Into This River I Drown

I spun around.

For a moment, I could have sworn I saw a flash of blue, deep and dark. But I blinked and it was gone and I couldn’t be sure it’d been there in the first place. I blinked again, my breath ragged in my throat. No one was behind me. The door was still closed. I thought about opening it and running up to Big House and cowering in my old bed, the covers pulled up and over my head, waiting for daylight, waiting for everything to make sense, for the world to brighten again, to lose the haze it had fallen under. But somehow, I stayed.

“I felt…,” I said out loud, not knowing who I was speaking to. My face grew hot and I shook my head. “Forget it,” I muttered. “I’m—”

haunted

“—home. That’s all that matters. I’m home.”

Little House shifted, the creaking of the wood its only reply.

Sheriff Griggs’s taillights have faded into the dark behind me.

An accident. That’s all it was. Sure, I think. Why not? Everyone else thinks it was an accident. The cops. The staties. The town. The Trio. Even….

Even Mom.

It’s easier, I think, for her to believe it was an accident, that there was nothing more behind Big Eddie’s death. Maybe that’s what she needed to move on. Maybe that’s what she needed to be able to fall asleep at night. Maybe that’s the only way she could stay sane.

I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me wonder if I loved him more than she did.

Sheriff Griggs isn’t coming back, so I start up the blue Ford and pull back out onto the road, headed for home. The truck feels empty now, like whatever is (or isn’t) with me has gone.

I think about stopping at mile marker seventy-seven. But I was there yesterday, and I need to try and stay away. It’s getting to be too much again, seeing that place. It’s starting to follow me into my dreams again as well: a flash of a river, then brake lights pointing toward a grayed-out sky as rain pours down, lightning flashing blue and bright. A flutter of massive wings from some bird I can’t see somewhere in the distance. A hand always rests on my shoulder. The scene and sounds before me fill me with horror and I open my mouth in a silent scream, but the hand grips me tight. There is comfort there, near the river. Even so, I wake up sweating, a strangled noise dying on my lips as the roar of the river fades from my ears.

No. I need to stay away from seventy-seven tonight. It’s getting late as it is, what with Officer Friendly pulling me over. Even after all these years, I can’t pinpoint what it is about Griggs that bothers me. He and Big Eddie went to school together, were friends of a sort, along with my mom and the Trio, only four years age difference separating all of them. But they went their separate ways after high school, and when they all returned to Roseland after college, things had just been different. Dad had married Mom. The Trio lived in Seafare, on the coast. “People grow up and grow apart,” Big Eddie had said once when I asked.

Which is true, I guess. None of my friends, what few there were, stayed in Roseland after we graduated from Umpqua High over in Wilbur. They’d all talked about getting out of here and going to far off mythical places, like California or New York. I pretended to ignore the looks I received when I mumbled that I was perfectly happy right where I was. The world is too big for someone like me. I worry about getting lost. At least here, in Roseland, I know where I am. People know who I am. It’s enough.

If you were to ask me if there was something else buried in the anger, in the depths of my grief, I’d look at you funny, not understanding what you meant. There’s nothing else besides grief. Besides anger. But it’s a shelter, a haven that I have amassed around myself to protect me, to focus my thoughts and energy away from the inevitable truth.

I have no qualms admitting that Big Eddie was my best friend. Most sons and daughters would probably shudder at the idea of admitting it out loud, and maybe they’re right. But I’m not normal. I never have been. I was the nerd. The geek. The weirdo. I had friends, sure, but no one close. No one like my father. No one I felt like I could tell everything to, even the greatest secret I carried with me for months before I finally broke down and told him one day toward the end of building Little House. Toward the end of his life. Even that I could not keep from him.

“Spit it out,” he growled at me when I handed him the wrong-sized nail.

“What?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“Something’s been on your mind for weeks, Benji,” Big Eddie said, pulling himself to his full height. It might have been intimidating to most, and usually it wasn’t for me (he was my dad), but I couldn’t look up into his eyes.

“Oh,” I said, shuffling my feet. “That.”

He dropped a big hand on my head and ruffled my hair before sliding his hand to my chin and gripping it gently, pulling up until my gaze was locked onto his. “What do men do when they

have important business to discuss?”

“They look each other in the eye,” I whisper out loud, pulling into the driveway,

almost home and lost in memory. “They look each other in the eye because it shows respect.” I barely acknowledge the blue flash that skates off somewhere to my right in the dark.

“That’s right,” my father said, dropping his grip from my chin, then putting his

hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently. “And I respect you, and you respect me, right?”

“Right,” I said, never turning my gaze away.

“Now, what’s going on, son? It isn’t like you to keep things from me. Not for this long.”

“I’m scared.”