“Sure,” I say. He asks me to fill up the car and I do. He pays me and leaves without another word. I return to the garage.
“What’d he want?” Abe asks me, sounding worried.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, showing him the card. “Just asked about Dad and… I don’t know.”
Abe shakes his head. “Big Eddie?” he asked, his eyes wide. “Why’d he want to know about him?”
“Just… he asked me if I thought Dad was a good man.”
Abe snorts. “Good man. Big Eddie was the greatest man. Don’t you dare believe otherwise. I loved that man as if he were my own. Blast it all, he was my own. And the only thing you need to concern yourself with is to keep doing what you’re doing. He’d be proud of you, Benji. I just know it.”
I nod, unable to speak.
His eyes soften. “We’re the same, you and I,” he says again.
We are. I really think we are.
I assure him I’m okay.
I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
Throughout the afternoon, a spring thunderstorm etches its way across the
Cascades. It looked like the mountains would hold the storm off from dropping down into the valley, lightning flashing near the peaks, but as I start to close up the shop for the night, the air smells of rain and ozone. Ripples of thunder peal through the air, crashing and causing the ground to vibrate underneath my feet. There’s no rain, and the air is heavy with static.
My father was a great man.
It’s this I think as I sit at a stop sign. The wind is picking up around me, and the thunder has begun to sound angry. Arcs of electricity travel along the surface of the clouds, light up the world in purples and white. And blues. So many shades of blue.
My father was a great man.
Straight ahead is the way home. To turn left is to head toward Lost Hill Memorial.
To turn right? To turn right is to go to the highway. To mile marker seventyseven.
I told myself I wasn’t going to go there anymore, that there was nothing left at the river for me to see. There was no longer any trace that a man had ever died at seventy-seven. Someone (I don’t know who) had put up a small white cross on the river’s bank shortly after the accident. I saw it for the first time four days after the funeral. It confused me. BIG EDDIE had been written in a childish scrawl across the horizontal bar. I knew what had happened there. I knew now where my father lay. I was certain that having two memorials would trap him, that he’d be stuck between the two, forced to return to the river over and over again, unable to leave.
I tore the cross from the earth. I broke it in half, then in half again. I threw the pieces into the river.
No one ever put up a cross again.
But they could have, I think now, irrationally. These are strange days and strange nights. There are feathers and blues. Dreams and storms. There are things Nina sees that aren’t really there. The script has been broken with Abe. The FBI wants to know if my father was a good man, and I think Little House is haunted. I think I’m haunted and it’s not real. It can’t be real. I am drowning in this river and I don’t know how to stop. I haven’t been to seventy-seven in days. Weeks. Someone could have put a cross back up again.
It’s no question, of course. I turn right.
It only takes ten minutes before I am at mile marker seventy-seven. I pull up in
front of the sign and turn off the truck, the flares of lightning above illuminating the white numbers. They reflect back at me with each pulse from above and it’s like they’re calling me. Beckoning.
Just gonna make sure there’s no cross , I tell myself. Once I see there’s no cross, I can go home. I can go home and forget about all of this. I need to move on. After tonight, it’s time for me to move on. Just gotta check one last time. Make sure there’s nothing there.
I hesitate with my hand on the door handle. Before I can stop myself, I reach into my bag and grab the feather, then open the door out into the storm.
The wind is howling in my ears, almost drowning out the roar from the river below. Another arc of electricity shoots overhead, and I count to two before another crack of thunder blasts the world around me. Just gotta see, I tell myself. I’ll be quick.
I slide down the embankment, careful not to fall on my ass and roll down the hill. I reach the bottom as another gust of wind blows against me, almost knocking me back. The feather begins to slide from my fingers. I grip it tighter. It pokes into my flesh, giving me a small cut. I ignore it.
I am at the river’s edge. There is no cross. There is nothing here.