by Brad Barkley
“Shit damn” Bosco shouts. He falls back onto the deck, kicking the fish back into the river, still hooked to its line. His gun skitters across the barge.
“Can you think of any other ways to kill yourself?” Ray asks. Bosco sucks on his palm while Ray takes the gun, hauls up the antifreeze jug, lifts the fish into the air, and shoots it through the head. He unhooks the limp fish and tosses it to Bosco.
“See if you can skin it and get it in the cooler without losing a limb. Then we’ll get the heater in the water.”
Bosco grins, his mouth wet with his own blood. “Yessir, boss man.”
Ray retrieves from the cabin their plastic bucket of weights, most of them old iron window sash weights, along with scraps of steel they found on the barge. He fills the front and back pockets of his jeans, and with a length of rope makes a belt of sash weights to tie around his waist. The second belt he makes for Bosco, who is still struggling with the pliers, trying to skin the catfish. It will go bad before he finishes. Now fifty pounds heavier, Ray takes a pint of bourbon from the fridge and drinks. The bottom of the river is always cold, even in August. Ray walks out and ties the weight belt to Bosco, then stuffs his pockets full of iron while Bosco wipes off his hands. He holds up the bottle so Bosco can drink, spilling some down his shirt front. Finally, he uncurls fifty feet of clothesline and cinches either end to their waists.
Bosco drinks again. “Let us not forget our tithes and offerings, brothers,” he says. “When the Lord has delivered into our hands those goddamn diamonds, let us give back to Jesus.”
Ray stiffens at the mention of the diamonds. For the whole day Bosco has been planning how they will have the diamonds cut and sold in Little Rock, and how they will spend the money—fast cars and stereos and guns. He talks as if their lives are fairy tales, already written.
“So it’s blasphemy now,” Ray says. “We’re trying something new.”
“Listen, bud, if God was of a mind to strike me down, he’d of gotten me twenty fuckups ago.”
Ray unchains the water heater from the side of the barge and floats it around to the front. The river currents lift and push it, banging it against the barge. Ray thinks that if it hit hard enough, it could knock them off their shoal and into open water. They tie it off to one of the cleats on the barge, then grasp it on opposite sides, gripping it by its brass valves and pipe fittings. They draw deep breaths, readying themselves to strain against the weight of it. The old heater shell is lead-lined, industrial-size, nearly as heavy as a small car.
“All the way up,” Ray says. “Nice big bubble for us.” Words he repeats every time, a kind of incantation. They count three and lift the heater, the two of them grunting and spitting, until it is upright and flush against the surface of the water.
“Now,” Ray says through his teeth, and they drop it, careful not to let it tip. They wait until it slips beneath the surface, thick rope coiling in after it. No bubble rises after the rope stops, and they know it has landed upright in the mud.
“We’re good,” Ray says. He draws five deep breaths, holds his clam rake tight to his chest, and jumps in, the weights in his clothes pulling him down. The rope around his waist tightens until he hears the muffled sloosh of Bosco jumping in after him. He has learned to keep his eyes open underwater, and watches overhead as the filtered light shifts from murky yellow to dull brown and then is gone almost completely. His feet settle on the bottom and he moves toward where he thinks the heater has landed, his boots sinking in, pulled downward. With his hands he finds the heater, and as his eyes adjust he can see it, faint white, slightly tilted. Ray gives two tugs on the rope and waits for Bosco to find him, hearing only the pounding of his heart in his ears. Three minutes he will last without a breath, the noise of his pulse like a clock reminding him. Bosco is there suddenly and they set to work, moving out from the heater like spokes from a hub, with or against the pull of the river. They rake the mud for oysters and clams, prying them out, saving them in burlap sacks tied to their belts. Later, sitting on the barge, they will sort them for size. Ray works quickly, his lungs feeling as though they, too, are weighted. His used-up air lets loose in quick, fat bursts as his muscles repeat their pattern—rake, dig, sack—like some song his body sings within itself. After twenty steps he turns back, lungs throbbing, the pulse of blood in the muscles of his face.
