surface. I open my eyes and prepare for the sting. It comes, but not as painful as it
was before. The world appears a quixotic blue—
blue i shall call you blue because all i have is blue
—and I think about how nice it seems, how soft and wonderful and muted. I
don’t know why I never thought of it this way before. It’s safer down here, floating
in the deep blue dark, and I think how wonderful it feels just to float. I could float
here for the rest of my—
A sharp sound, metal moving against rock.
It grates against my ears and I grit my teeth. But it dislodges something inside
me as well, and I no longer want to float in the blue. The river is trying to hold me
here, trying to make me forget. Breathe, it whispers in my ear. Open up your mouth
and take a deep breath and you will be fine. It’s all blue, you know. Everything down
here is blue.
The sound is louder. I see a faint shape outlined ahead.
The truck.
I push forward, twisting through the river. The red truck comes into sharper
focus, the cab upside down and pressed against the bed of the river. Its tail end is at
an angle and breaches the surface.
I move closer and see the driver’s window is busted out. It must have happened
in the impact. It must have been—
A flash of white.
It’s an arm, I think wildly in the river. It’s an arm. It’s Big Eddie. It’s my father.
The last time I saw my father was in the morgue when he was dead and white and not
my father. He was so fucking white and the man in scrubs said it was because he had been underwater for a long time, that it was the river’s fault he looked the way he
did. This is the river. This is my father. This is—
I’m closer now. My father holds something in his hand that drifts gently up and
down. It’s too hazy for me to see it, so I move closer. I don’t want to see my father’s
face, I don’t want to see any more of his body trapped here underneath the river, but I
must get closer. My chest is starting to burn, and all I really want to do is take a great
gasping breath, so all the blue fills my lungs and all the river is within me. It’s so