This River Awakens

by Steven Erikson

  She released her breath. Nothing but air.

  Down the hallway, steps shuffled into the bathroom. The door creaked as it swung shut.

  Different this time around. Yeah, right. White knight Roulston, healing everything he touches. This wasn’t the kind of infection someone could just cure. No, it had to be cut out. Cut away what’s dead. And the man’s dead, Roulston. He just doesn’t know it yet.

  She took another drag. The only way Roulston could help was by putting a bullet in her father’s head.

  ‘Your father has to admit that he’s sick, Jennifer. That’s the first step. Nothing can be done to help him until he does that.’

  Fucking idiot. Her father knew damn well he was sick. He’s a drunk, not stupid. He doesn’t pretend he can control it. In fact, he’s surrendered. Completely. Hell, Roulston, he likes being sick. Can’t you see that?

  ‘He has to hit rock bottom, and he has to understand it when it happens. He has to ask for help, put aside his pride and ego…’

  The toilet flushed. The door opened with another creak.

  Rock bottom. There is no rock bottom, Roulston. Just mushy mud. You sink for ever. Once you admit to that, Doctor, then we can help you. It’s the first step, Dr Roulston.

  Her head was spinning. She’d smoked the damn cigarette like a joint. Tonight, she was going to fly. A hit in the dark womb of her room. Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground. She’d circle under the ceiling, a giant bluebottle orbiting the lamp, and then it’d be time for David Bowie and Patti Smith, the only geniuses left who weren’t burnt out.

  Music inside and out, no skin in between. Catching her would be like trying to catch notes in the air, like trying to climb the scales with your hands and feet.

  And then there’s Owen. Owen Brand.

  She wanted him. It had started out simple, a way to get to his sister. Remove the threat. But when she’d thought about it, the reasoning fell apart. For all Jennifer knew, Debbie might hate her brother. Telling Debbie that she’d fucked her kid brother, that she’d turned him on and then messed him up – what difference would that make?

  The plan was flawed, but it didn’t matter any more. Owen had proved elusive, and that was enough to make her want him, to make her all the more determined to pull him in.

  She’d grown tired of the scene with Mark and Dave anyway. All she needed from them was the drugs, now that her visits out to Riverview had provided her with a new market, kids with rich parents, richer even than Barb’s old man – who’d already told his precious daughter that he’d buy her a car on her sixteenth birthday. What a laugh. Barb can’t even walk straight these days, loading up on everything I bring around. And Sandy’s gone for speed – could see that one coming.

  Speed was something Jennifer stayed away from. Speed kills, or worse, it fries your brain and you end up finding God or Jesus or some dumb-fuck guru with all the answers. But Sandy was eager, and it was her brain she was frying, after all.

  Owen was only twelve. She wondered if he’d woken up yet with come on his sheets. She wondered if when she took his cock in her hands it’d come alive. Was he there yet? Did it matter? She’d take him there, eventually. He liked her tits – a good sign. Kids who just piss out of their cocks don’t even notice things like that.

  Jennifer reached under the pillow and found the tab of windowpane. She held it up for a moment, admiring how simple and harmless it looked, then opened her mouth and slid it on to her tongue.

  She left the bed and kneeled in front of the record player. Floyd to start, then ‘White Rabbit’ – just ‘White Rabbit’, Grace Slick can’t sing worth shit – then back to Floyd—

  The door behind her opened. Jennifer swung around, still on her knees. ‘Get out,’ she said.

  Sten stared at her from the threshold. He hadn’t shaved in days. His undershirt was stained yellow under the arms. ‘You fuckin’ bitch,’ he drawled.

  The veins on his bare arms bulged suddenly. Jennifer’s eyes widened. Shit, no, not with him. The veins swelled fiercely, radiating purple and red waves of heat. His eyes had fallen away, completely away, leaving just sockets.

  ‘Got the fuckin’ principal breathing down my neck,’ he said. ‘Threatening me ’cause you never hardly showed up last year and he says if that happens this time he’s calling the cops. What the fuck’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Get out of my womb.’

