by Jon Negroni (December 2025)
The state road narrowed and the gravel turned to dust where they parked. The heat in the car stayed after the engine stopped. Ty killed the music and the quiet sat on them a second, heavy and humming.
“Trail’s that way,” he said, pointing with the bottle. The bottle was warm. He took one more drink to finish it and crushed the plastic and set it in the door like it would sit there by itself forever.
Leah had the small pack with the water and the gauze and the thin towels. She put her hair up without a mirror and tied it with the red band she kept on her wrist. “If we get lost,” she said, “we follow the water back.”
“We won’t get lost,” Ty said.
Sam shut her door last and heard the ping of hot metal cooling. She stood a moment to let her eyes adjust to the shade. The road heat made a wavering above the gravel. In the trees, the light shifted in squares. She could hear the falls before she could smell the wet rock. It was there the whole time, under the cicadas, under the wind in the pines, a constant voice that did not stop to breathe.
They went in on the narrow path, single file. The leaves brushed their legs with the oil and dust on them from the last dry week. A spider had strung a line across the path at shoulder height and Ty walked into it and cursed and laughed. He wiped it from his face and kept going. Leah checked her phone and put it away.
“Nothing?” Ty said.
“Nothing,” Leah said.
“Good,” Ty said.
The grade dropped. The sound of the falls grew. It was cooler under the beeches and the rocks held water where roots crossed and made steps. Leah put a hand back once for balance and Sam took it and then let it go.
“You okay?” Leah said.
“I’m fine,” Sam said. She wasn’t winded, only warm. The sweat moved on her spine in a line and down under the band of her sports bra and she felt it and did not think about it. She placed each foot where she wanted it. The trail showed scuffs and heel marks. Somebody had slid here and caught themselves on a birch with a missing strip of bark.
They came to the lip where the trees opened and the air fell away. The falls dropped clear and straight for two stories, white and loud. The rock on either side was black with old water and green with new. At the bottom a pool lay under the cliff and received everything that came into it and did not move except at the skin. Dragonflies crossed the skin in quick wires of blue and green.
“Hell yes,” Ty said. He swung his arms like he could throw himself down with them.
Leah laughed. “We’re going down left,” she said. “The right side is slick.”
Ty was already on the first shelf, both hands flat, boots finding the dry rough. “You coming?” he said without turning.
Leah went after him. She moved smooth and sure, a foot, then a hand, then the other foot. She did not talk while she did it. She looked where she would put herself next and then she went there.
Sam set her palms to the rock. It was warm where the sun had been and cool where the shadow lay. The rough grit bit the pads of her fingers as if the rock agreed to hold them. Her left foot slid once on a nick and she pressed harder and it survived. She moved down. The water’s voice rose and filled her ears, not as a sound exactly but as something that pressed.
On the second shelf, Ty turned and offered his hand. She didn’t take it. She wanted the rock and her own weight and the little test each move had in it. She set her knee down once to shift and felt the damp seep through the cloth and she did not mind. When she reached the ledge by the pool and stood, her legs buzzed. She liked the buzz.
They were alone. The sun came through the break in the trees and made a bright flat on the pool. Ty took his shirt off and threw it on a rock. His skin had the summer’s color in it. Leah took her boots off and her socks and rolled her pants to the knee. She knelt and put her hands in the water and lifted them and the water fell back and was the same water as before.
“It’s cold,” Leah said.
“It’s supposed to be,” Ty said. He waded in to mid-thigh and cursed and laughed again and kept going. The cold took his voice down to a breathless sound and then he went under. He came up with hair flat on his forehead and his mouth open.
Sam stood with her hands on her knees and watched the water move on the stone like skin. She wanted the shock of it and the weightless pull. She pulled her shirt up and hesitated and then pulled it off and set it on a dry place above the splash line, folded once without thinking. She kept the sports bra on and went in after Leah. The cold bit her just below the ribs and took her breath in a small way that made her grin.
“You okay?” Leah said.
Sam nodded. She went to where the fall hit and stood with her hands out and let the drop hammer her shoulders and her neck. The water numbed her and then woke her. She closed her eyes because it was too bright with them open. When she opened them again everything had a thin halo with it from the mixed light and the spray.
They swam clumsy and straight to the rock where the sun lay and pulled up and lay on their bellies like seals with their feet still in the cold. Ty passed the warm bottle. It was only water. The plastic tasted like plastic. It was good.
