distraction.
He hadn't been completely taken by surprise by Ezra's abrupt visit -- he'd received a phone call from Chris Larabee several weeks ago ordering in that terse command style to keep his calendar open for the next while.
"You'll know what it is when it comes. And once it has --" a pause. "Just let me know." Chris' tone had suddenly sounded -- not defeated, more like he didn't know what enemy he was fighting, or how to go about it.
Ezra shivered, sending pale moonlit ripples across his skin and drawing Josiah out of his reverie, even as he reached behind him on the rock, twisting his torso and shoulders to grab the battered sweater, its logo worn off and torn, and covered with paint in other places, enough so that its origins were beyond recognition. In a swift economy of movement the sweater was slipped over his head and onto his body, carefully tugged down so the t-shirt did not peek out from underneath. Suddenly, with his hair ruffled and tousled from the movement, and with his hands only barely emerging from the overly-large sweater, sitting cross-legged on the rock and blinking slowly at the pine trees in the distance, Ezra Standish looked like a child, swathed in shadows and starlight.
Josiah's heart choked. In the three days Ezra had been present, it was painfully obvious that something was wrong. The first sign was that Ezra was so silent -- he had appeared one day, like a wraith, walking out of the woods and into the ranger station. Josiah still had no idea how Ezra had gotten there, or how he had found him, since he had told perhaps three people at the university of his plans. Ezra had not volunteered a word. In fact, after his initial greeting of "Hello, Josiah. I'm glad I'm here," the normally loquacious southerner had not spoken a word for perhaps 18 hours. And then those words had only been "excuse me." Instead, he seemed content to simply sit somewhere and watch Josiah, perhaps follow him around for a bit. He did not seem to want to stay out of sight of the older man, except for the two inexplicable and rather worrisome periods where he had slipped off into the woods for several hours. He did seem, however, to acknowledge Josiah's worry when that happened, breaking his silence once again to say "I'm back" after the second occasion, as if that was all the reassurance one would need.
In some ways, Josiah was almost dreading the end of the silence. His sister Hannah, when he visited her, was always at her worst when she broke her silence to have some sort of raving fit, and now Josiah could almost see Ezra opening his mouth to speak, but instead ranting and bellowing like a monster. He forcibly pushed the thought aside.
He had to stay calm. Stay open -- stay receptive to whatever it was Ezra was doing. Find the balance and you cannot be struck from your path.
"It seems appropriate -- erosion..." Ezra's voice was so quiet that it took a moment for Josiah to realize he was speaking. It was obvious Ezra wanted to talk to him -- wanted to say something, but he was like a puppet without strings, an actor without a script. Ezra was looking anywhere but at him, and he couldn't see behind the frighteningly bland poker face. He couldn't keep out the sense of foreboding. "No one else is --" Ezra interrupted his own question. "Of course not." He shrugged. "They couldn't, even if they would --" he stopped again, this time with a decisive nod.
Finally, he sighed, and looked up, making eye contact at last. He looked exhausted. There was almost no spark of life in those eyes. "I don't know how you do it, Josiah..."
"Do what?" he asked quietly, not wanting to break whatever mood was allowing his tired friend to finally speak. He had held back all his questions, all his worries, all his normal reactions, not wanting to set off anything, start some spiraling downfall.
"How do you always stay on such an even keel? How do you stay so calm? How do you always --" Ezra's voice cracked, and his face seemed to crumble into loss and confusion, and he slumped forward. "How do you always know who you are?"
Josiah paused to consider his answer. The question seemed especially strange coming from a man who was notorious for slipping in and out of cover easily, without so much as a twitch. But it had been years since he'd seen his friend, and circumstances must have changed outside his purview. But to see this complete and utter change made him feel lost. All his standard answers had gone out the window. This was one piece of history that he would love to rewrite. But there was no time for that now.
"I don't know what's real and what's not any more." Ezra spoke in a monotone. "I live in the hope that one day I'll wake up and I won't know truth from fiction. Because I know that the truth is that one day I'll wake up, and not know that I don't know truth from fiction. And then where will I be? What will be walking around in this shell then?"
He sat there, numb. And frustrated. Why? Why could he help so many people, do such excellent work in other cases, then be powerless to help his own?
