Three Rivers (2 page)

Obi picked his way through the pine trees, placing his feet by instinct to avoid cracking branches hidden beneath the needle-covered ground. He crouched down in the midst of a circle of trees, a place where he could hear the bubbling water of an underground spring, and he waited.

He'd chosen this spot the day before, when he noticed the smooth areas rubbed onto the bark of the trees and the piles of shiny brownish-green pellets scattered on the ground. It was close to their campsite, but not too close. Obi peered in the direction of the spring and listened for the telltale rustle among the trees. He heard the buck before he saw it and he shouldered his rifle in anticipation. The buck stepped out into a small clearing, sniffing the morning air and stretching out its neck toward the sunrise. It was a beautiful deer, reddish brown with a soft streak of white across its throat. Its antlers were symmetrical, with three points on each rack. The deer was just beginning to shed the velvet coat of spring.

Obi squeezed the trigger. The buck crumpled to its knees, head and chest falling first, back end timbering down behind. A doe and a young, spotted fawn leapt across the clearing and crashed into the woods.

Obi stayed put, watched the downed buck just long enough to be sure the animal was no longer breathing. He approached his kill and pulled his bowie knife from a sheath strapped onto the belt loops of his jeans. He figured the buck weighed about 150 pounds, small enough to handle but large enough to yield a generous amount of meat. He sliced the animal open from breastbone to penis, removed the buck's testicles and also its bladder, which was thankfully empty. Entrails spilled out onto the pine needle nest of the forest floor when he rolled the carcass. Obi's hands and shirt were covered with blood and the warm salty smell of the animal clung to his nose. He separated the tough muscle of the diaphragm from the chest cavity with a few sure strokes, severed the esophagus and the windpipe, and pulled out the heavy heart and slippery liver. Obi dragged the animal back to his campsite, where he strung it from a tree to allow the blood to drain. As he reached above his head to cut the rope, he dropped his knife. It came down, blade first, on his cheek, missing his left eye by less than an inch. Obi put his hand to his face and felt warm blood pulsing from the wound. His knife was sharp and the incision was clean, so it didn't hurt much. His heart pounded with the knowledge that he could have lost his eye.

“Ow, Daddy!” Liam pointed at his father.

“I'm all right,” Obi said. “How about a trip into town?” Liam rubbed his eyes, yawned and stretched like a satisfied cat.

Sunlight was just beginning to filter through the trees. He'd strung the carcass up on a high branch to discourage predators, but he didn't have much time to dress and butcher the deer. The heat rose quickly at this time of year.

He drove to a truck stop that was also a small grocery on the side of the highway. It was open twenty-four hours a day, and Obi knew it would have what he needed. “Stay in the truck,” he told his son. Liam was stretched out with his back against the seat and his feet propped up on the dashboard. His eyes were closed, but Obi knew he was awake. He wore nothing but a pair of faded red shorts. A cluster of mosquito bites decorated Liam's calf. His chest and arms were smooth and flawless. His hair was long and curly and the color of soft brick, and it framed his freckled face like a halo. Obi reached out and gave Liam's tummy a tap. “Hear me?” Liam nodded without opening his eyes. He looked like a starfish splayed on a bit of dry sand.

The store was empty but for the clerk reading a magazine behind the counter. She didn't glance up when Obi entered. Air-conditioning blared, though the morning was cool. He picked up a container of kosher salt, a sack of red potatoes, and a bunch of carrots. He'd rather take the vegetables from a backyard garden and save his money, but the season was wrong and the carrots grown in Mississippi were puny anyhow. He grabbed a cheap tube of antiseptic cream and a box of large bandages. On impulse, he grabbed a handful of chocolate bars that were on sale beside the register. The woman working behind the counter put her magazine aside and rang up his purchases. She looked at him and recoiled. “You okay, mister?”

Obi knew he should have changed his shirt and cleaned his hands before coming here. It was not deer season, and there were heavy fines associated with hunting out of season, besides which, he did not have a hunting license. He knew he looked terrible, probably smelled worse. It was never a good idea to attract attention. He smiled at the woman and felt the gash under his eye open up; a warm trickle of blood ran down his cheek. “Little accident.” He wiped the blood with his palm. “Looks worse than it is.”

