Two Rivers

by T. Greenwood

  I checked my watch, a brand new Elgin railroad wristwatch, a gift from my father for my fourteenth birthday. It cost him an arm and a leg as well as three separate arguments with my mother, but it had been designed by engineers to be accurate to the second, which was something important apparently only to railroad workers and my father. “Almost four-thirty,” I said.

  “Shit,” Betsy said. “Aunt Hanna and Uncle Paul are coming over for dinner. I was supposed to put the roast in at three-thirty.”

  “We can make a run for it,” I said, peering out the window at the glistening trees.

  Thunder rolled under us, making the fort shudder.

  “Let’s go,” Betsy said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me to my feet. My back was aching from the dig. I put the shovel in the wagon, and I pulled it behind me as we dashed from the fort to the nearest tree, which provided little by way of cover. Rain pelted our skin and lightning flashed again. Every branch on the tree became a dark silhouette against the white sky. When the rain lessened for a moment, we ran again, this time toward the edge of the woods near the school parking lot. We stood underneath a tree, waiting for the rain to stop beating the leaf-covered ground, but it would not abate.

  One thing my father’s storm machine had taught me was that thunder and lightning went hand in hand: that there was rarely one without the other. I would never have admitted this to Betsy, but I was afraid of lightning. My mother knew a boy who was struck dead by lightning on a baseball field. So when thunder roared again, incessant and angry, I held on to Betsy, whose hair was drenched. “Wait.”

  “I can’t ,” she said, clearly irritated and cold now. She was shivering. “I told my dad I’d have dinner ready by six. I’ve got to go. ” And with that, she pulled away, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t say it hurt my feelings to have her wriggle away from me.

  She ran toward the parking lot, and I watched her navigate rocks and trees, her long braid swinging behind her. I stayed under the tree, waiting for the inevitable flash of lightning. I kept my eyes on Betsy, watching from afar as she first ran and then slipped on the wet leaves and fell. Before I had time to think, I found myself repeating her haphazard path toward the edge of the woods. The sky burst into a kind of white fire, and I shielded my eyes as if from the sun. I was blinded, and suddenly deafened by a loud crack. It sounded like the very earth was splitting open. When my eyes regained their focus, my ears still struggled to make sense of the dissonance. By the time I realized that the sound was of a tree first being ruptured and then crashing to the ground, my senses were so confused, I could barely discern where I was relative to the parking lot. Relative to Betsy. And when the tree came down, its descent both slow and adamant, I didn’t realize that Betsy, still sitting on the ground, likely with a twisted ankle or banged-up knee, was in its path.

  I made my way to her as if I were skating, the ground was so slick. By the time I got to her, the tree had already landed and was laying across her lower stomach. It wasn’t a huge tree, just a skinny birch, but it had pinned her to the ground. On one side of the trunk were Betsy’s legs, and on the other side was the rest of her. Her eyes were closed. I fell to my knees and touched her hair. It was my first impulse. My second was to run. I thought that maybe if I ran quickly enough I could get to one of the houses near the school. I could call someone, an ambulance, her father. I even started to run when I realized how ludicrous my plan was. What I needed to do was lift the tree off her.

  I looked at Betsy, still unconscious, and at the tree. “I’ll get it off you,” I promised. I knelt down next to her and tried to lift the tree. It wasn’t a big tree, but it was heavy. The pain in my back intensified with the effort. I would need to use something to act as a lever underneath the trunk. I remembered my father’s shovel. I located the wagon underneath the tree where I’d left it. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Betsy, who could have only been sleeping.

  I studied the shovel, frantically trying to devise a scheme. I conjured all the physics and geometry lessons that might help. If I were to wedge the shovel part under the tree and step on the handle, the tree might come up, but who would pull Betsy out? If she didn’t wake up, or if she couldn’t move, this idea would be futile. And, if I were to release my weight from the shovel’s handle, then the tree would crush her. I got an idea then. If I were to put the handle under the trunk, and load the shovel with something heavy enough to lift the tree, then I could pull her out. Relieved and terrified, I shoved the metal handle well under the trunk, right near Betsy’s body, and looked around for something heavy enough to do the trick. The rocks that I found were either too big and awkward to lift, or too light to make any difference. I filled the shovel with armloads of pebbles, and stared at the tree, which remained. Rain was in my eyes and ears, blurring everything when I remembered. The safe .

  I ran as fast as I could back to the fort, dragging the wagon and shovel behind me. The dirt floor of the fort was muddy from the storm. It took every ounce of my strength and every last bit of my energy to dig the safe out of the ground. But somehow, I managed to lift it out of the muddy well and load it into the wagon. My legs shook with exhaustion as I pulled the safe to where Betsy and the tree had fallen.

  Betsy’s eyes were open when I found her. “I thought you left,” she said, her voice small and afraid.

  Ashamed, I shook my head.

  The rest happened so quickly I can barely remember rigging up the contraption that would lift the tree off Betsy. What I do remember is this: the next flash of lightning made Betsy squeeze her eyes shut, but I willed mine to stay open. I remember the muddy trails her hair made on my arms as I pulled her out from underneath the tree. And I remember that she felt small in my arms when I cradled her.