Ray is first beneath the heater, always, as Bosco seems able to hold his breath forever. He gives Ray a thumbs-up sign in the dark swirl of mud they have stirred. They lift the heater, and Bosco steadies it long enough for Ray to slide underneath and up in. Inside the heater is black as ink, the smelt full of musk and rot, the curved walls sweaty, slick with moss and algae. There is no water down as far as his knees. Ray gulps mouthfuls of the trapped air, talks to himself to hear a voice, breathes again, then raps his knuckles on the wall and listens for the sound of Bosco lifting the heater for him.
For half a minute there is no sound, and Ray raps the wall again. “Dammit, Bosco,” he yells. He pushes up, without enough leverage to budge the heater. This prank is one that Bosco never tires of, one he will pull on Ray a couple times a week.
“Okay, fine,” Ray shouts. “Stay out there and drown your sorry ass.”
Finally there comes the squeak of Bosco’s hands searching for a grip, then the suck of mud at the bottom. Ray takes one last deep breath and squirms out through the gap. He holds the heater for Bosco to go inside. Looming up in Ray’s face, Bosco grins and gives another thumbs-up, then disappears. They work this way for over an hour, raking the spokes, filling their bags, taking their turns inside the heater. At the end of their work they turn the hot water valve at the top of the heater and let it fill, then climb the heater’s rope back up to the barge, the weight belts and oyster bags hanging down, pulling at them.
They stand dripping on the deck of the barge, tossing off their weights.
“Had you that time,” Bosco says, panting. “You thought I’d got washed away.”
“Hell, yes, you fooled me. About twice as much as three days ago when you pulled the same trick.”
“Well, this is near about the last time we have to dig oysters out of the shit. After we get those diamonds.”
Ray nods, wipes mud from his face.
“Tell me this right now, Bosco. You gonna put the gun against his head? Pull the trigger? Stand there with pieces of Leo’s brain down your shirt, blood on your hands, and then go digging through his shit? You can do all that?”
“Hell, Ray, you ever seen me handle a gun? I mean it—”
Ray shoves him hard against his good shoulder, staggering him. Bosco looks stung, his mouth open, dark water running in thin lines across his face.
“No more of your bullshit,” Ray says. “Tell me here and now. You need that money or you might die.” Ray lightly taps Bosco’s other shoulder, where the pain is, where the cancer has been. “No bullshit, just listen. I ain’t dying, but I ain’t afraid of good money, either. So you tell me, Bosco. A gun in your hand, you raise it up, you fire into Leo’s head. You shatter his skull. More blood than you’ve seen in your life. Think about that, Bosco, and tell me. You going to be able to do it?”
They stand facing each other, the puddles around their feet joining. Bosco’s mouth works, his eyes dart to the side. He will not look at Ray.
“Go on. You say the word, and we’ll dump these fucking oysters back in the river and head over right now. Got your gun loaded? Just say.”
Bosco looks off toward the water curling past the edge of the barge. His eyes well up, his face flushed. He slowly shakes his head, not speaking.
Ray points a finger at him. “That’s it, then, understand? Not another goddamn word about it.”
They use up the afternoon parked at the juncture of Highways 45 and 19, in the shade of a tree, selling the oysters out of a cooler in the back of Ray’s pickup. They sell mostly to people from town headed back to their country houses, men with their ties loosened, women in convertibles with the tops up
. Ray uses a scale he made to weigh more than true by taking it apart and stretching the spring. They charge six dollars a pound, a dollar cheaper than IGA.
When they have sold out or when what is left has gone bad, the shells opening, they will head into town, stopping at the liquor store on the way. By the time they get where they are going—usually the Lightbulb Club or the Barbary Coast—they are half-drunk on bourbon. Today, though, Ray eases off a little, steering toward the fire station on River Road, for what he calls the best deal in town, all-you-can-eat fried chicken and barbecue for four dollars, with slaw and biscuits and lemonade on the side.
“Every damn body and their seven kids will be there,” Bosco says. “Ain’t worth it.”
“It’s worth it,” Ray tells him. “I’m sick of hauling dinner out of that shithole river. Sick of all of it.”
“Plus, there won’t be no women there,” Bosco says. “Just housewives.” He wipes his nose on his sleeve.