“This is the best part,” Ty said. “This is the whole thing.”
Sam did not disagree. She felt the pulse in her throat where the water had hit it. She felt the pool’s cold in her calves and the sun in her back. She listened. The falls were a wall of sound and at the edges of it were the small sounds. A bee in the white flowers near the birch. The tick of the small drops from the moss seam above the ledge. Leah breathing slow and regular. Ty’s breath coming out in a laugh when he thought of nothing.
They stayed until the sun went higher and then slid behind the thin cloud that made the light flat. The cold in the pool rose into the air when the sun left. Leah looked at the sky and then at the trees. “We should go,” she said.
“Already?” Ty said.
“We should,” Leah said.
“All right,” Ty said.
They stood and put shirts on and the wet cloth stuck and they pulled and laughed at the way it trapped their arms. Sam wrung the ends of her hair with both hands and water ran down her wrists. She put her shirt back on and the cold cloth found the heat on her back and she let herself feel it without a name.
Leah took point on the climb. Ty went above her after a moment because he could not stand to wait. Sam followed Leah. The rock was darker now and slick where their feet had thrown water without meaning to. Leah found the dry places with her toes like she could see with them. She called back, “This one’s good,” as if it could make it more true.
They moved up steady. The sound of the falls fell behind them as something they did not leave and could not carry. At the wider shelf halfway the rock flattened into a step deep enough for a rest. Ty sat and looked over the pool and blew air out like he had done something hard. Then he stood because he could not sit long and started again.
Sam’s hands were strong but the cold had left them and she missed it. The damp from the shirt at her back warmed and became only cloth. She set her palm and found a hold that showed as a dark seam and pulled and it held her and she shifted and lifted and found the next. The small muscles along her ribs woke and burned like a line of heat. It made her sure she was doing something.
Above the shelf a trunk grew out of the rock itself. It had taken root in a seam where dirt had settled in a long thin crease. The bark was old and peeled in narrow curls. There was a scatter of dead leaves caught in a place where the rock dipped. Ty took the trunk in one hand and pulled himself to the next notch and went on without thinking. Leah did not take the trunk. She set her knuckles against the rock and pushed up with her legs and caught the small edge with her fingers.
Sam came up to the trunk and saw Ty’s boot print in the dust on the bark. She saw the shine where hands had smoothed the place below where everyone grabbed. She took it as you take a thing that is given and pulled. The bark gave under her hand as if it were attached to nothing. The wood under the bark was soft. It went away from her in a sheet and she went with it.
There was no sound in the first small part of the fall. The body went quiet for a breath between balance and no balance. Then the rock came up and met her in three places and made three sounds. Her hip hit first and turned her and her right forearm hit a lip and opened and then her shoulder took the last of it. She slid and stopped on the shelf below with her feet in a wet place and her head against a piece of mossy stone that was soft compared to the rest.
Leah said something in a voice that was not the voice she had used. Sam did not make out the word. Her mouth had the taste of iron and her breath took a second to remember what to do.
“Hey,” Ty said from above. “Hey, hey.” The second hey was softer.
“Don’t move,” Leah said, and laughed once without meaning to, the kind of laugh that is only breath.
Sam looked at her arm because it was bright and because looking at it would tell her what it was. The skin had opened from the wrist bone to the mid-forearm in a long mouth. The blood came out and ran over her palm and fell from the heel of the hand in drops she could watch. The drops pattered and made small red stars on the wet rock and ran away and were nothing in the water that went to the pool. She felt the place with her eyes, not her fingers. The feeling in it was hot and clear. It was a bright line that was all there was. She sat with it a second and let it tell her what to do.
Leah slid down beside her. She had her shirt off already and twisted it once and twice. “Here,” she said. “Here, let me—” She reached and then stopped and waited because waiting was the help.
“It’s fine,” Sam said. Her voice was there and was low. She pulled her own shirt off and the air on her skin made her ribs pull in tight. She wrapped the shirt twice above the cut and tied it with her left hand and her teeth. She tightened until the edges of the cut drew in and the bright line changed shape. It hurt in a clean way. The blood pushed a small and then slowed. She pressed the end under itself. She wiped her palm clean on her shorts and the red streaks turned brown as they dried.
