Rivers

by Michael Farris Smith

  She took him back into the trees, moving over or under or around what was left of the cottonwoods and oaks and pines. He stayed seven or eight steps behind her, and she frequently turned to look and see if he was still there. For half an hour they walked and Cohen thought several times of trying to turn her back but she seemed to know where she was going.

  It wasn’t five minutes when they came upon the body. Habana stopped and leaned over and nudged it with her nose but the body didn’t move. On his back were three dark red blotches and three small holes in his shirt. He was laying facedown in the leaves and mud. One arm under him and the other stretched out and his legs crossed. Cohen knelt and felt the man’s back pockets but there was nothing in them. He then rolled the man to his side and felt the front pockets and he pulled out a set of keys and a silver Zippo. He stood up and looked around on the ground for a pistol or shotgun or anything that might come in handy but there was nothing. Habana nudged the man again and Cohen patted her and apologized. He thought that was it, that she would go with him now, but she nudged the man a final time and only then did she continue on.

  The day was overcast and windy and there were probably three hours of light remaining. His instincts told him not to, but he followed her anyway.

  Eventually the trees thinned and they came to a clearing and he figured they were at least four or five miles from his place. The land was marshlike and Habana stopped to drink the muddy water, then she looked around for him and kept walking. She didn’t walk out into the clearing but kept to the tree line, sloshing through the mud and rainwater and in no hurry. He had no idea how long this would continue and he was beginning to regret letting it go this far, but then the tree line extended around to the east and when they moved around the bend, Cohen saw a far-reaching white wooden fence. Some of it stood and some of it didn’t but it stretched on and he didn’t see the end of it right away. Habana walked toward it and when they were closer, Cohen saw the house.

  He wanted her to stop and called for her to stop but she didn’t stop. He moved from out in the open and back into the tree line. But she walked casually and Cohen was able to get a good look at the place. It was a two-story Spanish-style house, terra-cotta-colored with arched windows and doorways. A balcony reached around the entire second floor and the ceramic roof tiles seemed intact but for one missing here and there like a lost tooth. A patio stretched out of the back of the house and there was a pool. The house appeared to sit in the middle of the fenced-off property as the white fence lined all sides but was at least a hundred yards away from the house in all directions. A horse trailer and truck were parked in the field to the west side of the house. Cohen wondered why he had never seen this place but he didn’t think about it long as two SUVs drove around the side of the house. He grabbed Habana’s reins and held her. He whispered to her and she let him lead her back into the trees.

  The SUVs drove out toward the horse trailer and truck but continued past and didn’t stop until they came to the fence. At the fence line, five men piled out of each vehicle. The back doors of the SUVs were opened and each man took a shovel from the back. Each man put on a pair of gloves, each man went to a fence post, and each man started to dig.

  Cohen stroked Habana’s neck and watched. He watched for an hour as the men dug in a spot, then moved on and dug in another, working their way from fence post to fence post in an orderly fashion. There wasn’t much light remaining in the day and Habana was getting restless. Cohen saw the men were occupied and he and the horse were far off and in the trees, so he felt safe moving. He held Habana’s reins and led her and she went with him this time without hesitation.

  After walking for a mile back along the tree line and into the woods, as the last of the day disappeared, he stopped and told Habana that this might go a little better if we do it the old-fashioned way. She seemed calm, so he put his foot in the saddle and mounted her and led her home.

  THE NEXT MORNING, AT FIRST light, they returned.

  This time Cohen had the shotgun and a shovel and gloves. When they came to the house, the SUVs and truck were not there. The horse trailer sat in the field.

  Cohen waited against the tree line and when he felt certain that no one was there, they rode out to the part of the fence where he had last seen the men digging. What he discovered as he rode along the fence were holes at every post along almost the entire south section of the fence. The holes were a yard wide and a yard deep.