  ‘Huh? You’re fucking stoned, aren’t you? Fucking taking drugs here in my house. What if Roulston shows up right now? The shit thinks he can drop by any time, just because she’s in the hospital under his care. I don’t give a shit if your jaw’s wired shut. Maybe I’ll just bust it again – you can have so many wires I’ll just stand on the roof and jerk you around your fucking precious garden. Think you can hide in your bed? Well, fuck you, it’s my bed too and I want to crawl in and nail you right here and now, I’ll do it ’cause I’m your husband. You weak little bitch. I’d like to see you hit back, I really would. I’d really like it if you just took my head right off. He’ll come by and sew it on but it’ll be too late and good fucking riddance. You think you can do whatever you want in this house? I never wanted you anyway. Just one more fuckin’ complication. I should’ve taken a coat hanger to you right away. Now get in that bed, the principal says you need a lesson and that’s what I’m here for like a good daddy.’

  He moved towards her, still standing, his legs motionless, his clothes burning away. She found herself flat on her back on the bed, and laughed because her hands were now knives.

  ‘Touch me and I’ll cut you to pieces. I fucking will, Daddy, and all the king’s dogs and all the doctors in the world won’t put you together again ’cause I’ll tell them everything, Daddy. I will.’

  ‘You’re stoned, girl. What’s the point of talking. Get out of my house. The kennel’s full and no one’s going anywhere, so you just run, little hamster. Run on your wheel and when I stick my cock in you you moan like you like it. You used to like it, remember? So let’s go back to how it was. Okay?’

  The door closed, rippling in its frame. Dog claws scraped on the stairs, going down, down into the bottomless mud.

  Jennifer studied the wicked long, curved blades of her hands. ‘Look at this. I can cut myself to pieces, and all the king’s horses…’ A part of her watched in amused horror as she began slicing open her flesh, starting at the breasts. Too big. She hated them. She hated everything, this new body, its new rules and hungers.

  Cut it all away. I want to be pushed higher, higher on the swing, Daddy. Higher and higher.

  III

  The day had passed as if in a dream, in which I only half lived the hours waiting for its end. Miss Shevrin seemed physically to slow as the hours in the classroom passed, her bulk solidifying, turning to stone. There was expectancy in the air, but it was only anticipation for the end to come.

  We scrubbed our desks, took drawings down from the wall, struggled to return the classroom to its sterile condition in which we’d found it on the first day. It seemed a pointless effort, and it seemed that Miss Shevrin knew it. She anchored herself behind her desk and left the last two hours for reading.

  I finished Jason and the Argonauts and then started on Tarzan of the Apes. Written in 1914, its story felt strangely older than Jason and his world. My thoughts quickly filled with half-man/half-ape beasts, the images blurring into that of the body lying on its bed of sticks, images shedding coarse hair and becoming smooth-skinned, shiny. The story’s solitude and loss spanned both scenes in my mind, shifting from the imagined to the real and back again, until I felt my life was a story, and that of Tarzan was as real as the desk’s wooden seat under me.

  The day ended with me feeling shorn and disturbed, trapped in a pale world. My final goodbye to Miss Shevrin a mumble, I departed from the classroom and the school at something close to a run. It was done. I’d never go back, but the act hadn’t had the drama I’d anticipated. It had felt like flight.

  I continued
reading on the bus trip home. The world beyond the windows rolled past unnoticed, powerless to capture my attention. Instead, I was witness to a child switched in a crib, and a human life launched on a strange, pathetic and wonderful journey. I longed for jungles embracing me. I longed for a simpler existence and discovery and revelation neatly packaged and bitterly satisfying.

  When I stepped down from the bus the cool wind washed over me, and it was like awakening for the first time that day. The last day. School over, the city surgically removed from my body, summer begun.

  My friends were nowhere to be seen. I stood on the side of the highway, feeling vaguely resentful but also relieved. There’d been nothing but arguments since we’d found the body. The secret was hard to bear, it felt heavy and dangerous, but none of us was willing to let go of it. Though we hadn’t revisited it, the body rotted in our minds, the flesh swarmed in our heads, the face hid under the skins of our own faces. I knew the others felt the same. The body made us feel too old.

