by Bea Bledsoe
“Can’t go back to Blackriver because of black thoughts. Can’t go back to Blackriver because of bad thoughts.” He continued repeating the phrase, whimpering now. Leigh didn’t know what to do; this certainly wasn’t t the smack-talking, wide-ass hermit she had known all her life. She reached out and rested her hand on his arm. He winced as if her touch was poison before shoving her roughly backwards and turning towards his truck.
“You get away from me!” He began hauling himself up into the truck.
Leigh leapt forward, wedging herself between the door. “Whatever has happened to you, you are not alone!”
Suddenly his features cleared, as though clouds had parted in his mind. “You don’t know how true that is, girl.” He sighed as he started the truck. After a second’s pause, the man she knew looked down at her desperate face. “Tomorrow. Y’all come get me tomorrow, when I’m feeling more like myself. I just…I need to get my head clear.” She watched as he wearily rested his gun on the dashboard. “I’ve had too much to drink, and drinking, it’s not good for me, opens up my mind to…bad things.” He paused. “Come find me tomorrow, at my ma’s old house here in town. It’s 108 Canary Lane, behind the lumber yard.” Then he slammed the car door shut, narrowly missing her fingers. She leapt down as the truck shot forward, leaving her and Henry in a cloud of thick diesel.
As they watched the trunk peel out of the parking lot, Leigh sunk to her knees in defeat. It wasn’t so much what Dog had said; it was what he hadn’t said that was tearing her heart into pieces. She felt Henry’s arms wrap around her and she leaned into him and let the tears fall.
“I think…” She choked, fearing that if she gave voice to the thought that it would make it true. Finally, it broke free. “I think my parents are dead.” Henry didn’t say anything, just tightened his hold on her, and she knew that he thought that too.
“Come on.” He whispered. “Let’s get you home.” She let him lead her back towards the hotel, the words my parents are dead ringing endlessly in the abyss where her heart used to be.
As the sad yellow light of the hotel sign flickered through their room, Leigh watched the clock hit midnight. She closed her eyes in the cool dark and curled up in her bed, wrapping her arms around herself. It was no use trying to burrow into the safety of sleep. Leigh was wide awake, her brain bouncing between rage, grief, confusion, and one very unwelcome emotion in the mix: desire. She turned over in her bed to look over at Henry.
Despite his protestations that he wasn’t even tired, he had fallen asleep in minutes and his eyelids were softly fluttering softly as he dreamed. She looked at the way his wavy brown hair fell over his forehead, at the slight sheen of sweat at the peak of his brow. She felt her desire stirring again, somewhere underneath the covers, and she flipped over onto her back. It was wrong to want him when her parents were gone. It was wrong, she was sure, to think like that when your whole town was gone, and yet…She found herself reaching for him like a life raft in a raging river. Leigh closed her eyes, willing herself to get the thing she needed the most: sleep. Instead, she bounced between nightmarish images of dead parents and hungry thoughts about Henry. After about a half hour of struggle, she finally pushed herself up on her elbows, her brain pushing through the foggy clouds of doubt to form one clear thought. It spoke with certainty: Maybe it’s okay.
She whispered it out loud to herself in the stillness. “Maybe it’s okay.” Maybe she could be both falling in love and grieving. Maybe it was okay to want him and miss them. There were no rules; if this experience had taught her anything it was that there was a detached madness to the entire world. Towns could disappear; people could go missing without a whisper, and no one would care. Life was brutal chaos, so why not reach out for the one thing that was bringing her a sliver of joy?
“Why not?” Perhaps it was only human to want the grief and the longing. Perhaps it was okay to love and grieve, to want and mourn. They were human; she was still breathing in this world and while she breathed, she knew what she wanted; no, what she needed.
Leigh stood up and walked to the window, pulling open the curtains with a rattle. She looked out over the low hills over Cody, their outline barely visible in the moonlight, taking a moment to gather herself. Henry stirred at the noise, his eyes blinking open in the moonlight.
