This River Awakens (35 page)

Rough hands grabbed her from behind and threw her down. The breath was knocked from her lungs. A penis drove into her from behind, splitting her down the middle. Something small and lumpy moved under her chest, inside her body. It crawled under her heart and curled up there.

Another one for the jars. Who’s done me? Who is that lying on top of me? Please, I have to know.

The kennel was in tatters. The dogs had shunted their skins. Naked, they delivered mayhem outside. Church windows shattered, lightning flashed, ashes fell like rain.

The child unravels me. Turns me inside out. I’ll crawl on this floor for months, maybe years. Lost. Where am I? Where am I?

‘Never mind. Just feed the damn thing.’

Too late.

Jars crashed, exploded, contents flopping purple-brown on to the floor. The dogs had arrived. Kaja, Shane, Caesar, their tethers dangling.

The unknown man still fucked her.
Unknown. Any man, every man.
Even as the dogs closed in and ate him alive. He screamed and shuddered with every tearing, ripping bite. But still he kept on, pumping, driving what was left of his body against her, now desperate, now crying.

‘That’s the world for you, right, friend? No one wins. We all have our demons.’

Jennifer turned her head, the floor cold on her cheek. Her father sat leaning against the cupboard, his mouth stained as he calmly devoured a pickled baby.

‘My son,’ he croaked. ‘I’ve got no choice. None of us have. That’s the joke. There’s only one throne, and it’s mine. I killed Father. I was his bile, deep in his liver. I turned him yellow and he died.’ He took another bite, pulled an arm away – but it wasn’t an arm. It was a wing.
Angel.
‘I broke into his house, you see. At the very end. Him or me. Us or them. I’d turned him inside out, just like you did with Elouise. How she crawled. Exhausted, alone. She didn’t know anything. Neither did I. You sprang out of my head, a girl, my darling one. The world should never have stained you, my sweet. It had no right. But you saw what was ahead. Too soon you saw your future. You ran out of your mother’s shadow, left us with nothing but envy. We’re looking for you still. We’ll look for ever, if we have to. You turned her inside out, but I want her back. What can you show us, Jennifer, to free us from worry? To free yourself from us? If you go forward, will that let us go back?’ He held up the baby’s head. ‘It’s not personal. I drink for revenge.’ He bit into it.

Some time later the dogs devoured him, whoever he was. The weight left her. Jennifer rolled on to her back, feeling sticks, broken masonry and roots underneath.

She drew a deep breath. She didn’t want to open her eyes. Not now. Not ever. She’d seen the future time, and it was the same as the past time.

Max was a shadow in her mind. He’d never leave her now. She’d always liked his playfulness, but he would never play again. She remembered how she’d cried in her room, how her father had cried downstairs. A dreadful, dulled night. Impervious, her mother had hummed while making salad.

Jennifer moaned. She raised her hands, and gasped as someone gripped them. Her eyes opened.

‘Owen.’

‘Never take candy from strangers,’ he said, then smiled. ‘Hello, stranger.’

III

They’d been thrilled with the refitting of
Mistress Flight.
Her value greatly enhanced, an auction was being planned. Other things had thrilled them far less.

‘The boy isn’t a member,’ Bill Smith had said. ‘He wasn’t signed in as a guest. If something had happened to him, the Yacht Club would’ve been held legally responsible. Dammit, Walter, you can’t see ten feet past your nose! That much became obvious with the launchings in June. Why do you think we brought Reggie on board? He’ll take over management of the grounds come season’s end.’

A watchman who couldn’t see. A manager who couldn’t manage. And a sky that wouldn’t rain.

Gribbs sat in his shack, staring at the calendars on the wall. They were all a dim blur, but he had his memory to keep them sharp. It’d been the same with the river, its curves, its bends. The map he’d studied while on the train in 1962 remained perfectly etched in his mind. He didn’t need a lifetime of cruises behind him, and when they’d been on the river, its currents, eddies and flows told him all he needed to know; the rebound of the Sea Horse’s growl off the banks, between the pylons under the bridges – a map he built as they went, as sure as the ground under his feet.

But the machine’s purpose had been taken away. No maintenance to maintain, no tasks to complete anywhere beyond these four walls. The muscles of his limbs had been relieved of duty, the edge of his mind and the backing of experience had been reduced to the aimless mutterings of an old man.