More time must have passed than he thought, because all of a sudden, Ezra was jumping to his feet and stalking away.
"Ezra, wait! I want to help you, I just need to --" he caught up, and grabbed Ezra's arm. He spun around, jerking out of his grasp and backing up.
"No, no, I don't want -- I don't -- This is exactly what I didn't want," Ezra babbled, keeping out of arms length of his former colleague. "I didn't want to make you -- I didn't want to be afraid!" He snapped out at last, then realized what he had just said, and paled. As much as he could pale with the moonlight already whitening his skin considerably. The level of detail so late in the night made everything seem almost surreal.
"Afraid of what, Ezra?" Josiah followed him cautiously, trying to keep an eye on the path so the oblivious younger man wouldn't fall.
Ezra seemed to slump. "How can you remind others of who you are," he asked softly, his gaze concentrated on a scrubby and bedraggled pine tree he was fingering. "if you can't even remember yourself?" He looked at Josiah, and for the first time his eyes seemed alive. They were filled with sorrow, and wry amusement. "I'm beginning to see the disadvantage in not entirely opening up to anyone." Had his accent thickened considerably, or was it just his imagination, fueled by the strangeness of the night?
No matter. Josiah was beginning to get the picture. Ezra's biggest weakness had always been his need to be in control. Even the slightest sign that he was losing control of himself -- something he had always been so firm about -- would be devastating.
"Ezra -- a personality like yours, your true personality, cannot be buried. At least, not forever," he soothed. Some of the tension seemed to ease from the younger man's shoulders, a relief that he would not have to explicitly state the problem, even if he had at least had to mention it. "Let us help you. I'm sure we --"
"NO!" That was a mistake. The yell reverberated in the stillness; somewhere Josiah thought he heard a bird, winging its way from a nearby tree. "You don't understand," he snapped. "Even if any of you -- understood, really knew, it still wouldn't be safe." He backed off a couple steps further from Josiah. "It's not all bleeding away... they're mixing together." His voice was such a low whisper that Josiah had to strain to catch the words. "I won't chance harming any of you." Ezra's eyes were wide and unfocussed. He looked tense, ready to bolt at any second.
Josiah couldn't stand it any longer. Taking two large strides forward, he enfolded the shorter man in a warm, tight bear-hug, feeling like he never wanted to let him go. Ezra's hands were trapped at his
sides, but fortunately he didn't struggle.
"I trust you. Always," he whispered harshly. He held on a moment longer, and felt Ezra relax against him at last. Then, slowly, he pushed away, a dark grin on his face.
"So long as I am indeed myself, I think I can agree." He pulled away some more, then turned around to face the majestic spread of nature before them. "But just as I could never be truly open in my life, I cannot bear to change that now. Maybe..." he drew in a deep breath, then sighed. "Maybe, if no one knows it existed, no one will have to mourn its passing." He smiled brightly, and Josiah shivered. But he couldn't find the words to argue, the motion to act. He raged internally, feeling that uselessness that crept up on him at the most inopportune times. No, you can't go. We need you. The words stuck in his throat. He wanted to carry the younger man away, take him to a place where nothing could harm him.
But he couldn't do that. He had no choice in the matter.
With that thought came a stunning instant of clarity. While he had no choice, it was not his life, his future choices, that was being ripped away from him. He had to make the only choice he could.
He had to let go.
"You go on ahead, Ezra." He placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder warmly. "We're behind you all the way."
Slowly Ezra turned, and graced him with a beaming smile so full of life -- so full of liveliness -- that Josiah was hard pressed to think there was anything wrong with the man.
"I want to always remember you. Even if it's not your name, or your face. I want to feel this feeling, and know that it is good. I think that even if I go, some part of you might always remain within me."
With that he turned and walked away, mingling and disappearing into the chiaroscuro of the shadowy pine trees, until even though the moon was almost as bright as day, Josiah could no longer pick him out, or trace his movements. The park returned to its normal nocturnal serenity, ignoring the passage of another transitory human, moving in a quicksilver instant in the face of the eternal, eons-slow movements of nature.
Josiah stood there long after he'd disappeared. Yes, he'd made the right choice. There had never really been another choice to begin with.
The End