“What is it, Leigh? Is everything okay?”
“No.” She answered honestly. “No, it’s not. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t get this. That we don’t get to have us.”
Henry sat up in bed, the sheet falling down to reveal his bare chest. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing. Is it wrong to want you so much while you are going through hell?” He breathed out, unable to contain the flush rising up his chest. He wanted her, and the reality of that was intoxicating. Leigh slowly walked towards him, staring down at the boy who she had tricked, stolen from, and now couldn’t imagine her life without. His eyes lit up and confirmed what she had thought to be true: He had been waiting for her to move, and so she did, gratefully reaching out a hand to him. He took it, and ran his fingers up and down her palm before raising it to his mouth. He kissed the inside of her fingers, and she sighed as he began tracing kisses up and down the inside of her arm, his lips dashing over the inside crook of her elbow. With a sigh, Leigh surrendered as he pulled her onto his lap on the bed. She smiled as she straddled him, her hands tracing up his hard chest, her mouth finding his. She had been here before, kissing Henry, and yet this all felt new. She hadn’t remembered the way that his mouth tasted slightly of mint and honey or the way that his hair curled in her fingers, soft and heavy.
He traced his hands around her waist, his fingers gently mapping every inch of her. Henry’s lips were so hot, and as she kissed him she could feel the heat within her rising, threatening to overflow like lava. His lips found her neck, her chest, and she pressed against his body, unmade and found all at once. He yanked the elastic tie out of her hair and her curls fell around them, creating a curtain to shield them as they whispered all the things their hearts were screaming.
I need you. I want you. You, you, you.
His palms began tracing her cheeks, her neck, her ribs. It felt like they were everywhere, and she let a soft moan fall out of her mouth and into his. He slipped them under her cotton t-shirt and she felt her body convulse as he cupped her gently against his rough hands.
As things escalated, she could feel the gradual beating of his strong heart pounding against hers, could feel him to surrender to her as she did to him. Clothes fell to the floor as they discovered each secret part of the other, at once familiar and new. He placed his hand just under her neck, feeling her heart beat, clutching at her skin as if she would disappear. As they moved together in the moonlight, finding each other in a million different ways, Leigh couldn’t help but feel like they were inventing something together, something glorious and hungry and real. He grabbed her waist and moaned her name – her full name - as they spiraled toward each other, and Leigh wondered at the fact that the bed had not burst into flames as she burst into sparks.
Afterwards, Leigh was exhausted but didn’t want sleep; she wanted the ache of him, all of him, forever. This was the opposite of the numbness she had become accustomed to: every single cell in her body was alive and singed with satisfaction. Leigh had never taken something because she wanted it for herself, and she wanted Henry more in this moment than she had ever wanted anything else. It was revelation. As the night crept slowly into the dawn, the girl who had been hiding in a shell of herself at Harvard took flight on her foreign wings, flapping out into the Wyoming darkness. She was about home here, home with him. It was enough for right now, for this midnight hour. Leigh ran her finger over his lips, watching a slow smile creep out from under them. Silently, Henry reached for her, and they began again.
16
Morning could wait. Breakfast, getting dressed, showering, and facing a cool, gray day could wait, because right now, Leigh was tracing the lines of Henry’s face. She let her fin
gers run over his strong jaw, softly pushing against the bones underneath, and then over the stubbly brown hairs on his chin. They found a small scar and traced it gently. Henry didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled when he spoke softly to her.
“I was playing outside with my brothers. We were building a tree fort. We were running, and I tripped and fell into the bottom of our base…and the stick went right through. There was a lot of blood. My younger brother fainted, and my mother ran out, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was mass chaos.” He laughed a little. “God, my poor mother. She would like you a lot, I think.” He flipped over onto his stomach, and Leigh watched with delight as the covers rolled down past his waist.