‘You’ve earned your retirement, Walter. Sit back, feel the wind on your face. Drinks are on the house, from now on.’
C’mon, Walter, tumbling into the dark’s as good a way as any. Put the body to rest, the mind’s sure to follow.

He knew he was feeling sorry for himself. It’d been a long life. He’d done some good with it. It just shouldn’t have to end with a whimper, with the lights slowly going down.

Who am I kidding? I’m wishing it could be that simple. Maybe it never is, unless you’ve gone senile, and even then it looks to be more confusion than peace. No, the dreams are back. I don’t know why I still call them dreams. They’re visions. Promises. Nothing gentle and nothing good going into this night.

I never really expected it to be otherwise. All the stories in my head, in my bones, all of them make one thing clear. It’s a hard world, always has been, and its trueness is there under the songs, timed by the number of words a human breath can hold, and by how slow and how fast a human heart can pump. Our limits are the only things giving order to the world. And as we get older, each of us by ourselves and all of us together – those limits get ever narrower. We look around but it’s all too fast now, too much, we can’t make sense of it any more.

But I know what I see.

Serpents roll in the dark mud, slip slipping through the deep’s pressures, gnawing at our beliefs and hoarding our treasures – all that we’ve lost. And I can see, coming out of the mist, that disordered host, cloaked in frost and the lap of flames on their arms. Armoured with uncertainty, shielded by doubt. Come to claim reason’s light – I think she’s on her way, my lover of old, coming with company on the rainbow road …

He wouldn’t tell the boy. Final stories had a way of wounding terribly, leaving scars that disfigure. No, the Ship of Nails and the shining prince at her bow – they’d remain his personal terror.

Owen had his own demons, in any case. Gribbs knew he hadn’t helped the boy there. He’d failed. Having done as much as he could, his efforts had proved inadequate. Too old, too many years between them.
He’s already been wounded. A stranger’s struck the blow – I see the blood in Owen’s eyes, hear the pain in his words. And yet, what a gift he gave me. All that he saw, a picture of relentless erosion told by a sky full of messengers. The moment of apocalypse slowed down, stretched out, as certain as any tide. And yet, nowhere was there surrender. After all, a vision of wings offers the chance of escape.

He’s not a gentle boy. Not at all. That’ll be his saving grace, I think. A hard child for a hard world.

There must be beauty somewhere, son. I’ll tell you that, when we talk for the last time. My gift in exchange. Not enough to balance what you’ve given me, but it’s all I’ve got left that’s worth giving.

Ancient poems in cold-hammered tongues. Maybe the time’s come again for sword-on-shield words, for cursing the heavens and the old men on their sagging thrones.

Schooners, sloops and ketches rocked wildly in the waves. His memory was that sharp.

IV

My head rested on her stomach, the soft folds under me warm and damp beneath the t-shirt. ‘I can’t trust you any more,’ I said. My mouth tasted like ashes, each breath I drew felt harsh in my throat.

‘Never again,’ she said. ‘Promise.’

She wouldn’t tell me what had happened to her. She’d never trusted me with that much of herself, something that hadn’t bothered me before but did now. Whatever she’d experienced had frightened her.
‘A bad trip. I panicked, Owen. You can’t panic. One minute you were there beside me, then next you were gone.’ Were you alone? ‘No, but you were gone.’

I went away, my lungs still on fire with your smoke. It’d felt like thirst. Not for water, but for more fire. I went far away. I went home.

‘We lost hours,’ Jennifer said. ‘But it only felt like minutes. Only look, the sun’s almost down.’

I closed my eyes. ‘Hours. I felt them.’
A long way, and you’d poured yourself into me and you’re inside me now, a slow, steady burn.
I turned my head and looked up at her. The cigarette in her hand was near her face. She looked like a model, or a movie star. ‘You wanted me to fuck you,’ I said.

‘I know. I, uh, I thought you did.’

I sat up. ‘Did I?’

‘No. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t anyone. Come here and kiss me. Lie beside me, I want your face against mine. Close.’

I rolled over and around. There were ants in the grass under us, but the numbness that started in our stomachs and spread out in slow waves kept everything away. I kissed her, then lay down on my side with my face alongside hers, our mouths within easy reach of each other.

‘I found a word in my dictionary,’ I said. ‘Vicarious. As in vicarious pleasure.’

