After The Fall

By Ben Leib

J.B. had worked his way into a nook at the corner of the porch, avoiding the shoulders and the elbows of strangers, and he watched Miriam where she stood beside Shera on the back lawn. He wasn’t spying, for there’s an element of voyeurism in the spy, an expectation of witnessing the unusual or the illicit as it transpires. J.B. felt himself in love with Miriam so looking was enough.

J.B. didn’t know whose house he was at. He’d tagged along with a group of friends, including Miriam, and there he stood, out of the way, not quite morose, but not the life of the party either. The commingling of elevated voices and a reggae party mix broadcast at maximum volume made for cacophony several decibels louder than he cared for. J.B. suspected his hearing was bad, and he had difficulty differentiating conversation from loud ambient noise – more so, he thought, than anybody else. It isolated him.

—

J.B. was dreaming of Miriam, wondering where he’d gone wrong. She was dating Jim, which had, at first, felt like a savage betrayal. But J.B. and Jim weren’t that close, and to blame him would have been so blatant a projection of J.B.’s own personal feelings of failure and self-doubt.

J.B. stood on the porch recalling when Miriam lay naked in his bed. He savored the details of that exploration: recalled the curve of her breasts, large and unique enough to be interesting, his hands as they explored the tactile details of exposed flesh, her excitement and his as drunken intimacies grew feverish.

He never figured out what he’d done wrong that led Miriam to leave so abruptly. She stood from the bed and dressed quickly mumbling that things were going too fast, that too little time had passed since she’d slept with her ex, and then was gone with a kiss, an apology, and the insult of pity written in her blue eyes.

—

J.B. caught Miriam’s eye, and she began waving. He realized that she was calling him down from the porch with an urgency that bespoke subdued panic. Shera stood beside her, hands at her cheeks.

J.B. pushed through the crowd, descended the staircase into the yard, and met the girls where they stood alone on the lawn. “What’s up?”

“Something’s wrong. There’s something fucked up with that porch. We just watched the whole thing move.”

I sized up the structure from which I’d just stepped. “The porch?”

“You didn’t feel it? You’re not thinking about going back up there, are you?”

“Well…”

Miriam turned to Shera. “We should try to get the boys out of the house.”

“I can start making phone calls.” Shera pulled her phone from her purse.

—

It was an instant precluding any meaningful reaction. The electricity in the house flashed off and then back on. There was a loud groaning, a crack, beams splintering. It was as if the wood took its time breaking, as if each splinter was forfeiting molecular cohesion one by one. The porch shifted. The left corner quivered and dropped six inches. The crowd lurched and a girl screamed. The lights flickered once more and then the porch fell. The left two thirds dropped straight down – all of its supports gave way at once. It fell fifteen feet into the yard below. Dozens of kids fell with it, landing in a heap at ground level. Those standing on the right side of the porch fell into the void that had opened beside them.

There was an instant that coincided with the collapse of the porch in which Miriam clasped onto my arm. It was instinct. The noise of the disintegration, the rumble, the screams, it all culminated in an innate moment of physical contact. Miriam reached out as if some fibrous synapse of her unconscious mind fired the message, He will protect you.

I touched her arm.

She looked at me. “What should we do?”

I turned toward Shera.

“What about the boys?”

In that irreproducible confluence of circumstance, I felt an unfamiliar sensation: a need to act. If but for an immeasurable briefness, I forgot about my own powerlessness.

“I’m gonna see if I can help.”

I began to pull away from Miriam’s grip.

“Wait, where are you going?” She refused to give up my arm.

“I’m gonna see if anybody’s hurt.”

—

Iran toward the bedlam of broken lumber and college students. The kids were struggling to right themselves, beginning to find footing, and scrambling off of the deck. I figured anybody at the bottom of that heap was likely injured. I began guiding people. “To your left, you can get off this way.” I pointed. I tried to command some attention. The kids were scattered as they attempted to regain their sense of surroundings. There were only a few spots through which they could easily exit the wreckage. “Hey buddy, over there, walk to your right. Don’t step on anybody.” I reached up, took the hands of disoriented girls. “This way. You’re okay. Good, good, just step down right here.” I grabbed other hands.

There must have been forty or fifty people who had fallen at once. I was amazed: the kids got themselves off the ruins of that porch, and as they did the bare planks of the deck were exposed. No bodies remained. There were no screams of pain.

Though the wooden pylons that supported it lay disintegrated beneath, the porch itself had fallen intact. I reached down and took a hold of the structure.

“Grab a side,” I called. Within seconds, ten or twelve guys had a grip on the edge of the deck. “On three.”

We all lifted, and the deck rose as one solid piece. I looked beneath. It was dark. There was a pile of fragmented lumber but I saw no human gore, no writhing limbs, and my pulse slowed as I realized no one had been injured.

—

When I returned, the girls were pale. They awaited a report.

“Is everybody okay?” Miriam concentrated her gaze as she scanned the crowd for someone specific.

“Everybody’s fine.”

Despite that no one was injured, a general chaos ensued. Drunk kids stormed the streets as the sirens could be heard approaching in the background. Everybody was participating in a mass exodus, prompted by the mutual desire to avoid the police. Somehow, like a beacon of reality in that dreamlike culmination of small and insignificant events, I heard Jim’s voice over the mounting gratuity of noise.

“Miriam! Miriam! Miriam!” He screamed for her.

And then the girls weren’t at my side.

—

There were fire trucks and police cars wailing by the time I found Steve waiting at the car. Flashing blue and red lights made a carnival out of the chaos. Kids were searching for their friends. They screamed to each other.

“Man, can you believe that shit?” Steve asked.

“One of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.”

We continued to drink back at the guys’ apartment. I stuck around, hoping that Miriam might find her way back there, to the place where we’d started the night off at. Still feeling her grip on my arm, still remembering that it was me she’d been able to reach for, I’d convinced myself that the improbable was actually quite possible, even likely. I held out hope even after it had become obvious that she’d gone home, that she was most likely lying naked beside Jim, possibly entwined with him even at that moment. I’d thought that maybe an act of bravery, a man taking charge in a chaotic situation, maybe to witness that would cause Miriam to realize my worth above Jim’s, above that of all men.

I stumbled home drunk early in the morning, alone, my heroism spent. Everything was back to normal. But she grabbed my arm, I thought to myself. That meant something.