“Hey, eyes up here, lady.” His face grew serious as he ran a hand gently across her brow. “Leigh, do you know why I came to find you at Harvard?”
“Because I stole two grand from you?”
“Well…” He grinned. “I guess that was part of the reason, but if some other person had stolen that money from me, I would have gone straight to the police.” He traced his fingers through hers. “It was that I couldn’t stop thinking about you, this clever, perfect girl with the sad eyes and the name that didn’t fit her. That night at the bar, I remember you said something funny and then you leaned back and laughed and in that moment, I saw someone completely different, a girl who I now know is the real you. In that tiny microcosm of a moment, I knew that I had to have you, whatever the cost. After you disappeared that morning to your fake boyfriend… Wait, what was his name again?” Leigh snickered.
“Rafe. My fake boyfriend’s name is Rafe. He’s a wrestler. Very unstable, has a bad Russian temper.”
“Oh yes, Rafe. Well, after you disappeared that morning to go back to; Rafe,’ I was obsessed with finding you. I couldn’t get you out of my head, but it was as if you had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Which is what was supposed to happen.” She kissed his shoulder.
“Yes. But I remembered that before I was totally intoxicated, you were talking about what kind of coffee we were going to have in the morning.”
“Oh no.” Leigh closed her eyes. “I didn’t.” She had been careless with him; she had felt it later.
“And you had mentioned that you loved Magpie Brew.”
She groaned. “Best dark roast in the world.” She shook her head. “That was very stupid of me.”
“Well, that was the only clue I had to your existence, and so I Googled what local coffee houses serve Magpie Brew. And guess what I found?” She sighed and kissed lower on his stomach just under his ribs. His body gave a shiver. “Stop that. I’m telling a story and you are very distracting. So, I looked it up and what did I find?”
Leigh tried not to focus on the smooth planes of his stomach. “The Bean House.”
“Yes! The Bean House. I started stopping there after class, hoping to see you. I went there every day after school for four days – they really do have great drinks - and had just given up hope when low and behold…you walked in. You wouldn’t have seen me; I was sitting in the back, in a baseball hat. Like a spy.”
Leigh shook her head and laughed. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I watched you walk up to the front. Your hair was different, and you weren’t wearing your glasses or near as much make-up, but it was unmistakably you. Then you pulled on an apron and I realized…you worked there.” He smiled. “That’s when I knew that I had to find out everything single thing about you. You weren’t some junkie or spoiled rich girl. If you were working at the Bean House, then you needed money. But why? Who were you really? The next day, I pried your name out of a coworker – what was his name? Brian? Brody? Either way, he was not great at protecting your privacy.”
“Dammit, Brian.” Leigh muttered. “I hate that guy. He never cleans off the syrup pumps.”
“From there I was able to find you – the real you, Leigh Montgomery - through the school directory. That same night, I headed to your dorm to confront you, but also to meet you properly. I was going to offer you a deal and ask you out.” He cupped her face in his hands.
“I wanted to kiss Leigh, not Evelyn. I wanted to earn it.”
“And then…”
“And then you punched me in the face holding your keys. And now we are here.” Leigh stopped kissing his face and sat back against the headboard, the dread that she had kept at bay all night creeping back into her brain. Here.
“This probably wasn’t the first date you were expecting. All of this.” Leigh sighed and curled herself away from him. “Look, we should probably get dressed and head to Dog’s.” Beside her, Henry shifted until he was bracing himself above her, his strong arms on either side of her shoulders.
“Leigh, look at me. Don’t do this, don’t close off to me.” She raised her eyes to meet his face. A face she loved, against all odds. “No matter what happens, I am glad I am here with you. I want you, all of you, for a very long time.” Leigh knew they should leave; she knew they should get dressed and get in the car, but instead she pulled him hungrily down to her and wrapped her long legs around his waist. “We haven’t even started talking about your freckles yet.” He murmured into her neck. “I have a lot of feelings about them.” Shivers ran up her spine.
Morning could wait.