  He got down from Habana, tied her to a standing piece of the wooden fence, and then he didn’t know why, but he started digging. He added five holes to the long line and then he stopped. His back ached and his hands were sore and it was midmorning. The feeling that the men in the SUVs would be back told him to quit, so he quit.

  The next morning he came back before daylight. At the fence line, he noticed that the holes now made the entire length of the south side and there were another ten stretching up the west portion of the fence.

  He got off, tied Habana, and went to work. He dug through dawn and then it started to rain and he quit. Riding back to his place, he explained to Habana that he didn’t know what the hell was going on but that he was done. My damn back is killing me.

  The next morning he was back again. A light rain fell and made him nervous as he dug because he couldn’t hear as well if the SUVs returned. Habana seemed unhappy standing in the rain, moving around more than usual and picking up her feet and smacking them down in the wet ground. An hour past dawn, he was wet and hurting and felt a little stupid.

  And then the shovel hit something. He was about two feet down and whatever he hit was strong and solid, and as if he had been plugged in, he began to dig at double speed, his imagination and adrenaline both racing, and in a matter of minutes he had uncovered all sides of the trunk. It was wide and broad, larger than any of the holes that had been dug. He didn’t bother trying to dig it out but instead he removed the dirt from the top and from around its sides. When he was done, he lay down on top and it was as long as he was, and he stretched out and grabbed the sides with his arms straight. He got up and stood on top, thought quickly about what to do. The trunk latch was padlocked and he didn’t want to fire the shotgun and risk making a big noise, but he had to. He fired and the lock and latch busted and Habana reared and whinnied. Cohen tossed the shotgun aside, stepped off the top of the trunk, and knelt at the edge of the hole. He reached down and tugged at the top and pulled it open.

  He was unsure what to think. He looked around as if it were a joke on one of those hidden-camera shows where the jokesters were waiting to leap out and point at him and cackle hysterically. There were stacks and stacks and stacks. Pretty and clean. Crisp and straight. So perfect, they seemed fake.

  He took Habana’s saddlebag and stuffed in as much as he could. Then he shoved stacks into his coat pockets and down into his pants and into his boots and anywhere else he could shove them. He mounted Habana and ran her across the field, hurried her through the jigsaw of the fallen trees and limbs, and ran her to the house. He hopped off, took the saddlebag inside and unloaded, then hurried back out, mounted, and ran. He was able to make two more trips and it took until midday. The rain fell steady and Habana seemed to be getting tired but he didn’t have half of what was in the trunk.

  “One more trip,” he told her and they took off again.

  This time when they came around the bend of the tree line, the SUVs were there. And the men were there. They were pointing and yelling at one another and he didn’t wait to see what they were going to do.

  He turned Habana and disappeared.

  44

  EVAN REALIZED THAT NO MATTER what the old man had said, no matter what had been agreed upon, and no matter what had exchanged hands to make the agreement, it wouldn’t be long before the two men outside the door decided to come in and see what they could find. It was a simple message that was delivered by both common sense and by Cohen’s twenty-four-hour whisper.

  In less than a minute, the world had changed aga
in. One moment he was lying on the bed watching television, with Brisco safe and dreaming next to him. The next moment a man with a gun had pushed Cohen and Mariposa into the room and Cohen had told him they had to go back down and those two will stand outside your door and make sure you don’t leave until we get back. Brisco never woke through the exchange and Evan was glad he didn’t. But Evan paced the room now, looking at his little brother, looking out of the window, walking in and out of the bathroom, replaying Cohen’s words in his head, wondering what the hell.

  Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.

  A lamp on the bedside table provided low light in the room and the wind had picked up outside and drove the rain into the windows and walls of the buildings on the square. Evan heard the men talking outside the bedroom door but couldn’t make out anything they said. Only muffled words in a muffled night but he didn’t need the details to know what they were talking about. They were talking about the same thing that damn near every other human being he’d ever known talked about—how much can I get and what’s the best way to get it.

