Matthew M. Quick

Matthew M. Quick

Overpass

Until the very end, when either of you got discouraged, you’d take her favorite trail past the lake to the sitting rock where you would drink water from wide-mouthed bottles, spill a stream for the dog to lap out of the air, and then gaze softly down at the apple trees in the meadow below.

If she were able, you would continue through the denser forest, toward the summit, and the canopy would whisper as you were engulfed, as you disappeared.

When you happened upon an experienced tree, all along its broad trunk, up and down scarred and knotty bark, shadows would eddy with sunlight, wraithlike faces would materialize for a second or two. With your breathing, with your sweat, you and your wife worshiped the spirits that haunted the trees.

Rays of light through branches, leaves, speckling the trail, making you feel as though you were walking on the bottom of the ocean. Birds singing out from the shadows—she told you which songs were of chickadees, which were of robins and sparrows, cardinals.

Sometimes a squirrel or a toad would cross your path, and while your wife knelt down to say hello, you would pull your dog back by the collar to keep her from shaking the small creature to death in her fangs.

Along the rim where the hardwoods gave way to more fragrant conifers, you hiked the steepest part of the trail over the fire road to the summit’s parking lot where, on a clear day, you could reach out toward the eastern horizon and hold a distant Boston in the palm of your hand.

Sometimes you would sit on the chairlift that was locked in place for the summer, dangling your hiking boots over the grass. She—identifying the falling cries of raptors circling overhead. You—identifying what you would miss most: the second before her hands broke the surface of the water and her body slipped into the swimming pool, she beamed; mistaking your arm for hers in the middle of a nightmare, she would try to wake herself up by pinching your flesh, leaving bruises that earned you blueberry pancakes in the morning; the way she tried to talk to birds when she thought no one was around, eyes wide, chirping at the birdhouses hung from the Japanese maple in the backyard.

Whenever you mourned her, she sensed it, and her tone reminded you that it was rude to miss someone before they had gone. “What?” she would say.

“Nothing,” you would reply. Your clumsy love, your admiration made you wistful, weak.

When I began to pray I went to the flat hiking path that was once train tracks, navigated by coal-fed steam engines—and I would run swiftly to the highway overpass that bridged the widest part of the river.

The trees spoke their swishy language; gravel shifted under my feet; my lungs pulled in more and more air; I sweated out; I sweated out; I sweated out; my pulse rose and echoed in my ears.

A couple miles down the trail, when I was just starting to tire, the great overpass would rise out of the trees. Here, a concrete support—thirty feet wide and at least ten stories high. After making sure no one was approaching, making sure no one would follow, I would circumvent the wall and sit on the jagged rocks that spilled down the steep incline to the river.

En route to the reservoir, water wore down the boulders that tried to impede its path. The river crackled around and over these large rocks like television static.

A small maple had sprouted up through the landslide of granite. When I looked up into its slender branches, the early foliage would glitter like fish scales in the sun. Light twinkled through each leaf differently; the summer breeze changed the shading but not the color.

Hearing the occasional car or tractor-trailer pass through the clouds, I would see the ribbed metal of the highway’s underbelly so far above me, and the rust stains that had percolated over the years, coloring many of the granite rocks below a brownish orange.

While praying, I often held a flat rock to my forehead, allowing it to drink the moisture from my skin in exchange for a feeling of warmth and acknowledgment.

Occasionally, the answers appeared as soon as I opened my eyes:

Dandelion seeds swirled in the afternoon sun. There did not seem to be any wind, yet in every direction tiny white parachutes danced and danced and danced.

You told your wife about the dandelion seeds, and she said that you had better continue to pray if you wanted to see such beauty again.

A mouse with legs like a rabbit and a foot-long tail. I blinked and smiled as the strange creature hopped, rappelling its way down toward the river, dragging its tail like a safety rope.

Your wife laughed and laughed when you squatted down to demonstrate the way the frog-mouse had hopped.

A nervous chipmunk approached, scurrying from rock to rock. Its small nails scratched and tickled when it climbed my leg, when it perched on my knee. We studied each other for a long time—its black stripes twitching along with its whiskers—before the chipmunk was spooked by the thunder of an eighteen-wheeler and scampered away.

She was convinced that your prayers were being received, saying that there was no denying a face-to-face encounter with a chipmunk.

“So come to the overpass with me,” you said to her. “I can carry you there if you can’t walk the whole way.”

Her deep-set eyes looked up at you from the pillow. Her shrunken hand rested lightly on your wrist. “The mountain’s where we go when we need to believe,” she reminded you. “But keep going back to the overpass. Keep praying under the small tree. Tell me what happens.”

Months after his wife had died, he was praying under the overpass when a window unit air conditioner fell from the sky and landed with a tremendous crash only a few feet from where he was sitting. When he looked up and saw a black square falling toward him, he dove out of the way, rolled down the incline—gashing his knees and elbows on the rocks—and managed to avoid being killed by the big screen television that exploded upon impact. He was knee-deep in the river, trying to escape to the other side, when he looked up and saw a refrigerator being unloaded over the guardrail. Its door kept opening and closing as it toppled toward the rocks. The young maple was quartered by its weight.

When appliances stopped falling, he climbed up the loose rock and rolled the refrigerator off of the small tree. Its trunk, which was only the thickness of a table leg, had snapped a few inches above the ground, leaving a white shard poking out through the rocks like a broken bone.

The very next day, you alone took your wife’s favorite trail up past the lake without stopping at the sitting rock, without gazing down at the apple trees in the meadow below.

In the thick of the forest, you happened upon an experienced tree. Leaves whispered, songbirds chirped, shadows eddied with sunlight, and you thought you saw her face in the speckled bark.

The northern base of the trunk had been hollowed out and—ducking your head—you found that the opening was big enough for you to enter. Cobwebs and beetles and moss inhabited the lower innards, but once inside, you realized that you could shimmy your way up into the deep quiet where the tree’s many life rings would become your force field. Using your knees and elbows like pickaxes, you clambered higher and higher—your scabs were soon ripped off and your blood commingled with thicker sap. Halfway to the top, you felt something pinch the flesh of your arm. When you closed your eyes, you saw your wife’s hands breaking through the blackness overhead, her grinning face slipping down through the trunk to greet you.