The River (18 page)

23

One… two… three… nine steps.

Nine steps down from the courthouse to the street. I’ve gotten good at judging distances, when I should use the crutches and when I should just hop. This time I choose the crutches and am able to step-swing those nine steps down without losing my balance and toppling forward into a Tri-Met bus.

I look up. The courthouse is one of the funkiest buildings in Portland, all geometric tile, as if a kid had built it from blocks. On its front is the second-largest bronze statue in the United States. Portlandia. She’s huge, a goddess with wavy hair holding a trident in one hand, reaching down with the other to scoop boats out of the water with the other. From where we are, I can only see the bottom of one massive bronze hand.

Gretchen stands on one side of me, lighting a cigarette. It’s a nasty, stinky vice, but it could be a lot worse. She takes a drag and I look at her profile. She’s filled out a little, not much, but at least there’s color in her cheeks. She’s lopped off the purple fringe in her hair and now looks almost ordinary.

She has two arms. She’s wearing short sleeves and the scar on her right elbow is
not
colored in. She usually likes to doodle on it, decorate it with ivy like a Victorian stencil, but Dad has threatened her with incarceration if she tries to make it look any less ghastly than it is.

“I think that went well,” she says.

I turn around and look back inside. Dad is still in there, talking to his old cronies, even though now he’s no longer one of them. He’s a prosecutor now, and he’s a nasty one. The jury’s just been given their instructions. Phil LaMarr has been escorted somewhere far away from civilized people. When the jury comes back, I hope to hear the word
remanded
.

We are back in our home in the city, Mom and Dad and Petunia and I. I’d forgotten how small our house was. The dog takes up half of it. She was my biggest worry that day on the river. I kept crying for her on the Life Flight helicopter all the way to Portland. Or so they say. I remember the tears, I remember being frantic. Then I remember Dad, trying to calm me, saying, “Trust Ranger Dave to fix her.” I remember thinking, “Oh, yeah,” and passing out again.

The next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital, Tomás asleep on the visitor’s chair. I took a good long look at his profile. He wasn’t wearing a baseball hat so his dark curly hair circled his head like a halo of question marks. Holy cow, those were pronounced cheekbones, steep as embankments. And that Sheriff of Nottingham goatee? I must’ve been an idiot to find that threatening. He wasn’t the Sheriff of Nottingham. He wasn’t even Robin Hood. Robin Hood was an outlaw. I’d had my fill of outlaws.

No, he was more than that. He was Good King Richard, home from the Crusades, ready to put everything right in the land.

And I cried then, because I’d come so close to missing this that I felt like I’d already missed it. That woke him up. He and asked me what was wrong, I didn’t have any snappy answers. Then he surprised me. Instead of calling a nurse for more drugs, he gently lifted my head and put his arm around me. Without speaking, the two of us together drifted off.

Gretchen and I are still standing under Portlandia when Tomás comes trotting up to us. Clean-shaven for the day. I run my fingers over his smooth jaw. I miss the scratchiness.

“Don’t get used to it, babe,” he says. “I’m growing it out as soon as the trial’s over.”

“Got the beeper?” I ask.

Tomás tosses it like a jump shot and catches it. “Your dad said to stick around,” he says. “He doesn’t expect them to deliberate long.”

Gretchen points to a Starbucks across the street and I step-swing over. They are faster than I am. I try not to mind. With a little luck and physical therapy, I should be able to run again in the fall.

“That was smooth, your dad having you wear a miniskirt,” Gretchen says as she scores a table for us outside on the red brick sidewalk. In front of us on the street, Tri-Met buses stop and start, peppering us with exhaust.

I look down at my leg, the one in the Frankenstein-like brace. There’s a pin holding my tibia together. In two weeks the cast will come off and I’ll get a boot. And even though Keith’s dead, I’m still mad at him, shooting my leg so full of bone shards they found some wedged in my uterus. At least that’s what Dr. Zegzula said. I think he was trying to make a joke.