  He reached between the mattress and took out the pistol that Cohen had given him. He tucked it into the back of his pants and knew he needed to find the other one. He walked through the bathroom into the other bedroom and went to the dresser. The top drawer was the last place he had seen Cohen put it and he opened the drawer but it wasn’t there. He wondered if Cohen had somehow managed to have it with him but didn’t figure Charlie was the kind of man to make that sort of mistake. The room was a mess, with clothes on the floor and laid across chairs and the bed-sheets and blanket twisted and half hanging off the bed. Evan lifted sheets and picked up and tossed aside clothes, opened the nightstand drawer and the other dresser drawers, looked on the closet shelf and looked between the mattresses, but he couldn’t find it. He knelt and looked under the bed at the rifles and shotgun and thought it would take the men about fourteen seconds to find them, and then what would happen?

  He went to the window and looked down. They were on the second floor and the awning was not ten feet below the window but Evan was almost certain it wouldn’t hold and if it splintered or collapsed then the fall could be much worse. He tried to open the window to get a better look but it was nailed shut. The window would have to be broken and with the sound of the storm it might be possible to get away with that. But then he would have to handle Brisco out of a jagged window onto a rickety awning in a driving storm. The entire scenario kept getting worse and worse.

  He walked back into the room where Brisco slept and he looked at the small digital clock on the bedside table. An hour had passed and he didn’t believe it would be much longer before they came in. He walked gently over to the door and put his ear against it. They had stopped talking. Evan waited for them to start again.

  Nothing. Only the beating of the rain and force of the wind.

  He moved his ear from the door and looked down at the doorknob. Above the doorknob he noticed that the latch on the door was unlocked. He turned the lock and it clicked shut.

  And then from the other side of the door, a voice said, “That ain’t gonna do you no good.”

  Evan eased back from the door and over to the bed. He took out his pistol and then he sat on the bed, his back against the wooden headboard. Brisco turned in his sleep and grunted some but didn’t wake. Evan held the pistol in his lap and watched the door.

  45

  COHEN COULDN’T STAND BEING ALONE. After burying himself, after becoming what he wanted to be—alone with his memories and ghosts of a life—after everything he had done to be alone and remain alone, he couldn’t stand being alone now as he drove the truck behind the U-Haul. For two hours they had been moving back toward the coast, the hurricane forceful and gathering strength and the endless black night and the pounding of the rain and the wind and the twisting and turning across the beaten land and all he could think about was how alone he felt and it hurt like a broken bone.

  During this solitary time he thought of everything. His life with Elisa and the early days when they were new and how he would quit work early and pick her up and they would drive up and down the coast, drinking beer and talking about all the things they were going to do, and at twilight they would find a pier to sit on where they could eat and drink some more beer and then at dark, before taking her back home, find a quiet strip of beach and lay out towels and lie naked under the empty sky, and when it was all done, kiss good night, anxious for tomorrow and the chance to do it all again.

  He thought of the positive pregnancy test he danced around the living room with, holding high like a trophy, and her laughing and saying I peed on that, I peed on that, but him only dancing and twisting and turning like a madman. He thought of the many times he should have cut loose and taken her and gotten out of there, sold the house, sold the land, started over somewhere else and if he would have done that, how she would be alive now and he would be lying in bed with his daughter reading a bedtime story instead of caught in the middle of this impossible night in this impossible land.

  He thought of the man he had left to bleed to death when the man was begging him to end his misery and he thought of slitting the stomach of the pregnant woman with the knife his grandfather had passed on to him and he thought of the two he had shot and killed back at the compound and he knew all those things made him something different now. He thought of Aggie and his twisted ideology and he thought of standing in the rain and trying to frame a child’s room and he thought of Habana and where she might be and he thought about the shoe box and how the things in it were probably scattered all across Gulfport. He thought of Mariposa and what must be going through her mind and how he hadn’t gotten to assure her of anything and did it matter anyway. Would any of it matter and would they even survive the night. He drove closely behind the U-Haul and being alone in the truck chewed at his heart and his mind and he seemed to relive his entire life in those hours and he wondered how in the hell the roads of his life could have led him to this moment. It seemed impossible.