She pushed his change across the counter, not touching his hands. Obi gathered his purchases and returned to his truck. Liam was on his stomach now, his head facing the seat back, his knees bent against the passenger door and his feet dangling out the window, soles toward heaven.

When they got back to camp, the deer had dripped the last of its blood onto the ground. Obi cut the buck down and then hung it again, this time with the head up. He sliced around the animal's throat to free the hide and pulled the skin off using his knife where he needed to release the muscles. He sliced off one of the buck's ears, washed it in a bit of cold river water and set it aside to dry as a gift for Liam. While he worked, Liam ran back and forth, dipping his feet into the icy cold river water. Obi was proud of how the boy moved, swift and silent and graceful. He belonged to this place, and Obi had no regrets about taking him from that other life. That woman from Social Services might even be impressed by how much Liam had grown.

Obi sliced through the joints of the deer's back legs and cut away the rump steaks. Most of the meat he cut into bite-sized pieces for stew, peeling away the tendons and connective tissue. He sliced the hams into strips and buried them in a pile of kosher salt. He filled his largest stew pot half full with water from the fresh stream and built two fires: one from coal and soft woods that sent up licks of flame and boiled the water in the pot, the other smoky and dry, a bed of coals topped with oak chips. Over the dry fire, Obi set up a crisscrossing frame of branches and stretched salted strips of meat across the wood. The smell of the smoke mingled with the fresh game and wafted out along the banks of the river.

Obi used the side mirror on his truck to examine the cut beneath his eye. The gash was deep and swollen. Obi dipped a cloth in a bit of river water and ran it along the wound. He scraped out the dried blood and the dirt and pressed to staunch the flow of fresh blood. It stung. Liam stood beside him, took the bloody cloth from him, and handed him a fresh one. When the blood coagulated, Obi smeared the antiseptic cream into the wound and covered it with a bandage. It needed stitches, but he didn't have the guts to stick a needle so close to his eye.

“I'm hungry,” Liam said.

Obi touched the boy's hair. “Let's make some breakfast.”

“Can we eat the deer?”

“Not yet,” Obi said. “Tonight we'll have a feast.” He rummaged around in the back of the truck, searching through their supplies. “How about pancakes? We still have some of those blueberries we picked.”

Liam pulled out the skillet and held it up like an offering. “Pancakes it is.”

 

Chapter Three

Geneva lay still and let the heat and shifting colors of the sauna wash over and through her. Guilt and obligation seeped from her pores, the flop sweat of family dysfunction. She itched to wipe her eyes and shake out her hair, but she resisted. The sweat, the poison, would evaporate at its own pace.

Some of the other women in the room moaned or cried out. One seemed to be performing a solo drum concert on her thighs. The slapping sound wasn't quite loud enough to drown out the nagging voice of Geneva's own weak conscience. Oh, shut the hell up, she told the voice. She knew damn well what people thought of her. No need to condemn herself.

These were the judgments against her: mad as a loon, unbelievably selfish, a bad mother, and a terrible wife. Fact is, Geneva's life was one long string of tragedy and yet she went right on living, getting stronger and more powerful in spite of it. People with ordinary problems believed they knew suffering. They thought they had a right to judge her. They had no right.

The moist cedar scent of the room mixed with the body odor from so many women sweating together. The air was thick and blood rich. She'd been away too long, allowed the anemia of her daily life to drag her down. Between deep breaths, her naked body filled with color. She forgot everything she ever knew. She remembered things she'd never known before. Her soul went blue, a deep cool blue like the color of the sky in springtime, her favorite turquoise bracelet, her grandmother's Spode china. Just when she was good and settled into the blue, it deepened. Purple gathered in her belly and spread out in a sensual, pulsing rhythm. She shuddered with pleasure. When she was wrung out and weak, red took over. It rushed through her like a wildfire, burned her skin and brain, then seemed to double back and tighten into a small, hot fist. Red gathered up all her anger into a tight mass at the base of her spine. It grew hotter until she feared she'd burst into flames. When it was as hot as she could bear, it faded to an ember, then snuffed out to blackness. Black as a shroud of protection, black as a mask of death, black as the Delta soil. She huffed out a burst of air like someone punched in the gut. That was better. Light. Clear, pure white light remained.