Ray nods, pleased that Bosco has found something to pout over, to distract him from the diamonds. He has not mentioned them since that morning. All afternoon, in the hot shade of the tree, Ray has seen Leo alone in his apartment, seen the small swirl of the feathers, has heard Leo’s breath in the quiet room. He thinks of the cancer growing inside Bosco’s shoulder, cells gone wrong and dark, growing there maybe even now, as Bosco drinks and wipes his mouth. He thinks of himself, shucking off his thirty-eight years like oyster shells. It would be two lives for one, he thinks. Two for one.
At the firehouse the men in their blue uniforms sweat over gas grills while the wind whips paper plates and napkins off the picnic tables and around the yard. Mothers and fathers sit on blankets spread across the grass. The bigger kids hurl water balloons at one another while the little kids crowd around a fat, panting dalmatian—Sparky—who shows the kids how to stop, drop, and roll, put through his paces by a short fireman with a blond mustache.
The man taking money sits at a card table in the driveway. Ray pays for both of them and waits for his change.
“You boys aren’t drunk, are you?” the man says. He gives them a smile with no humor in it. The man wants to find some excuse to keep them out, Ray thinks. Two river rats fucking up his nice family gathering.
“Not drunk,” Rays says. “Just hungry as hell.” Bosco laughs.
They stand in line for chicken and barbecue, cole slaw, biscuits, peach cobbler, and lemonade. Both pile their plates so high that some of the food teeters off into the grass. Bosco pulls his pint of bourbon from his pocket and refills their half-emptied lemonade cups. When they finish, Ray feels doubly drunk, from the whiskey and from his overly fed stomach. He eats one last biscuit, not from hunger but just for the excess of it, sloshing it around in his mouth with a gulp of the spiked lemonade. He can’t remember when he felt this happy, eating the way he did as a kid visiting his grandparents in Hot Springs, going a night without eating carp and mudfish from out of the dirty river and drinking half-warmed beer. Soon it will be fall again, oyster season over and back to little money, just what he makes from his route and whatever he and Bosco can throw together in the way of odd jobs. Last year it was helping businesses downtown string up their Christmas lights for four bucks an hour. For a man his age, nothing more than sympathy work.
He looks over at Bosco, who is still chewing and swallowing, bobbing his head in time with the bluegrass music that spills out of the loudspeaker mounted on the side of the firehouse. Every so often the music is interrupted by the crackle and chirp of the dispatcher radioing the sheriff’s deputies. A couple of the young parents dance in a ring around their children, who laugh and giggle in the middle. Ray takes the bottle from Bosco and pours over the ice in his cup. He swallows, hardly tasting it now, his happiness climbing like some balloon he’s released. He gets up and starts dancing, too, Bosco tugging on his pant leg, telling him to sit down. He wanders around the yard, stepping on blankets, thinking how strange it is that all these people—his age, many of them, or younger—have ended up this way. They have nice shining cars, nice shining houses, nice shining jobs.
“Nice shining lives,” Ray says aloud, not aware until he’s said it that he has been thinking this. He laughs at the idea that these people have got where they are by following some simple plan, going to school, meeting the right people. That’s all fine. His real question is how they knew from the start that there was supposed to be a plan, how did they know to move in some direction and not another? He stops now at the outside edge of a ring of children, a new group gathered around to watch Sparky go through his paces. He can see their polished lives laid out before them. He remembers teachers, principals, counselors from high school, two decades past now, telling him he needed direction. He can hear them saying it, see their faces. How was he to know that they only meant that his life would end up somewhere, and that automatic pilot brought you down low to stay? I have direction, he thinks, though the children turning to look at him tells him that he must be talking out loud again. His direction is down, the bottom of the river, then back to where he started, ready the next day to go down again. Down, down, Bosco behind or below him, tethered to him, the two ends of some finite thing, always down.
Sparky catches a Milk-bone tossed by the fireman. The dog wags his tail and the children clap. For a better view, Ray lifts himself onto the platform of the ladder truck parked in the driveway, its doors open for display, the ladder extended into the air.
“Always tell Mom and Dad to test those smoke detectors,” the fireman says. Sparky nods and the children laugh.