  Charlie was taking him places he had never been and if set free Cohen wondered if he could even find his way out of this hurricane. In almost every direction the ditches overflowed the road and the creeks ran the heights of bridges and there were great spaces of water everywhere but Charlie seemed to somehow find a way around. Cohen smoked without cease and the truck headlights and windshield wipers were ill-prepared for such intense combat. The winds rocked the back of the U-Haul and several times Charlie stopped and waited and then went on again but it never seemed to make sense to Cohen because there was only the fierce velocity of the wind and rain and never any ease.

  He didn’t have a damn clue where they were. He wasn’t even certain whether they were driving north or south. Or east or west. In his angst he knocked his head against the steering wheel, against the door window. He pulled at his beard, at his hair. He squeezed at his chest and he smoked and he smoked and he felt so alone. Once when Charlie momentarily stopped, Cohen let his head fall down on the steering wheel and he began to cry and he wished that he had lived a better life so that he could call out for the hand of providence to guide him and half expect a response. He had expected sometime in the night for the lull to come and ease their journey but there wasn’t going to be a lull. There was no such thing anymore.

  Mariposa had told him that in her dreams he left and didn’t come back. He had scoffed at the notion in the dry room but now he felt the possibility of not being there. And he thought of Evan and Brisco and the predicament he had left them in and he wondered how soon it would be before the boys were doing things out of desperation or if they were already. He thought that he should have sent them off with the black Hummer and the women and the baby. But hell no, he couldn’t have thought of that then.

  He wanted to know anything. What time it was. Where they were. How much strength was left in the storm. Would the Jeep still be there or had someone found it and for some reason found the latches underneath the back
seat and opened them and lifted the seat and hit jackpot. Would the night ever end. Would they be blown away. Would they drown. Would they be shot. All he had were questions.

  He smoked his last cigarette. The night raged on. They continued like patient water beasts migrating toward their violent ocean home. Another hour of Charlie making turn after turn. Another hour of going nowhere. All around was black and floating countryside and they were on a road that was not much wider than the U-Haul. The brake lights of the U-Haul shined and it came to a stop and Cohen knew it was another dead end. The hazard lights began to blink and this was the sign for Cohen to come get in the U-Haul so they could figure out what to do next.

  Cohen fought his way to the U-Haul cab, fought the door open, and Mariposa grabbed and pulled him in and he fell across her lap. He sat up and she slid into the middle of the bench seat between the men.

  “Told you we’d make it,” Charlie said.

  “You okay?” Mariposa asked and she held on to his arm.

  “There’s no way in hell to do this, Charlie,” Cohen said, catching his breath and sitting up straight. “You can’t hardly stand out there.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Charlie said. He held the pistol in one hand and the flask with the other.

  “Shit. You been drinking all this time?”

  “All this time,” Mariposa said.

  “This is all so damn insane.”

  “Not yet it ain’t,” Charlie said. “We got a little ways to go.”

  There was a gust and the U-Haul swayed and Mariposa squeezed Cohen’s arm with both hands.

  “We’re gonna have to wait on this wind,” Cohen said.

  The rain pelted the windshield and the headlights gave little notice and something big smacked against the side of the U-Haul and they all jumped.

  “All we gotta do is get right over there and it’s home free,” Charlie said. “About a mile up is one left turn and then another two or three miles to 49.” He pointed out in front with the flask. At the end of the headlight beams there was a bridge that was being washed over by an overflowing creek. The water rushed across the bridge and tree limbs and mounds of leaves and chunks of earth moved along with the strong current. The bridge rails were low and they leaned and wobbled with the flow, beaten nearly to death.