  I walked along the highway’s edge, not wanting to cross Fisk’s field alone. Lord Greystoke’s and Lady Alice’s corpses lay forgotten in a small cabin at the primeval jungle’s edge. The bones of a child ape rested in the crib. A man, a giant hairless, faceless man, lay on a beaver lodge, his flesh punctured by gnawed sticks, the crayfish working hungry tunnels inside his body. And Fisk sat in the shadows of his porch, covered in frost with dead flowers at his feet. They all felt real. They all felt more than real, they clung like tastes in my mouth, hinted their truths with each breath I took, were fed deep in my bones by racing blood.

  I was glad to be alone. We’d argued, my friends and I, over anything, everything. Lynk had been the most savage of us all. Summer was coming, and he’d come alive, showing his sneer at each of us in turn. I’d thought I’d been mean to Carl, but I was nothing compared to Lynk. Carl’s dad beat on him, and Lynk poked and jabbed at Carl’s fear as if it were an open wound. Roland had been missing school, either taking care of his kid brother – who’d broken an arm – or visiting the doctor. He’d been falling behind in his homework. Lynk knew more about it than I did, and he worked on Roland, too. Hints, veiled attacks, working around the truth without ever touching it. And Roland seemed unwilling to defend himself.

  The only person between Lynk and the throne of summer was me. I wasn’t about to let him pass, and though he showed me his spite he didn’t seem ready to try me yet.

  All because of the body, all because we felt lost and scared.

  I approached the wooden bus shack at the top of the ‘U’ road, and saw the jean-clad legs of someone sitting on the bench. As I came opposite I saw it was Jennifer, smoking a cigarette. Her eyes were huge as she looked up at me and smiled lazily.

  ‘Owen Brand. Growin’ Owen, want to sit down? We all got out of school early. Your friends are over at the candle factory. Lynk called you a fucking asshole, but he’s scared of you. Why?’

  I found myself sitting beside her, not sure why I’d accepted the invitation. A disarming smile – I remembered the description from a book I’d read once. Disarming – I’d looked up the word. Removing weapons, putting at ease. Opposite meanings, my favourite kind of word. Her smile was beautiful and left me with a delicious twisting and fluttering in my stomach.

  ‘Someone cut out your tongue?’

  I watched the cars roll by, smelling her smoke, and something sweeter, like burned rope, filling the air inside the shack. ‘Nope,’ I answered, thinking of the body’s open mouth, lipless, the tongue – birds had pulled bits from it, leaving it white and stubby.

  ‘I can’t see why Lynk’s scared of you.’

  ‘No?’

  She sat back, pulling hard on the cigarette. Twin streams of smoke shot down from her nose. ‘Want some?’

  ‘Some what?’

  ‘The butt. Want some of the butt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Chicken shit. You’d probably cough to death.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘You like your sister?’

  ‘Who? Debbie? Well, she’s my sister, right?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you don’t ever think about stuff like that. She’s a sister, that’s all. Don’t you have any sisters or brothers?’

  ‘No. Thank fucking God. I feel sorry for Debbie, having to look after you all the time.’

  ‘She doesn’t. All she does is listen to her records and talk on the phone with Dave, or Mark, or John or some other guy.’

  ‘She doesn’t care what you do?’

  ‘No, why should she?’ I scowled. ‘Why are we talking about Debbie, anyway?’

  Jennifer flicked her butt out on to the highway. We watched it roll in the wind of the passing cars. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you haven’t got any friends any more. What’s wrong with you? Are you a fruit or something? Or a suck? Are you a crybaby suck?’

  ‘If I was, Lynk wouldn’t be scared of me, would he?’ I liked the thought of Lynk being scared of me. Maybe it was true.

  She tapped her foot, her knee jumping. ‘Fuck this,’ she said, looking at me. ‘You want to go behind the school?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What do you think? To neck. Never necked before, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll show you what to do. Come on.’