Ty slid down after, clumsy and loud. “We need service,” he said. “We need to call—” He looked at his phone and it said nothing. He looked at the sky like the sky could hear about it. “Jesus,” he said.
“We have to go up,” Leah said. “We have to get out. It’s slower down.”
“Are you dizzy?” Ty said to Sam.
“No,” Sam said. She was not then. The sound under the rock had become louder in the moment after the fall, as if the water knew to fill any space.
Leah took her hand without touching the cut. “Can you feel your fingers?” Leah asked.
Sam opened and closed them. The ring and the small finger moved slow but they moved. “Yes,” she said.
“Okay,” Leah said. “We go now.”
Ty was nodding and watching her mouth like the words were going to come from there. “I’ll go ahead,” he said. “I’ll pull. Leah, you push. Okay?”
“Okay,” Leah said.
Sam breathed in to see if the breath would hurt her somewhere else. It did not. The shoulder had a dark ache to it where it had met the rock. Her hip would bruise and she would see it later like a fruit gone wrong. None of that mattered for now. She put her knee up and the knee did what it should. She set the heel of her left hand high and got her weight under it. She moved.
They went again. The falls spoke. The light had weakened and the green in the trees had deepened. The rock was different now. It had her blood on it in one place and her skin knew it. The shirt around her arm drew tight with each grip and the fabric cut into the skin at the elbow and that pain was good because it was the right pain. Leah kept a hand at her foot when she placed it. Ty kept a hand out when she reached, not to catch, only to be there when she wanted something to touch besides rock.
“Slow,” Leah said, but her voice meant hurry.
“I know,” Sam said.
The trunk that had given sat hollow now with its curl of bark peeled like paper. Ty took the rock hold beside it and leaned away from it as if it could pull him in. “Don’t touch this,” he said, as if they would forget.
Sam did not touch it. She set her fingers in the seam Leah had used and pushed and caught the next lip and then the next. She breathed in on the reach and out on the pull. She counted the body that way, not with numbers but with one and two that meant air. The shirt under her hand grew slick where the blood came through the old fabric. She re-gripped and slid and re-gripped on dry cloth. Leah watched and when the cloth darkened she moved to be there. “Here,” Leah said, and Sam set the base of her palm on the flat of Leah’s wrist for a moment to reset her own grip.
Ty talked to fill space. “You’re good,” he said. “You’re strong. It’s nothing. We’re almost there.” The words were not true or false. They were just air that had to come out of him.
At the narrow place near the top the rock pushed out above them like a lip and they had to go up and then sideways and then up again. Ty went ahead and reached down and did not grab her, only showed her where and she found it herself. Leah put her shoulder under Sam’s left foot for a second and took the weight and shifted it and it was fine. When the slit of level ground showed above like a strip of sky they did not change their pace. They moved as they had moved the whole time.
Then they were up. The path felt soft and strange under the boots after the stone. The trees came close again and took the sky and the noise of the water dropped back to a floor you could set a chair on. Ty set his hands on his knees and bent like a man who had run. Leah took a breath that was almost a sob and then turned it into a laugh because Ty would not know what to do.
Sam stood one more second because standing was easier than sitting. Then she sat. She set her back against a trunk and put her right arm in her lap and looked at the knot she had tied. The cloth was wet but not done. Every beat of her heart moved the edge of the knot a small. She let her head touch the bark behind her and the bark pressed a map into her scalp.
Leah opened the pack and tore the paper on the gauze with her teeth and unwound it. She did not take the shirt off the arm. She wrapped the gauze over the shirt and around her forearm and tied it, neat and hard. She slid her fingers under to check and slid them out and made it tighter.
“Still okay?” Leah said.
Sam nodded. The nod made the world tilt, not much, only enough to show that it could. She kept her eyes on Leah’s hands until the tilt went away.
Ty stood and turned in a circle looking at the trees like they were something new. “I’m going to run to the car,” he said. “I’ll bring it down the fire road. It’s closer than the lot.” He was ready to move and needed to.
“Take the whistle,” Leah said. “If you get off, blow.”
“I won’t get off,” Ty said. He took the whistle anyway and put it in his mouth with the cord around his neck and looked wrong that way. He touched Sam’s shoulder lightly. It was the shoulder that had taken the rock. “You’re okay,” he said, softer than he had ever said anything, and walked away.