  “Wow. You saved my life,” she said, looking up at me, wide-eyed and grateful.

  “Shut up,” I said, feeling just a little heroic but mostly relieved. We were sitting on the ground, and I was still holding her. I watched my fingers move the hair out of her eyes. I wanted to kiss her. To hold her and kiss her and kiss her. I even closed my eyes for a minute, leaned toward her.

  But then she sat up, brushed her hands off, and threw her shoulders back, wincing a little. “You saved my life, now I owe you mine.” She was all business. As if we’d just made a simple transaction.

  “Nah,” I said, disappointed. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  She nodded. “That’s what happens when someone saves your life. You owe them yours. It’s the truth.” She was dead serious, and it scared me.

  “Okay then.” I laughed. “But I don’t plan on collecting anytime soon.”

  Betsy broke three ribs that day, as well as her wrist. For the ribs she had to stay in bed for a whole week, but for the wrist she got a thick white plaster cast. And instead of being mad about it, Mr. Parker took me aside and shook my hand: thanked me for taking such good care of his little girl. I didn’t tell Betsy what he said, or that this whole incident was further evidence of my greater purpose in her life. Instead, I just asked to sign her cast. By the end of the summer, it was covered in Magic Marker drawings and signatures, but I knew mine was under there. The first.

  Stations of the Cross

  “Y ’all coming with me to church?” Maggie asked on Sunday morning. She was standing in the kitchen in a yellow dress that was freshly pressed: no evidence whatsoever of train wreck or foray into the river. There was a pale yellow ribbon tying her hair back in a puffy ponytail, and she was wearing stockings but not her shoes, whi
ch were sitting neatly by the front door.

  “Daddy doesn’t believe in God,” Shelly explained, though I had certainly never articulated my lack of faith to her in those terms. “He’s an atheist .”

  “Where did you hear that word?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Marigold,” she said. Mrs. Marigold, the expert on all things sacred and profane.

  Maggie looked baffled and then a little hurt. “You have to believe in God,” she said, slipping on first one shoe and then the next. Her feet were tiny little things. Like a doll’s feet. “Who do you think made all the birds and flowers and stuff? Who put the blue in the sky?”

  “I want to go to church too,” Shelly said defiantly.

  “You do?” I asked. She had never expressed any interest in religion. Normally, we spent Sunday mornings watching reruns of The Jetsons together, eating frozen waffles and scrambled eggs. But before I could say no, Shelly was putting her own shoes on, making two loops and then tying them together. The way a child does.

  I didn’t know how to explain to Shelly that it was probably not wise to be seen in public with Maggie. I’d given myself the weekend to make up my mind about what to do with her. To either try to find this aunt in Canada or call her father. In the meantime, I figured it would be best to act as if all of this was normal. For Shelly’s sake as well as my own.

  “I’ll go with you then,” I said, thinking that my tagging along might make the whole trip less desirable.

  Shelly raised one dark eyebrow, one of those few expressions that belonged to Betsy, one of those mannerisms that made a lump in my throat each and every time. “Okay,” she said, shrugging.

  “You got a Baptist church here?” Maggie asked.

  “Everything but,” I said.

  “You got any place with singing?”

  “I don’t think so. The only church I’ve ever been to is the Catholic one.”

  “Good enough. One house of God is as good as any I suppose,” she said. “That’s what my daddy says. He’s a preacher, you know.”

  Well, that explained things.

  St. Elizabeth’s was just down the street, so we walked. Right through town. My mind was racing regarding how I would explain who this girl was when we inevitably ran into someone I knew. Shelly acted as tour guide, pointing out all of Two Rivers’s landmarks along the way as Maggie asked questions and stopped to ponder what she found. Laundromat. Bronze statue of Ethan Allen. The place I’d helped Shelly write her name with a stick in wet cement. Luckily, by the time my friend Stan, from the freight office, and his wife pulled up next to us and rolled down the window, I had it all figured out.

  “Hey, Stan. Ginny,” I said, nodding.

  “Hey, Harper. Saw you down to the river Friday. Helluva mess. I’m goin’ to work soon as I drop Ginny off.”

  I nodded.

  “Who’s this?” he asked then, leaning across Ginny and reaching out the window to shake Maggie’s hand.

  I spoke before Maggie got a chance to. “This is Maggie—my mother’s college roommate’s youngest girl. She’s staying with us for a while.” I didn’t have any more to offer than that. I figured I’d let them come to whatever conclusions they wanted to.

  “I’m here to help Harper take care of Shelly,” she said. “Till my own baby comes, of course.” Her smile was so broad and white, the rest of her almost disappeared behind it. The Cheshire cat.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Stan said.

  Shelly tugged at me, visibly thrilled. “She’s staying? For real?”

  As Stan and Ginny pulled away, waving, I squeezed Shelly’s hand. I never made a promise I couldn’t keep, not anymore, so I thought long and hard before I answered her. “She can stay for a while .”

  “But what about Mrs. Marigold?” Shelly asked. Shelly was one of those rare children who almost always thought about other people before herself. “I mean, I’m pretty much too old for a sitter, but she thinks I still need her. She thinks without her I’d be eating corn dogs every night, that I’d be malnourished .”