Just before noon, Leigh packed their things into the car and looked wistfully back at the motel. She would always remember last night, she knew, not just for what had happened with Henry, but for how good sleeping in an actual bed felt. She missed her dorm room and the worn bed there, the sounds of Imogen’s soft snores. But more than that, she missed her parents, which is why she flung her bag into the truck and pulled herself up into the driver’s seat.
“What was the address again?” She looked over at Henry, who was beaming, despite the circumstances. “Stop smiling.”
He cringed. “I’m so sorry, I know I shouldn’t be smiling. It’s like my mouth has a life of its own.”
Leigh had a million responses for that, but instead she looked forward and bit her lip. Focus. Focus.
“Henry. Address.”
“He said 108 Canary Lane.”
“Okay.” She pulled out of the motel parking lot. “So this afternoon we will meet up with Dog and then we go to the Denver FBI, with him. We’ll have to convince him to come with us.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Leigh ran her tongue over her teeth.
“Then we make him come with us. We’ll make sure to get his gun first.”
Henry frowned. “Didn’t Ford say the FBI was in on this?”
“We don’t know if that’s true. Just because she said they were the FBI doesn’t mean they were, and I think she was pretty scared. I would say I was the FBI if I was trying to scare someone into being quiet, wouldn’t you?”
Henry nodded. “I guess so.” He sat back against the seat. “I just keep asking, how is it that there is no other proof that this town existed? How can it just be gone and no one cares?”
Leigh kept her eyes on the road winding into town. “You’re joking right? Do you care about small rural towns?”
Henry shook his head. “Not really, but I live in the city.”
She nodded.
“Exactly. Why should you care? Unfortunately, that’s how the entire nation feels at this point. It’s pretty depressing when you look at rural towns, to realize that when the older folks die, the town will die with them. First the businesses start disappearing, and when they go, so do the restaurants. Then the small markets follow and finally the gas stations, and by then everyone in town has to drive long distances to find what they need. Folks don’t like that. They start leaving, and then those who didn’t see the writing on the wall start leaving, too.”
She took a swig of water. “The folks who stay in dying towns stay there because they want to live out the rest of their lives there. They love it. When something like the White Devil Mill closing happens, it’s catastrophic to a small town. Fifteen people in Blackriver worke
d there and it was their only income. A lot of those people had children, and when they lost their jobs they couldn’t feed their families, so they moved and took the next generation with them. Then the schools die. And the remaining young people…” She paused, swallowing the guilty lump in her throat. “Most young people like me want to live in cities. We dream of growing up where there are people, where there are things to do and good schools to attend. Grown kids inherit their parent’s houses when they die and then quickly sell them because they don’t want to live here…and that’s how a rural town dies: with the whisper of old people vs. the dreams of the young.”
Henry was staring at her. “You have a lot of knowledge about this. And feelings too, I imagine.”
Leigh nodded. “My entrance essay was about the decline of rural communities.”
Henry inhaled. “Wow. I bet your mother loved that.”
“My mom never read it. She didn’t even know I was applying. I didn’t tell her until I got in, until I was choosing which college to attend.”
“Harvard is about as far from here as a person could go.”
Leigh nodded, her voice softening. “That’s why I picked it.” They turned onto a gravel road that wound past an abandoned playground, rusty swings creaking back and forth slowly. “Rural towns are disappearing, but what happened to Blackriver is something different. They go slowly, over generations. Not overnight. And parents don’t just leave their children. Even if they are furious with them.” Anger crept into her voice as the house appeared at the end of the street.
Henry sat forward. “I think that’s it.”
It was a two-story house, one that had been painted a cheery yellow once upon a time but now was dimmed with age to the color of urine. A dog on a chain barked wildly in the yard, which was brimming over with rusted-out car parts and an abandoned Volkswagen bus.
“Well that’s encouraging.” Deadpanned Henry as Leigh brought the car to a stop next to the driveway.