Leah sat with Sam and poured water on the back of Sam’s neck. The water ran under the collar and down and the cold of it met the heat and pulled at it. “You did that,” Leah said. “You climbed that out.”
Sam made a sound that was almost a laugh but not. The air felt far and close. She looked at Leah’s cheeks and saw the lines where the spray had dried. Leah’s hair had come down and the red band was around her wrist again. Leah’s hands were clean except for the half-moons of grit under the nails.
“Hey,” Leah said after a time. “Hey. Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” Sam said. She was for now. The edges of the trees had a bright around them like the kind of light you get when you come up from under water too fast and the air is new in your chest.
“Tell me something,” Leah said. “Anything. Your middle name.”
Sam smiled. “Which one,” she said.
Leah smiled back. “Fair,” she said. “Another thing then. What do you want when we get out.”
“Salt,” Sam said. “Something salty.” The word felt good in her mouth. It put her teeth together in a new way.
“Chips,” Leah said. “All the chips.”
“Fries,” Sam said.
“Fries,” Leah said. “Okay.”
The whistle sounded once from far off and then again. It meant Ty had not gotten lost yet. Leah answered with her mouth and her fingers, a high sharp sound that did not belong to a person but belonged to this place anyway. The sound went down the draw and died on the water and did not come back.
Sam watched a small ant move on the leaf by her foot. It went to the edge of the leaf and the leaf bent and it adjusted without thinking and went on. She smiled. She breathed and the breath made the shirt at her ribs rise against the skin. The gauze stayed. The heat in the edges of the cut eased a small bit and the hurt moved deeper and rounder. It made her calm to know where it was.
Then the tilt came again and the sound of the falls dropped farther away and the trees leaned in. Leah’s hand was on her cheek and then on her wrist. “Hey,” Leah said. “Hey, hey.” Her voice was clear. “You’re here.”
Sam nodded once and felt the nod in her neck and not in her head. She let her eyes close. The light felt like too much work. The dark behind the eyes was soft. Leah’s hand on her wrist felt like a tether tied to the world. The falls went on saying what they said to the rock without listening for an answer. In that voice there was a place to rest.
She opened her eyes to Ty’s voice and the smell of the car’s hot engine. Ty had leaves stuck to his legs like he had rolled in them. “Come on,” he said. “I parked where I shouldn’t but it’s there.”
Leah slid her arm under Sam’s left and helped her stand. The standing came easy because she had decided to do it. They went slow. Ty went ahead and held the branches out and let them go after Leah had passed. The ground tilting stopped after a dozen steps, then came back, then stopped. The path widened. The air warmed with the road heat. The car sat with both doors open and the hood hot enough to shimmer.
They got her in the back seat with her feet up on Leah’s pack. Ty threw the rest of the pack in the front and shut the doors and the sound of the falls was gone. The new sound was the tires on gravel and the engine’s force. Leah kept a hand on Sam’s knee like the tether had moved there and it had. The wind through the half-open window brought in water and pine sap. It smelled like this part of the world in late summer.
“You did it,” Leah said in the soft voice again when the road smoothed and the engine sound changed. “You did it, girl.”
Sam turned her head and looked at her. The word hung in the car a second and seemed to settle into the seat like it belonged there. She did not say anything. She did not need to. But she had needed to hear it from her. It meant that Leah knew who she was in a way that was not only a word. She let the sound of the engine and the wind and the new silence inside her make the room. The shirt under the gauze had stuck with the blood and would be a work later. It was all right. The body knew what it knew and had done what it had to do.
They reached the place where the asphalt began and Ty did not speed up. He put on the signal though there was no one to see. The trees opened a little and the sky raised itself. It was a pale blue that had gone paler with the hour. A hawk turned once in a circle and slowed and then slid out of the frame. The falls were behind now and kept falling without them and would tomorrow and in rain and in frost. The water went where it goes. The rock carried what it could and let the rest fall.
Sam closed her eyes with the car moving and the air on her face and the one word in the space between the friends. She let the dark come in soft and pure. The last thing she knew was the sound of the road’s small stones tick under the car like a shaken jar of beads, and under that the old voice of the water, far and constant, saying nothing.
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Anthony David Vernon is a continental philosopher and literary writer who writes in a variety of styles on myriad subjects. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and currently works as an adjunct professor of at multiple South Florida institutions.
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