‘So?’

‘Nothing. Just a word.’

‘I wish there was a drug that’d make us merge together. Like, completely. And we could both feel everything, both of us together.’

‘We’d spend all day masturbating.’

She fell silent. Smoked. I remained, vicarious.

‘Never again, Owen. I wanted to turn you on. But I don’t want you like Barb, or Sandy. I hardly see them any more, except when they want to buy. One of them will OD soon. One of them will crash, and then talk, and I’ll be in shit. I’m not selling to them any more. They can get it from somewhere else.’

I felt the muscles of her mouth move when she talked. Her words buzzed in my bones. Her voice was beautiful, low, rough at the edges. ‘Glue me here,’ I said.

She laughed, then said, ‘I won’t do it again. All my trips are going bad. I can’t get away. I’m quitting everything.’

‘Smoking?’

‘No, and you don’t want me to, either.’

‘Do you believe in dragons?’

‘You mean, like, dinosaurs?’

‘No. Like in St George and the Dragon.’

‘Who’s St George?’

‘Okay, like in Chinese paintings.’

She took a drag, pulled it into her lungs, then turned her head slightly and probed her tongue into the corner of my mouth. Then she settled back again, exhaled. ‘They’re just stories. Fairytales.’

‘I guess.’

‘You battled dragons, Owen?’

I frowned. ‘No. No battles.’

‘Fire-breathing?’

‘Maybe. There’s one right beside me now.’

‘Roar!’

‘Ow, my ear!’

Her laugh sounded liquid and delicious. I wondered if I was in love.

‘I’m honing the fatuous,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Something told me, I think. Not aloud. “Stop honing the fatuous,” it said.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Don’t know. But it felt like what my dad calls a kick in the pants.’ I sat up. ‘I’m hungry. Want to come over for dinner?’

‘Feeling brave, are you?’

‘I guess. I feel like shocking them.’

Jennifer sat up and said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘So?’

‘Well, would they kick me out? Swear at me? Maybe you’ll get canned. Maybe they’ll say you can’t see me any more.’

‘They won’t kick you out. They won’t swear. And they can’t can me for ever. We’ll be at school together, right? And if they say we can’t go together, I won’t listen. We just go back to doing it in secret again. You can’t just go home now. Not after all this.’

‘That’s the last place I want to go. Anyway, Mom’s started cooking and stuff again.’ She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Fuck it. Let’s go, then.’

Neither of us felt steady on our feet. We held hands as we left the overgrown lot and emerged on to the road. Across from us a lamp sitting on a pole had been turned on. Moths danced wildly around it. A mosquito buzzed in my ear – there weren’t many around, because of the drought – and I lazily waved at it. ‘We might be a bit late, but Mom always leaves some for me.’

‘I’m only a little hungry. It’s okay if you don’t have enough.’

‘Oh, we have enough. It just may not be cooked. We’ve got lots of food, in the fridge, in the cupboards.’

Jennifer gave me a strange look.

We continued on. As we came opposite Carl’s house we heard an argument going on inside. Or, rather, Carl’s dad yelling something about his torn jacket and it still wasn’t fixed.

‘Lynk beat up Carl,’ I said.

‘Big surprise. Carl gets beat up all the time. At school. Guys from Riverview. Gary and Dennis and those guys – you haven’t met them yet. They’re shits, little shits.’

‘Well, Lynk’s being a real asshole these days.’

‘He’s always been an asshole. Why do you hang out with him?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s me, Roland, Lynk and Carl. Has been since I first met them.’

‘Want me to hide my smokes?’

‘No. Mom smokes. Debbie does, too, in secret up in her room. She opens the window and it comes into my room because our windows are right next to each other. Mom knows, I think. She’s always leaving her pack out – like rat-traps or something.’

‘Maybe she’s just being generous.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

We cut across the ditch at the bend, approached the dark entrance to the driveway. We still held hands. I expected it to work the same way it had for Roland and Lynk and Carl, so there wouldn’t be any of those awkward unspoken questions – the funny looks and stuff.

‘What’s that?’

‘A factory engine. My dad’s rebuilding it.’

Father sat on the steps, cradling a mug of coffee in his big hands. He grinned at me. ‘Lots of leftovers. I’m sure your mother will manage, Owen.’