  My pride hurt; my knee jerked. “She said that? Christ. Yes, Maggie can keep an eye out for you. But just until we talk to her family.”

  Shelly smiled the rest of the way to church. She grabbed Maggie’s hand, and they skipped ahead, swinging their arms like little girls. It was an odd sight; Shelly had gotten so tall over the summer, and in this dress Maggie’s predicament was obvious. Regardless, they skipped all the way up the forty-four steps to the doors of the church, and then Maggie straightened her skirt, whispered something in Shelly’s ear, and they proceeded quietly through the doors.

  Inside, sunlight was streaming through the stained glass windows, which depicted Jesus’ demise—each window showing one step in His journey to crucifixion. We sat in a pew next to the image of Him carrying His cross. It struck me as ironic, and a little sad, this picture in glass of a man carrying the very instrument that would kill him. Shelly wriggled next to me on the uncomfortable wooden pew. Maggie stared straight ahead, her hands folded neatly on her lap.

  I watched as families entered the church and found their seats, whispering hello to people to the left and right of us. I saw a few people look slightly startled to see us, though we weren’t the only strangers to the service. There were a lot of faces I didn’t recognize. Families of the passengers from the accident, I assumed. At least it made Maggie a little less conspicuous.

  We all fumbled our way through the Mass, sitting and standing when the people in front of us did, searching through the thick hymnal for the words to the songs. Shelly seemed mesmerized by it all, the incense and colored lights shining through Jesus onto our laps. When the other parishioners started to form a line, Shelly followed behind Maggie, who turned to her and shook her head. “You can’t come if you ain’t baptized.”

  “What are they doing?” Shelly whispered.

  “Eating communion,” she said. “The Catholics call it the Body of Christ.”

  Shelly looked mortified. She sat down next to me again and watched Maggie as the line moved slowly toward the front of the church. When Maggie, her mouth closed over the Eucharist, returned to our pew and knelt slowly down to pray, Shelly whispered loudly in my ear, “She didn’t really just eat Jesus, did she, Daddy?”

  “No,” I whispered back, loud enough for Maggie to hear. “It’s just bread.”

  Maggie kept her eyes closed and her hands pressed together in prayer.

  “Mrs. Marigold said that sometimes people eat other people, and that it’s a sin. But only people from Africa. Cannibals , that’s what they’re called.”

  “Shhh,” I said.

  We made it through the Mass without further incident. Even when the elderly priest asked the Lord to hear our prayers regarding all the people who’d been on the train that spilled into Two Rivers, Maggie didn’t flinch.

  Still, I was grateful to get outside the church after Mass was over. The day was cool and crisp, the sort of early fall day that normally made me feel glad to be alive. As we made our way back home, I hung back as Shelly and Maggie skipped ahead. And then just as we were about to round the corner to our apartment building, Paul and Hanna rounded the corner too.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling dumbly.

  “Harper,” Paul said. “We heard about the wreck.
Are you okay? Someone said you were there, that you went in, looking for folks.”

  “You must be…from the train?” Hanna said to Maggie, and then to me, “you know, Lisa and Steve have taken in two little girls whose parents were…oh, this is just so tragic. I’m sorry, what was your name, sweetheart?” she asked, reaching out for Maggie’s hand.

  Maggie accepted her hand and shook it up and down vigorously. “I’m Marguerite DuFresne. I wasn’t in the wreck. My mother went to college with Harper’s mother. I’m here to help out with Shelly. I’m like family, really. See, when my mother found out that Harper was raising Shelly all by himself, she sent me straightaway. Besides, it’s good practice for me, what with the baby coming and all.”

  Hanna was speechless.

  Paul, who never liked anyone to feel uncomfortable, smiled and said, “Pleased to meet you, Marguerite.”

  “Call me Maggie.” She smiled.

  “Then let’s have supper,” Hanna said, forcing a smile. “It’s been over a month since you came by for Sunday supper.”

  Before I could apologize, explain, and decline, Maggie was talking. Again.

  “I make a mean Bananas Foster, I mean, if you don’t mind a little liquor in your dessert on a Sunday.” She smiled at Paul, and then she and Shelly were off skipping again, hand in hand down Depot Street toward Sunset Lanes.

  The Heights

  A fter the lightning and the tree, the only place Betsy felt safe during a storm now was inside a car. She’d heard somewhere that the best place to be if lightning were to strike was inside a vehicle. So on the days when the skies turned gray and thunder trembled in the air, I knew that Betsy would arrive at my house shortly, looking for shelter. Sometimes, if the rain had already started by the time she got to my house, she wouldn’t even bother to knock, going straight to my father’s ’51 DeSoto, which I inherited on my sixteenth birthday. She would wait inside that great beast until I discovered her there, where her anxiety dissipated into a sort of cool excitement. When I found her waiting in the passenger’s seat, she’d smile at me through the glass, motion for me to get inside the car, mouthing, “Hurry!” Then she’d grab my arm, a gesture that was simultaneously desperate and relieved, and say, “Let’s go watch the storm.”