Today, Dad insisted on the miniskirt so everyone can get a gander at what Phil LaMarr’s dead stepson did to me. Dad kept saying something about the swing vote, and how jurists who might be interested in cutting Phil a break are less likely to after the parade of misery, Gretchen’s testimony, my testimony, the Brads’ testimony. The list of charges against Mr. LaMarr is long. He’s an accessory to murder, but that seems to be the least of it. The big ones are masterminding a meth lab and owning unregistered firearms to protect it.

“Usual?” Tomás says, and goes in for caffeine: tall latte for him, mocha for me, Venti cappuccino for Gretch. I watch him progress through the line inside.

Out here, Gretchen lights a new cigarette from the butt of her old one. “Before I forget, I’ve got something for you,” she says, reaching into her book bag. She draws out of pile of paper folded in half, and slides it across the table to me.

“What’s this?”

“I was online the other day and I Googled
la llorona
.”

I groan, embarrassed I told her about that. I only mentioned it in passing in Group one Sunday at Riverside. I thought she’d get a kick out of it. You think you’re the only freaky one? Get this: I was so delusional I thought the river was sending me messages.

I unfold the paper she’s slid toward me and see a stack of printed-out articles.
Dark Beginnings of La Llorona
.
La Llorona Sighted by Border Guard. La Llorona And Elvis Have Demon Baby in Wal-Mart.

“Thanks,” I say unenthusiastically.

“She’s a witch in almost every story. But in one of them she’s a
curandera
. A healer. You know, helps lost children find their way out of the woods. That kind of thing.”

She takes a drag on her cigarette, then stubs it out under her heel.

“It makes sense if you think about it. I mean, weren’t the European witches really midwives? Then a bunch of men decided they had too much power? I think
la llorona
may have just gotten a bad rap.”

I wonder if Gretchen is right. I try to remember: did
la llorona
ever try to lure me in? Or did she warn me, encourage me?
Run
,
Ronnie
,
run
! Maybe there’s truth to what Gretch says. I don’t know, but I’m glad she looked it up for me. The Gretchen from a year ago would’ve rolled her eyes and barked at me to let it go.

When Tomás comes back out he’s smiling huge, carrying our drinks in a tray. “Up and at ’em. We’re being beeped,” he says. This is a good sign. They haven’t even been deliberating half an hour.

We hobble back to the courthouse, under Portlandia, through the metal detectors, and up the elevator to our courtroom. Dad is sitting at the prosecutor’s bench, waving at us as we all file in. On the bench behind him sits the Armstrong family. Mr. Armstrong squeezes over to make room for us. They do not look optimistic—not even the surviving kids. They know, as we all do, that this is not a happy day. But an undercurrent, deeper than optimism, has driven us here to witness it.

We are together for the first time since the day they pulled me up onto dry land: Mom, Tiny, Ranger Dave, Gloria Inez, Mrs. Kinyon, the Brads, Gretchen, Tomás, and me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to Phil LaMarr, but whatever it is, it won’t be enough. Karen is gone, and those of us left are scarred, patched together with pins and braces and memories—all thanks to this man and his cottage industry that cost us so much.

I close my eyes, drowsy with heat and fatigue, and listen for something I know I won’t hear. We’re too far away.

But I don’t really need the river. Because now I know the important stuff. I know that the Armstrongs might recover, encircling their remaining children like a mountain range, but they will never be the same. I know that Tomás and I are in love but we’re living in separate cities, so staying together is impractical. I don’t care, though, because when faced with something much stronger than us, we held on to each other and survived. I know how hard Gretchen is fighting for her future, but I also know that the statistics for people recovering from her particular brand of poison aren’t good. If she wants to stay straight, she’ll have to exert her will every day for the rest of her life. It is far from a perfect existence.

“All rise.”

We stand for the judge to come in, then have to stay standing for the jury. It seems like a long wait, and I list like a tall tree in a high wind.

But at last the jury files past, and one of them darts a poisonous glance at Phil. Even before they deliver their verdict I know what they’re going to say.

Mr. Armstrong reaches for my hand and squeezes it hard.

I listen for the Santiam but don’t hear it.

This is the most important thing: those of us left standing are wobbly, but at least we’re standing together.

It’s enough
, the river would whisper.
It’s enough
.