  We left the bus shack. My heart was pounding hard in my chest. Jennifer’s arm brushed mine, and even through our jackets the touch felt electric. We came to the crosswalk. I studied the school across from us. Its smoky glass reflected the houses behind us on the other side of the ditch. We looked small at this distance.

  ‘If you like,’ Jennifer said as we waited for a gap in the traffic, ‘we can go together this summer.’

  I glanced over at the candle factory. The side facing the highway had a huge geared wheel painted on the limestone. ‘All right. Listen, Lynk and the others might still be around.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Fuck. Well, there’s an old farmhouse on the other side of the tracks.’

  ‘Is that close to Roland’s?’

  ‘It’s Fraser land, yeah, but they live down at the end of the section road.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We crossed the highway a minute later and went around the school. The chain-link fence dividing the playground from the railroad property was high, but without barbed wire at the top. We climbed it, and then crossed the raised train tracks. Beyond stretched rows of stubby, yellow winter wheat, the mud in between already spotted and patched green with weeds. The old farmhouse stood about a quarter-mile away. A gravel road led to it from the section road, which was off to our right, on the other side of the candle factory.

  Jennifer led the way on to the muddy field. ‘Are you going to miss supper?’

  ‘No. Maybe. We don’t eat till seven, sometimes eight. You want to eat at my place?’

  She looked at me sharply over her shoulder. ‘You sure? Aren’t you supposed to phone first or something?’

  ‘Nah. Debbie does it all the time. You can phone your mom and dad from my place.’

  ‘Don’t have to. Mom’s still in the hospital. I cook my own meals.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’

  ‘She’s coming home soon.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  The land spread out here, north and westward for as far as I could see. A few clumps of trees sheltered farms, a few raised roads ribboned the fields, but mostly it was just cleared land. It wasn’t crowded in the way the land edging the river was – no forest, no bracken.

  I said, ‘Anybody who looked would see us.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re almost there. The ground’s still too wet to plough up. Besides, this field’s fallow.’

  ‘Really? I thought this was winter wheat.’

  ‘No, just wild oats and alfalfa.’

  ‘How come you know so much about farming?’

  ‘My mom’s sister was married to a farmer near Beausejour. But she died. Cancer. When I was a kid we used to go out there a lot. I had a horse there.’

  ‘That’s wha
t I want to learn. To ride a horse.’

  ‘My uncle got married again. We don’t go out there any more. He sold the horses, anyway.’

  We arrived. The farmhouse was one storey, its windows broken. Tall yellow grasses crowded its sides. The bare mud and gravel around the front and back glittered with broken glass. A weathered grey outhouse leaned against a pile of planks near a collapsed chicken coop.

  Jennifer walked up to the door, which was jammed half open.

  ‘Who lived here?’ I asked.

  ‘The Frasers. Before they built the new place.’

  ‘Before Roland was born?’

  ‘Way before. Come on.’

  I followed her inside. A narrow entrance-way opened out to a living room that made up the house’s centre. The kitchen and bedrooms led off from it. Shattered glass littered the wrinkled tiles on the floor. A stack of rotting newspapers sat next to a raised brick section on the floor, where a wood stove once stood.

  The air smelled damp and musty, though not as bad as I thought it would be. The broken windows let the wind through, chilly enough to make me shiver.

  Jennifer crossed the living room and stopped outside one of the bedrooms. She eyed me until I looked away. ‘Come on,’ she said. There’s an old mattress in here. Just think, Roland’s mom and dad probably fucked on it for years. It won’t mind.’

  ‘How could a mattress mind?’ I ambled slowly, haphazardly, across the room, glancing around. There were swallow nests above the windows, the mud and twig lumps tucked at the join between the wall and the ceiling. The floor directly below was thick with bird droppings.

  Jennifer waited until I came close then took me by the arm and pulled me into the room. The wide mattress lay on the floor – the only object left in the room. I stared at it. She’s been here before.

  ‘I want a smoke first,’ Jennifer said, sitting down on the mattress and pulling out her cigarettes. ‘Sit down beside me.’