“Have a plan for getting out,” the fireman says.
A plan. For getting out. The words fill Ray’s mouth as he repeats them, resonate at the bottom of his cup as he drinks, bum at the back of his throat. The children stare up at him, the fireman glares. He smiles at them. We have our plan, he wants to tell them. He and Bosco. For getting out. For getting off the bottom of the river. Leo…gun… Parcheesi box…diamonds. Ray tries to shake the idea from his head. Maybe they are done with it, and Bosco won’t pull anymore. Maybe Ray’s speech earlier has ended it, planting them forever at the river bottom.
“Why do you think we bring Sparky to the fires?” the fireman asks. Ray can tell this is the setup for some cornball joke.
“I know,” Ray says, and they all turn toward him, sudden as a school of fish. “He pisses on it when the rest of you fuckers get wrung out.”
The fireman’s face darkens. “I think you need to get on home now, buddy, sleep it off.”
Ray smiles. “I ain’t your fucking buddy.”
The fireman points his finger, raises his voice. “Now you listen—”
Ray whistles and snaps his fingers. “Here, boy. C’mon, boy.” Sparky jumps up and trots in Ray’s direction, the show only half over. The children look around, confused. Bosco is there suddenly, calling for Ray to come down off the truck. Ray likes this, the fireman flustered, everything mixed up. He has spoiled the plan. He sees this as the core of living in this world: plans made or not made, plans messed up. They have a plan for getting out and will not use it if Bosco will not talk about it, if Bosco will let himself die quietly instead.
“I think we’re done here, Ray,” Bosco says, pulling at his pant leg. Ray yanks loose from his grip and steps up on the ladder. He climbs about twenty feet and some of the children clap, thinking this is part of the show.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the fireman yells. Sparky barks.
“Hey, Bosco,” Ray shouts down, his tongue thick in his mouth. “What’s your plan for next spring? What say we dive down to the river bottom, rake around in the shit, then do it again the next day, then a thousand more times after that.”
Bosco shrugs. “Okay.”
Ray climbs farther up the ladder, feeling it sway under him. He can see the air conditioners on top of the firehouse, and, in the distance, a corner of the river. Other firemen leave their posts at the gas grills and trot over to surround the back of the truck. Ray turns
and sits on the rung.
“Come down from there now,” a fireman shouts. “We can’t be responsible for your safety. The outriggers aren’t extended.”
“Careful, Bosco,” Ray says. “You might want to check your calendar, make double sure about next spring.” He laughs at his joke, then stands and looks a hundred feet up at the top of the ladder. He thinks of climbing all the way up, then decides against it. Just more up and down, going nowhere.
“I’m sure, Ray,” Bosco says, sober with his embarrassment.
Ray climbs down to the platform, then jumps to the pavement. The firemen tell him to get lost before they call the sheriff, and some of the children start clapping again.
“Okay, then,” he tells Bosco. “We’re set.”
That night Ray makes an excuse of wanting tequila, which means a ride to the liquor store in Berryville, down the highway past Leo’s place. Ray wants to feel the pull of the dairy, the thin stretch of lawn and plaster wall separating them from that other life. He wants to know if it is enough to draw murder from them. He thinks of little else as they ride into the early gray of night, the noise of 1-40 rising on the near horizon. As they pass Leo’s, the dairy is dark, Bosco is punching the buttons on Ray’s radio, complaining that there are no decent rock ‘n’ roll stations. In Berryville they buy their tequila, drinking as they head back toward Clarendon. All along the road are the mashed bodies of frogs, which appear on the highways in the late part of summer, signaling its end.
Ray takes a long swig, the tequila a burning rope through him. As they pass the dairy again he taps the brakes, slowing. Yellow light from Leo’s window angles across the yard and gravel driveway. His curtains are open, a box fan on the windowsill. Leo stands shirtless in front of it. Faint music finds its way to the open window of Ray’s truck.
Ray passes the bottle to Bosco. He can feel the tequila inside him, an invisible thumb pushing him down. “There it is,” he says.
“There what is?” Bosco drinks, some of it spilling down his shirt. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve.