Earth Circle

‘The Twin Pinnacles, or “Twin Pins” as residents have affectionately called them for years beyond count, rise from the center of town to a height of just under 800 feet. They are the remnants of a massive shard of metamorphic gneiss that was thrust up over 150 million years ago, when the local landscape was characterized by shallow seas and volcanic islands. The shard cooled and, unmarked by any human observer, cracked into twin towers, and became what we see today in the background of almost any picture taken downtown. 

From above, approaching pilots have remarked about how disorienting the towers appear, jutting, almost at random from the earth’s surface. I have seen it from this vantage, and I agree; it looks as though some ancient chthonic deity thrust up two fingers through the aperture of the volcanic crater to symbolize its desire for peace with the surface world. The structures are not just historic markers of the North Carolina Piedmont’s incredible geological history, they are part of the town heritage and represent her lineage to prehistoric times. 

Infamous town founder, John Hanton Talbot, wrote in his journals that the rock towers were “an unmistakable sign” for him to settle here, concluding long years of wandering without a destination. 

Early residents often climbed the Twin Pins, sometimes to their own peril. At least since 1986, there has been an ordinance preventing anyone from attempting to scale the rocks for any reason after the death of a Hantonville High School student who plummeted to his demise the night before graduation in June of 1985.’

-Excerpt from the introduction to “Hantonville: A History” by Max Ruiz

Canopy. 

        It was the only word that popped into his mind at that moment. He wasn’t aware of why the word hung there like that, just floating in his brain. The roar and flame of the world receded, he was suddenly floating in darkness. He could not feel his hands or feet or body. He was merely consciousness in a void. The only light in that darkness was radiating in purple and pink pulses from the word. Over and over it roared. Canopy.

It has to be the greatest experience, John Kevin Eddington reflected, to be able to fly like a bird. He was standing on the precipice of rock, high above the town. He could see literally every undulation of the county below him. Late summer’s haze hung in heavy curtains upon a black-green landscape. The town lay nestled below him, coiling in tree-lined streets toward the center above which he stood. Above him, in the pale azure sky, fading from blue at the horizon to searing silver-white overhead, great birds—maybe they were turkey vultures, he thought—soared in widening circles, careless, graceful, free. He longed to break the tendrils of gravity’s power that held him fast to the surface. He wanted to feel the sun on his back, the wind in his hair, he wanted to gaze below him and feel that what he saw all belonged to him.

He yearned to leave the earth, to move through the firmament, to be unfettered by the world. He could feel himself slipping through the air, his arms stretched, his fingers touching the sky on either side. A thought more real than anything he had ever experienced said to him in the speech of his own mind that he could just leap into the air and it would buoy him up. He felt himself—something ancient and deep within him—throw off all he knew about the rules of reality and sweep out into nothingness.

Canopy. The word flashed and as it did a buzzing, singing sound filled where his mind had been. A whoosh of light and noise as the blackness halved and peeled back. He could see mountains and sky speeding past and then darkness again. Canopy. 

Below, there was a bowl filled with grass, where these great rock pinnacles had pierced the earth some hundred and fifty million years ago, like a great stone spear that split with the feverish pressures. The volcano that had raged here was now dormant, but these two great rock towers remained, split down the center, broken but still looming high over the town. For many years, the high school graduating class had climbed the steep staples hammered into the Twin Pinnacles and painted their graduation year on a large sheet or tarp and fastened it across the top. They did this each year until a young man plummeted out into the vast nothingness and crashed down into the shallow, grass-filled crater bowl below. After his death, city workers cut the steel hoops off of the rock to prevent people from climbing the Pinnacles. John Kevin Eddington knew by heart the placard placed at the bottom. “No Climbing. By Decree of the City of Hantonville, climbing either of the stone towers is subject to 30 days in jail and a $5,000 fine, by City Ordinance 1262 § 2.34 (1986).”

He had climbed the pinnacle even so. Using a selection of tools that he bought online, John had begun climbing at just past midnight and slowly, carefully climbed the 783 feet necessary to reach the top of the western tower. He’d watched the sun come up, seen light spread like honey through the streets, and became intimately familiar with which neighborhoods stayed in the shadows longer than the rest. He watched each street light pepper out, and the avenues and boulevards fade from orange-gold streams to gleaming black in the dew-laden air of first light. The Hill Avenue Heights arced like a wooded ridge on the north side of town, the huge houses and mansions gleaming in their post-colonial colors. He could even see with the binoculars he’d brought tiny vehicles resting in driveways, windows popped to light and toy-like humans started their day.

Talbot County Hospital, stretched like a great red brick monstrosity to hug the helicopter pad between its millionaire-donated wings; Hector’s Tacqueria, Rick’s Diner, the Rodeo Barrel, Tommy’s Taphouse, the Quick-Thru Exxon, three McDonald’s and two other fast food places lay snuggled along highway 54 on the business end of town, and were all there for him to see from his vantage point. He could even see a shadow on the knees of Jericho Mountain, and far away, at the edge of his sight, gleaming glass and chrome, Talbot County Community College, huddled within leafy grounds.

Canopy. Again the world cracked open. Black halves of darkness rolled away from bright light and seething background noise. Canopy. The word flashed and shrieked in his head. 

His head. Where was his head? He was laying down, looking at the world flying past him through... through what? Through...

The urge to fly had been growing in his mind for months. Georgie was gone and he was lying collapsed in the grass in the field behind his apartment complex, staring up into the winter white sky. A pair of crows winged past over him and his heart lurched upward against the inside of his chest, pulling at the power that held him fast to the ground. He felt then as if the ground he was lying on was actually the sky and the open air widened below him. He had only to break the hold of the magic that pulled him fast to the ground and he would plunge out into nothingness. The rest of the world would see him rising into the sky but to his perspective he would be falling out into the darkness beyond. He felt himself weeping, the loss, the pain, the emptiness in him, and he felt the tears slide across his cheeks and watched as they dripped from his woe-filled face into the sky.

Canopy. He reached, fighting the god-like strength holding him fast and pulled the lever between his legs and the canopy of the jet blew free and he was launched out into the sky like a bullet. The jet swept away to his left, growing smaller and smaller, trailing black smoke. He reached the apex of his arc and felt weightlessness take him for just a moment and then his innards rose as the earth pulled him back. The chutes blasted open in resistance to that pull, though and he swung lazily toward the brown world below.

John felt as if all he had to do was rise to his tip-toes and he would melt free of the bounds of the world and float away. It was all he wanted. Whether he flew or floated or fell, he would be out there with Georgie, their hands clasping, their bodies coming together in the weightlessness of the air. Georgie, her hair flowing behind her like a copper waterfall, her tawny eyes shining like fire in the morning light. The familiar ache inside him rose and pushed against his ribcage, like a black balloon of melancholy, pushing him upward.

He stood, feeling that he could not wait now; he was destined to break these bonds and rise. He stepped to the edge of the stone tower, felt the world beneath him looming toward the horizon and raised his face to feel the sunlight on it. “Think happy thoughts” he said to himself and heard the absurdity in the reference. 

And then, the balloon of sorrow popping within him, John stepped into nothingness.

A woman screamed. High above the city, a strange object appeared. It looked for all the world like three red and white-striped parachutes attached to a large throne. The whole thing slid along in the wind toward the center of town and on the ground, people from all over gazed up and ran to follow the object.

As he floated down, he could see the town rising to meet him. His body filled with the longing to land peacefully, and to free himself from the entanglements that held him back from the world. Two strange stone towers, huge and oddly thrusting up from the middle of the town, rose to meet him.

As he floated down, he was startled to see a man going the other direction. Instinct and long training moved his eyes to look for that man’s chutes, but there were none. The man just rose up. 

The pilot was filled with a sudden and nauseous disorientation. Maybe the chutes were carrying him upward and he was upside down. No, that wasn’t it. He was moving down. He reached for the radio that wasn’t there to alert the tower of this anomaly. His shaded eyes gazed in wonder at the man as he seemed to float up and away out of his vision. 

He was still trying to piece it together when the seat thunked down hard in an empty parking lot.

A woman gasped.

He knew that sound. It was a sound of joy. Of hope. Of reunion.

John reached out and pulled Georgie to him and they turned toward the lowering sun.