*   *   *

A soft hand stroked her arm. She was in a cool room now, a cave. Candlelight flickered on the mud-scraped walls. The dirt floor was raked into concentric circles. She sat in a circle of women, all of them woozy and disoriented from the heat of the sauna. Plus there was the tea they were served before entering the sauna, some mixture of ginger and funny mushrooms that helped the enlightenment along. Geneva bent at the waist and let her tongue flop out, doglike, onto the cool ground. Saliva poured from her mouth and turned the soil to pudding. A pair of hairy arms pulled her back. “Careful, love,” said a woman's silky voice against her ear.

Geneva smiled. Careful had never really been her style.

 

Chapter Four

Melody picked her way across the gravel parking lot. Her pants ripped a bit wider with each step. Big deal. She would never wear them again, and there was no one she hoped to impress between here and White Forest, Mississippi. Then she heard her name called and realized she was being followed. It was Chris. She ran faster. Chris had been trying to catch her for months. She wasn't about to slow down for him now.

Six months ago, Melody had walked off the stage after a performance in Oklahoma City and slammed into Chris Perkins, radio host, producer, up-and-coming tastemaker in the Christian music scene, almost as important as he believed himself to be. Chris was the voice of the Christian Radio Network, a syndicated service that aired wherever people listened to gospel music, which was most places in America.

Melody had not been paying attention and she walked into Chris, who was hanging out backstage. “Whoa!” He grabbed her shoulders and grinned like the Cheshire cat. Melody, as she always did under such circumstances, flushed purple and babbled out an apology. “Did I step on your foot?”

Chris laughed. “You're still standing on my foot.”

“Oh.” She stepped back.

“Yes, but it's fine. My foot is fine.” Chris jogged or danced or something, as if to prove his foot was in good working order. He looked like a puppet on a string.

“I'm glad.” She'd tried to walk around him, to catch up to the other girls. Joy liked to have a post-performance prayer and then tell everyone what they'd done wrong. She'd be furious if Melody was late, but Melody was going to be late. Chris took her hand and dragged her toward a heavy door. It led out into the alley and blessedly cool air.

“I couldn't hear myself think in there,” Chris said. “You were great.”

Melody shrugged. “It's Joy's group.”

“That's the problem,” Chris said. “Your voice should be front and center. Joy sings about as well as a canned ham.”

Melody laughed. “I don't even know what that means.”

“Me neither.” Chris was sweating, his upper lip glistening, and he stood so close Melody could feel the heat coming from his body. “These outfits are ridiculous. You look great, but no one should wear this blouse. It makes you all look like Captain Cook or something.”

“Mine doesn't fit so great. I've gained a few pounds since we ordered them.”

“It's not you. It's the clothing. You're beautiful. You're beautiful in spite of the clothes. You are doing these clothes a huge favor.”

Compliments like these were so outside the realm of Melody's experience that she did the only thing she could think of to shut him up. She kissed him.

He kissed back, pressing against her and putting his hands on either side of her face. His fingers tangled in her hair and she wished her hair were soft and flowing instead of brittle and sticky from all the hair spray. Not that he complained. It was good stuff, this kiss. Despite running with a crowd that encouraged virginity until marriage, Melody had managed to shed that albatross during a particularly awkward, drunken encounter with a Kappa Sig in college. So she wasn't completely without experience. Still, there was more going on during this kiss in an alley than had happened during an entire night with the frat boy at a decent hotel. Just as she was beginning to really relax and enjoy things, Shannon's shrill voice bleated out into the alley.

“I found her. I found her!”

For about half a second, Melody was prepared to tell Shannon to get lost, but Chris was not so unconcerned about being discovered. He pushed her away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sprinted from the alley without so much as a thank-you. As it turned out, Chris was engaged to some girl in Nebraska. This was common knowledge, according to Shannon and Joy. “What kind of person just makes out with someone in an alley?” Joy asked. It was not a purely hypothetical question, and the implication was clear: a cheap girl with loose morals, that's who.